Booghost on the prowl.......

I remember growing up at Ottertail and hold fond memories of my youth. The memories become more vivid and come more often as I grow older. I’ve told people over the years that I feel that my childhood was the best that anyone could have. When you are young, you want the years to pass quickly as each new age presents you with new opportunities, your own bed, or bedroom, taking a walk by yourself, or the hand-me-down bike. This continues into the early teens when you start yearning for solitude, drivers permit, and finally graduation from that damned Prentice High and figuring out just what the hell you are going to do the rest of your life.



You don’t miss anything yet because you just left it, and you can travel home for the weekend and feel comfortable and everything seems the way it should be. Then somewhere along the way things change, you’re not at home as often. Someone moved away, the general store sits empty never again to hold canned goods or wool mittens, the old barn comes down, which gives us a new great view of the east woods, but the playground of my youth is gone.



Right now I can smell the fresh cut grass and can feel the thick carpet on my bare back as the sun beats down on me, crickets singing, grasshoppers hopping, butterflies fluttering in and out of sight, as I gaze at a single white cloud that seems impossibly high in the sky, as it drifts slowly east. That dark green grass that only gets that dark in northern Wisconsin, hiding grass snakes and toads that knew I would pick them up if they left that cover.



Most of all I miss my family, my father the teacher, my mother the nurturer and my siblings no matter the differences we had. I miss that old house that gave me a lifetime of the sweetest memories anyone could ever have.




A short list of what I miss,



Feeding stones to Blackie

Running around a yard that seemed endless to a young boy

Dad coming home with fresh trout

Fresh rolls Mom just made

The sound of fat bike tires over a gravel road

The front porch, endless hours on or around that porch

Lilacs

The South garden

Secret paths around the old sheds, well we thought they were secret

Fresh wash on the line

Eating plums off the plum tree

Playing catch over the pump house

Rolling inside a tire

The gravel pit

Snow tunnels in drifts

Snowmen with leaves stuck to the snow

Skating in the swamp around tag Alders

The old apple tree

Horse tree

The rock pile

Running from hornets

The island

Playing in the woods

Coming in cold and wet to hot chocolate and fresh bread toast

Sundrop soda and popcorn Saturday night

The thunder storms rattling the windows in the middle of the night

The sun setting and sitting in the front hall feeling the warmth

Jack frost on the inside of the window

Fresh Balsam

Crappe frying

The feeble attempt at a tree house

Smoke bombs made of dried pine needles and a tin can



I miss when we all lived at home.



Now I wish I would have savored those moments more and time would have slowed down.

Tim.