TIME FOLLOWS ME

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX ROUNDING THE CIRCLE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

ROUNDING THE CIRCLE

Some folks sure know how to build straight roads. There's the temptation to push it when nobody else is 'round and that's what I would have done if I'd been driving.

Got picked up by these young kids who were going to Winnipeg on their way home from some road trip driving a Dodge Dart Sport. I think it had a 383 V8 and could really pull tail. It was a little older, but the engine hummed nicely with a gnarly growl. The big eighteen-inch wheels rode on stone chipped chrome rims, really gripping the road. We cruised along at 90 miles per hour with only the approaching car ahead to give us a sense of depth and distance. There's something calming about traveling really fast with no one ahead or behind you. You steer straight and try not to fall asleep. Guess that's what I was there for, doing my small part keeping the folks talkin' and awake. I realized I was just north of the border, where earlier in the summer, I made it across the border and began that mesmerizing part of my journey into the Southern States. I felt like a big hoola hoop, a'shakin' 'round, and somehow had rounded the circle.

Kenora was just across the border, the last real town in Ontario. There, I would be retracing my steps for the final leg home. I felt like I needed to get back to school starting in a week's time around September 6th, or 7th. Note to myself in my journal notebook, I had been traveling for just over two months. I began to wonder what my school friends would be thinking about me. Would they think I was never coming back?

Well, the thought crossed my mind. I didn't know how I would fit in after seeing so much and felt like I had grown, not in inches, but in experience for sure. Probably I was even thinner which is hard to believe because I was already pretty thin, at one-hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. I also felt lighter psychically. I didn't have to listen to my parents arguing all the time about every inane detail going on and on like a broken record. I didn't have to worry about playing my music too loud or all the other things they hated about me, not the least being my long hair, scraggly beard and worn out jeans. They were a nightmare those two, and I wondered why they stayed together. Probably, because they didn't know any other life and both found solitude from each other on the farm. They certainly weren't together for my brother and I. We were the unpaid help who did the chores even if I did like doing them, with the three dogs constantly around me, Porgy, Bess and Martha. And the horses would come when I called them in the evening, cavorting over the fields like the mythical beings they are.

Not many people can say that they could call horses and they would come. When I called my horse's name, "Laddie, Laddie, come in. Hey, Laddie, come now." He would come tearing across the low hills from the furthest reaches of the farm, at a full gallop in all his half Arabian elegance, his blond mane and tail raised and floating behind him, a chestnut horse with the spirit of champion, which he was. He would let me take his halter, snorting and prancing impatient to get to his stall, and his oats. He would try to nip me on the way in, just like him. He had to show who was boss. But, I would be ready and give him a little smack, "No you don't." I gave him his nightly ration of a quart of the finest oats, fresh hay and a cold, clear bucket of water from the single tap off the middle pillar of the stable. In wintertime, when it got really cold, the taps would freeze and we would have to get a blowtorch to thaw the pipes, being careful not to rupture the line. Shirlad, was some horse. We won every competitive trail ride race we entered all over Ontario including the "End of Year Thirty Mile Race." We won in 3 hours, 16 seconds, a record that would stand for decades. Shirlad was the Champion, I was a jockey, along for the ride, just to steer him and not to let him go out too fast, too early.

But that was a couple of summers ago. These days, I had stopped riding because I wasn't interested in the scene. I just read and played guitar all the time. I would go back home to school for one more semester, and then be on my own. This was also my parent's plan so at least we agreed on one thing. Kenora, was not that far ahead. I just had to make the tricky bypass of Winnipeg.

There was nothing interesting from the ground view of Winnipeg where I was stood. I'm sure there were some great people living there, but from the outside, it didn't draw me in. The prairies are flat as a pancake and then you come to Winnipeg. For some improbable reason, some planner Dude, had thrown a dart and said, "This is where we'll build the city, and we'll call the inhabitants, "Peggers."" Then they built a few jagged skyscrapers, sticking out of the big, flat, dust blown, pancake landscape.