Free Waiting for Autumn by Scott Blum Page B

greeted me immediately after I exited the freeway. I thought that I recognized some people I knew out of the corner of my eye when I drove past the bronze sculpture of a miner and mule underneath the blue and white tiled Y REKA sign. I knew that it was impossible, since I was sure that everyone from my past had left the area many years before, yet I permitted a twinge of excitement to lead me back to the sculpture to find out if what I’d seen had been real or imagined.
    As I neared the backside of the sculpture, I was both excited and a bit nervous to discover that the people I’d seen were still there. Standing next to the miner was a young brown-haired boy with a shaggy bowl haircut and his balding father, who had a bushy sandy-blond beard. The closer I got, the more I could hear their conversation, and it chilled me when I recognized their voices.
    “Many people came to Siskiyou County during the gold rush to claim their fortunes,” the father explained. “But few succeeded, and most left penniless.”
    “Dad, are we going to find gold here?”
    “Probably not. But if we work hard enough, we can be the ones to fix the miners’ equipment when it breaks.”
    I remembered the conversation word for word when my family first arrived in Yreka after moving there from Southern California. Yreka was about twenty miles from the town of Greenview, where we eventually settled, but it was that bronze sculpture that had represented the optimism we’d all felt when we first arrived. The possibilities had seemed limitless, and we were all excited to have enough land where we could raise animals and grow our own food. My well-intentioned father had grown up in the heartland of Iowa, and although my mother was a Southern California girl through and through, he convinced her that the country was a much better place to raise children; and at the beginning, I too bought into this idea.
    When I circled to the front of the sculpture, the man and child were no longer there, and I immediately fell to my knees and began to weep. I had fallen out of touch with my family, and although we maintained contact through occasional phone calls on birthdays and holidays, my tears finally seemed to express the lack of connection I felt. The bronze statue was exactly the same, but I was no longer the wide-eyed little boy excited about a new adventure, and my father was no longer the idealistic mechanic eager to fix mining equipment. The years had eroded our optimism to reveal pessimism—his financially and mine socially. When we finally felt defeated by Siskiyou County, we both retreated to our respective birthplaces: my father took my mother and sister to Iowa to be near his family, and I left Cheryl’s grave on my way to Southern California, where I thought I’d be able to invent a new family that would be more like me.
    After about ten minutes at the foot of the bronze sculpture, I wiped the tears from my eyes, dusted myself off, and began to walk toward Miner Street. I’d come to Yreka to visit the park, but I wasn’t sure I was ready quite yet. I was feeling both fragile and nostalgic and decided to reminisce by visiting a few shops in the town center before going to the park.
    On Miner Street, the buildings still had the same old-fashioned façades from the late 1800s; however, years of neglect made it seem more like a decaying ghost town than a vibrant celebration of happier times. A few of the same shops still existed, and an old memory popped into my consciousness with nearly every step. The memories were flooding in when I found myself at the door of the sporting-goods store at the top of the street.
    Looking up, I recognized the carved wooden sign in the shape of a green fish hanging above the entrance. I carefully opened the glass door and recognized all the sights and smells from my youth and was instantly transported to my thirteenth birthday. My father had brought me to this very shop on that day, and I remembered the distinct