Brush (away the cobwebs)

Taking Scully on one of our "long walks" yesterday morning brought us along to traverse Third Street on our way to a midpoint at Woods Rd. We happened there upon this packet of bound brush and I was stopped abruptly by a memory I couldn't quite place. I began raking through the clutter in my brain; sorting through those things that weren't quite right, bracketing this and that and coming up short and empty. Scully began to get impatient (as he does frequently bear the boredom of my unexpected pauses - particularly because I tend to stand there like a mannequin). He was probably more embarassed at being seen with me in such state than actually wanting to get moving - but let's not anthropomorphize here). I finally broke my seemingly blank stare and looked around.

There! There it was - a pergola fashioned of plumbing pipe and fittings, woven up and above with grape vines. The curbside stack was the waste come from pruning.

The unknown now placed, it was a comfortable ease into the memory of early springs on my grandfather's farm when teams of family, friends, and a few hired hands, would wend through rows and rows of vines with well worn and well oiled snips and fingerless gloves. We would throw the cut into the center of the rows. Later, with a tractor and a long pointed pole behind, we'd collect it all into small piles then throw it all into two or three very large (a good twenty feet high) piles to be burned. What a time that was! When I was ten or eleven, grandpa taught me to drive the old Ford tractor (though not to crank the engine to start it). Second gear was enough for that slow chore as he would walk behind and man the pole to gather the brush.

I could have gone on reminiscing but through that distance and fog I heard an out-of-time-and-place and whispered "rufff". Now that he'd found me, Scully and I moved on. I'll need to go by again and thank that viticulturist for the memory though I'm certain it'll take a while to explain it all. I'm going to leave Scully home for that one.