Sheldon Lee Compton

Sheldon Lee Compton passed on April 13, 2026. He was an author of the memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound as well as many novels, short stories, and newspaper articles; he helped and published a wide range of writers from Ketucky and beyond. I'm grateful that he published two excerpts from the as yet unpublished Spark Park, "Night Shift" and "Uncle Sam's Decline."

Growing up

"Growing up [Kenneth] slept with Bryan on the bottom bunk. The oldest of the three of us, I slept on the top bunk. Comfortable, plenty of room. Those were the perks. The morning I woke up to get ready for my wedding, the two of them were there, huddled against each other's backs. Bryan was fifteen. I remember one full year he was so fed up sharing a bottom bunk he slept on the floor, making a pallet out of two or three thick blankets. He probably couldn't figure out what took him so long to figure that one out.

"It was like that a lot. We were a family of seven barely making it. Food stamps. Reduced or free school lunches. School shopping once every year in July. Three to four outfits a piece, a pair of shoes, and then nothing until the following July. I side-stepped this a few times by asking for shoes for Christmas. Always Jordans, except the very last pair just before I was married. Those were Shaqs, blue and black. I'll never forget it, because when they got too small for me, my stepdad wore them another four years."

~~ from The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton

stationed in South Korea

In Sheldon Lee Compton's The Orchard Is Full of Sound, the author's father was stationed in South Korea during the Vietnam War and would later spend time living under a bridge back home in Kentucky.

 

I'm not good enough

"I'm not good enough to work or marry, but I am good enough to write."

~~ Breece D'J Pancake as quoted in The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton