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.
I find my views about rioting to be possibly artificially drawn away from magnetic north by several personal experiences with them, as well as having been an adult during the giant city burning episodes around the time of the MLK killing.
From personal observation and experience I feel a high level of certainty that every riot since the 1960s was and is heavily infiltrated by police or other government provocateurs, pushing, inflaming and instigating to direct events toward violence. I’m not suggesting the riots wouldn’t have happened without them. The riots would almost certainly have happened anyway. I honestly don’t have a clue why they’re doing it.
But my first experience with it was Halloween, 1960, in Borger, Texas. During the days before Halloween the kids in high school were all gearing up for it, but I was a newbie in town, had no reason to anticipate what they saw as the normal way to celebrate Halloween. Wild and wooly oil-field worker traditions combined with a boys-will-be-boys tolerance on the part of adults left the options wide open.
The newspaper the next day described it as a quieter than usual Halloween with the main damage being someone starting a bulldozer at a construction site and driving it through a house, nobody hurt.
A few hundred teenagers drunk on main street armed with eggs, veggies, rocks, jars of gasoline, cornering police paddy wagon with barrage after barrage, following them back to the station house and setting fire to the lawn was just a beginning. I never saw anything like it, even during the riots at the University of Texas I was a part of a decade later.
My point is, rioting is fun, it’s joyful, it’s seductive if the anonymity of a mob can be maintained and when there are no consequences. It doesn’t take much to get people rioting under those circumstances.
On the other hand, the day after Kent State and afterward throughout the remainder of the Vietnam War the temptation to riot was always there so long as it was someone else stepping off the curb into the street. The police and a lot of the rest of the country made it plain by word and attitude they felt tolerance for what happened at Kent State and wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
I recall what a letdown it was when I realized I wasn’t the gutsy hotshot I had people thinking I was, that I was just a loudmouth coward when it came to offering myself up for what I claimed I believed in by making myself a target for all those cops to practice on.
I don’t think things are much different now. My near-certainty about riots in the US is that the government response will determine whether there are riots, or won’t be. I don’t give advice, but if I did I’d suggest anyone involved in a peaceful demonstration immediately remove himself/herself from the area as rapidly as possible at the first sign of violence.
I’d suggest carefully exploring the route and area of the demonstration on maps and on the ground beforehand. Pre-arranged escape routes memorized to allow getting the hell out of dodge. Cell phones set with standby text messages to friends and cohorts to get the message out immediately that things are going sour. But I won’t suggest it.
But I don’t have a lot of reason to think having a riot going on and being in the center of it is a place I’d want to spend a lot of time.
She loved bridge
He loved mostly poker;
Never understood
How his sevens-high full house
Betted to the limit
Looking at her pair
Of Aces
Turned out to be
Disaster
Crushed beneath
An Ace high full
Every time he let her
Cut the deck
I said when I made the post I’d be talking more about it, but way led onto way and I never got around to doing it.
This was a one-man-band project. The footprint of that structure has about an inch-or-less of topsoil over hardpan caliche or limestone. Digging holes for the uprights wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate.
I knew I wanted the pickup camper as a roof, the shower-doors as part of the walls, wanted uprights with lateral stability without digging into limestone. But otherwise it was plan-as-you go, driven partly by material availability.
Those lower walls are two sides of a huge packing crate I picked up for $5 from a guy in Kerrville. Bought 30# of large lag-screws [$1.00 per pound] from Habitat for Humanity Recycling Store for the project because I anticipated difficulties in the lateral stability department. The shower doors were free. The 4x4s were from the same guy who sold me the packing crate.
I used the crate-sides to get three of the uprights generally in place by bolting them together. Trust me when I tell you this ought to be a 2-man job. I fudged on a lot of things by not paying a lot of attention to right-angles because I couldn’t be two places at once and knew I wasn’t going to live forever.
I took about a week building it, but probably it could have been done in a day with two people working.
As you can see I trenched below the lower walls and dug to bedrock, only an inch or two, to level the lower walls and provide a base for the corner posts.
Before putting the camper shell on top I built an interior frame and stabilized it with a steel bed frame salvaged from a junk pile:
Once that was in place I ran the front bumper of the truck up against it from whatever angles I could get to it, hooked a chain to the uprights from other angles pushing and pulling it with the truck to test the lateral strength. We get some high winds and I didn’t want it coming down, even if the additional strength the camper shell structure would add became fractured.
I constructed a lean-to ramp using 4 2x12s and positioned the camper shell diagonally on it, skidded it up with a come-along until I had it in place, then bolted it to the top frame. As I was finishing, Gale dropped down to see how I was doing and helped a lot during the final positioning of the shell.
The camper shell was missing the door, so for ventilation I used salvaged refrigerator shelving. It keeps the predators out but allows a good breeze. But to keep out the water I added the additional planks at an angle sloping away from the roof runoff.
Around 1969, I was in a freshman Geology course at the University of Texas, first week of classes. The instructor was a grad student teaching assistant who began the course with an overlay of how geologists determine the age of a particular layer of deposition.
Along about the third day a kid who’d been sitting next to me raised his hand. I’d noticed him squirming from the first day, and now he just had to get whatever was bothering him off his chest.
“I’ve been trying to understand what you’re saying, but it’s confusing. How can all this be true, all those depositions being so old when the world’s only (some specified low-range number of thousands) years old. It’s all been calculated when God created the earth.”
After the chaotic eruption of laughter from forty sophisticated freshmen who knew better subsided the instructor directed his response to the now-cringing questioner.
“You can’t have it both ways. This is a Geology course. Everything you hear in this room is based on the premise that the earth is ancient beyond imagination. That the world we see around us is the product of eons of tectonic activity. Of faulting, lifting, erosion, weathering followed by more of the same.
“I’m not going to try to convince you that what you’ve said is wrong. But I’ll tell you that if you can’t accept, for the sake of discussion, the possibility that the book in front of you describes reality, you’ll never get through this course.”
The kid joined me at a table in the Union coffee shop later. He was still upset and confused by the incident, the laughter. Turned out the kid truly couldn’t wrap his mind around the concepts being discussed. He KNEW it to be otherwise at such a fundamental level that he’d have had to relax all manner of other things he KNEW and held sacred to even consider it.
So he dropped the course and never let his mind out of the cage he’d built around it.
The experience that kid had in a geology classroom isn’t too different from what all of us encounter in life. It’s all a matter of where we place the boundaries of the cage.
Within a decade of the incident the geology world was turned upside down with emergence of tectonic plate theory, and much of what he’d have learned if he’d finished the course would have been out of date.
But Tectonic Plate Theory found similar boundaries among geologists’ minds during the difficult battle for acceptance. Old department heads wrestled against it in a war as bloody as a fundamentalist preacher would have fought against the concept of an earth more than a couple of thousand years old. They’d just placed the boundaries a bit further out than the kid and whatever school teacher told him the world was young. Those old geology profs KNEW there was no such animal as continental drift. No point in discussing evidence supporting it.
It’s a juggling act. In some pursuits the only doorway involves a body
of data we like to call ‘facts’. But frequently the doorway isn’t big
enough to allow a person through with his suitcase full of all his
life-accumulated facts he treasures. He has to pare them down to fit
into a briefcase, or a fanny-pack and leave the rest behind so’s to get
through the door and understand what he sees in the room he’s trying to
get into. If he tries tricking the system and dragging all the rest of
his facts through in a cotton-sack or some such thing he’ll be forever
tripping on them and stumbling.
A man’s got to be careful what he knows in this lifetime [maybe others,
also]. Traveling light can save a lot of trouble.
Sheeze. I was lying in there meditating, preparing my spirit for the coming day when I heard a rustling in the other room. I ignored it at first, figuring it was just one of the cats took advantage of the window screen that doesn’t latch convincingly. But gradually I focused because somebody was having a party in there.
As I considered the awakening possibilities an opinion formed that it was probably Tabby as the most likely candidate, her being the youngest and most imaginative. Now, completely focused I listened for more hints until the sound of something falling nudged my curiosity enough to pull me out from under the blanket.
When I came through the door I couldn’t see any cat, but the window screen was pulled open far enough to admit a large cat. No sign of the offender still, though as I walked over for a closer look.
Then out from under the layers of books and other belongings a large coon face glared at me, hissed and threatened. I didn’t like this a bit. There was an escape route through the window, but I was near enough the way out Brother Coon mightn’t consider it the best option. I didn’t want him coming further into this maze of hiding places. This cabin isn’t big enough for me and a coon.
I stepped slightly away from the route through the window, eyes locked to his, baring my teeth, growling and snarling, him baring his, then stood stock still. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in the final scene of the Good Bad Ugly. It seemed to last forever.
But while the tension never eased, like Tuco, I saw his eyes working toward that route outdoors. My arms were spread to increase my threatening appearance and my hand was near an open bag of pinto beans. I allowed my hand to creep toward it, then drew and fired a handful of pintos at the coon.
He didn’t have the strength of his convictions. No Lee Van Cleef, old Brother Coon. He was out that window faster than I can type it. I probably should add, I’m having a bit of difficulty typing. My hands are still shaking a bit. Clint Eastwood, I ain’t.
————————————–
Ms Cholla, I feel obliged to update you, wasn’t there for headcount again last night. This time I was more canny, looked right away over at the rooster compound and there she was, searching and poking around for a way in. No problem for me. If she wants to live with the damned roosters it suits me just fine.
————————————————
Spent most of the day yesterday trying to get the Documents and Settings saved from this going-kerplunk comp into some sort of form to allow it all to be transferred to the Thrift Store comp, but no joy. Kept getting error messages after a few hours at a time of the old machine considering the matter.
Just saying.
Old Jules
5:30 am – That coon’s been back on the porch three times since the post. He’s standing on his hind legs trying to look in the window or playing with the edge of the door trying to get back in. But thus far, he’s just a smidgen too canny to give me a shot at him through the window screen.
He needs to figure out something else to do with his time if he wants to live until daybreak.
She was always crosswise to the world, even when she was just a pullet, just beginning to free range. That’s her going back into the night fortress. It wasn’t more than a week after this picture was taken the guineas decided to sleep in the trees and she decided to join them.
Every night I’d have to turn a water hose on her and drive her around up there until she gave up and reluctantly came down to join the others out of harm’s way. As she matured she always reminded me of a woman I used to spend some time with in Socorro, New Mexico, called herself a Cholla. A consistent pain, pleasing to the eye but always in the wrong place, always ready with a dagger.
Yeah, this chicken sorely tried my patience in every way a chicken could from adolescence to full maturity.
So last night when she wasn’t there for the headcount I assumed she was pulling her favorite evening trick, waiting until all the others were locked down for the night, then coming in panic-stricken, pacing and fussing in mock terror until I re-opened the fortress to let her in. But she never showed up and I was secretly glad. I searched around with a flashlight after dark for a while, thinking she might have gone broody outside, or decided to roost on a treelimb.
Ha! Nowhere to be found! Ha! Coyotes have been calling in close nights lately, so I figured between coyotes and coons that lady was going to pay the price of freedom.
This morning before daybreak I put together a post entitled, Requiem for a Chicken. Said some nice things about her, partial, selective truths. Then, in the false dawn I went out and released the main flock, did another headcount as they emerged, just to make sure.
Next I went to the old fortress and cage where I keep the other two roosters separately penned. Out they came, and there she was. I don’t have a clue how she got in there.
So you hate him.
Wish him ill.
You have a problem.
If he could only feel
The fear, the doubt, the horror;
If he could only satisfy your
Yearning
For him to feel those things
He might do it.
He might.
If he could only understand
How much it means to you
To cause him pain;
With what a flood of anguish
And venom you despise
Hunger his agony
And want to be responsible;
Want him to know,
He certainly might try.
But, he can’t.
Despair’s no longer sexy
To those who’ve seen it naked.
Fear cowers under a straight,
Steady gaze.
You’ll have to offer something
More frightful
Than your silly rage;
Your idealized terror;
Something more dismal
Than your impotent concept of
Emptiness;
Something with more substance
Than your scorn;
Something more somber than you
Think death is
To make him care.
Life will hand him defeats
His days will serve up
A ration of pain
He’ll deal with them as he must
And always know those blows
Aren’t yours.
They’re just life.
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.
North by Northwest – Climbing the American ladder of success
The Alamo – “When I was a boy any girl would turn up a bunch of trees like that, cut a bunch down and one for a ridge pole and build herself a cabin alongside the other. Seems like all anyone would ever need.”
The Outlaw Josie Wales parleys with 10 Bears – “Dying ain’t so hard for people like you and me. It’s living that’s hard. Governments don’t live here. It’s people who live here. I’m saying people can live here together without butchering one another.”
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 