WEDNESDAY’S CHILD

      
        Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

Hank grew to be a tall, lean, straight backed, handsome man with coal black hair and a pleasant respectful attitude toward those he trusted. He would do anything for a friend, but in his mind, most of the world was against him and he was quick to take offense. As the years went by, he appeared destined for bachelorhood, but when he was in his late thirties, he was charmed by the spontaneity, the good nature, happy laughter and flirtatiousness of seventeen year old Beulah, who had moved from Arkansas to the small town in Kansas, with her family, where they ran the town’s only hotel. Hank and Beulah were soon married, and the two of them and his beloved mother, who had no one else in the world, moved to the tiny house on the farm located on fertile creek bottom land across the road from the farm where Jenny’s family was to live. Hank was as lean as Beulah was fat. They were like Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat, or perhaps a nail and a pumpkin. When Hank sat there so straight and lean in his cast iron tractor seat, with his flat cap on his head, from a distance, he looked just like a nail. Though both Hank and Beulah worked hard, and the land was good, poor business decisions were made and they struggled to eke out a living when the dry years of the thirties came along. It almost seemed as if he willed himself to fail, thinking it his lot in life. He had never experienced much success and seemed unable to pull himself up and overcome adversity as so many do.