The Broken Cross
This is the long-awaited conclusion to a piece first run by Wild Violet on September 24, 2010. While it was never our intention to wait so long to run the second installment of John Hitchner’s piece, sometimes real life intervenes. In this case, I had just brought home my newborn baby, and was in the midst of “baby boot camp.” By the time we resumed our production schedule, my baby-frazzled brain completely overlooked the fact that we had not run the second installment. While going through old files, I was recently reminded of the omission. So here, at long last, it is! ~...
Read MoreThe Broken Cross, Part 2
2 Early June during my high school years was a time between things. I was not a child now; I was not an adult. No more high school, no more Sunday School until after Labor Day. What would I do in my free time? At fifteen, I was too old to ride my bicycle around town and too young for a New Jersey driving learner’s permit. I was also jobless but expected to “chip in around the house and yard,” as my mother and father expressed it. “Keep those leg and arm muscles strong for football try-outs,” Dad urged me one Saturday morning and pointed to the yard rake and push...
Read MoreThe Broken Cross
(part one of a series) 1 The stone cross lay like a fallen monument on the lawn of Lorrence, New Jersey ’s Holy Trinity Church, the Episcopal parish of my boyhood. For my friends and me, the cross was our pebbled platform — so many pebbles that we wondered how many were sealed together in this ten-foot crucifix barrier between the lawn and walkway to the church’s traditional red door. “I’m thinkin’ twenty thou,” said my friend Joey Wicklund one spring Sunday as we stood on the cross’s two-foot wide base before 9:30...
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