It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Joni Mitchell sang out from my stereo. The Mockingbird was back, running across the wall, catching bugs. The sun was smiling, and a gentle breeze caressed the maple trees in the backyard.
I’d strung my new hammock between the sturdiest of the trees, and slowly slid into the cocoon. My head back on the ready made pillow of my arm, I stared up through the whispering branches, closed my eyes and allowed the day to take me. We floated along the bittersweet highway of memory, cruised around the canyon of dreams and finally settled comfortably in my own piece of Mayberry.
Aunt Bee was busy adding the strawberries to her homemade ice cream. Andy and Barney were bickering over the measurements for the horseshoe pit and Opie was chasing butterflies. Walt was fiddling with the smoker, as Goober chastised Gomer for not soaking the hickory chips.
“Now Gomer, Wally’s turkey ain’t gonna be no good without them chips.” He stood, hands on his hips, shaking his head, as Gomer’s shoulders dropped in dejection.
Off to the far right, under the old spruce, the ladies were setting out the food, as Ellie and Thelma Lou covered another table with cloth. Fresh fruit, corn on the cob, Helen’s famous potato salad and Emma’s baked beans. She swore it was from a 100 year old recipe handed down from generation to generation. The smell of it all caught the summer breeze and tickled my nose.
Fred and Floyd did their usual political bantering, while everyone else worked. Briscoe and Ernest T debated who was the king of country music. “Ernest T. Bass, don't you be standing there telling me that. You know the Grand Ole Opry wouldn't have said it, if it weren't true. He is the King!”
I sat high up in that old spruce, surveying it all. Hearing the women chatter, the men cajole, seeing the smoke from the cooking turkey curl around Aunt Bee as she finished the ice cream. Watching Opie, his face aglow, dive for a Monarch as it swept through a wild daisy patch.
Strumming on Andy’s old guitar, I began to softly sing the closing hymn from church that morning.
“Amazing grace. How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see.”
My vision held such clarity. My direction, stayed and true. I closed my eyes, safely tucked into the cocoon of my hammock and hoped that I would always feel the love and generosity of man. Even if it meant that I'd had taken a sharp right off the highway of bittersweet memories, and slow descent into that canyon of dreams.
I knew who I was, as I embraced my own piece of Mayberry.
“Lots of luck to you and yours.”
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