Crossing the Mississippi River is starting to feel like a habit! We made our fourth crossing in as many months as we zigzagged our way back and forth from Florida to Texas to Pennsylvania to Minnesota and Iowa. She’s a beauty, that river, full of character and pulsing with a power that you can feel just standing on the banks and looking at her with all her many moods and faces. Vastly changing from the muddy southern appearance to the fresh and clear water headed out of the north, racing on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, she is a chameleon that never fails to shock and awe.
Whether you are old enough to remember Perry Como or not, you are probably familiar with one of his frankly goofier songs. Its actual title is “Delaware” but most people know it as the Song of the States. Since we’ve been traveling (and listening to a lot of music while we do so) we’ve started to pay a great deal more attention to songs that pertain to or salute a particular state. If I’m not actually singing a new state song as I cross the border, Marilyn starts to wonder what’s wrong. Truth is, this last border crossing I just didn’t have my state song ready, so I tapped old Perry’s catch all so as not to fall short coming into Minnesota:
Without regard to phrasing and choruses, the lyrics went something like this:
What did Del-a-ware boy, what did Del-a-ware?
She wore a brand New Jersey, That’s what she did wear.
Why did Cali-fon-ya? She called to say Ha-wa-ya.
What did Missis-sip, boy?
She sipped a Minne-soda.Where has Ore-gon, boy? I don’t know; Al-as-ka.
Go ahead and ask her; she went to pay her Texas.
How did Wis-con-SIN, boy? She stole a New-brass-key.
Too bad that Arkan-saw, boy,
And so did Tenne-see
It made poor Flori-die, boy,
She died in Miss-our-I.
Oh, What did Dela-ware, boy? What did Dela-ware?
Not everything we think about in the course of a day is on a serious note!
But a follow up on COW TIPPING (see previous post). Still not ready to believe what I had told her about this bizarre “sport”, Marilyn took the dog for a walk the next morning and asked a gentleman wearing the yellow jacket of the campground and standing outside the office sipping his hot cup of morning coffee if in fact there were such a thing.
“Yes,” he said. And then he continued, much to my delight as Marilyn recounted the story later, to repeat each of the points that I had made and that the cheese girls had reinforced. His remarks were almost verbatim what we had all previously told her. Now she’s a believer- though she still doesn’t understand. And, come to think of it, who does???
Minnesota and Iowa are farm states, pure and simple. In fact, there’s not much else here. Like parts of the Pennsylvania I grew up in, but which is now pretty much gone, the countryside here is big and open, rolling hills of harrowed earth surrounding enclave posts of trees that shelter the house and the barn and the grain silos of the hard working, simple folks who work the land and call it home. It purveys a simpler place and time. It is a peaceful part of the country.
What stands out as a difference to my boyhood recollections is, for the most part, the shape of the barns. I include a few representative photos because I found it difficult to describe the shapes effectively, although it is pretty clear that with their rolling roof lines and unusually low side walls, they are clearly constructed to allow the strong winds to pass over without harm and to support greater snow loads than the barns back home could handle.
For the pictures, I had my choice of literally thousands of well built, nicely painted and maintained barns and magnificent farm complexes that accompanied them. But it has always been the older, more used and worn, maybe even run down barn structures that have appealed to me. I’m sure that says something about me, but I’m not sure I have reached any conclusions at this point what that might be. I’m the same way with blue jeans; dark blue and new has never worked for me. I prefer them washed a thousand times and tattered a bit if not a lot. I like a few holes in them and some frays that got there because they did what jeans are supposed to do- work. And work hard. Rocks? The same. Sharp and rough and jagged seldom capture my interest as I prefer the rounded and smooth sides of stones that have been rolled in the river or washed over for centuries by rushing streams. I’ve never been a history buff, but I like the looks of things that have a history, and for now, that is all I can explain.
Cow tipping aside, I like cows. Never did tip one myself and never will. But I REALLY like buffaloes, and there are a lot more of them here than we saw anywhere else we have been at this point. They are such stately and proud animals, and they have that sense and look of history, that torn and tattered hide, that scruffy ruggedness that seems to speak volumes to me. In the old Western Cowboys and Indians flicks, there was from time to time the appearance of the White Buffalo. Like an angel among animals, he stopped the stampedes, saved the hero of the story, or otherwise performed miraculous happenings that made the point of the story. Something allegorical. Moby Dick with four legs and a fur coat. Perhaps there is something to the old tales and legends. There probably, and usually, is, but I wouldn’t know what at this point. But I do know this. When I am driving the coach down the road, past the old farms and barns and fields and plains, taking in the scenery and all the new things it offers to us, I am always looking for buffalo. And one white one in particular.
