Explore 1.5M+ audiobooks & ebooks free for 30 days

From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

A Garden for Cornelius
A Garden for Cornelius
A Garden for Cornelius
Ebook73 pages1 hour

A Garden for Cornelius

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

There are formal classes we should attend, and there are street teachers who give a certain meaning to our personal experiences of living. Enjoy these outliers who, after some mistakes, have found so much good to share with the world. Love, passion, and yearning are the keys to good living presented here.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 7, 2025
ISBN9798230355595
A Garden for Cornelius
Read preview
Author

George H. Clowers, Jr.

Retired substance use disorder counselor.

Read more from George H. Clowers, Jr.

Related to A Garden for Cornelius

Related ebooks

City Life For You

View More

Related categories

Reviews for A Garden for Cornelius

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    A Garden for Cornelius - George H. Clowers, Jr.

    There are formal classes we should attend, and there are street teachers who give a certain meaning to our personal experiences of living. Enjoy these outliers who, after some mistakes, have found so much good to share with the world.

    Love, passion, and yearning are the keys to good living presented here.

    CONTENTS

    The Case of Milton Price

    Audrey Peterson

    A Garden for Cornelius

    Please Don’t Bury Me In The Rain

    THE CASE OF MILTON PRICE

    Who you, man? the little boy asked the crumpled mass of humanity sprawled out on the porch of his grandmother’s rental property on Griffin Street. Why you sleeping here? he asked further. You need to go home. You must be on crack.

    The boy looked around, sighed, and walked across the street to where he lived with his parents. He knew grandmama would be here soon and help the man get home.

    *

    The awards were many and would pay for his college tuition. He could go west, have that experience, and return to Georgia. He wanted to practice law, and the degree from Hollowell would be a good one to have. No one doubted his ability to compete, most just wondered how high he would go.

    He was a big man at twenty years old, six-one, 240 pounds. He had been a good defensive lineman in high school for three years but didn’t receive any offers to play at college. He was glad not to have that pressure. He enjoyed sports, but academia was where he wanted to play. His gift for words and outsized memory had served him well, as attested by his 3.9 GPA. He probably could have chosen most any field of endeavor, but the practice of law pulled him. There was something about fact finding and delivering a persuasive argument that had been his interest since grade school, and the first successful lie he told. He felt a certain calm when it was not challenged. He was nine years old.

    Milton’s older brother Ivan was smart too and was in his first year of residency up north. They stayed in touch and were still competitive yet supportive of each other’s endeavors. Ivan was outgoing and debonair, dressed well and made friends easily. He had already written several papers while in med school about the ill effects produced on neighborhoods due to drug use among young males and had decided to pursue psychiatry. Though the Price boys were somewhat protected from drug use by their parents, they had good friends who succumbed to its death knell or were in the throes of active addiction by twelfth grade. Ivan left home in good standing first, and Milton’s goal was to do the same and not get caught up. He did, however, smoke a joint with a girlfriend once, but didn’t like it, and never tried it again. Something about the feeling stayed with him and he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t tell Ivan and forgot about it as life moved on.

    *

    Milton usually sat in the front of the classroom and took modest notes to imprint information.  When queried, he would answer a question without knowing why he knew it. He stored so much information by the time he got to law school, some thought this was his second go ‘round. Facts, cases, and landmark decisions flowed from him with an unnerving ease, yet, he rarely carried books, or a briefcase. He was a pad and pen kind of guy back in 1975.

    Alana Robinson thought he was cool and approached him one day after a Tort Law class. The professor asked Milton to discuss reasons for torts and how to go about them. Everyone had clapped after his performance.

    Pretty cool, dude, she said to him. Do you already have a law degree? she asked.

    Oh, come on, he replied. You could have done that.

    Maybe, but not like that! That was silk homes.

    Well thank you. It was fun, he replied to her praise.

    *

    Milton went to work for a law firm that specialized in intellectual property disputes. It was a small outfit that handled the most difficult cases. He was hired particularly for his expertise in deductive literary criticism, an arcane art form used to distinguish similar written works. Within two years he had won large settlements from movie producers who had used an author’s work, without authorization, exposing their misuse of the similar works argument. Milton had rightly argued that just like a mother can spot or hear her child’s cries in a room of a thousand kids, the writers identified their work as presented on the screen. One writer had to be physically removed from a movie house midway through Mr. Franklin as he jumped from his seat screaming, That’s my story, that’s my story! The photo-journalist Art Johnson was in the audience and was able to document and recreate the reaction, which swayed a jury’s decision. Milton’s closing argument was made easier, and the studio was assessed $3.2 million in damages to the author.

    As his reputation soared, and his bank account increased, Milton became depressed, oddly, and while out on a date, marijuana was offered, and he accepted. The

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 4