Running with Shovel, Dancing with Plunger

When I was seventeen, I was cruising down the main street of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania in my super cool station wagon at a top speed of ten miles per hour. It was a warm spring day and all of my friends were packed into the car hanging out the open windows. Suddenly, I heard a knock on my window and was ordered to pull over by a police officer on foot. My front-seat passenger was issued a citation for not wearing his seatbelt and I was given a stern lecture about how it was the driver’s responsibility to control the passenger’s actions. All of this occurred in front of a school and I was more embarrassed by the fact that I was chased down by the foot patrol.

Now that I have officially morphed from an irresponsible youth into an adult with responsibilities, I often look back with thoughts of “what was I thinking?” and “why was that even fun?” At my 21st birthday party, I recall seeing a friend on the dance floor thrusting a plunger into the air like a king of the porcelain throne commanding his subjects to perform. The 21-year old me, despite knowing that the plunger had been used, thought it was funny and even wished I had grabbed it first. The responsible adult me cringes at the thought of all the germs and pulls out her bottle of hand sanitizer.

A few days ago, a friend reminded me that things are different now. “It’s not like it was back when we were underage” she texted. Abruptly I felt as old as my parents and recalled the “back when I was your age we walked eight miles to school each way uphill in the snow” statements and my grandmother’s laments of how “you people just don’t know how easy you have it” and how she had to prove she knew English when she applied for her US citizenship. Not that this was a huge effort as she had moved from her French Canadian town before she could even crawl!

Everyone remembers the lies their parents told them and the vows we made to never turn into them. Oh the vicious circle and history repeating itself! Sometimes, just for a fleeting moment, perhaps in an effort to hold on to those days gone by, I would just like to grab a hold of something stupid, even a shovel, and run through the streets of my small Southern town shouting at the top of my lungs. No worries, no concerns, no purpose. Wouldn’t that be something to behold?

Barefoot Summers

Crushing rocks
and "Kick the Can"
Who runs faster
across the sand?

Barefoot summers
at the lake
collecting gravel
with micah flakes.

Restaurant owner
by the age of nine
had just two patrons
at "The Nickel and Dime".

Last one standing
on an inner tube
endless fun
with nothing to prove.

Walking in a line
down to Camp Waban
Buying penny candy
was the only plan.

Cousins on a raft
with the rain falling down
holding an umbrella
so we wouldn't drown.

Capture the Flag
climbing birch trees
hiding from enemies
and skinning our knees.

Childhood summers
with memories so fond
All of us together
at Bauneg Beg Pond.

Dark Places

You linger in dark places
clinging to my memories
like cobwebs long forgotten
in the corners of my mind

You haunt me in the sunshine
pieces of you passing by
shades of blue outside my door
but there's never enough time.

A snapshot in the palm tree
or underneath a country road
a lifetime in the cemetery
with the real world left behind.

An evening in another country
without ever leaving ground
endless walking, holding hands
time stands still, our souls entwined.

You linger in dark places
forging brand new memories
and grant me hope for brighter days
of you and me defined.

The Scenic Route

Six pack and a canoe at midnight
Moonless, star-filled sky
Inky creek surrounds us
Conversation at a high

Six pack and a canoe after midnight
Shooting stars in the sky
Stirrings in the creek around us
Listening to an owl nearby

Six pack and a canoe at daybreak
Faint light streaks the sky
Paddling toward a landing
Amazing how time flies by

(March 4, 2000 McClellanville, SC)

Highway 17

Driving on black bands of licorice
Morning commute.
I hate licorice.

Incessant pounding of bass
in my ears
I like it loud.

New light blinds me
as my window fogs.
I scan for bad drivers and
wolves in sheep clothing.

Arrogant - I refuse to slow,
Passing unfortunate victims.
Breaking laws.

Safe again, I reach my destination.
The sun moves behind me.
Rewind the day.
I hate repetition.


(Note: I wrote this years ago when I lived in Charleston, SC on a dare to perform for an open mic night.)

Field Days

The summer before I received my driver’s license was spent, in part, at my best friend’s house in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania. It was the last year that I road my bike as a valid form of transportation…the last hurrah to childhood trivialities.

She had horses and a vast fenced-in field. Too lazy for saddles and not wanting to risk losing more sunshine, we would hop on a horse bareback and head down to the front part of the pasture to cook in the sun. One morning, after an unsuccessful attempt to locate suntan oil, we resorted to Crisco cooking oil as a very poor substitute. Sunscreen or skin care was clearly not in our vocabulary and we were fortunate that we didn’t burn our skin in the pasture that day.

We tormented her goat, Frisky, by perching on top of his goat house. Giggling and whispering, the goat could hear us but never could find us until we leapt from our rooftop hiding place onto his back. Frisky was a clever goat and would tolerate his burden long enough to wade into the middle of his pond and deposit us into the muddy shallows.

Later that summer, we built a log cabin at the front corner of the property. It was a rickety structure created from old and weathered farm fence. The floor was brown earth and we built it four feet tall. We slept in it one night.

Returning home from church with her family on a bright summer afternoon, we discovered that someone had stolen the bus shelter from the bottom of the driveway! We had a hard time believing that someone had stolen the entire school bus shelter. A new one was constructed however she would only use it for a few months before the ability to drive a car replaced the need to ride the bus. The new shelter didn’t have the same character and all of the drawings and secrets that my friend had scratched into the inside walls were forever lost.

Five years ago I was in the area and drove by her old house, now owned by strangers. I saw the old log cabin in the corner of the field still standing despite all the years. Two years ago, my friend and I spent a weekend in Pennsylvania on a memory lane road trip and were sad to discover that all remains of our cabin had disappeared along with evidence of the horse pastures and fences. The “new” bus shelter stood watch at the end of the driveway looking lonely and neglected. It’s still hard to believe that my memories which seem so fresh in my mind happened all of those years ago and despite the overgrown fields, I can still picture two teenage girls riding together on a single horse on a lazy summer day.

Stepford Deer, Designer Boots and Harvest Gold Toilets

I am not a cold weather person. I’m a Southern California girl and cold weather has never appealed to me. Ask my sister whose sole job in high school was to preheat my car if she wanted to avoid riding the bus to school. Ask my friends about my Christmas caroling method of staying in the car with the heat blasting and the window down. I use my heated car seats year-round and I live in the Deep South! So call me crazy when I decided to spend a long January weekend in the mountains of Virginia. Despite the cold and the snow I learned a few things:

1. It’s true…I still don’t wear practical footwear. Yes, boots are great for hiking. Mine have three-inch heels and were not meant for hiking the Appalachian Trail or snowy mountain paths. Even so, I didn’t let a little thing like that stop me.

2. Frozen paddle boats abandoned in the woods do not paddle and the ice covered seats are very cold but it does make for a fabulous photo shoot and a story. Who leaves their paddle boat in the woods?

3. The wind sounds different on the top of a mountain. Cold, hollow, and eerie. It truly makes you feel alone.

4. I forgot how the snow can form a crust on top like crème brûlée. I remember as children my friends and I would challenge each other to walk across without breaking through the surface. If I was careful, I could clutch a piece of the crunchy surface in my mitten like snowy peanut brittle.

5. It is not easy taking frozen fallen rocks from the side of the road, especially when they are stuck to each other with layers of fast-holding ice. A hatchet helps. Good thing I carry one around with me. I’m so Lizzie Borden.

6. The back roads in West Virginia are narrow and scary. Okay, everything in West Virginia is scary.

7. Just because the passengers in your four-wheel drive truck insist that you hit some West Virginian’s crazy dog who was trying to chase you off the road does not mean you actually hit the dog. So it is not necessary to stop and meet the West Virginian mountain man, especially if you distinctly remember not feeling a large bump in the road. It is permissible to stop if you have the hatchet ready.

8. Deer are creepy. Especially fields of deer. No cows, no horses, no goats, just creepy Stepford Wives’ deer. Pull up next to the fenced-in field of deer and they all stop eating at the same time, turn their creepy little deer faces to stare at you while twitching their gremlin ears and flicking their tails. Totally the stuff of horror films.

9. A port-a-potty in the middle of a snow covered field is apparently not unusual and is quite serviceable. Do not attempt to use the harvest gold 1970’s toilet on the side of the road in West Virginia. Back away.

10. I may have mentioned my habit of impractical footwear. I also have a similar habit of packing unsuitable clothing for winter weather. With that in mind, the best place and only place in town to buy a sweater is at the Goodwill. $3.50 is a bargain in my book!

11. I can still climb trees. Even in a cemetery. Even in designer boots with 3-inch heels.

12. The best coffee is at the Courthouse Café. A bottomless cup and they don’t care if you serve yourself or stay all day. I was sad to learn that the café closed and is now a snow-cone shack. I’m already cold! I don’t need snow cones.

13. Never drink a bottle of “J” wine and then attempt to follow the storyline in a movie. Even a movie with such a complex plotline as Tomb Raider. Along the same lines, do not drink a bottle of Spellbound’s Petit Syrah and attempt a thousand piece puzzle.

14. My grandmother is always right…wear a hat!