The attitude of the stars

It has been warm and breezy all day and the temperature is nice and October-y (yes, I know that is not a word, but felt like using the coined word, anyway). I found out that W&L is playing VMI in the Lee-Jackson lacrosse game at the VMI stadium on October 25, the same day that the football team is playing at Wilson Field. I think, if I had an extra $500 laying around that I would drive up to Lexington and watch some football and some lacrosse on that Saturday afternoon in late October.

I haven't been to Lexington since Kate was a Senior in High School. That was fun to visit the colleges and imagine myself, through Kate, at some sanctuary of higher education. I would love to see the new Stadium and all of the new athletic accoutrement at W&L. Maybe run into the new President, who was a Senior when I was a lowly Freshman. Take communion at the First Presbyterian Church with the ghost of Stonewall Jackson haunting the grey walls inside the sanctuary.

I would love to stroll around the downtown area and see my old apartment on Nelson Street, eat at the Southern Inn and walk past the College Town Shop, where I first spied the brown coat which reminded me of Cindy and sent me romantically spinning on a path toward a wedding in Southern California and twenty five plus years of marriage. The older I get the more sentimental I become.

When Cindy and I drove up to Sewanee for the football game last month, it was quite a nostalgia shot seeing the north side of Lookout Mountain and Covenant College sitting up on top of the mountain. I remember always thinking it could stand in for Shangra-la in some remake of Lost Horizon. It was fun to drive on and see Nikkajack Lake and all of the boaters on the lake on a pretty Saturday morning. Then to get up to Monteagle and enjoy the trees and buildings of Sewanee.

The only thing that would have made it better would have involved driving on to St. Bethlehem and enjoying a restful evening in the farmhouse. Of course, I could have slept in the bed at my house and we have a sufficient number of pictures and nick-nacks in order to remind me of the walls at the farmhouse, now demolished.

But I could have sat out under the stars and imagined the cattle lowing and the chickens rustling, even if they were no longer there. I could have seen the lights above us from Dunlop Lane, as we got off at the Rossview Road exit and headed northward to Dunlop Lane and the white frame house on the hill. The lights would have been on in anticipation of our arrival, even if Grandmommie was asleep in her chair in front of the 10:00 o'clock evening news from Nashville and WSM or WLAC.

But she would have sprung from her chair and hugged us and sent us on our way upstairs to the rooms on the second floor and a good night's sleep at the farm. As I said, I can still sleep in the bed I would have slept in at the farm. However, there is something about the placement of the bed in my house, as opposed to the front bedroom at the farm, which makes it a little less easy to get a good night's sleep.

A little stardust and the soft, sad music of the cattle.