Lilacs

The lilacs are opening in our neck of the words. Beautiful purple flowers with a smell filled with memories. Lilac bushes graced the south side of our one-room school yard, tall gangly bushes most of the year, but for a few days, a couple of weeks sometimes, the schoolyard was filled with the smell of lilac. When the lilacs first opened, we’d cut a big bouquet and give them to our teacher who would put them in a vase on the corner of her desk. And now the schoolroom, too, its long winter, musty smell with lingering smells of oak smoke was replaced with one more smell of spring.

We didn’t have lilacs at home. Pa didn’t like them. Said their smell was too strong. Here was one place I disagreed with him for I enjoyed the smell of lilacs, then and now. I prefer the smell of real lilac, not that created in a laboratory to become part of a strong smelling perfume that is supposed to smell like lilacs but doesn’t make it, not for my country smelling nose anyway.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: The road home is often the longest.

UPCOMING EVENTS:
May 23, 7:30 p.m. Brodhead Historical Society. Brodhead High School. History of Wisconsin Agriculture.

May 26, 7:00 p.m. Eagle River Library. Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 2, 7:00 p.m. Luck Library. Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 7, 7:00 p.m. Galesville Library. Horses and Barns.

June 24, 6:30 p.m. Patterson Memorial Library, fundraiser featuring Campfires and Loon calls.

June 28, 5-7 p.m. Fitger’s Bookstore, Duluth, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.

June 29, 2-4 p.m. Cherry Street Books, Alexandria, MN. Book signing, Campfires and Loon Calls.