Post
by Burger in Spokane » Sun Jul 14, 2019 4:55 pm
Bringing it back around again, .... I have collected up all the old family photo albums
that oddly enough, nobody else wanted, and about once a year I spend a week of winter
evenings looking through all the familiar photos of my grandparents and great-grandparents
doing "the dailies" and special events like camping trips. The post-war stuff, while interesting,
has never been as interesting as the 1880-1940 stuff. In a number of shots, my great grandmothers
are shown hanging out the laundry, posing about the yard, feeding the critters, etc. ... always
wearing the mandatory cotton dress and "sensible" shoes, their hair pinned up. Often there
are chickens in the background, doing chicken business, and the scene always has that sleepy
look of a peaceful place where lemonade could not possibly taste any better than when sipped
while sitting on the front porch swing.
Scenes like these were still common when I was a kid, but I was always bewildered by why so
few people cherished the slow pace and quietude of it all. Rather, my generation, and perhaps
not so much, the one that came before me, were fixated on always going faster, newer was always
better, shiny and cheap was better than old and proven. Never understood that.
I saw a street sign the other day. A yellow diamond shape with black letters and images of two
people with their head bent down, walking in lockstep. The words warned motorists to watch for
celfone zombies. It is not unusual at all to hear TV andradio shows referring to "our hectic world"
and the effects it has on our mental health. It seems the modern answer is to work even more hectically,
so you can sock away 1000's more, and fly off to some distant place for a "vacation". Sounds fun,
but what about that swing and the lemonade ? I am sitting here, taking a break from thinning lettuce
in the garden .... came in to have one of those ciders, in fact. Through the open window I hear the
chickens clucking. One just laid an egg and is squawking like they do. In the window behind me the
laundry I put out on the line is reflecting on my computer screen, like a flag in the breeze. It is
Sunday and it is quiet and peaceful and thinking of Ferd Porsche and the oceans of pompous clowns
that think his cars are the cat's pajamas, all the faster-faster-faster minded silly people, all the posers
and snoots, .... well, I just gotta laugh. I think those ladies in their cotton dresses and "sensible"
shoes would have laughed too. People busy chasing their tails, like a feather in the wind ... and
for what ?
When I am done with this cider, a repair I left in the vise last night is waiting for me to finish in the
shop. I will enjoy the ambiance of the muted sunlight pouring through all the colors of the stained glass,
and pack some bearings on the Model TT, so I can have it at a veterans event tomorrow evening. The
old truck is a regular with our Vets on the Farm program and represents that whole slow-paced, organic
sense of oneness with our surroundings thing that dirt-under-our-nails farmers know all too well. Why
the need for speed and aerodynamics when life's top speed is 45, and best enjoyed at 20 ? I never did
understand that need for speed, even now. Especially now !
More people are doing it today than ever before !
