Windchimes

a small shoe in unbaked clay

It's nice and cool outside tonight. Feels more like the edge of autumn than August in the near-tropics. Lovely breeze playing with the wind sculpture on my favorite windchimes.

Cliff got the air-conditioning fixed just in time.

OK, I know I'll be very happy about that before summer really ends.

Actually, the last couple of evenings have been cooler than normal. We were sitting on the front porch last night, talking about our childhood neighborhood. We grew up a few blocks from each other, so anytime we reminisce about childhood, each one knows the streets, malls, grocery stores, houses, fields, and even sewer pipes the other is talking about.

When we were in elementery school (grades k-6, generally ages 5 to 11 or 12) a certain appartment complex didn't exist. There was a fun little meadow there, with a perfect hill for little kids to climb and jump from. A gentle slope on one side, a short drop-off on the other. Like a bluff chopped in half.

The best way to walk to school was right through that field, jump over a creek to Booth street and up a short trail through some woods to the school playground. Should have only ever taken 10 minutes at most, but we had so much fun along the way, it generally took 20-30.

One day the bulldozers came, and our parents told us we'd have to walk a different way. The field was now a construction site. We should walk up Hunter Road, which involved a long, boring, gentle slope, then turn right on Amber. Seemed like a 20 minute walk, with nothing fun on the way.

We kept walking through the construction site. Even if it wasn't as fun anymore, it was shorter. It was also muddier now. All the heavy equipment tore out the grass, made a giant vat of thick batter out of the soil.

One rainy day, I put one foot in front of the other, tried repeating and couldn't. Wet red Georgia clay engulfed my foot and ankle up to the cuff of my sock. Maybe it was just panic, but there seemed no way to free my foot from the goo without leaving my shoe behind.

So, somewhere beneath the asphalt that paves Hunter Haven appartments lies a little girl's shoe.

Think someday archeologists will think up theories about it?

J.H. Larrew
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **