“Yes, Sensei?”
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Nature, Outdoors, Photo of the Day, Spirituality
Tagged culture, environment, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, Nature, psychology, society, sociology
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
Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens
Tagged beggars, culture, economy, Education, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, personal, philosophy, senior citizens, society, sociology
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.
Posted in 2013, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens
Tagged country life, culture, economy, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, musings, personal, psychology, senior citizens, society, sociology
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
Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Human Behavior, Nature, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Police
Tagged animals, cats, country life, culture, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, Nature, psychology, society, sociology
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
Posted in 2013, America, History, hitch hiking, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Peace Corps, Portales, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Spirituality, Trains, Transportation
Tagged Beatniks, culture, environment, Events, Free Love, Greenwich Village, Hippies, History, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, miscellaneous, musings, New Mexico, New York, Peace Corps, personal, Portales, random, Reflections, Relationships, San Francisco, society, thoughts, World's Fair
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I’ve been asking a lot of questions lately, learning a lot, some of which might be false, but I learned it anyway. Now that I’ve blown out enough tires on two different RVs to satisfy my curiosity I’m willing to try to apply some of it. Even though it robs my macho because of not knowing it before when I knew all manner of things.
First off, there’s the thing about tires. They ain’t as good as they used to be. Old guy behind the counter at the tire store and I conversed about it a while when we shared mutual memories of having bought junkyard tires and run them until they were down to the threads. Lots of them, and neither of us remembered much in the way of blowouts.
But now the DOT mandates they date those tires. And as a consequence, he opines they blow just about when the DOT predicted they would. The DOT gave the tire industry a leg up against criticism by providing them an “I told you so!” escape and they made great engineering use of it. Supposition, but possumly true.
Secondly, another old guy pointed out all the tires I’ve blown were right-rear dooleys. Beginning with inside ones. He opined that what I’m doing is running with that right rear wheel too near the pavement edge, maybe off it, forcing the inside-rear tire to carry all the weight. Which makes a hell of a lot of sense.
I’d been mulling over the fact every blowout I’ve had happened on highway RR479 north bound and wondering at the coincidence. It’s a fairly good Texas Ranch Road with a lot of hills and curves. Might just be I’ve been letting it drift, one wheel off the pavement instead of hugging the centerline.
Thirdly, I’ve also satisfied my curiosity about whether I’m interested in arm-wrestling lug nuts put on with impact drivers. Even with a 5 foot cheater, even with a T-bar after they’re loose, I was having to take breaks between lugs. And after I put them back on and tightened them, I’d stop a few miles down the road to check, they’d always be loose enough to require a little more tight with the bar. Half-dozen times between here and Kerrville. If an impact tool’s able to take care of just that problem of reality and confidence, it’s worth the price of admission.
[Debating with myself here, can’t recall whether 4th is spelled, Fourth, or Forth – what-the-hell]
Next: Careful examination of the half-inch drive corded hammer-drill suggests it might function as an impact tool, but it’s going to need a half-inch adapter between the drill-chuck and male socket whatchallit. If it works it’s going to be a lot cheaper than an off the shelf impact tool, and it doesn’t have a battery to go kerplunk.
Next: That trim above the right-rear wheel well [see pic] was destroyed when the tire blew. No way that piece of trim is going to jump out of the Universe at me to be replaced, so I’m going to have to find a way to innovate. Not entirely for aesthetics, but some places are pickypickypicky wanting to see pics of the rig before they’ll consider a person who wants to clean up their trash, mow their grass, listen to complaints of RV owners. In exchange for a pad with hookups, etc.
Last, I’ve been troubled because my ALT gauge doesn’t tell me squat about whether the alternator’s working or not. Couldn’t figure why. A guy on one of the vintage RV groups answered my question about it by telling me he had the same problem. Bought a cheap digital gadget plugs into the lighter socket. I got one yesterday and hot diggety damn. Yes, HOT diggety damn! You heard me right.
But I’ve digressed. The crux of it all is that, after having been provided all this new stuff to learn, I have to live long enough to use it, damn me if I don’t. Got myself a karmic debt on my Credit Card with an obligation I might carry spang into my next lifetime if I kick before using it.
So now, instead of just having to live long enough to pay back Keith and Rich for the lifesaving loans to get the RVs, instead of just having to outlive the damned cats, I’ve got to spend the remainder of my life changing blown tires and unscrewing pesky lug nuts.
Sheeze.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, Education, Government, History, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Politics, Senior Citizens, Spirituality, Texas, Transportation, Trucks
Tagged country life, DOT, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, Reflections, rv, senior citizens, survival, technology, texas, thoughts, tires
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Old Ms. Niaid managed to off Brother Rattler without any consequences evidently, so she’s going to have to find something else to flesh out her life experience, I reckons. Her long hair’s growing back from the sheep shearing when the hot weather hit, and it’s filling up with beggar’s lice and grass burrs, which might serve to fend off whatever’s around here dangerous to aging bachelorette felines.
Ms. Tabby, on the other hand, has a nose and front-of-her-face of the usual Tabby-summertime variety. Can’t keep her nose out of cactus, or out of the business of something capable of adding color and romance to an otherwise nondescript Tabby face. I’m thinking when we get out of here she might turn out to be a regular-looking cat.
I decided yesterday I’m going to add mothballs to that storage building to get those rattlers out where they can enjoy life instead of bickering and snarling inside that dark storage building. Can’t tell when someone’s going to want something else out of there and the anxiety level trying to find it ain’t worth not stepping on a snake some night going from the RV to the cabin to check my email.
Today I’m going to nurse the Escape Route V 2.51 into Kerrville on three tires on back and have the two blown ones replace with respectable 10 ply exceptions to the rule. Provided the spare on the ground right-rear doesn’t decide to blow the plan. I’ll try to take back roads and get the roadwork done early before the pavement gets too hot.
Keith emailed me a while back he’s planning to be in New Mexico late August or September, and I’m going to tentatively plan on getting out to visit while he’s in the area. Hopefully by then everything will be settled out here and I’ll be able to think of out-there as home for a while.
Maybe get me a nice little piece of ocean-side ground on the east, or west coast of New Mexico, once all the damned ice goes away and raises sea-level to a reasonable altitude. 4000′ mean sea level might be about right. Maybe the cats and I will open a little bait shop on the west coast near where Arizona used to be. Or maybe rig a surfboard and hang ten mornings after we pray the sun up.
I figure the west coast will probably be less jam packed with Arizonians than the east coast will be with Texans because those Texans already all go to New Mexico deliberately to ski and gamble at Ruidoso and Angel Fire. Arizonians and Californians never go to New Mexico deliberately unless they’re just going through it to get somewhere else.
By the time they wake up and discover they’re living in a salt-water swimming hole I’ll have things nailed down on all the corners, wave to them as they swim to shore, or ride in on their bass boats. Sell them some bait, maybe.
Big plans for the future here.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, Country Life, Gambling, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Nature, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Solitude
Tagged Angel Fire, animals, Arizona, cats, country life, environment, homesteading, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Life, lifestyle, miscellaneous, musings, Nature, New Mexico, Niaid, random, Rattle snakes, Reflections, Ruidoso, survival, Tabby, texas, thoughts, TX, Wildlife
Me, trying on caps at the JC Penny store: Why are some of these blue, other ones grey?
Store Clerk lady: Why the grey ones are Confederates.
Me: Oh. Okay, what are the blue ones.
Store Clerk lady, frowning: Um. Those are Non-Confederates.
Back when Keith Kelt and I were struggling through grammar school in Portales, New Mexico, a movie briefly drained our bluejeans pockets.
Suddenly every kid in town had to have a blue, or a grey cap with a shiny bill and crossed rifles at the front. Half-dollar at the JC Penny store had us all scrambling. Each of us tripped down to JC Penny the instant we could scrape together the gelt.
At which time probably all of us discovered we didn’t know enough to be making the decisions as we took cap after cap out of the bin, trying them on. Those of us who’d seen the movie weren’t educated enough to know much about it, aside from the fact it was bloody, violent, and exciting.
All we knew was that every kid who was anyone was wearing one of those caps.
Not until I made a fool of myself in class several years later in Junior High did I learn that the US Civil War wasn’t fought between Confederates and Non-Confederates.
Old Jules
Posted in 1950's, America, History, Military, Movies, New Mexico, NM, Portales, Senior Citizens
Tagged Civil War, confederate, culture, Education, forage caps, headgear, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, society, sociology, Union, US
Hi readers.
Back during the bad old days of my hippy-dopesmokerism, during the throw-rocks-at-cops times, during the turbulence of the Vietnam War, this happened:
I was sitting on the steps of the University of Texas Student Union Building with two other Veterans Against the War, five self-proclaimed Black Panthers, two Viva La Raza types, and a handfull of white girlygirls not wearing bras. Two of the girlygirls were paramours of a couple of the Panthers. The subject of racism came up.
Keep in mind that all the Panthers and both Viva La Raza types were white-haters, though they indulged those two white guy among us by ignoring the fact we were white. Indulged the girlygirls similarly. And keep in mind the two Hispanics had no love for blacks, nor the blacks, any love for Hispanics. Only the white girlygirls and we white Vets Against the War had felt no anti-black nor anti-Hispanic rage against the others of the group.
So tirades against whites became noisy, Hispanics and Panthers all in agreement, all making blanket statements proclaiming white bigotry. Somewhere during that I asked, “You guys are lumping us all together because we’re white. Isn’t that racism? Is it different when you do it, as opposed to a white lumping you all together?”
Caused an uproar, general outrage and denial. Universal even among the girlygirls, and one of the white guys.
“Victims of racism can’t be racist!” Repeated and re-phrased in numerous ways. “Only whites can be racists because they have the power!”
Wellllllll. Uhhhhh.
I suppose it’s probably consoling to a guy getting his ribs caved in by someone standing above him yelling, “You honky bastard!” to know he’s not the victim of bigotry and racism.
Or my neighbor in Placitas, New Mexico, who, though an old unreconstructed hippy, couldn’t get the Hispanic guy who controlled irrigation water to open her gates to her orchard when her turn came because of his outspoken hatred of Anglos. “My trees are dying because of what white-hating son of a bitch!” Her old hippy too-much-sun face reddening. “There’s nobody but other Hispanics I can appeal to!”
But at least it wasn’t racism. At least it wasn’t bigotry she was a victim of. Because bigotry and racism aren’t possible for people who don’t have the power.
Old Jules
Posted in 2013, America, Government, Human Behavior, Politics
Tagged bigotry, culture, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, musings, philosophy, psychology, racism, society, sociology
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/
So Far From Heaven 