It was Fiday afternoon and I'd been leaving work when I decided I'd take a small detour through the country on my way home.
The boss had been as uninspiring and as unconcerned (#980632) as ever. I'd been desperate for clarity on some issues that, with expert assiduity, he'd been able to explain into a mundane but nice-sounding catch-phrase, which I remember not, but that had at least a few multi-syllable trending meme-words in it. He has to earn his salary too, doesn't he?
I just kept driving. The sun shone in a clear sky and the smell of the lake began to waft in through my open windows.
"I must be nearing cottage country."
I realized as I watched the low-laying wetlands that flanked the highway that I'd dreamed being here before when the sudden fear set upon me that I could easily drive the car and sink it in the water. That happened in the dream.
Then I came upon a winding trail. There were waterfront properties where vacationers idled on porches. I kept driving.
I'd spent the whole of my adult life in that county and yet this had been my first time on that trail. It felt familiar, like it were a place in whose soil my ancestors had soaked their bones.
"Farm-fresh eggs," read a sandwich-board sign at the end of one of the driveways. I turned around and pulled-in.
The driveway curved behind the house
to a small parking area. A door on the ajacent barn said "Come In, We're Open."
Making sure I had cash, I exited the car. I didn't bother locking it. A few steps across the pebbled parking lot, and I tried the door. It opened.
This was the first time I'd bought eggs fresh off the farm. I saw a fridge and a cash box. The only sign of life there had been was a piece of a4 paper taped to the fridge which had these prices inscribed in green marker:
12 for $4 18 for $6
I had a fifty, but the cash box only had four fives and some change. I counted it and it amounted to a little more than $45, so I took $40, 30 eggs and left a $50 bill. Was my math right?
"Not a bad price, cheaper than America anyway."
I stopped at the reserve for some gas and Camel Blues and still beat my girlfriend home.
Here are the eggs, hslf-eaten. I always cook them with medjool dates and butter.