hellbilly

So the library book sale was worth the trip. While I didn't get a book on Cooking with a Wok I did get a biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower, ironically enough (see previous journal entry to find out why that's ironic. Actually I got a ton of good books, and some that are definately worth more than the five dollars I paid for the whole shopping bag. But that wasn't really the point. the point was to see how many books I can fit to the shopping bag. Like most Americans I wasnt the most for my five dollars. When I set the bag down on the counter there were probably four or five books stacked over the top of the bag. The old woman behind the counter tried to get me to get another bag, saying I had exceeded my limit. I pointed out though, that the books were technically still held into the bag by gravity, and I was pretty sure I had a book about that very thing somewhere near the bottom of the bag. All in all I'd say it was a good haul. It'll keep me in books for a while.
On an unrelated note I had the unexpected pleasure of harrowing a field. My friend has a farm, and so to help him out I went over today and helped him load fertilizer and harrowed some for him. Harrowing's sort of like plowing I guess. Anyway there's something pleasureably soothing about bouncing around in a tractor for the afternoon. All you have to do is just follow your path and look backwards every now and again. Unless you're turning around at the end of a row, all you have to do is just sit back and admire the scenery. Of course for us the scenery's about to take a major change since the land on one side of my friend's farm has been sold and is going in for houses. Pretty much like every other farm and piece of open land around us. The sad thing is it's the land behind my parents place that was one time part of that farm. It wasn't ours and had been sold years ago, but it still was always just there. When most every other farm had been sold for development, and open land was at a preimium it was still there. Now the guy that owned it died. 58 acres and it sold for close to five million. In a years time it'll be $800k homes. It's funny because we actually feel the loss here more than you would think. In fact one of the reasons I'm back is to be here before it goes. To make the dumbest anolagy ever, it's like coming home to wait for someone you love to die...Yup that's pretty dumb. But it's how it feels. We stand on the hill where my friends farm sits and we look down on the fields and woods across the street that we looked at all our lives, and we know it's days are numbered. I think of all the times we hayed that field and how much work we did there, and it doesn't mean a goddamned thing. Six months, maybe more, but surely no more than a year, it'll be gone. Well I mean it'll be there, but it'll be transfomed. In a town where none of my friends and I can afford to live anymore, all we had was a little space. Pretty soon we won't even have that anymore. Some one will park their BMW in a spot where I once threw hay bales in 98 degree heat with the sun beating down and the dust in the air, and the thump of the baler in the background, and how I hated it then, but how I hate this more. What makes me so bitter is that it's the same melodramatic story about change, and I hate those. Even if they are true.

Man I'm bitter all of a sudden. Well at least I got my books.