Category Archives: Trucks

Escape Route Version 2.5

Ford RV

1970s Ford

If the guy isn’t disinformationing me about the shape it’s in, this might be the next step in the long road home.  He says it’s got all new tires, spent the last 20 years under a carport, says everything works and is willing to provide the means for me to test everything before we finalize a deal.

Says it’s never had any leaks of any kind, roof, plumbing, and the structure, panelling of the coach is solid.  Says it has 60,000 actual miles on the gasoline engine.

If he hasn’t sold it by the time I can get to see it I’ll have a careful look at it first chance I can manage.

Reincarnation – Life after the evidence locker

dodge powerwagonWhen I came across this picture on the web a while back I was fairly certain I recognized it.  I believed and still believe it’s the truck belonging to the man and wife wood cutter couple murdered in Catron County, New Mexico while I was working Fox Mountain.  An incident I described in loving detail in the Adams Diggings book.  They were found several months later, a bear having dug them up where they were folded yinyang style into a 4’x4’x4′ grave in an ancient ruin site.

Damn I love that truck.  Nothing sissie at all there.  A guy could drive that thing around just about anywhere he might wish to go.  It’s been pre-disastered so the odds of anything bad happening in it would be nil.

La Cantina

Hi readers.

La Cantina Entry

A man who reads this blog sent me an email a while back offering to allow me to hook up and park mi casa where he lives in far-west Texas a night, or more if we found ourselves simpatico.  So after the WalMart parking lot in Midland, we trucked up there and said hello.

La Cantina bar

Eddie and Val, their names are.  Fine, fine, fine people.  The Coincidence Coordinators blessed me once again with an unexpected shot of reminder I’m the luckiest man alive.

I’ll digress a moment and suggest you notice the birdnests on the vigas and the droppings on the orno below.  This is the entryway into the section of their home Eddie built where they evidently spend most of their time and entertain guests.

La Cantina Fireplace

I spent a few days parked in their yard, hours of every day submerged in conversation with Eddie, Val, various relatives and neighbors, digesting my life, the flood of new learning I was doing, and a lot else, thanks mainly to Val, who was forever worrying whether I could drink some more coffee, eat some more of the fare she constantly provided, putting more wood on the fire.

La Cantina deer head

Val’s an ex-school teacher, biologist, and interesting lady.  Eddie’s an electrical engineer who spent much of his lifetime travelling all over the planet, first as a private contractor, then in a corporate capacity, then decided screw-it.  I ain’t doing this no more.

La Cantina hatrack

I met a lot of interesting people, heard a lot of intriguing world-views in that cantina while the wind howled outdoors.  I’ll be telling you more of that later.

But one question I was asked over and over during my stay.  “What the hell are you doing here?”

Soaking it up,” is the only answer comes immediately to mind.

Maybe I’m working up to continuing wossname, John Ernesto Hemingway Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie – The Brave New World For Whom The Bell Tolls.

The New Old Jules

Where Were You When The World Ended?

When the world ended

The End Of The World by Archibald MacLeish

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing — nothing at all.

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.   I’m the more profoundly enlightened, severely evolved creature who used to be Old Jules before the Mayan calendar ended.

As for the Mayan calendar, I think we have to assume the ancient Mayans were referring to Greenwich time, midnight.  I can’t see any way around it.  It all had to begin somewhere and I think the ancient Mayans were sufficiently wise to begin it in a place where everyone in the future would be able to agree when it happened.

For the cats and me, that was Big Lake, Texas.  A city park there with dozens of RV connections and three free overnight connections, according to information online.  But when the Mayan calendar ended I happened to be walking on the pavement near a dim sign I’ll paraphrase as saying, “Welcome to Big Lake overnight RV connections.  $15 per night, enjoy, stay as long as you wish and come back often.”

Big Lake Park hookups

As the Coincidence Coordinators would have it, I’d been there a couple of hours, trying out a new harness and leash I’d bought in the Walmart store in Midland, Texas, on each of the cats.  I’d noticed I was the target of repeated scrutiny by a Big Lake City Police officer driving slowly by, me smiling and half-waving as he went by.  Him not smiling, not waving.

Big Lake Park

Then, cats all battened back down into the RV, I took a longer walk and found myself more informed about the Post Mayan calendar calendar and surviving the coming times with the least possible bullshit for all concerned.

So the cats and I celebrated the birth of the new era by topping off the gas tank and heading off down the road where the glow of headlights might shine on someplace free to sleep off the emerging shock of sudden evolution.

Ended up in a Rest Area somewhere between Ozona and Snora around 10:00 pm the Day the World Ended.

I’ve some retrospectives about the people and places of the previous several days, but I’m shooting this off just to suggest if you’re ever looking for a place to spend a hassle-free night parked free with cats purring on your chest, stay out of Big Lake, Texas.

But I’ve digressed.  About that photo at the top:

Very few white men have ever witnessed what honest-to-goodness, eat-it-down-to-the-rocks over-grazing looks like unless they’ve visited the Navajo Reservation in the four-corners area of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. 

Or Texas.

The New Old Jules

Three cats and a hat overgrazing the gas stations

Good morning readers.

I’m not going to furnish you with an image.  I’m not even going to regale you with all the tales came into my mind as the cats and I travelled across west Texas.  We talked it out, mainly in loud meowws and decided there was a lot worthy of remaining unsaid until the dust settles a bit.

We’re in Andrews, Texas, after spending the night in a WalMart parking lot in Midland.  Took the Andrews Highway out of Midland after daybreak because the cats couldn’t wait to get back on the road.  Strangely, the Andrews Highway out of Midland doesn’t go to Andrews.  Goes spang to wossname, Odessa, instead.

So the cats and I asked a guy pulled into a gas station with a truck carrying a large piece of machinery I didn’t know what was and he cleared the matter up.

This trip is beginning to feel a bit like Travels with Charlie if wossname Ernest Hemingway’d written it instead of John Steinway and three cats instead of a dog.

The S key on this thing is being a Communist, but it’s only to be expected.

More later.  Stay tuned.

Old Jules

The Brother of Invention

Humane gunfighters

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

Life’s so full of happy surprises here it took me a while to remember to be surprised when I awakened warm, still parked where once chickens scratched and pecked on mornings such as this.  Then I remembered what it was I ought to be surprised about – that I’d expected this post to be made on a fast WIFI connection somewhere out where it’s probably colder than it is here.  Which is plenty cold enough to satisfy the needs of the feline population, I’m informed.

I thought it was the money situation keeping the delays coming hot and heavy, but when I managed yesterday after the temperature dropped to 20 degrees F, to get the propane heater working in the RV, I knew a new reality had dropped in to flex its muscles.  That heater had to be why the Universe kicked in to impose good sense into my activities.

I don’t know how I fixed it.  Maybe just pulling things apart and putting them back together, tapping on things, testing, and taking them apart again was what did it.  Or maybe it was my genius brother, Invention.

So this morning I woke someplace warm for the first cold morning in at least a couple of years.  I hope today I’ll be changing the oil on the RV, wrapping up a couple of other details, and try to round up the cats to hit the road before the end of the week.

But it’s not easy to feel much dissatisfaction with life when there’s warm out there to be had.  I’m going to have to kick myself with some determination to impose a sense of urgency into my intentions.

But I’ve digressed.  I’d planned to tell you about that truck I saw parked in front of the Humane Society Thrift Shop new construction area.

Can’t recall now what I was going to say about it.

Instead, here’s wishing all of you plenty of warm.

Old Jules

Cats Cradles, Communities, Hungers and Bokononism

Good morning readers.  Thanks for the visit.

Cats Cradle

I’m rapidly developing an overweening pride in this.  15-18 pounds of cat slept on it last night, and it’s no worse for the wear.

But, I’ve digressed.

Maybe it was inevitable.  While I was doing other things over the past weeks my mind began toying around with abstractions involving communities and the attraction human beings have for them.  I’d been reading some Jack London and found myself sticking pieces of his thinkings off in the side of my mind, observations about the packages of community he experienced and wrote about.

But on the side Slab City sneaked into my mind occasionally, and the attraction I’ve no intention to indulge, that remains despite my intentions. 

Or the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous RV and van dwellers are going to stage in Quartzite, Arizona in January.  http://cheapgreenrvliving.com/Rendezvous.html 

Evidently thousands of RVs and van dwellers converge on the spot every January for a big RV show, and the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous takes place concurrently.    50-100 people who live in RVs or vans or wish to live in them, and feel the need to be part of a community of a sort they didn’t find surrounded by RVs, campers and vans in RV parks, State Parks, or in National Forests.

Are the people occupying those dots down there different than the ones you’d meet if you went knocking on doors at the Take It Easy Trailer Court in Kerrville, Texas?  I dunno.

But something in my mind connected the concept of community and the human need for it with Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and Bokononism:

Bokononism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bokononism is a fictional religion invented by Kurt Vonnegut and practiced by many of the characters in his novel Cat’s Cradle. Many of the sacred texts of Bokononism were written in the form of calypsos.

Bokononism is based on the concept of foma, which are defined as harmless untruths. A foundation of Bokononism is that the religion, including its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, one who believes and adheres to these lies will have peace of mind, and perhaps live a good life. The primary tenet of Bokononism is to “Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”

Bokononism encompasses a number of unique concepts expressed in the San Lorenzan dialect:[1]

  • boko-maru – the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.
  • “Busy, busy, busy” – what a Bokononist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
  • “Calypso” – song from The Books of Bokonon. Eight such songs are cited in Cat’s Cradle, some of them are presented with a title (i.e. On Dynamic Tension or The Boko-maru Calypso) and others are presented with a number (i.e. The Hundred-and-nineteenth Calypso). The Calypsos illustrate various aspects of the teachings of Bokonon.
  • duffle – the destiny of thousands of people placed on one stuppa
  • duprass – a karass that consists of only two people. This is one of the few kinds of karass about which one can have any reliable knowledge. The two members of a duprass live lives that revolve around each other, and are therefore often married. “A true duprass can’t be invaded, not even by children born of such a union.” The novel cites the example of “Horlick Minton, the New American Ambassador to the Republic of San Lorenzo, and his wife, Claire.” The two members of a duprass always die within a week of each other.
  • foma – harmless untruths; lies that, if used correctly, can be useful.
  • granfalloon – a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is “Hoosiers“; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so they really share little more than a name. Another example is a Cornellian, a student or graduate of Cornell University.
  • kan-kan – the instrument which brings a person into his or her karass
  • karass – group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God’s will. The group can be thought of as the fingers that support a cat’s cradle.
  • “Now I will destroy the whole world” – What a Bokononist says before committing suicide.
  • pool-pah – wrath of God or “shit storm”
  • saroon – to acquiesce to a vin-dit
  • sin-wat – a person who wants all of somebody’s love for him/herself
  • sinookas – the tendrils of one’s life
  • stuppa – a fogbound child (i.e. an idiot)
  • vin-dit – a sudden shove in the direction of Bokononism
  • wampeter – the central theme or purpose of a karass. Each karass has two wampeters, one waxing and one waning.
  • wrang-wrang – someone who steers a Bokononist away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang’s own life, to an absurdity.
  • Zah-mah-ki-bo – fate, inevitable destiny

Brought me to realize these cats around here are all Bokononists.  They’ve been sneaking around here converting me to their religion all these years without me knowing it, superimposing their viewpoints over my natural ones.

Forcing me to have a community with them.

But at least I don’t have to go to Quartzite, Arizona to have a community.  Bokononism is a big step up in life if I can look around inside the RV and find a community without having to go all the way to Quartzite, or Slab City, AZ.

Old Jules

Smug Self-Congratulation and Slow Rapid Advancement

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

When I brought up the screen to post I noticed it’s November 18.  Old Sol’s muttering to me that he’s becoming bored with all my scurryings and goings on every time I go around him again without becoming a bit wiser in any way discernable by alert human beings.

But tomorrow I’ll have gotten by with it 70 times despite a persistent, continuing foolishness and determination to smack head-on into heavy, solid objects.  One such object I’ll be telling you about here, but that’s later on in the post.  But first, a few other matters. 

My friend Rich and his wife Lisa came to visit a few days recently.  We spent a lot of time just savoring the company, hours and days flashing by in such rapid sequence I’m reminded of those strobes a person used to have a to deal with on dance floors during the 1980s when I try to remember the details.

All I can say for certain is the time passed more as a pleasant dream than some feet-on-the-ground experience anchored in reality.

But somewhere during all that Rich fixed my computer so’s it connected online through WIFI.  When I left one evening he was downloading several years of updates to Windows Vista and AVG, which turned out to be a considerable task.

Rich has an amazing music collection and he brought along an 8gb flash drive loaded with some I didn’t have.  Took a T-drive back with him I’d freed up 600 gb from and he’ll be sending me the rest of what he has.

Amazing times we live in, where a thing such as that can happen.

Reality did rear up and whinny, however.

The second night I was driving home, moderate speed, and saw a dim shape in the oncoming lane ahead.  Thought it might be a deer and moved my foot to the brake, but before I could press the pedal it became a frightened, full grown buck.

I stood the RV on its nose while the deer ran in front, reversed himself, ran back, then back again before the WHACK.  A catastrophy for the deer, but a wild stroke of luck for me.

The incident revealed all the cabinet doors in the RV suffered from metal fatigue.  Every item I’d carefully arranged in those cabinets, securely stored, came down, forward, cans of cat food hitting the back of my head, all manner of articles filling the floorboard underfoot.  A crucial piece of knowledge I’d hate to have learned under different circumstances.

So the past few days have been spent scratching my head about the best ways for securing belongings in a vehicle destined to travel at highway speeds with the potential for sudden stops.  Studying those cabinet doors for ways to lock them shut. 

Trying out cargo nets as an option.

Installing recycled refrigerator shelves and ways to secure what’s on them, along with a platform from a grader-ditch cooler-top for the comp to sit on when I need it as a GPS, a place for incidentals the rest of the time.

Which is all to say, these are things I needed to know, bought at the price of minimal damage to the RV, the life of a buck deer, and enough expense making repairs to cut into the gas money I’d been hoarding.

Well worth the cost of setting back departure clock enough to accomodate it.

I’ve been waiting almost 70 years for this trip and the cats assure me a few more days won’t matter.

Old Jules

The Trekster Saga Continues

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

I won’t bore you with the details of preparations for the road, mostly.  Suffice to say it’s coming along gradually without tipping its hat to any deadlines and schedules I might attempt to impose.  I came to realize a few days ago I don’t have any alligators gnawing on my pantsleg to hurryhurryhurry, anyway.

So I’ll get on the road more-or-less soon, but not quite so soon as I’d told myself I will.  Which is okay by the cats and the Coincidence Coordinators as nearly as I can discern.

Shiva the Cow Cat opted out of the future with the other cats and me.  Refused to be cajoled into getting laid back about the RV, willingly adapt to it and think of it as a source of pleasurable quality time.  I finally decided I wouldn’t insist.

Jeanne’s son, Michael, drove down from Kansas and spent a couple of days I wouldn’t have missed for anything I can think of, then departed with Shiva.  Took her back to reside with Jeanne.

Second night he was here we were sitting outdoors talking and he pointed north.  “What the hell is that?”

We watched and gasped and wondered while a UFO performed impossibilities in the sky for a while.  Nice gift the Coincidence Coordinators provided to top off his visit.  Something to remember alongside Shiva’s departure.

Damn I’m going to miss that cat.  What the hell.

Otherwise, what the hell on everything else that needs it to balance things out, also.

Old Jules

Brief Out-of-Sequence Flashes of Yesterday

Scene:  Highway 479 midway back from Kerrville.

Boom!  Riiiipppp-like drumbeat roar from somewhere in the back of the truck.  I pulls over first opportunity, no sign of anything wrong.  Squat down peek under boxing the compass.  Nuthun.

I re-mount, pull back onto the pavement, nothing seems wrong for a few miles, then the unmistakeable sound of a tire flopping.  Pull over again.  Yep, inside rear dually tire’s blown.  What the hell.

Tire’s destroyed, but it’s a blessing.  I’ll just have to sort out how sometime later.

Scene in town, me and a guy I stop in to see when I’m there and have time, sitting on the porch telling one another how glad we were for the rain

“By the way, I’ve decided to swap you that trailer if you still want it.  Let me know and I’ll take the stuff off it and we’re in business.”

“Yessir.  Thankeevurymuchsir.  I wants it.”

Behind the scenes – RV air conditioner listing San Antonio Craigslist potential potentate:  

“I won’t give you more than $150.”

I ponders.  Seems to me a new tire’s likely to cost $200. 

“I ain’t taking less than $200.

The RV Air Conditioner Universe takes a powder, hopefully considering.

Scene – Elsewhere, Out-of-Nowhere Political Remark:

“We’re in deep doodoo if this guy gets re-elected!”

“We’re in deep doodoo no matter who gets elected.”

“Yeah, but more so if this one does.”

“We’ve been in deep doodoo from the time we first started letting kings make the deep doodooism decisions.  If one man’s capable of getting us up to our necks in doodoo he’s going to do it.  Ain’t nobody to stop him, so he has a moral obligation to the doodoo delivery dingus. 

“Simple as that.  If you don’t like it, don’t elect anyone.”

Old Jules