Shortcut

Monday night

Some of my cousins were at my dad's house, but I didn't have time to chat; I was on a mission. I'd come to Dad's place to borrow his sofa, throw it in the back of my car, and drive it somewhere. I did take a minute to greet my cousin Wingard. He towered over me, and looked thin and haggard; he was dressed all in dark clothing. I shook his hand and said, "Hey," and then kept on going about my business.

I'm not sure where I was going with the sofa, but I tried to take an "off-road" shortcut through an overgrown area between housing developments. It soon became apparent that I should get out of the car and walk over to the nearest street in order to find the safest way out of the mini-jungle I was in. I could see a street and some houses off in the distance, but wasn't sure of the terrain, and didn't know how to get back to the road. I wasn't worried, though, and soon became much more interested in my surroundings. I came across a pretty stream, and remembered how much I enjoyed going down to the creek when I was young. I found a partially-submerged board and thought to myself, "That looks like a snaky place." I was about to turn it over to see what I could find when all of a sudden a Jeep came crashing through the brush and drove straight through the creek. I thought to myself, "I wish he hadn't done that." The driver certainly spoiled the moment, as well as some of the surroundings. I watched a frightened freshwater eel emerge from under the board and swim away for dear life.

*****

This dream seems to be a comment on the fact that some of the wild places of my youth are gone, along with the the languid summers that I had to explore them.

This afternoon I was pondering this dream and I remembered one such magical place. When I was a kid, there was a large open field across Albemarle Street from the baseball diamond at my elementary school in Arlington. It was a wild thicket, filled with birds, berries and brambles, and the occasional rabbit. My friends and I spent many wonderful hours exploring there. Now it's all gone, plowed over years ago to make way for an expensive housing development.

I'm sure it's always been this way. Someone was probably upset when my parents' neighborhood was built in the post-World War II era, and somebody probably protested when fields were divided in the 1920s to make way for my current Nashville neighborhood. But I regret the loss of the last cherished wild places in Arlington most of all, because that's where I grew up, in a simpler, more relaxed time.