on my usual noon run on wednesday i came upon a sight not seen in many a moon. it was at one of the "mandatory" stops at the triangle park off paramount. what caught my attention was, not one, but a flight of eight or so dragonflies. i don't recall having seen a dragonfly in a very long time. and here, out of the blue, a virtual dragonfly stampede. well, not exactly a stampede but a dash this way and then that way, often come to an abrupt halt to hover in mid-air as they are known to do. in my youth i thought of them as insect heicopters.
what is even more curious to me is that they were hanging out in the middle of a park, nothing but grass in sight. my best recollection is that i've alway seen them around water. be it pond or lake, the water's edge seemed to be the hangout of choice.
seeing them took me back to the times my dad would take me fishing with him at one or the other of the stock tanks on the t-bar ranch. fishing with my dad, catching fish or not, was a special time for me. i wonder if those times meant anything to him at all.
my dad was a man of few words. he operated something like the dad in a country song getting play these days. it sings about how this particular dad couldn't say "i love you" aloud but each time dad and son parted the dad would "check the air in my tires, all the belts and spark plug wires and ask when the hell's the last time you changed this oil?" like the son in the song "i didn't know it then, but i know it now." he was saying "i love you"--the only way he knew how.
thanks dad, for letting me tag along to the fishing holes and for letting me hang around all those smoky camp fires listening to your old hounds singing out "aoooh, aooh" signaling they'd come up on the trail of some critter or other. i love you too. aio
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