A momentous birthday is approaching. No, not yours. Heck, you’re a youngster!

No, it’s mine, as though I needed to remind myself. Is it a symptom of aging when a simple drive around the countryside reminds me of time marching on? You know, mortality and all that.

It’s like this. Judy is driving. ( I don’t drive.) That leaves me with abundant time to look out the window, to gaze at scenery, to space out or to say something to Jude like, “old Joe Etz used to live there.” That, of course, was when we passed old Joe Etz’s house.

It’s still there, though a bit ramshackle.

Nonetheless, Judy will reply, “Who the Hell is Joe Etz?”

I’m an odd ball in that I’ve lived at the same place my whole life. Who does that anymore? Same farm, same fields, same trees, but larger now. The streams are the same streams, but have altered their course over the years.

It has always seemed quizzical to me that our state levies huge fines upon anyone who dares to excavate near a stream, yet the stream itself moves tons of gravel and soil over time. Water goes where water wants to.

A brilliant American intellectual once wrote, “Time is but the stream I go a’fishin’ in. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

I think I get it, Mr. Thoreau. Surely yours was a stabilizing influence in your neighborhood. Lord only knows if the same could be said for me.

Surely it could for old Joe Etz.