Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Medicine Lodge, KS
I just got back from my walk, on which I was accompanied by my guard Corgi, and met halfway back by the super hound, who could not be troubled to walk 2 miles on the dirt roads. I was near the neighbor's pasture full of mules and it hit me. It was the smell of my grandparents pasture near Medicine Lodge, down by the gyp hills. You know, near Kiowa? OK, almost to Oklahoma and west of Wichita quite a ways. We used to go there for a week every summer while Mom and Dad went to square dance camp in Colorado Springs. I hated my grandmother, who was incredibly mean and didn't really need the rest of us granddaughters after my older sister was born. She would scare the crap out of me and make fun of me when I was two-years-old, terrified of her, missing my mommy, and pouting with my bottom lip sticking out and quivering while tears came to my eyes. She'd tell me a chicken was gonna come along and sit on my lip if I didn't quit sticking it out. What the FUCK was wrong with that woman!? Where's the comfort for a freaked out toddler? It's no wonder all her kids were amazingly fucked up and have emotional problems to accompany their intimacy issues. Anyway, later the grandparents moved to Isabel, over closer to Sawyer. We were left to run around like oversized coyotes on the prairie for a week, with no need for baths other than in the crick, or in the pond on a horse's back. They didn't care too much what we did as long as we stayed out of their way, which believe me, WE DID!
The pasture down there has a smell that my pasture doesn't have. Maybe it's nasty chemicals, but I think it has more to do with some sort combination of plants that grows there. My sister, brother, and i would spend hours collecting wildflowers, weeds that were interesting looking, and these really cool seed pods called devils claws. We'd build sculptures out of them, but never had glue to actually make them last. At the end of the week, when we'd nearly driven the old folks to insanity (they had no TV!), we'd present our parents with a flower arrangement that we'd made that morning from our collection.
I'll drive by the neighbor' s place when I run to town in a little bit so I can hang my head out the window and take in the scent of a place and time far far away. It's out of the way from my usual path, but so are memories of my grandparents.
posted by Rosie @ 3/01/2006 01:13:00 PM

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