Blue Canoe

Cover art by T. M. Wright. Introduction by Tom Piccirilli.

My name is Happy Farmer.

I was born in a cherry red 1967 Mercury Montclair near a strip mall outside Cooperstown, NY, not much more than fifty years ago, to a loving young couple who – at the time – had no money but who had very large dreams.

Their last name was Farmer.

They named me "Happy" after my mother's favorite children's book, The Happy Farmer. The Happy Farmer himself was a tall and jolly man who always dressed in happy-blue farmer's coveralls, through whose shoulder straps he always inserted his happy thumbs, and he always wore a very, very happy farmer's grin which said, in essence, I'm the happy farmer. I grow happy food that makes all good little boys and girls grow into good and happy adults.

In time, the blue canoe will repair itself. I know this as well as I know my excesses, which have been legion. The blue canoe is a living thing. In its way, it breathes, ages, knows much. It knows about trees and grasses. It knows about the atmosphere, rain and wind, thunder and sleet and fog. And it knows about the constellations that parade across the sky, night and day – Cassiopeia, Andromeda, the Big Dipper.