Grandma Henke

On The Road Again by Willie Nelson

On the road again –
Just can’t wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is making music with my friends
And I can’t wait to get on the road again.
On the road again
Goin’ places that I’ve never been.
Seein’ things that I may never see again
And I can’t wait to get on the road again.
On the road again –
 

Ahhhh, this is the life!  

 

Tell me you aren’t jealous!    It doesn’t get much better than this.

 

 

We’ve been crossing Idaho today.    Idaho is an empty looking state, at least along Interstate 84.  There are fields and fields of beautiful crops.   Driving today I kept humming, “Cruising Down The River On a Sunday Afternoon”  (Not to be confused with Gladys Knight’s Rolling, Rolling, Rolling Down The River”.)   

     There are grain fields, hay fields in all stages of crops, cow pastures, horse pastures, and fields of grazing sheep.     There are watering systems that stretch across multiple acres looking like giant, iron centipedes against the blue sky in the background.   Those systems are for the wealthy farmers who own the collections of extra, extra large, shiny John Deer’s.   The other farmers have older, faded and rusted equipment with watering systems that aren’t automatic.   They have to watch their clocks and move the water by hand.

      There are silo’s and sheds, barns, and long open structures with tin roofs which hold the bales of hay in all sizes; small, medium, large, and X large.    There are rivers, canals, irrigation ditches, and small man made reservoirs like the one my dad made on our small farm.    He got out his tractor and pushed earth around until he had a good sized hole in the earth, then pushed and compacted the dirt he’d dug from the hole into banks around the edge of the reservoir.     Left over irrigation water would flow into it each week and it would be used to keep our crops wet between Irrigation Turns.    My older brothers used to swim in it, but I wasn’t allowed to go near it because I “might drowned”.    Whatever means they used to scare me enough to stay away from it worked.   I was afraid to go anywhere near it.    Later, when it was no longer used as a reservoir it became the “catch-all for dried weeds and burnable garbage like boxes.  (Before the days of recycling folks.)    Every now and then Dad would light it and flames would shoot past the tops of the Chinese Elm trees that grew along the irrigation ditch banks behind our mink sheds.   I wasn’t allowed to go near that, either.

     One of the farming sites we passed today was a large dairy with hundreds of cows mulling around waiting for their nightly relief.    If you’ve ever been a nursing mother you can understand why the cows voluntarily line up each night to be milked.    Their calling sounds like “Muuaaaw”, which translate, “Me!  Me!”.    To the side of the large milking barn and sheds were rows, upon rows, upon rows of dark brown “cow grunt” ripening in the sun to be sold and spread across someone’s plowed field so it can be recycled through a field of hay and eventually back to the cow who pooped it in the first place.   Interesting how that works.

      The sign reading Minidoka County caught my eye as we passed.   I liked how it sounded rolling off my tongue.   Minidoka.    We immediately crossed a rather big river which Lynn proclaimed was the Snake River.      He is a veritable walking/talking book of random facts and when he told me it was also known as the “River of No Return” of course I didn’t question him but immediately started humming that well known cowboy song.   (Sadly, I was to learn later that he was wrong.   The Salmon River is “The River of No Return”.)   

*  River Of No Return
There is a river called The River Of No Return
Sometimes it’s peaceful and sometimes wild and free!
Love is a trav’ler on The River Of No Return
Swept on for ever to be lost in the stormy sea
Wail-a-ree I can hear the river call [ no return, no return
Where the roarin’ waters fall wail-a-ree
I can hear my lover call come to me [ no return, no return
I lost my love on the river and for ever my heart will yearn
Gone gone for ever down The River Of No Return
Wail-a-ree wail-a-re-e-ee
She’ll/He’ll never return to me! no return, no return, no return

      My mind drifted to cowboys on the prairies as I hummed on down the highway and it raised some questions you might can answer for me:

1.   Did cowboys have allergies that made their eyes swell shut when the grasses grew tall?    Ever since we crossed the Idaho border my eyes have burned and my throat has been itchy and raspy.   

2.   What did cowboys use for toilet paper?    There aren’t that many good sized leaves on the prairie as I see it.    And … how come they didn’t die from not washing their hands … or bodies for that matter.

3.    How could they stand going for days without changing their underwear?

    There have been lots of travelers this balmy Father’s Day.    It’s fun to watch at the gas station when a minivan filled with a family of teenagers pulls up.   The doors fly open before the motor quits humming and they are stretching, shoving, and complaining as they jockey their way through the door to the convenience store to fill up on junk food faster than Dad can fill the minivan with gasoline.

      The senior travelers take more time exiting their vehicles.   Sometimes it takes two or three attempts to stand.    Then there is the limp/shuffle to the store as they discreetly pull their sweaty pants from between their cheeks.    However, we senior travelers are the friendliest travelers and are quite a gabby bunch.   Maybe it is our aches and pains that give us an immediate bond … they are a natural conversation starter.

      The young families often pull in with a chorus of wailing that can be heard even through closed windows and doors.   The little wailers are strapped into various legal children holders so tightly they can’t move, let alone break free so they can stand right behind the front seats and scream directly into their parent’s ears like ours did.    It seems like all the fun is gone from family vacations now they are entertained with movies and Mario.   Our kids didn’t get the pleasure of individualized music that pumped directly into their ears.    They got to fight over who would entertain the entire car of listeners.    And, since this was before the day of the seatbelt laws, they could really fight.   None of this sissy “he’s looking at me” stuff in those days.     Hands on fighting was the Dad’s cue to suddenly swerve the car across however many lanes so he could stop the car and yell, “Alright, everybody out!    Out!”      One time we were leaving Blanding for Salt Lake City and before he pulled out of the driveway he stopped the car and yelled, “Everybody out … Let’s do the beatings now and get it over with!”   Of course, Lynn is not a beater … nor is he a yeller unless he’s teasing.   That used to fall to me.  Lynn got to be Mr. Funny Dad who pulled funny faces and made up songs and stories.   I was the terminator.

      There have been a lot of prompts today that have reminded me what a wonderful man I married.    Suddenly there is an impromptu “On The Road Again” at the top of his lungs as we motor on down Interstate 84.   It just doesn’t get much better.