Up And Down

Had only driven up the improved driveway, so I went up and down a few times this morning, to get a feel for the new surface, then went on in to town to see the wooden sign that D did for the pup. Nicely lettered (he teaches typography), routed, sand-blasted and painted. A handsome thing. He can't really charge enough, but there should be a good bit of free beer involved. The owners are very excited. They stand me to a pint of Harp to go with my stew for lunch. leisurely drive home, enjoying the color on the slopes across the Ohio in Kentucky. On the trip up the creek, it's all about leaf fall and that swirl of color in the rear-view mirror. I stop to admire a field of rag-weed, lovely in the slanted light, stop again at there first ford, which is dry, to look at the sandstone formations. The ford itself is a flat sandstone shelf, but just to the south, in some ancient shifting, the rock in a straight line all the way across the stream is down-faulted 18 inches. In the spring it's a lovely clean waterfall. I follow B's lead on the driveway, hugging the inside, so that the wheels might start a grader ditch. If we're out there, in the first good rain, we'll train the water to deepen what we've started. I've been digging ditches my entire life, and digging post-holes. I can't even estimate the miles of fencing I've built. A large number. Doctor Peter calculated I'd carried more than a 150,000 gallons of water from the spring and stream in Mississippi. I've probably read more than 15,000 books. Statistics don't apply to individuals. I'd picked up several tins of sardines (in oil) at Big Lots. A secret passion. I love sardines. I had a bag of cheap yellow onions, I had a loaf of bread. You don't want to eat one of these if you need to be around other people. But alone with yourself, on a weekend. I prefer to put mayonnaise on one piece of bread, and drain off the oil, cover with onion sliced thin, and a squirt of lime juice, salt and pepper. A great, though messy and smelly sandwich. A sequence of switchbacks where you actually drove out the side windows, never seeing what was in front of you. An uncertain lump pf clay. Was that a middle C in the midst of all that extraneous sound? Did you hear it yourself, or are you parroting what you heard? I think about not trusting you, and then I wonder about why you trust me. There's a serious point here. The me they dug from that spot is not the actual me at all. You couldn't think I was a Basque dufus, you'd be so lucky. It's more complicated than that. The minute I heard, I heard there needed to be some particular riff, you and me, and the blues.The hall-way was crowded.