MY WILLOW

About the Book

MY WILLOW by Bud Lang

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Paul M. (Bud) Lang was born near Decatur, Alabama July 16, 1938, Morgan County then and now but formerly Cotaco County. While none of his three birth certificates show a different date, none show that he was born in the same place, either his Morgan, Madison or Limestone County. The year 1938 was the year that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) closed the dams and began to flood the valley. The Valley changed suddenly and rapidly. Learning early of German blood with the beginning of WWII and the incarceration of his father and grandfather because they could not produce an American birth certificate, then experiencing the rift in his maternal family over the fact that they were half Cherokee, as a child the issue of race had strong influence and provided difficulty in molding the adult person. He never learned to follow the will of those who chose to direct his thinking and has maintained a free mind of his own. Upon losing the one love that he had found in his early years, to a drunk driver just before their high school graduation, he turned his spirit to the Black American Rights movement where he learned that there were people who would listen to a white boy from Alabama. Too many friends died and it was too easy to make the freedom ride to New York where he stayed until he recuperated from severe injuries. At the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Mr. Lang became aware of the need to dedicate himself to another passion, the raising of his three children. Two more were added before long from an orphanage in Costa Rica, little Mayan girls. They wanted to grow up in Texas. There he wrote about business, education and training, banking, machines and instruments, among the many subjects, and raised all the kids. In later life it was discovered that there were mounds of notes and stories that had been accumulated over the years. In going back through them, nostalgia managed to direct the vision toward the story of the great story teller, Ol’ Charlie Wolf, and others. There are so many stories.