‘Tis the season. The season where daily I sit on my porch in my caledonia chair and watch the world unfold in front of me. Given the rural nature of the road I live on, most of that unfolding is on the quiet side — watching the grass grow and the flowers bloom. But sometimes it’s the cows across the street, two of them, who walk the distance from their barn, laboriously lay down beneath the shady trees, and chew their cud — all to my great entertainment.
It’s early days yet, but I’ve not seen them so far this season, and I suspect I know the reason why. These gals are treated handsomely, at least food-wise. I hadn’t seen much of them in the previous season until one day a couple of weeks ago, on my daily walk in the countryside, I spotted one of them, looking considerably heftier than this time last year. And I’m thinking that when they stand outside their barn and look down the football field to the shady trees, they say, “No way. We’ll never make it.” I’m sure they’re sorry they’ll miss the lady who stares at them from across the street, but methinks those days are gone.
Another feature of my street is that it’s the first road outside the city limits and, thus, the closest road to race down without police interference. Not to mislead you. My road has several serious curves, with no chance to pick up speed, but when it hugs that same football field, it’s straight, and for that one patch of road, they hightail it like it’s the Grand Prix. It doesn’t happen enough for me to downgrade it from entertainment to nuisance, but I admit that I won’t miss them this season.
Much to the racers’ despair, the department of men hard at work has closed off the road just north of me. They’re in the process of digging it up and installing a culvert on behalf of the many fish in these parts. I think the problem is that the existing culvert is too narrow and probably fills up with silt and debris, giving the fish a far too narrow opening to swim through. Or maybe the pipes were rusting out. If I was a fish, I’d want a bigger and rusty-less culvert too. So yay for the fish. And yay for me.
For the sensitive among you, you might want to stop reading here. You see, I have a list of things I want to do when I retire, and top of that is fly fishing. I’ve never done it, very much want to, and Washington is the perfect spot to get it done. So if the fish will be zooming around in expansive culverts in my neck of the woods, I’ll have no excuse not to pick up a rod.
But first, there is the season of clanking and cranking of heavy machinery to endure.
This morning, from the summer of love, Scott McKenzie …
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