Map of My Father: Carl Colin

These are some of the only words my father left for me. They were in response to an email I sent him asking for his comments on the coming of the year 2000, millennium. He wrote:

We each sat in our own chairs, our solace in a world that is passing us by. Or are we in fact, passing it by. The so called music that is heralded as the century's best was indeed not for us. I guess we just aren't as interested in what is going on around us as we were in the past. I think my deepest thoughts during the so-called countdown, were of my children and their offspring. I uttered a prayer for all of them, in the hopes that our creator would hear me and answer their prayers in the time to come. We were put here for something, and I hope we have satisfied that purpose. To you and all of yours, for the generations to come, may all of you be privy to the very best of everything, and appreciate the efforts of all those who came before you.

God bless all of you.
Mother and Daddy

I took this photograph of my dad in my grandparent's yard in Niceville Florida about 1967 with a cheap plastic camera that has become all the rage among "artists". My father always seemed to me like he looked in this picture, scowling and severe. In fact, he had a wonderous smile and sense of humor that peeked through when he didn't think other peoplewere paying attention. I inherited his "seriousness" and I'm sure my children thing of me in the same way I think of him. Isn't it amazing how that works out. His ashes are buried a few miles from there now. My grandmother and granddaddy are both dead and the house was sold to the First Baptist Church. My great grandmother and the house she lived in across the street they are gone as well. The old neighborhood where I played as a child is now a parking lot. Like the song, "They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot." Well its only gravel for now, perhaps they'll get around to paving it eventually. Some of you may read this and accuse me of being depressed and languishing in a bed of tears, but I'm only turning memories over like rocks and looking for the eyes of tiny creatures to fascinate me anew!