This ‘oasis’ comes with spooky bats

I have bats hanging from the rafters in my outbuilding, above my old tractor. Over the decades, I’ve cohabitated with bats in fixer-upper old houses my wife and I purchased. Lying in bed, holding hands as we did until the end, happy in bed on our first night in our very first house. At 2 a.m., a heart-stopping thuka-thuka-thuka sound circled overhead. My wife’s response, from underneath the covers? “It’s a bat! Do something!” The house had sat empty for some years, and it turned out the walls were filled with bats. It was my first experience with the spooky little critters, and it was helpful information on my role as a partner.

A long time ago, Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, probably best known for his terrific “The Blue Danube,” wrote a beautiful operetta about my little furry friends called “Die Fledermaus,” which you German-speaking folks will know translates to “The Flying Mouse.” Though, to be honest, if I recall correctly, the only bat in the production is some guy at a costume party dressed as a bat. Now, every time I open the basement door, I look for bull snakes; whenever I open a garage door, I first look for eastern rat snakes; and now, whenever I climb onto my tractor, I glance up at bats.

Having said that, last week the guy who prints my photos for an upcoming exhibition dropped some off out here, a place he’d never seen, and he said, “I love your oasis.” He nailed it, a calm, elegant place far removed from the ever-more unpleasant cacophony of our world. I’d love to share it with others, but here’s the thing: I’m not good at being with others, at least not in that adult stand-up-party sort of way. Even when someone tours my land, a friend takes them on the Gator, not me. My small talk is inelegant, graceless, and it quickly becomes apparent that I’m not a good storyteller, noting that the eyes of others are moving away as I speak, so I have learned that it’s best to stay with those who understand my idiosyncrasies and forgive me my trespasses, my cats. A few weeks ago, a woman informed me that I was eccentric, and about 10 days ago, a man shook my hand and told me that my writing was an acquired taste. Not sure what to make of any of it, and strongly suspect that, at my age, it doesn’t really matter, because at this point in my life the strings will never again be precisely in tune.

As I write this, saxophonist Stan Getz is on the radio playing a sweet tune called Early Autumn, and today it feels about right. Wind is gusting out of the northeast. A tiny maple tree I saved a number of years ago now stands tall in the hollow, catching the cold wind, competing with hundreds of walnut trees, showing off its orange leaves. I’ve mowed the hollow for perhaps the last time this year. Remember Stan Getz? He was probably best known for a 1964 collaboration with Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto on a little tune called “The Girl from Ipanema.” Encountering that song was magical for me, a world I hoped existed, one filled with languid, magical, smiling women, and handsome men, all backed up with a bit of bossa nova. At the time, my friends were all buying up 45 rpm records of a group out of England to whom I wasn’t paying much attention, a group called “The Beatles,” and I was listening to Getz and Gilberto, and later, along with my dear, talented mother, “Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66.” My mother was a good singer and a bright woman who understood a lot of things, like the fact that life isn’t all solos, that sometimes you need altos. I was eccentric even then, I suppose, and she understood.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County and hosts the “Rural America” podcast. It can be found at https://www.ullrichruralamerica.com