A whirlwind trip through the Buckeye State…a view of the old homestead where I spent a child’s Christmas and ate homemade cherry pie while seated on the red leather ottoman. ‘Do you still feel the beginning of the flatness?’ someone asks me as I look at the white barns, the fields along the stretch of highway 90 headed West…the tippy toe edge of the hint of an invisible prairie…out there…somewhere…the endless wind calls me…the flax and the substantial breeze and the deep, deep smells of earth and hidden waters we don’t have in the East. The smell is thick. I taste the water in it. The road sparkles differently.
As I drive by the old home, I hear once again the mournful cry of the train…headed West…somewhere…out there while Grandma sings to brother who suffers with a bad sore throat and I am curled up on a bed…the light dims and fades. Grandma goes downstairs and there is subdued adult chatter, the scraping of plates…’Good night’ and ‘Good night’…and the train sobs through the reaches of Cleveland…heading West…out there, somewhere.
But today, for now…I must return East. I turn my back on the beckoning winds…they know me. I’ve been here before, countless times where the hidden waters lie beneath sod and gumption and land upon land, upon winsome land. I cross two state lines, driving back on 90. East…the barns are red again…gas prices rise steadily…the flatness forms back up into rolling hills and lush vineyards…rich and fallow…growing forever beneath the spreading, green trees, the corn fields where the ears are taller than I am…the watered East.
I return to the city on the lake…to my heart…far from the red leather ottoman…that cherry pie…the mournful train…home to the one I love…
690 Saint Paul 