Drawers on the Line
I know I wax poetic about my somewhat rural town here in Colorado. Every year about this time, actually, I share some pictures from the Boulder County Fair Parade. You would think “Boulder” would mean some upscale, yuppified event, but Longmont, where I live, is not Boulder. It happens to be in Boulder County, on the far eastern edge of Boulder County. The Boulder County Fairgrounds are in our town. Boulder just happens to be one city in our county. And as some people like to point out, it is not Boulder, it is “The People’s Republic of Boulder.”
Longmont is decidedly rural, old-town, surrounded by family farms and miles and miles of open prairie before the mountains rise to the west. Agricultural ditches lace through open fields like enormous spiderwebs, feeding snow-melt to crops and cows. Classic red barns and while clapboard farm houses dot the landscape. In town of course, there is a bit more civilization – all of the big box stores you could want or need. But tucked into the middle of town is a farm store (Murdoch’s), and many homes in the old-town parts of the city boast wonderful, productive vegetable gardens, and well-used clotheslines.
Yesterday, Tater and I headed out on our bikes for a 10-block ride to downtown for the annual Boulder County Fair parade. I knew we’re going to see antique cars, giant tractors and harvesters, dancers, goats, horses, and marching bands. Because we value our lives, we bike through a series of allies until we can’t anymore and have to ride on the street. The first alley we ride through features a row of the back yards of a series of post-war houses. Some have dogs, some have gardens and dogs, some have chickens. And in one yard, the clothesline was filled with someone’s drawers. In a big city, with big-city sensibilities, you’d never see such a thing. But here? Drawers go on the line, right there with sheets, shirts, jeans, socks, and towels. Yes, even the towels.
I am not graced with a clothesline at our rental homestead. But I do have some wonderful vegetable gardens that are producing plenty for us to eat. Well, except for the tomatoes, that aren’t ripe yet as we head into the last weeks of summer. But there is squash, beans, eggplant, cucumbers, herbs, and lettuces. I’m growing Zinnias by the back door, to remind me that not all gardening has to be about vegetables, and as a throw-back to the beautiful roses farm wives used to grow by their back porches. Water was precious on the prairie, so those roses were watered with dishwater – nothing would go to waste. And the drawers would be on the clothesline, with all the rest of the clothes.
This week, Klown, Tater and I will visit the fair itself. I’ll look at all the chickens, ducks, turkeys, and ginea fowl, and wander through the goat barn and the cattle barn. We may buy tickets for the Mexican Rodeo, and for the Demolition Derby. We’ll watch the music and dance performances on the main stage, and I’ll spend an hour in the exhibit building looking at quilts, decorated cakes, monster home-grown veggies, fiber-work, and artwork. We’ll eat hot dogs and fried spiral potato chips and funnel cakes, chasing it all down with a frozen lemonade. The fair will be dusty, hot, smelly, and in all ways perfect.
And as ever, I will be thankful for the wonderful rural little city I live in. It fits my sensibilities just fine. Even if I have no clothesline to hang my drawers on.
Some pictures from the parade:
