Etchings

Prostrate like a dead snow angel
My face in the grass and my heels tipped skyward
A hawk crying far away
finches tittering nearer,
I wonder,
What was that advice you gave me?

The Cemetary

There is something about country funerals. The abscence of a church is one thing, contrary to the stereotypes of country folk. The last two I attended were in the VFW hall and the funeral parlor, respectively.

The room is always full of burly men, with big hands and fish belly white foreheads. Several have cowboy hats in their hands, others bear the crease in their hair of wearing a cowboy hat for most of their lives. The wives are dressed up a little, wearing nice blouses and good shoes. These are fierce women, make no mistake. Many have had to bury at least one child, others have worked beside their husbands trying to make a living on the land. They are mostly elderly, as the younger generation has gone off to the city to make a decent living.

There's always a cowboy poem, usually pretty bad. If there are musicians, they are surprisingly good, even if you don't particularly like cowboy music. Today, the music was a recording of Vince Gill singing "Go Rest High on That Mountain", guarantee'd to bring tears to the eyes of all but the toughest of us.

It might sound blasphemous but you can't beat the food at a country funeral. It's as if the women all try to outdo each other. Baked beans made with ham hocks, and molasses. Pot roast or sloppy joes, and home made buns. Corn pudding, almost unheard of in America today. Every kind of jello salad imaginable, including one that had raspberries, strawberries and blueberries in it. Potato salad, pasta salad, broccoli salad, green salad, three bean salad, and sliced tomatoes. The desert table is a child's Christmas eve dream; three kinds of brownies, four different chocolate cakes, homemade lemon meringue pie, berry cobbler, that chocolate pudding-coconut-whip-cream-pecan concoction that I can never remember the name of, and a german chocolate cake tall enough to be featured on a cooking magazine cover. Not one single thing that you would think of as "good for you", but somehow, cooked with such love that you are convinced it can do you no harm.

Some families are there with four generations, and the children are allowed to move freely about the hall, without fear of kidnapping and amber alerts. Sticky children, hot and tired from the cemetary, chase each other back and forth.

People are eager to update you on all the tragedies that have occurred in the community since the last time you saw them, as if to say, "It happens to all of us."
The list of oldtimers that have died increases so quickly, I can't help but wonder what will become of this beautiful valley. Will it be filled with houses like every other valley in Colorado?

Standing in the cemetary, looking out over the bluff, I can see about 50 miles. There are maybe 10 houses in all the space.

How long can that last?

Loose Screws

I have a question. Who loses one screw?

Over the years, as I’ve walked the roads of Coal Creek, I have found, variously, screws, tacks, nails, and really big nails, which someone tells me are called spikes. I always pick them up, having run over a few nails, screws, tacks and, more than once, a piece of angle iron myself. I find myself wondering, where in creation these devices-designed-for-fastening come from. Do they fall out of livestock racks? Someone’s homemade camper? Horse trailers? Bike racks?

Suspiciously, they are often found at the mouth of a drive way, or a lane, or a canal access road. Were they thrown there by a secret enemy? Or an avowed enemy for that matter? Is it the fact that there’s a little jounce as one leaves most driveway-lane-canal- access-road type pathways and return to the pavement? Hmmm, it’s a mystery. However, I consider it my neighborly duty to pick them up and carry them away before they cause harm.

Picking up things along the roadside is not new to me. Treading these back roads I have found enough toys to stock my own toy store. A long time ago I came across a magazine called “Found” that published pictures of collections of things found by people in their daily lives. It was fun to try to puzzle out the scene that led to a tear-stained love note being left under the windshield wiper on the wrong car. The picture of people in 1940’s clothing found blowing down the street. The musical score with serious profanity written all over it.

My toys were not so hard to figure out. The little plane was probably held out a window and dropped to see if it would fly. The McDonald’s Happy Meal toy, thrown away with the bag by a passing car (tsk, tsk). The pinwheel? Who needs an explanation for that?

I brought each of these, any many others, home, and put them in an old tie-dye pencil box my daughter had in third grade. At some point, I hoped to mail them all to “Found” so that they could come up with their own theory of their origins.

Alas, alack. Or is it alack, alas? Well, whatever. I made the mistake of reading a women’s magazine with an article on ridding oneself of clutter. It said that you should immediately throw away eight items. Now, did I throw away the 15 years of cancelled checks I have (from back when you still got cancelled checks)? The entire works of Larry Mc Murty (of “Lonesome Dove” fame) in paperback? The 15 coffee mugs I keep in the cupboard though I live alone? The copies of my divorce papers, my mother’s estate proceedings, or the various paid off promissory notes from my various endeavors?

No I did not. On an impulse I reached for, and threw away, the little tie-dye pencil box, with all the found toys dropped by children out car windows as they sat patiently in their little car seats, safely ensconced from harm and all human contact in the back seat, whizzing down the roads of Montrose County.

And I’ve been thinking. Why is it that we throw away so quickly the whimsical, the sentimental, and the silly? Why do we cling so tightly to the rest of it? Why do we remember with horror that moment we realized our dress was tucked into our pantyhose, re-experiencing the embarrassment and humiliation, but so quickly forget the little girl who says, “I like your pretty shoes?” Why do we catalogue every hurt and injury inflicted upon us by our loved ones, but forget the odd laugh, the worried look when we’re ill, and the unexpected caress?

I have no answers, and oddly enough, though I’ve found many screws, nails, tacks, and one more spike, while out walking, I have never yet found another toy.