Labor(free) Day Holiday Weekend

Friday, September 1, 2006
You Can Go Home Again

It's just not always the way you remember it.

For Labor Day Weekend I decided to visit my father who still lives down in the Ozarks. It was past time, I have been most everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere this summer now it was time to return home for a while.

Something about returning to where I grew up makes me feel like a child. I decided I was going to take the tent and camp out in the side yard under the big pine tree. Late the first evening, alone in the tent (Dulcinea, having not grown-up in the country, had decided to sleep indoors in a bed) and lying on the air mattress I was enjoying the early cool night air. For some reason I began to remember how much of my summers as a kid were filled with itching and scratching. I turned on the small flashlight and shone it behind my knee where a little seed tick was busily burrowing into my skin. And then I vividly remembered why I was always itching and scratching as a kid: ticks, chiggers and poison ivy.


Saturday, September 02, 2006

I did sleep great until just before dawn when I awoke to a cold pain in my butt. During the night the air mattress had deflated. I always did want to get up early to take pictures in the fresh light of early morning. After a pot of Dad's great tasting coffee (I think the secret is he never washes the pot) Dulcinea and I headed out for a morning of fishing in the creek that winds it way along the border of my Dad's farm. We use the word farm loosely in our family. The farm is the original homestead of my father's family; roughly 130 acres of Ozark hill country that has remained largely untouched since the Great Depression, except for a few fertile bottom acres my Dad lets a neighbor use to raise hay and winter pasture his cattle on in return for keeping our fence up.

After several hours of non-productive fishing and non-productive dove hunting the sun was now high overhead and we were perspiring profusely from the unusual exercise. I'm not sure who had the idea first, but within minutes we were swimming in the COLD spring-fed creek. Just like kids again and it felt great. We were back at the house in time for lunch.

As I write this during the lazy afternoon sitting in a cool breeze on the side porch I am watching two ruby throated hummingbirds do aerial combat stunts as each tries to keep the other from feeding at the red globe of sugar water . They are both so busy defending territory they are oblivious to my presence.

Later...
Time to head back to the city. It has been a perfect weekend. I have no problem with always being a kid when I visit here, if only in my memory.