Tag Archives: senior citizens

Letting a Camel Get a Nose Under the Tent

Posted on July 7, 2012 by | 9 comments

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

Most of you who read here frequently know I’m a man who prefers insanity and what a lot of you might consider hardship to compromise of a lot of things you’d assign no value to.  The world I live in is a place with a rigid value structure teetering on the edge of an abyss I do my best to keep it from falling into.

Yesterday I was tending my own affairs when the newish neighbor up the hill drove down and offered me a Shiner Boch beer.  Which I considered a tasty gesture.  I bought a case of beer sometime last summer and was down to almost my last one in the fridge.  That Shiner pulled me a beer into the future.

A while back I’d offered, neighborly, if the neighbor ever needed anyone to lift the other end of something I’d be pleased to lift it.  I don’t mind being a help when someone needs something I can do.  Glad to do it, in fact.

So, as I sat there sipping that Shiner Boch he explained to me he’d fired a likely young man he had up there working for him.  Said he’d like me to come work up there helping him a while.  Offered me an hourly wage to do it.

Given my financial situation I was sorely tempted and tentatively accepted, fully aware of the dangers inherent in changing the nature of my relationship with a neighbor from helpful, casual acquaintance to one of employer/bought-and-paid-for-employee.  And asking myself how the hell I could charge a wage to do something I’d have done anyway for nothing if he’d asked.

You’ll probably consider it foolish, maybe melodramatic when I tell you the entire damned issue kept me awake a lot longer last night than it had any business doing.

The man has a lot of machinery up there, all of it different by one nuance or another, from anything I’ve operated before.  Never operated a track machine, which I’d like to learn to do.  Never operated any machine that wasn’t gasoline fueled.  So if I have an opportunity to learn I’d consider the learning a potential value to me sometime.

And the guy has a lot of experience as a mechanic, believes he might be able to get that old Ford F350 Gale gave me that’s still sitting up there quietly waiting, running.  [ Got me a new truck!, The New Truck Resurrection,  Another Bug on the Windshield of Life – The Tow Bar, Running the Obstacle Course – the F 350, Learning How to Not Be So Stupid].

If he managed doing it, there’d be a lot more value for me than any damned wage he’d be likely to pay.  If he tried, but didn’t succeed, no big deal.

It’s not a quid pro quo that way.  Just two folks, each one needing a helping hand, extending one each to the other.

No camels putting their noses under the tent.  Nobody bought and paid for.

As a person who’s seen and experienced the entire range of potentials for neighbors wanting to shoot or beat the bejesus out of one another, this seems to me a decent way of disarming it all.  If a person’s driving off a few miles to work for someone and everything begins as a clear exchange of dollar value for labor it’s safe.  Someone decides to lean harder than someone else is willing to be leaned on, they easily go their separate ways.  No harm done.

But two people essentially handcuffed to one another by proximity don’t need to be throwing that sort of temptations out to human frailties.

So, here in a little while I’m going to wander up there and see what he wants me to do in exchange for fixing that damned old Communist F350.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Trucks

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Running Around Bare-Assed Naked – Visitors, Telescopes and Determination

Posted on June 30, 2012 by | 8 comments

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

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting outdoors reading Mitcheners, The Bridges at Toko-Ri [a truly bizarre piece of twisted logic intended to explain why the US was fighting a war in Korea nobody understood] wearing nothing but a pair of shoes.  Nobody much comes here, but I heard a vehicle on the hill, glanced up and saw a truck making its way down.  Ran indoors and slipped on a pair of trousers, still zipping up and pulling my galluses over my shoulders when the newish neighbor pulled up in front of the cabin.

Which has happened occasionally since he moved up there.  Something just to get used to, me being a guy who ain’t interested in what neighbors think of me if they have to use binoculars or come unexpected to get around to thinking it.

We talked a while, had a pleasant visit, and he left without commenting on the fact he’d probably gotten a forbidden view of my almost 70 year old traffic stopping bod.

But this morning when I logged on and glanced through the daily digests of Yahoo Group posts I came across this posted yesterday on the “Not Your Usual Goat” list:

Re: OT: Zillow
 
Fri Jun 29, 2012 9:33 am (PDT) . Posted by: “Cheridehart” thumber_smiget
I am to open to even consider going out nude more or less even in my nighty
. We are to open for that . Even with the neighbors on the next 20 acre lot
We are in farm land area my place was a wheat field at one time what trees
I have around the house I planted . I was adjusting the telescope one day for the hubby for sky watching and
focused in on a house going up on the hill side say about 25 miles away . I
did not think anything of it it was being built did not know someone was
staying there had not seen any one . Had hubby check it out if I had it set
for him okay it was a little blurred for me he wears glasses . Well when he
looked the guy was taking a shower in the garage part of the place right
where I had it pointing Hubby ask me if I was spying on the neighbors and
how many times have I watched him shower . I told him for now on he can
adjust it for him self from now on I am sticking to my own scope which is
pointed a Venus at the moment be going back to the moon soon . We have very
few out side lights so makes for a very good night sky watching around here
Can not believe how may satellites are up their blinking there way across
the skies. The last three good sky events we have had we where so clouded
could not see anything. Cheri
Led me to consider the big house someone built on the ridge about 10 miles away from here, which I watched them build through a telescope.  As it happens, I shower outdoors every day pouring gallon orange juice jugs of water warmed by sunlight over my head.  Direct line of sight from the big house on the ridge.
 
Got me wondering whether Cheri might be up there looking at my private stuff through a spyglass pretending I’m Venus.
 
Which I ain’t.
 
Maybe I need to start keeping one hand over my crotch.
 
Old Jules
 
Afterthought:  About The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Paraphrased
 
Navy Task Force Admiral character:  “No, this war isn’t necessary.  We could let them have it [read, let the North Koreans have Korea].  But what would we give them next?  Japan?  Hawaii?  California?  Besides, it’s honorable.”
 
Soon-to-be-dead fighter pilot:  “I’ve got to do this because the bastards shot down a guy I admired while he was directing fire on their advancing troops.  I can’t let my buddies down.  Wouldn’t be honorable.”
 
Soon-to-be-dead helicopter rescue pilot:  “I do it because I hate communists.  I’m a gutsy guy.  Not some coward.”
 
Weepy wifee of soon to be dead fighter pilot:  “I was against the war, didn’t want my hubby killed.  But I changed my mind after the Admiral explained why it’s necessary.  Now I’m okay with it, though I still whine and weep.  Now I whine and weep in a noble, more courageous way.”
 
 
 
 
 

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Astronomy, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Surveillance, Texas

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Roswell – 1947

Posted on June 25, 2012 by | 13 comments

Just so’s to clear up my own position regarding the ‘Roswell Incident’.

After I read Witness To Roswell I came away convinced all those interviews had put the ball into the other end of the court insofar as what happened back then and who needed to carry the burden of proof.  I carried that line of thought around a few years, including the time of the visit with Loretta.

But my second-thoughts about whether I’d trust the book began when, maybe a year ago, I began getting emails from one of the authors of the book.  I’m not certain what it was about his emails cause me to experience a growing body of mistrust, suspicion and dislike, but something did.  My gut feel left me thinking I wouldn’t trust the guy far enough to want to step on him barefooted.

So, I’m back where I was from the beginning.  I have no idea what happened out on wossname’s ranch in 1947, other than what Loretta said about it during our conversation.  And I quite honestly don’t think it much matters in the overall scheme of things, what happened, what anyone believes happened, nuthun.

Nuthun at all.  I couldn’t care less whether there are aliens zipping around this planet, time travellers, government flying machines, new world order robots, Roswellcrucians, ghosts, phantoms, vampires, or just bored people making things up.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 1940's, UFOs

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Blushes, Apologies and Corrections Regarding Loretta Proctor et al

Posted on June 25, 2012 by | 5 comments

About the post a longish whle back: 

An Afternoon with Aunt Loretta (Proctor)- Roswell, 1947 and UFO and Certainties About What Isn’t

I posted a whatchallit, vignette, I suppose, about a visit with Kay’s aunt [I thought], Loretta Proctor.  Evidently I made a lot of foolish errors, for which I apologize.  Here are a series of comments correcting my errors from Veda Proctor.

Hope this clears everything up sufficiently.  I lost track of most family relationships in my own life a long while back and probably don’t attach enough importance to the specifics where they apply to others, is the only excuse I can give.

Veda Proctor:

Jules-just to say, Anonymous has the facts, word for word. Kay is the niece of Ellis Hodge, Mama’s (or as you know her, “Aunt Loretta”) second husband. This is being written by Veda, the daughter that Loretta lives with to this day. I was the one you talked with when you came up with Kay and Gale. Dee was Mama’s third son, not a step son. Timothy is Dee’s son. Don’t know where that all came from. We don’t even call him Timothy. And I don’t think anything ever traumatized Dee. He would never talk about it much, because to a 7 year old, “it was just a bunch of junk”. It really did not impress him at all. He never saw the second sight at all. He never had any piece of it that he kept hidden away, there was one person, deceased many years ago, that she suspected would have some of it, if anyone did. Dee never ducked an interview, he would tell anyone who asked the same thing that he told us. “To a 7 year old, it was just a bunch of junk”. Our family has only been in the area for 95 years, so we pretty much knew who every one was even remotely close. Never heard of Wright, never had a neighbor named Thomas Edington, and Truman Spencer lived over 30 miles away. Travel in those days was difficult, to say the least, so not sure how his daughter managed to get to the site. Mama would have never referred to Dee as a spoiled brat. Until the military came out, the only way anyone got to the site was horseback. So there was not a lot of people knew about it. This article has people from all over the world hunting “hidden relics” that do not exist. That makes me slightly uncomfortable. Anyone who wants to hear what Mama had to say should stick with the basic interview that was posted and can be found by anyone doing a search on Loretta Proctor on their computer. That one has had nothing added, and nothing taken from it. Thank you. And again, I am not anonymous, I am VEDA.
Submitted on 2012/06/25 at 10:21 AM
It dawned on me that Kay is a niece to Lorettas second husband but I stand firm on the names and step situation, And No Metal Was Kept. Also Trumans grandsons were born over 20 years after the crash, Mac Brazels family lived in Tularosa not Las Cruces.

sorry to bother you again but I misunderstood the relationship to Truman. His daughter if she was even born at that time would have had to ride horseback over 30 miles as the crow flies to get to the crash site. I noticed on Vedas response she put the last name SPENCER. That family ranched between WHITE OAks and Carrizozo and the family you referred to ranched close to hiway 285 at least 30 miles from the crash site. I know about the PROCTOR family and that part of the world as I am from that part of the world. There were some EDINGTONS with connections to that area but coming from a family that lived there for years no one knew a THOMAS.

Thanks, Anonymous, for the clarification on the man with the first name of Truman. I immediately think of the ones near Carrizozo, MY MISTAKE!!! Anyone out there, PLEASE do NOT start contacting this family, as trying to get fact from fiction is tough enough, when people, (me included) do not proof read, and inadvertently call a wrong name, much less try to locate something that is not there, in the first place!! Again, you are absolutely, and totally correct in this reply you have made. VEDA

5 Comments

Posted in 1940's, UFOs

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Loaded With Extras

Posted on June 23, 2012 by | 11 comments

I take the view the only really necessary parts on a vehicle are:

  1. Engine and drive train,
  2. wheels of some description
  3. Steering device
  4. Throttle
  5. Someplace to sit or stand.

This car is loaded with extra parts.  For instance, notice that hood with all the paint on it and the little hump.  That hump was caused sometime when something flew off the engine and instead of heading off somewhere the driver wouldn’t have to deal with it, bounced it back into the engine compartment.

Paint is a definite useless extra, and the hood doesn’t do anything except make it more difficult to get to the engine.  Same as that windshield.  Just something else to break.  If the car didn’t have a windshield it wouldn’t need windshield wipers forever wearing out.

Look at all that expensive, useless crap they hang on those cars.  Bumper.  Mirrors, lights.  Just more stuff to go wrong or get knocked off.  Something covering the radiator.

More useless paint, little signs hung all over the place, hubcaps.  Reflectors.

All that stuff on the tires to wear out.  If they’d just wrap the hubs with electrical tap they’d never go flat.  Or make them out of solid rubber so’s a person could wear them all the way down to the axles, or at least the hubs.

Look at all this junk!  Tail lights.  Some kind of weird handle across the trunk.  More little signs.  A back window.  A tail pipe!  A dadgummed tail pipe hanging out there to catch on rocks and deadfall trees.  But most of this extra stuff will take care of itself over time just getting in and out of here. 

Luckily, the brakes are fairly spongy so’s I won’t have to trouble myself with them long.  If I need to stop planned, I’ll just shut down the engine.  Or emergencies, put it into reverse, or parking gear.  Or run it into something heavy.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in Transportation

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Unplanned Protrusions

Posted on June 23, 2012 by | 15 comments

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

A person with his ear to the ground listening for possibilities and interference from the Coincidence Coordinators can find himself in unexpected places, which I did.  Yesterday.

Had to go into town for groceries and animal necessities, but I’d been watching that bus for about six weeks.  Thought it might be time to begin feeling around in the head of the man who owns it. 

We were sitting in the car lot office circling the issue, nobody putting a toe in the water when a Lincoln pulled up in front and a guy got out, shouting, “I put serious stuff up my nose!”  He was shouting it non-verbally, but body language communicates sufficiently sometimes.

He jitterbugged into the office – it was clear he and the owner knew one another – and pointed across the lot to an older model American somewhat small car. 

Tweaker talking a mile a minute:  I’ve got checks out I need to beat to the bank with cash.  Would you buy that car from me for $1400 cash right now?

Owner:  No.

Tweaker:  $1300?

Owner:  No.

This progress worked its way down $100 at a time to $400, the owner nodding negative.  The tweaker paused.  “No?”

Owner:  NO.  I’ve got a cash flow problem here.  When I sold you that car I’d taken it on a trade in.

Tweaker turns to me:  Would you buy it?:

Me:  No.  That ain’t my kind of car.

Tweaker:  Huh.  I guess I’d better try to sell it to someone else then.  I’ll get my stuff out of it.

Tweaker goes out to the Chevi, takes a lot of stuff out of the back seat and carries it over to the Lincoln.  Meanwhile, I’m thinking.

Me to owner:  Would it be any problem for you if I bought that car from him?

Owner:  He bought it from me.  I don’t have anything to do with it now.

So, I got to the car about the same time as the tweaker returned to it, asked him about it.  Keep in mind, he’d talked to me in the office a few minutes earlier, asked if I’d buy it for $400.

Tweaker:  Would you buy it for $1400.

Me, scowling:  No

Tweaker:  $1300?

Me:  No.  Do you remember me?  I was in there with you and him a few minutes ago.

Tweaker:  Sure.  Would you give me $1200?

Me:  No.

We worked our way back down, me assuring him I honestly wasn’t certain I was interested at any price.  So we went over it, looking at everything, listening to the engine, driving it around the parking lot.

Tweaker:  Are you going to buy it?

Me:  You only got down to $600.  We aren’t down to talking about it yet.

Tweaker:  But you haven’t made any offer.

Me:  I’ll give you $400 lock stock and barrel.  No sales tax, no nothing else.

Tweaker:  That’s just the amount I was hoping for.

Turned out the papers from him buying it hadn’t come back from DVM yet, so I sent him off to get whatever was needed to sign it over to me and he left, saying he’d be back there at 2:00 pm.  I went off to a couple of thrift shops and returned at 2:00.  He was nowhere to be seen, so I hung around chewing the fat with the car lot owner until he arrived back and we did the motions of transferring things him jittering and jotting, talking incoherently.  We had a blank form and he signed it, wrote out a bill of sale on a piece of notebook paper.  Barely readable.

The story should have ended there, me coming back here to get Gale to haul me to town to pick it up.  But the tweaker had a lot of dances and fast peter-piper-picked-a-pail-of-pickle-peppers left in him he needed to get out.  Asked me if he should give me $100 back on the car.  No idea why.

Me:  No.  We’re okay. 

Eventually I nudged him friendly out to the Lincoln so he could go take care of the bank.  Went back inside the office shaking my head, made arrangements to leave it in the lot a few hours, or until this morning so’s I could come pick it up.  We all shook our heads at one another, shrugged, shook our heads some more and I was on the road home.

Gale was ecstatic, knowing he won’t be loaning me Little Red anymore for my necessaries.

Me, I’m just tickled the Coincidence Coordinators are so much smarter than me.  When the time comes I’ve figured out I don’t need it I’m comfortable I won’t lose money on it, provided it still runs.  But even as junk I won’t lose much if it comes to that.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, Texas, Transportation

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Dragging the Past Around Like a Cotton Sack

Posted on June 16, 2012 by | 6 comments

Until you forgives it, I reckons. 

The Coincidence Coordinators will rub our noses in the alternatives just for the hell of doing it.

I’d stopped into the Office Max store in Kerrville to pick up a cheap flash drive when I saw the little bastard.  He and what I figured must be a lady employ of his [now] were looking over the copying machines, taking notes, asking a clerk questions, frowning and muttering to one another.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, changed positions pretending to look at other merchandise on other counters to get a better view of him.  Shaking my head in disbelief.  He’d put on a bit of weight, hair’d gone gray, but it was Tony.  The very man I used to swear to myself if I ever caught him out somewhere I’d whip his ass until it thundered.

And here he was in Kerrville, Texas.

Shortly after I came into Grants, New Mexico, after I gave myself a Y2K, discovered I couldn’t find a job paying higher than minimum wage, I went to work for Tony.  He was managing the Rodeway Inn, needed a graveyard shift clerk.  I hired on.

During the interview he drifted to personal conversation.  “What kind of music do you like?”

“Old stuff, mostly.  Rock and Roll, pre-1980s CW.  Bluegrass.  Opera, classical.  I’ve got promiscuous tastes in music.”

“Any kind of music you especially don’t like?”

“Yeah.  I never cared for disco, and what passes for country music now drives me nuts.”

I had no idea.

After I’d trained for a week with one of the day shift clerks the place was all mine from 11:00 pm until 7:00 am.  The radio/stereo was locked in the office behind me, but I didn’t have access to it.  Tony’s apartment was back there, too, but the speakers to the radio were in the lobby.

11:00 pm every night I’d report to work, 11:10 pm every night, just so’s I’d know it was deliberate, the volume would go up almost so’s I couldn’t hear anything else allowing me to check in customers.  Modern all night country music station out of Albuquerque.

When they came down to check out early or to grab some breakfast the customers would often get nasty about it, ask me to turn down the racket.  All I could do was shrug.

I got this far writing the draft before I thought of the ‘Bypass Surgery’ post and song.  Thought it might tell some other tales about working in that motel, and about Tony.  But it turns out it might as well be this post played 78 rpm.

Spark and Tinder for the Next Country Music Wave

I suppose I ought to begin all over and tell you some other tales about old Tony, maybe sometime I will.  Because there are a lot of them, and many were codified in letters I wrote to Jeanne while I was working those long nights.  She’s pestered me plenty of times to post some of them here, though some weren’t about Tony. 

Good stories, though.  The night clerk at the other motel Tony managed across the street giving $25 bjs to the customers and Tony’s reaction when it got back to him.  How he got to banging the woman-prisoners from the State Women Prison who worked daytimes cleaning up, and how pissed he was when he discovered they were also screwing the customers.

How he’d rent the ‘suite’ room out a week at a time to the local crystal meth dealer, then spend his time up there rolling #100 bills, the motel register showing the room as vacant and closed for repairs.

But I ain’t going to waste my time telling you all that.  I’m just going to forgive old Tony for being among the lowest scum tyrants I’ve ever met this lifetime, then do my best to forget that entire episode of my life.

Actually, now I think about it, there are a couple that don’t involve Tony I might get around to telling.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Grants, Human Behavior, Music, New Mexico, NM, Relationships, Solitude, Survival, Y2K

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Giving God More Marching Orders

Posted on June 15, 2012 by | 8 comments

It was flags and God Bless America signs I noticed mostly in Kerrville last trip in.  Had me wondering whether something was going on I’d missed. 

Here’s a country where they’re still planting grass in the suburban yards so they can mow it at $3.50+ per gallon for the mowers, giant television sets, shiny new doolies, SUVs, RVs and golf courses demanding more blessings because the ones already provided don’t fill the cup.

But maybe I’m reading it wrong.  Maybe God Bless America’s a parenthetical statement:

(Help me God, because the onliest people I’ve got to choose from are all going to provide me with more undeclared wars, ship more jobs overseas, bail out more banks, automobile companies, allow my savings to be ravaged, and treat my Social Security as though it were welfare beggings.)

I dunno.  Seems to me this nation’s enjoyed considerable blessings for the duration of the lives of everyone living in it.  Even those living on the streets, on the Reservations, just about everywhere, compared to a great majority of the less-deserving who didn’t manage to get born here.

If there’s a diety out there looking for advice maybe a “Thankee!” would get a better hearing than, “Gimme more!”

Maybe it’s time to belly up to the bar and recognize that life’s a tough place to live and sometimes people have to live it without giant television sets and new SUVs.  Judging by the people the US public have selected to look out for their interests it would take a diety a lot more forgiving than the one a majority of believers believe in to heap more blessings on those demanding them.

Thowing good money after bad isn’t one of the traits attributed to the usual diety.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Texas

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Divine Intervention – A Blossom Fell

Posted on June 15, 2012 by | 12 comments

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

I was relaxing in a camp chair just before dusk yesterday when the Coincidence C0ordinators gave me a nudge to remind me my priorities are too much anchored in the chicken, cabin, drainage issues recent past.  The bachelor roosters were loose for their afternoon free range and my attention was directed to making certain neither of them sneaked off to bloody TGSB.

KERWHUMP!

Suddenly a few feet away I had an oak tree poking into my affairs.  The chickens were going crazy running every direction, guinea-mania drowning out the chicken-panic, me just trying to fathom what I was seeing.

Turned out one of the remaining trunks of the oak that fell on the roof of the storage building a while back decided to put the squeeze on the Bachelor Rooster Containment Center.

Spang blocked off the chute between the pen and the night fortress, raising all manner of questions about protected places to house the roosters for the night.

But more importantly, forced the awareness that this cabin, all the storage buildings, even the main chicken pen, surrounded by dying oaks waiting to fall on something important.

Nobody got crushed in this one.  The cats were well away, even I was far enough out of reach so only a few leaves and a bit of dust got to me.  But I’ve got lots of trees and not-all-that-many cats.

I pondered it all last night for a considerable while.  If that tree had come down on me there’d have been a lot of hungry, thirsty chickens and felines lying around with Xs over their eyes before anyone got around to wondering how long it had been since they’d seen me and why.

And the fact is, even though I’m a fair-hand at the one-man-band act, I can’t figure any way in hell to bring a lot of these potential crushers down in a way that doesn’t include them falling on the cabin roof.

So I did a lot of weighing and juggling what I ought to be thinking and doing.  Concluded I first need to scout around for a home for the chickens.  The lady who runs the Habitat For Humanity Thrift Store has a lot of free rangers, along with some goats and two dogs to protect them all.

I reckons I’ll be talking to her next time I’m in town to find out whether she might give them a home.

Meanwhile, maybe put up a tent out in the meadow for summer sleeping until I can feel some confidence the tin roof won’t be sleeping beside me if I snooze indoors.

When I left New Mexico a lot of the reason I felt pressured to do it was the fact of a roof arguing in favor of collapse and an 18 inch adobe wall looking for an excuse to fall.  If Gale hadn’t offered the use of this cabin I’d have had to find a lot less wholesome place than this before the snow flew.

Back to square one, thinks I.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Solitude, Survival, Texas

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The Smoke We Called Living

Posted on June 10, 2012 by | 12 comments

A few days ago Wayne, the guy everyone’s looking at in this pic sent it to me.  Brought back memories of a time when I had a dozen suits in the closet and more ties than would fit on a rack across the closet door.  That photo must be from 1975, 1976.  Leading edge watch I was wearing must have cost a bundle.

I’m the one with the chin.  The meataxe is the one without one.  Ken was his name.  If my memory serves me rightly he died sometime in the late 1980s, early ’90s and left a lot more people glad he did than wished he didn’t.  By that time he’d been far enough out of my life long enough so’s I didn’t give much of a damn one way or another.  Ken never amounted to much this lifetime, but he narrowly missed a few good bets, geography and time being a key factor.  He’d have fit right in a number of places when goose-stepping was more popular as a pastime.

Old Wayne’s stuck with that career all these decades, fought his way up the ladder to success, winding down now.  When we re-established contact a few months ago I’d thought for a long time he was probably dead, too.  But he’s a couple of months away from hanging up his gun, instead.  Retiring.  Cleaning out his desk, I reckons.

I’m hoping before I head off into the sunset, but after he finishes getting all that behind him, we’ll get out on a river bank somewhere and watch the bobbers on a trotline, scramble up some catfish and eggs for breakfast.   Him winding down, me just listening and watching.

For a human being, getting success behind ain’t always easy.  Tough drug  to kick most times, but a man has to do it.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Communication, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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