I was rummaging through some old newspaper clippings during one of my wife's many vintage items collection sprees back in the dusty hills of Kendall County in a small run-down home that was hosting this particular garage sale. I came across a dusty, yellowed hand-written eight pages of notebook paper entombed in a Ziploc baggy hidden between the also dusty 50's and 60's 'Old West' and 'True Detective' pulp magazines lying in a corner amongst the other dusty and abandoned books in this nearly abandoned home - or storage shed - I couldn't tell which.
The pages began with, "I was born in Dripping Springs, Texas in 1915."
I bought
the manuscript along with some books and the pulp magazines for $2.50. My wife bought a vintage '50s couch for $5 which we hauled back to our barn in Wimberley, Texas.
After reading
this manuscript, I went back to the garage sale and asked for a picture of the now deceased man who used to live here - who had owned these books, and had written his life's tale of important events, and who now was having his few belongings sold by neighbors and purchased by strangers passing through like myself.
Cecil Peel traveled the world. Cecil Peel loved archeology. Cecil Peel once got lost in the Saudi Arabian desert and nearly died. Cecil Peel criss-crossed much of the United States, building pipelines while searching for pre-historic sites. Cecil Peel, as a child,
saw his first automobile and paved road from his bed in the back of a covered wagon while en route with his family to Oklahoma to bury his grandfather in 1922.
Cecil Peel once had
an article written about him by a popular columnist in the San Antonio Express-News with a picture featuring him in his swanky cowboy hat and jeans. Cecil Peel was a bit of a celebrity - at least for a while.
I am amazed that we die. I am amazed that we die, and so easily return to dust. Us, our belongings, our memories so easily sit in the dusty corner of a dusty house and are discarded or bought - for $2.50.
I am amazed. And I wonder and am forced to accept, that yes, my days too will end like this.
God rest your soul, Cecil Peel.
