All goods things are wild & free.

Tags

adventure, Current River, family, introspection, Missouri, river life, summer, Van Buren

I go back sometimes, when I wake up in the morning a little too early and I feel the chill of fall. I go back sometimes, when I am sitting in class and the teacher’s droning voice has me half-asleep. It is almost reflexive, this time-traveling, like some sort of defense mechanism – a ready response to pain. My mind is not prepared to accept the oncoming winter, so it returns me to summer and Current River like an angel might safely deposit a tired soul on the far-side banks of Jordan.

I was never much of a river rat until this summer, when my aunt’s boyfriend took me fishing on Current River in a thunderstorm. To Charlie’s credit, it did not begin raining until we were already on the water. Just the same, we did not cut and run until we had a mess of blue gill in our boat and no bait left in the cooler. It was on that trip that I realized, whilst reeling in a fish in the pouring rain, that river life was just volatile and exciting enough to suit my healthy sense of adventure.

Uncle Charlie was born on the river. His family – the Grubbs – settled a long time ago in a hollow not far from Van Buren, Missouri. Current River, as it flows through Van Buren, is a sight for sore eyes. That river, filled with fish and folklore, was his playground as much as his legacy. Charlie is the intimate friend of every harrowing shoal and painted bluff within a fifty-mile radius of Grubb Landing, and this summer he introduced my aunt and I to each and every one of them. It was on the bow of his forty-horse Evinrude that I did most of my meditation.

Time spent on the river is, more than anything, a method of escape. In a place with no cellphone reception, there is very little for a girl to worry about except dodging dragonflies – also known as “snake doctors” – and working on the perfect tan. The breeze, the sun, and the postcard view can melt away stress and ease loneliness more efficiently than anything else I have ever felt or seen. Just stand on the overlook at Big Springs or take in the bluffs at Logyard and you will understand; the river is not just a vacation spot, it is a frame of mind.

The restaurant that thinks its a country store.

Tags

Basic training, Cracker Barrel, Fort Benning, Georgia, Infantry, letters, military, National Guard, priorities, soldier, summer, travel

I like to leave.

Seriously. I enjoy packing my suitcase. I do it with zeal and precision. (“Precision” meaning I use precisely each and every square inch of space available to me. “Zeal” meaning I pack way too much.)

I enjoy buying batteries for the camera. (The hard part is remembering to use it.)

And, I enjoy driving. Especially now that I’m old enough to make all those Interstate miles my own. (I also have an affinity for seedy roadside attractions and other rural oddities. Better have patience if you travel with me.)

Having said all that, I’m obviously going somewhere. That, or I just woke up screaming at 12:05AM because my blog was lacking a post about travel and I had to get up and write it. Yeah, right.

I’m actually leaving for Fort Benning, Georgia tomorrow evening. I’m going to watch my boyfriend graduate from Basic training. Large amounts of celebration are in order.

Wait… boyfriend?

Yes. Somewhere over the course of the many moons Tweedy Blues has been neglected, I developed a boyfriend. (I’m not used to it yet – that’s why I just made him sound like a case of whooping cough or perhaps a roll of film. Developed him. Haha.)

Anyway, he just completed nine weeks of Basic training at Fort Benning, AKA Sand Hill, AKA the hottest, most miserable place a guy could spend his summer. He’s with the Army National Guard, Infantry division. Going to college on an ROTC scholarship once he gets this behind him.

He’s been gone since May 25th. We’ve written a lot of letters. You wouldn’t believe how many stamps I’ve bought in the last three months. And they say people don’t do that anymore!

It’s old-fashioned… it’s outdated… it’s gone the way of the buffalo and the Five & Dime, et cetera.

Ha! Don’t you people know there’s a war on?

Letters are wonderful. If I’ve written as many as I have with a boyfriend in Basic training, imagine all those women whose husbands are overseas right now, serving tours of active duty.

Imagine their situations.

They’ve got kids. Or maybe she’s pregnant,  and there are nights when she misses him so bad it almost kills her. Not to mention the worry. You know it must be endless.

If anything, I know the past nine weeks have given me a better perspective on what our service men and women go through to keep us free. But, they’re not alone. For each soldier there are several other people he carries with him. Everywhere he goes and everything he does, he takes a small crowd of his family and friends. These are his advocates, his representatives, his lifeline. They are devoted to writing him a letter every day. To keeping him in their prayers at night.

That means that no matter what, it’s not just him. He’s not alone. And I know that makes all the difference.

Oh, I almost forgot. Kaleb has been raving about Cracker Barrel in all his recent letters. Suffice to say we’ll be eating there on his 36 hour leave. It’s my favorite restaurant and I always made him take me there when we went out. Now he’s dying for a glass of sweet tea and a plate of chicken and dumplings.

Lord, but I sure do know how to pick ‘em.

I almost forgot – it’s summer!

Tags

Arkansas, girls, hot weather, mud, summer

Gone Countrier

Tags

Arkansas, country life, cowboy hat, photography, summer

Some photos don’t really need a back story– know what I mean? So all I’m going to say is that the logger does not often don a cowboy hat. But his little brother Bob bought this one for him, so that they would match.

Actually, I’m sure matching had nothing to do with it.

Anyway. It was cute.

An Old Troubador

Tags

circle of fifths, dad, flowers, guitar, guitar player, hayfield, lessons, Music, music theory, notes, summer, yucca plants

Hello, handful of people who read this blog.

You will be glad to know that I am not dead– not that I know of, anyway. Just busy trying to somewhat gracefully survive another Arkansas summer. Boy, I wonder where spring got off to? One second I’m in love with the shy advances of temperamental April weather, the next I’m being sat upon and suffocated by the irrationally high humidity levels. “Getting…. hard, to… breathe!”

In the meantime, us Arkansans have been doing typical June things. That means bailing hay, restoring the coolant in our pickups, dragging out all the window fans, bailing more hay, and watching the yucca plants bloom.

Haha. Did you catch that? An Arkansan watching a yucca plant bloom? Whatever.

They are in bloom, but down here we wouldn’t be caught dead enjoying something as sissy-sounding as a “yucca plant”. So we just call ‘em bear grass. Takes care of all our problems.

FYI: This post is not about yucca plants or bear grass.

It’s about the fact that my dad is trying to learn acoustic guitar. Isn’t that cool? I’ve been taking classes for about nine weeks now, and he never showed any vested interesting in picking it up himself until I came home with the ability to play the intro to “Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash.

You know (if you don’t, get the heck off my Internet) in the beginning of the song where the bass player does the “walkup” and Johnny is humming before he actually starts to sing? That’s the part I was playing when Dad fell in love. He said, and I quote; “Meggie May, if I could learn to just play that much on a guitar, I’d sit around and do it all day!” The sad part? He wasn’t kidding.

So, not realizing the potential damage I could be doing, I decided I would take the time to teach him a few things last Saturday on my acoustic. I figured Hey, what’s the harm? It will be cute– like when you train your pet to do something clever! So I sat him down on the couch and, being very eager to learn how Johnny gets his guitar to make that cool sound, he listened astutely as I explained to him what was what and where he had to put his fingers.

Said intro to said song is played using notes, as shown here at the top of the page:

And though Dad doesn’t have any idea what the name of the notes are or where they fit in the grander scheme of things, he could play them with an impressive accuracy by the end of our first “lesson”. Sure, it’s only picking– but for a rank amateur, the man held his own.

He also gave me a new appreciation for my guitar teacher! It takes the patience of Job to not just teach someone, but to pretend you share their excitement when they discover something it seems like you’ve known since the beginning of time. Example: “WOW. Did you know that touching the other strings makes them sound all flat and stuff?” Oh my gosh… no WAY! My guitar teacher is underpaid.

Anyway, Dad must have gone through that walkup two hundred times. He was pretty proud of himself when he finally got to the point where he could do it with no mistakes. Of course, I was letting him look at his hands, and just to keep egos in check I showed him this:

It’s the Circle of Fifths, or the introduction to music theory. He gave it a good, long, hard look as I explained to him the finer points of tension and resolve, then he uncrossed his eyes and went back to playing his walkup. Heh heh. Just keeping it real here.

He’s getting himself a used guitar and expects me to continue his education. I wonder when I should tell him the average salary for guitar teachers around here is about $17 a lesson…