Another remarkable October morning, I wake before dawn to the drone of traffic drifting through an open window. The semis downshift and whine as they snake south on Rochester Road along Lakeville Lake.
This rush hour wagon train persists while I rest. Listen. Let my mind meander. Crows laugh in the backyard. “Caw-caw-caw! Caw-caw-caw!”
The jokesters have no respect for the working man and woman. They’ve never sat behind a wheel on their way to work, sometimes in downpours. Or in Old Man Winter’s blasts of snow and ice.
As I live by the directives of my DNA, the crows do too. They mock me, who has raised children, built a homestead with my husband, and now listen to the morning music of younger generations.
While I enjoy the liberty of discretionary time to do whatever I please, the crows enjoy theirs. As Aesop’s fables tell, and Edgar Allan Poe penned in “The Raven”, crows have no compassion for us who grieve the loss of life and love, and keep a house and pay bills.
At last, I rise and return to my desk, invest another day to work with words. Then, I suit up with mosquito-proof attire, retrieve Betsy our golf cart, and load a bag of Japanese anemone roots and stems on Betsy’s bed.
Removed from my backyard gardens, the anemones’ slender, long stems, leafy foliage, and dark pink blossoms will offer a face lift to my perennial island come next fall.
Although thoroughly protected by clothing and my bee veil, those darned mosquitoes chase me away before I complete deadheading and transplanting.
After dinner and a good night’s rest, I lay listening again this morning to the traffic and crows–ponder how our household, life, and America have changed. From 1978-1988, my husband and I awoke to the radio at 6 a.m., tuned to Dr. James Dobson’s program on parenting.
Soon, weather will force me to shut and lock the window, morning’s music silenced.
Ah…no more Wagon Train. One of my favorite childhood television series. For several years, I sat before our little TV with my family watching the wagon master guide pioneers in their covered wagons from the East Coast into the Wild West.
Then, I could not comprehend the adventure and hardships of a pioneer, what they suffered and lost to homestead the American Frontier. In 1954, when my parents left our McCoy homeplace behind in Peter Creek, Kentucky, Dad drove on newly paved roads in his 1949 Chrysler into the city of Detroit. Mom poured him hot coffee from a thermos to keep him awake.
As in our homeplace, we had a flushing toilet in the Detroit house. Mom cooked on a stove fueled by gas.
Dear Reader, unlike our homeplace, we had a television in Detroit. And Gunsmoke to entertain us. Later came Wagon Train when our family moved to Warren.
Now, while I may, I listen to rush hour’s song–the wheels whine and gears shift into the future of electric cars.
Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com
