The original song of this title is on the following link, arranged and sung by Elanna Lund, who’s currently in a contest fundraiser. I’ve posted the link, so you can vote for her if you’d like. Below is another version I wrote as another poem in the Pioneer series, which I updated below.
Tag: relationships
Chase the Dream, Chapters 1-4 updated
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First Things
One Sunday when my children were very young, our family made it to church with enough time before the service for an elderly saint to ask how things were going at home. I replied that some days we didn’t seem to accomplish a thing. “Did you read them the Bible?” she asked. “Yes.” “Then you…
Chase the Dream: Childhood Dreams, Chapter 4 part 3
From the best seat in the Palace, Sterling Sr. crowed, blending in with the tumult around him. “Did you see that move, boy? Blast Off’s calling card: a few straight-out jumps and then a killer right reverse. Sure tumbled ol’ Hank Dixon!” The old man hooted as the fallen rider sought refuge behind the arena…
Chase the Dream: Childhood Dreams, Chapter 4 part 2
Forrest didn’t mind his granddad going off and leaving him with a stranger. That was nothing unusual. But the clucking old hen now attending him was. Forrest couldn’t concentrate with her chatter filling the deserted grandstands. He couldn’t do what he needed to before the performance, because despite what he’d told his best friend, Tom,…
Chase the Dream: Childhood Dreams, Chapter 4 part 1
In Sterling Jackson Sr.’s reckoning, no rodeo except the NFR at Oklahoma City topped the San Francisco Cow Palace’s competition. Though he’d never qualified for the Grand National himself, his son seemed to ride for him. Before the National kicked off, the gaunt, silver-haired rancher would tour the city or its environs. Sterling might stop…
Chase the Dream: Childhood Dreams, Chapter 3 part 2
The musty scent of old hay thickened the air. “Mm.” Alison inhaled deeply. “Barns smell so good, Dad.” Scooping up another armful of hay from the cracked concrete floor, she tossed it above her head and danced underneath. Hay and dust particles floated around her, more visible because of the sunlight showering through one of…
Chase the Dream: Childhood Dreams, Chapter 2 part 3. Plus: This Fall-en World
Since this last Chapter 2 segment of Chase is so small, below it I’m also posting another updated seasonal vignette originally published in 2020. Betty Rawlings looked across her Bible at the two boys devouring her gingersnaps. “It’s good to see that my reading didn’t affect your appetites.” She tousled Forrest’s hair, then smoothed it…
Chase the Dream: Childhood Dreams, Chapter 1 part 2
Even before watching her first rodeo, nine-year-old Alison Austin dreams of being a beautiful woman on a fast horse, little guessing what such dreams will cost her and those she learns to love.
The Secret of the Blueberry Patch
My genteel Southern grandma usually protected herself from our northern summer sun with a large-brimmed straw hat, tied under her chin with a big, colorful bow. When the wild berries ripened, she switched to a no-nonsense seed cap. Leading the march to the ditches or neighbors’ old cow pasture, she’d make us pick for hours….
Constance Colson-Clay 