Midwestern Time Capsules
We’re speeding down a nondescript dirt road.
The land is open and sweeping and infinite. The plains are oceans of tall grass kissing clouded skies. It’s the type of desolate backcountry where the sides of roads are eroded from rainstorms and beer cans are scattered along the ditch. Laila is talking, describing an abandoned farmhouse out on the prairie and how she wants to snatch a swatch of the peeling wallpaper for an art project. I nod, absentmindedly watching the clouds of dust the spinning tires create as we rush along the forgotten route. I’m thinking of the Dust Bowl and herds of buffalo that used to graze on the land. She says, on a good day, someone can find ditch-weed on the property, but not enough to get high. I smile at the thought of marijuana growing wild among the conservative wheat fields of Kansas.
She takes us down the road as if it’s a rollercoaster, and my stomach drops with each exhilaration on the hills. The scenery feels familiar and ancient. I think about the countryside tours my grandparents used to take me on. The three of us packed into the front of my grandpa’s pickup truck as he pointed: here’s the foundation of the one-room school where I learned to read; this is the house your great-grandparents built after immigrating from Switzerland; over yonder is what’s left of the chapel my parents married in.
Laila jerks the wheel and slams on the brakes, drifting the car into a field. She points through the dust. I scan the field and see the structural bones of a decaying house. Consumed by laughter, I yank open the car door and step outside. Laila raises an eyebrow, confused, questioning my sanity. I gesture wildly to the house and manage to speak, “This is where my mom grew up. It’s Cherry Creek.”
I open the gate and artfully step around cow-pies, conscious of the rattlesnakes that could be sleeping in the overgrown grass. I lead Laila up to the structure—to the place where my mom learned to crawl and my grandmother cooked fried dumplings and my grandfather spent long days tilling the fields. Where my uncle collected baseball cards and my aunt snuck off into the surrounding pastures to pretend to be an outlaw and Coco, their pet deer, slept on the living room throw rug. It’s not a home without them there. It’s just a house with its doors and windows stolen, a place where grazing cows find shelter from the elements and local teenagers come to sip Bud Light away from town laws and patrolling cop cars.
For a second, I think the country is a time capsule and the cows gnawing on crabgrass outside are time lords. Laila artfully steps into house, careful to avoid rotting floorboards. She walks into what is left of the kitchen. There’s moss growing on the cabinets and mouse droppings scattered on the floor. Laila runs her hand along the wallpaper my grandmother once painstakingly glued to the wall and then pulls out a pocket-knife to claim the print of orange-speckled mushrooms as her own.
I want to take the linear transgression of time and layer seconds on top of each other until I can smell my grandmother making wassail in the kitchen, until I can hear Coco bleating over my grandpa’s Saturday night football game.
