Its A Small World

This isn't a blog entry about riding in a little mechanical pulled boat with groups of dolls dressed in their native costumes singing "It's a Small World."

This is about killing.

When we returned from our trip Friday a friend I grew up left me a message to call him. Because he is the same childhood friend who is scheduled to add a room underneath the den in August I figured his call couldn't be urgent, so I would call him when I got a chance. First, there were a lot of things we needed to get our routines back on track and unpack.

One of the things I needed to do was to carry a sack of Florida oranges to my neighbor, a way of thanking him for watching the house why we were gone and picking up our newspaper every day. While visiting, he and his wife told me his brother recently bought a older house in the historic district of the town of Kennesaw. The man who installed his carpet killed the manager of the carpet company then shot himself, which he died a few hours later. It made interesting conversation, but I didn't think anymore about it.

This morning after I came in from my run I returned my friend’s call. He told a carpet installer shot and killed a good friend of ours, Sonny Hicks, that we grew up with. He killed him because he was disgruntled because he was told they would no longer recommend him to their customers because of his sloppy work and undependability.

And to make it even smaller: I called my sister and asked if she knew about Sonny's death and she said she thought it was him, and she went on to say that Smitty's real name was Frank Smith and he installed her kitchen floor not long ago. I knew his real name was Frank Smith, by reading the article in the paper.

Sonny's funeral was Saturday.