Westward Bound

The past was locked in with very little 'right of passage'. The present was also 'on lockdown', but plotting its escape. The future had been stolen and shipped to parts unknown, forcing places elsewhere to become known as home. Mobility became a trendy tradition born out of necessity. I agree that there is 'no place' like home, provided that place means more than a locality but also defined as a state of being. You see, I would not trade for anything the family that I was born into, but the geography of the place of my birth and rearing left lasting wounds. Freedom was indeed about legal matters, but it was also about exit strategies. I tell you, those wounds often stuck to me like glue, unwilling to be healed soon. Like wounded warriors who know no quit, we'd grit out teeth of life and make the best of it. Back then, there were few known routes for escaping deprivation and adjunct poverty. Back then, as I recall, there were but two escape routes in my neck of the woods. One escape route led to college, and the other led some 550 miles north to Chicago. The former was more certain and enduring than the latter that was just a quick-fix. Most took the one-way ticket north to the great metropolis of the mid-west, but I knew none that protested, and most managed success by doing their best. Most who did decide to stay behind did for years what I did for a short while. But I too went north for just a while until I heard it said, "Go west young man". Sometime later it dawned on me that I had taken both escape routes. I took the quick-fix route to Chicago where I also finished college and found my bride. But wherever I've been, I have always remembered how it was way back then. We were mending fences if not running pigs back into their pins. If we weren't hay bailing, we were irrigating. If not irrigating, we were water-furring the fields, redirecting floodwaters to creeks, ditches, and ponds. If not gathering greens, shelling peas, or busting pecans, We were either picking or chopping cotton, or pulling field corn. We were shelling peas if not busy pulling up peanut vines or sweet potatoes. After a hard rain or windy fall night, on early mornings we'd gather pecans. After leaves fell from trees, along came winter when all became calm and still. Old Man Winter often brought blowing rains blasting against our windowpanes, not to mention snow, icy roads, and occasional school closures which we adored. We rested and endured the winter chill, whether or not the groundhog saw his shadow. No work in the winter season, but regular chores continued on as did keeping warm by the fire. Another thing always remembered was daddy saying, "I'm going west where the eagles build their nest". Why daddy never moved out west and never crossed The Great Divide, but 15 years after his passing, one of his sons resettled in the City by the Bay within a few blocks of the Pacific Ocean. 070420PSCtest, Completely New (8), Brian Strand