With our route at the State Horse Pistol (hospital) temporarily off limits due to renovations, aka, a battalion of trucks the size of Utah, our small but determined band of roving walkers met down at Mickey’s playground. For a moment we pretended we were at the warmer version of Disney, but the snap of the Ohio River wind brought us back to reality. Evansville is not known for its consistent weather in the spring. Gray and cloudy is our consistency in the dead of winter, but this walk was going to bear up to a clear blue bone chilling April cold snap.
As you might recall, we are a newly formed walking club that meets on the first of every month. That seems like an easy date to remember, but alas, our club’s membership has already fallen by half, and it was only at five members to begin with. Let’s just blame it on the cold and gargantuan construction equipment. This time.
We were brave enough to walk along the levee path, checking out the curves of the river, and looking for a calmer path. Aren’t we all? For a brief moment I worried that I would become air born in my parka and have an aerial view of Evansville as I parasailed across the Midwest. Two of my companions actually had bunny ears on their head, hints of an upcoming Easter party, and like real bunny ears, they twitched in the wind, listening for clues of summertime, (or perhaps errant radio stations).
We blathered nonstop, according to the rules of the club, as we picked up two little ones in a stroller, mom in tow. Twisting our way through the restoration area, we marveled at homeowners ambitious enough to scrap and paint their way along tall porticos, cornices and wonderfully carved entablatures. I don’t know what any of those words really mean, but if you get the idea that we were surrounded by century old river houses, you’d be correct. I felt like I had stepped out from Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine, and for a moment I longed to be an 1850’s steamboat boat captain coming home to my wife, waving to her one hundred feet up in her widow’s perch.
While we meandered aimlessly, narrowly missing piles of gravel and concrete, upturned hazard cones, and delivery trucks in the wrong lane, and I envied the two toddlers warmly buckled into their stroller with only their sniffy red noses showing. Being from Kenosha, Wisconsin, they took in the cold like bosses, and I know in their stocking capped heads they were giggling at all of us for being such wimps. Made me want to put on my big-guy-pants, find a bubbler at the nearest stop and go light, er no? (apologies to Wisconsin vernacular).
I did learn a couple of interesting facts about Kenosha on our BBRR journey. People there are working together, very hard I might add, to heal tensions after a very rough year. All along our walk, as we talked about our life’s challenges, I thought it telling that no one made any hint of April Fool’s Day. There were more important things to cover, among them the gratefulness that we were all healthy, and that we were looking into the sun and seeing some light at the end of Covid.
That is no joke. The Bunny bunnies keep marching towards better, and so does our nation, and our next generation, the kids from Kenosha.