Aug. 21: "Two of Life's Great Mysteries''

For some time now, I’ve been able to escape what, for a 52-year-old man, is the often surreal atmosphere of life as a college student to do some country living on the weekends.

Granted, Starkville, Miss., is not located in a sprawling urban metropolis. Nor does Mississippi State University lack a certain bucolic quality. There are plenty of open green spaces and ancient shade trees around campus.

Still, these weekend escapes to rural Pickens County, Alabama (somewhat a redundancy, since the whole county is more or less rural) have been a salve for the vagaries my new life as an old student. Out here on the Price homestead, where you have to drive five miles to find a paved road, things just don’t seem to rush at you. You have a chance to study something in detail because it's usually in no great hurry. Except for the hummingbirds, who even mate in mid-flight. Guessing you probably didn't know that.

This weekend, I cut down some small trees near the creek where the family goes fishing and stages parties from time to time. I cut some grass and spread some ant poison on some enormous ant hills that had been built in the roots of several of the great old oaks that surround Joy’s little cottage.

I also, pulled up a dead shrub by tying a rope a round it, attaching the other end of the rope to the trailer hitch of the old Ford 150 pick-up and yanking it out, roots and all. That was more fun than you would probably ever suspect. Here’s an oddity, though: It took four feet of dirt to fill the one-foot hole where the shrub used to be.

So it was a hot, busy, sweaty-stained weekend. At my age, this sort of work requires frequent breaks, usually taken under the closest available shade. Two hours into the day, I was already soaked with sweat, having sweated through my jeans even. The bandana I tied around my head to keep the sweat out of my eyes, when rung out, could fill a fruit jar, it seemed. But it’s a good kind of dirty sweat, somehow. It just feels good, in a way I am at a loss to explain.

I did run one errand during the weekend, driving over to Carrolton, the closest town, to buy some night-crawlers and crickets, just in case somebody decided to go fishing.

“There’s a cricket basket in the truck shed,’’ Joy told me.

So I grabbed the cricket basket and headed for town.

Joy had told me I could buy the worms and crickets at the little grocery store in town. I looked around the store, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might be where you would keep bait. Finally, I approached the checkout counter and asked the man behind the counter if they had crickets for sale.

“Crickets?'’ the man said in an accent I recognized as being Indian (by Indian I mean the big country in Asia).

“Yes, crickets,’’ I said.

The man made a motion as if he were swinging a cricket paddle. “That kind of cricket?’’ he asked.

“No,’’ I said. “I mean for fishing.’’

“No. I am sorry. We don’t sell them.’’

Fortunately, another customer had arrived at the counter as I was having this discussion with the clerk.

“You can get crickets at the One-Stop, I think,’’ she said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to go to Pickensville.’’

I’m not sure where Pickensville is located, but the woman said it as if it were a long drive. So I was relieved to discover that you can buy crickets (and worms) at One-Stop in Carrolton.

The man at the One-Stop took my cricket basket and returned a few minutes later with 100 (or so) crickets in my basket.

“The worms are in the refrigerator over there,’’ he said.

Driving back to the Price homestead, I looked over at the little round wire mess basket, full of crickets.

It’s a funny thing, really. I’ve seen and used cricket baskets since I was a little kid.

But somehow, two marvelous thoughts came to me as I drove along the little blacktop highway.

First, why don’t the crickets just hop out of the basket? Second, and this is probably even a greater mystery, who figured out they wouldn’t?

On the outside chance that you don’t know about cricket baskets, a description is necessary. A cricket basket (it can be round or square) is made of wire mess and is about 12 inches tall. Here’s where the mysterious part comes in. There is no lid on the basket, only a sleeve, usually plastic, that fits inside. Even so, the opening at the top is large enough for even the biggest hand to fit into to retrieve a cricket.

Now, I know enough about crickets to understand that even the most ancient, infirmed of crickets can jump a good 18 inches. Any cricket could, at least in theory, stand at the bottom of the cricket basket and hop straight up out of the opening in the top of the basket and escape to freedom.

But they never do.

But here’s the more interesting part. Someone – no one will likely ever know who – figured this out and designed a basket for keeping crickets that didn’t have a lid. The idea of a container without a lid used specifically to keep something inside that has the ability - not to mention the desire - to get out seems to defy all logical thinking.

In my mind, it is one of the great inventions of all time, not because of its contribution to society – which, at best, is marginal – but rather because it is so contrary to any conventional way of thinking.

As far as I know, there have been no real technological advances in this field. Long ago, somebody figured this out and they’ve been making cricket baskets pretty much the same way ever since.

When you buy a cricket basket, you do not have to work about a 4G version of it hitting the market next month. Strangely, that idea appeals to me.

Maybe it’s just a sign I am getting older. I find that I am comforted more by the old things that don’t change than I am excited by all the new things that change all the time.

The road in front of the Price homestead has been a dirt road for close to 100 years. Most likely, a hundred years hence it will still be a dirt road.

And the cricket basket of 2111 will look the same as the one that is sitting on the front seat of this old pick-up truck.

And the crickets won’t hop out.

They never do.

They never will.

I like that.