Not Gone Well

Prior to the officer vote at church this morning, there wasn’t enough time to allow questions to be addressed to the prospective elders and deacon, so The Bear, Francis, and I came up with our own, whispered back and forth down the row…

“What’s you favorite color?”

“Are you a Mormon?”

“Were you ever a Cubs fan?”

Milk went splashing across the table onto the floor at lunch. Joe and Francis were to blame. Then someone brought up how the basement bathroom was temporarily out of order.

“Well, Joe was the one who dropped the thing of dental floss in the…”

“Yeah, but then you flushed the…”

“If I hear that story one more time…” Carrie groaned, pressing hands against ears. “By the way, lunch may not be… well, I sent Joe to the store. I asked him to get three things for me. Three things. First of all, we get this call from him. He was looking for roasted tomatoes. In the produce section.”

“Hey, there is no such thing as fire-roasted tomatoes.”

“Then I asked him to get two bags of salad. So he bought two bags of collard greens.”

Joe just grinned.

“Then I asked for a few ripe pears. So he came back with two of the hardest pears I’ve ever seen.”

“Ug,” Rose interrupted. “The neighbor’s walking around without his shirt on. Yuck.”

Lunch was shortly concluded after an autumn soup, sans the roasted tomatoes, cheese-stuffed breadsticks, and a tougher version of rosemary pear danish, which was still good anyway, apparently, because Carrie prepared it.

Cade’s Cove.

That’s what Dad calls it anyway. There’s this place called Lost Creek Trail up north in the hills where, according to the Boy Scout papers, Native Americans hunted along the creek bed and artifacts are still regularly uncovered. 20 miles of isolated red, orange, and yellow wooded hills and valleys. Of course, for most of my siblings, it was a chance to “I Spy” meth labs and Sasquatches.

The old fifteen passenger liked to rattle apart as we descended into the abyss of antique territory. “Dad! Aaah!” was heard regularly from the various padded benches back through the automobile. When we finally reached one of the green valleys pinned with hay bales, Joe took an opportunity for a picturesque panorama, climbing through the window, walking the roof of the van.

“Joe, get off! You’re bending the van!” Carrie shouted to him, bracing her arms against the indentations.

The further we drove, the more seclusion awaited us, crops of trees swathed in rich purple paint, warning us from being too curious.

“I’m telling you, the country is way more creepy than the city,” Carrie observed.

“I’ve always told you that,” said Rose.

Eventually, however, we passed some civilization in the dry creek bed.

“Duck as we go by the Jeep! They could have guns!”

“I’ll bet that’s a meth lab pick-up, right there.”

And so on… We plunged towards the first pool of algae-d water in yet another white-rock creek bed.

“Look out, everyone! Our first crossing!”

“Aaaaaaah!”

“Ug, Dad. You squished a fish.”

An ancient barn and white clapboard house, clearly unoccupied, circled into view.

“Check out that haunted window.”

“Stop, Dad! I need to get a picture of this!”

“That’s right, house,” Joe angled his phone towards the abandoned abode. “Work it. Work it. You’re looking sassy today, house.”

Eventually we mingled with more joy-riders, hay-rides, bee hives, caves…

“Abraham Lincoln built that cabin,” Rose suggested to Puck, who doesn’t know anything about Abraham Lincoln.

Somewhere back on 40 in reality, we camped out at Aldi, and Rose played NASA’s recording of Jupiter.

Into the evening, Joe and Francis explored Home Depot. Dad drove Linnea to youth group. Mom cut up pizzas with scissors. Carrie walked up from the basement with a giant pair of pliers to craft a sky lounge for the bunnies. And Rose flipped on “Felix the Cat”.

In order to distract myself from near-tragic circumstances in California – well, it wasn’t the principle reason, but it sort of helped – we took Puck to the carnival at the church across the street after dark to ride the ferris wheel. Grinning kid suspended in space above the lights of the fair. That’s what I like to see.