Day Travel with my Father

for my father

“To see Heaven in a grain of sand”

Went to my cottage the other day, just for the day, and it was well worth the time, even driving more than the few hours actually spent there.
To get out of the city: the sea of noise, baubles, and distraction. The constant influx of competing drones for your attention.
Driving out of Toronto, the smog and endless rows of #1 drivers, I finally reach 115/35 junction and turn off into the country. Immediately the air is different, endless hills, and there’s a relaxed atmosphere.
I stop for coffee, grab it and go; start the pathway I know leads to the cottage road.
No assholes on the road, no thumping bullshit coming from car windows masquerading as music, just cops littered across the landscape waiting for speeding wankers despite an ‘understood’ allowance of it being okay to go over the limit by about 10-15%.

The air is actually light; it feels as though you could almost taste it, and later that proves to be true: it becomes sweet, free of the city pollution that rotted new aluminum screens on the house, while those on the cottage are still like new after the same period of time.

I reach another juncture of Highway 7, turn onto it; gas up again, and turn my camera on to take pictures as I drive.
And of course ask my father to step out into the lovely air for a picture.

The only obstacles at times being some countrified goober driving along as if he is still in his driveway, or some tiny old bag sliding into Paradise.

I recognize my ‘edge’ as the defense it is, feeling really nothing but good will towards everyone yet at the same time wishing a monstrous and unforgiven torment on those with their own projections against me, or without a care towards anyone else.
Which of course the moronic mutts take to be arrogance. They have a great need to find someone to fault, or to justify, in their pettiness, their own jealousy.

First, I sweep through Norwood; a small town with quite a few nicely built brick Victorian houses, and I think sanctuary, peace. Also, solitude beyond imagining in the winter and only the gaze of retards wondering why I left the city.

Next is the postal stamp town sidelined with an old railway station called Havelock. I recall traveling through here as a young teen, with my parents. My father talking about how he’d pass through at different times in his work. And later picking up the gnarly old stump who owned the cottage next to my parents because she could not get there without my father taking the time to stop, get her into the car – always a treat sitting next to her huffing lace and old lady dust – and pack her things into the trunk.

Passing the old railway station my father would often tell about working from and traveling through the small towns.

Finally, shuffling along the highway corridored by trees and fields, cows and horses grazing, the even smaller town of Marmora, the city cemetery on a hill to the southside of the main road. I always salute the residents as I pass, and no doubt they are tripping over their cerements trying to get the smart ass in the car. Just as likely they will grin mercilessly when I arrive there, certain of my repentance; at least until the moment I blow formaldehyde and undertaker spit out my ghostly ass.

There are flea markets, yard sales consisting of the entire property on which they exist, reptile farms, music fairs in the sweeter months, small bridges, and hawks circling as I sail my steel canoe across the highway of sky.

The next town is Madoc, hidden by fields and buildings encroaching on near parts of the highway. Then a slow slide down the road and the juncture of Tweed, holding the little park with barbecue stands and a small store where we used to stop to feed the bears kept in nearby cages. They would accept all the junk food they could get their paws on.

And all this time my father’s spirit keeps me company from the passenger seat.

He used to hate to drive with the windows open, while I wanted every window down, and the roof slid back. We’d try and compromise, and I would generally get used to it.

I coast past swamps, rivers still frozen though their outlets are flowing. Slide by the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) stations, ease through the little drive-by of Kaladar – where a small magazine published a poem of mine in 1973 – and I am suddenly moving through Frontenac Country, pine trees, stands of birch, hightop hills with rolling rocks when the full Spring thaw occurs, coming around a curve, and drifting to a slow stop across from the Fish Hatchery to the road opening that leads towards the cottage.

How I miss my father since his passing on July 2, 2006 is indescribable. This only slightly begins to touch on my biggest influence.
I do recall sometimes he’d try to wake me at 5 or 6 a.m. to go to the cottage with him.

I wish he would do so again. Someday, I am sure he will. My father defined the word gentleman.
Love you, Dad.

©Dean Baker

©Dean J. Baker and deanjbaker.wordpress.com, 2003-2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Dean J. Baker and deanjbaker.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.