So, what's with these sidewalks?

I’m getting pretty familiar with the five or six mile bike ride from Grandpa’s house to the rehab center—up Maple Grove, west down Overland for most of the way, left on Eagle…. Along Overland most of the development is new, congregations of tract homes, long strip malls at intersections, and business parks spreading all about as if the town couldn’t get enough chiropractic clinics and dance studios and business colleges. But a few nearly moribund farms remain, a corral of horses bordered by new homes, a big hay field recently cut, the grass drying in the hot sun. A few in-between parcels, smaller, orphan remnants of pale weeds, sprout big “Available” signs.

Along much of this part of Overland, there’s a landscaped buffer about thirty feet wide, between the busy road and high wooden fences protecting backyards of the tract homes. The landscaping is new, hillocks of thick grass dotted with small trees, the occasional gathering of carefully placed boulders. Sprinklers ply the grass each day, and I often get a little wet on the ride. This roadside green feature seems pointless and particularly artificial in such a desert place, but southern Idahoans like Americans everywhere are partial to well-watered and trimmed turf.

What is unusual, though, at least in my experience, is the sidewalk configuration along Overland. There’s the usual type, running right along the busy road, but then there’s a parallel sidewalk, with just a few feet of grass between the two. The inner walk runs in curves through the landscaped buffer, fifty feet or so at a stretch, then comes back to the straight bit, momentarily, before drifting off into the grass again.  Why?.... I’ve seen little foot or bike traffic along Overland, but who knows, maybe the planners expect that to change, maybe the dual walks are to accommodate non-motorized traffic jams of the future.... On this Saturday afternoon, though, with the temperature at 96, I had the sidewalks to myself.

Grandpa was eating his dinner, in his room, when I arrived: grilled cheese and ham, baked beans, some sort of custard. He was at the table, from where the television is not visible, and I sat down next to hm. We occupied ourselves with the subject of the weather, but that never lasts long. The night before we had talked easily—or he had—but now we had a hard time getting started again….

I let him eat and wrote a long text to Test, the woman who I’d be hiking with on the PCT just before I left the trail. I’d said I’d write and tell her what had happened, but I had not…. She texted me right back, writing that she was at Mammoth, waiting for a new pair of shoes to arrive in the mail. She said she had been wondering about me, but since no dire news had arrived via the trail grapevine she’d figured I was not too bad off.

Grandpa said he wished he had learned about computers a long time ago, but he still wanted to figure out how to use the one he has at the house. Part of the problem with that Compaq is it’s too old to keep up with current internet features. But as far as “learning” the computer, it seems easy enough, and actually he already knows about email. But I think he means he would like to know how the computer works, and would like to be able to take his apart and fiddle with it…. One of the problems with the rehab center is that there’s nothing for him to try to fix; at home, all sorts of things are broken and he occupies himself for long stretches with repairs. Repairs of a sort. Most everything is either waiting such attention or is working only in an imperfect fashion. I think he used to be more adept, but his skills have slipped, and the technology of small devices has become less friendly to the shade-tree mechanic.

After forty-five minutes of conversational dead-ends, I asked a question about the Harrises, following up from the night before. “So, I said, (I tend, like most people, to run together the first part of a spoken sentence, but Grandpa’s hearing requires first a signal that I’m starting, then carefully and loudly  enunciated words), “I wanted to ask another question about the Harrises. I know they left Nebraska for Idaho in the late 30s, but how long had they been in Nebraska?”

Grandpa looked at me, and I wasn’t sure he had understood the question. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.” He rubbed his neck and thought. “For some time, I figure…. Their Dad, he got a job down in Texas, and they left Nebraska in a covered wagon and went on down there. Mom was born on the trip.” That would’ve been 1898. She was the youngest, so Walt, Charlie, and Lu were on the wagon too. I learned that there had been another sibling, Jim, who was born later, and who like four of the five never married. “But they wasn’t in Texas long before they come back up to Spalding.”

For some reason that I didn’t follow, he thought of a woman named Ruth Peterson. “She was a Harris but she married some fella named Peterson and became a Peterson herself.” She was a cousin of Grandpa’s mother, Liz. Grandpa followed with a long history of Ruth and her descendants, telling of her second marriage, the twins she’d given birth to, Robert and Richard, who had some sort of disease only boys get; they’d both grown up and gone to work for the telephone company…. I couldn’t make the connection to the family I knew, and so was less interested in these people. “I don’t know what they’re doing, but I suppose they’re still out there in Nebraska….” It seems unlikely they’re alive.

I could only stay an hour or so, since Rosemary had invited me over for dinner. I always feel bad when I leave, but Grandpa never complains. He’s more forthcoming with Rosemary. She had visited earlier in the day, and when an attendant arrived to help him take a shower Rosemary said she was going to leave. Grandpa had said, no, and she had said, well it’ll take a while, and then he had shouted in a peremptory tone, “Don’t go!” So she stayed.

At dinner, we all sat around a new table on the patio, Rosemary and Mike, Kristen and her Mike, Rylee. We talked about Grandpa, the dilemma of what would or could come next. We had chicken and steak and fried potatoes, and salad with ranch made from a packet, the family salad dressing, which I always associate with Grandpa. Mike said, “This is good salad,” and Rosemary said of the paper plates, “these are too small,” which was just my problem.