Back Where I Come From

I absolutely love being home this time of year...

because I have the wonderful privilege of seeing this out my back door.

The Delta.

Growing up twenty minutes from school, friends, civilization, and the grocery store.

I loved it in elementary school because that meant I could play outside for hours and no one would bother me. I had multiple "clubhouses" in the woods that probably weren't safe, and I would probably never be able to find again. Sweet Rachel and I spent hours and hours working on one that was without a doubt the most incredible clubhouse ever built.

I hated it in junior high because my mom always had an excuse as to why I couldn't spend the night out on short notice.

But my favorite part about living "on the farm" was that Saturday afternoon every year when we got the last cotton trailer all to ourselves. Just a little education for you--the cotton comes off the plant and goes through a machine that makes cotton bales that some of you might have seen. They're just big block of cotton that sit there until they're ready to be taken to the gin, where the seeds come out. Well before they make bales, the cotton just hangs out in a giant trailer. And thats where some of my best childhood memories came from. One of our dads would save a trailer for us, and park it in the front yard. Our parents would literally throw us over into the back of this trailer and leave us for hours. You might think that could only be entertaining for so long, but we managed to play in this cotton trailer for the whole day.. every year and it never got old. We made forts, we dug tunnels, we had wars, we made mountains. And of course we itched and stunk afterwards.

I don't remember anything specific, besides that Adron and I were always on a team and always won. And that someone usually cried. But that was always the day that I looked forward to in the fall when the fields started turning white.

Happy Fall.