This is where I come from.
The weeks spent at my grandparent's farm
over the first 18 years of my life are some of the best
memories I keep and treasure. Always a solace. Playing in
this barn until Gramps discovered us and
sent us out of there. He was always one to forget I
was a girl and let me play and get dirty just like the boys.
There were always horses,
later followed by ponies. Now, barren, as gramps
no longer can safely get outside in the winter
to feed. He sold the last of the ponies
last year. The thought of it made me choke up.
It came full circle when I discovered these photos
on the camera taken by my 14 year old
The farm is not the same, but yet, it is.
Tony, my brother, and I used to push each other
around in this old wheelbarrow. It always had a
flat tire, but it only slowed us down a little. That was
back when Luke and Daisy Duke were
the coolest people in the world. We became
Luke and Daisy (me minus the shorts...I wasn't
allowed to wear them!), that wheelbarrow was our
good old General Lee. Of course it's still gracing the
farm waiting for someone to jump in it and get their
shorts ruined from it's weathering...
just like many years ago.
The memories flood back
from this little John Deere...
...to the summer it rained so much
the creek, pronounced "crick" in Ohio, between
my grandparents and great grandmother's
house flooded. My brother and I swam in it and
pretended we were actually in the ocean.
California is so far from home.
In many, many ways.
But, I keep a piece of my heart there...
amongst the fields and barns.
