Looking back, it’s hard to believe the stuff we
imagined, the stuff we did, and the stuff we got away with while growing up in
a rural area. On a farm, ranch, or small
town with easy access to the country, the sheer variety of opportunities are unimagined
in the cities. Opportunities for education. Opportunities for fun.
Opportunities for trouble!
In my story, “Waiting For a Comet,” part of TAP’s
new anthology, THIS SUMMER STORM, twelve-year-old Jo Harper takes full
advantage of her country setting to help justice prevail. It’s the kind of mystery
I imagined growing up on a northeast Nebraska farm in the ‘70s. And, in looking
back over the story, some of Jo’s adventures aren’t so far removed from my own.
Here’s something that directly influenced a scene in
“Waiting for a Comet.”
When I was eight or nine years old, I was obsessed
with dinosaurs. Fact is, I knew I’d grow up to be a famous archeologist,
somebody who discovered heretofore unknown species of lightning bugs in amber
and thunder lizards in rock. To do that, I knew I’d have to read up on the
subject, so I checked out every library book about dinosaurs I could find. But
more important, I knew I needed to get crackin’ in the field. There’s just no
substitute for hands on experience.
My grandpa’s cow pasture became an untapped sea of
Jurassic-age treasure. Under the dry bluestem I knew I’d find a million
fossils. In the banks of the wandering crick, I was sure to locate a footprint
or twelve. At the very least I hoped for a collection of Indian arrowheads. When I heard that a hunting guide along the
Niobrara river, twenty miles north, had discovered the remains of a wooly
mammoth (a creature the local Ponca tribe called Pasnuta), my dreams reveled in
newfound credibility.
And then one day: the mother-lode.
My friend Greg and I discovered a near complete
skeleton. Small and bleached white, a perfect specimen preserved there on the
flaking mud floor of the crick. Consisting of a skull, a rib cage and a couple
long “dog bones,” it was just small enough for two kids to manage, and we drug
it off to my fort.
We argued about it. Was it a baby Tyrannosaurus?
Maybe a little Stegosaur? Greg even suggested it might be a Pterodactyl. We
simply hadn’t yet found the wings. We
spent the afternoon setting up our display.
We invited my parents and grandparents to the newly christened “Museum
Wing” of the fort. We even charged
admission (a quarter).
I don’t know what the grown-ups expected. My mom, I
think, figured we had set up a display of our plastic model toys. My grandpa
probably thought we found some old tree limbs.
Nobody figured on us finding the remains of a baby
calf that had gone missing in the early spring. But that’s what we had. And
after a round of “Pee-ewws” and then, “Where did you find it?” we were driven
up to the house and into the bath tub for a serious scrubbing.
The best part in looking back is remembering how on
one level I knew the rack of old bones wasn’t a real dinosaur, and yet…on another
level, convincing myself that maybe it was. What if? Why not? Then what?
Those three questions led to plenty of nonsense on
the farm. But they also led to plenty of wonder.
They still do!
