An envisioning. 1938, early morning and the wind rustling through the wheat somewhere on the outskirts of Calgary.
4l
Oh to be here.
Up early and time to sit on the porch watching the sun come up with everything so still you can hear the freight train whistling on the other side of town, at least until the men go out into the fields to do something or other. Most of the words for it all at least half-memorized but hard to remember no matter what.
Growing up on a farm, yes, but an Arizona cattle ranch and words for everything mainly in Spanish with the rest in German, what with Grandfather having come from there knowing the words for growing potatoes.
English, too, at least at the school, but something else to talk in the rest of the time and dinners that came from anywhere. Sauerbraten one night and a chicken fricassee the next drowned in an entire bottle of white wine, Mother at the stove doing her best to remember to cut up enough onions between sips.
But regular American person food, no. Pate for meatloaf and ketchup as a sin. Brownies with a scoop of vanilla ice cream at the ice cream parlor and at home, but always with a different name. Funny. Home being wherever you came from if you were old, but getting to live young halfway down the middle if you were young. American names for things but not in the kitchen. Thinking of yourself as American or German depending on who you were offering tartlets to when they all came to visit.
Canada beautiful, and the husband and children darling, but a life one wanted but didn’t get. Seventeen and a pilot flying in from somewhere and landing in Mother’s back pasture after he forgot where the fly-in was supposed to be and a kiss before he left.
Taking the train to Texas to visit. Ending up married in a white frock from the first store come to on the outskirts of San Antonio with a bunch of whatever wildflowers grew by the side of the road. City Hall, the clerk on the other side of the counter, and a longer kiss than the first one.
A joy forever he would have been. Apartment on the base where his airplane lived and wave after wave when he flew out and returned.
Guantánamo and a nicer apartment with a porch with its own ceiling fan to sip rum punch under instead of just having the in-the-house kind. A sweet life until he flew out over the Bermuda Triangle and never came back . . . wheat waving in the wind being fine, but sea spray filled with dancing flying fish would have been better . . .
These images (and there are more at the link) are taken from a photo album of World War I aviation at Carruthers Field, Benbrook, Texas so ca. 1917-1918. It is an evocative photo album documenting early airforce aeronautics at Carruthers Field, a United States Army Air Service training base in Texas for allied Canadian and American pilots, including numerous aerial and crash scenes.
It can be found online here. https://www.jamesarsenault.com/pages/books/8987/photo-album-of-world-war-i-aviation-at-carruthers-field-texas-snapshots-cover-title?fbclid=IwY2xjawI9JzpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVbrnGylao362IyxhpbftJoYVD5jPIr_mFosOwW9T1NjYx3KxR3bTunLZg_aem_I8OaCyI1UFtzJZkAl3snKg