Linda Ricketts with Michael McDougal at the Montgomery County Literacy Volunteers Annual Spelling Bee Fund Raiser
(May 18, 2004) — Image by kenne
There’s a song written by John Prine titled, “Angel from Montgomery.” The people of Montgomery County had that angle and her name is Linda Ricketts. Linda was an angel because she was one of those rare people who found her voice by adopting and embracing communities and filiations, which in turn Inspired her to inhale the memory of acts never experienced. These acts were the work of an angel who served countless people and organizations by giving without conditions the one gift worth more than any, her time. She was a volunteer’s volunteer!
If we believe that “becoming is superior to being,” then the process of becoming is that of “gathering up the fragments”, so that we as individuals, communities and organizations may become whole. Linda was able to see the fragments around her and gather them. Whatever was broken, missing, disconnected or lost, Linda worked to create new connections resulting in bright mosaics made from the gathered fragments.
The historic, colloquial, genesis of the title words in the song, “Angel from Montgomery” are not about our angel from Montgomery county, but have to do with her husband being pardoned from a death sentence by the governor of Alabama. You hope from Death Row that the governor will be your Angel and send a pardon your way from his home in Montgomery. So the old woman in the John Prine song is singing about becoming a pardon from the humdrum humility of her loveless life. I share it here for its beauty and humble, but profound chorus of gathered fragments.
Those of us who love Linda are blessed with her beautiful mosaics made from gather fragments — broken; colorful; unique; that will forever be “beneficial to all concerned.”
I count Linda among my most loved friends.
kenne
Angel from Montgomery
I am an old woman named after my mother
My old man is another child that’s grown old
If dreams were lightning thunder was desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago
Make me an angel that flies from Montgom’ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
When I was a young girl well, I had me a cowboy
He weren’t much to look at, just free rambling man
But that was a long time and no matter how I try
The years just flow by like a broken down dam.
Make me an angel that flies from Montgom’ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
There’s flies in the kitchen I can hear ’em there buzzing
And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.
Make me an angel that flies from Montgom’ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
— John Prine
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