LONG TRAILS FROM PLEASANT HILL

About the Book

From my earliest recollections, my mother, Cora Brown Smith Scurlock, read me poems and stories: Mother Goose rhymes, “Little Orphan Annie,” and “The Night Before Christmas,” stories like “Little Red Riding Hood,” and those fabulous Bedtime Stories that appeared serially in the Bloomington (IL) Daily Pantograph by Thornton W. Burgess.  All of these poems and stories with their unusual people dressed in strange clothes, the talking animals, and the pleasant rhythm of the language made a deep impression on my young impressionable soul.  In addition, Grandfather Wilbur Brown, who lived only five minutes away in my village of Pleasant Hill, sometimes recited poetry memorized in his school days, such as John Whittier’s “Snowbound.” But it was that amazing one-room country grade school teacher, Frieda (Mrs. Walter) Morrison, who ignited the poetic kindling that I had inherited from home.  She had her prize pupils of the eventual Pleasant Hill Grade School class of 1939 reading and writing poems in the first grade!  None of mine survived in manuscript form, but because of repetitive recall over the years, two of them that lead off this collection stuck in my memory.

Others who encouraged my early efforts were my teenage “guardian angel,” Daisy (Mrs. George) Schneider, Lexington (IL) High School teachers Ms. Helen Adams and Ms. Lavelle Ogden, and classmate William Roy.

But I was still writing 19th century imitations when I entered Illinois Wesleyan University in the fall of 1946.  Nothing changed there until I took a contemporary poetry class under Ms. Elizabeth Oggel and creative writing classes under Dr. Louise Johnson in 1948, and joined Black Bookmen, the campus creative writing club, in 1949.  In Black Bookmen, we all came under the dominant influence of fellow student, Arthur Hall Smith (see his critique of one poem in this book).  The most brilliant individual I have ever met — and graciously modest, he taught by example (and by firm, kind criticism to protect our tender egos) the difference between old, trite, imitative images, and the importance of creating fresh, startling new images and styles.  He even “nominated” me, the prototypical social recluse, to be the editor of the Alumni Bulletin’s creative writing issue called Prelude in the spring of 1950.  When he became the editor in 1951 — my postgraduate year — he saturated, over my objections, the issue with my poems and one of my long, experimental short stories.

After I began teaching in 1953, I had a new focus and rarely wrote poems, but I owe a great debt to those I have mentioned for encouraging my poetic efforts.  After I left college, I had no interest in publishing my poetry.  It wasn’t until I began to think, as a genealogist, about how anything written by ancient relatives — even a signature — was (or could have been) so extraordinarily precious that I decided to consider publishing.  I realized that I, too, someday, would likely be a long-ago ancient relative to someone who was pursuing my family history.  And Myron Boyd, a 12 year grade and high school classmate, pushed my impulse button when he sent me a book of his poems dedicated to his lovely wife Rita...

About the Author

G. E. Smith grew up in the tiny ghost-village of Pleasant Hill in Lexington Township, McLean County, Illinois. He graduated from one room Pleasant Hill grade school in 1939 and Lexington High School in 1943. He spent nearly three years in World War II as a member of the 111th United States Navy Construction Battalion in France, the Philippines, Borneo, and Truk Island. He received a BA in journalism from Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Illinois, in 1950. After two years of menial work at State Farm Insurance Company, and Meadows Washing Machine Factory in Bloomington, he began a nine year teaching stint at his alma mater, Lexington High School, in 1953. He later taught for 21 years at Crete-Monee High School, Crete, Illinois, retiring in 1983. His primary interests are sports, writing, genealogy, and, above all, PEOPLE. This is his first published book, but he is currently writing his family history book.