The Brazzel boys lived out beyond Pontiac. You would turn right by the pottery
sign and pass the Christmas tree farm where, even in August, you could see
green spray paint like an umbrella around old stumps. They grew landscape
bushes and smoked a lot of weed. Growing up, my uncle would send me by there
for plants. It was always a hassel for them to get up and have to sell
something. You could hear them muttering and walking extra slow. Once, I saw
them hide when I drove up. It was that kind of an operation. They had a cat
whose stomach dragged the ground.
The birch roots were always the toughest to break through.
You had to pull them up through the irrigation pots. They have tap roots that
you need a saw to get through. The Brazzels hated when someone wanted to buy a
birch tree. Once I needed twenty. They tied the trees, one by one, to the back
of a Ford truck. It took twice the time and we busted an irrigation line. I
will never forget driving away, the boys standing there as lake water
accumulated in the sand field – motionless.
There was no reason to know that any of this was out of the
norm. I liked the flat pineland, the shacks, the fishing holes with worm
containers and corks in the trees. Men would sit on walls next grocery stores,
like every place, I guess, but these were different walls, different talk. There
was a slowness and a steady hum. Progress was measured in generations. People
were pinch-faced and mean, they drank hard and did not talk to strangers. And
they loved each other, escpecially when they looked alike.
I drove by the other day, after a lifetime of doing other
things. It is hard to say where I came from, or how I can managed to turn out
so god-damned strange. There is a music to the lives of those who know their
lot and stick to it. There is a tragedy to us all. But there is a music to the
lives of those who have a place to come from.
