I often daydream about a huge meadow with one tree smack dab in the middle. This image has been painted and it’s been captured on film. So it’s not original, but it is doctored up to my liking.
This tree has risen in my thoughts and jotted down as the peaceful place that I’m longing to find.
The sun is at a late morning to early afternoon angle. It’s bright and the sky is blue but filtered with wisps of floating clouds.
The meadow is imperfect with patches of grass, rows of scattered hay and mounds of broken dirt. My daydream doesn’t have sunflowers standing tall blowing in the wind. The only thing standing tall is the squat tree in the distance.
My tree isn’t a miraculous oak or pointy pine tree. My tree is a red maple tree that casts a canopy of shade in the midday sunlight.
Since this is a daydream anything can be under the shade of my maple tree. It all depends on my mood when I start to wonder.
If the daydream materializes on a warm summer day I have a pitcher of lemonade sitting on a wooden table. Sometimes a keg of beer is tapped with iced down Pilsner ready to pour into a mug.
There are two comfortable chairs and a table under my tree. Since this is a dreamy vision an old radio from early mid century is plugged in under the shade tree. The radio could be playing Louis Armstrong or Billie Holiday. Maybe a ballgame between the Chicago White Sox and the Saint Louis Browns…
Always two chairs sit close to the strong tree trunk. An old patched comforter made by my Gramma is folded under the table next to my Philco radio. Just in case I want to lay down where the shadow and the sunlight meet and take a nap.
Two chairs…. Someone reading today’s Morning Chalkboard has sat in the extra seat. Most of the time that chair is occupied by someone visiting from heaven.
Someone who is worth sharing a glass of lemonade or a mug of beer under my shade tree. Someone who appreciates the rich tones of Lady Day thru the static of reaching airwaves.
My guest always brings a picnic basket with food that is reminiscent of our relationship.
My tree in the meadow daydream has recently become a daydream set in another daydream.
One in which I snap out of the shade of my maple and I’m mowing the lawn at 220 South Lombard. It’s a Saturday afternoon and after I put the lawnmower away, careful not to scratch the Dadillac I walk up to the back porch.
Standing there waiting is Don Shepley extending a juice glass of cold Liebfraumilch. The oldman loved this sweet German white wine on hot summer days. On the back porch are lunch meat sandwiches on white bread. Thinly sliced onion and tomato with whatever cold cuts were on sale at The Jewels that week.
My dad has Dick Buckley playing jazz songs on his transistor radio and the tribune resting on my chair.
A daydream in a daydream on a Saturday morning, the last Saturday of April in Twenty-Twenty Three…
It is the last Saturday of no drinking. Next week look for me under a tree with a Growler of BuckleDown beer and an Alpine sub.
Today is Eeyore’s birthday. Go cheer him up!
