jumpingfish

He has become lazy. He doesn’t write much, anymore. He just posts pictures. He must not have anything to say.

It is true, that there have been a lot of pictures here. (I hope you’ve enjoyed them maybe a little.) And it is also true that many have been unencumbered by text. (I hope that this hasn’t been too much of a drag.) But it is not true that I had nothing to say.

Consider, the inanimate objects around the cottage on the hill. There is a story in each of those twelve pictures. 

For example, this one:

That ratty white table near that flue tile leaning up against that White Pine tree are in a very special place.

Long ago, there used to be a red table there. It only had two legs, because one end was nailed to the tree. This was where, we were told, grampa Macmillan used to shave in the morning. He’d lean a mirror against the tree and put his shaving gear on the table and shave. (For what it’s worth, I believe that mirror is in our camping gear in the garage.)

Of course, as children, we had no memory of this. It was only what we were told. Yet we knew the red table well. We sat on it. We crawled under it. And we ran by it over and over, because the stairs going down to the lake used to start in exactly that spot. And we knew those stairs so well that we could run down them in the dark.

On sunny days, when it was ok to swim, we’d dash down those steps. And when we got to the bottom, we’d go out onto the dock that extended into the water from the base of the stairs. Although calling it a dock is being generous, because in those days it was just three long planks mounted to a stump at the water’s edge extending out to Oak or Maple posts pounded into the lake each spring. 

The bluegills and crawdads hid under the planks of that dock. And there was a mucky spot in the water there where if you stepped in, you’d sink up to your knee. Frogs hopped on the sandy beach there. And sometimes snakes slithered by, trying to quickly get to the swamp just twenty yards up the shore.

The dock. I was talking about the dock. And about how we’d run out onto it.

What I wanted to say is that when we’d run down those stairs and get to the dock, my brother and I would stop short, but my cousin would continue running out onto those three long planks at full speed. With huge strides, he’d pick up speed and put his arms over his head, and then he’d dive off the end into the water.

That’s the story that goes with that picture.

If it were a normal year, the creeks would have dried up long ago. If it were a normal year, the grass would be brown. It it were a normal year, the rain barrels would be empty.

But the rain barrels are full. And the grass, in mid August, is lush and green. And water is rushing down the creeks.

Today the sky was gray, and threatening clouds rolled low overhead. Rain fell from the sky. The roads were cluttered with clean, shiny cars driven by drivers who didn’t know quite what to make of that glistening stuff on the pavement. 

Even now, even as my eyes droop and my fingers betray me at the keyboard, there is thunder booming ever closer in the darkness to the west.

This is has definitely not been a normal year.

I stood a while, because I had selected an empty table around the corner and far away. I figured I’d get Kyle’s attention when he came around the corner so that he knew where I was sitting. But he didn’t appear, and he didn’t appear, so eventually I sat down. Moments later, he walked up to the table.

He set down his tray and sat down across from me.

“Something troubling happened back there,” he said.

I looked up.

“I ordered two-thirds of a pound of brisket, and when they weighed it, the scale said 0.48 lbs. Neither person at the register knew whether or not it was two-thirds of a pound. They asked me for help, because they didn’t know that two-thirds is 0.66.”

I shook my head.

“It’s no surprise,” I muttered, “that companies what to hire folks on H-1B visas.”