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October 17, 2002

Blue Kentucky Girl

I’m going to Kentucky for a week and a half. I don’t know how it happened. I was only going to go for a weekend, long enough to wish my grandparents well on their 50th wedding anniversary, have a beer with my sweet baby brother, shoot a few rolls of film and be back on my way, safe and sound to Austin, the land I love so well.

But I can’t say no to my mother. More accurately, I will go to great lengths to avoid arguing with my mother, which has often resulted in me doing very foolish things, though none of them as foolish as the arguments we’ve gotten into, which is probably why I continue to do it. I’m not even in the same room with her and she’s already bitching, “It’s such a long way to come, there’s no point if you don’t stay and visit. What do you have to do in Austin that’s so important, anyway?” and on and on and on and so. There you go. Rather, there I go. I’ll be pulling out the banjo tunes and chewing tobacco to get myself in the right frame of mind in a few days.

And really, why shouldn’t I take a long visit? I like my grandparents, I actually like Kentucky, which was something that took a long, long time for me to be able to say. It’s really beautiful. Food tastes good there (except for the stuff fried in lard, which is a good deal, I’ll grant you.) and the sky is amazing, bright and clear and no street lights around for miles. I’ll eat biscuits every morning with blackberry preserves that my grandmother made herself. I’ll play the out-of-tune piano in the breezeway and I’ll sleep on feather pillows. I’ll hear stories I’ve never heard before. I’ll take a million pictures. As long as the Alabama cousins don’t try to take me honky tonkin’ I should be alright.

And then I’ll run back as fast as I can to Austin, back to this century and the sweetest boy I know.

Posted by pogo at October 17, 2002 3:50 PM