All Is So Long Ago

     “Evening Land,” a first-rate Swedish book of poetry contains a refrain that causes me to travel to other times in my memory with these lines, “With old eyes I look back. All is so long ago.” He talks about his life being spent far away, “In another world or as if in another world.” His imagination had taken him elsewhere in his earlier life, but now “all is soon over.”

     I have a large collection of images that I've boxed and stored on an upper shelf in my memory. Every once in awhile I bring them down to look at again. Some are small and light, others weigh heavy. They have accumulated over the years. I'm lucky because the box is large and continues to fill. Let me reach in and grab hold of a few.

     I'm standing in a hayfield reaching under a windrow to hook my finger in the handle of a crock jug. Hot and thirsty, I hoist the jug high in the crook of my arm and drink long, cool swallows from it.

     I'm a small boy and my grandpa has taken me fishing at Lake Teawaukon. He baits my hook and throws in the line telling me, "Don't take your eyes off that bobber!" I obey, for several long hours. Small perch pull it under making it bob and bob. He takes me home at twilight just as a full moon rises. I look at it and see that float bobbing, bobbing, bobbing in the moon, in my supper plate, in my dreams.

     Goose bumps chill me when I lie in bed with a raging winter storm howling in the eaves. I'd wonder why, it seems, a woman screams inside a blizzard wind.

     I'm in the barnyard. A bull eyes me from the pasture. His hooves kick up a dust cloud filled with a hate for the man-child he spots. He charges. My fingers dig and claw into the wall of the barn, and I gain the rooftop just as he arrives.

     We’re in the hayfield again. I always want to be where the men work. I'm given the job of cleaning spilled hay from underneath the stationary stacker. As it raises to dump its load atop the growing stack, the wooden main beam breaks and hundreds of pounds crash to the ground just as I've stepped away.

     Spring arrives and I shed the long underwear and the heavy boots to finally glory in the light feeling. And in the spring wind I watch clothes on the line sail with the wind.

 

     Saturday night as we drive along the gravel road to Enderlin where by the Center Farm we must stop for a long train pulled hard by a steam engine blowing smoke up the grade out of town. Given a boost in the rear by another steam engine, the chuffing sounds and clouds of coal smoke roll from them. 

     A long burlap bag hangs from a tall temporary scaffold ready for someone to throw in a twine-tied fleece and crawl in to pack it down as bundles of wool accumulate. The wool glistens rich with lanolin that soaks the pant legs and softens the leather of my shoes.

     What are my earliest memories from so long ago. There was a rooster that kept attacking me. With a long stick and one swing I removed that threat forevermore. Finding eggs to gather and bring to my mother ended poorly when one carried in my pocket broke. Leaving the farmyard and wandering down the gravel road, I entered a slough with tall reeds where luckily my dog accompanied me and his wagging tail flagged down an uncle driving by.

     Unfortunately some memories become stone and I must return them to the box. Maybe they will be dug from the box again in the future, but they are personal history that I can’t give away.  and don’t want anyone else to experience either.

     The singer songwriter John Prine recently succumbed to Covid, but left us with one song called “I Remember Everything.” He writes “I remember every tree, Every single blade of grass Holds a special place for me.” Although we can’t take the words literally, they do hold meaning. With a little effort, we can remember much.