Southern Pastorale
I like frogs. I’ve liked the slimy little critters since I was knee high to a tadpole. So the other night, when it was raining cats and dogs, it was really raining frogs. Driving home, I was in hog—or should I say “frog”—heaven. I was as happy as a Nascar fan at the Sharpie 500.
I must have passed dozens, though I counted only four frogs through the slap-dash dashing of my windshield wipers. Three of these frogs were hopping as fast as they could across the road in a noble attempt bound to teach some possums or race-car drivers a thing or two.
The fourth frog, as sleek as a moss-covered stone in a slow-running creek, was not so swift. Not even slow as molasses, it had just plain stopped in its tracks, as if it were having some sort of identity crisis: deer? frog? deer? frog?
What could I do? I pulled over, turned on my blinkers, and walked into the middle of the soggy blacktop to stare at the frog that huddled there, not quite sure what it was doing in the middle of a blacktop .
I won’t tell you what I said to the frog that was marching (or not) to its own drummer. I will say that I picked it up and carried it across the road, since it seemed to be pointing southwest, perhaps to follow the trail down the hill. Then, eager to get settled by a nice fire, I got back in my car and made it safely home in the rain.
In retrospect, I sort of wish I had stayed there on the side of the road for a spell. I could have pulled out my cell phone and called up Larry Seaquist, the politician from Washington (state, that is) who’s been trying to block a Nascar race track that some people want.
It may be impractical to put one out there, but why make us folks down here look slimy in the process of fighting it?
“These people are not the kind of people you would want living next door to you,” Seaquist said. “They'd be the ones with the junky cars in the front yard and would try to slip around the law.”
You could’ve knocked me over with a goat-feather. I thought that sort of stereotyping about these parts had died and gone to you-know-where to reside with jokes about the farmer’s daughter.
Although I’ve never been to a race, and don’t plan to, and even think the whole race thing (frog-racing excluded) feels like an odd use of natural resources, I have lived amongst Nascar fans for fifty years. Nascar fans are regular folks, like me—and like you.
On the side of the road, rain falling, I might have been able to get some ribbiting vocals to accompany me in an appeal to Seaquist and the like to broaden their minds about southerners and northerners too. We’re all human together, warts and all.
Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 7 March 2007, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2007.
I must have passed dozens, though I counted only four frogs through the slap-dash dashing of my windshield wipers. Three of these frogs were hopping as fast as they could across the road in a noble attempt bound to teach some possums or race-car drivers a thing or two.
The fourth frog, as sleek as a moss-covered stone in a slow-running creek, was not so swift. Not even slow as molasses, it had just plain stopped in its tracks, as if it were having some sort of identity crisis: deer? frog? deer? frog?
What could I do? I pulled over, turned on my blinkers, and walked into the middle of the soggy blacktop to stare at the frog that huddled there, not quite sure what it was doing in the middle of a blacktop .
I won’t tell you what I said to the frog that was marching (or not) to its own drummer. I will say that I picked it up and carried it across the road, since it seemed to be pointing southwest, perhaps to follow the trail down the hill. Then, eager to get settled by a nice fire, I got back in my car and made it safely home in the rain.
In retrospect, I sort of wish I had stayed there on the side of the road for a spell. I could have pulled out my cell phone and called up Larry Seaquist, the politician from Washington (state, that is) who’s been trying to block a Nascar race track that some people want.
It may be impractical to put one out there, but why make us folks down here look slimy in the process of fighting it?
“These people are not the kind of people you would want living next door to you,” Seaquist said. “They'd be the ones with the junky cars in the front yard and would try to slip around the law.”
You could’ve knocked me over with a goat-feather. I thought that sort of stereotyping about these parts had died and gone to you-know-where to reside with jokes about the farmer’s daughter.
Although I’ve never been to a race, and don’t plan to, and even think the whole race thing (frog-racing excluded) feels like an odd use of natural resources, I have lived amongst Nascar fans for fifty years. Nascar fans are regular folks, like me—and like you.
On the side of the road, rain falling, I might have been able to get some ribbiting vocals to accompany me in an appeal to Seaquist and the like to broaden their minds about southerners and northerners too. We’re all human together, warts and all.
Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 7 March 2007, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2007.
posted by Felicia Mitchell | 6:47 AM
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