When I started compiling word pictures of my childhood memories, I realized they were like the mailboxes along the roads and the old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds that served as landmarks in rural Montana.
These landmarks told us where we were and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home” and the end of the road. At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.
Dropping in unexpectedly on a neighbor or relative or Someone Who Lived In Town could be done in a dozen different ways and for a dozen different reasons.
Sometimes “dropping in” was a matter of a night time emergency such as when our closest neighbor came pounding at our farmhouse door late one night. (more…)