My Home Town

26 March 2012

A Beautiful Day for a Ride

A nice day on Sunday. Beautiful actually. The sun was shining, the air was clear and blue. Went for a ride with the local chapter of the Harley Owners Group, Oz HOGS as they are called. Oz, of course, referring to this being Kansas, and Dorothy being from Kansas in the Wizard of Oz books (yes, to all you film buffs, there are more than one Wizard of Oz books!).

We rode from Topeka out U.S. 40 to Lawrence. That is a fun road to ride when you're on your own, or with maybe one or two others. In a larger group, it didn't quite seem as fun. Part of the fun are the twisties, the curves and the rolling hills. Hitting a 40mph curve at 55 can be thrilling. Downright exhilarating even! Hitting a 40mph curve at 30 or 35? Not so much. Regardless, it was still good. A reason to burn the fuel and have the wind in my face and to see the fields as they turn green with the wheat and corn and whatever else the farmers are planting out there.

There is a house on that road, one I remember from when I was just a wee tyke. It has a rather large clock in a gable facing the front. The clock must be 10 or more feet in diameter. It doesn't work. Never has as far back as I can remember. There were several years during my youth when instead of the clock, there was a covered hole there, the clock leaning against the side of the house. I'm glad whoever did so put it back in it's proper place.

It was in the general location of that clock-house that I caught a whiff of fresh-cut wood as I rolled down the road. The odor taking me instantly back to my youth, many many years ago, and also transporting me several hundred miles south, to Pittsburg, Kansas.

The home of my grandfather. His home and the workshop in the back yard. He was a furniture maker. "Tomorrow's Antiques Today" read some business cards that we had found just a few years ago. The same motto used by my grandfather and his father before him. Both furniture makers. The smell of the fresh-cut wood made me think of that workshop. Saw dust covering the floor. Light angling in through the windows, catching all the tiny bits and specks of saw dust that were floating in the air. The building was a rather drab looking gray, but I loved it there. It was a place of magic and wonder. I sometimes wonder if he had lived long enough, and we lived close enough, if he would have taught me how to create beauty from a twisted tree like he could. "Let it be said of me, that I could find beauty in a twisted tree." That is the phrase on his grave marker.

Now I feel the need to make a trip to Pittsburg. To visit his grave. The workshop is long gone now, the contents sold after his death and the building torn down. But Chicken Annie's is still there in Pittsburg. Best fried chicken you'll find anywhere.

A few moments after the whiff of saw-dust filled my nostrils, and dragged out the pleasant memories, I rode past a skunk someone had hit. Its repugnant stench cancelling out the sweet memories of saw dust and youth (before it had a chance to be misspent).

13 September 2011

Life Is Good

It was sunrise. You couldn't see the sun yet, it was still below the horizon, but the daylight that is the sun's entourage was bright yellow and orange. It reached out in a sunburst pattern, fingers of yellow-orange daylight reaching into the dark blue purple of the night. The sight was truly magnificent. I only remember seeing that sunburst effect in drawings or paintings, or other works of art. I'm sure I've seen it in reality a thousand times, but none of those have ever registered in my memory. Either I wasn't paying attention, or they simply weren't that spectacular. Probably a combination of both. This sunrise though, was awe inspiring. I fully regret now, not pulling off to the side of the road and taking a few moments to snap a couple of pictures. Though I'm pretty certain the pictures would not have been as inspiring. Like pictures of the Grand Canyon. There's no way a picture can match the real thing. No way it can make you feel the way being there and witnessing it makes you feel.

The vibrant yellow-orange of the day reached out fingers of light into the dark blue purple of the night. The demarcations between day and night were well defined, almost sharp. Shafts of night narrowed into dagger like points between the widening fingers of daylight. It didn't last long as I rode the highway through Lawrence, by the time I reached the Eudora exit, the scene has muted. The light and dark mixed and the lines blurred until there was a sort of day-horizon, with a pale blue-purple curtain of night slowly dissipating as the pale yellow of the day made progress, winning the battle - as it does every day. The sun finally made it's appearance. Like some giant red general or king riding high on his stallion behind the front lines into battle. Supervising as the troops of daylight vanquished the dark soldiers of nighttime.

It was a glorious sight.