Sometimes you just have to get away … surround yourself with some dirt and sticks, and reset for a bit.
I grew up surrounded by dirt and sticks … and pigs and old trucks and barbed wire fences and open pasture. At the time I just wanted to get out of Small Town, Texas. But now, some time in the country is the perfect remedy to a deadline-driven, traffic-jammed, prepackaged-groceries life in the big city.
My husband, Scooter, and I knew we were getting close when we ran over a skunk just before the turnoff to County Road 402. Febreeze can’t touch skunk musk, I’m just sayin’.
There wasn’t much on the agenda for the weekend, aside from a few early-morning garage sales and stocking up on firewood to bring back to our big city fireplace.
With Dad driving us around in his Chevy, we searched for mesquite – “It’ll keep you warmer than oak,” he says. I had to continue to knock on the back glass, letting Mom and Scooter know, as they sat on the tailgate, to duck because low branches were coming. We also found, and dug up, a few small cedar trees to bring back for our front entryway.
Dad pointed out the wild pig wallow, the deer rubs and the place he had spotted the biggest bobcat he’d ever seen the week before. We stopped at the pigpen – “That’s Peewee, he’s the runt,” Mom says.
All that running around got us hungry. What was for lunch? Brisket and pork butt that Dad had spent the entire day before cooking on his pit, and Mom’s homemade mustard potato salad. And what was for dinner that night and then lunch and dinner the next day? Well, brisket, pork butt and potato salad, of course. What else is there?
Car loaded with cedars, firewood, mason jars of homemade salsa and the pork butt bone for the dogs to enjoy later, it was time to leave. Time to cross two cattle guards, two creeks, head down the caliche road and back to the highway toward the big city where you hear fewer “yes ma’ams” and more car horns.
As I sit here writing, listening to my “Grandpa Lee” Pandora station, a station made of up of songs by Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash and Red Sovine, I’m inspired to hold on to that part of who I am. So I’m back in the big city with a bit more fresh air in my lungs, a few more bug bites than I’m used to and a clearer perspective of my roots … roots still surrounded by dirt and sticks.
