Yesterday was a typical Arkansas summer day–hot, with bumble bees in the flowers, birds at the bird bath. The house with its refrigerated air got to be a little much, so I went to the deck to soak up the sun, look at the blue sky above me, and breathe some fresh air.
Nemo
Nemo went with me. Funny thing–he likes to be out, but more than that, he likes for me to be out with him. For some reason, exploring the yard and biting off a few blades of herbs is a lot more fun if he has an audience.
This morning, the temperature is still warm and rain is in the forecast. This summer, NWArkansas has been blessed with plentiful rainfall. Lawns are green, trees are full of leaves, and the flowers love being well watered.
On warm, summer days when the blue sky arches above me, I think about past summers. I think about Etta Bend as it was when my mother was a child and the Latty and Willis families pretty much populated the community. The heat didn’t mean that work stopped. It was the opposite. My grandpa had crops to take care of. My grandmother and her daughters had the garden and canning. This was a season to get ready for winter. Keeping the farm and the family going was hot, hard work, but the Lattys did it. They did a good job. That area along the Illinois River grew good crops. It was a different place then. It was a place where families used the gifts of water and land that God had given them, to the best advantage. They took care of what they had, kept everything clean and in working order.
And that brings me to today’s mini-mystery. It is an unsolved mystery because I have no answer for it. How can that busy, productive, happy life of a hundred years ago have disappeared as completely as a slate wiped clean? There isn’t even a footprint left. All we have are memories and remembered stories and that will have to be enough.
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