Been Thinkin’ About…Bricks in time

I'm doing my best to stay awake, leaning back in the overstuffed couch as the clock ticks toward midnight. I'm catching up on my favorite science fiction series, a series now only a mere 30 years old. On the screen, the captain is, uncharacteristically, scrubbing potatoes, leaning back against the old brick wall of his father's New Orleans restaurant. The screen glistens from a 24th century rain that I'm confident was not natural on that 1990s' Paramount set before fading to black on a season cliffhanger.

Time passes, but then again, what is time, exactly? Will bricks exist in the 24th century? Now is not the hour for an existential crisis. I have a schedule to keep, a company to run. Meetings to coordinate. Events to host. StateoftheOzarks has a big season coming fast.

The red bricks are sandy, dry and hot, that Piedmont Monday afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina. The bricks are laid in pleasing southern patterns, proper framing for the old elegant fountain. The live oak twigs scroll their own foreign alphabet over the old square near the courthouse downtown, just north of a narrow, imposing canyon composed entirely of reflective glass skyscrapers.

History, modernity and bluegrass met in one week, that first International Bluegrass Music Association convention held in North Carolina, and I was there for the whole long, magnificent, mountain music-infused thing. Very old and very new, all colliding and I did my best to see it all. Now, a dozen years have gone. The five-star hotel's complimentary soap was infused with orange blossom and perhaps a hint of lemon and bergamot, somehow framing that brief moment in slow southern charm. How could so much time have elapsed since? Are those moments really gone or can they still exist simply because I remember them?

A July rain beat down, washing over the St. Louis metro. Cities are citadels in place each with their own corporate engines, their own marketing schtick. Hierarchy at its finest, self-emblazoned with appropriate bragging rights adjectives: First, Biggest, Tallest, Oldest, Newest, Largest, Most. The words are like manufactured confections, colorful, but in the end, fleeting.

That July rain washed down the edges of the last vestiges of the eastern Ozarks before blowing itself out over the green fields of Illinois. Rivulets formed fast in storm drains and emptied into the old Cherokee Cavern beneath the metro. The caves are closed off now, mostly. St. Louis doesn't seem to know it is half of an Ozarks city but the karst limestone doesn't lie. I stand on the rain-wet bricks, pausing to listen. My impatient Basset puppy pulls hard on his leash, wanting to chase a mischievous rabbit teasing hound sensibility from a grass-grown lot between old Second Empire-and-mansard-roofed buildings. The sun has broken through the western sky, pointing now homeward. Black wrought iron fence frames grand elephant ear leaves, dripping rainwater in a fairy-like garden. Which way home? For a moment, standing in soggy sneakers, I know not. From somewhere down the street comes the sound of the blues, and the smell of hash browns. I turn and choke back the urge to cry.

I'm standing on the old bricks in our garden at home. We bought the bricks from a young couple living in an old antebellum home. They had torn out a part of their yard and had stacks of old red Illinois bricks ready for sale with a price that was close to next to nothing, a price my mom could accept. We laid those bricks next to the hollyhocks and the grapevines and I was 14, but the past-century filigree of that old antebellum home still haunts my mind. And now, those bricks we laid are covered with soil, lost beneath the warm and haunted earth. If the new owners were to dig down, they would find the bricks. But the story, the reason, the heart behind their placement, would be lost. I'm the only one who remembers.

The rain comes down again, in the garden. Which garden doesn't matter, only that the rains fall, washing over the earth, washing over the memories. "The earth doesn't forget," the old saying goes, reminder that ghosts come in many forms, sometimes in ways even the most stalwart bulldozer or overeager real estate developer cannot erase. We're so busy, so lost in our own tiny worlds. But no matter what may come to pass, the moments still remain, past, present, future. And I pray, in the far-flung future, the rain still comes down, rain water running over the bricks we have touched today.