Kentucky: Stories of a Regional Librarian

By Don Amburgey

One word sums up the title: bildungsroman. Protagonists mature from youth to adulthood, age wisely and morally. Their growth extends from thirteen to twenty-five years of age: youth, teens, young teachers, adult librarians. The young and old get attached to their dogs. Each character faces conflict and has to resolve it. Even a teacher learns the psychology of dogs in the story “Quicksand.” Time extends from 1947 to 1965, set in East Kentucky, the state as a whole, and southern Appalachia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638854777

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Kentucky: Stories of a Regional Librarian

Don Amburgey

ISBN 978-1-63885-476-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-477-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Don Amburgey

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Ernie and Sasha

Conrad’s Passage

Blue Moon in September

Quicksand

Rock Star Rising

Wild Geese

They Will Come Again

Appalachian Bounty

Lover’s Call

Dropping the Atom Bomb

Ernie and Sasha

Ernie loved his dog, Sasha, above everything else in life.

She was his sole companion and guardian against loneliness.

He had always wanted a dog. His dad, a regional librarian, spent many nights away from home traveling for the state library. Loneliness for a fourteen-year-old could be a crushing experience.

Now Sasha was missing!

When Ernie returned home late one night from his school’s basketball season opener at Little Elkhorn, Sasha was gone from her kennel area. That was two weeks after Halloween. He had chained her in the front yard before taking the school bus to the game. The weather had been clear.

Has Sasha been the target of some passing dog thief? Ernie thought and ran toward the kennel. He felt alarmed instantly.

Ernie knew none of his neighbors would harm Sasha. A part of her chain remained attached to the ground pin. Her rawhide chew lay beside it.

An iron-gripping hurt clutched his throat.

Has she been stolen, or has she strayed and gotten killed on the highway? Thoughts raced through Ernie’s head; a passing coal truck could easily have crushed her to death. He lived just off the main trucking route, along the northern base of Pine Mountain. Sasha never knew a stranger. But still…

Ernie determined immediately to track down the thief and retrieve Sasha, even if it were his final act on earth.

Ernie knew his dad was coming home Friday night. That left less than twenty-four hours to find his dog. He convinced himself she had been stolen. He just felt it and wanted her back, dead or alive.

It was now 11 o’clock. First, he would walk the nearby streets to look and whistle for Sasha. He had read that huskies tended to roam and bark less than other breeds of dogs. But at times, Sasha howled like a coyote; he never knew why.

Why didn’t I leave Sasha in the house tonight? Ernie reproached himself. His dad disliked dogs in the house. But his dad was away from home right now.

I don’t like the odors or dog hairs in my coffee cup, he had told Ernie. Though Ernie kept her bathed and groomed, his dad would not relent.

Ernie felt the old loneliness gripping him again.

As he searched along the streets, he recalled first seeing Sasha. She was in the pet store sleeping like a wolf puppy, tightly curled into a ball of black and white fur. She had tried to chew out of the wire cage and come straight to him.

Few people were up yet. None he asked had seen Sasha. He decided, after an hour of inquiry, to go home and use the telephone. Then tomorrow, he would get out his Huffy bicycle and investigate a wider area, taking it street by street.

To whom could he make calls at midnight?

He called the Sheriff’s Dispatcher Service to put out a