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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Going to Graceland part 1







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Lina and I are embarked on a 16 day pilgrimage to the holy land. The holy land of music, anyways. We both love country music and rock n roll has some of it’s’ roots are in Memphis. We are looking forward to seeing the Grand ‘Ol Opry (the old and the new) and Graceland too. Branson Missouri is home to a lot of hot acts and we are looking forward to seeing some great shows.
Day one takes us from Edmonton Ab. To Swift Current Sk. Bright and early this morning, 5 am, that is, we crawled out of bed. Now I usually only see one 5 o’clock a day and that aint it. In the freezing cold (it was minus 6 and snowing) we made our way south (thank God). To Red Deer and Calgary, picking up more tour members as we went. We are the only people from the Nt on the tour. I love driving through Alberta. Especially southern Alberta, it is the first time I have been there in over twenty years. I have never been to Lethbridge or Swift Current. Let me say this, Wow! Coulee country rocks! The foothills are awesome. The prairie landscape carved into rolling hills, the native grasses drifting with snow leaving lines like the brain is some gigantic sheet of wood. And what would the prairie landscape be without those icons of life in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan; the iron horse and the grain elevator? I love grain elevators especially the old wooden ones. The newer metal ones have no soul, but what is more iconic than those peeling, painted behemoths that dominated the landscape for a century and marked the presence of the next town. Oh, about those towns. I love them. You cruise the bald prairie passing individual farms, often miles apart. The buildings clustered together. Huddled like huskies sleeping in the snow, relying on each other for warmth in the constant winter wind. A row of trees usually marks the edges of the property, planted to shelter the constant shifting snow. In the predawn they sit, lights burning in the semi dark. A dairy farm appears out of the gray black dawn. The barns are already lit and a farmer ducks his head in the wind as he walks briskly from building to building, his hands dug deep into jacket pockets, the brim of his ball cap white with snow. The out of the undulating golden fields of chaff left by the combines a town appears. First a gas station, empty and silent at this hour. Then a few older homes empty and abandoned their paint peeling, the driveway empty. Then a cluster of newer homes. An old railway station, renovated now into some other use tells of the importance of the ribbon of steel that follows the highway. An old wooden grain elevator proudly marks that this is, or at least was, a place of importance, of commerce. A newer steel elevator rises alongside the tracks too. It has usurped the role of the old wooden structure but these new ones don’t cut it with me. I hope they keep the old ones standing. Main street features old brick stores, built in the thirties with the western style false fronts designed to make them more impressive and certainly creating a purely prairie ambiance.
A word about the prairies, many people describe the prairies as flat and boring. This does a great injustice to this area. There are many words to describe the prairies, an entire prairie vocabulary. Words like; level, smooth, plane, horizontal and even leap to mind. And boring? Come on! What about; unexciting, dull, monotonous, dreary and tedious. That’s better, give the prairies their due! Seriously though, you would have to see this splendour every day for years to find it dull. I am from the east coast so maybe it is all new to me but I love it! It makes me want to re-read “Who has seen the wind” W.O. Mitchell’s classic piece of prairie prose. So far the Canadian part of our trip has been fun. Tomorrow we hit Manitoba, we’ll see if my love affair with the prairies continues. TTFN

Greg

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