My Harley Davidson Sportster on a dirt road where I grew up

I just returned from a chilly ride in the countryside, along the old dusty back roads where I grew up.  This is the part of the country where grids are present everywhere, even in the countryside, based on the township and range survey system.  In the 1891, when the Indian lands (this used to be the Potawatomi reservation) were either purchased, swindled or stolen, the government opened up this land for settlement by “land run” to which each settler could claim 160 acres (one fourth of a square mile section).  These were mostly landless poor southerners, and they’d line up with their horses and buggies, carrying their sole possessions.  At the sound of a gunshot off they’d go to stake their claim.  So they cut section roads all over the countryside to mark the section boundaries (square miles), and they are still present.  This is where I grew up, out in the country, along an old muddy road, with pastures and dense "cross timber" forests of black jack oak and cedar.  There is still the remnants of one of these early homesteads near where I took this picture of my motorcycle.  This is at the junction of two of these section roads, in front of a large pasture with buffalo and two old paint horses. 

 

 

I’m sitting in my garage, listening to music.  So I thought I’d post a link to what I’ve been listening to.  I don’t know why I love this song, but I do . . .  It’s kind of how I feel right now, strangely chromatic and tinted, perhaps because of the perpetual fog and mist and cold we seem to be stuck in here in Oklahoma.  Here it is . . .   

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjQ2jGUNSck

 

And now I’m listening to my favorite Jazz singer, Chet Baker, born in the tiny town of Yale, Oklahoma.  You can see in this video that it was right after he had his tooth knocked out by a thug as he was buying heroin in San Francisco.  Chet was a lifelong junky and died a tragic death.  But he was magic on the trumpet and had the voice of an angel.  Chet, like many great artists, experienced art and life too close to the bone, like a candle burning bright from both ends, to be able to tolerate a long life in this mad, modern world. 

  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ybMVHeJZ7w

 

 

 

"Grunge"
 . . . art is everywhere if you know where to look.