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Until just a few days ago, it had been at least four months since I’d gotten really dirty. I haven’t had mud on my pants since late November; I haven’t had dirt under my nails since the weather turned cold, and I haven’t had a pocket or cuff to pull inside out since I don’t know when.
I remedied that situation two weeks ago. Home from work on break, I grabbed my grimy old jeans and a stained cotton work shirt — still unwashed from where I left them in December — off a peg in our garage, shook them once, and pulled them on to head outside. My right pocket still held two quarters, an old pocket knife, an s-hook, a lock washer, an Indian bead and some sand.
During the winter, I am a notorious pencil pusher. I grade papers, plan lessons and spend countless hours in the quiet of lamplight reading and studying and scribbling notes. But come springtime, I cut my hours in my carpeted cocoon to get after my mowing and trimming and digging, all tasks that come not only as necessities of home ownership but also with an almost instinctual, familial need to get dirty, to play in the mud again.
I turned some soil over in my little garden on my first day of freedom, and I remember saying to myself that the dirt smelled good, that its scent, mixed with a little sunshine and newborn grass, reminded me of the days I spent with my grandfather in his garden. It is a memory that comes to me often in the spring.
It’s a shame that so many of our kids now aren’t encouraged to get filthy when they can; I think I know a child or two right now who will never be allowed to get good and dirty, who will forever be in pressed pants and crisp shirts and clean socks. Kinda sad.
I have never encountered a substance I couldn’t eventually get rinsed, washed or scrubbed off, and I know that despite the challenges and drudgeries of wash days, my mom would have much rather been cleaning my grungy blue jeans and cruddy T-shirts than watching me stare at a television or poke buttons on something held in the palm of my hand. I know my wife, Joanie, thinks that, too, for it won’t be long when she’ll be out potting and planting and painting right alongside me. We, in turn, encouraged our two kids to get dirty.
Among my favorite photos is one of my daughter and me standing near a backyard gate; it is a warm summer day, and I am about to rinse the then-3 year old off with a garden hose. She is already sopping wet and splattered with mud; Joanie had just discovered her “swimming” in a mud puddle behind our barn, as happy as any robin that wades into brown water to bathe. It is a memory made possible by dirt, a good portion of it deposited in her hair and on her face and on the striped shirt that hid her chubby belly.
My son — who, as a pre-schooler, used to get so filthy playing with his trucks and tractors at his sister’s softball games that my wife made him change clothes before he could ever get back into our car for the trip home — still manages to make a mess of himself, but he has finally learned one basic tenet we keep: Get as dirty as you want to, but go no farther than the garage door to my office when wearing boots and polluted work clothes. His socks, alone, could make an EPA hazardous materials list, but in spite of just starting a career that will have him in suit and tie for the next 30 years, I believe he’ll never hesitate to get his hands dirty or invest his sweat in hard work.
Before the rain set in to spoil things for a while, I managed to get much done around our place. Joanie had reminded me more than once that we should get our birdhouses cleaned out, that we didn’t want to lose our bluebirds or wrens just because we’d been slow with our spring cleaning. So, I grabbed my ladder and dutifully climbed into our maples and crabapples to snatch down our houses and crack them open like walnuts. One of the houses rattled with the coarse twigs of a wren’s nest, while another, a cedar box that sits on a green metal pole, held a nest that was shaped like the box itself, a carefully woven bed of grasses that I believe was manufactured by a bluebird. Other boxes that sat on corner posts, and the one that is screwed into the side of a storage shed, got scoured, too, and one, much to my surprise, had a healthy colony of fat black ants already inside, milling about in anticipation of a long summer of work and profit.
The chore shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but I worked deliberately and slowly because it was one of those kind of days on which I tend to drag my feet just to watch the sun set. I repaired a few of the boxes, including one that needed a little modern-day technology — some silicone sealant — to keep its new occupants from complaining to the landlord about a leaky roof.
I clipped and snipped and raked, too. Each spring, I thin the yuccas that grow along our drive; they bloom better that way, I think. I scratched the last of the fall’s leaves away from our irises and noticed that already the coneflower and black-eyed Susans and peonies were pushing their way upward. Because I like to see the winter frost settle on the tall ornamental grasses we grow, I always put off cutting the yellow stalks until spring, and so I finally did that, as well.
Many of my rock borders and walls need re-stacking — the winter cold and freezing rains send them spilling over like water in a too-full bucket, so a small portion of the day was spent nipping and tucking at those, too. Some walls, like the one along our front porch, need some gentle deconstruction and re-building before they can ever look good again, but that job had to wait.
I planted some new grass in a spot near the road where I have more gravel than soil in which to grow it, and, in a moment of perfect antithesis, went to the barn, tossed the tarp off my mower, plumped its tires, filled its tank, installed its battery, and fired it up. Truth be known, I unofficially became the first person in my neighborhood to mow a few high spots in his yard that day. There is no award for such an achievement, although some folks did point at me from passing cars.
As is a springtime custom of mine, I walked my yard, filling my wheelbarrow times over with twigs and pinecones and scarlet pin oak leaves, raking little piles here and there to which I’ll return. I could have dumped the loads anywhere along my wood line, but felt much better about walking them to a spot behind our barn, where I occasionally burn a few sticks of wood for conversational purposes. The tinder I offered went up in flames quickly, its warmth welcomed despite the light sweat I had under my shirt.
I stood next to the fire and watched the sun dip lower, satisfied that I was tired enough and just about dirty enough to head to the house.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or C/O the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, 47808. He will be speaking and signing books in Vermillion, Vigo, and Clay counties in April. A complete listing of those events can be found at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Let me tell you a little, dirty story…
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Jodi Arias: Death Penalty Would Cause More Pain
Raw: Aftermath of Deadly Attack in London
IRS Official Pleads 5th Amendment
Florida FBI Shooting Has Boston Bombing Links
Okla. City Mayor: Up to 13K Homes Hit by Tornado
Looking for Love? Take the Prague Metro
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Garcetti Elected Los Angeles Mayor Over Greuel
Lawyer: Feds Investigating Susan Powell Case
First Person: Baby Falcons on a New York Bridge
Today in History May 22
Paperless Scanner, Vision of the Future
Crews Race to Find Survivors of Okla. Twister
Raw: Costa Rica Volcano Roars to Life
Oklahoma: Images of Devastation, Reunion
Raw: Aerial View of Moore Tornado Damage
Former Rep. Weiner Running for New York Mayor
Raw: Students Clash With Police in Chile
Families Begin Returning to Their Homes in Moore
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
