Cornbread Sun?

I hope this blog finds you doing well. It leaves my fingers doing well. It is moving through my input device and transmitting via blue tooth into my Ipad with almost no latency. Later it will saved to my drop box account in the "cloud", which is low, cold and gray today. Then I will move it to my laptop for the final edit, and then it will be posted to the internet in my blog.  I know what you are asking. Roger how do you make something so technical, reverberate with such soul and humanity. I am indebted to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and those goobers who created Google for the technical side. The soulful humanity is brought to you by Alfred P. Newman, Red Skelton, and Hee Haw. (Doom, Despair, and Agony on me).

Fall didn’t think that the vernal equinox and a blog wasn't enough to celebrate its arrival last week. Fall had to go for a full court press this weekend at our place. High in the 50's and a cold rain has been on the menu for the past two days.  I have taken a proactive combative stance of two-two hour naps this weekend and plan on pulling out the ham and bean recipe for Monday. Yummy. The secret weapon will be a skillet full of cornbread. When it comes out of the oven, that golden orb will look like a sun all warm and toasty. It will embrace the golden butter and flow to the cockles of my soul and give me warm fuzzy feelings while I eat the second and third and fourth pieces. The whole time I will be hunting for that big piece of ham that fell off of the bone as those beans simmered in the crock-pot all day.

Fall is definitely the time of the year when imagery returns. Summer is too bright. It washes all brilliant imagery away in its blazing light. Oh we try; hotter than a firecracker (adequate), dryer than a desiccated cockroach in the Mohave desert. (not heard of that one? Of course you haven't. I just made it up because I needed another image to go with hotter than a fire-cracker.) We have only one lousy firecracker metaphor for summer.

Back to my point that summer is not the time of imagery. At the end of July, I was riding my bike when I came across the two boots in the picture at the bottom of this page. It was at the bottom of this long really steep hill and I was going 32 mph. Going 32 mph on a bicycle, really helps the concentration. So I quickly thought "that's cool" and let it go, continuing my search for other obstacles that might end my ride faster than a French photographer in the Tour de France. (I know another summer image reference, but admit it you have no idea what I am talking about. Only .009 % of the population does and we are all those goofy spandex, bicycle, short wearing geeks that know exactly how fast we were going down a hill when we pass a pair of children's boots laying on the side of the road.) While I didn't pay much attention to the boots, I did tuck the image away thinking it would be good to build a blog around. I am always looking for a good soulful blog topic.

I even got my daughter, Grace, to go out and take the pictures so I could hold on to the moment, and if the word count for pictures is correct I could put a caption underneath that said "Small cowboy runs out of boots on cattle drive up Southeastern Avenue saying "That thar hill is just too steep to run up in fur-lined boots when it is hotter than a fire-cracker" and viola I would have had a 1033 word blog.

One-sixth of a year has passed since then and nothing. NO INSPIRATION at all from those cute little fur lined boots. I think it is because summer burns off the imagery from our lives. The sun leaves no shadow. It is always overhead burning off all of those extraneous thoughts that live in the shadows. Boots on the road in July are just boots; probably a purchase at a garage sale that fell off the top of a car because a harried shopper didn't get all of their 25 cent treasures tucked into the back seat.

Imagine that picture taken on a bright late September day at the same time of the day. The shadow would have trailed off toward the East. The sun would be igniting the first hints of fall foliage to a deeper gold. Those would be the boots of a boy who had come to this bridge to go fishing in Fall Creek with his dad or grandpa. The grass in the sideditch would have turned lush again with the cooler temperatures and recent rains. The sun had brought some warmth and burnt off the dew and cool that the boots were brought for. So this kid convinced his dad to sit down on that rail and shuck those hot things off and run for the creek bank in his bare feet.

On Monday, it is no wonder that boy will imagine that that cornbread is a big pale fall sun and smile as it warms the cockles of his heart.

Take care

Roger



Small cowboy runs out of boots on cattle drive up Southeastern Avenue