Where seeds of thought have room to grow
Category: Hitting the road
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Summers are riding bikes to Berkshire pharmacy for ice cream cones, picking dewberries in the horse pasture, the first stars silently watching a twilight game of hide-n-seek. Summers are hours spent at Astroworld, standing in lines, screaming on rides, flirting… days spent at Camp Warnecke, tubing the Comal, playing pinball. Flirting. Summers are flying down…
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Back in 10th grade, full of Texas pride, I got into a heated argument with my boyfriend, a fresh transplant from Baraboo, Wisconsin, over the merits of our respective states. I don't think he was trying to say Wisconsin was better than Texas, only trying to describe its beauty and merits to me, but it…
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I've been mostly 'unplugged' for the past week, hopscotching through America's heartland. We headed north from Texas through Oklahoma for an overnight stop in Kansas at Kenny and Cathy's house (Tom's oldest brother) where we got a 'two-fer'… #4 brother Steve and his girls were there on their way home to Montana from Florida. Cornfields,…
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My dad's cousin left for China this morning. This is her 17th visit, most of them mission trips. On this one, she'll be part of a team teaching English. The Big Trip of my summer will be up north to Wisconsin to visit some of Tom's family. Our last visit was for his cousin's wedding…
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Ever since we traveled down to Huatabampo, Mexico for his little brother's wedding in 1998, Tom has been raving about the Mexican Hot Dogs sold by street vendors there. He described them to me, but I wasn't impressed or tempted to try one myself – avocado, tomato and lettuce on a hot dog? Oh, heck…
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He left Texas heat mirages for Wyoming snow Glided thousands of miles along highways that cut through flatlands and rose into the Rocky mountains Rode beside herds of antelope and prong-horned deer Held little Haila, his newborn granddaughter (named for the grandmother watching her from heaven) Celebrated Father's Day with his new-father son Climbed Independence…
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I rolled into Galveston after dark. It was the final section of the I-45 Time Tunnel I'd been traveling for almost an hour, seeing each of the sites clearly despite nightfall. Perhaps better, because the darkness blocked reality, allowing me to see each place as I remembered it… …there was Almeda Mall and its movie…
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I'm a girl from the suburbs. I grew up with sidewalks, with the option of jumping on my bike to go anywhere I wanted to go, but with an illusion born of desire that the horse pasture across the street was "the country" (anyone else ever fish for crawdads in a sewage ditch?) Down our…
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Like many other Americans, I've been zipping around this weekend, celebrating graduations and friendships. This afternoon I'll be relaxing lakeside and sipping on a frozen margarita. But over it all, I'm trying to keep in mind the Big Reason for this holiday – remembering those who gave their lives to keep our country free, or…
Long Hollow 