200? Going West on I-70. After we come out of the Eisenhower tunnel, we still have a long way ahead of us. It is cold and green and white and grey. I don't much care for the mountains around here. As we get near Eagle, it is desolate and brown. It isn't until after we go through Glenwood Springs, along the Colorado River, that I really enjoy the scenery. That's the kind of mountains I like...red and purple and beige and yellow and orange and pink and tan. Weird hoodoos like alien anthills stand sentinel over the highway. This is the Colorado I hardly knew when I lived there. Maybe if I'd known it more at the time, I'd still be there. I don't like the Front Range, but love the Delta Valley. I love the moist green mossy ferny deciduous land in Wisconsin and New England. I love the arid sandstone cactus land of the southwest, including Western Colorado. But there is something the about semi-arid land of the front range that I don't like. It's non-committal. It's not a desert. It's not lush. It's neither. Nowhere. I guess when I moved there against my will decades ago, I couldn't quite put that into words. I guess I just missed New York, but it wasn't just that. It was the land. It was prairie land, dry grassland. Not like prairies in Wisconsin with wildflowers and frogs. This was barren.

200? Mother-in-Law's. A huge south-facing bay window filled of light and filled with the cactuses we buy on the trip. At night, we can fix the shades and see the stars as we lie in bed. There are no city lights to interfere nor much of an atmosphere to speak of. The bed is too small for both of us (we're king-size spoiled), so we alternate turns sleeping in the other room (with the scary dolls) or sometimes Stan sleeps on the floor on a sleeping bag. At night we hear crickets, and the wind blows with that lonely western wind sound. We open the shades and look out across the back yard, across the golf course, across this vast expanse of valley, across the mesas, all the way to the San Juans. I wished we could stay there forever, if only the housing association allowed dogs.

197? Summer at Grandma's in the 70s. I am sitting in a chair from the middle of the 20th century. It has old green slipcovers, but it is very comfortable. It is across from the TV, and I sit there and eat dinner, which consists of a delicious steak and wonderful tomatoes. I never have food like this at home when my dad is in charge of buying food. The chair has wide, flat arms where I lay my plates down. I am watching some old tv show like The Andy Griffith Show or Leave it To Beaver. Not only is the furniture stuck in time, but the syndicated shows on this independent Chicago station are as well. When the Chicago or Milwaukee news comes on, the reporters speak about things I don't understand, events and news items outside of my world. Baseball is a big thing in this part of the world. It goes along with Leave it to Beaver, the old fashioned yet mid-century decor, the vegetable and egg vendors that come to the house, the heavy, black, phone-company issued telephone on a party line, the blue violet chickory growing along the roads to grocery stores with big cartoon pig mascots, and tiny little neighborhood stores with narrow aisles where I bought lime popsicles. Going to visit my grandmother in Racine was like being transported back into another era. I was taken out of the 70s and put back into the 40s or 50s for a few weeks every summer.

Labels: Vacation