The Wanlorn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_wanlorn) wrote2010-04-27 07:17 pm
the_wanlorn) wrote2010-04-27 07:17 pm
Entry tags:
- band,
- country life,
- fishing,
- meme,
- poetry,
- robin,
- shabaka,
- threeweeks
Rosanna Warren, "From New Hampshire"
Nicked a meme from sally_maria because, lord knows, I love talking about myself.
Post pictures - no more than one or two - of interesting places, landmarks or buildings in their town. Either the town where you live, or where you grew up - somewhere that you maybe still associate with the idea of home.
Tell us a bit about the picture and why it's interesting. We all get to see the tourist pictures of the world, but not so much about the smaller special places that mean something to us.
So, here's the thing. I grew up in a census-designated place. It wasn't until I was... really old, embarrassingly old, that I realized that it wasn't actually a separate town. WHICH, OKAY. ISN'T THAT UNREASONABLE. I mean, we have our own Main St. and our own center of town and our own churches and our own cemetery and just shut up, okay, I hate you. >:(
Anyway. The first two images are from the CDP that I consider Cowtown, and the last two are from the rest of the town, aka, the Greater Cowtown Area.
So, this is the Civil War monument down the street and around the corner (most parts of town are down the street and around the corner from me). Every Memorial Day, for my entire high school career, we'd march across town for a million miles in bazillion degree weather in wool uniforms, stopping at a couple significant places to swelter in the sun while people said some words.
There would usually be a couple of freshman (or 7th/8th graders, as they had to start letting younger and younger kids into the high school band because there weren't enough people otherwise) who forgot/didn't believe the "don't lock your knees" warning, and almost fainted. But it was also great, because it was pretty much the only time you could get an actual drink of water without spilling half of it.
The woman who always talked at this monument was, my hand to god, at least a hundred years old. Her grandfather was in the Civil War, and since this was the Civil War monument, they'd let her talk. And it fucking sucked, because not only did she read the same speech every year, it was a half hour long, at least. It's one thing to be marching in the heat, where you're either thinking about what you're playing, or making sure you're staying in line with everyone, or making sure that the 8th grader next to you is staying in line, and so on and so forth. It's another to be standing at parade rest, baking in the sun, listening to someone drone on, where the only thing to distract you is counting how many sweat drops trickle down the back of your neck and trying to rearrange your lyre -- without anyone noticing -- so it stops cutting off your circulation.
But then, I guess it's better than Christmas, where the hand warmers never lasted long enough and you couldn't feel your fingers after the first twenty minutes.
Tromping through the woods and over a hill from my house brings you to the old schoolhouse, which was the only school in town for a long, long time. My parents both went there for at least a portion of elementary school, if not all of it. After the new school was built up the hill (so we only had to tromp through the woods and up the hill), it was closed down and converted into a haunted house every year at Halloween. We only went once, when we were little, and had to use the chicken door because it was way too fucking scary. After a while, it got to the point where it was so not-up-to-code that they had to shut it down entirely and board it up.
Plus there's, you know, the whole haunted thing. But let's not get into that.
Moving on to the Greater Cowtown Area, we've got the creepy ice cream lady statue, which has been there forfuckingever. There's this little ice cream place -- the kind where there's no inside, just a window to get ice cream from -- attached to the gas station, where everyone goes for ice cream during the summer, and that statue stands off to the edge, right by the road. It seems like everyone in town worked at either the ice cream place or the gas station for at least a couple weeks during high school. Whenever I drive by, I want to stop for some ice cream, but I'm never driving by while it's still open.
Finally, we have the res. At one point, this was where town water was coming from. I'm not sure if it's true anymore, but I'd buy it, since Cowtown is built on a swamp, and we have town water and it tastes swampy (which I never noticed until I moved away, and the water tasted wrong). It's definitely still used for fishing, though. The causeway is just wide enough to stand against the wall and fish, so long as there aren't two cars trying to go by each other. If you want to sit down, you can go around the side and there's a bunch of rocks set up just right to sit on.
If you don't mind only catching bluegill, it's an A+ place. There are some fucking massive trout in there (I ASSUME, really, all I know is that they are big, they are long, and they are not bluegill) but I've never caught one. Or, rather. I've hooked one a whoooooole bunch of times. But my line always snaps because it is not exactly the best line or the heaviest line in the entire world. At all.
If you want to catch something more edible than bluegill (which, I am assured are actually edible, but lol are you fucking kidding me?), there's a river up through the woods a bit. I am not sure if there are actually fish in it, since I've never actually caught anything, but my dad assures me that when he wanders up there he totes catches fish. For real. No lie.
The one thing I'm sad about is that I never got to take Shabaka up there. She would have fucking loved it, if how much she loved fucking around while I fished at the Fells is anything to go by. Bringing Robin just isn't the same, since he's so flighty and skittish and I have to spend so much time minding him instead of just sitting with him or letting him fuck around near me off-leash.
From New Hampshire
by Rosanna Warren
It's not your mountain
but I almost expect
to meet you here
I think you have taken a long late evening walk
Your heavy shoes glisten with dew
I hear your footsteps pause on the dirt road
and I know you are picking out
the dark mass of the sleeping
mountain from the dark
mass of night and testing the heaviness of each
Your hands are small but they know weights and measures
You are a connoisseur of boundaries
You loved the bears
because they pass between
leaving their stories
in fat pudding turds on the grass
Here it's raspberries they're after not our
sour Vermont apples No matter You will find them
When they hoot in courtship
you always hoot back
more owl than bear
They don't mind They always answer you
And tonight I imagine you're out waiting up for them
by the berries, which is why you don't cross
the dew-sopped lawn
don't press open the
warped screen door
of the kitchen where I sit late by a single glowing bulb
sally_maria because, lord knows, I love talking about myself.Post pictures - no more than one or two - of interesting places, landmarks or buildings in their town. Either the town where you live, or where you grew up - somewhere that you maybe still associate with the idea of home.
Tell us a bit about the picture and why it's interesting. We all get to see the tourist pictures of the world, but not so much about the smaller special places that mean something to us.
So, here's the thing. I grew up in a census-designated place. It wasn't until I was... really old, embarrassingly old, that I realized that it wasn't actually a separate town. WHICH, OKAY. ISN'T THAT UNREASONABLE. I mean, we have our own Main St. and our own center of town and our own churches and our own cemetery and just shut up, okay, I hate you. >:(
Anyway. The first two images are from the CDP that I consider Cowtown, and the last two are from the rest of the town, aka, the Greater Cowtown Area.
So, this is the Civil War monument down the street and around the corner (most parts of town are down the street and around the corner from me). Every Memorial Day, for my entire high school career, we'd march across town for a million miles in bazillion degree weather in wool uniforms, stopping at a couple significant places to swelter in the sun while people said some words.
There would usually be a couple of freshman (or 7th/8th graders, as they had to start letting younger and younger kids into the high school band because there weren't enough people otherwise) who forgot/didn't believe the "don't lock your knees" warning, and almost fainted. But it was also great, because it was pretty much the only time you could get an actual drink of water without spilling half of it.
The woman who always talked at this monument was, my hand to god, at least a hundred years old. Her grandfather was in the Civil War, and since this was the Civil War monument, they'd let her talk. And it fucking sucked, because not only did she read the same speech every year, it was a half hour long, at least. It's one thing to be marching in the heat, where you're either thinking about what you're playing, or making sure you're staying in line with everyone, or making sure that the 8th grader next to you is staying in line, and so on and so forth. It's another to be standing at parade rest, baking in the sun, listening to someone drone on, where the only thing to distract you is counting how many sweat drops trickle down the back of your neck and trying to rearrange your lyre -- without anyone noticing -- so it stops cutting off your circulation.
But then, I guess it's better than Christmas, where the hand warmers never lasted long enough and you couldn't feel your fingers after the first twenty minutes.
Tromping through the woods and over a hill from my house brings you to the old schoolhouse, which was the only school in town for a long, long time. My parents both went there for at least a portion of elementary school, if not all of it. After the new school was built up the hill (so we only had to tromp through the woods and up the hill), it was closed down and converted into a haunted house every year at Halloween. We only went once, when we were little, and had to use the chicken door because it was way too fucking scary. After a while, it got to the point where it was so not-up-to-code that they had to shut it down entirely and board it up.
Plus there's, you know, the whole haunted thing. But let's not get into that.
Moving on to the Greater Cowtown Area, we've got the creepy ice cream lady statue, which has been there forfuckingever. There's this little ice cream place -- the kind where there's no inside, just a window to get ice cream from -- attached to the gas station, where everyone goes for ice cream during the summer, and that statue stands off to the edge, right by the road. It seems like everyone in town worked at either the ice cream place or the gas station for at least a couple weeks during high school. Whenever I drive by, I want to stop for some ice cream, but I'm never driving by while it's still open.
Finally, we have the res. At one point, this was where town water was coming from. I'm not sure if it's true anymore, but I'd buy it, since Cowtown is built on a swamp, and we have town water and it tastes swampy (which I never noticed until I moved away, and the water tasted wrong). It's definitely still used for fishing, though. The causeway is just wide enough to stand against the wall and fish, so long as there aren't two cars trying to go by each other. If you want to sit down, you can go around the side and there's a bunch of rocks set up just right to sit on.
If you don't mind only catching bluegill, it's an A+ place. There are some fucking massive trout in there (I ASSUME, really, all I know is that they are big, they are long, and they are not bluegill) but I've never caught one. Or, rather. I've hooked one a whoooooole bunch of times. But my line always snaps because it is not exactly the best line or the heaviest line in the entire world. At all.
If you want to catch something more edible than bluegill (which, I am assured are actually edible, but lol are you fucking kidding me?), there's a river up through the woods a bit. I am not sure if there are actually fish in it, since I've never actually caught anything, but my dad assures me that when he wanders up there he totes catches fish. For real. No lie.
The one thing I'm sad about is that I never got to take Shabaka up there. She would have fucking loved it, if how much she loved fucking around while I fished at the Fells is anything to go by. Bringing Robin just isn't the same, since he's so flighty and skittish and I have to spend so much time minding him instead of just sitting with him or letting him fuck around near me off-leash.
From New Hampshire
by Rosanna Warren
It's not your mountain
but I almost expect
to meet you here
I think you have taken a long late evening walk
Your heavy shoes glisten with dew
I hear your footsteps pause on the dirt road
and I know you are picking out
the dark mass of the sleeping
mountain from the dark
mass of night and testing the heaviness of each
Your hands are small but they know weights and measures
You are a connoisseur of boundaries
You loved the bears
because they pass between
leaving their stories
in fat pudding turds on the grass
Here it's raspberries they're after not our
sour Vermont apples No matter You will find them
When they hoot in courtship
you always hoot back
more owl than bear
They don't mind They always answer you
And tonight I imagine you're out waiting up for them
by the berries, which is why you don't cross
the dew-sopped lawn
don't press open the
warped screen door
of the kitchen where I sit late by a single glowing bulb
no subject
My high school and middle school managed to have separate marching bands when I was younger, but by the time I graduated there'd been so much filling-in, one way or another, that they just gave up and made it one band. Of course the only time we played was the Memorial Day parade, and sometimes alumni joined it, and we didn't have to stand around at the end at all.
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We had separate bands, but the middle school band was only a concert band. High school was concert and marching. And, for the longest time, the HS marching band was either the best or the second best in the region (it changed every so often with another school that were our ~rivals~). We did so fucking many parades every year because us and the other school were the ones everyone always called to be all ":D :D Can you march in our parade this year? :D :D" Then, as the current (at the time) crop of seniors graduated and they started having to let younger and younger kids in just so they could have, say, at least one tuba player, it got worse and worse. Now I have no idea where they are in the rankings, but they definitely aren't near the top anymore. :(
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I'll bet there are many "true" stories kids have about that boarded up school. The ice-cream statue is Stephen King-level creepy. *shivers*
The res looks so peaceful and pretty, a lovely place to fish even if you don't end up with trout.
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A great series of pictures and memories, thank you for sharing them.
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