15 february 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2648: state of the world

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

“Reading the newspaper is a habit of old men that some of us would live longer if we broke.”

Thus said Edwin Ludlow in the presence of his “Baby Bob,” youngest son Robert Edward Ludlow, who did not know what to do with that at a mere seven years old. His father was not talking to him, but in quiet despair about the state of the world, how it was changing in a manner he did not like, and how he could no longer side with the men he agreed with the most because they had hurt his baby son.

51 years later, Capt. Robert Edward Ludlow Sr. remembered this, and sighed … the state of the world was not as far out of his liking as it had been for his father in 1969, but Covid-19 and a highly contentious election season were dominating the Big Loft Bulletin. To be bombarded with problems for which there was no possible solution one could enact – it was so disempowering.

Capt. Ludlow sometimes read the Lofton County Free Voice – its takes were sometimes not to his liking, but at least it was an action-based publication. One always knew who to call, who to write, and whose doorstep to show up on … but even that, for a single individual, was exhausting.

So, the captain decided to do what he didn't know what to do for himself as a child … in his mind, he visualized his own granddaughter, Amanda, coming to interrupt him because often she sensed when he was frustrated, and decided that she should not be burdened … it was his job not to frustrate himself.

So, the captain used the Free Voice to cross-check the issues he was interested in, wrote down the sources and contact material each provided, and then jotted down his ideas and the moves he might make, and then took both papers to the shredder where Mrs. Ludlow would make papier-mache for their grandchildren to make things with. All of them were out on the yard, playing … and tears overflowed his eyes.

“There is nothing I will not do that is in my power,” he said aloud, “to keep you unburdened as long as I can in this world, and the main burden I need to keep from you is the bad habits in me, so that is what I am going to do!”