The Bumpy Ride Home

I can still hear his voice… “Mud, brick, Flue!” My father’s bellowing, high on the scaffold, mid-afternoon; the mason pushing hard to finish the chimney by nightfall.  The sound reached me as I hoisted a 94-pound sack of dry mortar up onto a cement mixer.  At the time I was pre-adolescent, a lanky 110lbs. His…