The Causeway is one of the longest bridges over water and Lake Ponchartrain among the largest salt water lakes and driving the 26.5 miles each way gives you plenty of time to think. I lived across the lake when my dad died in 1985 and I had a panic attack driving back across the bridge and decided to move back to New Orleans. Returning from my mom’s funeral on December 2, 2010, I remember the sun breaking through the clouds over the grey water and Allison Krauss singing I’ll Fly Away on my iPod.
This time I was thinking about bulls – I learned that you have to trade bulls because they can’t mate with their own children. So people who have cows and bulls, trade their bulls. I learned that a bull recently died of heat stroke and later saw a sign on the Veterinarian Hospital that said: HEAT STROKE KILLS. I learned another bull ate metal shavings from an old dump and they tore up his insides and he died. It’s been a bad year for bulls across the lake.
I also learned that donkeys are kept with the cows so that they keep predators away. Their braying drives everyone insane including coyotes who they will stomp if the noise doesn’t get them first.
I also thought about the country versus the city. My neighbors have been wanting to get back to the country because as they said, “We are from the country.” Another neighbor who was helping me build something said, “I’m country” as if to explain everything else he was about to say. I remember one time when I was very young, I told my friends that my mom was country and my dad was from the city and my mother slapped my face. She wanted to be from the city. But that was a long time ago and now she is in the country again, which I know deep in her heart she loved.
The country has a strange way of getting inside of you and no matter how far you travel away from it, you never quite get it out of you. Which is a good thing. Because when I’m over there in the thick of pine tree forests, surrounded by cows and horses and pigs and chickens, a sea of green and blue, I feel good. My cousin’s son has taken up with a girl he likes a lot because she doesn’t mind if he has poo on his boots because more than likely she does too. Now that is some dating criteria right there.
Whether you have poo on your boots or a dead bull in your pasture, the point is the same things happen in the country that happen in the city, just the names are changed to protect the innocent.