Springtime and being elderly

For the first time in my life I feel like an elderly rural matron. I am sitting as I write, listening to Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion. The St. Olaf's Girls Choir is singing, "Will You Go Lassie Go?"--a song I remember best from my Uncle Jerry's place when I was a child. He had all the Clancy Brothers albums and we listened whenever we visited. He's been gone a long time now. So have my parents. A Prairie Home Companion is evocative of another time, when families sat down after Saturday dinner, after mowing the lawn, fixing the car, and painting the shed. They listened to the radio and watched television, Ozzie and Harriet, Your Hit Parade, Sing Along with Mitch. Garrison Keillor can make me remember those times, not at my home but at my aunts' houses in Long Island and Peekskill. They were gentle times of blue twilights and warm breezes.

At the end of this school year I will retire, in spite of not being of an age to do so. I am fortunate enough to be able to leave early. However, it is extremely disconcerting to realize that I will no longer have to get up early and that my life will no longer revolve around "getting ahead." In fact I had gotten to the point where I felt that I was just spinning my wheels instead of getting ahead. Actually, I have completely forgotten exactly where "ahead" might be. So for the past few days I have been feeling a tad nostalgic for my youth. I truly hate nostalgia. It is doubtlessly the most negative of emotions. So once again I need to do something crazy in order to formulate a future lest I risk becoming a victim of the past.

Spring is the season of all that is new. It is the time of rebirth and resurrection so I am going to resurrect my earlier self. Fernando and I are thinking of spending a few of our hard earned dollars on buying 60 day bus passes and setting off to look for America.

I have seen A Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood in Massachusetts but I think I want to see it at home in the Fitzgerald Theater in Minneapolis or maybe at the State Fair. I also want to see if there are still 4H clubs in the Midwest, peanut farmers in Georgia, and cowboys in Texas.

I once wrote an English paper about the road trip as a theme in American novels. This should be a monumental road trip. Maybe I'll write a novel. In the meantime, I'll be posting here.