Catching a ride on the upswing.

Sounds like a title that should be about golf or something, but in truth, it is about moods. Ever notice how when you are on your way down to the abyss that the people most likely to pull you out of the funk are the people you are least likely to find around? But like golf, when you actually figure out the issue, make contact with the ball so to speak, there those people are, laughing with you, moving back into that arc of sunshine aimed at the green, looking for that flagpole raised high and straight where the grass is trimmed neatly into a triangular… oops. Wrong flagpole….

Okay, so I didn't quite hit bottom, didn't quite feel the depth of depression that I know exists before I consciously turned it around and changed direction. I'm sorry Moods, I just don't have time for that right now.

There are snakes in the story I'm working on this week.(it had to be snakes. i hate snakes!) I used to think snakes were fictitious. My step grandfather… grandma's fourth, remember?… had a farm in Indiana in a place called Clinton Falls. I've written about some of the memories from that place before, but I'd forgotten about the snake until I just typed that. (See what journaling can do?) If you've never spent time on a farm, and by farm I mean one of those places where the family that lived there actually depended upon the fruits of the land and labor to support them, then you probably have never heard of a corn crib. A corncrib was a place to store field corn… as distinguished from sweet corn which is what you eat, whether fresh from the field on the cob, or frozen or canned. Sweet corn. Field corn is hard and dry and ground into meal or fed directly to livestock… seems to me that grain fed cattle eat it cob and all. Field corn is also the basis for many of the consumer products we find in the grocery store.. Everything from the tortillas I used to make enchiladas tonight to the dr pepper my boys are addicted to (since the seventies, high fructose corn syrup, or hfcs, has been the basis of the sweet taste in soft drinks. Not cane sugar. Corn.)

Anyway, on the small farms that prevailed in Indiana, usually less than 200 acres, in increments divisible by 80… we can talk land units another time if you want… the point was to keep back enough of a corn crop to feed the livestock kept on the farm. The rest of the crop was sold at a Co-op, where generally it was transported by train or barge to a larger market, where processors would buy it at "free market" (we can talk about subsidies another time too if you want) rates.

A corncrib was where the saved corn was stored. The one on Grandpa Charlie's farm was rectangular, had a tin roof and slats of old wood pieced together like Lincoln logs, so that air could circulate I suppose.

The biggest problem was that a corncrib was not airtight or secure. And all manner of rodents loved to come there for a quick and easy supper. So Charlie got himself a pair of snakes.

I knew they were there, in the corncrib. But I never saw them. I believed in them though. It is true that things you can't see are still real.
I've spent too long on my feet today, pretending to be something that I'm not. I'm physically tired, yet hesitate to close my computer and go to my bedroom. I wonder if I have more in common with the snake or the mice tonight. And with those references, I know it's time to stop.