Topsy and the Little Red Fox

By Dr. Silas E. Short and Lyle Jakosalem

I have enjoyed writing most of my life. I wrote bulletin articles for the church bulletin and have some 1,200 of them saved somewhere. I have a vivid imagination for it comes very easy. We had a mare named Molly when I was a kid. I rode her a million miles (not really). She was a great horse. I loved her a lot. When I began thinking about the Topsy story, the name was the first one I came up with. We also had a pony named Topsy; my older sister and I rode her for a long time. She originally belonged to Miss America Jo Carol Denison (1948), so came the name of Topsy for my fictional colt.

The second character in the book is the little red fox, Swifty. She actually was real too. I looked out that morning and saw her sitting in my driveway. That part of the book is real. I began to write myself notes to use in the book. I had planned to have two books, but thought it would be fun to combine them, so here is the one book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514434918

Dr. Silas E. Short

I, Silas E. Short, the author, was born in the back bedroom of our farm house. I weighed in at an even ten pounds. Dr. Underwood stayed at our house for sixteen hours because mother was a small lady and was having a very tough time. That was seventy-seven and a half years ago. I grew up on our dairy farm. We milked eighty head of Jersey cows twice a day. We bottled our milk in quart bottles and delivered it to most houses in Hale Center. We also delivered it to the restaurants and grocery stores. It was a really good time in life. We never lacked things to do. We farmed cotton and feed as well. In the fall, we would gather our cotton by hand. The feed, we bundled and shocked it in the field. Christmas break from school was always hauling bundles and stacking them in long stacks near the back of the barn. The hammer mill (feed grinder) was always in use every Saturday morning. My school days began in 1944. I graduated from high school in 1956. My sweet wife, Beth, and I married on June 1, just a week after graduating. We raised our super sons and enjoyed them. Beth passed away on October 5, 1989, with breast cancer. I had gone back to school and got my BA in 1985, my master’s in 1997, and my doctorate in 2001. I have been preaching the Gospel for the past thirty years in the Church of Christ in different cities. I remained a widower for three years and then married Sherry Jo. She and I have one son, Shiloh, born in 1992. She was diagnosed with malignant brain tumors in 1994. She survived for almost seven years, but we lost her September 26, 2001. I remarried after three years. Judy passed away on June 5, 2012, from COPD.

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