Apr. 07, 2007 - 00:52 MDT

EXTENDING FRIDAY

Hanging onto Friday just a bit, just had to rest early on tonight. We are done getting ready for company.

Just not sure as to why we went to such great leangths in preparation for my birthday company, but it was good because Monday my Nebraska cousin and her Denver brother will be over at our place for a visit before we go out to eat.

But I do feel like the proverbial two birds killed with one stone, a heavy one. It seems that it takes me forever to do the things I once accomplished in a very few hours. Hah, complaint registered.

THE LONG WAY BACK

Spring used to come as a blessing and a curse to me. All winter long I could hear the freight trains passing south just a bit west of our house, and that lonesome, agonizing whistle spoke to me of strange and warm lands.

I hated winter with a purple passion to say the least. Looking back with what I know now, I was a victim of SAD.

The first few warm days of Spring would tune up my Fiddle Foot and I would long to be where it was warm all the time. A desire that has never left me.

I was probably in the fifth grade, I know it was after I had spent a year out of school with St. Vitus Dance and was fattened up and healthy. So it must have been fifth grade or so that coming home from school, stirring up the fire in the coal range, doing housework and getting supper ready began to irk me to the max.

Knowing that we probably still had snow coming at least one or two more times, in a pout I dug up my heavy jacket and decided I would strike out on my own and GO SOUTH. The way south was just a few blocks away and I had hooked rides on boxcars for short ways, just for the fun of it I decided to hop a freight and be where it was warm soonest.

Sticking a sandwich in my jacket pocket along with an apple in the other one I left on the great adventure. The term Runaway didn't enter my mind, I was a man in search of constant warmth figuring on finding work when I got wherever I was going.

But this day you might say the Gods were against me, or for me as the case may be. I walked the tracks for hours and no freights came by, oh, well some came by but they were headed north.

In my little undeveloped mind (never did develop far) I figured, the heck with it and where the train tracks diverged from the highway south I kept following the highway. It cooled off as evening approached, I buttoned my jacket up, ate the sandwich and kept walking, later having the apple. At a filling station down the road I bought a bottle of pop and kept on walking.

I had walked about as far as my body would carry me and when a berm with a bit of height showed up I got behind it and laid down out of the breeze. After a short nap, even this headstrong kid began to realize his limits and figured catching hell and a beating would be better than walking so far to the warm Southland. So I trudged my way back all those miles.

It was long after midnight, but the lights were still on and my folks still up, and the door was unlocked. I entered to see Mom shedding tears and got a hug from her. Then rather than a beating (or the usual spanking) I got a more serious bit of punishment, a long, long talk from my Dad explaining what I had put my Mom through. Mom had gone to bed when finally Dad finished his lecture and said, "I'm too tired to spank you tonight, we'll see about tomorrow and sent me to bed.

Tomorrow came, we got up Dad had words to the effect, "It's a good thing you didn't miss any school, better eat and get on your way."

So my fantastically great act of rebellion was over - - - - - for that year. For a time I did remember THE LONG WAY BACK . . . . . . . . . . .

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