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Cabin Fever

This is the place to tell about all the cool places your Eagle takes you. Hopefully there will be lots of great pictures that will help us all plan future trips.
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BoxcarOkie
Posts: 538
Joined: Thu May 21, 2009 7:42 pm

Cabin Fever

Post by BoxcarOkie »

Wednesday! Hump Day for a five-day-a week wage slave in Oklahoma, I have been doing so much cotton-pickin’ painting that clean air is really starting to smell funny. On top of that, it is still wintertime in my neck of the woods, and the weather guessers are saying more snow is on the way. It is a good thing that I have my doctor's permission to self medicate.

This time of the year is terribly hard on a guy, especially a guy who has the wanderlust gene like myself. I want to get out and roam, although I know that this is no longer a reality, it is not possible in this day and age. So I fritter the days away sitting in the bus-shop office and I find other ways to amuse myself, like wondering, “What is the longest English word you can type with only the left hand?”

(Stewardesses)

Important issues like that.

I find myself longing for a special moment in time … Summer time. Back in the day I would find myself lying on a blanket with some sweet thing and we would be whispering into each other ears, sonnets and secret phrases, but alas, they are gone too. Now I wonder if the old air conditioner will make it thru another season? How much water I am going to have to put on the lawn this year, to green it up and keep it that way. Why women find it impossible to sleep in a bed that has a fan blowing across it.

Secretly I pine for Montana, it is never far away in my thoughts, often just around the corner. I wonder if Andy has found anything recently with his metal detector (I wonder … does Andy even have a metal detector?). A few years back, I actually found a wedding band with mine. It was still attached to the man’s finger; uh, I dunno, I think it might have been Jimmy Hoffa.

Man, I need to get back to big sky country.

The pale blue sky opening up over Butte seems to stretch forever. The air is fresh and clean at the top of Bear Tooth Pass outside Red Lodge and the roads empty before, now most likely are bare altogether. A long BNSF freight racing across the land at breakneck speed to Chicago, clear water streams and long hot summer days.

In the summer, you can drive across southern Montana and the haystack dotted farmland seems to roll on and on forever. You drive by the small outfits, and they haul out to the front fence, what they have to sell. Worn out, beaten up pickups, a combine here and there, well used tractor an old gas guzzling motor-home, whatever. I have to admit, I have never seen an Eagle parked out front, nose up to the fence.

Image
I have driven on two lanes so striking, so majestic and mesmerizing, hauntingly familiar, that you swore they were objects of art. Rolling green sea’s of prairie grass, visions of Native Americans, stampeding horses, bison and of course, cowboys taming an unruly bronco fill my mind. You would not expect anything less of someone whose favorite western is “Dancin’With Wolves.”

Eye candy for the soul is how I always seem to refer to it.

A place in time, that lingers in your mind and often helps you thru your day. Distant roads are calling me. Through scenery so spectacular that much like fine oil or a colorful print hanging on the wall it takes your breath away. The mood and the feel of the land permeate your soul in big sky country, the home of Louis and Clark, the chiseled Grizzly.

I yearn to roam.

The old time towns and the architecture mixed with the new style trendy restaurants and galleries of the new west. Pickup’s with gun racks. Small detailed dream catchers hanging from the rear-view mirror, a blue healer dog in the back, one stop light at the end of the block.

And always, a canvas of baby blue (sky) right above you. If I squint real hard, I think I can see the Black Hills looming on the eastern horizon. Six on the floor! The other one out the door … Hammer down, Hammer down!

See you in the fast lane …

BCO
No I didn't say that ... Must have been some other guy.
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akroyaleagle
Club Member
Club Member
Posts: 486
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2008 12:11 pm
FMCA #: F180747
Bus Model: 1978 Model 05
Location: Sioux Falls, SD

Re: Cabin Fever

Post by akroyaleagle »

BCO,
I too grew up on a Montana ranch. I now live in South Dakota.

I enjoy your musings and encourage you to submit some of them for publication so that many may enjoy them.

A couple of places come to mind quickly:

Western Ag Reporter in Billings is a newspaper folks like us enjoy. It is a weekly, mailed out and widely subscribed to. Many of the articles are historical. I'm quite sure you would enjoy reading it!

South Dakota magazine is another. Many different articles are published in it. It fits your style of writing very well.

You are always welcome in South Dakota. We will fish, hunt, visit, tell stories compare Eagles or tour the places you write about.

Hope to meet you in Custer this year.
Joe Laird
'78 05
Sioux Falls, SD
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