As we wrap up the finishing text for The King of Highbanks Road, I reflect on so many things from the experience of putting it all on paper – and how the place I will always know as home has impacted me all over again.
• The art of loafing and sitting around a coffee table with a group of men just shooting the bull, telling tall tales, even a few lies.
•Massive Crock Pot gatherings after church where the food is so good it makes you want to melt, but the older ladies say, “It must notta been fit to eat. They barely touched a thing.” This, although every last crumb was scraped from the bowl.
•The smell of fall. For cotton farmers, this is distinct, unique, and like nothing else in the world.
•Four-wheel drive pickup trucks so tall you need a step side to get in one … and the bird dogs and retrievers that ride in back of them. I recently got one of those trucks for myself.
•Watching the fall migration of Canadas, Snow geese, and mallard ducks navigate the Mississippi River Flyway.
•The sudden power jerk when a 2-pound crappie hits a 12-foot pole, and the battle that follows in the seconds afterward.
•Going out of my way to see the senior members of community families who raised me.
•Listening to the satisfying, nostalgic, mechanical hum of a distant cotton picker in a field miles away as it tries to beat the rain.
•The smell inside the old church where I was raised.
•All those small-town stories, and people, especially the local farmers who for better or worse, shaped me into the man I am today.
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