Well, time to get back to this to tell the rest of the story, or rather, the non-story.
On Sunday, I'd been asked if I'd kindly let a couple of primitives and their cohorts spend a couple of nights here in the annex, where there's four hardly-ever-used bedrooms. The property caretaker offered to install a lock and one of those chain things on the door leading from the annex to the kitchen, even.
A 51-year-old guy in town died late Saturday night. He and his wife had five kids, ranging in age from 11 to 30.
Despite their being good parents, two of the children ended up worthless bums, showing again that being a parent is a risky game of chance.
One of them was actually an "occupier" over in Des Moines, Iowa; the other's been to Wayne State College, the University of Nebraska, Metro Tech in Omaha, and beauty school in Omaha.....for about a semester each. Both of them ended up costing their late father a great deal of money; tuition, drug money, bail fees, civil penalties, beer and travel expenses.
They were going to come to their father's funeral, and relatives and friends of the grieving widow didn't want them around to trouble her, as they've been nothing but problems, and this is a bad time for her to deal with problems.
Since I've dealt with all sorts of people and have the means, I was asked if I could house them, so as to keep them and their friends out of the hair of the rest of the family. After all, it's not something in which I lack experience.
Apparently on Monday, they insisted that mom send them beer and travel money so they could get to the funeral.
The grieving widow was upset, but had enough resolution to say "no;" this was their father, and in theory at least they were supposed to bust their asses to get to his funeral, just as expected of anyone with filial respect.
So they never came at all.
They aren't aware yet that their father two or three years ago, after computing how much money he'd spent on them as compared with the other three children, cut them out of his will.
Too bad for those primitives, but we all make our own beds.
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As for the light pole, I inquired of the property caretaker.
He said it was erected during the mid-1960s, when he was in Vietnam, so he doesn't know the exact details, other than that its base goes down into a deep well, lots of concrete. It's part wood, part metal. It looks like a radio tower, excepting the last ten or so feet.
It was put up when the old lady (the stepmother in the windmill story above) was still around. She was pretty old, and her descendants wanted her living in town, but she wouldn't. She insisted on staying out here in splendid isolation, which she did, until about a year, two years, before she died at the age of 102 years in 1988.
It's a beacon more so than a yard-light, although it does illuminate part of the front yard pretty well.
This is the edge of the sparsely-populated Sandhills, hardly any people around, and far removed from any major metropolitan area that lights up the night as if day. Nights in the Sandhills are ink-black. Totally black. I suppose those in urban areas can see hundreds, maybe a few thousands, of stars (I never paid attention myself, when living in congested areas), but all the artificial lighting even at night obsures one's view. There's actually millions upon millions of stars out there, and in the Sandhills one can pretty much see them all.
The house, and the light, are two miles south of the highway, and the turn-off to here is rather indistinct; in fact, the average traveler wouldn't even notice the turn-off. It's visible from the highway, with a slight red tinge so it won't be confused with astronomical phenomenons.
There was always concern for the frail old lady, living out here in the middle of nowhere--although there shouldn't have been, because she'd dealt with mean characters all her life, she was adept with firearms, both shot-gun and hand-gun, there were dogs both inside and outside the house, and she had a telephone (in fact, four of them).
So in all respects other than her old age, she was safer than franksolich, actually.
The light can be seen even during the worst of storms, the wind and snow howling.
The seven years I've been here, I've kept the light shut off during pleasant weather those times I didn't want company. If an emergency, people I know could get here anyway. But in good weather, strangers wouldn't even know this place exists.
However, in fulfillment of my moral and societal obligations to humanity, since I'm the only one around, during times of bad weather, I keep it lit, in case a traveler needs help. Or if I'm going to be gone, not returning until the middle of the night or something, it tells me from the highway where to turn off.
I cannot exaggerate how dark it gets out here. There are no landmarks. Being a native of the Sandhills, I myself can discern a horizon, differentiating between utter black and dark dark purple, but that's about it; most people can't, which might or might not be a reason soft effetes aren't comfortable traveling through.
