Tag Archives: culture

Escape Route Version 2.5 Pussyfooting tremors

Posted on June 11, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Ford RV

My old friend Gale’s going into Kerrville today to find out whether he’s reached the point in life to get his hip replaced sometime soon.  While he’s there he’s going to swing by and snap a lot more specific photos of that RV if he can arrange it with the seller.

I want a better view of the engine compartment, closeups of the tires clear enough to read the numbers so I can know how old they really are.  A pic of the other side …. I don’t have a clue where the entry door on the thing is.  Pics taken looking down the sides, front and back so I can discern whether the siding has any ripples indicating the overhead is sagging or it’s been in an accident.

After I’ve studied on those I’ll be better able to know whether it’s worth further examination.  I’ve about decided to pay a used RV repair/sales place in  town to go over it looking for warts if I can’t find good reasons to not buy it my ownself.

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Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens, Transportation, Trucks

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My hat’s off to Jeanne

Posted on June 11, 2013 by | 5 comments

I was talking to her on the phone last night, her feeling down and in fairly low spirits about the art she’s worked on all these years and hasn’t sold enough of to balance the cost of entries in art shows, etc.  We were discussing other strategies she might try when I suddenly heard the word, “AWESOME!”

I thought the connection and gone bad or I was hearing wrong.  Just reaching for the button to hang up when she added, “I sold one off the blog!” 

I didn’t hang up after all, though the word awesome isn’t one I usually allow to reach my ear twice in the same conversation.

Can’t tell you how glad I am for her.  I honestly couldn’t imagine a blog, no matter how much trouble a person took building it, was a place where original art could be sold.

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Posted in 2013, America, Art

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Something’s happening at Slab City

Posted on June 10, 2013 by | 13 comments

Back when I posted the thing about Slab City, CA, I eventually decided despite my curiosity about the place I just have too many things left I want to do in my life to get out there and check it out:

Slab City, California – An Impromptu Community

The place is so hot summertime only about 100 people stay there during the scorching months.  And winter months there just seemed to be too many other ways to spend the time to justify a visit out there. 

Now they’ve formed some sort of an organization willing to pay someone $400 per month to sweat through the summer months doing some sort of maintenance on Salvation Mountain.  Likely they’ll get a lot of interest in the $400 per month and the fervor among the interested will dwindle rapidly as the thermometer climbs.

But the last RV Workers on Wheels newsletter had this:

CA: Camp Host at Art Preservation Site in Slab City

by Salvation Mountain Inc. – Slab City, California, USA
(Nin-Profit Volunteer Site Manager with Site and Stipend)

Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain

Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain

 

Salvation Mountain is an “outsider art” monument at the entrance to Slab City, created over 30 years by Leonard Knight. Leonard’s unique and enduring vision is one of universal love.

Leonard painted his vision on the cliffs at Slab City over a period of 30 years. He can no longer maintain his monument, due to declining health, so a charitable corporation was formed. The Salvation Mountain Inc. Board of Directors has the responsibility of continuing to preserve Leonard’s dream.

We are looking for a camp host and site manager to work with our board of directors at this monument in the desert. This is a volunteer contract position, where we provide a living space for an RV, a small stipend of $400 per month, plus solar electricity, water, trash removal, and internet access. We also have a park model trailer on the site.

You can learn more about Salvation Mountain at http://www.salvationmountaininc.org.

Slab City is a boondocking “off the grid” community in the desert in Southeast California, just east of the Salton Sea. For information about Slab City, go to this website: http://www.slab-city.com.

Salvation Mountain Inc. is a registered charitable non-profit company charged with preservation of Leonard Knight’s art site called Salvation Mountain. Leonard Knight starting building Salvation Mountain almost 30 years ago. While I, a board member, am not a particularly religious person, I do appreciate Leonard’s dedication and vision, especially his message of universal love. This is not a religious charity, it is an art preservation charity.

We are trying to find a site manger (aka a camp host) to live at the Salvation Mountain site 24/7. It’s a contract position, and there is a stipend of $400 per month to help with expenses. We provide water, solar power, internet and trash removal. We are asking for a one year commitment (with a 90 day probation period to see if the fit is good with our Board of Directors).

We welcome your application and inquiries for this position. We will do a background check (criminal and credit), as this is a position of responsibility.

You can request an application at salvationmountaininc31@gmail.com. Be sure to let us know that you saw our Help Wanted ad on Coleen’s Workers On Wheels website when you contact us about this site manager job. Salvation Mountain Inc. – Slab City, California. Posted June 2013.

I’m mulling it over.  Given my current situation and the violence $400 a month would do to my series of debt responsibilities it might be I could stand the heat.  Going to have a long prayer meeting with the cats to find out whether they’re willing to allow having a look.

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Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Possible Escape Route Version 2.5

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | 10 comments

Guy with the RV sent me some more pics.

Econoline front

From the front there doesn’t appear to have ever been a collision on that side.  No pics of the other side.

Econoline odometer

Bummer that it only has 80 MPH on the speedometer.  I’d figured on coasting down mountains at 110 or better.

Econoline fridge

He says the fridge isn’t the original.  Says the closed compartment above is a freezer.

Econoline interior

Says that’s new carpet, which the cats should appreciate.  In fact, all that interior needs a few layers of cat hair before it will be able to call itself home.

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Posted in 2013, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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I might be forced to find me a woman

Posted on June 8, 2013 by | 22 comments

Don Giovanni

At least for a while.  I’ve been kicking it around in my head a lot lately.  If I’m going to do any serious trekking into the high mountains for more than a few days I’m going to have to have someone looking after the felines.  And if I want to spend a season work camping somewhere they almost always require couples, as opposed to singles.

Fact is, I run across a lot of men who might be a lot easier to get along with than a woman, but most of them have their own ideas about what they’d prefer to do with themselves as opposed to doing what I might wish them to do.  And women tend to be a lot easier to come by in my experience.  The problem is keeping things clean and well lighted, the parties of the first and second parts each knowing where the other’s coming from, and where they’re going.

That can get complicated.  Mainly because one of the two parties is working on more than one agenda without coming out and saying so, figuring the agenda of the other can be modified after the hook is set better.

But a lot of the things I want to do before I die are going to require someone to lift the other end of something.  Finding someone willing to lift the other end and take joy in doing it is no easy matter.  Whatever the object needs lifting, whatever the agenda.

Afterthought:  A woman who owns a couple of mules or a string of pack goats and a few acres of land up near the continental divide might work out well.  Also a stock trailer and something to pull it.  Probably can find something on Craigslist.

Afterthought #2:  I can’t, in good conscience, recommend me to any woman.  In fact, I’d counsel strongly against me as a consideration.  Fact is, I’m a nice guy.  Got an honest streak in me and enough of a century behind to know this whole thing was a lousy idea.  Though fun, in an oblique sort of way.

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Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, New Mexico, Outdoors, Senior Citizens

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Thinking positive about bologna – The new paradigm

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 8 comments

If you think you’ve reached the point where you just can’t look a bologna sandwich in the eye one more time, maybe it’s time to begin using your noggin.  Even if all you’ve got is a frying pan and a Coleman camp stove you can make a concoction you’ll savor.

Chop up that bologna into bits the size of dill pickle slices and throw it in the pan with chopped onion, minced garlic, and a teaspoon of grapeseed oil.  Turn it and stir it until the bologna browns and curls up on the sides.

Once it’s done, throw on a teaspoon of chopped dill pickles, and smear it all between those two slices of bread.  Curry, ginger, ancho, jalapeno, green pepper, all of them will add some variety to carry you through until payday.

The old ‘pound of red and a loaf of bread’ method of squeezing through hard times was never good past the second day.  Torturing yourself to death after the third was just a method of robbing life of potential joy.

This ain’t the 20th Century anymore.

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Posted in 2013, America, Senior Citizens, Survival

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Reincarnation – Life after the evidence locker

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 10 comments

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.

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Posted in 1990's, Transportation, Trucks

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In God We Trust

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 6 comments

first man in space

I’m not sure what I think about this proposal to take Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson and so on off the currency and put Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the Koch brothers on there instead.  Certainly there’s merit to the idea.

Old Ben Franklin would probably find the knowledge people are rolling up his picture snorting coke and meth through him unsettling.  Building him a karmic load he didn’t pay for.

There are certainly more currently recognizable people guilty of all Andrew Jackson did, one-upped him in a hundred different ways.  But Jackson might be said to have set the pace and nailed down the precedents, earned his place on those bills.  Even though the people handing them over to supermarket clerks to pay for dog food mostly don’t who he was, nor what he did.

A series of bills reflecting their actual value in the world marketplace after the national debt is subtracted might be a good idea. $1 bills with a minus $1 Million across the bottom.  A picture of the last couple of presidents on each side.

All in all I think I’d prefer the government to issue a piece of currency molded in the shape of a straw for people to snort their coke and meth through.  If it’s got to have a picture on it, use the first chimpanzee to get launched into space. Or Ronald Reagan for starting the War on Drugs.  Building the need for a lot more of those bills to be printed.

Or any of the legion of celebrities who’ve overdosed on the stuff and become immortal.

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Posted in 2013, America

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FFFuture Shock

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 5 comments

The Internet came fast, though it’s tempting to take it for granted and just absorb it as it comes along without having to faint and revive yourself.

A person can hop over to Craigslist to see what types of travel trailers and cheap RVs people have they want to sell in lordee-knows-where places he tried to forget exist in Texas.  Pop off an email or two to the people doing the selling.

Exhaust that and pop over, shoot off an email to the USFS district handling the Gila Wilderness to find out the condition of this-or-that trail nobody in his right mind would use. Whether a particular trail has been cleared enough to a particular spot to allow a mountain bike to use it.

Pop over to Google maps for a quickie satellite look at a mountain or three, reboot the machine to clear the memory when things start to die.

Pop to dogpile.com to do a search of bicycle forums and discussion boards to see what mountain bikes are costing and what people are saying about them.  Then another search or two  to find out how much weight a burro could be expected to carry.  Whether anyone’s got a notion about them as riding animals and the maximum weight of the person they could carry under particular conditions.

Spang, another websearch to DIY sites looking for ideas for load carrier devices people have put together on bicycle frames, or using bicycle wheels.

Doesn’t appear to be any limit to it.  However obscure and esoteric the interest, there’s somone, somewhere on the Internet thinking along the same lines who’s already done some of the heavy thinking.

The neighbor up the hill tells me people are putting together 3D printers in their garages allowing them to duplicate anything that’s ever been manufactured.  Putting what they do up on the Internet so other people can manufacture the same thing somehow.  Some guy making a crescent wrench that works from his old crescent wrench and a printer.

It’s no wonder the governments of the world are suspicious and concerned.  With things like that going on there’s no predicting what will come of it.  People might get used to thinking and begin to make a habit of it.

About a century ago two bicycle mechanics put something together the scientific community was busy agreeing couldn’t be done.  Without any help they took a manned heavier-than-air flight convincing enough to turn everything upside down.

Didn’t even have computers and the Internet.  If they’d had those someone might have been able to convince them they couldn’t do it.  Or everyone and his dog would have been making one in his garage.

5 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Communication, Internet

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A failure to communicate

Posted on June 7, 2013 by | 3 comments

ivy leaguers

These unfortunate undercover police officers were mistaken for ordinary citizens when they attempted to address uniformed police officers in the way uniformed police officers address ordinary citizens.

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Posted in 2013, America, Police

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