Two Gold Rings and the Legend of Tall Tree

Thomas Daniel Payne, a.k.a. Tuck, is eighty-seven years old, was born in 1924 in Charlottesville, Virginia, lived in the Depression years, and was a high school graduate in 1942. He is a veteran of the Army Air Force in World War II, honorably discharged on February 1946. He married Ella, his only love, from Buckingham County, Virginia on January 1945. As Tuck said, she spoiled him for fi ftynine years before passing away. Together they shared their love with three boys and two girls. He worked as a master plumber, retiring in 1989. In 1968, they built a fi ve-room cottage on the Chickahominy River for boating and fl y-fi shing for bass. He woke up one night in 2007 having a great urge to write. He is trying to fi ll that urge with one fi nger and a laptop.