Tag Archives: senior citizens

Boundary issues

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | 11 comments

I stepped out of the RV to pee around 4:00 am and since it was too dark to read while I stood there pondering life to pass the time.  Tried to anticipate whether, late as it was, I’d be able to get back to sleep, or should I come indoors and do some work on the computer I’d been putting off doing.

So when I finished I’d decided to go up to the cabin and get some coffee, maybe do the comp thing.  But I noticed the wind had blown over a chair where I’d left a pinch bar and it was on the ground.  Picked it up and headed for the cabin porch.

Suddenly I was proud to have the pinchbar because one of the bigger coons I’ve ever encountered met me at the head of the steps, teeth bared.  I leaned backward to begin a step and the coon leaned forward suggesting he/she’d be following while I reared the pinchbar back to strike if needed.

Coon came down the top step with its front legs looking me straight in the eye when I spang hit it with the pinchbar and knocked it backward onto the porch.  This was beginning to tick me off.

I came up the first step while the coon turned around to face me again baring teeth and sort of whine/growling, not much of a pause before it came fast and I whacked hell out of it again upside the head.

Stunned it enough to give me time to think a moment and decide I wasn’t crazy about how this was all going, so as the coon struggled up and turned to face me I hit it again, this time with all the force I could muster.  Took it down again, but not dead, not unconscious.

So I stepped into the cabin and dragged out a .22 pistol inside the door, turned back around just in time to have the coon turning on me again.

Lousy way to start a day.

11 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, Animals, Nature, Texas, Wildlife

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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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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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Tough year here for cats

Posted on June 8, 2013 by | 12 comments

invadercat1

Something snagged the Invadercat here a while back, tore him up badly and took out one eye.  He hung around here a week-or-so for food, didn’t appear to be getting worse.  But then he vanished, as he’s always been prone to do.  I know he was getting food at one of the ranches around here, probably several.

But once he left he hasn’t been back.  Might be one of the other folks who’ve been feeding him took him to a vet and had him doctored, or maybe something got him in the woods.  Life’s dangerous enough in the real world for a cat with two good eyes and no serious injuries.

Meanwhile, Ms Tabby’s having worse than her usual battle with spring and summer leg and skin troubles.  Getting welts from either cactus, or fire ants on her legs, belly and tail.  I see her crouched in the meadow stalking things in places where I know there are fire ant beds, so that might be the problem.  But she’s looking worse now than anytime since she’s been with me.

Ms Niaid and Mr Hydrox are doing generally okay, though Niaid’s looking skinnier than I’d like.  She’s bringing in several mice per day to show off before she eats them, but still wants the catfood and is the eagerest eater of them all.  After I used the sheep shears on her she hasn’t picked up burrs and gotten matted hair so badly, seems a lot more pleased with herself.  Gets around well for a senior citizen.

Mr Hydrox only has half of himself sheep sheared, avoided being caught to have it finished after we had a difference of opinion during the operation regarding how much more to take off.  But last night he wanted to sleep with me, so I’m thinking he’s going to have less hair soon.

All in all central Texas probably just ain’t the exact right place for these felines and this 70 year old man and the Coincidence Coordinators are raising the ante for staying any longer than I have to.

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, Animals, Outdoors, Texas

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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.

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Senior Citizens, Survival

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The price you can get for your kids has skyrocketed.

Posted on June 6, 2013 by | Leave a comment

The National Debt

Time was when parents were reluctant to sell their children.  They could barely get enough to pay a week rent for a healthy, hard working, intelligent kid.

However, luckily in this 21st Century all that has changed.  You can get wars, weaponry,  welfare, superhighways, government grants, retirement for government officials, 87 layers of cops, national health care and a lot more.  All you have to do is sell your kids, worthless, illiterate and unlikely though they are. 

Heck, I guess the kids are all already sold.  It’s the grandkids and the rest of your progeny you’ll have to hock.  But the folks who loan money to the US government are still anxious to buy them.

Especially the Chinese.

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Posted in 2000's, 2013, America, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Parents

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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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Wishing you whatever kind of Christmas you want for yourselves

Posted on December 23, 2012 by | 14 comments

la cantina antlered head 2

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

I sat in a Mexican food cafe in Snora the other morning chowing down on a buffet breakfast I hadn’t asked ahead of time how much would cost.  After all, how much could they charge for a buffet breakfast, anyway?

Well, that’s another story.  What I was going to say was that the table next to me had five men having breakfast together.  Obviously something they did frequently, judging from the conversation.  None of them gave off the physical aura of having missed many big breakfasts for a while.

But these were serious, corn fed Texas men wearing cowboy hats and gimme caps with an air of having shiny new pickups with dual wheels out in the parking lot and weighty matters on their minds.  Men of substance and strong opinions about what’s wrong in this world and how to go about solving it.

Men, I thought as I eavesdropped on them, who wouldn’t sit still for someone telling them what kind of Christmas or New Year to have, because these men were capable of figuring it out for themselves.

I learned a lot as I listened to them telling one another things the others weren’t listening to while they waited for openings to allow themselves to tell the others things they wouldn’t listen to.

But it was all right, because they were all saying pretty much the same things, anyway.

So I waited in a state of fingernail-chewing anticipation to find out whether one of them would slip up and tell the others what kinds of Christmas to have, causing a confrontation, a fist-fight, maybe a gunfight out in the parking lot.  I hurried my meal so’s if I had to duck under a table I’d have already packed my gut with as much as time allowed.

However, strangely enough, they all stirred the remains of their meals around on their plates, finished off whatever each had to say that the others wouldn’t hear, and almost in unison, ordered one another to have a Merry Christmas.  No steely eye squints.  No, “Don’t you tell ME what kind of Christmas to have, Charlie!”

Everyone made allowances, I suppose, for the fact it was breakfast ending and they had serious matters to attend and not enough time to do it.  No time for a fist fight before getting on with it.  Or maybe they just didn’t hear what the others said, as they’d done throughout the meal.  Didn’t realize someone told them what kind of Christmas to have.

However, after thinking it and talking it over to the cats, I think my own approach is to mildly suggest that you readers have whatever sort of Christmas you want to have.  But if you choose not to, it’s okay.  I’m not insisting.

The New Old Jules and the Enlightened Cats

14 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Surveillance, The Lone Psychiatrist

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Tilting Windmills Out The Window of an RV

Posted on December 22, 2012 by | 7 comments

Ira Ann Windmills2

Hi readers.

Once these damned cats croak I have one project left to complete before I fall into a burning ring of fire Johnny Cashwise.  I want to find a hubcap to use for a helmet, a garbage can lid for a shield, and a long piece of 2 inch cast iron pipe and open a can of whupass on one of those windmills they’re foresting the plains of West Texas with.

Not to suggest I have anything against them.  In fact, I respect them and whatever engineer with an Asian surname designed them.

No, I want to prove to myself and to future generations of mankind that whatever else Cervantes might have thought, he was wrong about windmills and their place in the overall scheme of things as it applies to the human condition when it’s challenged by a man of vision.

And I’m just the man to do it.

The New Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Books, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Science, Senior Citizens

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La Cantina

Posted on December 21, 2012 by | 12 comments

Hi readers.

La Cantina Entry

A man who reads this blog sent me an email a while back offering to allow me to hook up and park mi casa where he lives in far-west Texas a night, or more if we found ourselves simpatico.  So after the WalMart parking lot in Midland, we trucked up there and said hello.

La Cantina bar

Eddie and Val, their names are.  Fine, fine, fine people.  The Coincidence Coordinators blessed me once again with an unexpected shot of reminder I’m the luckiest man alive.

I’ll digress a moment and suggest you notice the birdnests on the vigas and the droppings on the orno below.  This is the entryway into the section of their home Eddie built where they evidently spend most of their time and entertain guests.

La Cantina Fireplace

I spent a few days parked in their yard, hours of every day submerged in conversation with Eddie, Val, various relatives and neighbors, digesting my life, the flood of new learning I was doing, and a lot else, thanks mainly to Val, who was forever worrying whether I could drink some more coffee, eat some more of the fare she constantly provided, putting more wood on the fire.

La Cantina deer head

Val’s an ex-school teacher, biologist, and interesting lady.  Eddie’s an electrical engineer who spent much of his lifetime travelling all over the planet, first as a private contractor, then in a corporate capacity, then decided screw-it.  I ain’t doing this no more.

La Cantina hatrack

I met a lot of interesting people, heard a lot of intriguing world-views in that cantina while the wind howled outdoors.  I’ll be telling you more of that later.

But one question I was asked over and over during my stay.  “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Soaking it up,” is the only answer comes immediately to mind.

Maybe I’m working up to continuing wossname, John Ernesto Hemingway Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie – The Brave New World For Whom The Bell Tolls.

The New Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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