Friday from the Archives: “Ruins of Time” a short story by Jerry Leath Mills from NCLR 17 (2008)
By Josie Klacker, Intern
Jerry Leath (Jake) Mills, a dear friend of NCLR, passed away in 2012. Mills had numerous publications in his lifetime including the essay “The Dead Mule Rides Again,” published in Southern Cultures in 2000. Mills, a native from Burlington, taught English Renaissance literature at UNC for 31 years. Upon retiring he taught at East Carolina University and Colby Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire.
Mills shared a memory for our 2008 “North Carolina Humor: The Old Mirth State” issue: being a middle school aged boy during the summer of 1949. “Ruins of Time” recounts how, in this sleepy small town, all the neighborhood kids had bikes, and these bikes were somewhat of a class label: “status at my time among my age group had its public incarnation in bicycles: the more rearview mirrors, fox tails and reflector-studded mud flaps on a bike, the further into trash and tackiness its owner was assumed to be…”
It was Mills’ birthday, and he knew he was going to be getting a new sleek red and white American style bicycle. After much practice on the bikes of his friends and family, Mills was ready to take on his quiet town with his brand-new bicycle.
This story is filled with amusing anecdotes and comical remarks of the kinds of trouble young boys with brand new bikes encounter. Mills writes, “I don’t know from what depths of remembrance such a grandiose phrase could have come […] But I wailed with every ounce of melodrama I could muster, ‘I’M RUINED!!!’”
The story concludes with a resolution that will leave readers with the good feeling of childhood whimsy and joy. Mills’ story is an easy light-hearted read that implores us to remember the innocence and drama of youth.
Read the entire piece now on Gale Cengage or by purchasing a copy of the 2008 issue. Read the eulogy by his good friend, author Bland Simpson, in the 2013 issue.
