the mysterious case of the primitive wrench

[franksolich]

the mysterious case of the primitive wrench.  “Boss, take a look at this,” the property caretaker told me this morning, showing a 6” adjustable wrench he had found outside.

The caretaker is a thin, wizened, balding little guy 62 years old, with a bug-eye.  He performed nobly during the war in Vietnam, but then after becoming a civilian again, was in some sort of motorcycle accident that incapacitated his inner cranium a bit. 

He calls me “young man” when he’s sober, and “boss” when he’s drunk.  He usually calls me “boss.”

“I keep telling you—as does everybody else—that there’s strangers lurking around here, maybe some of them dangerous, but you don’t seem to care—“

“I’ve never seen anybody stalking around here,” I interrupted.  “Not a one.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re not around,” the caretaker persisted; “you just never see anything until somebody else points them out.

“It’s like you’re blind, rather than deaf.”

Okay, okay, we’ve had this discussion before, and I have had it with others, who fail to understand the nature of deafness.  This idea that we use “vision” to compensate for lacking of “hearing” is utter nonsense, but this is not the time and place to go into that.  Just simply put, without “hearing” sounds to stimulate the “vision,” one just does not notice things unless one is specifically looking for it.

I took the wrench and examined it.  “It hasn’t been outdoors very long, it’s still clean.  Probably fell out of someone’s tool box reasonably recently.”

“But whose?” the caretaker asked.  “It’s not mine, it’s not [the neighbor’s], and it’s not yours.

“None of us would own a piece of junk like this.”

I agreed, turning it over in my hand.  “Majestic Tools.

“Majestic Tools—a private brand manufactured in Red China during the 1980s for NuWay Hardware Distributors of Baltimore, Maryland, a wholesale hardware concern, main market being Pennsyslvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio.

“My knowledge of the wholesale hardware business is a little bit dated; I dunno if NuWay or Majestic even exists any more.

“But whoever bought this, when they bought it, had no clue as to what good tools are.

“I wouldn’t use this to pick my nose.”

The caretaker, the neighbor, and I have impressive collections of hand-tools; they keep theirs locked up in chests in the enormous garage here, while I leave my own laying around, including my prize specimens, four 1-3/8” S/K adjustable wrenches about 12” long, and handy for using as clubs.

(I measure adjustable wrenches by their maximum spannage; others apparently measure them by the length of their handles.)

“Where’d you find it?” I asked the caretaker.

“It was laying on the edge of the porch, underneath the railing, over on the far side.  There was also a couple of footprints there—“

Now my ears, if I had ears, perked up.  The caretaker is descended from a long line, untold generations, of trackers and scouts who survived by noticing such things.  I wish I could designate him a Native American from frontier days then, but actually his antecedents are Swiss, he being only the third generation in this country.

They had been Alpine Swiss, and had acquired the genetic propensity to discern and interpret things in the snow, and on the ground, invisible to the rest of us.

Even when in his cups, the caretaker is great for noticing things not noticed by other eyes.

We went outside to look.  He pointed to two footprints in the dirt, one of them sort of distinct, and the other one barely discernible.  I planted my bare foot (it’s been a California winter here in the Sandhills this year, and so I had not yet put on shoes this day) next to the more-distinct of the two.

“Okay, I’m ten, ten and a half, and this appears to be, roughly, a size larger, say, eleven, eleven and a half.”

The caretaker speculated they were the hooves of a primitive.

“Oh, I dunno,” I said; “we do know the Las Vegas Leviathan’s a size 16EEEEEE or something like that, his feet as large as commode seats, so this wouldn’t be him.  And the prints are too light to have been impressed by Fat Che or Omaha’s Ed Norton; they would’ve left deeper ones, considering their own incredible bulks.

“It’s too bad,” I concluded, “there aren’t more prints, so we could figure out if the stranger has haemorrhoids.”

The caretaker looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space.

“People afflicted with haemorrhoids have a different sort of ‘walk’ than people not afflicted with haemorrhods,” I told him.

to be updated as soon as events, whatever events they may be, further transpire; and my apologies to the late A. Conan Doyle

[franksolich]

This morning, I had four visitors; the retired banker’s wife brought some family with her when she came here to drop off some galvanized-steel bushel baskets for use next month, when she and the husband come to collect some of the William Rivers Pitt for their garden in town.  They actually have more than one garden, vegetables and flowers, and they would win any floral or garden show, even national or international ones.

She credits the William Rivers Pitt for all the well-formed, lush foliage grown on ground that is otherwise not especially remarkable.

With her was her younger brother, an old gent circa 65 years old, his daughter, an attractive woman circa 35 years old, and her son, a little lad exactly 5 years old.  Not exactly a fecund grasswire primitive sort of family, only three generations instead of five packed into sixty years.

The husband of the daughter was recently in south Asia, but is back in the United States now.  For reasons that I did not grasp, while he’s in the process of being demobilized, he’s still stuck on a base in Oklahoma.

They have seen him down there, but he has not been home yet, and they are hoping he gets home soon so as to resume managing the farm.  His father-in-law and wife have done a pretty good job running it the past four years, but they would just as soon he were back home doing it.  (The father-in-law has his own farm, and the wife is a pharmacist.)

As they were walking up to the porch, the retired banker’s wife, in her early 70s, saw something on the ground, and paused to pick it up.  She handed it me, nagging, “Here, I thought you quit smoking.”

I looked at her blankly; of course I had quit smoking.

It was a paper matchbook, “Sneakers’ Sports Bar” and “Ashford, CT” printed on it.

“Oh,” I said; “Ashford, up in the northeastern corner of that state.

“Of course, Connecticut’s such a small state, everything’s close to everything else.

“There was somebody from Ashford who won the Powerball lottery a few years ago, but mostly it’s populated by Old Money and Much Money, trust fund kiddies and the like.  No blacks, no Puerto Ricans, no Orientals, no brown people, strictly upper-class lily-white and for some peculiar reason, no gays.

“Heavily Democrat area, really liberal Democrat, the Kucinich-loving type.

“I wonder where that came from.”

The retired banker’s wife blanched.  “You don’t know?  Then maybe they’re coming back.

“You really have to be careful, as these aren’t nice people.”

It’s been seven years now, but most around here still remember Fat Che’s threat to come up here to the roof of Nebraska and to play baseball with me, although not strictly regulation baseball.  He was going to bring the Bostonian Drunkard and the sensitive lad the piano-playing primitive with him, but something must have happened, because they never did show.

Perhaps they got lost, and ended up somewhere in Kansas or Montana.

“Oh, but that’s exaggerated paranoia,” I insisted; “I’ve never once seen primitives lurking around here, and since this is my place, I’d probably know of them long before anybody else would see them.”

She raised her eyebrows archly, but I let it pass.

The miniature adjustable wrench found by the caretaker yesterday was on the dining room table, tossed into an otherwise empty cardboard beer flat, in case its owner identifies himself and claims it.  I tossed the matchbook into the same container.

“You know,” I told the retired banker’s wife, “we’re supposed to get a fair amount of snow tonight or sometime tomorrow.

“People, when they walk around in the snow, leave footprints.

“After it’s done, I’ll check the snow, but I bet it won’t show anything but a few bird-tracks.”

[franksolich]

When the property caretaker came this morning to get his miniature snow-plough for use in town, he noticed something running along the outer edge of the house.

I had seen the same thing myself earlier, but decided I would wait for him to see it.

Human footprints in the snow, stretching from near the base of the William Rivers Pitt where an automobile had obviously been parked, to the house, and then all around the house, about two feet away from the windows and walls (the house is about 60% windows).

He glared at me.  “You didn’t see a damned thing, I bet.”

I admitted that was true; I had slept like an infant all night long, and as the cats were outside romping and playing, they were not around to alert me anything was amiss.

“Well, let’s see what this is,” I suggested, before he could get all bent out of shape again.

We traced the footsteps in the snow.  There hadn’t been much snow, but enough that one could decipher the treads of tennis shoes.  The caretaker speculated that it was a big guy, a heavy guy, maybe circa 300-400 pounds.

Deciding to show off, I pointed out two other singularities.  “Not only a big guy, but a big guy with a bad back, based upon the way his feet sometimes trod.

“And not only a big guy with a bad back, but a lachrymal one at that, too—notice the little tiny drops in the snow separate from the footprints; he was weeping as he made his way around the house, dropping tear-drops all over.

“I can’t guess why he’d been bawling like a baby, but at any rate, nothing happened, no harm done.”

The latter part of the phrase which was exactly the wrong thing to say.

“Damn you,” the caretaker swore.  “Can’t you be just a little bit paranoid about things?”

He looked around, as if hoping to see a ball he could kick, even if a cannonball.

“Can’t you be just a little bit paranoid about things?” he repeated, considerably vexed.

As he spittered and sputtered and raged, I stood by nonchalantly.  Such explosions are not a new phenomenon; in fact, I have been the brunt of them all my life, beginning when as a little lad, being yelled at by older brothers and sisters who were both stunned and sorely amazed that because of a lack of caution on my part, what should have ended in a bad way, did not, myself remaining whole and intact.

“White hot rage” sort of, uh, understates the usual reaction.

“Damn,” he continued swearing; “you’re an innocent, a naif, a child, and despite your age, you’re always going to be an innocent, a naif, a…..child, going through life as if there aren’t dangerous people around, as if no one has any intention of doing you harm, as if you don’t have to look out for yourself, because ‘nothing’s going to happen’.”

Not only what the older brothers and sisters used to yell at me, but also later in life the high school friends, the college classmates and roommates, policemen, and even a long-ago officer in the British army, and a secret policeman in Russia, and a U.S. embassy official in Ukraine; always the same sort of red-faced shouting and lecture, themselves apoplexic with rage and fury.

Even the late David Hunter had blown up the same way, outraged that I had so casually run some sort of risk, and not only that, but also avoided suffering the customary consequences.

I could be wrong, but I suspect it is not only concern for me that I had so callously disregarded any peril, but also jealousy because I escaped unscathed.  After all, my younger brother had done one thing only one time in his life, and it cost him his life; the exact same thing I had done hundreds of times, and nothing happened.

“You’re the luckiest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met in my life,” the caretaker said.

Yeah, I have heard that before, too; too many times to count.

After a bit, the caretaker cooled off.  Before he left with the snow-plough, he sighed, commenting, “I dunno what it is, but it’s like some sort of power or force is shielding you from harm, no matter what you do.

“We should all be so lucky as you, damn it.”

Whatever, I shrugged.

[franksolich]

The neighbor came by later this morning, after the light snow had changed to light rain.

He tossed into the cardboard beer-flat an Ohio State Buckeyes key-chain attachment that had apparently fallen off someone's key-chain in front of the steps leading up to the front porch, where it joined the adjustable wrench and the matchbook.

“I dunno what this is,” he said, “but it looks like to me you’re having visitors.”

I shrugged; “I haven’t seen anybody myself.”

I described what the caretaker and I had seen some hours earlier.

“Well, you do seem to be unconcerned about things at times,” the neighbor said.

“In fact, sometimes you make the blood run cold, you seem so unconcerned.”

He brought up something that had happened more than a year ago, when I was standing next to someone at a gasoline pump who was trying to drive away without paying.  “That scared the Hell out of everybody, the way you reacted, with no care or concern at all about the danger you were in.”

“That was a bum rap,” I said, sharply; “as a lot of these perceptions of my conduct are.

“I’m really tired of these bum raps, giving me a reputation for being careless or stupid, when in fact that’s not the case.

“True, the security camera showed the guy pointing a gun at me, but I never saw the gun until I saw the film from the security camera some days later.  I had no idea he had a gun.  I was concentrating on getting a good visual of his face and bodily characteristics, not looking at what he had in his hand.

“Although I was confused as to why he seemed so agitated; I didn’t think to look what he had in his hand.

“That was no calloused disregard for my safety; that was just not knowing there was a gun there.

“And besides, it ended well.  The gun was unloaded anyway, and I got a good enough description of him that he was arrested forty-five minutes later.

“Nothing happened; I’m tired of these bum raps where people think I’m reckless or stupid or both, when the fact is that I’m simply not aware of a danger.

“One acts on what one knows, and if he doesn’t know something’s dangerous, he’s not going to worry about it.”

“Well, I’ve known you for fourteen years now,” the neighbor said (we had met when I was living in Lincoln, freshly arrived back from the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, and he was in college), “and from what I’ve been told by others the way you were before then, it’s obvious you’ve always had someone watching your back for you.

“But God helps those who help themselves; the primitives aren't nice people, to put it mildly—in fact, they’re rather sick, deviated, perverted, delusional, violent, hate-filled people, and it’d be a feather in one of their caps, to get [franksolich].”

“I refuse to be paranoid,” I repeated.

[franksolich]

The femme came by in late afternoon, when it was still lightly raining.  She was on her way from the big city to Omaha, to spend the weekend with her sister and family.

She had with her a box of stuff, junk mail.

“I decided to stop off at the post office to pick up your mail, and there was so much of it they had to box it up,” she explained.

“The postmistress said it was highly unusual, because you don’t get junk mail, only first-class mail.

“She wondered if maybe you got on somebody’s list; it’s like that last time about seven years ago, she said, when the primitives put your name and address on all these mass-mailing lists.”

Yeah, that was a pain, I admitted, but also adding I had gotten some good out of it.  Many were advertisements for book clubs, four books for a buck and then buy four more over a year or two, and so I made lemonade out of lemons, getting quite a few cheap books out of it.

“It’s something primitives never think about,” I said; “making lemonade out of lemons.”

She saw the cardboard beer-flat on the dining room table, with miscellaneous junk in it, the stuff that others had been finding.

“I dunno,” I said, “they think this is stuff dropped around here by primitive stalkers, but as far as I can see, maybe the wind blew them here.

“They have this idea that primitives are always hanging around here, looking for me, but that gives far too much credit to the cerebral capacities and get-up-and-go of the primitives. 

“Remember where we’re at, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

The femme hesitated.

“You know, I really wish you’d live closer to other people, where they could watch your back.”

“There’s nothing to watch,” I said; “I live here; I know and see all that happens, and I haven’t seen a primitive yet.

“I refuse to be paranoid.”

[md11hydmec]

Great story so far.  I love all the descriptions of the people and places.  Be careful out there, coach, Omaha Steve might cry on you.  :-)Looking forward to more. 

[franksolich]

Saturday morning, the neighbor’s wife dropped by, with the children, seven-year-old twin girls, a five-year-old boy, and a nearly-one-year-old infant boy.  The six of us weekly go to the big city, she to do some shopping, and myself because I am not doing anything else in particular.

Her husband, the neighbor, like me doesn’t care much for shopping, and since I am a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet, I take up his slack on the matter.

She laid something down on the dining-room table; something with a handle and a big blade.

“I found this on the ground near the steps of the front porch,” she said; “it looks too dangerous to leave laying around.”

“Hmmmm,” I said, “it looks pretty old and dull.”

It was in fact old and blunt.  Stamped on the blade was the notation, ROGERS COUNTY (OKLA.) CORONER, with DISCARDED stamped at an angle over that.

A cadaver-carver I said, probably purchased at an auction of surplus governmental property.

“I wonder whose it is, and how it got here,” she commented.

“I dunno,” I replied, “ but to hear everybody talk, I’m being stalked by primitives, this place is teeming with primitives, hundreds of primitives out to get me, from the road on the other side of the William Rivers Pitt clear over to down by the river.

“Everybody’s seeing primitives but me.”

“Well, but you don’t see everything,” the neighbor’s wife insisted; “remember, you hadn’t even lived out here a week, when that one deer bucked and knocked you down from behind.

“It was a big deer too, and you didn’t even know it was there.”

Well, whatever, I replied; at any rate, the house is more than half—about circa 60% windows—and given my abhorrence of curtains, draperies, and shades, and because I like the panoramic view of the Sandhills on all four sides, I am seeing practically the whole area practically all the time.

Now, those familiar with the primitives-stalking-franksolich stories perhaps long ago sensed there is some sort of “special relationship” between the neighbor’s wife and myself, and such a conclusion is a wholly accurate one.  I have no idea why it is, but despite that the femme is of course the most important woman in my life, and that the senior business partner and I are about as close as brothers, I have always found it much easier to be intimate with the neighbor's wife, than with anybody else.

In the platonic sense, of course.

And so I unloaded on her, during the drive to the big city.  I was driving, and so I was doing the talking and she the listening; on the way home, the roles always reverse.  (This is done so as to “accommodate” my deafness.)

“You know,” I said while at the steering-wheel sputtering in indignation, “all my life I’ve had to deal with this, other people’s perceptions that I’m really stupid, or at best, negligent about my personal safety.

“And yet nothing could possibly be further from the truth; whatever knowledge I acquire, I seem to squeeze every single drop of usefulness out of it, and being a fragile person, I’m naturally very solicitous about my personal safety and well-being.

“It all started when I was three years old, and ran out into the street in front of a drunken driver, according to an eyewitness, ‘getting smashed flatter than a toad that’s been stepped on.’

“I’ve lived with that reputation all my life; in fact, it’s a really big chip on my shoulder, being thought of as either stupid or careless, or more usually, both, because I ran out in front of a car.

“The facts of the matter are that I was three years old, and deaf.  That there would be people and things on either side of me, or back of me, never occurred to me, and even today I usually forget that, and have to remind myself—there’s people and things all around me, but all I’m aware of are those right in front of me.

“I’d be the easiest person to jump on from behind, and I’d never know what hit me.

“However, as my length of years shows, it’s pleased God that nothing’s ever happened; I remain far more whole and intact than anybody else my age, or near to it.

“It’s been extraordinary, my run of good luck, and it doesn’t look as if it’s going to end soon.

“I guess I’m supposed to be paranoid, but I refuse to be paranoid.”

[franksolich]

I love all the descriptions of the people and places.

I'm working on "character development" here.

I'm staying away from actually describing people, but rather to give the readers a chance to form their own impressions of what these people look like, by what they say.

[franksolich]

Since the snow was still coming down, I decided to call it a day early, and as I was not in any mood for more visitors, I went outside to shut off the outdoor pole light that serves as a beacon beckoning people here, “here” being the only human habitation for six miles around.

Seeing what seemed a black metallic rod in the snow, I reached down to pick it up.  It took a while, but I finally figured out it was a handle broken off a child’s little red wagon, although I had no idea how, or why, it had gotten there.  I tossed it into the cardboard beer-flat on the dining-room table, and thought no more of it.

Then I got undressed and slipped into bed, slumbering as if an infant for some hours, until perhaps 2:00 a.m., when my eyes suddenly snapped open.  The light of the kitchen could be seen from around a corner of the bedroom, and it was on.  Someone was inside the house.

I threw off the covers, and had the mad impulse to dash into the kitchen to confront whoever, or whatever, it was, but remembered I was weaponless.  There was however a 1-3/8” S/K adjustable wrench on top of one of the bookcases in the living room, and the living room is located on the other side of this bedroom.

I could go there, pick up the tool, and then go into the kitchen through the dining room.

Not bothering to turn on the light there—I after all know the house like the back of my hand—when grabbing the wrench, I noticed in the darkness a pile of clothes heaped on the floor, and the couch looked as if someone anticipated spending the night on it.

Okay, that was it; I wanted this intruder out of here.

While walking through the dining room to the lighted kitchen, I noticed the little red light on the telephonic answering-machine was blinking; someone had called after I had gone to bed, but it did me no good, as I had to have someone around to listen to the message for me, and tell me what it was.

I walked into the kitchen; there was no one there, and the coffee-maker was brewing.

There was however someone in the bathroom, as the door was tightly shut and one could see the light in there crawling out of the threshold.  I had no idea what was going on in there, but was considerably comforted that I had cornered the intruder.

I stood leaning against the kitchen sink, the wrench like a steel club in hand, facing the bathroom door, and waited.

And waited and waited and waited.

After what seemed a very long time, the door finally moved, and out walked another guy, about a head shorter than myself, wiping his wet hair with a towel.

Before he looked up, I loudly slapped the wrench into my other hand, announcing, “Surprise!”

[franksolich]

My senior business partner looked at me as if I were Bozo from Outer Space.

The adrenaline all drained out of me, I put the wrench on the counter and dumped some of the still-brewing coffee into a mug that still had some coffee-and-milk in it, from earlier in the day.  Or perhaps from a couple of days ago.  Coffee is coffee, whether new or ancient, after all.

“Okay now, tell me what’s going on,” I asked.

He said he had telephoned, and left a message that he was coming here.  It was late, but he had hoped there would still be someone around to convey the message to me.  He had delivered a horse-trailer up over in southern Minnesota, and was on his way home when he decided to stop here to spend the night.  He had not thought it worthwhile waking me up; after all, we would see each other in the morning.

Okay.  That has always been the arrangement because I live on the eastern fringe of the Sandhills, and he lives 120 miles further west, in the middle of the Sandhills, and we both loathe driving long distances.  It works the other way, too, when I head west and stay at his place.

The difference being he locks his home, and I have a key in case he is not at home, or does not hear me knock.  Me, because it is important that I be accessible at all times to anyone who might need me, I have never locked these doors.  There is, obviously, a risk in doing that (even though there is nothing in this place worth stealing), but there is a far greater risk that someone might need to get a hold of me, and unable to hear a pounding on the door or a knocking on a window, I would have no idea.

“You seem jittery, out of sorts,” he said.

“Well, I’m trying to not be paranoid—I refuse to be paranoid—but it seems like everybody’s lately been doing their best to encourage me to be paranoid,” I replied, as I grabbed a bathrobe and he donned a pair of underwear.

We went into the dining room with our coffee.

“Tell me about it,” he said; “it’s late, but tell me about it.”

And so I told him about it; about how the past several days various people have dropped hints that this place is infested with stalking primitives, and who are confused because I seem indifferent about it.

“If I seem indifferent about it, it’s because there’s nothing to be concerned about; I dunno what they’re seeing, but I myself have never seen a primitive around here, much less one intending to do me any harm.”

Then, glancing over to the other side of the table, I noticed a wet scrap of paper by the beer-flat.

“Oh, that,” my senior business partner commented; “it was on the floor of the porch by the door when I got here, soaked from the snow and rain.  I thought it might be a note someone meant to hang for you.”

I picked it up and examined it.  It was a torn-off piece of a highway-map of northern New Jersey.

“I refuse to be paranoid,” I declared.

[franksolich]

The caretaker dropped by Monday afternoon, in a much better mood than he had been the preceding time.

He told me that some guy had inquired at the convenience store, about where I live, because of course my address of record is not the same as my actual address.  Two different places, but as they are both in the same tax jurisdictions, it is not like I am pulling a flyarm.

(The flyarm primitive has residences in both New Jersey and Florida, her vast palatial Streisandian digs in New Jersey the main one, but she claims her very modest abode in Florida as her principal residence.....so as to evade the higher taxes of New Jersey.)

"The clerk didn't like the way he looked, a shorter guy about 40, sort of scruffy, surly leer, shaved head, coming off of a drug high.

"So he gave him directions.....sending him somewhere up to South Dakota."

Oh, I said.

The caretaker added more.  "Because the county needs the revenue, when the sheriff saw the out-of-state license-plates on the vehicle, he decided to follow him in case he did something wrong, so as to give him a ticket for a couple of hundred bucks or something, for the county coffers.

"But he didn't do anything wrong, not once the thirty miles the sheriff tailed him, and so no ticket.

"However, the sheriff had called in the plate number, finding it was registered in Oakland, California, and that the owner had been in trouble before.  Nothing major, little stuff; purse-snatching, petty burglary, domestic abuse, fencing stolen goods, selling dope, failing to pay child support, bartering food stamps for drugs, those sorts of things."

Oh, I said.

"I tell you," the caretaker said, "the primitives really are here, looking for you."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said; "I refuse to be paranoid."

[franksolich]

“You know, I’m getting pretty irritated with this issue,” I said to the neighbor’s wife on Saturday morning, when she was here to pick up something from the garage, that her husband needed; some sort of tool.

“Everybody seems to think the primitives are stalking me, and warning me to pay more attention, but I haven’t seen hide or hair of a primitive around here, ever.”

The neighbor’s wife looked as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t.

Instead, she commented, “But there are times you don’t pay attention—like at the grocery store, for example.”

For the record, the neighbor’s wife and I shop together for groceries in the big city once a week.  The neighbor doesn’t like to shop, and she doesn’t like to drive, and as I’m not doing anything in particular that day, and because I’m a nice guy, I go with her.

“It’s odd, watching you in the store,” she continued.  “You just ‘zero’ in on what you’ve come for, and don’t pay attention to anything else.  You see the gallon of milk or loaf of bread or the jar of coffee, that you want, and nothing else.  You never look around to see what’s on ‘special’ or what’s new—“

“It’s a good way to save money,” I interrupted; “one’s not tempted by glitter and glatz and color, and so doesn’t waste money on things one doesn’t need.”

“I think it’s more than that, though,” she said.

Not wanting to argue, and so as to change the subject, I said, “Okay, okay, so nobody thinks I’m ever aware of perils and hazards.

“It’s very odd that during the most perilous time of my life, nobody even worried about me.

“Not that I wanted them to worry, but it just seemed really odd to me, that nobody hadn’t.”

I was referring of course to my long sojourn in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants during the mid-1990s, when it was as if I were on the dark side of the moon, utterly out of contact—and no way to contact—anyone or anything with which I was familiar.  I couldn’t use a telephone—such as telephone service was, in that wretched place at the time—and there was no such thing as e-mail.

The only communication was with the regular postal service, and given the chaos and disorder around me, that was always “iffy.”  Under the best of circumstances, which happened sometimes but not a lot of times, it would take six weeks for a letter to get from there to here, and another six weeks the other way.  And packages, well, several months, if received at all.

I imagine a telegram might have worked, but there was the matter of bribing the telegrapher to send the thing, and again bribing the telegrapher to give one the reply. 

And as I had gone there with just $187 in American currency, paying bribes was not on my budget.

I had gone there in a hurry, and short of funds, because this was shortly after the socialist paradises had splintered apart, and I was worried lest I’d miss all the excitement (which I pretty much did miss anyway).  And while funds could be sent me, that didn’t mean funds would be received by me.

“And of course I knew nothing of the languages, and couldn’t hear any of it even if I had.

“So…..I had all of these experiences, all of these adventures—the FBI man at the American embassy in Kiev called me “the luckiest son-of-a-bitch” he’d ever seen in all his career in law-enforcement—the major in the Russian secret police who after he slapped me around, described me as “a lamb among wolves”—and some other experiences you don’t want to hear about…..but when I came back here, whole and intact, it turned out nobody had worried about me at all, when I was gone.

“As I said, I didn’t want anybody to worry, but I was sorely surprised to learn they hadn’t, despite that this involved some of the most risky, most dangerous, most hazardous, experiences in my life.

“Case closed.  People worry too much.  I refuse to be paranoid.”

The neighbor’s wife pursed her lips.

“Well, I just listened to your telephone messages for you, and passed on two of them to you. 

“The other three didn’t identify themselves; there was just heavy breathing at the other end.”

[franksolich]

The caretaker came into the house Tuesday morning, stamping the snow off his feet in the entry-way to the dining room.

"I can't believe you don't believe any of this stuff is going on," he said.

I was at the dining room table, reading Monday's Omaha World-Herald, drinking coffee.

"What?" I asked; "what stuff?"

The carektaker poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the other end of the table.

The property caretaker is a small, balding, wizened bug-eyed little guy, 63 years old, with some damage inside his head.  He is a distant relative of the ancient elderly couple who own this place, and like them lives in town.  He served in Vietnam during the war for the liberation of that country, returning home in 1970 to what was to have been a bright future in the well-drilling business.

But alas, during his time in the service he had acquired a liking for motorcycles.....and for drink.

Some time the summer of 1972, he zoomed off on his bike, helmet-less, and for some reason the two parts--him and the motorcycle--separated.  It could have been worse; at most, he suffered only some brain-damage when his whole head could have been mashed flatter than a pancake.

The injury was not service-related, and the social security gravy disability gravy-train was then still on the drawing-boards, but given certain characteristics of the cerebral damage, he was no longer any good for well-drilling.

He was hired by the owners of this place--and some other properties in three counties--to be the caretaker, as he still retained his remarkable plumbing-heating-air conditioning-roofing-carpentry-electrical-gardening-landscaping-painting-mechanical-heavy machine operating skills; a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of nearly them all.

His skills remind me very much of the skills displayed in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, where it was oftentimes necessary to cannibalize an electrical coffee percolator from Poland, for example, in order to repair an electrical toaster from East Germany; that sort of craftsman.

He is married, for decades now, to his high-school sweetheart, now a pleasantly-fat woman, who manages the money.  They have one son, circa 40 years old, married, with three children, who is a farmer and an instructor in the agricultural arts at the community college in the big city.

Ever since first meeting me about ten years ago, he took a paternal interest in me, which I do my best to dissuade.  He calls me "young man" when he's sober, and "boss" when he's drunk.  (Usually he calls me "boss".)  He has this preposterous notion that I, being deaf, cannot possibly know what's going on, a perception based from our first meeting, but that's another story altogether.

"You haven't been outside yet," he accused me.

Sipping my cup of coffee, I admitted it; "When I first got up this morning, I glanced out a window and noticed it'd snowed, and since I already know what that looks like, no point in it."

"Well," he said, "take a look," opening the front door.

I looked.  The entire front yard, from the front porch clear over to the William Rivers Pitt, was criss-crossed with what were, obviously tracks of a gasoline-powered sled, or a snowmobile, or whatever those things are called.

"They must've spent at least an hour zooming back-and-forth, here to there, there to here, during the middle of the night, and you didn't even know it," the caretaker said.

"I tell you, the primitives are stalking you, but you don't believe it."

"I refuse to be paranoid," I replied.

[Dblhaul]

Great story so far. I like the drunk caretaker, rider of motorcycles, tracker. Remindes me of a DU poster that has a brain that isent quite up to par.

[franksolich]

When the neighbor came over this morning, bringing with him a boxful of junk-mail from my post office box in town, I was sitting at the dining room table, contemplating.

“You’ve been getting a lot of this stuff lately,” he commented; “I wonder how you ended up on everybody’s mass-mailing list.”

I looked through it, hoping to see a campaign circular from Omaha Steve, but no, there wasn’t one.

Yet.

The neighbor said he’d talked with the property caretaker, about my lack of concern for my personal safety.

“Look,” I said; “he means well, but he worries too much.

“However, I have a plan I’m going to give to him.”

I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and drew a rough draft outlining the property here.

Pencilling in dots, I pointed out where I proposed to plant land-mines.

“The problem with this idea though,” I said, “is that one of the cats might set one off, and we can’t have that.”

“Well, you could set the mines to not go off under a certain weight,” he suggested.

He was taking me seriously.

“Like, say, anything under twenty pounds.  Your biggest cat doesn’t weigh more than twelve.”

I thought about it.  “Well, I suppose if one blew up a deer or coyote or mountain lion, it’d be okay, no great loss.”

But then I thought some more, getting greatly disturbed.

“What about wild turkeys?—there’s enough of them around here—and I’m sure some of them weigh more than twenty pounds—that in autumn, this place could be like the London Blitz all over again.”

The neighbor mulled that over. 

And then I thought of something else.

“What about in summer, when the bald eagles come to nest on the river—damn it, I’m sure many of them weigh more than twenty pounds—at least they look that way up close.

“The last thing I need is to get yelled at for blowing up bald eagles.”

[franksolich]

The property caretaker came over this morning, Sunday morning, which he usually doesn’t do, bearing a catalogue of outdoor supplies.

He opened up the section dealing with “signs.”

"This is what we’re going to put up around here,” he told me.

All the signs listed seemed something like 18”x30” or thereabouts, made of metal and with paint that shines in the dark.

PRIVATE PROPERTY

PRIVATE PROPERTY: KEEP OUT

NO TRESPASSING

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

PROPERTY PROTECTED BY .95 JDJ

BEWARE OF DOG

BEWARE OF DANGEROUS DOG

SECURITY ALARM IN PLACE

PROPERTY UNDER CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE

ENTRY NOT ALLOWED

GREEN RIVER ORDINANCE ENFORCED

GO AWAY

A POLICE OFFICER LIVES HERE

And so on and so on, including a sign advertising the place is a military testing-ground for land-mines.

Uh, no, I said.

“But you need to keep the primitives out,” he replied.

“Well, right, but if it keeps decent and civilized people out too, then I don’t want it.  I can deal with stalking primitives.  I refuse to be paranoid.”

[obumazombie]

What is the "green river ordinance" ? Something to do with treadwell, or serial killers ? And, if you want to kill eagles, bald or otherwise, with impunity, put a number of wind turbines up on your property.

[franksolich]

What is the "green river ordinance"? Something to do with treadwell, or serial killers?

The name "Green River Ordinance" is given to a common United States city ordinance prohibiting door-to-door solicitation. Under such an ordinance, it is illegal for any business to sell their items door-to-door without express permission from the household beforehand. Some versions prohibit all organizations, including non-profit charitable, political, and religious groups, from soliciting or canvassing any household that makes it clear, in writing, that it does not want such solicitations (generally with a "No Trespassing" or "No Solicitations" sign posted.)

The ordinance is named for the city of Green River, Wyoming, which in 1931 was the first city to enact it. The ordinance was unsuccessfully challenged on constitutional grounds by the Fuller Brush Company in 1932.

The ordinance has been challenged before the Supreme Court on several occasions.

Around these parts, it's generally, and quite accurately, interpreted to mean, "don't bother us unless you're invited company."

[franksolich]

One of the deputy sheriffs dropped by this morning, as I had completed his income taxes.

“You know, there’s going to be a surprise for your birthday,” he advised me.

Yeah, I replied; I already knew about it.

“Two weeks ago, the business partner told me there was going to be a surprise.

“He knows I don’t care for surprises—I get too many of them as it is simply from being deaf—people materializing out of thin air, people being around me and I’m not aware, and somesuch—and figured he’d do me a favor tipping me off in advance, so I’m not taken by surprise.

“And then a couple of days after that, the neighbor told me others were planning a surprise for me.

“That same day, but later on, the caretaker informed me.

“And then last weekend, first, the neighbor’s wife told me there’d be a surprise, and then the femme some hours later when we were dining out.

“Only yesterday, the big guy from the grain elevator came out and told me.

“So I know there’s going to be a surprise, and so I won’t be caught off guard.”

“Nobody told you what the surprise is,” he asked, alarmed.

“No, no,” I reassured him; “nobody told me anything other than that there’ll be a surprise.  I have no idea what the surprise is, but at least I know there’s going to be a surprise, so I’m not on edge about it.”

“Well,” he said, relaxing because I hadn’t been told what the surprise is, “I hope there won’t be any stalking primitives around to ruin it.”

I sighed.  “I refuse to be paranoid.”