E-letters come to me every day from all over. Got one last evening from a fella in Alabama who travels around the country most of the time. Seems he's one of the young ones (age 34) who likes to connect with Silver Foxes past the age of 60. He doesn't care what they look like, so long as they're good company and might be interested in a little of what he terms his "southern comfort." Hehe (as they finger-giggle in the Internet chat rooms). He wondered if I knew anybody who might like to meet him. As that is not exactly my line of work and I am reluctant to become a matchmaker for things like that, I suggested he subscribe to John Kilpatrick's Mailing List where he can make direct connections with other subscribers by posting information about himself and his interests.   

His letter put me in a reflective mood. I sat out here on the porch of the cabin in Granny's big old mahogany rocker that HER grandma snatched out of the wagon when the rest of her family took off for the Wild and Wooly West after the gold strikes in California. Don't know whether they ever got there or not, but this rocker ain't goin' nowhere at this late date. Got my name on it as well as my butt. Right cold today, I tell you, but I got my parka on that I picked up in Alaska for the "20-below," so I reckon it'll do for the 35-above showin' on the thermometer my buddy Jerry hung above the church pew along the wall facing the Ohio River.   

What I'm thinkin' about is this young travelin' man. He sent me a picture attached to his letter. Fine lookin', no doubt about it. Puts me in mind of a fella I knew in South Africa during my own travelin' days a long time ago. Yessir, he was another fine specimen, that one. We traveled awhile together, him riding pillion on my trusty steed, a Lambretta 152 motor scooter that I nicknamed "the Road Angel." We got lost in the Kalahari Desert one time, him and me, and holed up in a cave to get out of the murderous sun. Real cool in there. Shone the flashlight around and found some prehistoric drawings on the walls, likely not seen for thousands upon thousands of years.   

Animals that nobody ever knew to exist in them parts were romping across the walls with hunters at their heels. And over a ledge which could have passed for a shrine was drawn a female figure with a nubile body that left no doubt of her purpose in life. I reckon the folks that put her there might have prayed to her to help them in the sexual activity required for carrying on the life of the tribe.   

She sure got the point across to my handsome buddy and me, and although what we engaged in before her shrine was not likely to make new life, I s'pose she was pleased to note the honest effort we put into giving it a try.   

I sure hated to leave that young fella behind when I set off for Egypt on the Road Angel up the Great Trunk Road through the heart of Africa. Many's the time I would have enjoyed the warm pleasures of his company along the way. I think in particular of a time high in the Aberdare Range of Kenya.   

Before I left him at Beit Bridge, which spanned the Limpopo River between South Africa and what was then known as Southern Rhodesia but since has been renamed Zimbabwe, he presented with me a little token of farewell which some folks might have thought inappropriate from one man to another. A lot of things, however, went on between him and me which were not exactly the order of the day between buddies of the male persuasion, so the music box that tinkled a song we had adopted as "ours" brought a lift to my heart and a mutual kiss to our lips.   

Thus it came about that my buddy would save my life a few weeks later, even though he remained in South Africa.   

One night I pitched camp in the Aberdare Range of Kenya. I had driven too long, and darkness fell before I found a suitable site. So I stumbled around with a flashlight which shone only a small patch of light in the nearly impenetrable darkness of a mountain forest. I laid out my sleeping roll and, as usual, serenaded myself to sleep with the music box, dreamily wishing for the warmth of the sweet young man I had left behind in South Africa. Off I went into slumber, but was awakened in the moments before dawn by the music box tinkling in my ear. I had apparently rolled over and struck it with my hand and it had started up again. I woke with a start and sat up. Then, above the tinkling of the music box, I heard what sounded like thunder, and the ground began to shake.   

In reflex action, I swept up my sleeping roll and raced up the hillside at the top of which I had parked the Road Angel. From there, in the budding light of day, I watched in horror as a 30-foot-high wall of water swept past. I had pitched camp in a wadi, or dry river bed, and a storm higher in the range had brought on a flash flood channeling down the mountain at a speed, I am sure, exceeding 60 miles an hour. Somewhere in the churning debris of mud, branches and rocks I glimpsed tumbling over the crest, my music box met a sorrowful fate.   

I packed my gear and drove away, remembering our discovery of the shrine inside that cave deep in the Kalahari and the gay rites of physical love we performed before it. Maybe the fertility goddess understood our kind as well as those breeders of her tribe, for although it had come about in a mysterious way, she had, through my partner, bestowed life. Upon me.