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Souvenir of the Midwest
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Souvenir of the Midwest |
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cwebb Junior Member
since 2002-01-19
Posts 34 |
I put my paper-pad on the seat beside me, driving back from Kansas City this last Tuesday, courting danger as I scribbled, more intent on capturing what I saw and thought than my next turn. But I opened my eyes. Kept them that way for eight hours, hearing Sgt Pepper fixing a hole, Toots Thielemann’s wailing harp. Here is what I brought back with me (besides memories of my sisters and my darling niece and nephew, hugs from friends, and a renewed case of homesickness for that great town – some day, KC, I’ll be back.) I’d followed my sister’s instructions down: "It's called BB Highway and stretches from Buckner down through Grain Valley to Lone Jack. Just turn left on it from 24 Highway once you get to Buckner... not sure what it's called up through Buckner, but it becomes Main through Grain Valley… So I reversed that route, tailing early-morning farmers with their road-hogging combines, looking out each side to see rising morning mist... I drove. Past villages called Timewell, Rushville, Summum (sounding old-testamentory and threatening, steeped in legend of farming's past, now with little more substance than that of cowboy mythology); Astoria, Little America. Seeing: green halfbowl indents, hummocky hillsides with their black-socked sheep and cows, seeking shelter under windbreak trees, an inland sea of corn and soy, variegated russet/gold/green, brown at root and crown, harvest-time. Following, at one point, an old car with an old guy carefully driving the main street of his hometown - seeing only a plaid elbow leaned out the window, a plastic cup-holder. He turns in at the local bar. Time: 12:30 p.m. Barely-seen hints of fall in the landscape's tapestry, evidence of past storms in limbs laid out like toothpicks. Echoes of Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology - graves beyond some windbreaks, unseen; voices of decades and generations dictating louder here by far than elsewhere the patterns of life. (“The pine woods on the hill and the farmhouse miles away, showed clear as though behind a lens under a sky of peacock blue! But a blanket of cloud by afternoon Muffled the earth. And you walked the road And the clover field, where the only sound Was the cricket’s liquid tremolo. Then the sun went down between great drifts Of distant storms. For a rising wind Swept clean the sky Of the unprotected stars And swayed the russet moon…”) Churches, everywhere - and rusted signs blasting abortion, narrow-gated entrances, Pioneer seed test-plots. A ruined 4-square farmhouse with its stalactite vinings. The only traffic-light in some small town a red-blinking 4-way stop, trailing another blue pickup hauling a seed-spreader. Banners at the last of town, faded and a bit tattered, but still legibly welcoming me to an All-American City, circa 1994. Speed up to 75 once out of town, past tree-limb fenceposts and rusted barbwire stretched - fallen, left coiled in weeds at times, like some wiry snake. Unexpected vistas of the deepest emerald soy-seas, tidal in the riffling breeze. Gypsy crews, road-bound in their orange safety vests... "Prop. for Sale" - knee-high weeds. Deserted farms, round bends overhung by hedgerows older by far than this repatched road - past Grain Bin Rd., Morningstar, Mud St., "The New Arrowhead Cafe" - for sale, a painted burger, hung slackly, chained. I get the sense of a faded midwest slowly returning to the soil (tomorrow's artifacts, rust enriching in some different way) - barnsiding torn slat by weathered slat, gone to furnish craft malls rife with bending broad-beamed women, destined for suburban lawns. I round another bend, suddenly confronted by a vista, brown square, green, gold, vision only to the horizon's bounding trees, the world carefully mapped, at my feet. The ribbon-road shimmers, leading me forever through this seeded prairie. |
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| © Copyright 2002 Carol Webber - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
I take the back roads, too! I also know the feel of this, getting some poetry mixed in with my thoughts, and NOT taking the on the task of trying to scribble them down while driving... My only suggestion would be to work on the format, some editing, and bring it back for a re-read. I think you have something here...would like to see more! |
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amusemi Senior Member
since 2001-12-08
Posts 1262A State of Disarray |
This makes me so ready for a long road trip!!! |
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