I was reading clickclack gorilla’s hitching story and it dawned on me what’s going on in Europe with hitch-hiking is entirely different from it in the US. Evidently thumbing rides there still includes ‘respectable’ people. It wasn’t so long ago the same was true in the US.
As a youngster and young man I hitched across the US up-down and sideways more times than I’ve traveled it any other way. In the military it used to be the most common way soldiers traveled, but it was also a legitimate way of getting to a destination for anyone else, as well. When I got out of jail for riding trains in Rochester, New York, in 1964, the judge at the arraignment told me, “Don’t you know hopping trains in New York is a FELONY?”
“No sir. I didn’t know that.”
“Is there someone you can contact to get money for a bus ticket to get back to New Mexico?”
“No sir, there isn’t.”
“I’m going to say this, then I’m going to let you go. Hitch-hiking is only a misdemeanor in New York.”
After I was released a police officer drove me out to the Interstate and let me off at a freeway entrance. And way led onto way.
All that hitching as a youth was an adventure I suspect a lot of people alive today haven’t experienced. Every trip was a hundred stories, including the one above. And every hitch-hiker I’ve picked up over the decades since [I still do] has been a story in itself. I keep a case of Dinty Moore stew in the truck and usually give them a can or two if they’ve convinced me they’re hungry.
Today people are generally frightened of hitch-hikers, or just don’t believe the potential feel-good rewards of picking them up is worth the risk of getting robbed, assaulted, or just being trapped inside a vehicle with a person who smells as though he’s been on the road a while is worth it. I’d opine they’re thinking smart. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t had some close calls, both hitching, and picking up hitch-hikers.
But I do it anyway, and I’m glad I do, glad I have, wouldn’t trade having done it for the alternative.
I’m thinking I might throw in a few of those hitch-hiking, hitch-hiker tales on this blog occasionally. Some are chilling, some are strange, but every one is unique.
The comments on the Yin Yang Conspiracy post got me thinking about this:
In 1961, at the age of 17 I took an oath agreeing to be part of a team effort to kill anyone John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and later Lyndon Baines Johnson, thought needed killing.
Everything I’ve learned about those two men during the decades since has caused me to believe both were despicable, incorrigible individuals bent on personal power and self-aggrandizement, first, with the betterment of the US public only a priority to the extent it contributed to those.
But I raised my right hand and took an oath to become the trigger-finger for anything they wanted doing, volunteered to point a rifle and kill whomever these two car salesmen cum rich-boy opportunists found more convenient dead than alive.
My thinking today is that, despite the popularity of the choice I made, despite the fact millions of other men made the same choice to abdicate their ethics, their intelligence, their judgement to those men and others exactly of the same unworthy breed, [still do so today,] it’s not a choice to be admired, praised, encouraged, or rewarded. If anything, it’s a testimony to my own shallowness, stupidity, weakness of character and obliquely, a failure of self-respect.
Today, men and women who openly vilify the President of the US, the US Congress, detest the US military command and officer corps, are nevertheless pointing their weapons at whomever those people they detest tell them to kill. And label doing so a virtue.
Aside from the fact I didn’t know enough when I took my oath to recognize what scum the two presidents I agreed to kill for were, those people serving today are in precisely the same position I was in. They’ve agreed to do whatever the dregs of humanity tell them to do, do it without question.
The main change between 1961, and 2011, is that I agreed to do it for $78 per month, whereas they’re getting paid one hell of a lot more to obey the orders about which unlucky human beings get the downrange surprises.
Think about it. Thousands of young men died, thousands killed because Richard Milhaus Nixon told them to do it. Yet Richard Nixon outranked those politicians of the time in scumhood so conspicuously he was casheered from office by the others of his club. His own peers.
In 1970, the University of Texas was squared off against itself. The frats, the student government, the sororities, the administration, the ROTC department, and the cops on the one side, and us on the other.
The Vets against the Vietnam War, the Wobblies (IWW), the Panthers, the Young Socialistist Alliance (Trotskyite), the RYM2 (Revolutionary Youth Movement faction of the Students for a Democratic Society), Weathermen (the other, more interesting side of the SDS), and hundreds of other splinter groups were taking a fair beating, though we had the numbers.
I was in the middle of all that, writing for the alternative newspaper, the RAG, and trying to get an education dovetailed with sex, drugs and Rock and Roll with helping organize an occasional riot, march or rally thrown in for good measure.
That’s when we invented the Yin Yang Conspiracy. An ad hoc political party. We ran a longhair named Jeff Jones for student body president, and we threw the bastards out, lock stock and fraternity pin. Lordee we thought we’d done something fierce, beating the system that way. Hot diggedy-damn.
Anyway, this blog entry is in memory of that microscopic triumph among people who had in common only that they opposed the War.
The Yin Yang Conspiracy. A tiny piece of winning the Vietnam War by bringing the troops home. Winning the easy way. Coming out in the open, looking those cops, those stay-at-home flag-waving patriots in the eye through their riot masks, and saying, “Enough is enough!”
We learned a lot. Surveillance, provocateurs, intimidations probably weren’t so pervasive in those days. No yes-man Congress had passed a Patriot Act, so we still had some rights and protections under the US Constitution. It would be a tougher gig today.
But, if that was now we’d be doing it again. We’d be working in both, subtle and overt ways to bring those boys home.
Trying to get them out of there before too many more get all shot up and crippled up and be completely forgotten by the patriots who are waving flags back home.
Driving rural roads in Texas requires a lot of savoir-faire, cunning, and savvy. One minor slip and a person can find himself blessed with a new image because he violated a highway protocol.
That’s right. Greeting oncoming motorists in rural Texas is important business. You never risk the full finger howdy unless you know the guy you’re giving it to well enough to anticipate exactly what he’s up to.
Once you’re committed to the full finger howdy there’s no getting out of it. If he responds by staring ahead, looking off into the pasture through his passenger window, he wins. He’s communicated to you that he’s enough more important than you he can practice the one-upsmanship of ignoring you. He’s disdained your greeting, while awarding himself the uplifting feeling of having insulted you without danger of being insulted in return.
The most common way rural Texans avoid overstretching their trust in their fellow motorists is to hold out for a sign from the oncoming driver that he’s going to indulge in a greeting. This is awkward because it ends up being a game of chicken, each driver trying to out-wait the other to insure not being a loser, while avoiding being thought a snob.
Carefully executed, the tentative hat tip can be a good maneuver, both defensively, and offensively. Defensively, the user can quickly change from a full finger howdy in progress to snatching the hat and wiping his forehead on his sleeve in the blink of an eye. Offensively, he can perform this maneuver AFTER the other driver has committed, thereby, winning.
At highway speeds and in traffic usually there’s no time to complete the more complex rituals involving headgear. Instead, the game gets played from the top of the steering wheel.
The index finger acknowledge can have a number of different meanings. It might mean, “I don’t know who you are, but I don’t want to risk being rude.” It might mean, “Yeah, I see you but I’m not enthusiastic about it.” Or it might mean, “I don’t have time to play,” or, “I’m not from around here.”
The fast three finger hi means, “You almost got me.” Slower, it means, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you around but I haven’t formed an opinion of you yet.”
The full-hand steering wheel howdy is usually reserved for dirt roads or slow traffic and close acquaintances. It expresses, “I’m willing to stop and talk if you want to, but I’m not married to the idea.”
The spread hand steering wheel howdy usually means, “That hay you’re hauling is on fire.” However, sometimes it might mean, “That trash bag you threw out is caught on your antenna and waving around beside your Confederate battle flag.”
Thumb up canted right means, “Yeah, them boys won last night.” Or, “Yeah, I heard they dropped the DWI charges.” Or, “Yeah, I heard you won the lottery.”
Thumb up canted left means, “Just because I’m acknowledging you doesn’t mean I’m your new best friend.”
Then, of course, there’s always this. Usually stopped, or molasses-slow traffic. It can mean a lot of things, but one way or another it always means the same thing. The guy needs a shave and haircut.
Old Jules
Dinah Shore – Dear Hearts And Gentle People – 1949
———————————-
8AM afterthoughts:
http://selousscouts.blogspot.com/ featured a compact camping setup this morning worth the watch called swissbox home board. It’s expensive, but a person with a few tools and a bit of imagination could probably produce something similar for the inside of a van or camper, or use outdoors as depicted in the video. Customized for personal preferences and needs.
This morning I saw the first deliberate aggression I’ve ever beheld on the part of a doe. When I went out to turn the chickens loose and feed them she came in close and didn’t agree to be run off even a little way while she waited for me to throw out chicken feed to the hens. I waved a stick at her and she picked out an Australorp layer about 30 yards away, ran at her, kicked her rolling, and appeared intending to do more if I hadn’t come running and yelling to the rescue.
This might be the beginning of a change in policy regarding these starving critters. I’ve tolerated them storming the place, robbing chicken feed, being a pesky nuisance constantly, even doing minor damage, but I’m not going to tolerate attacks on the hens or cats.
Kay, the wife side of the couple owning the cabin where I live, is part of the family owning the property adjoining the ranch where the Roswell Incident happened in 1947. Her Aunt Loretta was the step-mother of Dee Proctor, the youngster with Mac Brazel when he discovered the debris on his land.
Loretta was there when Brazel brought Dee home that day carrying pieces of what they’d found. She sat at the table with the rest of the family considering while Mac Brazel tried to make sense of it, tried to decide what he should do.
“The piece he [Mac Brazel] brought looked like a kind of tan, light brown plastic. It was very lightweight, like balsa wood. It wasn’t a large piece, maybe about four inches long, maybe just a little larger than a pencil. We cut on it with a knife and would hold a match on it, and it wouldn’t burn. We knew it wasn’t wood. It was smooth like plastic.” “According to Brazel’s neighbor Loretta Proctor, her 7-year old son Timothy or “Dee” was with Brazel when he first discovered the debris field. But he was also with Brazel when he discovered something else at another site 2-1/2 miles to the east that left him deeply traumatized for the rest of his life.” This is frequently quoted from numerous locations on the web and in books about Roswell, but it provides a good summation or paraphrase of what Loretta had to say about that part of her experience during our visit recently.
Dee [the accounts continue] never told her exactly what he saw there but did take her to the location in 1994 saying, “Here is where Mack found something else.” Dee Proctor would also duck all attempts at interview and died in 2006.
However, Dee never ducked any conversations with Aunt Loretta, nor with his step-sister regarding the incident, though he was reticent to a degree according to the two women.
The popular accounts continue: “However, other rancher children are believed to have visited the site, including Sydney “Jack” Wright, who said that two sons of rancher Thomas Edington and one of rancher Truman Pierce’s daughters got to “the other location.” Wright in 1998 would state, “There were bodies, small bodies with big heads and eyes. And Mack was there too. We couldn’t get away from there fast enough.”
—————
A while back Gale, Kay and I went up to Comanche to visit her Aunt Loretta for an afternoon. I’d recently read Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt’s book, Witness to Roswell. Even though I ‘d thought before reading it the subject had beaten to death several decades ago, the book renewed my interest, so I was enthusiastic about meeting Aunt Loretta and discussing it with her, so I carried a recorder with me.
Loretta lives with her daughter now, raising goats, dancing one night a week, sharp of mind, intelligent and quick of wit. At 95, she’s a woman with a lot still to say, but careful about how she says it.
I was prepared by recent readings mentioned above, ready with questions, as were Gale and Kay, who’d also done the reading of Witness to Roswell. We sat for several hours, asked, and she and her daughter answered, sometimes drifting into nuance, squinting with loaded, pointed implication.
As we drove back Gale, Kay and I talked a lot about what Loretta and her daughter told us that afternoon. It all boiled down to what she’d personally observed, remembrances of Dee when he and Mac arrived at their ranch, asides about Dee, afterward, almost certainly still in possession of the ‘memory metal’ after it was supposed to have been all turned over to the Army. “A certain little brat kept it hidden away his whole life!” Loretta declared with a measure of smiling venom.
According to Aunt Loretta, Mac was in a quandry over what to do about the mess on his ranch. He’d heard somewhere the Army would pay a reward for anyone who found a ‘flying saucer’, but he had a lot of qualms about whether to get involved with the government. Like a lot of people of that time and that area, Mac didn’t have a lot of trust in them. A huge tract of land not far away had been confiscated from the families owning it just a few years earlier to create White Sands Proving Grounds, and the Trinity Site of the first atomic bomb detonation was just down the road and only a couple of years in the past.
There, in Loretta’s kitchen, Mac decided to go visit his wife and kids in Las Cruces for the next few days to think it over. It wasn’t until his return from Cruces he went to Roswell and reported what he’d found. Because of that delay of a week a lot of people in the Corona area knew about it a considerable while before the government did.
She’d provided a vivid description of the site, almost without seeming to realize she was doing it. The way the ridge was scoured of any plant life, the ‘remembrance’ of the ‘impact’ zone as she gazed at the wall telling about it. I came away believing Loretta probably visited the site herself, sometime shortly after the event.
But of all the questions we asked Loretta that afternoon the one thing that didn’t happen was any hint of denial of anything related to her, Dee, the events of those days as described in “Witness to Roswell”.
Whatever happened back there in 1947, there’s not much room to doubt that Loretta’s interpretation of it all doesn’t agree at all with government accounts and seems to agree in all ways where her personal experience and observations come into the events, with just about everything the ‘other side’ has been saying all along.
http://www.alienresistance.org/roswellufocrashsitephotos.htm
Edited in Preface: Someone’s told me this post is a bit grim, which floored me. That is NOT what this is all about. I might well be the happiest man on the planet, the most joyful and grateful for the roof over his head, for the animalcules, for every moment of this life I’m blessed with. I am sure as hell not complaining about the way I live in this post, not poking around looking for sympathy from anyone. There’s not one of you I’d trade lives with.
Please allow your mind to read what follows with a smile. I love this crap. This post is me laughing at myself, laughing at whatever life might throw at me, telling life, “Do your damnedest! I’ll keep coming.”
“Science,” Hydrox the jellicle cat insists, “You observe, you formulate a premise, you test the premise and revise it, then you test again. Just make damned certain it’s right this time.” Hydrox is one of the two felines indoors during cool, and especially during inclement weather. “If science isn’t cutting it try some engineering.”
He takes a jaundiced view of hiding under something to get away from thunder only to get drenched by a lousy roof repair experiment. Hydrox is attuned Level 3 Reiki.
“Reiki Masters,” he assures me, ” At least cat Reiki Masters, don’t appreciate being interrupted from doing high-minded things by getting sloshed because of criminal negligence on the part of a human being.”
Back when I was attuning him several people thought this mightn’t be a good thing. It’s been a mixed blessing.
That chimney pipe was leaking badly back when it still rained. But this repair job hasn’t had the test of a good rainfall yet.
Edit: This larger diameter stovepipe came from Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store [toward the bottom here: Curiouser and curiouser ] for a couple of bucks. If the current fix doesn’t work I’ll cut the down-end with the angle cutter to match the slope of the roof, cut the top shorter than the chimney vent and sleeve the chimney with it. I thinks it will block of a lot, if not all the pesky intrusion of rain into the chimney pipe.
As you can see, I’ve smeared tar all over the the joints in the sheet metal roof, in addition to the customized chimney. That didn’t work too well, I’ll confess. Got some other things to try though. The light brown or tan you see is the foam you get at the hardware store that is touted as being able to plug large leaks by expanding into them to fill in the space. No joy on that.
The chimney problem’s crucial. Water hitting the side of it goes inside, runs down to the elbow in the bedroom but doesn’t slow down much:
[The gray hat’s a XXXXXX John B Stetson I picked up at a silent auction a few years ago for $10. Man who owned but never wore it died and left it to me, though we never met.]
Naturally there’s a backup plan to keep water from coming down on the bed in the unlikely event it rains:
This has worked pretty well in the light rain arena. Hasn’t been tested in a bull goose honest-to-goodness wind blowing rain sideways daddy-long-legs storm.
But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks. Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell! Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm. What’s the big deal? If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.
“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.”
Then have a look at the positions of the three weirdest spin axis / magnetic fields in the solar system. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune:
Old Jules
8:30 AM – Just for those who think a blog entry ought to have something for everyone.
Tired of buying compressed air to blow the dirt out of your computer, watching the prices on it rise to simulate gold?
60# of pressure that doesn’t run out. Cost was $2 in a thrift store.
Computer gurus will tell you it might cause moisture to condense on the important components of your comp. Physics says they ought to be maybe right because of the venturi created when the air expands leaving the pressurized tube.
I’ve been using this one inside and outside my comps for about two years. Haven’t seen any signs of condensation, haven’t experienced any damage to the comps, haven’t spent a penny on compressed air, don’t have a bunch of empty cans lying around wondering what to do with themselves.
But that’s just me. I’m a risk taker.
It also serves as a great, compact bellows for starting fires in a wood stove.
Mama Nature after two days of brainwashing with canned thunder:
Old Jules
5:00 PM – Decided I needed to go to Kerrville for necessaries. Ended up getting a couple of watermelons from an old guy brings them up from the valley. He says it’s his last watermelon trip for the year, says they’ve gotten too high in cost down there to allow him any profit after hauling costs. I told him he needs to buy another truck and make up the difference in volume. Some jokes have been dead long enough for reincarnating them. This one fell on deaf ears. Only drew a puzzled look, as though he was considering the entrepreneural aspects.
This was hard to resist. All those foam ice chests could have kept my chickens pooping foam plastic until spring.
Those shower doors are still coming in for them I reckons, with nobody buying them. I got 20 free for building my chicken house out of, but I’m betting you’d have to pay $5 for all these until they’re ready to put them in the dumpster.
Those have collected dust, been around a while. I’m guessing a person could have them all at a righteous price as low as your conscience would allow you to offer.
Next stop:
Not much going on here.
Next stop:
A guy surely needs one of those, eh?
Didn’t buy nuffin there though. Eventually did pick off a $3 electric 6 cup rice steamer never been out of the box at Salvation Army Thrift Store.
Someone showed me a website where a person can send emails to be delivered to themselves at some specified future time. http://www.futureme.org/
Interesting thought.
What’s more interesting, however, is that a person’s allowed to have those emails to his future self posted for the public to read, though those are anonymous.
It’s a study in the way a lot of people view themselves.
One intriguing shot some 16 year old fired at his 22 year old self,
“I hope you’re out of the Marine Corps by now. If you aren’t, you are an idiot.”
A 16-er who ain’t yet in the Gyrenes telling his future self he hopes he’s out by now and implying going in was a mistake???
But what’s most puzzling is the way so many are lecturing their future selves.
“I hope you own fifteen rent houses by now and are driving a Corvette. If not, you’ve been procrastinating. Get busy.”
Evidently a lot of people are going along on the assumption they’re as wise now as they’ll be five or ten years from now, and that the person they’ll be won’t shudder, nor blush that HERE’s what they used to be. Here’s how they used to think. Whew.
“No wonder my life is such a mess if THAT’s where I came from”, they’ll be saying.
One cute one from some young adult of indeterminate age was addressed to him/herself to be delivered, January 1, 2013. It congratulates the future self for being there to read the email, reminding about how he/she had been into Mayan prophesy predicting the end of the world in 2012.
OOOOOOOkay.
Got me thinking, what’s really needed is a site where we can send emails to be delivered to ourselves at specified times in the past.
For instance, I could send one to me for delivery January 1, 1999.
“Hi guy.
“You just took your retirement funds out of their safe haven, retired, and you’re getting ready to go off and prepare for the collapse of civilization.
“You think the banks, the IRS, everything’s going deep South a year from now.
“You think buying that land on installments is a smart move, that the money’s better spent buying food, shelter, barter items, medications, for hoards of refugees that will be coming out of the cities. Because,
“You think when civilization collapses the taxes, the installments, even paper cash will be gone, kaput.
“I don’t want to influence you about most of what you’re going to do during the next year, but I do have a couple of suggestions.
“First, notice I’m sending you this email by computer from 2011.
“Second, you’ve asked yourself what you’re going to do if the lights don’t go out and think you know the answer. Prepare yourself for a surprise or two. No need to change anything much, but keep in mind life is full of the unexpected. Savor the adventure.
“Third, store your retirement cash you’re depending on in case Y2K doesn’t happen in a metal container where the rats can’t get to it. (Trust me on this one. Just do it and don’t ask any questions.)
“Other than that, you’re doing fine, sport. Just go on with what you were doing when you opened this email.
“From the man you’re going to be twelve HARD years from now,”
“Jules”
“PS – There’s a website out there where you can answer this email and have it delivered to me now. Don’t bother. I was you once. I remember all about it. You don’t have anything to say I don’t know already.
“PPS – Start learning as much as you can learn about playing blackjack. You’re going to need it for a while.
“I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t mention that you are one incredibly stupid SOB, though you don’t know it yet. You won’t know it in 2002, 2006, 2008, even 2010, either, though it won’t have changed. In fact, you’ll always be convinced you are right on top of things during all those times. No problem, chum. It will add a lot of adventure and spice to our life.
“You don’t get to be smart until September, 2011. Tough gig but it’s something to look forward to.”
NOTE: I can’t visit Face Book because of the load time and my slow connection. However, Jeanne’s posted a video on my FB what? Account? Site? Whatever they do over there. It’s a short thing of a fawn born under my porch she caught on camera while she was here. Those of you who are able to open Face Book might enjoy it. Jules
Expect an uneventful day, blogsters. Nothing has happened in the world on September 13, since 1922:
Turkey 1922 Turkey Constantinople
13th Sept. 1922 : Following the Turkish Victory in Constantinople, crowds have taken to the streets and are attacking Greek churches and homes and destroying them . The Turkish troops have been dispatched to keep order. The spread of Typhus and the Plague are now reaching epidemic proportions but authorities are insisting they do no not wish aid in the form of medical assistance from neighboring countries.
Actually there was this: U.S. 1926 U.S.A. Bandits Robbing Mail Trains
13th September 1926 : The Post Office Department sent a memo to it’s army of 25,000 railway mail clerks an order to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail, this follows an ever increasing number of robberies by bandits on the mail service which carries millions of dollars worth of mail every day. They also issued a statement saying that if the robberies continue the marines will be bought in again to protect the mail. http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/september13th.html
But otherwise nothing’s ever happened on September 13, since 1922, so relax.
On the other hand, this from Spaceweather.com
HARVEST MOONBOW: Last night’s Harvest Moon was so bright, it did something normally reserved for the sun. It made a rainbow:
“I was surprised to see a rainbow at night,” says Marsha Adams of Sedona, Arizona, who took the picture nearly 2 hours before sunrise. “The rainbow was apparently caused by the Harvest Moon beaming through the rain clouds.”
Indeed, moonlight reflected by raindrops breaks into the colors of a rainbow just like sunlight does. It takes an especially bright Moon, however, to make the phenomenon visible to the human eye. Did anyone else spot a Harvest Moonbow? Submit your images here.
I’ve been talking this over with the cats and chickens this morning, the September 13 ennui, and the possible implications and ramifications as they apply to the human psyche and potential injecting something to mitigate it all. Eventually we agreed on a course of action.
Today I’m going to be playing a constantly repeating CD of a violent thunderstorm outdoors with as much volume as I can coax out of the receiver and speakers. We here in the middle of nowhere want to do our small part for humanity while maybe giving a whispering hint to Mama Nature without being pushy.
It’s a true fact I’ve observed whenever I’ve been around watching people watch television: When the box shoots out canned laughter it triggers laughter on the people watching it. It’s time, the cats, the chickens and I have decided, to give Mama Nature a healthy dose of canned thunder and the sound of rain falling.
Old Jules
9:30 AM – Raising the ante:
On the off-chance I’m being too subtle in my communications with Mama Nature, I’ve got a load of socks and underwear in my handy-dandy 1947 Kenmore washing machine [ Clean Underwear and Hard Times ] running the gauntlet. After the rinse I’m not going to wring them out, but instead will hang them from the line to provide the nearest thing I’m able to rainfall hitting the dirt underneath the line.
I’m betting between the canned thunder, the sound of rainfall, and all that dripping underneath, Mama Nature’s plenty smart enough to put it all together.
I just hope I got all the soap out of my socks and drawers. I don’t need Mama Nature soaping down the countryside and trying to wash all the stuff out of the holes in the roof I’ve been plugging to stop the leaks if it ever rains.
Compulsive personality. That’s the only possible explanation I can think of for this recurring pattern in my life.
Today I had to go into Harper to pay a bill due tomorrow. I hate to make a trip in without getting full value for the gasoline expended getting there, so after I’d taken care of business I drove around the several back streets. I was craning my neck, straining my eyes, looking into the back yards of abandoned houses for a cab-over camper or camper trailer I might be able to pick up cheap as a potential way to give myself an escape route if something goes sour here.
I’ll be posting about some of that Harper thing another time. But after I finished nosing the back streets I went to the Harper Library Resale Store just because it was there. Picked up $6.00 worth of used books at 25 cents each, moseyed around and eyeballed a wireless weather station with rain gauge, anemometer, all manner of goodies for $20. But the box was open and there was dust on it.
My computer-like mind registered this and concluded it had been sitting there a while, nobody willing to pay $20 for it. So I carried my books to the register and while she counted them, “That weather station back there looks as though it’s been here a while.”
She stopped counting and looked at me grinning. They know me there. “You want to bargain about it?”
“Wulll. Actually, I’m not sure I want it. I couldn’t pay more than $10.”
She grinned and pointed to the room where it was located, started walking back there. “You’re going to TAKE $10? You ought not take $10.” Sheeze. We don’t get any weather here and who cares how fast the wind is blowing? When we got there she picked it up out of the box, frowning.
“The wind direction doesn’t work is the only thing.”
“Bobby Dylan and I decided a long time ago we didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
So back to the register. $16.00. She holds up an orange card. “Do you have one of these yet?” No, I nods. “Every time you buy $10 worth of anything we stamp it. When you’ve got $10 stamped 10 times you get $10 off your next purchase.”
“Whoah! You’re telling me if I spent $4 more I’d have gotten two stamps on there?”
Smile. “Yes.”
“Okay. Let me wander around in here a little longer.”
I found four copies of the Texas Historical Review from the 1990s for 50 cents each. Then I found a pair of good sneakers that fit marked $3. I carried them back to the register. “Okay. $2 for the Historical Reviews and $3 for the shoes. Give me another stamp on that card.”
She starts adding, mutters, “Men shoes are half price today. You’re 50 cents short. 26 cents even if we count the sales tax.”
Deep breath. “I want to donate 26 cents to the library. Stamp the card.”
Speedometer cable was making noise on the Toyota when it went Communist. Maybe if the cable breaks I can attach that anemometer to the top of the truck and use the wind speed for a speedometer if I ever get the 4Runner running on pavement again.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
