There was
nothing doubtful about our drive to Brenham, midway between Houston and Austin,
the birthplace of Blind Willie Johnson. The land is gently hilly, a pleasant
break from Houston’s vision-limiting flatness. We saw fields of cows, horses
and goats, and copses of oak rimming ponds, more like mud holes in the ongoing
drought. Hawks were busy. We toured the Blue Bell Creamery. It was my third
visit to an ice cream factory (Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont, Tillamook’s in
Oregon), and I don’t eat ice cream.
At the
Antique Rose Emporium we bought pots of gerbera, Cheiranthus allionii, blackfoot
daisy and blue lobelia. The boys swung on a robe swing hanging from a live oak.
A male Northern mockingbird perched at the tallest of each tree he visited and seemed
to follow us around the ground. A mockingbird’s repertoire is like Ulysses, with each chapter told in a
different style. His Latin name is splendid: Mimus polyglottos. One of his
songs sounded like the squeak of a rusty windmill, another like the trickle of
water in a down spout. My sons and I whistled the theme from The Andy Griffith Show, but he never joined in. He was longing
for a mate but remained solitary throughout our visit.
“Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does
quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of
infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which
people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss.”
1 comment:
I saw a young mockingbird open his beak and say--nothing. He hadn't yet acquired a vocabulary.
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