franksolich keeps his cool under primitive conditions

[franksolich]

This is for the big guy from Bellevue, Omaha Steve, who daily updates the primitives on Skins’s island about life in Nebraska—but who for some peculiar reason has been neglecting to inform them about the biggest story at the moment—the Sahara-like (in temperatures), Amazon-like (in humidity) heat wave that’s held the state in its deadly grip for a couple of weeks.

The big guy of course is aware of it, but as he sits around inside a house all day long in front of the air-conditioner, it doesn’t particularly bother him.  The big guy’s a primitive, remember; something may bother a million and a half other people, but if it doesn’t affect Steve personally, then it’s not important, it’s not news worth sharing with his fellow primitives.

This whole thing has already been written, and will be posted in parts so as to keep reader interest; and despite all appearances, there is no smut in this story; not the least.  This is something the big guy can read to his little granddaughter at bed-time, without fear or trepidation that it’s less than squeaky-clean. 

- - - - - - - - - -

Beginning about the 4th of July, it’s been miserably hot and humid and wretched in the Sandhills of Nebraska, the heat index (which takes into account not only the temperature, but the humidity too) exceeding 100-105 degrees every day.  The Sandhills can be hot any given summer, of course, but usually it’s a dry sort of heat that doesn’t oppress one’s system as much as wet heat.

There was so much rain here the past spring and now into summer, that the humidity’s life-threatening; one could probably almost drown in the air. Not only are the rivers and fields full of water, but Nebraska sits atop the largest subterranean “sea” of fresh water in the world, and it’s close to the surface; all one has to do is dig down a few feet.

The corn was only knee-high on the 4th of July; this morning I measured some, and it’s all in excess of eight feet, some of it nine feet tall.  It’s true, very true—although franksolich wouldn’t know it personally—that one can actually hear corn grow—people in Iowa and Illinois know more about it than we here in Nebraska do, though--and I guess it’s been pretty loud.

Even with state-of-the-art industrial-strength air-conditioning, one can’t get away from the wet.

And there is no state-of-the-art air-conditioning out here; there’s not even air-conditioning, period, in this old house.  Usually the heat’s tolerable because the windows on all four sides are big and have operating screens, and so electric fans blow the air around.  What this means is electric bills that are pretty much non-existent during the summer…..but there’s always a few days when one’s willing to pay a king’s ransom just to get a cool breeze going.

There’s apparently no insulation in the roof or ceiling—but as franksolich is destined to be the last tenant here anyway, it’s not worth doing anything about it—as the other day, the outdoor temperature was 94 degrees, the heat-index (taking into account the humidity) 105 degrees, and the thermostat for the furnace in the living room registered 97 degrees.

If I have overnight guests during torridly hot weather, the deal is, they have to camp out, rather than staying in the house.  And myself, it’s been two weeks since I last slept in my bedroom; I’ve been sleeping on the swinging bench on the front porch, or the floor of the back porch, or if it doesn’t look like rain, in a sleeping bag in the bed of a pick-up truck parked out front (the garage itself is like a blast oven).

But the rent’s cheap, the grounds are spacious (to put it mildly) and all mine, and the cats like it, so other than that, I got no complaints.

I feel for those who have to work outdoors in this climate—which is the greater share of people in this area, farmers, ranchers, groundskeepers, repairmen, truck drivers, steelworkers, law enforcement, salesmen, aluminum-can collectors, &c., &c., &c., even dog-walkers, of which there’s a few around here who make money doing that.

I don’t have to work outdoors—I do if asked, but it’s not anything I have to do—but most who do, seem to be (a) working very early in morning and very late at night, avoiding working during the day-time, (b) working for only short periods of time, and (c) inhaling gallons and gallons of liquids.  But I’m sure they have to do more than just that.

to be continued

[JohnnyReb]

100 degrees and high humidity, uh.....sounds like Charleston S.C..

In July of !980 I went to a heavy equipment auction in Charleston. It was about 9:30 am when I parked the truck. A short fat fellow in a rental car parked beside me. He got out and started wiping sweat right away. He asked me how hot it was. I said, "The guy on the radio said it was 93." He said, "93 my ass. It was 110 when I left Texas yesterday and it wasn't this damn hot."

You're right Frank, that high humidity is a killer.

[franksolich]

100 degrees and high humidity, uh.....sounds like Charleston S.C..

The two photographs in the original post are what the Sandhills look like now.

This is what the Sandhills are supposed to look like in mid-July:

[franksolich]

An advantage to being “self-employed” and living way out in the middle of nowhere is that one’s freer to conduct himself in whatever ways that makes one as comfortable as possible, than one is in a crowded congested blue city or blue state, where one always has to take into account the presences and sensitivities of other people. 

There ain’t nobody out here to bother except franksolich.

It helps that there’s a nicely-flowing river on this isolated property.

It’s not as famous as dutch508’s river a few miles north, but it’s almost as big, and unlike dutch508’s river, it’s thus far been spared “development,” outsiders not paying the least bit of attention to it.

- - - - - - - - - -

Despite that franksolich is known to be an honest hard working regular church-attending member of excellent standing in the Republican party, at the same time, there’s this perception of a non-conforming original thinking free spirit, a devil-may-care rebel.

Both perceptions are absolutely correct; I have sterling credentials in either case.  And there’s no conflict; I’m a “situational” type of person, adapting myself to the environment as it changes. 

Whatever the circumstances require, I become—in a three-piece pin-striped suit or casual wear; gentle and soft-spoken or loud and boisterous; moody and silent or merry and gregarious; well mannered or as rude and boorish as a primitive…..whatever best suits the position I’m in.

God apparently made franksolich skillfully adaptable, or at least a social chameleon.

I wasn’t always this way.  As a little lad, for example, I was hostile to other people.  I believe this attitude was actually impressed upon me by the parents as a means of self-defense.  They were medical professionals, and understood better than I did (at the time) the perils and risks facing me.

Handicapped children—in my case, being deaf and without guile—are vulnerable to the wiles and machinations of other people, some of them not good people.

I managed to evolve from toddler to child to adolescent with no untoward traumatic experiences to warp my mind; a fate that unhappily eluded many others like myself.

Some time during late adolescence, I finally realized, “Well, I’m bigger and wiser and not as vulnerable as I used to be, and nobody can have me without my consent, so it’s okay for me to be more open and reckless, whatever I want to be, because now nobody but myself can hurt me.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

One might not believe this, but it’s there in the record books and the geography books; despite being only a reasonably medium-sized state (77,000 square miles), Nebraska has more miles of rivers than any other state, even the really big ones.

The map ^^^ shows only the major rivers; the minor rivers and the thousands of creeks aren’t given on it.  One can see from the map why Nebraska’s considered a “ladder of rivers,” each one a “rung” as one goes south to north, from the Republican River, near where our member CollectivismMustDie resides, way up to the Niobrara River, on which is the cattle barony, about half the size of Connecticut, of our member dutch508.

The big guy, Omaha Steve, lives right where the Platte River and the Missouri River intersect, just below Omaha.  franksolich, who’s lived in many parts of the state, in addition to other parts of the world, currently lives somewhere up in northeastern Nebraska, on the borderline between what’s called “Lewis & Clark” terrain and the Sandhills. 

The Platte River ^^^ alongside which franksolich was born and spent his childhood, is perhaps the best-known river in Nebraska, at least among those aware of the existence of Nebraska. It’s a very ancient river and is getting shallower and shallower as it winds down its natural life-span of a few million years.

The Platte River is responsible for the grossly erroneous misconception that Nebraska is “flat;” the Platte River was, and remains, the most popular route through the state, and as many don’t venture far beyond it, it’s natural to think the whole entire state is flat when it’s flat only alongside the Platte River.

Because of various naturally-occurring environmental hazards and perils, the Platte River, at least the western two-thirds of it, is lousy for swimming, and so few have, or do.

The only memory I retain of the Platte River is from late August of various years, when the older brothers and their friends camped there, fishing for crap.  They then traded the fresh fish with carnies in town for the local end-of-summer festivities, for strips of tickets good for carnival rides.  I remember that my younger brother and I were then each given a strip of tickets about as long as our heights, but I was too young to understand the source—dead fish--of this largesse.

I myself, when ten years old, learned to swim in the Middle Loup River, and spent much of my adolescence swimming there, and in…..the South Loup River and…..the North Loup River.  This was after the family had moved north into the Sandhills.

I had a friend—in fact, he was my best friend, God rest his soul—who didn’t get along with all the rest of my friends, and so the two of us swam in the Dismal River ^^^ which was nice, but more difficult to “access”—not to mention infested with rattlesnakes.  Or ostensibly so; I never saw one myself, and we were there plenty of times.

The Niobrara River, way up on the roof of Nebraska, is the hip, trendy, cool, with-it waterway in Nebraska, attracting hordes of Nebraskans and riff-raff outsiders, many of them of the primitive sort, all year long, even during winter.

It’s supposed to be the next “Jackson Hole,” the Niobrara River, so alas for dutch508, who sooner or later is likely to find hordes of primitives trodding all over his spread, spooking the cattle.

to be continued

[franksolich]

Despite all the hoary old jokes about country boys skinny-dipping in a secret water-hole, in this life at least such a thing never happened until the summer before I was a junior in high school.

Since about the age of 13, several of us had worked at the drive-in movie theater—this was at the tail-end of that era, and this was one of the last such theaters in Nebraska—during the summer days, picking up trash, repairing speaker boxes, mowing the greenery, and somesuch, getting sweaty, dirty, and tired.

As the heat reached its peak during the day, we drove up to the Middle Loup River, and dived into the water—usually in our cut-offs, but sometimes one had the foresight to bring trunks, which were better for protection of a certain part of the male anatomy.

But that next-to-the-last summer, there was a foreign exchange student from West Germany in town, who joined us.  I dunno if he did the same thing back home, but out in the Sandhills, he chose to swim naked, and the rest of we hicks followed his lead.

Well, we went back to school in autumn, we graduated, and spent the final summer doing the same thing before taking off for college.

We grew up, and over the next couple of decades, I myself lived in big cities where aquatic recreation wasn’t anything that appealed to me.  And some time later, I took off for the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants to see what was going on there, and I saw plenty, including naked bodies in water.

But myself, no.  Early on, I’d fortunately detected an unusual obsession about the American male sexual organ—on the part of both women and males—and kept out of arm's reach.  One could look, but one wasn’t going to get to touch.

Then I returned, lived in Omaha for a while, and moved up out here, on the eastern edge of the Sandhills, on the roof of Nebraska.  I’d left “nature” about twenty-five years earlier, and here franksolich was, back again…..out in the wilds in a place with no air-conditioning (but absurdly cheap rent too, remember).

I accepted, adapted, and moved on.  If one gets too hot, one has the option of diving into the water, splashing around as long as one wishes.  And how one does it is up to the individual; it doesn’t make any difference, as there’s usually only one or two other people, friends, around, nobody to get their sensibilities offended.

Public nudity is against the law in Nebraska, as it should be, but this is private property in a remote secluded area.  It has a reputation for being a great place to camp—not least because one can consume alcohol on the property, unlike at governmental parks and campgrounds—but it’s, well, sort of out of the way for all but the most determined campers and hikers (or those wanting to use drugs without getting caught, badly enough).

to be continued

[franksolich]

http://www.omaha.com/outdoors/ducey-with-rain-niobrara-more-scenic-than-usual/article_b574b90f-87ae-5349-927a-926be3f5873e.html

This is dutch508's river, not the same river as franksolich's river.

If one must come and visit a river in Nebraska, go to dutch508's; leave mine alone.

With rain, Niobrara more scenic than usual

Park Superintendent Steve Thede found picture-perfect conditions last week when he floated down the Niobrara National Scenic River.
 
“The grass is green, the trees are green, the flowers are out,” he said. “It’s just great out there.”
 
The water is about knee-high in most places so you can stand. But it’s also deep enough so canoers, kayakers and tubers don’t have to worry about getting out and pulling their vessels into deeper water to avoid scraping bottom.

That’s not always the case later in the year as temperatures spike and rainfall slows.

“The rain has never stopped,” Thede said. “Sometimes it can get too hot, and other times the vegetation starts browning up. We’re not getting any of that right now, and we’re just really fortunate.”

Wildlife is abundant, too. Thede saw several deer one day and an owl on another, along with too many other birds to count.

Visitation is up a little right now, but Thede said the river isn’t overcrowded. He estimates about 3,000 to 4,000 people are on the river each week during the summer. Last year, there were 53,000 annual visitors with about 32,000 floating the river.

Friday afternoons and Saturdays are big days for younger participants. Families can start in the afternoon on Saturday or wait until Sunday to avoid the crowds.

Rangers are happy to let you know the best starting times, Thede said.

“On the fourth of July, my friend and I went down in the late afternoon and only saw four other people and we did 12 miles of river,” he said. “We didn’t see anybody until we got to Smith Falls.”

A trip down the river can be an all-day outing, but Thede recommends starting with around a three-hour excursion. With so many accessible landings, it’s easy to plan a shorter trip.

“It’s a good way to get your feet wet, pun intended,” Thede said.

The Niobrara NSR Visitor Center, 214 W. Highway 20 in Valentine, is open seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. until Labor Day. For more information on a trip, call the center at 402-376-1901, visit www.nps.gov/niob, or go to www.facebook.com/NiobraraNSR.

Wrestling down a 67-pounder

Taylor Foral and his dad, Ed, of Springfield didn’t realize their latest fishing trip was going to require some wrestling moves.

The 67-pound blue catfish they caught at a sandpit lake near Springfield took 30 minutes to land. Their bait was Asian carp from the Platte River that they’d killed with bow and arrows and cut up.

“He wouldn’t fit in our net because he was so big,” Taylor Foral said. “He bent our net in half and broke it, so of course I panicked. I had to jump in the water and bear-hug him and wrestle him to the shore to land him. I think I was more worn out than the fish actually was. People just don’t understand how powerful a fish of that caliber is — it is unbelievable.”

The fish had a big turtle bite in its side, which might have slowed it down. It died shortly after the struggle, so Taylor plans to have it mounted with his state record longnose gar in the trophy room. Normally, he would have released the fish.

They released 40- and 45-pounders.

“We fished for five days straight and caught some very nice fish,” he said. “We didn’t catch these fish out of luck, we caught these fish because we worked very hard at it. Hard work pays off.”

Taylor said he, his father and brother Dustin have fished the body of water for more than 20 years, and the 67-pounder was their biggest trophy.

“We will probably never catch another one this big,” he said, “but we can hope so.”

Staying safe on the water

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is urging everyone enjoying a day on the water to do so safely.

Some safety reminders:

» Avoid alcohol: Whether boating, swimming or tubing, avoid alcohol. It causes dehydration and impairs judgment.

» Wear a life jacket: Most boating fatalities involve a person falling from or being ejected from a boat.

» Have required safety equipment: Life jackets, throw cushions, fire extinguishers, and bailing devices are required on most boats. For a list of rules, check out the 2015 Boating Guide available statewide and at OutdoorNebraska.org/boating.

» Be wary of surroundings: Many boat collisions occur because people don’t keep an eye on what is going on around them, or boats get too close to each other when going too fast. The best boat operators constantly are looking around for other boats, swimmers, stumps and other hazards.

» Take a safety course: Operators must be at least 14 years of age to operate a motorboat or personal watercraft. Any operator born after Dec. 31, 1985, must have successfully completed the Nebraska boating safety course and be in possession of a valid certificate. Visit OutdoorNebraska.org/boating to find a course.

» Swimming: Swim only in designated areas of lakes and with a buddy — it’s safer and more fun.

» If tubing or paddling a river, be wary of deep holes, underwater hazards and obstructions in the water.

» Watch the weather: Get off the water immediately if there’s lightning in the area or a storm is approaching.

[I_B_Perky]

100 degrees and high humidity, uh.....sounds like Charleston S.C..

You're right Frank, that high humidity is a killer.

Or Charleston WV.

Humidity here is any where from 70 to 90 percent in July.  Thunder storms every afternoon. Then the humidity gets even higher once the rain quits.   

[Chris_]

Today was an average 97° day.  Humidity was average, but the sun was a killer. 

We had some cloud coverage that held down the temperature but once they passed, standing out in that sun was too much.

[franksolich]

Despite that one appreciates solitude, it’s dangerous to swim alone; a river may look shallow and serene, but any river usually has hidden snares and traps.  One might need help and so best to wait until someone else shows up.

And for a deaf person, it’s doubly dangerous, but I’ll get around to that later. 

One’s not going to suggest such an outing to an ancient person, or a respectable woman, or a member of the religious clergy, or those under twenty-one, but outside of that, the other, or others, can be just about anybody who happens to be around.

In my case, that’s usually at least another adult male or a woman who’s been around the block a few times, so there’s nothing about franksolich that either impresses or shocks them. 

The other person, or persons, might, or might not, skinny-dip; I don’t bother with this “I’ll take mine off if you take yours off” bit, instead just taking it off no matter what the others do. 

It all depends upon the individual temperament and level of comfort and confidence.  Whatever rows one’s boat, rocks one’s chair, pushes one’s buttons; it’s all good.

The big rule is that such should be undertaken only with others enthusiastic about the idea; the last thing one wants is someone who’s going to get all upset and bent out of shape about being naked, or seeing other people naked.

Some people have legitimate personal and religious scruples about nakedness, and those feelings need respected, as they are here.  It’s just that such people tend not to be around when sporting’s afoot on franksolich’s terrain, and so that’s an easy sensitivity to respect.

There are some people however who’re hesitant about the idea for silly reasons—medical professionals know exactly the sort of persons to whom I’m referring—and being a public-spirited individual, if something’s for someone’s own good, I push it.  I’ll spend all the time and creativity needed, to make someone, anyone, a better person.

It’s remarkable what being naked out in the open air, and in front of others, can do for a prude, or someone lacking a healthy sense of self.  Probably if more primitives did this sort of thing, while it might not do a whole lot of good for the aesthetics of humanity, there’d be a lot less unhappy people in this world.

to be continued

[franksolich]

One notices the big guy, who pretends to be the Nebraska correspondent on Skins’s island, has been avoiding illuminating the primitives about the biggest story in the state the past three or four weeks; that of the heat wave pressing down upon us.

It’s the first story in the news on the radio at the top of each hour, and the lead-in story in the local news on the television at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m……and on the front page, above the fold, of every newspaper.  It’s hard to miss this story.

But for the big guy who sits around on his ass all day long in air-conditioned comfort, never having to go to work or do household chores, it’s not “news.”  It doesn’t affect him.  Of course it affects poor dear Marta, compelled to travel to work under these most inhumane conditions, but as far as the big guy’s concerned, that’s her problem, not his.

- - - - - - - - - -

Okay, so possible drowning hazards aren’t the only reason one shouldn’t go swimming without at least one more person coming along…..especially if one’s deaf.  We need someone to listen for dangers and perils we can’t hear.  If one’s naked, it’s a good idea to know if someone else, unheard and unnoticed by us, is around.  It can get discomfiting, to learn that one’s provided a “show” for an audience of whose existence one’s blissfully unaware.

Even though this is far out in the country and the nearest neighbor’s six miles away, there can be a problem with unanticipated intruders, such as the village idiot, who comes out to watch from behind the bushes.  He can’t drive, and it’s quite a hike from town, so I don’t know how he gets out here, but he gets out here.

And then after he goes back to town, he goes to the bar and blabs about the goings-on he’s seen out here.  Being deaf, I’m not privy to gossip and so have no idea what he says, but it’s no great concern.   Whether he’s telling the truth or not is of no importance; because he is who he is, the village idiot, nobody believes what he says anyway.

- - - - - - - - - -

Years ago, before I figured all this out, I was swimming one summer afternoon when I was abruptly confronted by two campers who’d come out of nowhere; two guys about 20 years old.  At first, I was horrified being caught like I was, thinking they were perhaps Mormons, and I don’t like to offend decent and civilized people. 

I had no idea who they were and what they wanted.  I’d left my clothes up at the house, and as the house is quite a hike away, I wasn’t sure what to do about being the way I was in front of two strangers…..and they probably weren’t too sure about how to take franksolich either.

But fortunately, they turned out college students from somewhere, who were spending the summer selling books door-to-door (the Southwestern Publishing Company experience).  They hung around selling books for three days, so obviously this place wasn’t objectionable to them.

But I caught on early, and while there’s always been unanticipated intrusions, it’s been okay, because the other person, or persons, can do all the listening-and-talking, finding out who such people are and what they want, leaving franksolich free to be off doing his own thing.

to be continued

[franksolich]

Actually, the genesis of this let’s-get-naked-and-go-swimming custom on this specific property is from the first summer I lived here, and had nothing to do with me, as it involved women only.

There was one day a woman dropped by the house; she was in her mid-40s, not fat but not thin either, married, children, and worked as a file clerk in an attorney’s office in the big city.  I knew her by sight, recognized her face as someone I’d seen around, but that was it.

She told me she’d heard a lot about me, and that I was a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet; a notoriously magnanimous friend of humanity.  Okay.  I still wasn’t quite sure exactly who she was, but as she obviously knew who I was, I invited her to come and sit on the back porch, where we could talk better, and have some iced tea.

She wanted something, and at first, because of my deafness and all the uncertainty and ambiguity that entails, I assumed she was proposing to use this place for a Tupperware party, and responded to her comments along that line.

And so I proceeded the next few days along those lines, assuming the women were coming over for a Tupperware, or Avon, party.  But the first afternoon they showed up, ooops.

It took some more time—not because I’m stupid and don’t understand things, but simply because I’m deaf and don’t hear things—but I was finally given to understand that “the girls” wanted to come here, away from prying eyes, to…..skinny-dip.  They wanted to romp around naked without other people seeing them.

And so now readers, one understands why franksolich prefers to do such things through the property caretaker or the neighbor's wife, who get the who, what, and when from the source, and then convey to me what's going on.  It simplifies life considerably, and avoids a great many unexpected surprises.

The leader of the group, finally ascertaining I’d greatly misunderstood, feared that I didn’t want any of this sort of thing going on here.

I looked at her as if she were Bozo from Outer Space.

Why, of course I understood, I said; even decent and civilized people need occasional opportunities to blow off pressure by being silly—we were talking working women here, who need a chance once in a while to get away from men and children, and gallivant around with others of their own race.  This was something that would help them become better people, and so I was all for it.

And so for three summers—they don’t do it any more, because they all grew older and tired—about five or six times per, about ten or a dozen middle-aged women showed up, to go down to the river and be silly.  So as to ensure their privacy and safety, I closed off the property for the duration, and even removed the telescope from its mount on the railing of the back porch, used for watching whatever’s going on down that way.

to be continued