Monthly Archives: August 2013

Keeping stupidity to a minimum

Posted on August 2, 2013 by | 12 comments

Hi readers.

Last trip to Kerrville, after I had my spanking new 10 ply tires mounted, after I’d been inside the Walmart store and bought a 1/2 inch hammer drill [which ain’t going to do the intended job, will have to be returned] I was feeling uppidy something awful.  I got everything tucked into places where it wouldn’t scatter hell-to-breakfast and headed out of the parking lot.

Guy was sitting on the side before the stop sign in a wheel chair.  Had a sign, “Vet – Appreciate any help“.  Stump of one leg sticking out.  I craned my neck and squinted, drove on by, then backed up and pulled to the side, cursing myself.  Hell, I don’t care whether he’s a vet.  Damned guy only has one leg, for Christsake.  Sheeze.  Damnittohell.  Probably got more money than I do, anyway.  Damnittohell.

I rolled down my window and he rolled up close.  “Hey man. ”  He watched me thumbing through my small bill wallet trying to decide how much.  “How you doing?”

“Doing okay.”  At least I’ve got both my freaking legs.  Ain’t stooped to begging on the street.  I squeezed my eyes shut so’s to not have to look at the $20 I handed him.

“Hey, thanks man.”

“No problem.  Hang in there.”  I rolled up the window and backed the RV enough to get back on the road, clinching my teeth, cursing myself for being such a dumbass.  Knowing he’s probably got all kinds of support from a lot of directions.  Searching my mind for rationalizations for having done it.

Finally settled on thinking of Jeanne’s brother, Carl.  Guy’s got MS, crippled up something awful.  Made a lot of lousy decisions in life and got old, in and out of hospitals.  Can’t do squat, doesn’t know from one day to the next whether he and his wife will have a place to live.  Mostly his own fault for not doing everything he could for himself, applying for help from sources it might have been available.

Hell, I decided, if I saw Carl beside the road with a sign I’d give him a $20.  Even if a lot of his problem is his own fault.  The MS ain’t, and we human beings are dumber than cluckshit.  None of us worth shooting. 

Screw it.  The cats and I are generally healthy and at least the stupid we carry around ain’t as heavy on the shoulders at that guy.  Or Carl.  Cripes.  A month from now I’ll never even miss that $20.

Screw it.  But next time I ain’t going to do it.  I hope.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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Hermits, misers and short-term memory

Posted on August 2, 2013 by | 6 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Last night I found myself with my two wallets out, the one where I keep $100s and $50s, counting them carefully, and the one where I keep $20s, $10s, $5s and $1s, adding them all up.  [I keep them in two different wallets so’s I can’t accidentally hand a store clerk a large bill thinking it’s a small one, can’t lose the big bill wallet and hit rock bottom between two breaths].

After carefully counting it all out, got the map, the calculator, re-figured the gas mileage averages per gallon I’ve been getting on the RV, the distances between places I might drive to, and the cost in fuel if nothing else goes wrong.

After I’d figured and re-figured all that a few times I went in to the cabin and began unloading boxes of books I’d packed to carry into town to donate to thrift stores, opening each one and fanning the pages.  Just to make sure.  [A few weeks ago I’d found a $100 in one I must have stashed in there sometime when I had an extra and wanted to put it aside for a rainy day.]

Found a couple of books I want to read again before disposing of them, but not one $100 bill.  So I went around looking at things and other hidey holes where I might have stashed bills so’s I wouldn’t spend them, then forgot.  Checking the pockets of blue jeans, coats and jackets, taking the lids off button jars and pill bottles looking inside, moving the buttons pills etc, in case I’d shoved a bill down inside out of sight.

Got me thinking how damned sick this whole money thing is.  I remembered for the first time in 40-50 years a book, My Brother’s Keeper, I read as a youngster and was impressed enough to have it stamped on my memory.  About some old guy must have been a lot like me.  And remembering all the fictional misers stereotyped in books I’ve read over the decades.

Guys who died and people disposing of their belongings coming across pillows, mattresses, loose floor boards, with gobs of money.  While the guy half-starved.  Hell, maybe they forgot they had it.

Got me wondering if maybe I’ve got a stash around here full of $100s and ain’t remembering I’ve got it. 

Maybe it’s time I went out into the meadow and dug some holes, crawled down underneath the cabin to check out the floor joists, the piers and beams for money I hid.  I doubt I’d have done that, though.  After the packrats shredded all my retirement money I had hidden under a floor joist in the Y2K cabin, I like to think I learned a lesson.

So where the hell DID I put all the money I must have stashed around here over the past few years and forgot?

Sicksicksick. 

Old Jules

Afterthought: It’s no damned wonder so many people who are actually rich are so preoccupied with getting richer.  They’re probably forgotting they’re already rich.  Or can’t remember where their money is.

6 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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1965 Time Machine – The Cat-People Vote

Posted on August 1, 2013 by | 3 comments

Hydrox:  Don’t even think about this Edgewood, New Dawn crap. 

Me:  What?  You cat-people don’t like the mountains?

Hydrox:  We cat-people don’t like anachronisms.  We don’t trust them.  They let their dogs run loose.  They lie around smoking dope waiting for the uniforms to show up and confiscate everything, haul everyone off to the slammer.

Me:  We’re talking about the EAST mountains, Hydrox.  If they’re paying off the right people it doesn’t matter what they’re doing out there.  Besides, they’re looking for people willing to work.

Hydrox:  Yeah, but work doing what?  Breaking Ephedrin caps out of packages?  Stirring up the mix to dissolve it?  Watching the acetone mist boil over the sides?  Watching the crystal iodine vapor turn your whiskers purple?

Me:  No, Hydrox.  You’ve got it all wrong.  These people are into sweetness and light.  Harmonizing with nature.  Working to build a new world.  A community.

Hydrox:  I’m betting pit bulls checking the fenceline and a National Guard Armory in the barn.

Me:  I don’t know how you got so cynical. 

Hydrox:  I was living with you 2002, 2003, 2004.  So was Niaid.  Those East Mountainers made an impression old cats aren’t likely to forget.

Me:  You’re too suspicious.    Free place to park the RV, mountains, pinons and pines.  Idealistic young people.

Hydrox:  If your good sense about the rest didn’t raise your hackles enough to tell you it’s a snakepit, the idealistic young people ought to do the job.

Me:  Hmmmm.  Yeah, idealistic young people’s where you make your strongest point.  Actually they probably do have a meth lab out there.   Or will have.  How the hell could they not? 

Hydrox:  Pit bulls running around loose looking for a free lunch. 

Me:  So you’re thinking Gila?  Mimbres? 

Hydrox:  I’m thinking anywhere but the East Mountains.  Mosquero if it comes to it.  Albuquerque’s a nice place to visit.  Wouldn’t mind seeing Amy again, see how those two Chinese girls she adopted are growing up.  But you’re too old and we cats are too old to be getting involved with East Mountain people.

Me:  I hate to see you generalizing, stereotyping. 

Hydrox:  I hate to see you not using that big brain you’re stuck with.  Hell, if it weren’t for us cats you’d probably be living under a bridge.

Me:  [Sigh] I’ve got you, babe. 

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Human Behavior, Nature, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Police

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1965 -They’re still out there trying to bring it back

Posted on August 1, 2013 by | 2 comments

New stanzas for the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

NEW DAWN PROJECT

EDGEWOOD, New Mexico WELCOME HOME!!!

REQUESTING YOU!

If

If you identify with any of these identities, you may be a good fit with our community:
Contractors/skilled labor
Homesteaders
Hippies willing to work
Yuppies willing to get dirty
“I’ve got to get out of the city”
Currently without a home/work, but want both
Adventurer/Learner
Rainbow Family
Have lived in co-mmunity before
Artist/Musician . . . . . . . . .Other?

Building Community
FROM THE GROUND UP!
New Dawn Project has existed for about a year as an intentional community. We are in the formative stage our development – like a child eager, excited, and ready to learn, with lots of energy to expend and fun to be had! On the other hand, we are operated (parented by) folks who have put many years of time and effort into community planning, who have structures in place to ensure our good growth, and who are committed to New Dawn’s total nurturing. Join us in this adventure!
As a guest of New Dawn Project, you will need to be able to feed yourself, clean up after yourself, and contribute to the community. There is no rent. We are open to whatever combination of couples/ individuals/ families, etc. who want to live together here. Most ideally we are seeking 6 – 12 people who can work independently and cooperatively, leave each other alone when needed, hang out and appreciate one another when wanted. Community-minded and oriented folks are welcome to check us out. Temporary guests welcome also. Your questions are welcome. We are open. . . . . !

We welcome Family to rest or visit – a day, a month, or to become a member of New Dawn.

Let us CELEBRATE TOGETHER!PLEASE NOTE: New Dawn can and will provide rides as we are able to and from the Edgewood and/or Moriarty exits of I-40 to the property. However, we cannot guarantee rides from other locations, such as Albuquerque. If in doubt, CALL and ask ahead. 🙂

2 Comments

Posted in Adventure

Hitch-hiking from Beatnik to Hippiedom

Posted on August 1, 2013 by | 5 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

When I got out of the Army, summer 1964, I had a lot of ideas about my bright future.  Shopped around the Portales area for a while and found a quarter-section cotton farm I thought briefly I’d buy and become a starving-to-death farmer, which fell through.  Worked meanwhile, for Abe Ribble at his cement operation, and applied for the Peace Corps, knowing I wouldn’t hear from them for several months.

I was hanging out with a number of other young guys who were at loose ends, drinking coffee and walking around town, sitting on benches around the courthouse trying to figure out the meaning of life.  Going out with a waitress out at the truckstop when she got off work at midnight.  A young woman with goals, and confidence that no matter what a man might want for himself, she could mold him into something more to her liking.  Once she got him nailed down on all the corners.

The World Fair was going on in New York that year.  I could feel the walls of Portales trying to close in on me, and the guys I’d been spending spare time with were mostly thinking of themselves as beatniks, to the extend a person could be a beatnik in Portales.  A slight beard and a beret went a long way in that direction.  Sketchpad and a piece of charcoal, or a lot of free-verse poems jotted on cafe napkins were the tools.

So another aspiring beatnik, Stan Sexton, and I, decided to hitch to beatnik heaven.  Check out the World Fair.  Visit a couple of New Yorker weekend beatniks who went to Eastern New Mexico University, but were home in Westchester that summer.

I’ve told elsewhere on this blog about that summer, about sleeping on the Brooklyn Bridge, about catching the freight-train out late-August, jail in Rochester, and eventually hitching, driving the school bus to California, etc.  About all those would-be beatnik women and the “Eh?  YOU don’t believe in free love?” pickup line that always worked.

When I was accepted for Peace Corps Training and headed out of New York I had no idea I was seeing the dying gasp of the Beatnik phase everywhere.  That a year later everyone who was anyone would be Hippy.  That Greenwich Village would be replaced by San Francisco as the center of ‘what’s happening in America’.  Kids would be burning their draft-cards and taking acid trips.  Doing ‘Love-ins’ in the park.

By the time I got back to Portales to spend my time waiting for the Peace Corps India X training to begin in Hawaii the world had begun a sea-change, though it didn’t know it. 

But at least some of the pressure was off in Portales.  The waitress had found someone else with better prospects for a bright future.  Cotton farmer, he turned out to be, if I remember correctly.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, History, hitch hiking, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Peace Corps, Portales, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Spirituality, Trains, Transportation

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