The Saturday Evening Post March/April 2018

My grandmother, a genteel woman who never spoke ill of anyone, had a brother she didn’t like. He was a good bit older than she was, and they were not close. When I asked her about him, she would only say he was “not very nice.” That’s the kind of vagueness that sets the mind to conjuring all sorts of ignominious details. Had he been a criminal, perhaps? What had happened to drive a wedge between these two siblings? Many families have secrets. There’s the black sheep who married outside the faith and then disappeared from view, or the drug addict no one talks about. In this issue, Diane Selkirk chases down the mystery of her absent grandfather (“Found Family,” page 40), which began with a photograph of her father as a…

Gigi Ragland Each spring, the world’s largest gathering of sandhill cranes converge on Nebraska’s Platte River Valley — an epic event featured in “Wings!” (page 34). “After watching the documentary Winged Migrations, I became more conscious of the variety of bird life around me,” says Ragland, who has written for National Geographic Traveler and Denver Life. “I wanted to witness this prehistoric spectacle, to see a sky cluttered with flapping enormous birds edging across like a giant curtain — one of nature’s grand shows.” Kathryn Mappes Turner “The dance of the cranes has provided a great deal of inspiration for my work,” says Turner, the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, artist whose painting Serenity appears on our cover. “The elegance and grace of their shape lends itself to composition. In this image I tried to…

Salsa Surprise! I enjoyed “Open Season at the Café Rumba” (Jan/Feb) by Julia Rocchi so much. In my mind, I danced every step as I read. Thank you for a wonderful story that brightened my day. Delana Adkins, Cadiz, Kentucky Rider Down I love the article “Thundering Herd” (Jan/Feb). I want to let you know that I was the “rider down!” I was riding my 24-year-old Rocky Mountain gelding, Smokey, when my bridle broke during the run through a draw. I had no control over my horse after that. It was like getting in your car and the brakes are dismantled and no steering, gas pedal to the floor. I broke three vertebrae and a rib. A kind cowboy helped stop my horse. The adrenaline rush was like no other, and I would still…

In a supposedly classless society like ours, confident appeals to American greatness via hyperbole attract audiences. In 1835, Phineas Taylor Barnum was down on his luck and anxious to find an “amusement” that would attract paying customers. One lucky day, a stranger came into the shop where Barnum worked and told him that he possessed half-ownership of a “curiosity”: a woman named Joice Heth who, the stranger claimed, was the 161-year-old slave who raised George Washington. Barnum examined Heth and the stranger’s “proofs” about her age and provenance and, convinced of her seeming veracity, bought Heth from the stranger. Barnum, being “a student of human nature” as well as a natural showman, “spared no reasonable efforts” in drawing a crowd to see Joice Heth’s performances, in which Heth recounted tales of George…

Tattoos are popular among those “who work in the gig economy, entrepreneurs.” It’s a statement about independence. If it seems to you that you’ve lately been seeing tattoos everywhere and on nearly everyone, you’re not hallucinating. One of the best experts to ask about the flourishing trend may be Friday Jones, a prominent American tattoo artist with an elite worldwide clientele (“I love my oligarchs, here and in Europe — but we don’t talk politics.”) and a visceral passion for her art. “Oh, the money is so easy these days. I feel guilty,” Jones gushed by phone when I found her in New Orleans, which is currently her American base. “I’ve been doing tattoos for 26 years. It’s amazing, watching the whole arc of the business.” Me, I’m confused and conflicted, the blazing…

When the implement store on the west edge of town stops selling snow plows and starts selling lawn mowers, that’s a pretty good sign winter’s grip has loosened. Every year, I circle the vernal equinox on our refrigerator calendar so the first day of spring won’t slip by unnoticed. I’m not sure why I depend upon the calendar to announce spring’s arrival, since it has so little bearing on the matter. Spring comes when it’s good and ready; sometimes well before March 21, sometimes well after. For years, spring in our town was heralded by Leon and Jo Martin, who owned the Dairy Queen. Every year, after their winter sojourn to Florida, they would post the words “Now Hiring” on their sign. I would walk past, see the sign, see Leon and…