Grandma lived on an old dirt road in the-middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma. Passing cars would raise dust trails behind them that could be seen long before the vehicles themselves were visible. No other houses were visible from Grandma’s yard, only tall weeds and blackjack trees for miles around. Two old rusty Ford trucks sat out front, one red, one blue, although the paint on both had long ago oxidized to pale versions of their original hues.
The front gate, framed by a crepe myrtle bush on one side and a honeysuckle vine on the other, hung lopsided on its hinges so that it scraped the red stone walk at one corner. The mimosa tree on the right served as second base during evening softball games (the gate and front porch were first and third respectively), its soft feathery pink flowers littering the ground and emitting a delicate perfume into the air. Every year Uncle Dale attempted to grow a garden in the barren patch of land that made up the right front corner of the yard. Beyond the fence of the yard proper, lay a tangled pasture overgrown with blackberry bushes, nightshade, and prairie grass.
The left front corner of the yard held a tree we called the bean tree because it produced long skinny pods resembling green beans. Ahead, just to the left of the walk stood an immense elm with branches sturdy enough to climb almost to the top. As a young child I used to stand in the top of the tree and swear I could see all the way to California, while my mother stood below yelling for me to come down before I broke my neck. Next to the elm squatted a small cactus my parents had brought back from Arizona one summer. It never actually thrived in the Oklahoma humidity, but it never died either. It just stood in the shadow of the elm never growing more than two feet tall.
To the left of the elm, just beyond the fence, was the storm cellar, full of water from years of summer rains, which had never been properly drained. Some time ago, Dale had thrown a few fish into the cellar so the grandkids could go fishing without having to leave the view of watchful parents. Past the cellar was a narrow trail that led down into the pasture.
The house had been built in the early nineteen hundreds shortly after the Oklahoma land rush. Originally, it had been a three-room cabin, but as time and technology caught up to it, a kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom—complete with running water—were added. The outside walls were covered with a mauve shingle common to older houses in that part of the country. The facade of the house was square and symmetrical with an A-frame roof, simple and functional. Concrete steps flanked by half-pillars led from the sidewalk to the front porch. A few of the planks had rotted across the bottom and black wasp-like insects called dirt daubers had built a nest in the hole in the ceiling, but overall the porch was fairly sound. At night, we would sit on the porch and look up at the Milky Way, which ran parallel to the front walk, and talk about life beyond our cozy little planet.
Almost every summer Sunday would find cousins, aunts, uncles and sometimes grandparents out in the yard, shooting the breeze, playing a game of softball or climbing trees. These were happy, carefree days when family hierarchies and sibling rivalries would be put to rest for a little while and we all just enjoyed our time together.
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