Old Home Familiar Pt. I

A vigorous, opposing wind blew, bending against the growing, green-row slopes. The hills curved with perfect fields and grasses, moving with a turbulent midday dance of bright green jubilation to the great white sun. Cottonball cream clouds with the baby blue abyss threw patches of shade and sun alike onto the waving slopes.

I rode against the sharp piercing air, a bandana over my ears to silence its howl, the brim of my hat tugged down and my glasses on to keep my eyes from drying. Slowly and constantly moving west, I inched for hours into the wind. Everything turned monotonous. My eyes settled to the asphalt streaming immediately before me. But slowly, unconsciously, the black road faded from vision. My mind began to wind with ecstatic, vibrant dreams of the amber evening ahead, and I forgot where I was.

Straight ahead, Sioux Falls: my old home familiar. Just out town past the white water tower and beyond the dusty line of railroad tracks to the dirt road, opening on glowing stretches of fields where from far off piqued does watch intensely the billowing dust of the road dispense, and turning left down the drive - there the blue house of all my old friends from golden old high school days seeming so far away and so long passed. These dear delicate images stirred up in me with an imminent sense of proximity while a blur of Iowan pavement dragged on, ineffectually. I'd get rolling papers and tobacco, and off to the ice cream shop for my sweet pint of coffee-brown chocolate ice cream in a big Styrofoam cup, to the grocery store's great big beer room to deliberate over a while, and then seeing all of my beloved people of that town, to clink frothy beers round a rollicking front-yard fire hearing all about their lives of the past year.

Looking up I recognized the rolls of hills ahead and was pulled from my daydream. I was tired but most of the day had escaped without notice and knowing I was near was a relief. The first veil of buildings passed me and the town grew thicker. The place returned to me like a pair of lost shoes, worn in, long forgotten, but found afresh and slipping me into it, comfortable and perfect. Being in town gave me a yearning for a cigarette. I bounced from store to store looking for tobacco, and at the third shop and I'd found a packet. On the hot concrete outside the store I sat down, sore, aching and wind-beaten. Pedestrians striding by, seeing me and my bike, went without acknowledging or shot me with sharp eyes of contempt. I didn't care. I rolled a cig and tried to call Jeremy, but he didn't pick up so I started to move across town toward the house.

On the south side I stopped at a restaurant for tater tots and spicy cheese. Sitting on the curb outside a man came by and handed me a folded up $10 bill. Flabbergasted, I said thanks and then tried again at calling Jeremy.

He answered, “Nathaniel Benjamin!”

I told him I'd got to town and was eating at Cliff and 57^th.

“No you're not. Where? Do you see me? In a red truck.”

I looked around and I actually did see him, in a red truck idling at the red light. He turned and pulled through an adjacent parking lot, then drove up jolting to a halt at my curb. Biggest town I'd been in in what seemed to me a long while, yet, out of the whole preoccupied place there he stood before me. We caught up briefly. He was just off work and had half a pizza which he took out, offered me a slice, and then went straight to perusing my bicycle and its, what were to him, strange furnishings. He did this a good while then with a “See ya there,” drove off to meet me at the house.

I went straight to it and knocked on the front door. Drew opened it up, “Thanny! How've you been?” That was how I'd been known in those old days. In the main room Jonah was sleeping on the couch, and dragged himself slowly to waking. Those two lived reversed days, staying up through the night to count their cards at the new casino complex on the brim of town, or else kept up by video games in a dry-eyed stupor, tethered to the blinking television into drowsy dawn.

The ancient golden retriever, Buddy, lazily roamed the carpet. He stopped and looked at me a moment with his dull, far-removed eyes of a sage and flapped his tail a little. Then he collapsed onto a deliberately chosen patch of carpet to doze, his big tired body perpetually devoid of energy. Jeremy came down the stairs, stepped around the dog and told me Broeks was on his way.

I followed Jeremy through the garage and around to the backyard to let out his black Labrador, Diesel, from the chain link kennel. Last I was here this had housed three pet ducks, not a dog, but they'd apparently escaped or more likely been cooked up and eaten. Diesel bounded off into the grass, sniffing and biting at the little wild flowers. He was a burly black hunting dog bred and intended for fetching and listening. The South Dakota wilderness is one only experienced with a rifle or a fishing pole.

Broeks arrived. “Are you reading anything right now?” he asked me, then also if I'd searched through the bookmobile yet. We always exchanged our recent discoveries, musical or literary, but now I didn't know what he meant. “That bus out back is stuffed full with dusty books.” I'd never known.

We walked over the grass to the faded red bus on the edge of the property, its tires deeply entrenched in the ground. “Sioux Falls Public Library Bookmobile” was traced on its sides in worn red. Behind the springy door and up the steps hung the stagnant, musty air of a vault. Broeks eyed the dim book spines all around us, “It's all the landlord's, but I've come in plenty of times and taken stuff out. He'll never read 'em anyway. It's been back here for eternity.” Books of all kinds filled the shelf walls, or stood in precarious piles on the front seats and floor, mingled among boxes of old analogue records in paper sleeves. War histories, girths of fiction, politics collections, archives of Nat Geo arching back to the sixties, Socrates dialogues, intros to archeology, astronomy, economics, elementary school texts, & everything else. A film of dust had settled on all upward faces, burning auburn in the angular sunlight bent through the round rear window. I took five novels. I was hauling too many books around as it was.


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Pieces of Iowa Pt. II

Josh's house was down the street and a block away from the town's axis road. I pushed my bicycle into his garage while he took two bottles of beer from the fridge, passing one to me as I set the bicycle against the wall, and we went inside with them, wiling away into twilight with beers and wandering talk. I fell into asleep on the couch around midnight as the music stream flowed from the ebbing speakers, or Josh strummed on his reverberant guitar to a vast invisible undulating audience, me a member listening from my quiet kaleidoscope dreaminess. And upon sober early morning, I left a thanks note on the kitchen table and the town behind, into an off-white haze of fog and intermittent blankets of vapor rain falling, and to what would have been a bleak day.

After a couple miles down the Amish country road, a truck pulled into the shoulder ahead and stopped my riding. A man opened the door and stepped out from the truck-side into the haze. “Heard you got a little drunk last night,” he said with raised eyebrows and a grin, throwing me for a loop. A girl of her early twenties came from the passenger side, around the truck and stood next to her father, akimbo, “I'm Amanda,”. They knew Josh and asked if I wanted to hang around town a few more days for the weekend ride they had planned. “This town you're just leaving is actually a really big biking community,” she told me.

All I knew was I didn't want to ride in the rain, so without resolving any plans we put my bike into the truck bed, went to Amanda's dad's house and dropped it off. Then in the truck I was taken into Cedar Rapids where they were moving Amanda's sister Laura Lea's things into her new apartment. We hopped through town picking up some chairs, a table, a recliner. “Betcha didn't think you'd be doing this today,” as we lifted a round glass table out of the truck, “Needed somebody to help out. That's just why we picked y'up, you know.” Nothing they ever said was serious. Afterward off to a dim restaurant for dinner, them conversing in family sarcasms through an appetizers and meal. It was indeed a day of work, but was more comfortably spent than in suspense riding under threat of rain.

When we were back to Independence, Amanda and I rode on bikes through the fogged empty streets a couple of blocks from her dad's to her house. Her covered front deck space was lined by broad window panes, looking onto the lane. We took seats in the hanging canvas chairs, rocking forward and back as the dull, shadowy sky turned a deeper gray. The neighborhood was empty and quiet and calm with early evening stillness as we swayed, talking about what to do, which itself became something to do. A vapid, indecisive moment for the quiet contemplation of nothing, or passive hearing of the hushing sound of a raindrop mesh drifting over the wooden steps and grass carpet, all of it originating from the kind circumstance of Amanda's company.

Eventually we went across the lawn to the neighbor's garage. A bunch of guys were drinking inside. The place had been fashioned over time into a sort of beer den. They talked, sitting on extracted car seats up against the walls, and yellow light bulbs hanging on tethers from the ceiling like a makeshift lounge, amusing themselves with nothing in particular, delaying tomorrow. “Just a low-key night,” sipping, bottle in hand. They were friendly with a natural, unsullied, middle-western friendliness that would give to the end of giving, given a recipient in honest need. They were genuinely happy simply to be, if things would be maintained and remain undisturbed. After a while Amanda and I returned to her house over the damp dark lawn and went inside, sitting down before the television, the billowy recliner and alcohol-fog lulling me soon to sleep.

At waking, the television still flickered idly, but the room was empty and I sat watching cartoons awhile. Soon, though, I lost patience, scrawled another note, and took off under the new day's old gray sky, onto the two-lane highway stretch west to rumble along against the wind with fury, being pecked by raindrops. I donned my gray sweatshirt, pulling the hood up over my hat, and knotting hood-lace in a bow for warmth and shield against the wind and rain. A dark, bitter hour slowly turned by, schlepping away incrementally into the windy, rainy blaze. Miserably wet and cold, with no shelter, I kept telling myself it could be worse, but was relieved when a white pickup slowed down beside me, and through rolled-down window the driver yelled out, “Hey, are you wanting a ride?”

“Yes, please!” I said looking over through blurred squinting eyes, nodding and smiling. He pulled off ahead and helped me load my bike into the truck bed. I lifted the front end, he the back, and I pulled it in by the handlebars, laying it down. The shoulders of his polo and the front of his his khakis were shaded by the spatter of rain when we got into the truck.

“I figured this is no weather to be riding in,” he said, shaking his head. The seats were comfortable and warm. He shook my hand. His hair speckled gray, he looked the part of a burly blue collar who'd labored his way behind a desk. Then we took off, zipping on fast down the road. Seeing everything go by so quickly made me somewhat uneasy, so I mostly watched northward as the perpendicular plains passed in the window. The blanket of clouds' tattered edge broke against a thin sliver of blue, settled on the horizon like oil at the bottom of the watery sky. He went on a bit about where I was headed if I were going west, about Waterloo and then Fort Dodge where he'd be stopping.

We were flying down the road, 80 miles an hour, and he switched the conversation, “You find many kinky girls along the way?” I brushed his question off with a laugh. Then he threw me off, “How about any guys, then?”

I laughed again in hesitation, then,“What do you mean?”

“You know kinky guys trying to get with you. I only ask cause I get like that once in a while.”

The truck became a bit uncomfortable, “Uh, nope.”

“Would you ever?”

“I'm just into girls, really.”

“How about for fifty bucks? You know, I just want to rub it a little.”

My eyes were broad and staring down as the road continued by and, though chuckling avertedly, I grew a pinch nervous now and squeezed out a weak “No thanks.”

Wise to the tension he'd made he graciously wiped the slate clean, “Well just thought I'd ask. Gotta respect it, when somebody says 'no'. That should be that. It's just... a guy like that gets lonely out here,” trailing off. He couldn't call himself anything but 'a guy like that'. There was a shame in him. 'A guy like that' would get lonely in this part of the country, and while I was still uncomfortable I couldn't grudge him and actually grew a little sad for him behind a recomposed facade. He grew quiet and fading, and in his blank blue eyes staring ahead I saw his own sadness, his remorseful mourning from loneliness sadness.

He dropped me off shortly after, taking me a little past the town and away from the traffic, leaving me at a little park with a concrete table underneath a tree where I could keep partly out of the rain, and then he left. The rain soon slowed and ceased, but the pallid spread of clouds remained, keeping all in dull shadow, and the shriek of wind continued, howling against me throughout the day as I pedaled on to nowhere.

More pictures for you on Facebook Albums 1, 2, & 3. Just click on the numbers. Currently in Phoenix at my parents' house for a couple weeks of total meditative rest.

Pieces of Iowa Pt. I

And into Iowa, where the people are kind, open, sympathetic, and inviting all around. Just outside Cedar Rapids I, on a hot day, stopped at a highway corner and opened my map for finding the way forward. A lady in a van pulled slowly by, slowing and halting, and called out to me from her open window, “You need help? Know where ya are?” so I dismounted my bicycle on the shoulder and went over, map in hand. She showed me with her finger precisely how to get where I was going, passed on a cold liter root beer gift, and parted with farewells.

By these directions finding my way past the little towns surrounding, I came into Cedar Rapids, from the east, and got in contact with some people living here who I'd found through a travel network. All afternoon I rode through the big town's stretch of summer heat and construction, with shoulders all torn up and the street signs gone, trying by might to get to the outdoor shop on the west side where I'd get a new can of stove fuel, as mine was long ago empty. After finding this I retrod my long hectic path to arrive at these peoples' place in the late day. I had got good directions from them over the phone to the middle of town where they resided, but managed to make myself thoroughly lost anyway. Like I've said before, highway navigation is one thing, but cities are a different beast, especially Cedar Rapids in the disorienting swelter of summer. They charitably decided to come pick me up instead, finding and stopping lost, confused me as I was ignorantly pedaling into the north-of-town countryside.

Teresa was the mother of the house. She showed me into the room, where she said I could stay as long as I needed, and asked me if I'd want a shower or to eat first. Also met Joel, a kid in the upper years of high school. He was taking time off from everything in his preparation for upcoming travel to Israel with his brother, a medic in Afghanistan. Joel was reserved, but kind and easy to be around, and made a deliberate effort to host while I was around. Josiah, the little brother was around shortly, with his good mannered young charm. The father, Jerry, who had picked me up in their truck, wanted to hear all about the travels, and to tell how proud he was of the kids and their own adventures.

I got a quick shower and ate a late dinner at their table (mashed potatoes ribs, and veggies) being further introduced to the company. With a belly full and a plate finally emptied, one of Joel's friends came over and they wanted to smoke pipes. I was happy to join for a post-meal smoke. We went out all barefoot on asphalt with our pipes, tobacco, matches, and lighters to walk the streets in the yellow lamp lit dusk. We went into the neighborhood night, sharing all fashion of our traveling pasts, Joel telling of his times from beginning in Jordan, to the ancient mystic Petra, Israel and his brief stint in Paris in the end, with impromptu explorations and the chance fortunate acquaintances that travel necessarily introduces.

Next day was without much event, morning writing, then got out in the late afternoon, Joel treating me to a burrito, and then off to a bookstore for more writing and back for dinner. I'd gotten sunburned a couple of days before from riding with my shirt off too long in the unimpeded peak heat of summer solstice, so my back now looked like the swollen ripe inside of a watermelon, and all this rest time was greatly appreciated by me. That night it was back to the soft, quiet bed to sleep a long, dreamless, pristine sleep, meaning for morning departure being entirely rested and recomposed.

Awoke and had a breakfast, saying goodbye to everybody as they left off to their chores, except Teresa who was staying in for the day. I busied around the room gathering my things and tidying the bed. After getting my bags together, and pulling my bike to the living room to go, Teresa sat me down in the wooden chair for a final goodbye talk. She reclined beside me in a padded armchair with the yellow light from the lamp between us falling golden on her face. Noon light blazed behind from the patio's glass door, circling around her figure in a bright, radial, glowing blaze like Our Lady of Guadalupe as she squashes the serpent underfoot. She told me her story of a sullen, godless childhood and the revelations revealed to her in the time of need, imparting to me the root, the source, of all her eternal immortal joys, being all concerned about my afterlife, and reaching over to touch softly my arm as she discoursed. I took it all in quiet confidence, sitting enthralled, and listening about the myriad miracles, and angels, and tongues. When she'd finished the memoir she said to me, “Now I've fire-hosed you before you go on continuing your adventure.” I recognized the reverence in the story and was glad to hear, but in my mind I thought, “Am I the only one not so worried bout my soul?”

I thanked her for everything as she'd really given to me more deeply than I could ever have asked, and she said she was glad and hoped I had gained from it.

After a midsummer's ride north I was in Independence Iowa while a storm blew in, pattering rain falling down through the air, each bead refracting a late white sun against dark blue balloon clouds rolling from the east. A pickup truck pulled up by me while I was riding through a park looking to get out of the rains. A thin old guy smiling in its window, from a big wild beard, called out and motioned me over. He asked where I was from with a bike so packed and I told him my story in brief form. The building right by us was his repair shop, he said. He invited me in, pulled his truck around, lifted up the garage door from the entrance, and then he introduced himself to me as Hoskie. In this little town, home of all his life, he did tree trimming and stump removal, and all other various handyman tasks for all the folk. The side of his truck declared, “We get high legally!” in reference to the tree climbing.

“Like that? I thought it was a good one.” he laughed. I asked about the town and if he had any place to recommend for camping free since it was getting late. “If you're out on a ride and like to see interesting things, you know there's a whole clan of Amish people just north a-here, if you want to go out that way and make a quick stop for some sights.” I was interested and he said he could give a brief tour of the route to me via truck drive and then I'd know the way. He was incredibly amiable so I hopped in the passenger seat.

We pulled out along outside town dirt roads as the sun was lowering dangerously in the west meaning I'd have no time before full dark to ride here after the return drive. Throughout the drive Hoskie introduced me to the nuances of small town Independence life, talking about the locales we passed and inserting his dirty jokes and anecdotes from a bottomless supply. In courteous Midwestern manner, he'd lift up two fingers from the wheel to wave to every car going in the other lane.

He pulled out a menthol, lit it, and cranked his window down a crack. “Hafta watch for cops round here. They really got a stick in their ass, but I've gotten away with some crazy stuff. Oh, now here's a story for ya: I got drunk once and saw the chief's car was unlocked, so, naturally, I decided to take a little joyride in it before anybody'd caught up with me,” He took a drag off the cigarette, ashed out the window and chuckled with a grin, “I told 'em, 'I was just checkin to make sure it ran alright, guys.' They know me well, and somehow I got away with it without any trouble, too. Can you believe that?” I did believe him. Then seeing the town cemetery on the left, he pointed it out with habitual sarcasm, “Oh, everybody's just dying to get in there.”

We came to the Amish country road and then began retracing our path. On the right Hoskie saw a couple guys out front of a house who he knew, slowed, and pulled down their dirt drive. Sitting in the truck we each had a couple beers with the company of the two farmers, who were both already evening drunk. With flowing upward inflections punctuating every sentence in their native Iowan dialect, they exchanged their own dirty jokes and weekday current events among us. A little dog and kid pranced around each other in the front yard under the dimming dusk light, and the farmer's wife yelled out from the yellow-filled front window, “Supper's ready!” so we started out the driveway and back toward town again.

No light remained in the sky. Stepping out from the truck into the shop, Hoskie apparently recognized the predicament I was in and in a moment had invited me to follow down the street to his house for a grilled dinner with the family, which I did. I felt somewhat stuck and was anxious, still being bedless in a dark town unknown, but was grateful all the same for his hospitality. We sat in the living room after dinner watching TV, me tentatively resting my bones. His son Josh, who earlier I'd been introduced to cashiering at a gas station, stepped into the flickering light through the square door frame of the living room and asked if I wanted to stay the night at his place. Outside my own intention, the night's events flowed seamlessly from one to the next and I now had a couch for the night, all my restless worries instantly dissolving like tiny salt grains in a vast uncontrived, recalcitrant sea.

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Vivid Details

The Illinois plains were riddled with the spires and fires of the oil industry like some hostile, alien city. Refinery plants covered the soil in every direction. Above was a gray sky, the haze of the industry mixing with a sad troposphere. I pulled along with the cars, on down the road. Huge cylindrical tanks of the gasoline stood like sentries among networks of pipes and pyres, all of it set behind a high chain-link fence.

Figuring the way out, a way to escape finally from every last industrial remnant of the cities I'd thought were already left behind, was a convoluted labor. Streets meandered, waved and wound about without any obvious purpose. A couple outskirt towns passed by and, inevitably, from daily the westward push, every fragment of condensed civilization disappeared in the distance behind. Turning up ahead was the vast great stretch I'd been ready and set for mentally for days. Its first true pieces were there extrapolated before me.

The Midwest: that meager label we've given to such a tremendous expanse of domesticated prairie, a title too succinct and nondescript to accurately tell of any part of what it is beyond location. Contents and context, left by this name so obscured and undefined, leaves the actual idea of it open and empty, a space to be filled with a search and a discovery of intimacy with a place. A shallow and general impression of it can be gained easily enough from images of its endlessly repeating plants, all tucked away in columns and rows, but the specifics in between them keep more illusive. True understanding and appreciation of its details comes only from a simple desire to nakedly experience what beats through those hidden veins of our America's fertile cradle of a heart, the will to see the seeds of our society and how their deep and precious roots have grown. It is a vast land whose immensity lies in its breadth rather than a height and a climb. It is marginalized, all too often forgotten or ignored; the transition between the Eastern woods and Western dry. But that description, too, sells it short, defining it in relation to other things of only equal value, when it is something which is self-defined with a greatness of its own proclaimed in its every inch.

Now onset the far reaching ride through the land free of obstructions, filled only by open visibility to the long, flat circular horizon. A two-lane, sun faded, cracked up highway stretched out over the flat expanse, sided left and right with rank and file newborn corn sprouts, sucking fresh life from the sun who's pure face attended them maternally in her blue bonnet sky.

Every farm homestead was a consummate rural tableaux. Curving away from the county highway, wild grass grows in a thin margin between the two deep ruts, worn into packed dirt over the years by the truck which sits in front of a peeling, white garage. This maybe leans a bit to the left to match the barn which is propped up and fading into time in the far corner of the neatly mowed backyard. White lace curtains hang limp in the front window of the centerpiece white house. Its heavy wooden door (with an old brass knob in it that rattles just a little, but locks just fine) sits ajar in the heated day behind a loose screen to keep the houseflies out. A red tractor with tires just switched out for the new season and a baler hitched on back rests in front of the two squat grain silos at the house's west side. Inside them, a few tattered, stray corn ears remain from last year's harvest, hardened and dried through winter's freeze. The border fence of oaks and ashes bunches it all together and separates home from work - as best as possible, anyway.

At the evening end of another repeat day, my eyes searched about for camp, patiently at first, but with an earnestness that grew as the surrounding naked openness continued to hinder. For lack of cover, I couldn't find anywhere to settle and the light was dimming in the west. At the driveway of a house I stopped and looked around. A car and a truck sat resting before the garage. I pulled my bicycle halfway up the drive, laid it over to keep it visible from the doorway, and walked up to the house. When I came to the little porch and stairs I noticed two short, brown and black spotted gray dogs sleeping underneath it. The nearest to me awoke to the sound of my footsteps, blinked tiredly, then recognizing me, her little body began to erupt with violent barks. This startled her sister, who followed a similar progression into fitful barking. I quietly tried to talk them down and sooth them as they followed me around the house to the side door. I knocked on the metal frame of the screen. After a minute a man opened it up and, mostly ignoring the dogs, asked me what he could help me with.

I told him I was traveling a long distance and moved myself to the side so he could see my bike laying on its side in his driveway. “Normally I'd camp somewhere off in the woods, but in the Midwest, as you know, there's obviously not a lot of discrete places to do that. So I was wondering if it'd be possible for me to set up my tent somewhere in your yard for the night. I hadn't noticed that you had dogs, though,” I said as they continued to bark at my feet.

“I guess you don't like dogs around?”

“Oh, I don't mind them, it's just whether they mind me or not. I've noticed dogs don't usually like bikes.”

“They won't keep you up, so I wouldn't worry much about that. And yeah, I think that'd be alright with me.”

He had no preference for where I should put my tent and went back inside. A wire fence lined the yard, serving as a barrier between grass and corn fields. On the yard's southern side, a broad oak tree grew, with an old tire swing dangling down on a rope from a middle bough. I got all set up under this branch umbrella and put together my stove to cook the mac and cheese I'd got from a grocery in the last town. The dogs, once they'd seen me settle in, ceased their barking just like he'd said, and so they went back to their rest under the front stoop.

Six thirty and I awoke as the first thin, pale traces of light were streaming out from the eastern horizon onto the radial clouds. I wavered groggily inside my tent, with eyes half open, sitting up in my sleeping bag waiting for the bottom dregs of sleep to drain from my tired head.

Started boiling some water for cooking up breakfast and the first dog I'd met the night before snooped by, sniffing around my tent, with her muzzle sweeping the dewy grass. I dropped a brick of noodles into the pot to cook and the dog's ears suddenly perked, her head snapped upward with eyes intense toward the road, then she shot off. I looked over to see what she'd run off to. At a power pole's base she stopped her rush, planted her four paws out firm into the weeds, pointed eyes up and got to barking. A big old raccoon was fleeing quickly up the trunk and sat down on the cross beam upon reaching the top, its ring tail hanging off behind and mask eyes glaring down at the dog past its paws, as they gripped the beam. The dog's sister jumped up from under the stoop and came charging soon as she caught what happened, and rendezvoused in the ditch, joining in with her own vigorous barking like it was she who'd treed the raccoon. They went on like this for a bit over ten minutes.

Eventually they lost patience and went off wandering, but they each kept a keen eye on the power pole. I started lapping up breakfast. Once all had been clear for a while, the raccoon shimmied down the pole, face first. The dogs watched and then charged full speed onto it with all fury when it had reached the thick weeds at the bottom. They chased the raccoon around, fighting it back and forth in a circle with vicious growling and a flurry of snarls between them. It tried to retreat from the dogs back up the power pole, but one of the dogs jumped and caught its left hind leg in her teeth. She gripped tight and tore the raccoon down with all her weight while the other one went at its right side. Downed, biting, and clawing at the dogs, the raccoon tried up the pole again and got pulled off by whatever they could get grip of with their jaws. It tried once more and then got bit hard between its stomach and left hind leg by the more ferocious of the two dogs, but finally, laboriously, it broke free from the canine's teeth, and managed to climb outside their short reach. With a severe limp in the left leg, it slowly ascended the trunk to its perch at the pole top. Tired and defeated it stayed there this time even after the dogs had left. The raccoon's energy flagged entirely, its motions ceased and it no longer breathed. It remained, still at the top of the power pole and I went off for my morning ride with an excitement and a slight tinge of homesickness wisping away.