Came across this book in a thrift store in Kerrville recently and couldn’t resist it because they were having a dime-a-book sale. As nearly as I can recall it was maybe the 3rd, or 4th science fiction book I read when I discovered the genre in the Portales Junior High School Library around 1958 or ’59.
I’d qualify it as ‘middling’, probably nowadays young adult, Horatio Algeresque, and a nice evening read if a man has three cats interrupting to punctuate things. Those times were full of first in orbit Sputink Explorer Cape Canavaral fizzles and it’s clear Heinlein, along with almost everyone else in the US, suddenly realized what an ignorant, poorly educated society we were becoming already. Spends a considerable while early in the book with a father discussing the shortcomings of the education the young main character was getting for himself and how he, the kid, was going to have to take responsibility for changing that. Assuming the kid wants it changed for the eventual outcome of his goal to go to the moon.
But there’s also a lot of other social commentary about responsibility, goals, paternalism, and finding a place outside the ‘normal’ shortcomings and flaws of humankind. Surprising lot of insight as to where science and engineering were going to go, though it naturally overlooked the prospect of the field being increasingly dominated by Asians. Even though RAH saw the social and educational conditions in the US that led in that direction, in those days nobody’d noticed whatever it was in Asia that would bring it to fruition.
All in all I doubt it would appeal much to the readership of today. But most would never find it anyway.
Me: “Okay Tabby. This has gone on long enough. Time we had a heart-to-heart about whatever’s bothering you.”
Tabby: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Me: “That’s obvious enough. But the fact is, I’m holding all the cards. We’re going to work this out, or you’re going to find yourself out of a job.”
Tabby:“I knew it was going to come to that. You’ve never liked me.”
Me: “Well, it’s true I didn’t pick you to be part of the clan. You’ve never been one I’d have deliberately selected. But I’ve tried my best to be dishonest about it consistently and not show it.”
Tabby: “The other cats have never liked me, never accepted me.”
Me: “Yeah, you’ve bullied them and they’ve bullied you. I’ve had to pull you off Niaid, and I’ve had to pull Hydrox off you. I’ve tried not to show a preference. I even used to have to pull you off Shiva, your own mother.
“But I’ve also held you upside down, sweet talked you, petted you, treated you as affectionately as all the rest of them were treated anytime you’d allow it. You quit allowing it. I didn’t quit trying.”
Tabby: “That’s because I finally realized you’re a liar. That you were being dishonest. That you really don’t like me at all.”
Me: “Yeah, but I’ve been consistently dishonest. I’ve tried to hide the fact I don’t like you much during those times I didn’t and I worked hard at liking you. If you want to stay around here and be a part of the ‘us’, Hydrox, Niaid, you and me, you’re going to have to trust me to keep on being dishonest.”
Tabby: “I’m not sure I can do that.”
Me: “If you can’t you stand a good shot at me starting to be honest. I’m an old Jellicle cat man from ‘way back. You’re a Tabby. I learned to love your mom, even though she’s a Tabby. I’ll keep working at it, and meanwhile I’ll keep being dishonest. But don’t push it too far. The clock’s running.”
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
First, I want to thank Bob for the link he provided about Gate Guard jobs, a particular blog entry that swivelled my thinking on the issue entirely. The issues of wear and tear on the RV because of the dust on the sites, bearings and other wear surfaces, particularly. Along with everything clogging, electrical connections not making contact, and the bad roads getting to town for groceries all conspired to convince me it’s not the job for this RV, these cats, and this old guy who wants to die before the party of the first part, but after the parties of the second part.
Second, today I’ll be taking it to town for the first time since I got the tags transferred. Need to pick up something called a ‘deep cycle’ battery to run the various coach functions. The one that’s on it is dead meat, which I knew when I bought it and used it to argue the guy down a bit on the price I paid. But it’s got to be replaced.
I’ll also be going by a coin laundry for the first time since I’ve been in Texas to get some clothes back into non-pioneer conditions.
Afterward I’ll go behind all the malls and big stores for packing boxes so’s I can get my belongings out of here and into the storage place. Everything I can’t carry along right now, winter clothing, that sort of thing.
Thirdly, groceries. Getting food of types I haven’t been equipped to utilize in a goodly while. Because everything on that RV WORKS.
Lastly: I might put the thing through one of those oil change places, get it lubricated, everything checked out for fluid levels, new oil. Instead of doing it my ownself, which ain’t all that much cheaper and is just one more time-sink.
Life’s a good adventure. It allows the illusion of forward movement, even standing still, leaning forward, preparing to stagger into the future.
Although I don’t believe I’ve come right out and said so, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the felines since June 9th when old Brother Coon made his debut. Even though I’m not inclined to think he was sick, it’s not easy to reconcile with my past experience with wild animals. If it weren’t for the single episode a year or two ago when Hydrox and I stood off a somewhat aggressive coon [described somewhere on this blog] I’d be more concerned.
But even so, I don’t trust this last one. In 70 years of being around wild critters this qualifies as the first time I’ve ever been attacked by one, even though I’ve been in close woods-proximity to a lot of them including bears and cougars. Always was able to stand off the bears without any increase in heartbeat rates and the cougars never had much interest in me.
But when I consider how big I must have looked to old Brother Coon I can’t help thinking this incident might involve something wrong with his thinker.
And as I’ve describe on some other recent posts, Tabby’s been acting uncharacteristally stand-offish, paranoid, etc. Usually I wouldn’t be much bothered by that, because Tabby’s a cat with a long history of behavioral changes, more-or-less when the wind changes.
She seems healthy enough even though she barely comes to the porch for food and definitely doesn’t want any attention, affection, etc. This morning she only spent a few minutes up here eating dry cat food then headed off across the meadow to sit staring back. I took some canned food out there and she devoured it, but didn’t encourage me to scratch her behind the ears or stroke her.
I gave her what she wanted without any arguments.
Today’s June 21 and the Great Coon Incident happened June 9. I’ll return to being insistent with Tabby when two weeks have passed, assuming she’s not foaming at the mouth or wobbling on her hind legs.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Jeanne called yesterday and said she’d fallen and broken her arm in a parking lot. Drove to a clinic somewhere and got a temporary cast put on. Afterward she said she’s having to type with one hand, so she mightn’t be doing much online work for a while.
I’m fairly concerned about this cat, Tabby. She’s 10-11 years old ….. seems to have a propensity for skin conditions summers, doesn’t get along well with the two long hairs, goes through phases of beating up Niaid, or being so stand offish the older cats gang up on her and drive her away from the food. All of them have too many scratches on their faces for my tastes.
Sometimes I’ll go a couple of days without seeing her, and when I do, about half the time she pretends I might hit her, cringes away. I’m keeping as close an eye on her as I’m able until two weeks passes since the agressive coon incident, because I have the impression she ain’t feeling well at all.
One of the possible jobs I’m looking at is in Arizona, a couple has a self-styled animal rescue setup, would like someone to help out feeding and taking care of the animalcules on their four-acres of land. In exchange for a site with utilities. Might be fun to do for a while, and if Tabby did well there I think I might persuade myself she’d be happier there permanently than voyaging around with the two older cats and me.
Spent all day in town Friday trying to get everything done transferring title, insurance etc on the new RV, but the day wasn’t long enough. Complications with undotted Tees and uncrossed eyes had me scurrying around back and forth up and down a lot of the day.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
A nice little norther blew in here the past couple of days, cooled things down something awful. I slept in the RV, and by ones and twos the cats volunteered to join me inside for a bit of quality time, sleeping on my chest, purring and kneading claws pleasantly. They tell me, with reservations, they think they’re going to be able to hunker down and live in there.
Came just in a nick of time, too, because what? Three daybreaks ago? I noticed something coming out of the now-open chicken house just after dawn. Double-take revealed it to be a bobcat, small for a bobcat, but large enough to make a meal out of any of these wannabe toughies. Last night the cats and I played fruit-basket-turn-over, two inside alternating with two nearby waiting their turn to come up next time I got up to pee.
Got my ‘Work for RVers and Campers Newsletter by email this morning:
Work for RVers and Campers: Employment, Volunteer Positions, Jobs, and Business
Nowhere near as many listings in there for west Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as there were last issue, which had a couple I found exciting. This issue only has a couple in Texas, neither far enough west to suit me, and one in Arizona up in the neighborhood of Sedona. They want someone in an RV park up there to do various things in exchange for a place to park.
But me going to Sedona would be carrying coals to Newcastle, I reckons. Besides, they wanted applicants to send a photo of themselves, along with a resume. With winter coming on I reckons I’d have to figure out which winter pic of me to send:
I’d naturally want to throw out the best possible impression of myself I could.
And they want the resume to demonstrate how I’m a people person, which of course, I am. Ain’t hardly any more people people out there than I am, taken from certain perspectives. But I’m not sure how I’d go about conveying it to them.
Been a long time since I wrote a resume, though I used to count myself a fair hand at doing it. If I was the one doing the hiring out there, I’d jump at me.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I suppose any vehicle as old as this one and built as this one was built would inevitably require some fixup before becoming a cabin on wheels. I mentioned in an earlier post about the springs sagging, and the springs have arrived, waiting for the new shocks to get here.
But I’m going to remove that AC unit up there to get rid of the weight, replace it with a roof vent, which is in transit. That’s a lot of weight up there to be carrying around for something I’m unlikely to use much. And there’s evidence the roof structure doesn’t need the challenge it provides.
I covered that crack in the front window with Gorilla tape for now, but ultimately I’m thinking I’ll cut a flat piece of panel to place behind it and fill in the bubble-void with insulation foam.
Probably put a compartment in it for a GPS receiver with a better view of the sky than I’d get from the dashboard.
I’ll run Delorme Street Atlas on the laptop when I’m trying to navigate around towns, but I truly love Terrain Navigator where there’s enough variation in the terrain to justify using it. I’m rigging a stand for the laptop to swivel from one of the passenger-side neck-support posts.
This thing just posted by itself. I’m just going to finish it, editing in the rest, I reckons.
Anyway, once I get the AC off I’ll do a complete over on the roof with this stuff, and new caulking anywhere my imagination leads me. The critical path on this part is that I can’t pull off the AC until the 14×14 roof vent arrives to replace it.
I’ve been feeling the walls and ceiling inside and out, drilling through and squirting in a lot of that Great Stuff foam where I find a void, of which there are a sufficient number to allow me a sense of accomplishment.
Then there’s the matter of the cats. I’m making that overhead into a travel space for the cats to enjoy themselves in while we’re on the road. A place where they can’t contrive to get underfoot, or jump out at a gas station to find a new life for themselves.
Once we’re parked somewhere it will go back to being a bed, whatever, but on the road it will be a cage. They won’t like it, but they’ll like it better than all the alternatives they’d find in the alternative Universe they’d be choosing for themselves if they got loose.
And against the advice of people who know a lot more than I do about these matters, I’m going to find, or construct a small trailer to pull behind for large bags of cat food, tools, extra clothing, and probably some prospecting gear.
This thing’s for sale in San Antonio [Converse] on Craigslist for $100. If I weren’t so far from SA I’d snap it up, gut it and convert it to a light haul trailer with a top to pull behind the Toyota. Might be a ragged out popup is sitting behind someone’s house within a 40 mile radius they’d part with at a similarly righteous price.
But I’ve messed this post up enough for now. Maybe I’ll go into this more later on a post I haven’t already posted.
I told you that silky rooster was intelligent, but I thought he’d outsmarted himself by getting loose and left behind here. All those hens he came up with as a chick, the surviving rooster. Kay’s hens and rooster. All now joined with a free ranging flock somewhere else.
And he was sorely depressed being alone here.
But he must have known faith would see him through. A lady down the road with 17 hens and no roosters emailed me after I listed him on Kerrville FreeCycle. We arranged to meet yesterday at a pullover midway between her and me.
“What a beautiful rooster!” He preened.
“What’s his name?”
“I’ve never given him a name.” She scowled and stroked him.
“I always name my chickens.” Attractive pucker.
To which Mr. NoName Silky replied, “I’ve been to the wild wood, mither. Mak my bed soon.”
After the literary Mehitabel, the first namesake to enter my life was in 1967. She was a stray, moved in ahead of a hurricane reputed to be headed for Houston. My new wife and I took her in because she was hungry, pregnant, and a violent storm might be coming.
She was near to giving birth and decided my sock drawer was the best option, refused to be dissuaded. So I built her a cat house behind the apartment. She didn’t stay around long after the kittens died, evidently because of drinking her milk.
Mehitabel #2 was a bob-tailed calico. Amazing cat, a loyal companion for 17 years. I once watched her in horror and awe as she mauled a full grown German Shepherd and similarly sized mutt, though they intended it to be the other way around, then found themselves surrounded, blocked repeatedly in their attempts to escape by a feline seemed to prefer two at a time.
I could spend pages telling Mehitabel #2 stories, but I won’t, except to say she was the mother of Hydrox #1, Hydrox #2, Xerox #s 1 and 2, and The Great Rumpus Cat #1. I always figured she was reincarnated from Mehitabel #1.
Over the years I always kept the cat population contained in a set of names lying in wait for a cat to fit in them, Mehitabel, Hydrox, Xerox and The Great Rumpus Cat being the primary ones. The method always worked well for me, but cats needed to fit particular qualifications to seize a particular name. Hydrox and Xerox were always jellicle cats. Mehitabel had to qualify by meeting other standards, generally following the Don Marquis model.
Mehitabel #3 came in around 1996, me fresh out of cats, her being a pregnant bookstore cat in Socorro, New Mexico. When Mehitabel #3 emerged from sleep and demanded I pick her up I asked the lady-owner, “She’s close. When these kittens are weaned could I have one?”
“You can have HER.”
“I don’t want half-a-dozen cats.”
“I know. As soon as the kittens are weaned you can have her.”
The enthusiasm and insistence of the lady told me I had the right cat. Mehitabel and I hit it off beautifully. But I was on the road a lot, and despite the cat door she was able to use to go in and out, I sensed Mehitabel was lonely.
Mel, a good friend, had a pregnant jellical female, Electra, living in his garage, and when the kittens were born I picked out Hydrox #4, or maybe 5. Freshly weaned, I carried him home to introduce him to Mehitabel #3. She hated him.
Mehitabel showed no signs of accepting him, so I went back to Mel and borrowed the second-best of the litter, Niaid, on an indefinite loan to keep him company. I didn’t try to fit her into the name thing because she was just a loaner.
As the pair matured I’d frequently ask Mel, “You needing this cat back?”
“No,” he’d assure me, “I’m fine.” Then Mel partnered with me on the Y2K land, though he stayed in town except for a week leading up to January 1, 2000, so the Niaid issue wasn’t a concern.
But in the background, throughout her life, Mehitabel bullied both of them unmercifully. When we went to live in a single-room apartment in Grants, New Mexico, toward the end of 2000, she could lay down the law and they couldn’t get away from her. But eventually Mehitabel #3 went on permanent mouse patrol, relieving the household of a lot of tension.
That’s where the screw-up happened in the life-long cat naming procedures. A stray pregnant cat emerged from catdom at a motel Jeanne was staying in while visiting me in Grants, which she took back to Kansas with her. Named her Shiva, largely because of my lousy abilities at prognostication.
I had no idea the was going to eventually fill the Mehitabel #4 slot.
But she did and it’s screwed everything up from a cat naming perspective. I doubt I’ll live long enough to get it back on track. One of Shiva’s litter’s living with me, as well. Sheeze! Her name????
This is a confusing situation. First I consulted my feline advisers about it, which didn’t help much.
Mr. Hydrox did, however, point out that the chickens, coons, possums and deer want to be like cats, coming onto the porch eating cat food, which gave me pause. But then I discussed it with the Great Speckled Bird, who pointed his spurs of blame in the direction of the deer and the coons, mainly.
“You’re constantly having to run them out of the chicken feed you put out for us. Those deer aren’t even scared of you, but it’s fun watching you trying to chase them off throwing rocks, cussing and waving your arms around. Damned deer want to be like us chickens.”
The deer were next in line for consultation. That’s more difficult because they don’t speak proper English. But a young buck assured me it was the feral swine causing the problem. “Squeeee deer are just hungry. Squeee don’t meannnnn no harm ner try busting things up. Most of ussss. It’s them damned wild hawggggs doing that. They want to beeeeee like us deer. Copycat bastards.”
What I was trying to figure out was why ‘we’ US citizens want the rest of the world to be like us.
At least, we want them to want to be like us
Time was not so long ago when the US cared so little about whether the rest of the world wanted to be like us, or not, the thought would have never entered their heads yea or nay. Prior to WWII most US citizens wanted nothing more than to go about their own affairs and be left strictly out of the troubles spilling blood all over the planet. What the rest of the world did was the business of the rest of the world.
Earlier, during the Civil War, when the UK was trying to decide whether to join the French in the invasion of Mexico, the Prime Minister was saying a lot of things to Queen Victoria about the leadership of the country (Abraham Lincoln), the reasons for the war, the conduct of the war, that Americans would have found painful to hear if they hadn’t been too busy killing one another to pay attention.
But they’d have found those remarks between the PM and the Queen painful because they contained so much truth. Not because they cared a damn what the leaders of the UK thought about the US.
We’ve spent the last half-century trying to make the rest of the world want to emulate us, politically. Most of the world wasn’t interested. But we did succeed in a lot of ways nobody anticipated. We shipped all our industry off to the countries we’d spent a lot of lives and treasure whupping the socks off of, trying to help them be like us just a few years earlier.
By ‘we’, I’m not talking about ‘me’, nor am I talking about ‘you’ if you happen to just be a regular person who wasn’t involved in making decisions to ship all our production, manufacturing and skilled labor jobs off to third world countries because of the cheap labor and ostensibly trying to help them to be like us.
The ‘we’ I’m talking about is some nebulous consortium of folks who had enough money to own companies, factories, mines, lumber mills, steel mills and all the other components involved in a healthy economy with a population of employed citizens.
And by ‘we’ I’m also talking about several generations of bought and paid for politicians of both parties who found themselves more attracted to serving the interests of those described immediately above than protecting the interests of the citizens who elected them to public office.
When the parts of ‘we’ described above were minding ‘our’ own business the part of ‘we’ not included had thriving industry, plenty of jobs, affluence. Anyone who wanted a job could find one.
But gradually, as ‘we #1’ and ‘we #2’ succeeded in making the rest of the world in our own image in some unanticipated ways, all three of ‘our’ industry and production infrastructures became a dead shell. All ‘our #3’ jobs became government related, or pure government, or ‘service’, such as selling insurance, flipping hamburgers, running the sewer plant, advertising, cashiers, sales, lawyering, medical, and cops. The kinds of jobs producing nothing of lasting value, nothing for export.
And in the process, the world we made in our own image wanted to be like us. They wanted cars, television sets, air conditioners, microwave ovens. They became super-consumers. They began needing petroleum products for energy, for plastic rubber monster toys for the kids. Petroleum to run their power plants to refrigerate. Petroleum to run their hair dryers. Petroleum to run their industries.
They became like us.
Meanwhile, the dead hull of US industry didn’t demand so much energy, but our automobiles, air conditioners and plastics requirements continued to do so.
But the rest of the world wanted it, too. They became like us. Prices skyrocketed.
So, now we don’t have any industry, don’t produce anything, but still need the energy to run. And so, also, does the rest of the world because they’ve done as we hoped. They became like us. Now maybe we need to find some other ways to make them want to be like us, before they decide to be like us in some other unanticipated ways we’ll like a lot less.
But a couple of decades ago the entire Eastern Block of Nations, along with Iran, did something we might be well served to emulate. They kicked out all the politico factions who’d been selling out the interests of the citizenries, tried a lot of them for treason and other serious crimes, and tried to start anew.
Now that they’ve managed to become like us it’s time we tried to be like them.
Finally, Tabby pointed out what’s probably both true and obvious.
“You run those chickens off the porch when they try to steal our food. You do whatever you have to do to keep the coons and possums from killing the chickens. You drive the deer away from the chicken feed. And you kill the swine because they’re dangerous to all of us and destroy everything that stands in their way of taking everything from all of us.
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 
