5 July 2001 - 2

"Clink"...pause..."ka-chunk."

Someone was talking to me when I heard those sounds, but I have no idea what they said. I was a hundred miles away, in another ponderosa forest, in another time.

"Clink"...pause..."clank."

The sounds of someone playing horseshoes. A sound of my youth. Nice to hear it again so close to the Fourth of July.

When I was a kid, every July Fourth was spent in the Black Forest of Colorado. On my grandparents' homestead. In the ponderosas.

No wonder I love that tree.

My Dad was number ten of eleven kids, so it was always a large family gathering. Most of my cousins were married and had kids my age, so we spent our time playing with our cousins once removed. That country was still raw then, with narrow gravel roads that closed for weeks at a time in the winter, neighbors that lived a mile or so apart but still knew each other's business.

We didn't meet at anyone's home for some reason. It was always out at the picnic grounds in the woods, with hand-hewn picnic tables and benches made from ponderosa. With two to three inches of pine needle duff under your feet, at the edge of an open grass meadow.

The Independence Day feast was pot-luck, with all the fixings you would expect at a rural ranch gathering. Roast beef, corn-on-the-cob, deviled-eggs, baked beans with bacon, and cakes baked from scratch. Using brown eggs produced on the baker's own place.

And home-made ice cream, with cream from someone's own cows, and fruit picked nearby or from gardens. Ice cream that we kids had to crank if we wanted it made.

After the meal the women folk would clean up and then chat amongst themselves. We kids went off to make forts and fight pinecone wars, or set off fireworks that aren't even made anymore, much less legal. Like the little black powder balls that exploded whenever thrown hard enough against a solid object (like a cousin).

Usually set off at least one fire a year, which brought a flurry of activity from the menfolk with their shovels.

But the men all spent their time at the horseshoe pits. Pitching all afternoon while they caught up on weather, politics, the price of beef or corn. Who just bought a new truck, and what he paid for it. Hours of conversation, mixed in with the steady

"Clink"...pause..."ka-chunk."

It was the backdrop noise to everything we did all afternoon. As long as those "clanks" continued, all was well, all was unchanged.

When it stopped, we knew it would soon be time to go home. And, of course, it was almost dark by then.

"Clink"...pause..."clank."

It was hard coming back to the 21^st century after being with folks who saw the first decade of the 20^th.