Views From My Rocking Chair

About the Book

Travel with the author down memory lane in this the first of a series of books about lessons taught and the values learned. Learn of hard earned character, and the attributes one finds in living the Christian life, mostly the character the author finds in those he meets along the way. Be on the lookout for memories that will take you down old country roads and across old wooden bridges past serpentine split rail fences, only coming to rest at the old farmhouse at the end of the road. If so, then you have traveled with the author and viewed life as he saw it.

Memories long past and lessons learned long ago is the order of the day from someone who knows what it is like to have grown up poor on one of Florida’s many farms in the 1950’s and on. This look down memory lane teaches the reader lessons from the standpoint of Christian love, and it teaches it so well that the reader doesn’t even know he has been to church. For that is the key to Bert Brooks’ writings. He doesn’t preach and he doesn’t condemn. He obliges those with differences and is always on the lookout for someone to teach him. A teacher, who is a student, why didn’t someone think of this earlier? The author gives the sermons he has lived in life to you as it was dealt to him. Many lessons to him were taught from the front of an old white-washed country church, and many more from those he has met along the way. One gets the impression that many of these lessons laid at rest for decades in the mind of the author, nurturing and ripening with age, and only now are springing forth in homespun humor and simplicity that only one with roots such as he can attest. “The best sermons are those that are lived,” is but one of his many expressions that plays on the reader’s mind and causes one to feel has come about from sitting at the feet of someone greater than he. You will laugh and you will cry as you will remember those days of yesteryear with promises of hope and joy for tomorrow.

This is a humorous look at nostalgia and how one man survived, no triumphed, over a very inauspicious beginning, to tell us that he has lived the very best life one could ever possibly live, and if he had it to do over again, would do nothing different. At least one gets that feeling from a life laid open for all to see. It’s simple, yet sincere; light hearted, but complex and one that is guaranteed to cause you to feel much better about yourself and those around you, long after you have finished, than when you first began. It is a book that is an easy read, but one that will leave you reminiscing about the past and looking forward to the future. For that, you will be “blessed.”

Upon these pages you will find truth and dare. You will see life as it was in rural America during the 1950’s and on, and you will see the humor gleaned by the author from a far simpler time and place. Down the dusty dirt roads of backwoods America you will travel with the author as he grows up and you will find that even during tough times folks had a way of making a go of it, and making life enjoyable along the way. You will find what he has found in his travels and hear of friends he has made, and the family that was formed. And hear of the neighbors he shared, the fences they mended and the bridges they built. Be prepared to be gently taught many of life’s lessons as you hear of life’s sermons and perhaps learn a deeper meaning of life, given in an easygoing manner. And, if in the process, your memories have been whetted and honed into nostalgia like an old grindstone found under the shelter of love, then you will be much better off after you have said your goodbyes than when you first said hello. If so, I would hope that you, along with me, will share what you learned with others. Having accomplished that, we will all be much the richer for it.

About the Author

Bert E. Brooks is a sixth generation Floridian, born and raised in “another time and place” when rural America was King. Because of a life changing experience while sitting in a little country church, he commenced a quest for his family’s roots. That search has led him to writing about his life as a youngster and his years as a missionary and beyond. This is his first book in a series of books, satirical in nature, humorous, and sprinkled with anecdotes of his travels. He likes to say, “Southerner by birth, Christian by choice and Cracker by the grace of God!”