Ode to Tennessee....

Our time in Tennessee was a sweet gift. And like any intangible gift in time was filled with joy, frustration, struggle, laughter, exhaustion, peace, etc….etc… I would be a liar if I said the Airstream didn’t school us in our ignorance of, well, …Airstreams! For three weeks we labored over the Silver Bullet. And during that time we learned a tremendous amount about plumbing…especially plumbing in tight spaces. But not enough to get it done ourselves…. at least not this time. The day we employed professionals to fix the ever-evolving leak was the first best day we had! We gave up and it was wonderful! We played in the creek the rest of the afternoon. It had been calling us…..well, more like torturing us….as we sweated ourselves to exhaustion while cramming our hands and shoulders into impossible positions tightening this and sealing that without the luxury of air conditioning in a tin can parked in the sun. “To hell with this!” was our battle cry and to the creek we ran. It took the guys at the shop two more weeks to fix our illusive multiple leaks. Knowing our Silver Bullet was in someone else’s sweaty hands made those afternoons in Knob Creek that much sweeter. With Silver’s return, we parked him on the edge of the water and immersed ourselves in our little version of Walden Pond. Ready for intimacy with the night and nature, I’d imagined a still kind of quiet that reaches your soul and stills it, too. But, as Katie’s imagination is often just that, I learned what a racket it is on Knob Creek at night!!! You couldn’t hear someone 10 feet away if you tried! Between the frogs, the crickets, the owls and the beavers (who can only be doing belly flops from the tree branches from the sounds of it), the soundtrack at night was a chorus of noise. Our biggest treat was a crane that visited nearly every morning to fish just outside our bedroom window. We’d wake up, pull the curtains and watch him standing in the reeds to mask his presence, curl his neck down like an S and come up with a large minnow, sparkling and silvery in the morning sun. And it became an even more special treat to learn one day walking along the bank that our crane was a girl crane….a Momma crane to be exact… with a gangly baby ….. assumingly startled by our presence, she flew the nest with an unmistakable youngin’ skawking and flapping not far behind.

During these past two months, we ate too much and worked too hard and have gained 10 lbs, a remodeled Airstream, a 100 tree line at Aunt Barbara’s, a Leg Up sign at Aunt Beck’s, a new walkway at Dad’s, and a silken sealed siding, re-organized shop and re-organized fridge at the Kelly’s! We had a ball watching our amazing nephew do the fabulous things 1 1/2 year old musical geniuses do. And…..the list truly goes on and on. But, though tempted, I won’t bore you with ramblings about every detail. I’ve gone on enough. As Bobby would scold, “TMI {Too Much Information} Katie!” So I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

To our Tennessee ( & New Orleans) folk:
Thank you, you wonderful family and friends of ours for all the love, food and, especially, time you shared. It was visiting with each of you that I cherish most. We love you and can’t wait to see you at Christmas time!!!
---- K