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My dad was the biggest dog lover on the face of the earth. The day he died he had nine dogs. I'm sure he wished he had nine more.

When I was a child, there was an Air Force base near my home. It closed years and years ago - but much of the ruins of it are still there, particularly the runways.


They are all overgrown and lonely. When my son was 9 or 10, my dad and I used to let him drive the car on them. He would drive and drive and my dad would sit in the back
seat so happy. (I know....I know.... irresponsible parenting. Please don't call DSS - it was a long time ago.)


My dad owned Syberian huskies with lots of energy. He used to take them there and let them run and run and run beside his van as he drove up and down the runways. It was one of his favorite things to do.

Before he died, he requested that he be cremated and that his ashes be strewn out there by those runways.

So that's what we did.

Once a year, I go back and visit. It's very, very quiet there. The kind of quiet that engulfs you. It's also very peaceful there.

The first year after he died (six years ago), I went to "visit" him. We had a little "chat" - and then I looked down, and there, embedded in the runway were.....

Dog prints!!


I swear they weren't there before that.

Today - I went there again. When I was walking back to my car, I noticed something beside my car.

It was a dog!

Now, trust me when I tell you that this place is far from anything. Anything. I scrambled to take a photo but you can barely see him. That little black dot of a thing just to the right of the car is a dog.

When I got back to the car, I followed him. He ran a long way. He was a very confident, I-know-where-I'm-going-and-what-I'm-doing-so-leave-me-alone kind of dog. He got as far as a private aviation center of some kind that is out there at that old Air Force base, but I couldn't get close enough to him to say hello.
Just one of those life-is-funny kind of experiences, you know?

You know how I was talking about that red dirt road and all (a couple of posts below)?

Well, tonight was a beautiful hot summer night and I was driving around blasting country western music on the radio - gettin' my groove on and all.....and guess what song came on?

Red Dirt Road by Brooks and Dunn.

Now, I don't know if you're into country music at all - but the lyrics go like this:

My Smoky Mountain soul sister friend, Kerry Madden, has a way cool collection of sayings that she saw on church signs down South. So I've been thinking about her whenever I see them - which means I'm thinking about her a lot because those signs are everywhere.

Here is one I saw today. I like it! (The problem is, how to do you STOP worrying?)

I recently had to do some copyedits on Greetings from Nowhere (Spring 08) that involved cutting out a reference to "red dirt" - because I had used that reference a few times and enough is enough with the red dirt.

But today I was driving around (in South Carolina) - and was struck by how much RED DIRT there is. And, it really is red (well, okay, maybe more orange, but...anyway).

See? I took that photo today. Red dirt.

I have very vivid memories of red dirt.

Red dirt roads.

Red dirt yards.

Red dirt driveways.

The bottom of my feet stained orange (red) from that red dirt in the summer.

Etc.

So, I just can't help myself.

Thank goodness for copyeditors.

....today for lunch I had a HOMEMADE pimiento cheese sandwich (thank you, Aunt Margaret) and sweet tea (thank you, Cousin Libby).