girls would have restored all of the roads, rebuilt all of the bombed homes, adopted all of the orphans, established
daycare centers, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters, and girls would have processed endlessly about what we
could have done to have prevented the war and what we still can do to prevent it from ever happening again. Because girls
believe, in the end, everything that happens is our own personal fault.
To avoid having personal fault for a Jaguars loss, our gang drove immediately to the Meijers’ store—our team’s sponsor—to
buy team Ts and team paraphernalia. Sadly, there were none to be had. I presume we will be sewing our own. My Beloved is thinking
of giving the team mascot a gift certificate to a massage therapist to compensate for balancing that costume head all night.
We have preparations to make. First, we need to find a schedule because—although we are pretty sure we have four more home
games this season—we don’t know when any of them are. To build up our cheering voices, we have all vowed to practice shouting
“Go Deeper!” each morning in the shower. So if you hear any odd shouting before the next game, that’s what it is.
eminent domain
I F YOU WALKED OUT the back door of my parents’ house, drifted on past the old garage with its charred back wall and the cement foundation for
the larger building that burned away, and on past the converted henhouse where my father kept all of his tools (and himself
much of the time) you would come to the end of my yard. My yard ended more dramatically than most people’s—it dropped, almost
vertically, about twenty-five feet into a big, green pond. The view to the left of the back pond was more picturesque, but
no less startling: the little green pond was surrounded by a willow woods and when I was young, it hosted a small school of
rogue goldfish that would float up to the surface and speckle the dark water with splotches of white and gold.
A few years ago my nephew misnavigated and rode his grandfather’s four-wheeler headfirst over the bank into the little green
pond. His little brother rode right along behind him. The pond is nowhere near as deep as we presumed it was when I was a
kid. My father, the Groundskeeper, had spent a great deal of time eradicating “weeds” (anything not a maple) from the bank,
so it must have been a short, fast ride, just about long enough to let nine years of sin flash before the child’s eyes. Then
his grandfather burst over the bank, tore down the hill and—every instinct tells me—gave a remarkable demonstration of the
famous Peck temper. Both boys survived without a scratch, discounting injuries to the ego. The four-wheeler, remarkably enough,
lived as well, but it took my father most of the afternoon to haul it back up the bank and it was some time before my nephew
so much as acknowledged the cursed vehicle again.
Both ponds were part of the huge kidney-shaped hole surrounding our yard we called The Gravel Pit. We spoke of it quite definitively—The
Gravel Pit—as if it were the only one, as if no one else in south central Michigan had ever seen or heard of one. It was large
and fairly irregularly shaped and both my yard and my best friend’s, around the corner, were chipped out of it. From fence
post to fence post of the fields that contained it, it was about a quarter of a mile wide at its widest point, and it was
a little longer than it was wide. Ours was unconventional by most gravel pit standards: it hid the Great Plains, a section
of Death Valley, the North Woods and an extraordinary number of wicked and untamed Indians (for, I fear, it was a politically
incorrect gravel pit). I hunted both buffalo and Jesse James there in my youth.
On rare occasions huge dump trucks would roar down the drive and haul away parts of our universe, something I believe all
of us who hunted and foraged there considered to be both unnecessary and
daycare centers, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters, and girls would have processed endlessly about what we
could have done to have prevented the war and what we still can do to prevent it from ever happening again. Because girls
believe, in the end, everything that happens is our own personal fault.
To avoid having personal fault for a Jaguars loss, our gang drove immediately to the Meijers’ store—our team’s sponsor—to
buy team Ts and team paraphernalia. Sadly, there were none to be had. I presume we will be sewing our own. My Beloved is thinking
of giving the team mascot a gift certificate to a massage therapist to compensate for balancing that costume head all night.
We have preparations to make. First, we need to find a schedule because—although we are pretty sure we have four more home
games this season—we don’t know when any of them are. To build up our cheering voices, we have all vowed to practice shouting
“Go Deeper!” each morning in the shower. So if you hear any odd shouting before the next game, that’s what it is.
eminent domain
I F YOU WALKED OUT the back door of my parents’ house, drifted on past the old garage with its charred back wall and the cement foundation for
the larger building that burned away, and on past the converted henhouse where my father kept all of his tools (and himself
much of the time) you would come to the end of my yard. My yard ended more dramatically than most people’s—it dropped, almost
vertically, about twenty-five feet into a big, green pond. The view to the left of the back pond was more picturesque, but
no less startling: the little green pond was surrounded by a willow woods and when I was young, it hosted a small school of
rogue goldfish that would float up to the surface and speckle the dark water with splotches of white and gold.
A few years ago my nephew misnavigated and rode his grandfather’s four-wheeler headfirst over the bank into the little green
pond. His little brother rode right along behind him. The pond is nowhere near as deep as we presumed it was when I was a
kid. My father, the Groundskeeper, had spent a great deal of time eradicating “weeds” (anything not a maple) from the bank,
so it must have been a short, fast ride, just about long enough to let nine years of sin flash before the child’s eyes. Then
his grandfather burst over the bank, tore down the hill and—every instinct tells me—gave a remarkable demonstration of the
famous Peck temper. Both boys survived without a scratch, discounting injuries to the ego. The four-wheeler, remarkably enough,
lived as well, but it took my father most of the afternoon to haul it back up the bank and it was some time before my nephew
so much as acknowledged the cursed vehicle again.
Both ponds were part of the huge kidney-shaped hole surrounding our yard we called The Gravel Pit. We spoke of it quite definitively—The
Gravel Pit—as if it were the only one, as if no one else in south central Michigan had ever seen or heard of one. It was large
and fairly irregularly shaped and both my yard and my best friend’s, around the corner, were chipped out of it. From fence
post to fence post of the fields that contained it, it was about a quarter of a mile wide at its widest point, and it was
a little longer than it was wide. Ours was unconventional by most gravel pit standards: it hid the Great Plains, a section
of Death Valley, the North Woods and an extraordinary number of wicked and untamed Indians (for, I fear, it was a politically
incorrect gravel pit). I hunted both buffalo and Jesse James there in my youth.
On rare occasions huge dump trucks would roar down the drive and haul away parts of our universe, something I believe all
of us who hunted and foraged there considered to be both unnecessary and
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