LETTERS FROM HOME: FOUR-LEGGED NEIGHBORS AND FAMILIAR FACES

Oct. 6, 1994

Four-legged neighbors, and familiar faces

Dear Karin, John, Inga and Christian,

Glad to report we found a place to live in the country. In fact, our closest neighbors are horses named Charley, Sea Note and Spook. Very friendly. They listen to country music on the radio in the barn next to our house, which in a prior life was a dairy parlor. I know you won't know what that is, and I didn't either. Images of cows sitting around sipping tea. The dairy parlor is where the milking is done. No sipping allowed.

A Rottweiler named Lacey also lives in the barn, and his pals Valentine (a Great Dane) and 'Bama (lineage unknown, maybe a Corgi) are only about 20 yards away in their pen. They bark at us and then lick us every night when we arrive home from work. They are not ours, we are not theirs, and yet we're already growing on each other.

Getting to the house requires crossing a low-water bridge that will be under water after every rain. The trick will be knowing when the water is so deep we have to take the back way. Otherwise we float into town.

Weather is much more important here than in coastal California. You have to watch out for tornadoes in the spring and for ice and snow storms in the winter. Usually air conditioning is all you need to worry about in the summer, except for special occasions like the Great Flood of 1993. You remember. Half the Midwest floated into town.

Autumn is the most uneventful season, which is to say the most pleasant. Blue skies, orange trees. This slowing down, shutting down time of year in Missouri holds a kind of warm peacefulness for me, a feeling of settling in, of comforting familiarities like radiators rattling to life at night and iced tea traded for hot, and a blur of football games.

DC and I went to see our high school alma mater play last weekend. A few faces in the crowd we remembered from high school, there in the school colors of black and orange to cheer their sons on to victory or to applaud their kids in the marching band.

She and I played in that band long ago. What a difference 25 years make. If I recall correctly, our version marched on the field, played a tune, formed something that looked a lot like some picture or word, blasted out a few more songs and walked off. These guys not only march and play at the same time, they do it backward, sideways and with gusto. What is the matter with kids today?

Watching them, DC said you'd enjoy living here because people like football games and marching bands and doing things together as a family. I think she just misses you.

It's strange to go home again. You aren't the same person. They aren't the same people, yet familiarity is all around. Sort of like deja vu, but when you're easily old enough to be the cheerleaders' father the game looks different.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.