A Deer Friend

When it rains, it pours, unless it doesn’t. But we we’ve been getting wet, figuratively speaking. On Saturday, my good friend, writing comrade and fellow expat from Houston, Mark Bertrand, rolled into our little town in his little car on his way back to Souix Falls. By the time he winded down our drought stricken drive his normally pristine mini looked like it had been parked in the kitchen while Lucy and Ethel were baking. But what are friends for?

In this case it was for a night of LiT, the sequel. Anthony and Dyan joined us for dinner and then we all headed down to our home away from home, The Rocheport General Store, where Anthony and I now host the Columbia leg of LiT on Thursday nights. I’ll be posting about that gem (the store) soon. We sat upstairs in the loft while live music played below and various Rocheportians stuck their heads in to say hello. Somewhere in all that Anthony noted that one year ago we were all still in Houston, comfy in our little group, and none of us would have guessed that in one year’s time we’d all have left Houston and become Midwesterners. After we’d sucked dry the urn of coffee Kim the proprietor had deposited upstairs for us, we headed back to Lealholm where Wayne had a feisty bonfire blazing in minutes. Mark shared his fine cigars and we sat up chatting till 2:30 am. The one (only?) good thing about moving away from friends is that instead of meeting up for an hour or two here and there or lunch or coffee or a movie, when you do get to visit you really visit. And you can bet that whoever comes here to visit leaves here with plenty of dirt.