Mud Meadow
The name of our place is Mud Meadow. I’m not sure how that came about, but it’s what my father always called it. I don’t know if he made it up himself or heard it from one of the oldtimers along our road, which was unpaved back in those days of the 1950s. The name seems most fitting in early spring, but over the course of April things start drying out. After that, there’s no more mud in Mud Meadow—till next year.
The dark woods have a way of sneaking up on you around here, so I try to remain vigilant. One April, some years ago, I was cutting back trees along the edge of the meadow. You might not guess from all the poetry books I have in my library, but I wield a wicked chainsaw. It’s one of the few skills I acquired from a long-ago education in forestry. Maybe it’s the only one. In any case, when you’re cutting down trees for hours on end and breathing lots of exhaust fumes, the mind can wander. Mine does. Sometimes it revisits old grudges. That day it made a beeline for a grievance I had been harboring for over a year. It concerned a small wooden sign that was supposed to say, “Mud Meadow.”
The idea was to install it over the barn door and bestow a touch of pastoral elegance on our modest homestead. I ordered off the internet—today’s domain of errant consumer knights—after finding a website advertising hand-carved cedar signs made to order. The fellow who made the signs lived in Wisconsin. The examples of his work posted on the website were attractive and the prices reasonable. I placed my order and paid in advance. The email he sent in return promised the work would be completed and delivered within two weeks. Great!
The order was placed in the middle of winter. Weeks passed. Then more weeks passed. Winter turned to spring. No sign of the sign. On a fine April day, I phoned the fellow from Wisconsin and asked, “Where’s my sign?”
He said, “I totally forgot. I’ll do it tomorrow and mail it to you.” Okay.
Weeks passed. Then more weeks passed. Spring turned to summer. Still no sign of the sign. Again I phoned the fellow from Wisconsin and asked, “Where’s my sign?”
He said, “I totally forgot. I’ll mail it tomorrow.” Well, more weeks passed, then some more. Still no sign of the sign. By now it was autumn. I kept waiting. I’m a fool for faith and hope.
Finally, almost a year after I ordered a simple sign off the internet, I made a desperate call to that fellow in Wisconsin, shouting into the phone: “Dude! Where’s my sign?!”
He said, “I totally forgot. I’ll UPS it to you tomorrow.”
And he actually did. He even provided a tracking number to go with his promise. But alas, instead of using our street number for the shipping address, he used our post office box number. The sign never arrived.
When I inquired with UPS about the missing item, they responded with a curt message implying I was a dunce for using a post office box number on the shipping label. In those days UPS only delivered to street addresses, not P.O. boxes. Everybody knew that. Even I knew that. This wasn’t my mistake.
I phoned the fellow in Wisconsin to tell him of his error. He said, “I totally forgot about that UPS address thing. I’ll mail it tomorrow.”
Of course the sign never arrived. I was right back where all this began—in the middle of winter, wanting a sign. I gave up, putting the whole episode out of my mind.
A couple months later, though, under warm April sunshine, I was out at the edge of the meadow engaged in the ongoing effort to keep the encroaching forest at bay. I was about to lay into the diamond-hard trunk of an ironwood with my chainsaw, when thoughts of the fellow in Wisconsin came surging back into my head. We love nothing so much as our own suffering. I pictured him there in his workshop, a thousand miles from where I stood, looking around at his dusty shelves and spotting a little sign that read, “Mud Meadow.” What would those words mean to him, a perfect stranger? Might he have some use for the sign? Might somebody else? What’s in a name anyway?
Then I thought, “Hey, I haven’t thought about that sign or that fellow from Wisconsin for a couple months now. Maybe I’m ready to let it go.”
That evening, as frog-song was filtering in through the open windows of our house, I was wasting time on the computer. I received a LinkedIn request. It came from the fellow in Wisconsin. He wanted me to recommend his business on my page. I weighed making a snarky response, but in the end I just deleted my LinkedIn account. Then I got up, went out to the barn, and refueled the chainsaw in anticipation of the next day’s work. Spring was a-coming in. No more mud in Mud Meadow—till next year.
©John P. O’Grady
Originally appeared in The Mountain Eagle on December 11, 2020
