Written from the screened porch at the old Earle cabin near Ichetucknee Springs, Florida
June 13, 2018
I don’t even know where to begin, it’s been so long since I’ve written anything (besides a short thank-you note). I’m going all old-school long hand as I’ve no working computer at the moment. How did I manage to journal all those years on paper? It was all I really knew. And I preferred it. Now my mind is faster than my hand. And my posture is terrible.
Yesterday I caught a scent which reminded me of grandpa Pa. It must have been a combination of raw tobacco and the rain right before it falls. I was driving my son and I along one of the many country roads, lined with farmland– corn, cows, horses, watermelon. Power lines neatly parallel to the ever-stretching two-lane highway. Pa used his handkerchief (which he kept in his back pocket) to blow his nose. His vice was chewing tobacco. His very own garden full of the best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten to this day.
As a teen I couldn’t imagine his existence anything short of mundane, perhaps dull. But now I see the allure. The very peacefulness of it all. Days spent tinkering in the garage, tending to the vegetables, gathering fallen tree limbs, wiping the sweat of the brow with a worn handkerchief.
I go to these trips to the springs, to the ranch, to get away from it all. To be away from noise and chatter and chores and errands and work. Here the birds sing day and night. The rooster crows. The donkey bellows. There’s no WiFi. I woke up this morning and walked in dewy grass to pet a pygmy horse.
I miss my Pa. And my Granny. It’s hard sometimes to grasp the brevity of it all– that I shall never again spend time in their presence. Their memories float along with the momentum of the highway, the rows of melon, and the fields of corn.
Busted Flip Flops 