I mentioned a couple of days ago that Gale recently acquired some material of a sort I’d never seen previously. One he was working on when I went up there was opalized petrified wood.
He’d never seen any before, either, so he polished up this piece just to get an idea what he was working with.
He’d just finished cutting this piece and it was a bit oily from the saw. It’s going to be a beautiful chunk of rock when it’s polished. Beneath it’s another recent acquisition, zebra agate, formed from river delta bottom mud. The paisley’s caused by the shells of marine life. He hasn’t slabbed and polished any of it yet.
This gives you an idea of the size of the chunk he got. He doesn’t expect to ever see any again, so he’s trying to plan ahead carefully insofar as what he’ll make from it.
Meanwhile he’s keeping three saws working up there slabbing the jewelry quality stone he picked up at the San Antonio Rock and Mineral Show, hmm or maybe it was Austin, a few days back.
I’ve been friends with Gale since 1970. At the time our circle of friends used to joke Gale was the busiest person any of us had ever met. Most of them are dead, or faded into history, so I’m the only one left to testify. He’s still the busiest man I’ve ever known.
Here’s one of the last several remaining of those Siberian Wolf Fang pendants he was working on a while back.
Here’s another of those recent acquisitions just off the saw.
Watching Gale work used to be a hair-raising experience back 30-35 years ago before he lost that finger. He became a legend for a while by making a fairly detailed chess set out of exotic woods using a radial arm saw, holding each piece between two fingers while he made his cuts with the saw.
I occasionally remind him of this piece of history and he always replies, “That wasn’t what I cut the finger off doing.”
In 1967 I was working 5.5 days a week doing hard physical labor, taking night courses at the University of Houston and having an urgent, compelling romance with my wife-to-be living in Port Lavaca, 150 miles away. Every minute I could spare I cranked up that Metropolitan and headed west to spend a few hours with her. Even for a young man exhaustion built and I had a lot of difficulty staying awake while driving.
Picking up hitch-hikers was one of the ways I stayed awake. Just having someone to talk to on that endless road was a major asset.
1967 was a year of serious racial tensions and polarization. During the years immediately previous a gradual mind-opening of tolerance was manifested in a brief cliche, “I’ve got nothing against blacks, but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.” For a while a person heard that at least once a week.
One day as I was leaving Houston I stopped for two black guys hitching at an empty stretch of highway. As they ran up to the car they saw the University of Houston sticker on back and without moving to get in they took on a grinning, belligerant-but-joshing attitude. “You go to U of H?”
“Yeah. Where you guys headed?”
Still no move to get in. “We go to Texas Southern [a black university in Houston]. You a queer? The last guy picked us up went to U of H was a queer. Dumped us out here ’cause we didn’t want none of him.”
“I’m not a queer. I’m going to Port Lavaca to see my girl friend.”
They relaxed and squeezed into the Metropolitan, joshing about the klutzy car, how tight it was, how they didn’t want to be seen riding with a white guy. “Anyone sees us riding with you they’ll think you’re queer. They’ll think we’re letting you queer us.”
As we reached highway speed I grinned and looked over at them. “I’ve got nothing against queers but I wouldn’t want my brother to marry one.”
Both of them gagged on that, double-took me, one another, trying to decide whether to be offended. Finally one of them guffawed. “Hey man, that’s a good one!” Held his hand up to be slapped.
Turned out to be fairly nice guys headed to Corpus Christi for the weekend. The drive to Port Lavaca went by fast, once we decided we were just three young guys not needing to fight, fear, or scrutinize every word for some slur or threat.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much times have changed.
Ruidoso Steak-House
Glanced at her reflection
In the plate-glass window
New squash-blossom turquoise
Sassy Stetson
Patted 50ish blonde curls
And wished
They’d eaten at the casino
Where this didn’t happen
Wrinkled pretty nose
“Don’t give him anything He’ll just get drunk!” Stage whispered
To her Houston lady friend
As though he wasn’t there
She was right of course
Except the old man Mescalero
Was already drunk
He turned away
Then turned back and mumbled
“Sing the Song of Life each day Or when the time arrives you won’t know how To sing the Song of Death.”
Coming back from Fredericksburg yesterday I spotted this sitting in a field 100 yards off the pavement. I felt an immediate kinship, made a U-turn to go back for a closer look.
The first new vehicle I ever owned was a 1970 F150. Standing here looking at this one too-long left in a pasture, flat tires, dents and proud sign I flashed a brief, joyful memory of driving mine back to Austin from the dealership in Luling.
Someone did the same with this one from some other dealership. I wonder if he remembers the day, wonder if he’s even alive to remember some piece of geography he shared with this heap of steel, glass and rubber before me.
The young don’t know enough
About being young
They squander youth
And never know ’til later.
Any lad of twelve will testify
An eight-year-old can’t even qualify
To be a child
At eighteen our own ignorance
At fifteen is finally written
In language we comprehend:
We know the score
Reality’s the icing on the cake
Of youthful fantasies;
When the young grow old
They know a lot
About being young
But almost nothing
About being old.
But trucks know
Trucks have the dents
Worn bearings
Frayed seat-covers
Holding a thousand
Passed-gas kisses
Spilled drinks
Forgotten miles
Of those who forgot.
The human mind is a strange place to find ourselves living if we ever get enough distance from the background noise to notice. I tend to notice it a lot.
This morning seemed destined to be just another day. Gale and Kay were doing the Austin Gem and Mineral Show, so I’d figured to walk up to his house to get the truck mid-day so’s to take care of putting their chickens to bed tonight. Startled me a bit when I looked up and there he sat in Little Red a few feet away, having brought it down to me. My hearing must be further gone than I’d realized.
Seemed they’d no sooner gone than I got an email from Jeanne saying my old friend from childhood and later lost-gold-mine chasing days was in Fredericksburg trying to get hold of me hoping I could get over there for lunch. Heck, it must be 15 years or more since I’ve seen Keith, though recently he’s been reading this blog. Naturally him being 40 miles away and me with a truck sitting there available, I headed over there.
Really nice visit, but in the course of bringing one another up-to-date he asked me a number of questions about my situation here that forced me to take a hard look and organize my thoughts about it all. That kicked off a series of trails of thinking to organize clearer, more concrete priorities for myself within a realistic examination of my options.
There aren’t a lot of them, but they’re all stacked atop a single one: having the means of leaving this place in a relatively short time if the need arises. It’s time I decided on a single course of action and begin leading events in a direction that allows it to congeal in a way that accomodates the needs of the cats.
But the process of thinking about it in an organized way had a parallel thinking-path over whispering somewhere else in my brain wiggling out a sort of excitement, anticipation about it. Here’s something that will be pure trauma and agony for the cats I do everything possible to spare such things, and my ticker’s beating a little faster in a pleasurable way just considering it.
That, combined with the certainty the process of getting things together to execute the plan I come with is going to involve some unpleasantness, excruciating work and fingernail chewing as it goes along.
Seems I’ve somehow contrived to be two different places at the same time inside my mind. One being pushed by probabilities to do what makes sense rather than what I’d prefer, the cats would prefer. And one reaching somewhere into fond memories of pinon trees, high mountains and an entirely different sort of solitude than I have here.
Keith confided to me today, “Everyone thinks you’re crazy.” I can’t find any good argument that everyone’s wrong. It’s nice being crazy and still being as happy as I manage to be all the time, though.
Anyway, to satisfy that fiddle-footed nagging, here are some songs of the highway and the road.
The politico dependent portion of the US population has gone to enormous effort to keep the boundaries of dialogue within a poured concrete septic tank for an awfully long time. Those boundaries have confined what can be expressed by the totally disfranchised, the largely disfranchised, the mildly disfranchised and the slightly disfranchised safely outside platforms for discussion.
Two dominant political parties, lobbyists, government contractors, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies and the health industry, multi-national corporations and defense industry entitlement organizations have all found comfortable niches to work within that structure and prosper. The symbiosis benefits the yin of government officials, both elected and hired-hands, and furthers the interests of the yang of anyone with the financial backing to feed the gargantuan resulting from it all.
Technology and communications at a grassroots level have conspired to abruptly allow voices outside that structure to be heard in the context of peaceful assembly by citizens with little in common besides their frustration with being locked outside the box. Evidently enough of that dissatisfaction exists to spread their numbers over a surprisingly wide area.
Enough to set off the burglar alarms across the spectrum of the comfort zones of those accustomed to doing precisely as they wish quietly in warm and friendly waters. Probably their best strategy would have been to ignore it all and almost certainly it would have gone away. It would have faded without the tsunami of indignation the bought and paid for elements of mass communication rattling denouncement through every channel, calling out the cavalry, piling insult and venom on those peacefully expressing themselves in harmless ways.
This ‘movement’ wasn’t created by the seedlings who began it. The Occupy Wall Street movement would have died on the vine if it hadn’t been nurtured and fertilized by the shrill cries of the safe and comfortable denouncing it. And by continuing to do so they provide the life blood for future expansion.
The protests on wall street are those coming from inside the buildings. Someone’s opening a door they believed they had locked.
Me thinks the lady [inside the buildings] protests too much.
Brother Coon and I couldn’t come to an agreement about the availability of indoors as acceptable behavior for a coon with a long life expectancy. Whatever I did to keep him out, half an hour later he’d be poking around trying to find a way in, eventually leading to success.
Last night I’d had a bellyfull of it. I brought the live trap in and put it down next to the sack of cat food, then went to bed. Around 3:00 am I heard the trap slam shut and a lot of ruckus. Transported trap, coon and angry all outdoors to await arraignment, trial, conviction and final disposition.
For once I predicted something and it came to pass. That ice chest I salvaged out of the grader ditch actually has proved itself the popular cat-hotel I hoped it would.
Evidently a bat got confused and got snagged in the buglight instead of coming into the cabin to fly around as they usually do.
Every m0rning the chickens feast under that light as soon as I turn them loose. But I think I’d best unplug it before I poke around with a stick trying to get that bat out of there.
Ah well. Maybe the chickens will eat it.
This cool morning had me putting on clothing instead of running around with nothing but shoes on to turn out the chickens and feed the cats. But it reminded me I’ve been almost a year without any gas for the cookstove and no way except the woodstove to knock the morning chill out of the cabin. I’m going to have to do something about that.
Then there’s this:
It’s coming nigh onto time to haul water again. Probably also ought to try to figure out what’s wrong with that well pump. It’s been since last December it quit, but I didn’t want to rush anything. If I need to pull that pump I didn’t want to do it in cold weather when it happened, but didn’t want to do it in hot weather the rest of the time.
Saw this in the parking lot of the Humane Society Thrift Store the other dayInside the guy was easy to identify, looked about like you'd figure
He was poking around in a box of old LP records. I tried to start a conversation with him about old music but he wasn’t having any of it.
This old XP’s going kerplunk. I picked up a replacement at the Thrift Store and if I can figure out where all these wires go I’ll have it in here in a jiffy as soon as I get around to it.
Protesting people being uncivil to senior citizens
I’m back from town and today I began my Occupy 40 Miles per Hours Protest of people saying and doing ugly things to senior citizens. A long line of sympathetic protestors formed behind me, sometimes dozens joined me in the protest. Many even honked their horns and flashed their lights on and off.
I doubt most of them knew what we were protesting, but they joined me anyway, slowing down and enjoying themselves on those hilly, curving roads.
I could tell which ones I was justified in my protesting of them because they yelled at me and shot me the bird as they finally went around me.
An uplifting, community-like experience all in all.
I don’t get to town all that often, so I naturally like to put on the dog, spiff myself up a bit. Sometimes that includes shaving, but I’ve found the average electric just doesn’t do the job. Add to that the fact the disposables and the replaceable blade razors leave a person with a dangerous piece of throwaway I’ve not yet figured out any use for.
Still, I like to look nice when I go to town, so I use the tool I also use to remove a lot of clogged hair from the two longhaired cats I share the place with. The shorthairs consider it a blessing to be exempt.
Starting out here’s how it appears:
After. You can see there’s a difference if you look closely.
Add a John B Stetson, a cleanest shirt and bluejeans, galluses, a pair of deadman’s boots from some thrift store and I’ll have the hearts of the town ladies all a-flutter with the fantods.
Gotta get moving, dress up and walk up the hill to see if Little Red’s available for the borrowing. Later this day maybe I’ll tell you what exciting happened there.
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 