The Captain`s Vengeance

To all my hard-working, common-sense East Tennessee kin-folk who went before, who lived in the shadows of McCloud Mountain and McLean's Rock in the Powell Valley time out of mind, just a "Hoot and Holler" from the Cumberland Gap. If they did try to pound some "down home" verities into me, I'm sorry that they didn't all take, and wish I'd paid more attention to the old tales, the centuries-old lore that was warp and woof of their "Bright, Sunny South," in those wondrous summer twilights when the kids and the dogs lay "plumb tuckered out" 'neath my Mamaw and Papaw Ellison's sheltering oak, and the "lightning bugs" swam above the lawn as thick as schools of minnows. It may be belated, but God bless you all for my "raisin'."

And, to my ex-wives… don't bother, I'm still too broke to pay attention.

Praenda vago iussit geminare pericula ponto,

bellica cum dubiis rostra dedit retibus.

Praedator cupit immensos obsidere campos

ut multa innumera igera pasecat ove.

Booty bade men double the perils of the surging

deep when it fitted the beaks of war to the rocking ships.

'Tis the freebooter who longs to seize upon

the measureless plains that on many an acre

he may graze his countless sheep.

– Nemesis III, 39-42

Albius Tibullus