An Indigo Nighthawk

On Green Fields, Blue Birds, and Lawnmowers

Vol. 153, May 20th, 2025 Published a day early online

(Prefer to watch the blog? It’s now in video format.)

The Fields are Green

This is not news you’d see on a screen, but you might like to know. The fescue is setting seeds, ready for the first hay cutting of the year. I waded through this waving sea, waist deep, listening to a bird here and there.

The Indigo Bunting is back, singing his lazy tune. Soon the summer will set in, stern, ripping sheets of heat from the baking grass, building silent mirages. The Bunting will fly through the shimmering air, electric blue plumage a spark from the furnace, or a bit of molten sky landing on a branch field-side. Today, he looked like some gem flitting across the emerald grass, calmer than July.

A Sunday afternoon in May is soft. A tiger swallowtail visited the late blooms of the blackberries. I watched his yellow wings, carnival-like, somehow sad in the sinking light. I used to think that the showmen in the city were the bright lights, but now suspect they’re pale imitations of the butterflies of the fields. But both have to face Sunday evening.

Sitting on a rock by the stream, I took care not to squish an ant or tell irreverent jokes to the clear water, not imposing–for once. A crawdad emerged from under a rock. This is not news, but I thought you might like to know.

The Indigo Buntings are singing in the fields again, harbingers of Summer.

From Emily Dickinson

“I taste a liquor never brewed, From tankards scooped in pearl;

Not all the vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,

and debauchee of dew, reeling,

Through endless summer days, from inns of molten blue.

When the landlords turn the

Drunken bee out of the foxglove’s door,

When butterflies renounce their drams,

I shall but drink the more!”

Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week

Hope may die: Maybe short for “hope to die if I’m telling a lie.”

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Stewart

Born 1908 in Indiana, PA, degreed in architecture, flew in WWII, gave us great movies.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS, EMPORIUM!”

Write to Us!

The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com

Letters from Josh

(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #233)

Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: Better Than AstroTurf

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! This rain looks like green paint. (It does the same thing.) The fields rejoice, and the lawn is drinking it up. It'll be time to mow again.

I'll cut the grumbling. It's hard to beat the smell of fresh-cut grass and the drone of a mower as proof–proof that things are never as bad as they say on TV. Everyday life is a precious thing.

Rattling along on the old rider on a sunny afternoon, I eyed the faded gold paint. Maybe the cloud of blue smoke got in my eye, but these things seem like chariots.

Don't you remember the gleaming rows of mowers at the hardware store? They thrilled me as a boy. Red, black, green & yellow, orange. That new tire smell, and sneaking aboard to grasp the steering wheel. The seat–fit for a king–someday.

Time passed and I pushed many a row on foot. Then somebody spied the old mower under a tarp in the neighbor's yard. “Dad, Dad, can we make a go-kart out of it?” The men talked and shook hands and a piece of rusty metal gashed Dad's hand open and the stitches were tied up and Mom calmed down and we knocked a wasp's nest out from under the hood and then we had it. Nobody had a driver's license, but who cared? We had wheels.

We cooed over the rusty monstrosity, blind as a mother with an ugly baby. “It's an eight horsepower.” What a giddy feeling, driving it around. Or maybe it was the carbon monoxide. And all the other fumes. “Smells like victory.”

A good lawn wasn't the point. Low-speed racing was. But you need two to compete. A brother found a little rear-engine rider with tired red paint. We called it The Lady Bug. We didn't need to mow after that muddy spring of motor-sports in the back yard. The lawn never stood a chance.

And the foul eight-horsepower beast that nearly put Dad in the hospital and us boys over the moon? We christened it The Plague. Somebody made a stencil with Gothic letters and a silhouette of a rat.

Parts aren't cheap when you're a kid. Instead of lemonade, we made a few shirts for our uncle sponsor. Team Plague Racing. With a rat. It paid for the carburetor rebuild.

The grass grew again and again. Strangers cut the childhood lawn. The racing team lives in two states. I think The Plague rusted away. But we still work on engines.

Now I clatter up and down hills at my new yard, leaning over the spinning left wheel when the wet grass gets it stuck, giving it a lurch and holler; “Giddy-up!”over the roar, and a stick catches the blades with a clang. Sometimes I even remember that old Plague.

Another type of plague swept the land not long ago. I'm still trying to make sense of what happened with COVID. Did we almost lose everything, or almost give it all away? Will it happen again? Will we let it? I didn't know how much the Everyday mattered until it vanished. Kitty Kallen sang it right: Little things mean a lot. Now I treasure them.

Cutting the grass can be a drag, but I remember those days of boyhood wishing, and the recent era when everything almost snapped in two.

I get to ride a chariot on a sunny day. It's real, and boy does it remind me. Sure beats AstroTurf. Is it too good to be true? I guess that depends on us.

Catch you on the flip side,

Josh

Send spare carburetors and letters to P.O. Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or on X @RealJoshUrban