2003-11-17 - 8:14 p.m.
I drove yesterday to my brother's for a late afternoon meal. He had cooked up some venison and turkey and salt potatoes and I knew he would have beer, too, so I watched three-quarters of the Bills game at my parents' (up until the gutless decision not to go for it on fourth down from the two) before clicking the tv off in disgust and starting for the hills.
Along the way, I noticed again some things I always notice while making this trip, but they are not so remarkable as to stay in the forefront of my mind, so they recede and lie dormant until the next time I see them. There is a sign that says Agget Road, and I wonder each time how it is some youth doesn't affix an F to it, and then there is the cemetary where sincere Don Weller the plumber is buried and the turn-off just beyond that, the one I would have missed oh, gosh, now twenty-five years ago if my friend Jim hadn't been with me--not that he was really all that much help, because he was drunk as a skunk, too, but somehow between us we managed to get safely home. Across the bridge just after the turn is a little rise where the abandoned house used to be. I stopped once to look through it and got from the place such a feeling of melancholy it was as if the ghost of an unhappy childhood pervaded the place and I never went back. Now I see someone has levelled the house and put a driveway in where that old house used to stand, leading up to a new house higher on the hill. Beyond that there are other houses intermittantly, small farm houses mostly, some with attendant large barns. One of these small houses is painted green with yellow trim when you go to, and changes to yellow with green trim when you come fro. It plays a peculiar trick on the mind that the mind takes a few trips to catch onto. And now that I know the gag, I can't help but to smile each time.
A little farther on you come to a place. The only evidence of its being a place is a sign. The sign says: Rawson--First Settled In 1854. It is my thought the original inhabitants settled here, got comfortable, then moved away. No-one's quite sure when it was settled next.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. The answer to What's greater than God, worse than the Devil, poor people have it, rich people want it, and if you eat it you die? Nothing, of course.
