Saturday, September 28, 2024
Into the Woods
I'm at my mom's house in Quincy, which is literally in the middle of a giant woods, such that the threat of a tree falling on us has been a genuine concern for as long as I can remember. Also? Weeds and brush. My father was always fighting weeds and brush, which I felt certain would contain snakes. My mother has continued the battle, but with scrawnier arms she stands less of a chance. I assume the whole house will be reclaimed by nature some day, and this may be for the best.
Before that happens, I'm doing my best to rescue some of the things that are meaningful to me. So I'm taking lots of books and records (not in the corporate sense of books and records, though that one is good too) back to Chicago. I've got a two-volume set of the Folklore of Quincy and Adams County, which my dad worked on with the great folklorist Harry Hyatt (this is a real thing), weighing down the back of the Prius, along with some of my parents' marked-up copies of novels I like (Faulkner, Fielding, Vonnegut). And my grandfather had some pretty great records, at least in my view, since I have the taste of someone who's been deceased for over two decades. But since the CSO performing Charles Ives and Perry Como in Irving Berlin's Mr. President are probably not anyone else's jam, we should probably move along.
I tend to keep a pretty low profile while I'm in town, in the wake of repeatedly being running into people at Wal-Mart while buying Hot Pockets in sweatpants and a "My Other Car is Oprah" t-shirt. But we did get the dog out for not one but two walks and I got a nice run in. Also, I discovered that Uber Eats actually works here, so there was no need to dine publicly for sustenance. (Although I did have a carry-out incident that left me feeling like Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes, but I've vowed never to speak of it again.)
Back to Chicago tomorrow morning, assuming the Prius can bear this load...
