Drifting through the streets of a city that has seen more than I will ever see or be able to understand, I came to know the bliss of being alive. Walls drenched with ivy, whispering out from the past as if to say: "I'm glad you've come." Passing by people and places, knowing that each step had been taken before, by someone else…but not this time. Singing to the tune in my head as I often do, inhaling breaths of jasmine and thanking the heavens for that treat. Louis, you had it right! "What a Wonderful World!"
I think of life as a journey. A journey to the next step, and when you reach the place you were looking for - you stand on that plateau and dream about the next. A journey to this place and that, and then back home, because you always have to go home. I like to think of home so much because I am away from my home. Away from the club houses made of fallen limbs and junk dragged in from here, there and everywhere. Because my memory can recreate home forever more, it makes the time in between not so long. Regardless, I am on a great adventure. An adventure filled with new people, new things, new things to see, to touch, and to feel, new music to tap my foot to and sing along.
Once upon a time me and two of my best buddies found and old seat out of a old car or truck out in the woods near our houses. We dragged that old seat five hundred yards or more, on our way to the perfect spot to set it down. That perfect spot just so happened to be a culvert, built as beautiful as a stone chimney, probably by the WPA or the CCC in the time of our grandparents, we had no idea. Regardless of who built this utilitarian fixture, we thought it was beautiful when we came across it. It over looked what we called a gully and dripped or moved water depending on the time of year through the creek that slithered through our forest. We set up that old teal bench-style seat right on top of that culvert and couldn't wait to see the view from our new grand stand. What a world we could create there in the shade of trees covered with grapevines that we swung on. A place out of a story book. A place where the red fern truly did grow. A place that even today I am not far removed from.
Three boys in three different cities, St. Louis, Shreveport and Austin . I wonder if those boys too remember that place? I bet they do. The sun has risen and set more times than I can count since those days. I am reminded still of the adventure I was on then and the one that I am on now. I wonder if I will ever go back to that specific place? Is it even necessary? Should I replace that pilgrimage with new places, new sites that have yet to be seen by my eyes? I think that is a good idea, at least I will always have the thought of it. Would going back change the whole magnificence of it? Would it be so much smaller and less grand? Would it be broken down or removed? Would a trip back to that place erase such a good memory? Maybe and maybe not! Regardless what the answers to those questions are and no matter what time does to that place, or to me, or to those buddies of mine…that memory is ours. That place and a hundred others belong to our stories. Soon and very so on I hope to see those friends of mine,and when I do I will bring up that culvert made of stone. I will bring up the memories that have popped up in my head today when I thought of that very spot. I would bring them up here but no one else would probably understand…but they will. They will know exactly what I am thinking without much explanation.
A place not too far from Rosedale Lane, East Hall, or 4-H Camp Road …they'll know the place. They might have gone back there too in a memory or a dream over the years.
Mom once had a toll painted sign hanging on a wall in another memory that said: "Home is where the heart is." I think that’s right in many ways, and I am certainly glad that you can take "home" with you when you have to leave. I am so thankful to be able to take "home" with me everywhere I go on this adventure. That stone culvert - whoever built it, Mom and Dad's table with four ladder back chairs - me by the window, trading garbage pail kids cards with my sister on twin beds - in a blue room, of course the smell of Juicy Fruit and Kool cigarettes, iced tea and fresh cherries, pipe smoke and African violets, stories told over and over again. The stories of my life. And I bring up this question myself: am I good enough for all of this? What did I do to deserve all that has been mine?
Years from now if my mind allows me access to these thoughts, if it will let me think of these places, of these people, if I am that lucky then and if I continue to add to this bank of good happenings and wonderful fellowship…I shall be a lucky man to have been able to have my adventure.
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