Tag Archives: personal

Loose Ends – Weight and Balance

Posted on June 12, 2013 by | 2 comments

Weight and balance

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

Gale came down last night with a couple of hundred photos of the 1978 Ford Econoline RV and his impressions of what he’d seen.  Considering the amount of money I have at my disposal and what I intend to do with myself, he thinks it’s a good vehicle.

Both he, and the neighbor up the hill have grave concerns acknowledging if the RV dies somewhere out there I’m going to be dead in the water.  They both believe a better option would be a pickup and pull behind travel trailer.  I agree.

But the fact is, if I spent half on a pickup and half on a travel trailer I’d end up with two cheap, likely undependable artifacts in my life with high probabilities for failure instead of one.

I’m going to be checking this out carefully and if it is the best game in town, I’ll play.

My friend Eddie, meanwhile, pointed out that the Salvation Mountain job probably would be hotter and pay less than a gate guard at an oil field site if I can get such a job.  I’ll be thinking through whether that’s something I want to pursue.  Ed Hurst indicated he thought it’s a weight and balance matter – just a problem of how much a person is willing to put up with for the sake of more money.

Which, when you boil every thing down and scrape what’s left on the bottom off the inside of the pot, pretty much describes modern life.

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, 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.

5 Comments

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.

13 Comments

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

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Damned fool dogs that didn’t hunt – Risk taking and priorities

Posted on June 10, 2013 by | 4 comments

wind sock columbus2

If you happen to be one of those people who goes through life making decisions about the dogs you’ve considered buying and they always hunted you probably believe it’s because you’ve been wise and prudent.  Or purely from ‘hard work’.  It’s certainly tempting for the person with that body of experience to believe it’s true, and maybe it is. 

Who the hell wants to believe, having spent his life scrambling with the only goal being ending up eventually with more money than you can spend, that it was because it’s just how it went?  That successfully accumulating a lot of money through a lifetime isn’t a hell of a lot different from just inheriting money?  That when the kids inherit what you accumulated but didn’t spend, the only favor you did them was giving them a leg up to being dirty rich kids turned adult?  Robbed them of the experience of scrambling and making the hard decisions and compromises you made, learned from, and consider vital to your life?

Alternatively, for people who muddle along staying in the middle of the bell shaped curve, or those who buy dogs that didn’t hunt tend to blame it on someone else, or outside factors.  The government, rich people, or just lousy luck.

Seems to me the problem with all this is the measuring stick, and it’s a disease of modern life.  Something we condition ourselves to early and never do enough thinking about to examine carefully.  So we fret about whether the chips on the table are $1 chips, or $100 ones and let the place they occupy on the value system influence whether we stay, or raise, nevermind the cards we’re holding.

I’m writing this because the game I’m in at the moment seems to be a high stakes one where I’m sitting.  People nearby ain’t saying so, but they believe I’m a damned fool for the buying the Toyota RV, believing what the guy who sold it to me told me about it, not knowing enough to assure it was the truth.

I’m not denying it’s true.  I thought the guy was honest and maybe he was.  He never checked a lot of it out because the guy who sold it to him was a good Christian in his church and he believed what he’d been told.

So I borrowed the money to buy it from a close friend and I’ll be paying him back for a longish time at $100 per month, whether that RV is in a junk yard, or has the coach stripped off and is earning its keep as a hauling cargo vehicle.  The buck stops here.  I’m not going to lie or misrepresent what that truck is and put some other poor bastard into the same position I’m in.  I’ll junk it first and swallow the loss, screw all the yardsticks.

So now I’ve got another RV staring me in the face, all my mistrusting sense organs fired up from the last time I trusted anyone.  Stakes being roughly the same as before, but seeming higher because I borrowed money from another friend I’m going to be paying back $100 per month for a couple of years, win, lose, or draw.

And knowing no matter how much checking I do, how clever I try to be, there’s a better-than-even chance the guy’s lying about something important I won’t be smart enough to catch.  Or maybe he’s telling the truth and buying the thing will be the smartest thing I ever did.

Either way, I’ll still be the damned fool I was before, the only difference being whether I think I was smart, or blame the government, or rich people, or Lady Luck.

Hell of a deal.

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Gambling, Government, Human Behavior, Transportation, Trucks

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Solar Shower – Overdesigned under-utilized

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | 4 comments

Shower

This was briefly my smartassed solar shower.  Lasted through one, count’em: 1 each of those 8 gallon water jugs.  Getting 60 pounds of water up there in a way so’s it will stay decided me the showering I got wasn’t worth the hernia I almost got.

So next time in town I went to Walmart and bought a 2 gallon insecticide sprayer.

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, Nature, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Science, Senior Citizens, Survival, Texas

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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.

10 Comments

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.

22 Comments

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

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Escape Route Version 2.5

Posted on June 8, 2013 by | 8 comments

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.

8 Comments

Posted in 1970's, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Transportation, Trucks

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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.

10 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Transportation, Trucks

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Humpty Dumptytime

Posted on December 31, 2012 by | 21 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming around.  I’m hoping you’re all getting your ducks in a row to put whatever lousy issues you’ve got to rest, come midnight.  Beginning one minute afterward we’ve all got to start the serious business of trying to live with all that behind us.  The Coincidence Coordinators have a lot in store for each of us and they don’t want any of it getting bogged down in tanglefootedness left over from yesteryear.

Some of you probably remember that bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label,

Juggling the Possibilities.

 I wrote about it November 17, 2011,

“I finished off most of this bottle of Jack Daniels on December 31, 1999, while I was sitting around listening on the short wave radio to Y2K not happening, first in New Zealand, then Australia, then places further west until it got to me, where it happened well enough to make up for those other places it didn’t.

“But as you can see, there was some left in the bottle when Y2K got to me.  I resolved to hold it back until something else happened.  I’ve had it sitting over there on the microwave collecting dust for several years, threatening to celebrate various New Year and Thanksgivings and I-don’t-know-whatalls.  I’d had it in the back of my mind lately I’d do my 70th birthday with it, then slid the clock backward and thought maybe my 69th here in a few days.”

Fact is, that bottle qualifies as an open container.  I can’t travel with it in the RV.  So this evening I’m going to put on some good music and sip that Jack Daniels to death celebrating all the Humpty Dumpties in my 2012.

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Great Speckled Bird went off maybe in July to wherever chickens go when they die, and later in the year I Humpty Dumptied my contracts with the hens and other roosters.  [Sip anticipated] 

I terminated my contract with Shiva The Cow Cat.  [Sip anticipated]

There’s this:

Roof and Chimney Leaks — White Trash Repairs

But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks.  Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell!  Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm.  What’s the big deal?  If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.

“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.” [Sip anticipated]

And of course, the Humpty Dumpty trees. [Sip anticipated]

Men's ThermoPlus Extreme Boot Liner

http://www.sorel.com/Men%27s-ThermoPlus-Extreme-Boot-Liner/NU1490,default,pd.html

I’ve used my Sorel boot liners several years as thermal house shoes when it’s cold, and they’ve begun to fray.  Looked up the price of replacing them and discovered it’s $45, so I went to work on the seams and edges with super glue.

No Humpty Dumpty for them.  But I’ll sip to them anyway if there’s any left.

As for Shiva, she’s doing well up there, happy.  Jeanne and I have a ritual of talking on the phone, speaker phone on on her end.  Shiva sits on her shoulder, purrs, slobbers, and rubs her face against the phone.

I’ll sip to a happy ending, a new adventure, and the three remaining felines with active contracts.

And wish things equally good for you.  [Final sip]

Old Jules

21 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Free-ranging-chickens, History, Human Behavior, Music, Senior Citizens

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