When I was young, my family would drive to Griffithville, a very small rural town in east-central Arkansas and home to the now-demolished Blue Devil restaurant, to visit my grandparents-my mother's parents. They lived in the same house that my mother had grown up in after spending the initial part of her childhood in Chicago. It wasn't a long drive from where we lived-about thirty minutes-but to a young boy, the uneventful trip through miles and miles of flat farmland seemed like forever.
But then I started looking out the window. I mean really looking. I began to see things formed by the rows and rows of soybean plants, a kind of zoetrope, if you will. Beautiful things. Fantastic things. Ridiculous things. Dependent on the angle of the rows in relation to the road, different shapes would form and perform whatever trick they had for me. I can't remember all the shapes and forms I used to see, but I still see one whenever I drive by soybean fields, and he was my favorite. It was a cowboy, with a tall 10-gallon hat and big cowboy boots, just running as fast as he can. Sometimes I thought we were in a race, but most of all I was just happy he was there, running alongside us.
I found a dragon in my pipe smoke, but I was not scared. He flew for me until he became sky; then space; then stars.
My family shot Roman Candles off of the old Judsonia bridge on the Fourth of July. Though I think my brother and I were really the only ones that appreciated how magnificent it was, I think it reminded my father of how good life can still be. I know I need reminding sometimes. And I appreciate that something so simple can be so uplifting.
2 comments:
Beautiful.
I sometimes wish I had looked out the car window more as a child. Instead, I was always lost in a book. For good or ill, I was less tied to the physical world than most.
I'll look for your racing cowboy the next time I pass a soybean field.
take me with you to your soybean fields..thank you
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