An easy day today, not a whole lot on my plate. Took an old chair and leaned it up against the wall, listened to the Turtle Doves singing their mournful song in the trees. A time to reflect, on the lazy hazy days of summer. Spring just around the corner.
A prime candidate for Cabin Fever, I am ready for the summer season, bring it on. Big winter storm moving in this weekend, some of it today, one more to suffer thru and perhaps it is the last.
Not all that bad this year, it has been cool and it has been nice. Like I said … A little time to sit on the front porch and watch the world roll by. Reflect, mull it over. God has been so good to me. He gives me enough peace and tranquility, time to myself, and my mind can make trips that no amount of high-priced gasoline can stop.
On some days, that is what it is all about.
The American Economy and my spending habits may have relegated me to a life of quiet desperation on the front porch, but it cannot close the borders of my mind. In my mind, there are trips yet untold. In my mind, I can go all I want, and it doesn’t cost one thin dime to head on down that road.
Today I am driving north on Highway Seventy-Four, up that old torn, well driven, worn two lane which harbors those old white wheat elevators in Crescent, Oklahoma, how they stood like ships upon the plain. I am remembering how it was, when I was ten years old, that I thought they were truly the biggest things I had ever seen.
That was before Aircraft Carriers and Viet Nam.
All the mysteries of life, a young heart yearned to discover. Stealing off and skinny-dippin down at the Cimarron River, if mama ever knew, the lickin I would have received. Special days and times, now so precious to me.
Old tin roof, leaves in the gutter. Yellow jackets on the watermelon, honey-suckle in the air, Daddy turning on the sprinkler, letting us run thru it in our underwear. Falling asleep in my Grandpa’s lap, to the sound of his pocket watch ticking in his vest. Angel Food Cake on the counter and a silver fork in my hand.
Learning to drive in a wheat-field full of stubble, shifting gears and using a clutch. Ice cold Grapetts at the Co-Op at the north end of town, beside the railroad depot, now long gone. Fried chicken dinners, ice tea, and fresh picked strawberries for lunch. Riding an old popper, a John Deere to city folks.
Keeping an eye on the furrow and plowing straight, long after the sun has set and into the night. Burning drip-gas in the old pickup, laying a strip of rubber on the asphalt. Secretly stealing a kiss in the balcony on Saturday night.
The noise of an old freight rattling thru town, the sound the train whistle made late in the night. Years later, after decades of time, it would be my hand on that whistle cord, making a living out on the branch line. It would be me riding thru town in the late hours with a string of empties and a little red hack on the end.
Working Oklahoma hot summers, in air so thick with humidity, you could cut it with a knife, barefoot days that seemed to go on and on forever, seemingly to never end. Perhaps I am remembering this all wrong, but, life seemed to be better way back then.
Early morning … Sittin’ on the porch, almost April, trying to work it all out.
All those days, part of my faded past, now a treasure in my minds eye. If life was a classroom and love was just a lesson, I would like to have to stay there, until I finally got it right. Rollin’ north on Highway Seventy-four. There’s a blacktop road, with a faded yellow centerline.
It can take you back to the place, but it can’t take you back in time.
OOO
