"Robert," said Miss Kelly, "perhaps you'll surprise us all, and amount to something." 

     It was years later when somebody pointed to a large building and said, "That's a library." I didn't believe it, because in Miss Kelly's little one-room school, we all knew what a library was. Not a building. It was a board. A three-foot-long shelf in the corner, a plank, upon which sat our few precious worn-out books. According to custom, we washed our hands before touching them.

     So there we sat in her school, soldier straight, learning about people like Mark Twain and Calvin Coolidge, and Ty Cobb and Charles Lindbergh and Booker T. Washington.

     We were the sons and daughters of illiterate farmers, millworkers, and lumberjacks. Some of the folks, in town, called us uproaders. And we called them downhillers. But I knew they could do what I had me an itch to do.

    At school, our teacher Miss Kelly read to us by the hour. She gave us Tom Sawyer and The Wind in the Willows and Ivanhoe, in an effort to lead us from the bondage of ignorance and poverty.

    She earned her thirteen dollars a week.

    I was the youngest of seven children, yet the first to attend any school. Papa and Mama had opposed my going. Yet when I finally introduced Papa to Miss Kelly, initially he said nothing. But he took off his hat.

    "Thank you," Miss Kelly told my father, "for giving me Robert. I shall try to be deserving of your trust."

    "We hope he's got manners," Papa told her with a straight face. "And whatever he breaks, we'll pay for."

    Miss Kelly smiled.

    At school, I met Soup.

    It's only honest to admit here, as an aside, that when I was in college I seriously considered becoming a minister . . . in order to become the first Protestant Pope. However, upon viewing my character (or lack of it) I decided I was unworthy. Were I a preacher, my worry would be that my flock might harken to some of my eccentricities and be like me. But today, were I a minister, I would fight pro-left organizations such as the National Council (and World Council) of Churches.

    During much of my so-called mature life, I've protected my soul and my wallet by avoiding doctors, lawyers, and the clergy. Yet three of my closest and dearest cronies all became ministers . . . Hank Gooch, Fred Rogers, and Soup Vinson.

    The Vinsons lived uproad from the Pecks. And most times, Soup and I were nothing but trouble, to everyone in our path.

    He started it, and I usually caught the blame, and often Miss Kelly's ruler. She didn't have to fill out a form, or assemble witnesses, in order to whack a kid. Those were the sensible days in education. One ruler was worth a dozen rules.

    Somehow, both Soup and I came to realize, as our behinds were smarting, that Miss Kelly was our ticket out of a sewer, or a manure pile. She was a small and resolute candle, flickering in darkness, proud to be a teacher, prouder still of all we learned.

    "Teachers and farmers," Miss Kelly once in-formed us, "are alike. But I'm luckier, because a farmer has to go to his garden. My garden comes to me."

    We were the young, the green, the growing. Buds of life, opening to her warmth, her sunshine, and her strength. She called us "her flowerbed of pansy faces." We were hers, we knew, and she was ours. In her shoddy clothes, she stood ramrod straight, instilling in us all the sterling, character-building Vermont virtues and values.

    She liked me the best.

    As a first grader, I viewed our Miss Kelly as being very tall. As years flew by, she magically grew shorter. When, at age nineteen, I came home from Europe and World War II, she was almost tiny. She rushed up to me, hugged me with her thin little arms, and said, "Praise God."

    Everyone in the county called her Miss Kelly.

    Lots of people bowed to her as she passed, holding her head up high, a patrician among peasants, a beacon in their darkened world. One of the toughest brawlers in town, a man named Buck Dillard, a lumberjack, always brought her a dressed capon for Christmas.

    He had never attended school. Yet local rumor held that Miss Kelly had, one evening, taught Buck Dillard to write his name. He sported a big, mean wood-hook scar across his face and had a slightly crippled hand which had been crushed beneath a log. Some folks claimed there was little good in him. Others claimed none.

    Buck weighed close to three hundred pounds, and for some strange reason, nobody kidded him much. Not even when he silently sobbed at Miss Kelly's funeral.

    She died at age ninety-seven. For me, this was difficult to believe, because when we were her pupils, Soup and I both suspected that Miss Kelly was at least 144. I am most thankful that she lived to share in my success as a writer. I've dedicated more than one book to her, and she became almost as proud of me as I will ever be of her.

    "This book is dedicated to kids who will never read it, hoping that the kids who can will care."

    My latest novel, Jo Silver, is dedicated to a remarkable woman, elderly only in years and winters, whom I met on a Montana mountain, a lady this author shall ever remember. Her name is Sally Old Coyote. 

    Dedications are gestures of thanks.

    Soup is dedicated "to the Reverend Luther Wesley Vinson, a shepherd of his flock, from his first sheep."

    Other pals warrant a salute.

    Banjo pays tribute to a college buddy, who was my best man when I married Dorrie, my favorite librarian. "I dedicate this book to a great guy who will always be my pal . . . and I'll always be his   . . . Fred Rogers." Yes, you're right, TV's famous Mister Rogers.

    Fred and I don't see eye-to-eye on anything. You name it, we differ on it. Yet we've always been able to disagree without becoming disagreeable. Pals forever.

    We are God's garden of variety, in color, race, and creed. How dismal life must be to live in a country where there's only one political party, one origin, or one faith.

    In the summer of 1984, in Los Angeles, we Americans all held a party for the entire world, the Olympic Games. (Russia didn't come. No matter, as Communists never enjoy anything and seldom grin.) What I liked best was watching two athletes hug each other, one white and one black, or one from Japan and one from Brazil, and a Frenchman hugged a German!

    It was a blend of music, fun, excellence. People smiled and praised one another, a party of human brotherhood and sisterhood.

    In my opinion, now that we've seen what works and what doesn't, we ought to dissolve the United Nations, and instead, hold the Olympic Games every year or two. We'd replace talk with action, mediocrity with excellence; and best of all, replace hatred with friendship. Sure, I was rooting for our USA kids. But when that courageous Belgian boy rolled over the finish line in his wheelchair, the world cheered.

    Oh, I love our USA. I'm the corniest flag-waving patriot ever to skip along the pike. If you can't find scores of things, and folks, to admire in these United States, then perhaps loving is beyond your reach and grasp.

    For example, take Early Pardee.

    Early Pardee and I were hunting, one cold day in Vermont, resting, our backs against spruce trees and sitting in snow. Two red foxes were dragging a dead snowshoe hare across a white meadow. It was too dog-gone beautiful to raise a gun and cut down.

    Early spat out a brown stream of Red Man, and spoke. "Ya know, Rob . . . them snowshoes be the bread of winter."

    It was true, what Early Pardee said, because all of life is predatory. Roots of a tree clutch at earth the way the talons of a hawk stretch for an unwary rabbit. Even a carrot is a predator, one orange talon, stabbing into the earth to seek that which is not yet its own.

    Unfortunately, we now smother in a world of law, much of which (civil law and canon law) is enacted by senile males, in churches, courts, and legislatures. Divine Law is all that really counts, law ordained by God and practiced by Nature.

    Today, trouble is, we're all up to our vulnerable wallets in lawyers. We citizens want less law, and more referenda. Lawyers dominate Congress, lobbies, government bureaus, state legislatures, city and town councils, and our courts. I hold even less respect for judges. In short, lawyers should practice the law, but should not be allowed to determine which laws are enacted, many of which benefit themselves.

    No lawyer should run for office. We ought to board-up all law schools for at least twenty years. Laboratory experiments should use lawyers instead of white mice, as lawyers multiply more rapidly, and are less loveable.

    We citizens are always warned: "You can't take the law into your own hands." Poppycock! This is exactly where law belongs, in our hands, not in the hands of lawyers and judges.

    Now then, on to more pleasing matters.

    Because of this mire of people, which I dub peoplution, our animals are dying. Whale, panther, moose, bluebird, even our American eagle is endangered.

    Human life is no more sacred than all of life. Morality, therefore, is acreage per head, for all of Earth's bio life. As I write these words, there is mass starvation in Africa, and today's newspapers abound with heart-wrenching photographs of emaciated children.

    Nature's corrections are always massive, occurring without pity. Horrible, yet because of this starvation, many other forms of life will survive in Africa, and future generations may hopefully prosper. Perhaps it is part of some unknown Divine Order which a mortal mind cannot, or will not, comprehend.

    God's will cannot be fairly translated into human words. To humanize God is demeaning. Prayer should not offer God direction, only gratitude, for a brutal beautiful natural balance created to work so well. "In the beginning, God created." We did not. Ergo, we best not criticize Divine Order, its drought, or its rain.

    I wish not to improve the world. Instead, to give thanks I'm allowed to be part of it, a very insignificant part.

    Even though I work as a writer, and speaker, it's a pity that language, was invented. It's fouled religion. God's purpose should not be etched into words, and Moses erred in herding us, like sheep, down that dreadful wordy path.

   My own Bible is often read.

    I met Ed away out in the middle of nowhere, in our Florida Everglades. He was dumping a mixture of acorns and corn mash onto the ground. I asked him why. Answer, to capture some wild hogs. "All I do," Ed said, "is git 'em lazy enough to depend on me. Soon as that happens, they're my slaves."

    What he told me, I thought, applies to citizens and government. So I told Ed I'd someday write about him. Thus I have, but I won't send him this article. Ed can't read.

    When I met Ed, his mule, Esme, had just died. Only mule he'd ever owned who would lift up a hoof to shake hands. He showed me the harness he'd made for her, then a mound of fresh amber sand he'd dug for her, under which she lay buried.

   That, my friends, is the core of research for a writer, or for anyone curious to learn.

    It is getting off pavement to find the Ed Nockers of America, rural sachems of distant domains, unwashed, unread, yet rarely unwise. Don't go to talk. Go to listen. Meet enough Eds, and you'll be EDucated.

    Speaking of the Florida outback, land, and hardy folk (human or mule), I just finished a novel about a Florida cattle ranch, and a determined and scrawny little widow trying to raise calves and children. Ed Nocker would respect Violet Beecher and maybe so will you. Spanish Hoof is a book I'm proud to author.

    Whoa!

    Sure, I remember the guys I played on teams with, and drank beer with, and sang with ... but I don't guess I remember them any more fondly than the men I worked alongside. Farmers, lumberjacks, old woodhooks at a paper mill, men I helped slaughter hogs, and fellow soldiers when I was a seventeen-year-old private overseas in the U. S. Army.

    These special people, so many of them un-schooled, sit upon an honored throne in my heart.

    In later years, I worked as an advertising executive in New York City, with people whose hands were always clean. Yet sometimes, their mouths, deeds, and souls were filthy. They frittered away their money on an analyst's couch. Why? Because they somehow suspected that what they did for a living served no rightful purpose. Their work built nothing. Fed no one.

    Ask yourself this. Who got chosen by the carpenter of Nazareth to be His closest friends? Were they the richly-robed Pharisees and Sadducees? Not hardly. His friends were Galilean fishermen, men who sweated, and no doubt smelled of fish heads and salt from the sea.

    Work!

    That dirty four-letter word. Yet where would any of us be without it? Begging our government for support, I dare suppose. My happiest mornings are when I jump out of bed at six o'clock, knowing I have a lot to do. And I'm so grateful God has given me the back to start it (that's the tough part) and the will and fortitude to get it completed. Never quit when you're tired. Only when you're done.

    Advice to kids: As you're growing up, find a type of work you enjoy. Any wimp can enjoy play, or TV.

    Also, here's an extra bonus thought, one I discovered by personal experience: People who do hard physical work talk more sense to me than people who rarely soil their hands.

    This is why, in this author's opinion, education better get up off its duff and move outdoors. Kids are being raised today who couldn't even kill a chicken, pluck it, gut it, or cook it. From their limited scope of living, they probably conclude that survival is ordering up a coke and fries at Burger World.

    If you eat meat, you ought to be able to butcher it yourself, instead of tripping blissfully through life thinking that a hamburger is made by Du Pont out of soybeans.

    Perhaps what is really being butchered is education. How long has it been since you have actually touched a cow? Go touch her. She's as warm and sweet as her milk.

    People in America today are possibly becoming teachers at too young an age, too often fresh-hatched out of a college egg. From one cloister to another. Now then, I'm not quite sure how this would work, but perhaps the noble title of teacher should only be bestowed upon a citizen who has ventured off a campus and into the real outside world, and has actually accomplished something. Maybe a teacher should be no younger than thirty, or forty.

    Little saddens me more than my suspecting that educational institutions judge teachers on the criterion of what degree they hold.

    For kids, education should perhaps consider balancing all of its conceptual thought with tangible training, so that a youngster doesn't graduate from college able to manipulate a telephone, a pencil, a keyboard...and little else.

    Some teachers, the lesser ones, gripe about some self-concocted disorder known as Burn Out. These teachers should be allowed to work in the chipper room in a paper mill, where the noise is literally deafening, for an eight-hour shift. I did. Then, when your relief man reports drunk, you work another eight hours. This might convince a teacher or two that a classroom ain't so doggone awful.

    What I'm saying is not that I dislike teachers. No way. I'd just like to remind a few complainers that all jobs have a negative and a positive side. The goose that'll lay a golden egg will also drop a lot of other stuff.

    Laugh Department: I speak to groups of teachers rather often. Generally, they're a super bunch and love to laugh. The biggest round of applause I ever received was after I'd confessed that I had attended only one PTA meeting at a school, where my kids went, and one was quite enough. The ovation came when I said, "I'm convinced that teachers and parents should never meet."

    A most jovial, bright, and friendly fellow was this junior-high principal I met near Chicago. After speaking at his school, the two of us escaped to a local pub for refreshment. He had recently returned from a national convention in Austin, a meeting of principals and superintendents. The most popular session had been called Career Change.

    I asked him why so many upper-echelon educators wanted out. His answer startled me. "Politics," he said. "In my opinion, public education is becoming swamped with too many political causes, and not enough learning or fun."

    His daughter, age of ten, was in elementary school. She came home with a list of new words. One of them was feminist. She spelled it for him. But then the young principal asked his daughter what it meant. Her reply? "Lesbian." This was not, he said, a definition supplied by her teacher, but rather a consensus of student conclusion.

    Thus, we all might conclude that more of today's education could embrace a few studies which are tangible as opposed to conceptual and abstract.

    Today's child is eager, almost salivating, to drive the family car. But have we adults ever manifested the courage, or foresight, to insist that the child understands even the most rudimentary concepts of an engine? Worse yet, do any of us so-called adults know?

    Can we put a worm on a hook? Or remove a hooked catfish and prepare it as a meal? In other words, we should be fully-vested as people, not helpless, incomplete, over-texted weaklings, wondering when Mom (or Swift & Company) is going to spoon-feed us.

    Are we men? Or do we merely wear trousers?

1. Two people recently robbed me. One, a mugger, stuck a gun in my ribs and took my money. The other robber, a college prof I never met, applied for a federal grant, and took your money as well as mine. Of the two, I respect the mugger more. At least he tackled his own dirty work.

2. Cost-of-living adjustments do accomplish one thing. They continually increase everyone's cost of living.

4. Never buy anything, including religion, from someone who telephones you. Whenever one of these pesky people call, politely ask him, or her, to hang on because there's someone knocking at your door. Five minutes later, hang up the phone.

5.In my hands I hold two objects: an acorn, and my Bible. Were I forced  to choose only one, to cherish forever, I would keep the acorn, as it is entirely of God's making.

6. Men are smarter than women. Because no man would consider buying a shirt that buttons up the back.

7. If you wish to have friends, be a friend to someone. Learn where his soft spot is. (We all have them, areas in our mind where we can be easily hurt.) So don't stomp on somebody else's. Tiptoe graciously around it, and never let him know that you are aware he has a vulnerable underbelly which is undefended against a barbed tongue.

8. Justly so, people who try so hard to get something for nothing end up with far less than the rest of us who pay a merchant for its worth and value.

9. Education is not a social service. In truth, it is a commodity, like pork jowls. Health is also a personal concern. It is not a governmental problem that legions of us prefer our forks to exercise, smoke to fresh air, and booze over orange juice.

10. We need new prisons. They should be enclosed, colorful factories (not gray dungeons) where criminals learn a craft, produce products other than license plates, and earn a wage. A modern prison could, on cheap labor, support itself without a penny of public funds.

11. One tiny birth-control pill, properly used, accomplishes more to preserve our beautiful planet than ten social workers or twenty environmentalists.

12. Socialism is merely shared poverty. The disease of socialism could have been cured, like a ham, had only the unfortunate victim (the socialist) been raised on a farm.

15. Most of my wisdom (what little I have) was given to me by a mother, a father, an aunt and a grandmother...none of whom could read or write. Yet I am so grateful to all of my teachers who taught me their crafts and artistry.

16. I like movies in which cop cars crash.

18. Judges should not be former lawyers. A judge should be a citizen; like you, me, and the jury. If the systems in your body became as fouled-up as our judicial system, think how sick you'd be.

19. I respect teachers, so much so that I intensely distrust their unions who prey upon teachers and rob them of their money. Worse yet, when a teachers union hops into bed with a political party, education-gets a slap in the face

20. The teachers who are characters in my books are always strict, sensitive, and caring.

22. Every school needs a hero. But first, learn how a hero acts. He makes other kids feel big. The bigger they all feel, the higher they hold him, and the louder they cheer.

25. The high point of my life would be for me to visit a high school and meet a principal who is not a former football coach.

27. If you're a blacksmith who is working on a stallion, always heft up a front hoof first, for safety. When you meet a stranger, shake his hand, before you're tempted to stomp on his toes.

28. Most automobile damage could have been avoided had the drivers employed a modicum of courtesy. After a two-car crash, it is usually the driver yelling the louder who is at fault. Brakes are poor substitutes for brains.

29. Farmers are the hardest-working people I know. Also the healthiest and happiest. Maybe there's a connection.

31. Cowards always kick a dead lion. Politically speaking, Richard Nixon is a dead lion, but the cowards are still kicking. I pity them, and I'd guess old Mr. Nixon pities them too.

32. Winners always smile, whether they win or lose. Losers grumble, make up excuses, frown, cuss. They throw golf putters, tennis racquets, and tantrums. But your opponent won't remember the score. He will remember whether or not you were a lady or a gentleman.

33. Not long ago, upon hearing of his death, I wept. And then sat at my piano and played all of the 'S Wonderful songs he had written . . . "Lady Be Good" and "Embraceable You" and "My Love Is Here to Stay." Wherever you are, Ira Gershwin, I pray there's a piano and angels to sing you the kind of delightful music you gave to us.

34. As I write these words, a cat is sleeping with her head resting on the toe of my boot. I wish my foot were bare, to appreciate her comfort.

35. Many of today's schools are too big. Middle schools and high schools should be smaller, just for one neighborhood, so that the ridiculous cost of busing could go toward improving the salaries and quality of teachers and the manners of students.

36. Teachers, please hug your kids. Some of them have never been lovingly touched. Only slapped. Miss Kelly hugged Soup and me. So hug even the pupil who is defiant. Why? It is the rule-breaker who will someday explore the stars.

37. She hugged me the most.

39. Women, please learn that men are interested only in one thing. But, after you feed us, our interests may be augmented into other areas.

40. Compared to the work of so many talented authors, my novels aren't really so doggone great. Yet secretly, I truly believe that I am the best teacher of creative writing in the entire galaxy. If you don't believe it, read Secrets of Successful Fiction and also Fiction Is Folks. But please, when talking to students, do not refer to them as text books, a term which makes my book about as appealing as eating a mattress. They are fun books, filled with the meat and potatoes of my craft, not written by a prof, but by a pro. Humor is my chief teaching tool. I've learned far more wisdom from clowns than I have from funeral directors.

41. Every hunting dog should own a man.

42. I own a dog who owns me. He's getting old, lame, and blind. Soon I must take him, a shovel and my gun, into the woods for our last trip together. He will not die indoors with a vet or a needle. I promise you he will feel no pain. I will feel it all. It will be our final outing, as friends.

43. Manhood is doing what has to be done.

44. One of the biggest thrills of my life happened in Missouri, in 1982, when I won the Mark Twain Award. The little bronze bust of Mark Twain that they gave me is here, in my den, and stands only seven inches high. Rob Peck stood seven feet that evening and he's been growing ever since.

46. Ain't it just peachy that the fools of the world hold their own annual festival. It's called New Year's Eve. And if you climb into your car on 31 December, and venture out on a highway, you'll be the biggest fool of all, especially in some flimsy Japanese car.

49. My favorite conversational ploy at a stand-up cocktail party is to corner a liberal and torture it.

    Folks who do, cheer the United States and not the United Nations. They holler "U-S-A!" and not "U-N."

    Cowboy America is positive, prosperous, and pleasant. More than a difference of geography, I see it as a difference of attitude. I live in Florida. Driving a car, one time, I entered a northeastern state, and noticed an official roadside sign which "welcomed" me to its border. It read "Conviction Means Loss of License." In contrast, as a motorist enters a particular southern state, the sign reads "Drive Friendly."

    In short, Harvard's nasal wail of doom (so many Ivy League men talk slightly pained, as though their Fruit-of-the-Looms are a size too tight) is becoming unheard in most of our country.

    It's rather a pity that the headquarters for all three broadcasting networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) are all in New York City, and continually pumping out NYC philosophies across the plains where most of us people live. That, however, will also change. Say what you will about the rural electronic evangelists, at least they're offering a balance for the see-saw.

    No, I'm not, in any way whatsoever, a member of The Moral Majority.

    Yet I must observe that much of what is broad-cast, music-recorded, and filmed these days could use a bath. As obscenity comes, also comes censorship. I'd prefer a powder-blue-suited electronic evangelist for a neighbor rather than a foul-mouthed, hip-grinding, pot-smoking, herpes-carrying, gender-questionable electronic guitarist. To conclude this tirade, I guess my personal preferences for America can be best typified by hearing old Gene Autry singing "Back in the Saddle Again." And that is Cowboy America.

    Well, that's it. It's all I have to prattle and here's hoping it's enough. I can hear you screaming. "Too much!" 

    Whatever you do, don't let innocent children read any of this glop. We can't allow them to grow up into another warped and twisted Robert Newton Peck. Heaven forbid! Yet I must confess to you that Rob Peck has led one heck of a great life. It's been a ball. And a brawl. The rich and famous are often attacked.

    Mediocrity resents talent. And believe me, I resent all those talented people.

    My first hurdle, whenever I lecture (do a gig) at a college or university, is to open up minds. Not the minds of students, because theirs are already open. I try, and often fail, to open the minds of the faculty. They resent me, because I represent success in the off-campus world. Colleges persist in evaluating someone by what degree he holds, or what title. At lunch, bank presidents never ask me. On a campus, there are so many doctors I feel like I'm watching television's General Hospital.

    Life is fun. It's a hoot and a holler. If you can't revel in America and enjoy all the wonderful Americans you meet, you wouldn't be happy in Heaven or even in Florida.

    I doubt I'll go to Heaven, that is, if I have a choice. So many of my closest buddies will probably go somewhere further south, where there's a red piano, a red poker table, and a red pool table with corner pockets that are eight inches wide. And I'll be there, filling inside straights with bourbon, and making old Hades a Heaven for the ladies.

    Looking back, I sure ain't missed much, so I probably won't be missed.

    Don't panic.

    I'm not going just yet, because I have more books to write, more horses to tame, and a lot more songs to sing. Every day ought to represent the whole of a person's life. A full day.

    My three morning rules are these: Up at 6:00, breakfast at 6:15, and at 6:30 ... back to bed. But come to think about it, my life has been mostly work. I was a mite too busy for hopes, prayers, or dreams. So here's my personal motto.