Kentucky

For the first time today, I loved Kentucky.

I was up on the roof, 95 degrees out, wearing my cutoff t-shirt and a 10pb tool belt. Sweat was beading up and rolling into my eyes, and I could feel my arms getting a sunburn. I'm crawling around on all fours, holding an electric drill in one hand and a fistful of screws in the other, dropping twice as many screws as I get into the roof. My fingers are having trouble with the screws - the tin roof is so hot from the sun that I'm wearing super bulky leather gloves to keep from burning myself. My sneakers are damp and slipping, just a bit, on the metal.

And I stand up, and just look. Old cracked sheds on the property and across the street. A lame beagle trotting unevenly, aiming for the shade of a cluster of old trees. Chickens running loose across the one lane dirt road. A tractor in the back yard, just finished digging up the lawn for the garden. Hazy, light gray-blue sky that's thick and muggy. Cicadas and grasshoppers buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, mixing with the noise of air conditioners.

Just over the edge of the trees, I can see the hills - the pseudo-mountains of Kentucky, like moss-covered, mellow boulders just gently breaking the surface of the world, going on and on as if there is no world but this world, no country but this country, nothing but Kentucky hills forever and for always. And right then, on top of the roof, I knew that I was where I supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there, and that I love Kentucky and I love her people and I love her land.

This is good country.