Classic Poem

In a recent Independent I read
a sketch that told
Of affairs and folks in Ashland
way back in days of old,
When the Stinger ran each Sunday
in the old Commercial sheet,
With caustic observations and
sarcastic joke replete.

My thoughts turned backward as
I read, to those old days again —
The words were so familiar and
the incidents so plain!
It brought a throbbing to my
heart, a tear-drop to my eye,
For the Stinger's star reporter
and its editor was I.

The first of March, nineteen and
eight! And thirty years have gone
And the memory of the Stinger
to most folks has long passed on.
But it caused my pulse to quiver
and my blood to swifter flow
Just to review the incidents of
thirty years ago.

Thirty years since I have wielded
such a bold and merry pen,
And a mighty lot of water's
flowed beneath the bridge since then!
Thirty years of reckless living,
wasted talent, careless ways,
Of neglected opportunities and
useless, squandered days.

The publisher has answered to
his " 30 " from on high
And I wonder who is better off,
friends, Charlie Kirk, or I.
Charlie's rest is calm and peaceful, trials
trails he does not roam
While I'm living in a bedlam
known as the Boyd County Home.

In those days I had some money,
counted friendships by the score,
Now I'm blue and sick and
stranded, in a shelter for the poor;
Not a friend to call upon me,
not a friend on whom to call —
Sometimes I think that Charlie
got the best break after all.

I wonder where they are today,
these folks I wrote about?
Some are scattered here and
yonder, many others have passed out,
Some have prospered, some have
suffered, some have fallen far below
The station of their hopes and
dreams of thirty years ago.

Old Ashland's made great changes
since the year nineteen and eight,
'Twas then a little town and now
a city up-to-date.
It's changes were for better while
I, now old and gray,
Look back and see my changes
were all made the other way.

Oh, I'd trade my share of every-
thing that this old world can give
To again be called Si Plunkard,
and to write and laugh and live.
I'd give all that I had and all
the future may bestow
To recall those good old " Stinger "
days of thirty years ago.