The Road Home

Only to find this abandoned place.

I couldn’t help wondering whose grandparent’s once homesteaded here so far out of the way.

How they must have worked to fulfill their dreams that somehow now have fallen from grace.

The barn and home are now like others around here are also in a state of dismay and sorrow.

The once well kept yard in which their children once played are now full of weeds and shrubbery overgrown.

I wondered if these weathered buildings might still be standing tomorrow.

As the looming thunderhead overhead makes it presence known.

The rusted square nails and tin roofs were sure to be under yet another strain,

From the pressure of a storm front gusting the strong winds with its anvil head thunderheads which are sure to bring a nasty rage.

Walking through the barn U could faintly hear the cedar planks begin to creek in pain,

Above the rustling sounds in the nearby fields of golden sage.

Walking through the barn you could faintly hear the cedar planks begin to creek in pain,

Above the rustling sounds in the nearby fields of golden sage.

The only good road - is the Road Home

The story behind the Painting and Poem "The Road Home"

Not far from my city limits of my home town, Mitchell, South Dakota there were numerous places to fish and explore as a kid growing up, but the James River was by far, my favorite destination within biking distance. The locals simply called this slow meandering, muddy green river, which depending on the seasons of the year was either flooding or just about bone dry, “The Jim River”.

In my early years of experiencing the great outdoors my equipment demands where quite modest, simply outfitted with bamboo fishing poles, braided fishing line wrapped the length of the pole then tipped off with a red and white bobber. I explored the mudding, sharply eroded and cut out river banks in search of carp and bullheads, that where more plentiful, then any game fish late in the hot summer and low water levels.

Later during my high school years around the ripe old age of 16 years old, I received my first driver’s license and occasionally was able to borrow the family’s lemon yellow 1976 Chevrolet Vega. My hunting and fishing friends and I dubbed it, “the urban jeep”, because it was great for “cruising” up and down Main Street on Friday and Saturday nights with gas well under $1.00 per gallon, and then during the weekend hunting and fishing excursions the hatchback option made it easy and quick to load and unload all the necessary equipment that we had acquired thanks to the arrival of the Herters Outdoors store..

On a hot summer night, when the engine was really hot, it cloud up a city block or two with a blue haze emitted from the burning oil in the General Motors flawed aluminum block engine, which most of the time made it not such a great car to get the attention of the car loads of girls cruising around also. The guys at Adam’s Standard, always joked with my about working as the local “bug fogger”, but if you tapped the accelerator just right as a car load of upper classman girls cruised by, it would puff a perfect smoke ring.

I drove into town, done Main Street this hot Friday night a couple years ago, with gas now well over $2.00 per gallon, other then the tourist near the Corn Place, Main Street was void of the teenagers that once lined both sides of the street just a decade ago.

It was not Main Street that had brought me back however for this trip, but I wanted to spend a weekend re-exploring the Jim.