Cow

My fam­ily is spread to the four cor­ners of the coun­try. 4 kids, four cor­ners. One in Ore­gon, one in NYC, one in Cleve­land, one in South Texas, in a prison. We learned from our par­ents, who fled Ire­land for reli­gious per­se­cu­tion. Once we got to the United States our par­ents made good use of the road and the big cars. We took sum­mer vaca­tions in the car. We went for dri­ves in the evening after din­ner or after church. As in, “Let’s go for a drive down the front.” That meant we would drive down Ocean Drive where the wealthy live in Cor­pus Christi, tak­ing the long way past Oso Bay (means bear in Eng­lish) and all the way along the bay that forms the empty con­cav­ity that is down­town Cor­pus Christi. I would ask why we didn’t live on Ocean Drive. My mom would tell me to stop being ridicu­lous, but I secretly felt enti­tled. Then we would drive through six points or down Leop­ard Street, which was exotic because rich peo­ple didn’t live there. We might stop at the Mex­i­can bak­ery for the rolls we ate almost every day of my grow­ing up life. The last leg home we usu­ally ended up dri­ving along Saratoga road, the south­ern limit of town, inhab­ited by cows liv­ing in lit­tle pas­tures between sorghum fields.Then we would get home and tum­ble out of the car, the six of us and head back in to the house,somewhat peace­ful or prob­a­bly sedated. Maybe our fam­ily had col­lec­tive colic and the drive set­tled us. My mem­ory is that that’s the case. We weren’t often set­tled at any other time being all together. The white noise of the car and the AC set to “MAX” (not “NORM”) prob­a­bly took us back to the qui­eter, sleepier place we all passed through before we met each other.

Does any­one do that any­more, go for a “drive” as if its a treat? Do fam­i­lies of six take an hour to be in the car together? When I am back in CC I make the loop almost every time. I am inex­plic­a­bly drawn to it. I know what the salmon must think of themselves.

This coun­try has out­stand­ing geog­ra­phy. It makes a great excuse for get­ting away from any­one, or any­thing. In AA a “geo­graphic” is a legit form of denial in which one tries to escape from the inner demons by explor­ing new locales – mov­ing, chang­ing jobs and cities. I have com­pleted my share of epic geo­graph­ics. I moved from Atlanta to Bend, essen­tially flee­ing the city, hav­ing con­vinced myself it was on fire like in the Civil War. Real­ity: I was on fire and had to get quite a bit more deeply burned before I knew it. Denial is awe­some. It allows one to get all the way to the very end of life’s les­son plan before real­iz­ing school is even in session.

I loved going on fam­ily vaca­tions in this coun­try. In the sum­mer now I itch for the road trip. I like stop­ping at truck stops. As a kid I would crank on the invis­i­ble air horn chain until the trucker yanked on their vis­i­ble ones. I still want to do that. I want to pull in to the motor in too late at night after hav­ing rolled past the bar­ren desert south­west and jump in the pool before going to sleep on starched sheets. I want the ter­ri­ble vanilla-oid ice cream at Howard Johnson’s (Free cones for the kids!). We fought con­stantly, but we were all in the same car, rang­ing across the coun­try in the sum­mers and now I loop back to those mem­o­ries to com­fort me when the mean­ing­less grind of work sands me smooth and unin­ter­est­ing. I was with my peo­ple I guess. Maybe I am unnec­es­sar­ily and inac­cu­rately roman­ti­ciz­ing this – very likely true. Oh well, I do enjoy the mem­o­ries and I enjoy reliv­ing them when I am now on the road espe­cially in the sum­mer­time. The more the dis­tance between my brother and sis­ters, the more I am con­nected to them in this world of my imag­i­nary mem­ory. It’s as good as I can do most of the time. Today, how­ever, to all you Archers who likely don’t get this blog much (and that’s fine, by the way), hello. I am think­ing about you.