City Slickers

When we get company who've never been here before or it's been too long, they often phone from Wadena. I give them directions to the corner three-quarters of a mile south, and wait for them there.

I drive to the correction line and make a u-turn before pulling over to the side of the road.

Out the passenger window

It usually takes about 10 minutes till they get here. I sit and listen to the radio (today it was Quirks and Quarks on CBC; guests were talking about "fake" tattoos that can read physical conditions like high cholesterol, cancer, etc., and about gleaning electronic energy from human sweat; wow, I say).

Out the driver's window. Hm, where are they? Should be here by now.

Text:
We're on Lone Tree Road by the greenhouse sign.

Text:
By the sign or by the actual greenhouse?

Text:
The greenhouse.

Text:
Oh. Okay. You can get here that way, too. Drive straight, another mile to the four-way stop, and turn left; I'll be in the little green car.

And so I back up onto the correction line and mosey on over to the Kylemore grid and toward Lone Tree Road, and soon see Kathy's car approaching from the distance. She blinks her headlights a couple times and I do the same before turning around in a driveway so the car points toward home again.

This time the girls have a pilot vehicle and pull into our yard right behind me.

Little Kath and her daughter Jessie come out from Saskatoon for the afternoon. 

 I'm meeting Jessie, age nine, for the first time. Kathy and I have known each other since she was 11 and I was 23, when her dad was my new beau. For four years Kathy and her two younger siblings spent their summer holidays with us.

Ducky thinks he's died and gone to heaven. Two more laps to sit on, four more hands to pet him; what's not to love! And when Jessie leaves her mom and me at the kitchen table and moves to the couch to draw and write in her book, Ducky goes along.

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How's this for an answer to the unspoken question, How do you account for your long life?

"I pick all my own fruit," he said. "It gives me a reason to stay living." -"Jam Man" in Prince Albert
FULL STORY: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/jam-man-vows-continue-1.3453544?cmp=rss&cid=news-digests-saskatchewan

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Response to comments:
• LORI - I went to your webpage this morning again. Looks like you guys had a great time. So interesting to one who's never been up there ... like me.
• ANNETTE: Cameras, eh? I like my little digital, mostly because I've dropped it a half-dozen times and it keeps on ticking! But it does do weird things with perspective, like bring a field close that is a mile away, that kind of thing. However, it's all in fun and that's enough for me.