Head for the Mountains

Stephen M. Tomic
The Junction
Published in
4 min readAug 25, 2020

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Author photo, taken across the street from childhood home

It’s the perfect day for a barbecue. The denim is frayed, the skies are blue. The mustaches are long, mullets flowing. Cans of Busch sweat in beer koozies. Bicycles sit abandoned in the front yard. Pickup trucks fill the gravel driveway.

Everyone’s out in the back yard. There are a chain-link fence and a few silver maples that crap leaves in the fall and send whirlybirds helicoptering onto the lawn in spring. For now, though, they’re bright and green and providing some shade on an otherwise scorching Saturday. Across the street is a corn field, tall and endless.

A black kettle grill is loaded up with burgers, bratwursts, and hot dogs each at varying stages of completion. A fold-out table is covered with a thin white plastic tablecloth, the kind used at the VFW for events, like weddings and bingo. There are paper plates and plastic utensils, napkins, open bags of chips, sour cream dip, potato salad, and an assortment of condiments for every kind of culinary thrill.

The kids are running around in clusters. One girl is holding on for dear life on the swing set. The swing is at its upward apex, causing one of the poles to rise out of the ground. The smell of freshly cut grass competes with the odor of oil and gasoline from the riding lawnmower.

The song “Black Betty” is playing on the radio. The fellas are content to stand around…

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