From There to Here, with a Big Big Smile

The Great Plotnik took both these photos yesterday, the first at the Hermitage in Old Hickory, Tennessee, home of America's Seventh President Andrew Jackson, and the second somewhere above Arkansas only a few hours later.

It is nothing short of miraculous to realize that Auntie Melba's life has spanned horses to jets, and beyond. As Plot and Duck sat in her little den the other night...



...Auntie M talked about her earliest memories. One of these was riding on a horse, perched on a homespun blanket behind her grandmother with her arms around the older woman's waist, as they rode to town from their farm outside of Whitely City, Kentucky, to buy a few staples. She recalled how she never saw her grandma Elvira smile. The previous day, Duck and Plot had stopped at the Whitely City city hall to take a few pictures on their way into Somerset, now half an hour away up a busy highway, but back then several days ride by horse. If they had known, they could have walked behind the 'new' court house (build in the 1950s) to see the tiny old farmhouse, still standing, that Duck's Grandmother Vera and her grandfather Eli had built when they were married in 1913.

Then, a few hours later, the Great Californians hopped aboard their Southwest airliner and flew 2,000 miles home to Saint Plotniko, in the time it took Auntie M and her grandmother to ride a few miles down the road. Melba's life has spanned both these ages, from horses through trains and cars to airplanes and beyond, from postcards written in tiny, pristine handwriting that might take weeks to arrive, to blogs typed and sent 'round the world in seconds.

On Monday, Plot, Duck and Auntie M had stopped at the cemetery in tiny Science Hill, down the road from Somerset, to see Duck's great-grandparents Elvira and her husband Elza Becketts' graves, as well as her grandmother Vera's. No one is really sure where grandfather Eli is buried, as he ran out on the family when Auntie M and Duck's mother were little girls.



The Great Plotnik is happy to be home, but amazed to ponder the distance from there to here, wherever here is, and wherever there was. There is something inside some of us that makes us uncomfortable in any one spot for too long, and also something equally powerful that calls us home. As Plot and Duck were riding BART home last night from Smokeland Airport, Plot looked up at the faces entering the train at the Embarcadero Station: black, white, brown, tall, short, young, old, talking on cell phones, listening to I-pods, going over the events of the day with their friends in Spanish-y or Chinese-y or Tagalog-y English. Inside The Great Plotnik, World Traveler sat down and Lord Almighty-It's-Good-To-Be-Home stood up and smiled, big big smile.