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My folks bought 120 acres in southern Missouri. It’s in the no man’s land between Springfield and Branson. It requires turning off the paved road not once, but twice… then you have to drive down a barely graveled one-mile long driveway just to get to their house. Once there, you are surrounded by beautiful hills, trees, pastures, and the sounds of the forest. Crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs call out constantly. Dozens of bird species hang out around the feeders in the backyard, much to the delight of my father.
He sits every morning in the same place on the back deck. Binoculars in one hand, a bird book in his lap, and a cup of coffee on the railing. Days when his existence isn’t interrupted by the presence of his son and his son’s boyfriend, this ritual is usually performed nude,* save for a pair of boots, in case he decides to walk down and fill the bird bath, or do some other chore that would require sturdy footwear. He takes his time examining new visitors to the feeders, and looking them up in his fancy Audubon Society book. He is only interrupted by the hummingbirds that swarm his feeder next to the deck. They like to dart around his head and stare at him, all while sipping that bright red syrup from a fake plastic flower. One morning while we were there, we observed at least 16 ruby throated hummingbirds buzzing around at once.
There is at least one natural spring on the property, feeding a beautiful stream that runs the length. The stream is home to all sorts of wildlife including leopard and bull frogs, crawfish, several small minnow species, bluegill, and young largemouth bass.
The property needs a lot of maintenance. Fences need to be repaired, pastures need to be mown (mowed?), hornet nests need to be removed. For new readers unfamiliar with my family, my parents are an over the road truck driving team.** They are often away from home for weeks at a time. They are not in the best of health, as sitting in a truck 20 hours or more every day doesn’t exactly count as exercise. Dad is a diabetic, and mom has a lot of trouble with her knees and hips. My parents have also apparently lost their minds.
We spent Labor Day touring the property and basically relaxing. My mom’s oldest sister, Loretta, lives nearby. She and her husband Leon came over, and then we all made a trip to a very depressing casino on the Oklahoma-Missouri border near Seneca for dinner.
The next day, we headed out 20 miles south to Shell Knob, a blink of an eye town on the northern side of Table Rock Lake. We rented a pontoon boat and a jet ski and spent the day with the lake entirely to ourselves. None of us had ever been on a jet ski before, so the rental place set the wave runner on the low-power setting and let us go.
Low power meant the jet ski could only get to 48 miles per hour. 48MPH on the water is pretty damn fast.
I talked my mother into getting onto the back of it with me. She finally agreed, but made me promise I wouldn’t go any faster than 15MPH.*** She jumped on the back and we headed out. Within just a moment my mother was screaming into my ear, “SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN!” She was gripping me so tightly that I was afraid for a minute that the makeshift Heimlich manuever would produce a technicolor display of lunch.
“Mom, we’re only going six miles an hour.”
“Oh. Well that’s fast enough,” she replied.
I told her to hold on, and took off at a moderate 30 MPH. Mom never stopped screaming.
Before the end of the trip, UMB and I headed back to the farm for a couple of nights. Mom and Dad had just left to go back to work, so we had the place to ourselves. UMB thought it would be funny to leave a little present for them. A picture of his impression of my dad on the deck.****
