Laura Sherry

From “Ridge People”

JIM BURGANTINE said,

“If any other man had tried

To put over a plug hat

In this Western burg

He’d a been egged.”

Howard Bently

Didn’t follow fashion.

He brought his hat from Massachusetts—

It was a good hat

And lasted forty years.

For the matter of that,

Eight months of the calendar

He didn’t wear a hat;

He never did unnecessary things.

He split a cracker

If the scales tipped over a pound.

He split a cracker

If the scales tipped under a pound.

When a neighbor was sick

He sat up nights,

And took the orphans home.

Twenty-five thousand dollars,

Earned in his corner grocery,

Was scattered about the country

Among the struggling farmers.

Howard Bently died

Without trying to collect.

He never said unnecessary words—

He was a quiet man.

No tombstone

Shouts his name above the sod.