Autumn Adventure

You know how it is when you sell a home:
new people whom you do not like move in,
change the colors, rip out the Canadian thistles,
and announce that the basement was such a pit
that they decided to clean it out with a front-loader
and turn it into something that can be used.

I hate it when that happens!

It happened to us at the house we owned in Decorah, Iowa.
We happened to be in town, recently, to help our grandchildren,
Spencer and Sophie, celebrate their birthdays (and just
incidentally to ascertain whether a lost Milwaukee drill
had been left at our log house), and had a chance
to look at the back of the house, where I had built
a two-story solarium: Solhuset, as Per named it.

I took a picture. See for yourself:

Well, O.K., my daughter, Gail, and son-in-law, Marty,
live there now. And it is true that a water line burst up on
the third floor, taking out old plastered walls all the way down.
And they had to put the damned thing somewhere,
until they could put it back again. Even so. . . . Kids!

People of a certain age, that is to say, Old Codgers, such as I,
would have lugged it down to the miserable basement,
our out to the garage, to hide it, and parked on the street.
Civilization is at stake! Maybe I am just a Republican!

'Twere a lovely day, after what has seemed like weeks of drear.
The sun was low in the west, as we drove back to the Cities,
shadow-silhouetting us against the still-standing corn fields.

Some days simply are lovely!

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