High, Wide and Lonesome

When I was growing up I use to love to read about faraway places. I'd read and imagine that it was me doing the exploring. Sometimes it was science fiction, sometimes it was history or biography. Somewhere in high school I discovered Hal Borland. Apparently Mr. Borland use to be a regular at either the New York Times or some other publication centered in that city, but he lived the life of a country squire in Conneticut.

High, Wide and Lonesome was his story of growing up on the high plains country of Eastern Colorado. He was a gifted writer and his coming of age on the great plains was a perfect match with my fantasies. There was one portion that I recall reading these forty years later, something that has stuck with me. Sardines.

Hal Borland told of sitting on the buckboard of a wagon heading out into the immensness of the grass with his father and for lunch they enjoyed openning a tin of sardines and slathering the fish ontop of saltine crackers. My own father loved to do the same, without the buckboard and without the grass. There was a little key on top of the sardine can that you used to hook into a metal tab that sealed around the can and as you twisted on the key a metal strip would peel back, loosening the top of the flattened tin. And there would be the smelly sardines. I bet that if someone had figured out how to unsmell sardines they would have sold triple the number.

I don't eat sardines much, the biggest problem is that if you open a can, you'd better eat them all or they'll stink up everything in the refrigerator. It needs at least two people to do a tin's worth, and Nancy wouldn't think of it. Kevin, the youngest boy, put three tins in my sock for Christmas, but I haven't opened them yet, waiting for a warm day to eat them outside. I might have to swallow the entire contents of perhaps one of the dogs would help. I think a breezy day would be best.

It's funny how we our minds associate our memories. A can of sardines links with my father, premium saltine crackers, Hal Borland, the high plains of Colorado.

I'd post a picture of sardines, but how about one of Crocus instead -- They don't smell.