ROCKLANDS on the Old Britstown Road. True stories by Etienne Blomerus

2018. Smallish, firm softcover, 179 pages. Good condition; tightly bound and neat.

When (Etienne Blomerus') book, Rocklands: On the Old Britstown Road, appeared, with the wonderful tales of his youth, I discovered that, although he had told me so much of those days on the farm and of the personages there, none of the ones I knew appeared in the book. The one about bat they nailed over the door to keep the bad out; of the old man who chewed tobacco and could spit with such deadly accuracy that it could extinguish a mans cigarette as he entered by the barn door, as well as a host of others, were all missing. It makes one wonder Behind that intelligence and perspicacity we all experienced; that could be cutting and hard, but also made him such an entertaining storyteller, there seemed to run an endless golden thread of memory. In him something of times past lived on, a deep nostalgia for what might have been and kept him, somehow, always a bit apart from the bustle of todays world... -  From a tribute by Eric Hurner