Oh to be here.
Iowa and fall inching its way towards winter. Pillars of smoke reaching into the sky from every house as father after father builds a leaf bonfire in the driveway for his children to dance around while the wives stay inside warming up cider.
Very pretty but too cold. Well not too cold if you grew up in Canada but a childhood spent in Alabama, not Ontario. Grandchildren with warm boots and coats but no idea about how to sneak away from nannies while visiting grandparents out in the country and standing still while the biggest boy throws a rock into the pond out where the next yard ends to make the water moccasins swim away.
Loving fried chicken and green tomatoes fried in bacon grease but a strange accent.
Loved just the same but if only. Father losing his job and having to go where the cousins with the bicycle factory could help.
But the memories still there. Albums carted out on the train and from house to house ever since in who knew how many moving vans. The pictures looked at a million times but a new one falling out of the back. Who knows why but a time travel or at least a thinking.
The Pluto bandstand in the big park in Montgomery where the grownups went on weekends.
No children but for the one time. All the staff sick with something but both parents wanting to hear the band anyway . . . The music, a cup of warmed cider and a honey biscuit . . . Gone for Iowa the next year but that no one knew . . . A good thing . . .all those people come and gone like moths fleeing a blown out flame on the back porch and never seen again.
