Roy Richardson

The Folk and the Education of Private Ambrose Roy Richardson

There is a myth that a small bug called an earwig is able to enter men s minds. I decided to write about the earwig as a benign creature. I would deny the myth because of my granddaughter, Kate, who is frightened of them. Then one of the earwigs, named Charles, appeared in my story to verify the myth. Now, I was stuck. Kate s mother, my daughter, suggested an alternate direction: my autobiography. Good enough. But gradually, the earwig myth and my past began to merge. Closer, closer, and closer the folk (the earwigs) have come to practice their mythical talent. My autobiography, joining with the obligatory scene, seemed imminent. The background was the Aleutian Campaign on Kiska and its aftermath and World War II. It was a three-and-a-half-year experiment and a conclusion to my private answer to war.