Unknown?

This week was somewhat of a busy week, a few Children;s appointments, a couple business meetings, a couple of interviews, mowing the grass (It's a big lawn!), and the usual stuff...so I didn't have a lot of time to come up with something to write about....so....that leads me to this piece. Earlier this year, I wrote a series of columns called "In My Eyes" that have never been published.....Some were about music, but this one,,,,is a little different. If anything else, it might make you think about those mysterious people in photos from long ago!....Hope you like!

It's kind of interesting how one word in the English language can fire up the imagination. How many words are listed in Webster's Dictionary? Well, I can't claim to know the answer to that…..but seeing just one of those seemingly endless words in print the other day kind of inspired me….and troubled me, at the same time.

I was having lunch with some friends of mine at their house just north of town, and one of them brought out some old pictures they had just recently received of their second grade class. The exposures had been redone, and the names of the students had been printed at the bottom of the picture. Everybody was accounted for in these shots from almost sixty years ago…….Everybody was identified in the picture, that is….except for one…..who was named "Unknown."

While I'm sure that in any one class at any given moment in time, someone floated into town for a year, and then was gone to another town, another city, another state….that phrase troubled me just a little. The girl, who was about six or seven, wasn't a mystery to everyone…Was she? Surely, there was someone who would remember her name….What kind of candy bar was her favorite….Who her favorite teacher was that year….But, on the picture….just one word used….Unknown.

I had a basketball game to broadcast that night, then it was home to Centerville after that. I will say that I didn't lose a minute's sleep thinking about it…but the next day, some questions did enter into my mind.

First, there was the obvious….Just who was this person? She wasn't smiling that big in the picture. Why? I wondered…..Did she move away some sixty years ago because her father, who could have just gotten back from the war…found another job elsewhere? She would have turned eighteen in 1960, I figured. Was college in the cards, or maybe a trade vocation. 1960? That's the year my mother graduated from high school. Could she have known her at some point? Did she have a high school sweetheart that she married….one that joined the service immediately after graduation? If so, that would have put in within a few years of possibly having to go to Vietnam. If there was a husband, and if he did go….Did he come back? If not….How did she make it without him? If there were children….How did she raise them by herself? Did they make her a grandparent, just like the friends who had invited me to lunch that day?

Now…I will be the first to admit that there's quite a few if's in this story….and this person is someone that more than likely I have never seen. However, you never know. This person could have been a nurse in Dickson one Sunday night in 1974 when I was born. She could have been a waitress at a restaurant I ate at in Bakersfield, CA….or Mount Vernon, IL, or Abingdon, VA…..three of the towns I have been blessed to visit over those thirty-five years. I have posed several questions here , I know…..but I don't think I have raised anymore than what lies behind that one word…..Unknown. Surely someone knows!