Absent Companions, 2008, is Tom Kelly's 13th edition of stories about the bird, the people of the South, lost friends, a special black lab and the loss of a circus that he was personally involved in. Here is Tom's copy from the dust cover. "After your age had gotten into double digits, and the first digit of the number is an eight, unless you have spent an awful lot of your time in prison, you have rn through a lot of companions and made a lot of friends and acquaintances. Not that the people you know today are any less interesting than those of other years, but a lot of the interesting ones have already gone to that great wood yard in the sky. I take a drink to these vanished companions every night of my life partly in gratitude for having known them and partly for a selfish reason, namely, that I warm my id at their coals." Tom Kelly, 2008
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