Tag Archives: senior citizens

The Toothless Soothsayer

Posted on January 18, 2012 by | 17 comments

The Toothless Soothsayer

I must have been four, or maybe five
When grandfather said, with a snicker,
“Where a man wouldn’t go with a Colt .45
That boy will follow his pecker.”

Half a century now mocks:
I’d surely be elated
If Papa’s eye had turned to stocks
Or land speculated.

I’ve frequently suspected my granddad was speaking from his own experience.

One of the rewards the Universe gave me for getting to be this old was the raging hormones fading into oblivion.   There’s still plenty of passion in my life, but it’s of a different nature, and it listens to the voice of reason. 

I’d never have believed back when passion was a misery to be endured that the Universe had other passions in mind if a person could just make room for them between the preoccupations.

And yet, today I listen to any one of the songs below and it brings back vivid, pleasant memories of [usually] one woman.  The shadow of the past agonies is still there if I choose to examine it, but if I don’t the songs and the passage of time allows it all to be a bit nostalgic.  And the songs don’t last long enough to insist on thorough remembering.

Old Jules

(Arirang) Korean Folk Song [She never had an orchestra background that I recall]

;

Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes said things too well.  It was one of several I put as a single song on a 90 minute tape and wore out.  Live version, no embed: http://youtu.be/GQJAsEZ-S3I

 Hank Snow
90 Miles an Hours Down a Deadend Street  was another ‘said things too well’.

Terry Stafford – “Suspicion” (1964)

 

Leroy Van Dyke Just Walk on By

DALE & GRACE – I’M LEAVING IT UP TO YOU.wmv

 

Johnny Duncan and Janie Fricke Thinking of a Rendezvous

Eartha Kitt – C’est Si Bon (Live Kaskad 1962)

 Leonard Cohen – Take This Waltz

 

Cohen’s tribute to Lorca

Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts – Angel of the Morning

 

 We’ll Sing In The Sunshine– Gale Garnett- 1964

 

Third Rate Romance Low Rent Renzezvous – Amazing Rhythm Aces

Leonard Cohen – Closing Time

 

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Posted in Adventure, Music, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, YouTube

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Sweatsocks, Milo Maize and Microwaves

Posted on January 12, 2012 by | 21 comments

Morning readers.  I’m obliged you came by for a read.

Some of you are too young to remember why microwave ovens and electricity were invented.  It’s a fact worth knowing.

The pioneers, when they invented this country, lived mostly in dugouts.  Dugout canoes in the summer, dugout houses in the winter.  Those winters tended to get them cold on their backsides and necks.  So they started growing wheat, milo maize, rice, to try heating up and putting in some warm container to throw around their necks to try to keep warm.

They tried all manner of containers, those cold natured ancestors of ours.  Tried skinning rabbits and sewing up grain inside the hides, but it didn’t take any time at all before the only benefit they were getting from it was the smell of burning hair.  So they invented sweat socks to put it in.

But they needed a way to heat it up without burning it, so they invented microwave ovens.  Trouble was, the microwaves sat there for generations full of sweatsox waiting for electricity to be invented.

Then along came Nicoli Tesla Edison with the solution.

So nowadays all you have to do is plug that mama in, that microwave, shove in a sweat sock full of grain, run it about five minutes, and you have a thingamabob you can drape around your neck when it’s cold, or stiff, or for when the old shoulder’s reminding you of a motorcycle that wrapped itself around a tree 40 years ago, and you can toss in another one for putting at the foot of your blankets to give the cats a place to get hacked off when you throw them off it and go to bed.

Got two of them in that microwave right this very moment.

Thankee universe for nicola tesla edison and joseph h. microwave and their yankee ingenuity inventions.  And thankee universe for joseph cotton’s development of sweatsocks.  Also Horatio Milo, the developer of Milo Maize.

We lucky to have this universe to provide such blessings.

Old Jules

21 Comments

Posted in America, Animals, Country Life, History, Homesteading, Nature, Science, Texas

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Exploring Alley Oop’s Home Circa 1947

Posted on January 11, 2012 by | 10 comments

When my mom left her second husband near Apache Junction, Arizona  to move near my granddad’s place at Causey, New Mexico, I was considerable upset about it all.  I’d become overfond of the Arizona guy, liked him a lot despite his human flaws that bothered my mom.

Time proved my level of upset couldn’t be handled by beating it out of me, nor by any of the other usual ways people tried back then to nudge a kid back into being seen and not heard.  The Runaways, 1947

My first step-dad [Arizona] was fond of reading the Alley Oop comic strip to me and I was a huge fan.  Alley was a cave man skipping forward and backward in time thanks to a 20th Century scientist.  Alley even had a 20th Century lady friend named Oola. 

About the only thing I’d brought with me from Arizona was my stack of Alley Oop comic strips.  We’d travelled light across the desert.  And when we arrived in Causey one of the jobs my sisters had was reading those Alley Oops to me, trying to bring up my spirits.  Which I suppose it did until they’d finished reading them to me.

Something more permanent had to be done, and my granddad decided to have a shot at it.  He promised to take me to visit Alley’s home.  Mesa Verde, Colorado.

What a trip that must have been, me pestering him whether we were there yet, how much further before we’d see Alley’s home.  I don’t know how long we stayed, but I never forgot old Alley and his home.  I still had one picture of the cave dwelling he took back then until Y2K.

And of the hundreds of ancient ruins, documented and undocumented, I’ve poked around in during my life, I’ve never visited one, found one, without thinking to myself with a smile that Alley Oop might have lived there, visited there ahead of me.

When Mel King and I were exploring the ruin on Gobbler’s Knob and were driving back to Socorro when he reached into his daypack for something, came out with a human skull it was the first thing I said to him.  “What the hell is that?  You packed off Oola’s skull.  Get it the hell out of this truck!” 

I screeched onto the shoulder and he hid it behind a cedar until  we’d be headed back to Gobber’s Knob so he could put it back where it belongs.

Nowadays I think I have more in common with Alley Oop than with any modern human being.  If there was ever a right time for me to pop out of the gene pool it would probably have been more appropriate temporally in some other Universe where Alley Oop lived and breathed.  It made more sense than this one.

Old Jules

 

10 Comments

Posted in 1940's, 1990's, Adventure, America, History, Human Behavior, Music, Native American, Native Americans, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Youth, YouTube

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Spark and Tinder for the Next Country Music Wave

Posted on January 9, 2012 by | 24 comments

Morning readers.  I’m obliged you came by for a read this morning.

A while back while I was in Kerrville I was in one of the huge office supply stores that have driven all the locally owned ones out of business.  I was nosing around looking at things when I glanced at a guy, a woman and a clerk studying copiers or fax machines. 

“Small world!”  I mutters to myself.  The male customer part of the trio was a face a decade older than one I’d known too well almost a decade ago.  A guy named Tony Wossname.  Once a motel manager in Grants, New Mexico.  A man I’d been blessed to observe through the lens of the darkest side of his character. 

I changed positions in the store, moving place to place studying this later model of a man who could spot desperate need for a job when he saw it and derived a lot of pleasure out of making it as painful and difficult for the desparee as his power allowed.

After I discovered I couldn’t get any other job in Grants, New Mexico following Y2K I went to work in a motel off the Interstate, graveyard shift, as a night clerk for a while.  Besides giving me almost enough money to pay rent, utilities, and buy a little carefully selected grub, the job showed me a side of humanity I wasn’t familiar with.  And it gave me a lot of time to think about what I observed.

One of the things Tony liked about being a motel manager was his radio in the locked office the 11-7 shift clerk couldn’t access.  The radio had no speakers in the office, nor in his apartment beside it, but it did have speakers in the lobby where he couldn’t hear it.

“What kind of music do you like?” Tony’d asked me conversationally during the job interview.

“I like any good music.”  I shrugged, recognizing a management school tactic for getting the applicant to relax.

“So do I.  But there’s some on the air these days I can’t stand.”  He scowled and shook his head.  “I hate that RAP stuff.”

“I just don’t listen to the radio much.  I like older music, mostly.  The modern CW swill could probably drive me nuts.”

He had what he wanted and changed the subject, now that I was all relaxed.

I got the job, which included two lobby speakers tuned to a modern CW station, 11 pm to 7 am with the volume control and station selector behind a locked door.

I did a lot of writing on those shifts while trying to stay sane.  Here’s one night of inspiration about modern country music:

3:30 AM

Hearing this country music station wailing all night so many nights has caused me to realize what’s changed in country music. It used to encompass a fairly wide range of fairly lowbrow experiences and sentiments. Love, cheating, drinking, bull riding, hound dogs, mama, trains, trucks, car wrecks, dead friends, being broke, dreams of something or another, hopes, losses, resentment, pride of accomplishment, prison, cows, land, and clothing. Now it’s nothing but drooling whining love songs. Wonder what the hell that means?

Probably  means females are picking all the hits, buying all the records, and the men who dance lockstep with them are also females.   Something’s definitely changed, in any case.  There are still Guy Clarks out there, still Prines, still Tom Russells, still Willies and Merles. That just ain’t getting hit records.

Maybe the baby boomers lost something after their quadruple bypasses. Ever heard of a woman getting bypass surgery? I haven’t.

Maybe ten years from now we’ll be hearing country songs about bypasses and prostate cancer- about Winnebagos, casinos, golf, medicare—about grandkids wanting to  put him/her in a nursing home- about hearing aids and false teeth, thick toenails and sagging skin.

If so, it will be an improvement, and I, for one, look forward to it.   Maybe tonight I’ll write the off-the-charts hit CW song for 2012. 

Cheatin’ a Broken Heart

Westbound on the Interstate
Out on the Great Divide
Our Winnie overheated
So we pulled off on the side

The sagebrush and the red rock buttes
Invoked our reverie
While the engine cooled I thought about
My bypass surgery.

Refrain:
You can have your diabetes
Talk about your brand of “C”
But when heat waves blur the red rock
I’ll take bypass surgery

We’ll be turning south at Flagstaff
For the fairways to the south
Where my third ex-wife will meet us
With the grandkids and her mouth

Those two eggs up on whiskey toast
Home fries on the side
She always made for breakfast
Were my downfall and her pride

We’ll take the brats along with us
And camp somewhere below
The international boundary
Buying meds in Mexico

‘Cause it’s not the margaritas
Nor the senoritas sweet
It’s the discount pharmaceuticals
That tug these flattened feet

Now the engine’s finished cooling
And the wheels begin to roll
And there ain’t no bloody stool
In the RV commode bowl

Refrain:
You can have your diabetes
Talk about your brand of “C”
But when heat waves blur the red rock
I’ll take bypass surgery

So here I am, 2012 coming on strong and fast.  The lyrics for the big hit for the year already written, the New CW Wave craze all mapped and ready to take off.

Gotta find a musician.

Remember where you heard it first.

Old Jules

24 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Grants, Human Behavior, Music, New Mexico, NM, Senior Citizens, Survival

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Scouting the Escape Route

Posted on January 2, 2012 by | 13 comments

Even though Gale’s change in plans for last week postponed the schedule for The New Truck Resurrection the new year seemed a good place to start examining the next steps for exploiting the possible.  I didn’t have a clear enough idea about the options and my thinking was bouncing around inside a range from becoming Joe Palooka’s pal, Humphrey Pennyworth:

to building a house on a trailer http://tinyurl.com/7a95xyo, to finding some trashed bumper-pull trailer and fixing it to live in RAZ Auction and an Aborted Escape Route.  I needed to narrow things down.  So I finally did the obvious and visited Craigslist to see what’s out there within the price-range of what I might be able to manage.  The results were surprising, welcome and uplifting.

I received this travel trailer in a trade. It has been sitting for a while. We are in the process of cleaning it. {lots of dust} The trailer is in overall good condition. Would make a great hunting trailer. The outside looks dirty because it has been sitting onder a oak tree. I tried the A/C and it will have to have the dirt dauber nests removed, the fan makes noise. The water pump runs but I am not going to put water in the tank until the weather warms up. Not sure about the ref. but one the same size at Home Depot or Sams are about $100.00. I am selling the trailer as is where is for $1500.00. It has the propane tank with the small fitting. New tanks are about $20.00 each. The trailer looks great inside, it has not been abused.

And inside:

Or if the New Truck doesn’t turn out to be dependable after a Real Mechanic gets it going:

1983 Toyota RV – $1500

One Owner
Runs and Drives Good
53k on 4 cylinder
5 speed manual trans.
Missing door on camper…
Needs TLC..$1500 obo..

Inside:

What I found is that within a 200 mile radius of here there are a number of already livable dwellings on wheels available for $1000 to $1500.  Livable, or capable of beng made so without a lot of expense or labor.

It took me a year to set aside a thousand bucks to be sure I could pay a mechanic to get the New Truck licensed, mechanic-worked, and inspection-stickered, or the Toyota fixed.  But the work mightn’t require all of it.  In any case, putting together whatever remains between what’s left and buying something will require some squeezing of turnip-blood.

But I need something I can pull out here and move the cats and me into so I can begin putting the cabin into the shape it was in when I moved here.  And start pulling down the chicken house and pens, garden fence, and the upside-down hot tub project so’s nobody’s left with a mess I made of the place.

I think I managed, at least, to define the critical paths and some potential realities as a means of finding my way out of a situation I’d come to think of as too nigh-onto-hopeless to contemplate in any meaningful way.

All in one day, January 1, 2012.

I feel 30 years younger than I was December 31, 2011.

Old Jules

 

13 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, America, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Transportation, Trucks

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2012 – A Pretty Good Year by Hindsight

Posted on January 1, 2012 by | 34 comments

Good morning readers.  Here’s wishing each of you whatever you consider best for yourself in 2012.

Some years are better viewed by hindsight than during the actual living of them.  1954 was such a year, and I have an idea 2012 might be another.  Long hindsight smooths down the rough spots and helps remove a lot of the detritus keeping us from viewing it in ways we can appreciate the strong points.

Almost everyone in that picture is dead, with the possible exceptions of the blonde kid next to me, cousin wossname, the girl behind me without glasses, and my ownself.  The blonde kid might be dead, or he mightn’t. 

He and I never had much truck after the time that picture was taken.  He lived in Pennsylvania was part of the reason, but the other part was in the fact I accidentally shot him in the lower leg with an arrow and his mom didn’t care to bring him down our way anymore.  Next time I might have improved my marksmanship, she alleged.

Fact was the kid and I were shooting at a target, taking turns.  He was down close to the target waiting for me to shoot so’s to retrieve the arrows and take his turn.  But just as I released, he ran in front of the target and ruined my shot, sank that arrow spang into his calf a goodly distance.

On the ground bleeding and squalling to high heaven, he denied that’s how it happened, and there was an element of belief among the adults present.  Them knowing how much I despised that spoiled little prick.

Anyway, with the softening provided by the passage of all those decades and all the protagonists either dead, or might as well be, 1954 shines out as a middling good year.

Similar to how I think there’s a good chance most people who are online January 1, 2013, will have fonder recollections of 2012 around January 1 2050, than they do recapping it 2013.

Which isn’t to suggest 2012 won’t be a great year.  I fully expect it will.  I won’t be the least surprised if 2012 has more surprises in store than almost any year in living memory.  Tremendous opportunities for growth experiences.  But growth experiences do have a way of needing more hindsight to be appreciated than those years when all we do is sit around watching television.

So, here’s wishing all of you as much potential for personal growth during 2012 as you consider yourself qualified to appreciate as soon afterward as possible.

Old Jules

 

34 Comments

Posted in 2000's, 2011, America, Education, Senior Citizens, Survival

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Talking Our Way Into Oblivion – Hydrogen and Hot Air

Posted on December 30, 2011 by | 20 comments

A few years ago my friend Rich asked me if I’d be interested in talking with an older guy in his late 70s who was experimenting with hydrogen generators for retrofitting onto his vehicle.   I wasn’t looking into hydrogen generating, but I’m a curious sort of fellow.  I didn’t require any persuading.  I just told Rich to give Bryce my phone number.  About a week later he called me.

Turned out Bryce had spent his career as chief mechanic for the Ford and General Motors Speed Teams, or Racing Teams, some such thing.  He was part of the group that put together the hydrogen powered vehicle that established a record for the highest speed ever recorded for an internal combustion engine driven automobile.

Using what he learned from all that, Bryce had created a series of hydrogen generators for his own vehicle, trying to maximize efficiency and deal with other shortcomings with the system.  He did it all from salvaged materials.  Heck of an interesting guy the first few times we talked.  I wish I’d taken notes and drawn sketches of what he told me.

At first during our acquaintance Bryce and I had conversations.  Two people brainstorming things he was doing, and I was doing.  But gradually the hydrogen generating conversational possibilities ran down.  Bryce was calling me every day or so, telling me all manner of things I didn’t want to hear, such as what the waitress in the cafe where he took coffee and meals said to him, what he said back, what she said back.  Or what other customers said to him and what he said back.  Or his brother.

Bryce would call, ask how I was, not wait for an answer, and talk non-stop for an hour, two hours.  I could put the phone down, go feed the chickens or make a cup of coffee and come back to the phone without him noticing.  Sometimes I’d tie a bandanna around my head attaching the phone to my ear and read a book waiting for him to wind down.

This went on for months.  I didn’t know what to do about it, except straight-on explaining to him that this wasn’t conversation and wasn’t a source of joy to me.  I mentioned it to Rich, and it turned out Bryce was doing the same thing to him.

Finally, as gently as I could manage, I interrupted one of his monologues and explained the problem, as I viewed it.  I told him I liked him, that I’d enjoy conversations with him, but that I didn’t want to hear the same stories over and over about people at the restaurant, his brother, etc.  That if we were going to continue having communications there’d need to be exchanges and some level of concern as to the amount of interest the other person had in hearing it.

Despite my attempt to soften the words, Bryce got his feelers hurt badly by this.  He never called again, which I preferred to the alternative of things continuing as they were.

Sometime a few months later Rich finally got his fill of it and tried the same tactic on Bryce, with the same result.  He was more reluctant to do it than I’d been, because he felt sorrier for Bryce than I was willing to allow myself to indulge.

Bryce came up in conversation between us a couple of days ago.  Turns out it’s been almost exactly a year since Rich has heard from him, and a few months more than that for me.  We wondered aloud how he was doing.

But neither of us is willing to bite the bullet and call him to find out, on pain of maybe starting the whole mess again.

I began this post figuring on saying some things about hydrogen generators but drifted off into Bryce and his problems.  Maybe some other time, the hydrogen generators.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Human Behavior, Relationships, Trucks

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Important Updates From the Middle of Nowhere – Breaking News

Posted on December 28, 2011 by | 16 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Things have slowed down here a bit, but exciting things are still happening.

The freezer compartment never had a natural door, so it frosts up somewhat rapidly.

You’ve probably been through this, too.  Defrosting it’s a challenge.  Two days so far with it turned off and the door open.  Slow going because the ambient temperature’s not getting much above freezing.

Someone in south Texas cut down a Texas Ebony tree and Gale managed to lay claim to part of it.  He’s itching to begin working on it, but the bearings, both on his lathe and the sawmill went out suddenly and simultaneously.

He decided it’s time to upgrade his lathe anyway, so the old one’s got to be dissassembled and moved out and the new one assembled and installed.

We’re still waiting for the sawmill bearings to arrive from China or somewhere.

Meanwhile, the wobblyhead extensions still aren’t going to do the job on the Commie Toyota starter.  I think the 4-Runner’s down for the count until I can pull that engine out of there and get to it.  The nut-head rounded off more every time I applied torque.  I dassn’t do anything to round it off more.

Otherwise it’s business as usual here.  The cats and chickens send their regards.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in Admin., America, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Transportation, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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The New Truck Resurrection

Posted on December 21, 2011 by | 27 comments

Got me a new truck!

Now that Gale and Kay have finished up their last craft shows for the year and the marathon of preparing for the next ones is over for a couple of months I talked to Gale about this again.  The critical path to me getting transportation appears to involve dragging this one in where a real mechanic can work on it, or dragging  The Communist Toyota 4-Runner in for that purpose.  I’m completely stumped with moving forward repairing either of them.  Time to bring in the heavy artillery.

It’s been a year now, and I’ve been hoarding and pinching pennies and dollars all of 2011 to be certain I’d have the money to get one or the other a license tag, safety inspection sticker, and when I eventually decided I didn’t have the skill to fix either of them, a real mechanic.  I’m more-or-less there now, or close to it.

It’s a toss-up and gives me a case of the fantods choosing one as the better bet, but I’ve settled on the New Truck over the Toyota.  It has the potential capability of pulling some sort of dwelling on wheels, which the Toyota doesn’t.  [Unrequited Love – I Coveted This, Fiddle-Footed Naggings and Songs of the Highway, Cat houses and such, Thursday morning meanderings]

So Gale and I agreed sometime during the week after Christmas we’ll figure out how to get that New Truck on a trailer and haul it to a place where people know what the hell they’re talking about, truck-wise.

Makes my hard pound louder just thinking of having transportation again. 

Old Jules

27 Comments

Posted in 2011, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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What’s with the pointy nightcaps? Sensible Sleep Headgear

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | 25 comments

Every year I wonder about these pictures of Scrooge and others wearing pointee nightcaps.  It’s a subject dear to my heart because I became an aficionado of sleeping hats when I used to do my slumbering outdoors a lot.

The function of a nightcap is to keep a person from losing his body heat through his exposed scalp and hair.  Besides doing that it needs to stay on the head while you toss and turn.  Those pointed hats do none of that.

I’ve tried a lot of different types of sleeping caps through the years and found it’s not easy to find one that satisfies all the minimum criteria:

This one’s sheepskin and I’ve used it for 30 years when the weather’s cold enough.  But it’s stiff and doesn’t stay on all that well because one of the straps for tying under the chin broke off sometime way back there and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.  The temperature has to be not-too-warm or it becomes a cranial sweat lodge and not-too-cold because it doesn’t provide any protection to the exposed part of the neck.

A balaclava solves some of that, but it’s only one layer thick, somewhat expensive, and tends to wear out at the chin.  When the ambient temperature gets down around freezing it needs some help.

They make those fleece caps for women and I find them in thrift stores for a buck frequently.  When I find them, I buy them and wear them a lot, outdoors, indoors and as sleeping caps when the weather’s cold, but not cold enough for something more extreme.

During this last cold snap when the water froze inside the house I came up with this, and I like it a lot.  It’s a fleece blanket folded four times lengthwise, wrapped around the head and tucked into/zipped in to the fleece vest.  It stays in place and is warmer than anything I’ve ever found.  It’s tempting to drag out the scissors, needle and thread and cut it down to a four-layer balaclava, but I hate to mess up that fleece blanket.  The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” school of winter headgear might apply here.

When the weather’s cool but not cold, the stocking cap is a seductive option, even though they don’t ride out the night well.  I keep a stack of a dozen of them on the bookshelf above the bed so I can reach up and find one for a quick reload without turning on the light.  Same concept as a fresh clip of ammo for a rifle near at hand.

Pointee hats are talk.  As Tuco observed in The Good, Bad and Ugly, “When you’re going to shoot, shoot.  Don’t talk.”

Old Jules

 

25 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Music, Outdoors, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores

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