Let Those Ponies Run

Home In this little town, the dirt roads stretch for miles. The pot holes long left neglected are little reminders that I live in a rural area, far from the civility. Like any place, this little town has its up’s and downs. Life is slow here and at the same time it is fast with the hurried drama of small problems that bloom with the help of the local gossip queens and kings. Everybody knows everybody and with that, everybody knows what the next person is doing, factual or not. For the most part, everyone just tries to survive the best that they can. It is a long way from City life and the instant gratification of a six dollar coffee on every corner. Somehow, the people of this little down do just fine without all of the City perks. Because they have been doing it for hundreds of years, they just accept the trade-off of a 24 hour superstore for the peace and quiet of the oak covered hills. The smell of cow shit is as prevalent in the air here as the smell of car exhaust in the city, but nobody seems to mind. In late fall, all of the cattle are being shipped back from their summer range in Oregon. The green trails of watery, green muck that spill out of the cattle hauling semis, signal shipping season is here. The locals are used to it, but for the city slickers that stop for gas on their way through, they fan their noses in disgust. If it is not the smell of shit that gets them, the mosquitos will. This is no place for the faint of heart and it takes a special person to accept the lifestyle. The family names are as old as the State and some of the patriarchs and matriarchs of those scions let you know that. The kids graduate and move away, but they eventually come back. One can drive away, but sadly enough one can never leave. I found this out the hard way. After packing the only clothes I had in an old Army ruck sack, I said goodbye to the shit stained streets and said hello to the smell of moth balls, itchy wool blankets and Army life. I traveled the world like a vagabond in camo boots, living from a duffle bag. At the time, that green, canvas duffle bag was the only home I knew. But, somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew home was where my family was and what I found later was that home is really where your heart is. Home is where one finds comfort. It is a place that connects our souls to peace and tranquility. It is a place that we love, though we may not have the ability to fully explain why. Home was mom’s kitchen and the smell of fresh baked apple pie. Home was a bunkhouse and the smell of burning cedar and shitty boots. Home was a field of wild flowers in a spring meadow and home is anywhere with a person you love beside you. The years away from home had left me empty and cold and I found comfort in willing arms of strangers only to even feel emptier as I crept out the door in the early morning light. It was an ever dissolving patch on my heart that I would consistently coat with heaps of booze and promiscuity. I wondered more than once when that pain would end, but deep down I was only building a scar that would take decades to heal. After my stint in the Army, I was bruised and hardened by things that no one person should ever see. The black and white world of military service is hardscrabble and unforgiving. It is triumph and heartache rolled into a burrito of fried goodness. One that looks super good on the outside, but on the inside, one is not healthy. The day I pulled my old truck into mom’s house, I sat in the driveway of the place I grew up in and looked around. It looked the same as it did six years earlier, but I knew it was different. It had to be. In the driveway, the snow was three feet high and growing taller with each flake that fell. For a moment, I looked in the rearview mirror at the piles of crap that I had so hastily packed in my truck and thought about driving away. It wasn’t that I wanted to run, but I had to. That deep seated need to go as far and as fast away from that house and the memories of Randi, weighed hard on my fractured soul. Randi wasn’t my dog or a brother who so mercifully beat me, but she was the blonde haired, sparkly-eyed misfit that destroyed me. Long ago, I was an eighteen year old ranch hand fresh out of high school and home was a solitary bunkhouse and a creaky, metal bed. It wasn’t as much of a home as mom’s sugar cookies on a cold fall day, but it did the trick.