When the Grass Was Green and the Sky Was Baby Blue
When the Grass Was Green and the Sky Was Baby Blue
It was my very first road trip as an adult. My sister and I were hauling our mother and our aunt to northern Virginia to visit another aunt and to take in the Washington, DC sites. We left home early in the morning, before daylight, and as the pitch black night was just starting to give way to the light of dawn, the Verrazano Bridge was looming ahead of us, its myriad of lights appearing to be many eyes in the head of a giant monster. I must admit it was terrifying and my stomach thought of emptying its contents right then and there. Never one for mornings, yet very excited for the day’s adventure at whatever time it had to begin, I somehow managed to cross the bridge with everything I hadn’t yet digested still inside me.
There are few things I remember from that first trip, followed by many other trips over the years, longer ones and to many different places around the country, but the first one, like all firsts, remains the most special one. It is the beginning, the fresh start, the new thing, sometimes the first and the last, yet always full of excitement or trepidation, whatever the case may be.
There was my must see site in D.C., the house where Lincoln died. I will never forget the pillow where his head lay while he was dying. His bloodstains from the wound to his head were still there. It was fascinating. My mother and sister who I dragged there with me lacked the level of fascination that gripped me, shall we say. Come on Mary Ann, I heard several times in pleading fashion, until I drew my eyes away from that pillow and allowed them to take me out of that room. My sister had wanted us to see the Hope diamond in the Smithsonian and in our last moments in D.C. we ran into the museum and saw it. Unfortunately, it apparently wasn’t seared into my brain as Lincoln’s pillow still is. I cannot remember what that diamond looked like for the life of me. I remember some kind of a green background to it or around it, but that’s it. Funny what we remember and don’t remember.
We spent several days sightseeing and I don’t recall much of any of the other sites. I remember the D.C. subway system was newer and kept clean, unlike the New York subway system, and they had some cute names of stops like Foggy Bottom and Vienna. I remember one of the exits on the interstate there where an entire wide expanse was green grass, wide open and just green grass. Wide open spaces! I wanted to move there! So many of my memories are geographical, places stick with me, it’s a restlessness perhaps, always wanting to see places I have never seen and feel carefree and just get out and explore, get away from the everyday for a little while. I doubt that will ever leave me, building dreams and hopes, most unlikely perhaps but yet seemingly always possible.
Music creates memories that stick with me too. I remember the song playing when we hit D.C.’s Capital Beltway at lunch time. You became a race car driver or you were not going to get off that beltway alive. My sister was the lucky one driving and I was trying to navigate for her the ins and outs of the thing. My aunt was in the back seat directly behind me with a towel on her head trying to shield herself from the blazing sun. It must have been well into the 90s already that day and our car’s air conditioning was the open windows. The movie African Queen comes to mind. At any rate, the song that was playing was George Strait’s Baby Blue and I glanced up at the sky and it was just that, baby blue. I will always think of that moment whenever I hear that song.
We survived the Capital Beltway then and also many years later when we went there again for my aunt’s funeral. The expanse of green grass was gone, replaced by strip malls and developments. They called us the Yankee relatives and that felt a little weird, but that was what we Northerners were. I think they liked us just the same.
Baby Blue by George Strait. Click here to take a listen and you too might remember the time in your life when the grass was green and the sky was baby blue.
