Going Home, Part II

Today was that great drive along Rt 15. Everything was ready for my pick up at Geneseo, and I got out of there quickly to get on the road by 12 noon. Upstate NY and Pennsylvania is filled with old wood frame houses that sag like the owners inside them. My mood lifted as I passed horses and cows, and the black dog standing on top of his homemade doghouse, keeping guard. I remember how I had been in Miami for a few years, and was trying to woo a woman from Wyoming to come work with us at FIU. I knew she had horses, and so I took her to Davie, north of Miami, where there are lots of farms. I remember walking into a feed store, and stopping in my tracks as I caught my first whiff of hay, and how nostalgic it made me. Today it was the smell of people burning leaves in their garbage cans.

All along RT 15 there were pick up trucks containing truckloads of men dressed in camo and bright orange, carrying shotguns, walking down the side of the hill to lie in wait. A VERY long time ago, I dated someone who hunted: realizing that I was afraid to handle the gun, I got him to teach me how to shoot at clay pigeons, and later I went to the firing range and actually enjoyed shooting handguns at targets, and I was pretty good at it. I remember our heated discussions about hunting: I understood the rationale, but ultimately I did not want to be with someone who was capable of doing it. Today I wonder again, "who are all these men who are able to see a beautiful creature moving through the woods, pull the trigger, and stop its heart (then gut it)?", and I thanked God I wasn't married to one of them.