I’m writing from my Minky and DD’s house.

You know that old song, the one that goes, “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go . . .” That’s a perfect way to describe the drive up to Dover, where my parents live. 

When you cross the Illinois Bayou, you’re getting close. The Bayou runs behind my house too, or at least it used to. Now it’s just part of Lake Dardanelle, a forty-foot trench that’s home to channel cats I catch some nights with my son.

The name “Illinois Bayou” comes from the fact that the water flows through a region traditionally associated with the Illinois Native American tribe and the Choctaw word “bayuk,” which means slow moving stream. 

The water is fast and green, but when we turn onto Highway 333, the bayou that’s not a bayou is gone, replaced by gentle rolling hills.

Drive north another couple miles, and you’ll hit the Ozark Mountains. Roadkill lines the highway. Dad says Arkansas has more roadkill than any other state in America, and he should know; Dad’s bicycled across the entire country, twice. 

Buy Eli Cranor's books - #Commissions Earned

Turkey vultures stand like sentries along both shoulders of Highway 333, watching for freshly flattened possums, racoons, and armadillos. 

Dad shoots armadillos with his .22 in the middle of the night. He says they’ll jump if you hit them just right. Dad wages war on the small, armored mammals, fighting over all that Bermuda he keeps mowed down tight like a putting green. 

Minky and DD’s house sits at the end of a dirt road with another name that doesn’t fit. I won’t mention it here (my parents enjoy their privacy), but it’s always sounded just a tad too fancy to this ear.

I grew up on Muscadine Lane in a subdivision called Deer Run. There was a creek, a drainage ditch, really, that ran behind our house. Jeff and Drew and I used to build little dams. We’d catch tadpoles and fry them on the blacktop under our magnifying glasses. In the winter, the creek froze over and we tiptoed across the ice. 

My kids love playing at Minky and DD’s house. Dad built a zipline in the front yard, that same patch of grass he’s so obsessive about, the acre or so that’s always on the cusp of an armadillo invasion.   

The inside of the house is lined with artwork and artifacts. Pieces of my childhood home have been hauled out to the country. Pictures of 9-year-old me with a blond bowl cut line the walls. My Auntie E’s artwork is everywhere too, along with some of Doyle Young’s watercolors.

Last year, my wife’s parents sold Granny and Pop's house behind the Phillips 66 on West Main. Whoever bought it remodeled everything and now it’s on the market again. My wife showed me the pictures on Zillow. It doesn’t look anything like the house I remember.

That’s why I'm trying to paint a picture with my words, a portrait of a place I never want to forget.

VISIT www.elicranor.com
JOIN my monthly newsletter
GET THE BOOKS!