Old Underwood typewriters....University Avenue in the rain....painting the black keys on the piano red....the smell of the soil in early April....women who throw on a pair of jeans and walk out the door without make-up....anything made of wood....blankets people bring to football games in the fall....used book stores....empty box cars....the stuff in the bottom right hand drawer of any desk in America....old men who sit in the back of church every Sunday....a dog lying down at the foot of a bed....alleys....four guys laughing together....a kid with a pillow reading a book....a leather baseball mitt in an attic....waking up in the middle of the night and feeling happy without knowing why....barges....any automobile dashboard prior to 1970....a man with a pipe in his mouth, all alone, staring out a window....The remote possibility that one day a cardinal will fly in my house and rest on my shoulder while I'm making coffee....Weeping Willows....the elevator in the Pioneer Building in downtown St. Paul....a waitress on break with a cigarette....bed-sheets on a clothesline in May...keeping the speedometer at 40, on a motorcycle, in the country, at twilight....a conservative with a liberal view and a liberal with a conservative view....street-sweepers   ....dictionaries that get used....stained glass garage windows...The wallet of anyone 80 years of age or older....people who graduate from college with philosophy majors and end up painting houses for a living....A Bloody Mary and the New York Times on Sunday.... the photo albums in people's closets....brass lighters....people who love life enough to laugh at a Wake....the borderline ecstasy when the pain of an injury subsides....seeing the ocean that very first time....the color of a penny, the size of a dime....the feeling when a plane lands on the tarmac and everyone's safe....garage sales where they don't care about making money, they just want to get rid of stuff....the technical brilliance and simple wonder of a stapler....seeing someone skating all alone on an outdoor ice rink at three in the morning....the excitement when a boat breaks free from a dock in a summer storm....a baby asleep in a stroller at a little league baseball game....60 degrees in February, 40 degrees in July....a screen door at a lake cabin....driving the rider mower for a half hour without the blade engaged, just for the hell of it....watching the pin-setter at a bowling alley....and finally, hearing the words, "Dad, do you want to play catch?"
        

Posted by TD Mischke
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