Two kids
were arguing just outside
my window the other day. Now that school’s out, they have more
time for the
important issues of life, of course. This time, the subject
was ghosts and
whether or not they are real.
People my age have to plead guilty to the capital crime
of having gray
hair, and therefore aren’t qualified to participate in such
weighty matters.
But if they had asked me, they might have been surprised. Of
course there are
ghosts. We’re surrounded by them.
Maybe they aren’t scary or grab you from behind, but
they are ghosts
just the same. See that rusting tank on the edge of town?
That’s all that’s
left from when George Dodson started that tannery back in the
1920s. He was
doing all right then, until the Great Depression came along,
and George and the
steel tank became ghosts … a part of our history, but still
somehow here with
us, still a part of what makes this community our home.
Just up Lewis Creek a mile are the sloping concrete
walls of what used
to be a dairy. As kids, we’d sneak over … quietly, so we
didn’t spook the cows
… and watch the men milking. The huge Holsteins walked in from
force of habit
like animated milk factories, which they were. Seems like
there should be
something someone could do with that old milking barn. Now
it’s just hard to go
by and see the weeds thickening around it as it lies there in
the unrelenting
sun and cracks to pieces.
Down on Main Street is the old ice cream store where we
used to go the
very firsttime we had nerve enough to ask a girl to go with
us. We’d bite the
ends off the drinking straw covers, dip the remaining ends in
chocolate syrup,
and shoot them with a puff of breath to stick on the ceiling,
like stalactites
of young love.
But today it holds the video rental store. Times
change. Businesses
change. People come and then leave us. But the ghosts remain.
And the ghosts
are the ones who make us what we are today.
I wish those kids would ask me about them.
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Brought
to you by “A Cowboy’s Guide to
Growing Up Right” by Slim Randles. Buy one for that problem
kid down the
street. Only $2.99 on Amazon.com.