the spring of one's discontent

[franksolich]

the spring of one’s discontent.  “I hope those aren’t hippies down there, boss,” the property caretaker said, startling me as I was tightening screws on a pivot.

Since spring’s now here, I’d begun dragging things outdoors, in this case the telescope that during good weather is perched on the railing of the back porch, giving one a close-up view of what’s going on down by the river, about 500 yards from the back porch.

It’s just an old Sears, Roebuck high-school kid’s telescope for amateur star-gazing, but it works.  The caretaker had found it at a garage sale in the big city a few years ago, and thought it would be handy for keeping my eyes on what goes on around here.

No, I assured him; they were from town, and they weren’t even camping.  They’d just come by to admire the river in early spring, nothing more than that.

- - - - - - - - - -

The caretaker looked over to the expanse of wild land south of this property, commenting that the county assessor had gotten the semi-annual property tax payment on it Friday, even though it’s not due until June 30.

It happens every year; that property’s been owned by Italianate interests in New Jersey since 1948, which was the first and only time the owners came out here to look at it.  Since then, two times every year, a legal firm in that state sends in the property tax payment, always punctually and always early.

No one around here remembers the names of the owners, and only the very ancient can recall ever seeing them, that one time 65 years ago; two dapper-looking Italianate gentlemen who were very nice, and paid the full price demanded, in cash.

Since then, the only evidence of their existence has been a check mailed twice a year by an attorney in New Jersey, acting on behalf of the owners.  The land’s been left alone.

“Well, it’d be a good idea if everybody else around here did what they’re doing,” I said.

“The Italianate interests know what’s going on, and if they think it’s a good idea to simply leave it alone, using it as a tax dodge, probably everybody else around here should do the same.  They’re not dummies, the Italianates back east.

“Obviously, it’s our tax system, which penalizes productivity, and subsidizes, rewards, non-productivity.  If one has a choice between sending a check to Washington, or getting a check from Washington, well, it’s a no-brainer.”

This was in reference to the decision recently made by the owners of the property I rent, to put a “hold” on improvements, leaving everything as it is, non-productive, because if one dares try to have the land produce something, the Democrats will steal most of it.

Better to receive, than to give; life in Massa Barry‘s America.

- - - - - - - - - -

I told the caretaker I had a project, for whenever he got bored.

Now, the property caretaker usually does work of substance and value, but likes to mess around with things once in a while, for diversion and amusement.  He’s 67 years old, about the same age as old hippies.  But rather than sitting around getting stoned, he likes to do things.

I told him I needed him to build an observatory atop the William Rivers Pitt.

“And then maybe we could find another telescope at a garage sale, and mount it there, so I can see someone coming up the driveway.

“It’s always been awkward for me, not knowing someone’s approaching, until they’re already in the front yard.

“This way, I could spot them when they’re still two miles away, coming down from the highway.”

The caretaker usually approves of my attempts to improve security here, out in the middle of nowhere, but he balked at this idea.

“Boss, I’m not as young as I used to be, and that’s a rather steep climb.”

The William Rivers Pitt is a 740-cubic-ton mound of antique swine excrement from 1875-1950, even though nowadays it looks like just another pile of dirt.  And true, it’s not an easy ascent.

“You wouldn’t need to worry about that,” I told him.  “I’ll haul the building materials and tools and whatever you need, up there myself.”  (I’m quite a bit younger and more vigorous than the caretaker.)

“You’d have to go up there only one time, put it together, and then come down.  And I’ll stand by in case you need something, to go down and get it and bring it back up.

“It should be a piece of cake, for both you and me.”

The caretaker ruminated upon the idea.  “Well, I suppose we could find some spare lumber around.”

“Not a problem,” I said.  “I already have it picked out, the lumber that’s stored in the dirt-cellar south of the house.  There’s 35--there was probably 36 at one time, but someone took one to use somewhere--4x4 posts, each 12 feet long, stacked there.

“[the neighbor] says it’s walnut, pure walnut.

“And it’s aged appropriately, so it can easily withstand a couple of Nebraska Sandhills winters and summers.”

The caretaker then remembered what I was talking about.  Back in 1927, it’d been planned to put up a new house, and substantial lumber was delivered here.

But then occurred the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and there was no money, so no new house was put up.  By the time good times returned, everybody’d forgotten about putting up a new house, and made do with what was already here, leaving the unused lumber stored in a dirt-cellar.

“We could use those; I’ll drag them up to the top, and you can start building the observatory at your convenience.

“It’ll be great, to be able to see people coming before they get here.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

Since it was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I wasn’t doing anything in particular, I went to town, to see if I could find anyone who knew anything about the Italianate interests in New Jersey who own the property adjacent to this.

The whole issue’s buried under tons of antiquity, and as far as I could speculate, there were only two people in town old enough to know what happened sixty-five years ago--Grumpy, the retired banker who wears his polyester pants hiked up to his midriff, or the husband of the ancient woman who’d hosted me for Thanksgiving dinner last year.

I wasn’t too keen on visiting with Grumpy, so I went to the second place.  Now, the husband in this pair is very old and senescent; it’s only a matter of time before he ends up in the nursing home.  He wasn’t going to be good for any information, but his wife might recall some things.

She seemed delighted to see me, but to tell the truth, for me, on the inside, it was disheartening.  She’s as old as my mother would be, if my mother (who died at 54 years of age) were still alive, and I have “problems” seeing contemporaries of my parents as old people.  She’s very fragile, weak, and prone to “bad moments,” nothing like the way my mother would’ve possibly turned out.

Or so I suppose.

- - - - - - - - - -

After some minutes of idle chit-chattery, I got down to the real reason for my visit, and she happily reminisced for me, telling me the whole story.

“My husband was a newly-practicing lawyer, and so while he saw what went on, he didn’t handle it; his partner, much older, who’d been practicing since 1912, took care of it.

“It was on a hot summer morning when they showed up in front of my husband’s law office, riding in a black 1948 Cadillac with wide white-sidewall tires.  New Jersey license plates.  Gentlemen in their 40s, with eastern accents.  They’d spent the previous night at the Fontenelle Hotel in Omaha.  They were well-dressed, and despite the weather, wearing trench-coats and hats.

"The short one, the non-Italian looking one, introduced himself as ‘Meyer,’ and the other one as ‘Alberto.’

“The other one, who was definitely Italian, wasn’t quite as nice--to put it bluntly, he gave the impression of being snarly and surly--but that didn’t matter, because the first one did most of the talking anyway.

“Meyer--he could charm a snake out of a tree.

“They’d seen some farmland they knew was for sale, and liked it.

“Back then it was the Hotchkiss place, although none in that family ever lived there.  Before then, it’d been the Prentice place, but the Dust Bowl and Great Depression had bankrupted Old Man Prentice, who was forced to sell it to Hotchkiss.

“Since it was a desperation sale, Hotchkiss got it for a song, far less than what it was worth, and was thereafter convinced his greed was repaid many times over.  He had the land for about fifteen years, but never could get any good out of it.

“Hotchkiss was getting on in years, and ready to dump the white elephant.

“After the deal was signed, the pair paid cash for it, crisp green American currency.

“Eighty-four thousand dollars, and this in 1948 dollars, remember.

“This created problems at the bank, because as you know, despite appearances, banks aren’t really crowded with cash; even back then, it was mostly notations in ledgers and journals.  It was a problem, getting the bank to handle this much cash, and they had to hire a Wells, Fargo truck to take it to a bank in [the big city].”

My eyebrows arched.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Oh no,” she said.  “There was nothing funny about it, nothing at all.  It’d been looked into, and it was real money, legitimately withdrawn from a bank in New Jersey.

“And the attorney at that end had once been governor of the state.

“There wasn’t anything funny about it at all; it was just a lot of cash, much more than what was usually seen around here.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“When the two gentlemen and my husband’s senior partner were out there taking a second look at the property, they insisted upon meeting [the ancient woman who lived here before I did], so as to determine the quality of neighbors they’d be having, hoping they’d be of the quiet and discreet sort.

“Well, she was the only neighbor they’d have, and my husband’s partner reluctantly took them to meet her, hoping there wouldn’t be a scene.

“Now, this was 1948, about twenty years before she became blind, and forty before she finally died, but already back then she was acting hostile towards other people.  She’d led a hard life and suffered much tragedy; she just wanted to be left alone, didn’t want to be bothered by anybody.

“He needn’t have worried, because the non-Italian-looking one, Meyer, talked himself into her good graces right away.  They all got along grandly, at that first and only meeting between them.

“’Awesome old dame,’ they said; ‘the perfect neighbor.’

“They stayed at her house all that afternoon, getting acquainted and illuminating her as to what they’d hoped to do with this piece of farmland.  They had high hopes for an olive ranch, and she agreed that the terrain, the soil, and the weather other than in winter would be excellent for such a crop, although she remained skeptical there’d be much of a demand for olive oil around here.

“While they were having tea, someone down by the river started target-shooting, which startled the other one, Alberto, who dropped his tea-cup.

“It was from her Limoges set, a wedding gift she’d gotten in 1922, and of course the tea-cup broke.

“She’d had a lot of nice things in her life broken, and told him to not worry about it, but he did.

“Some weeks later, the Railway Express Agency delivered a large wooden crate, full of fine Italian china, Giorni; her stepdaughter-in-law has it now, and antique dealers and auction houses in New York and Boston have tried getting her to consign it to them, because it’s complete, and a rare design, considered among the finest in Italian craftsmanship.

“But she says it stays in the family, and you’ve of course seen it in her home, and on exhibit at the county fair.

“About ten years after they were here, the other one, Alberto, was sitting in a barber shop of a hotel in New York City, being lathered up for a shave, when someone burst in and wantonly shot him.

“The murder was never solved, and she [the ancient woman who lived here before I did] took it rather hard.  Nobody else who’d met them seemed to think so highly of him, while they adored Meyer, but she insisted that despite appearances, he was a very nice man, a gentleman with impeccable Old World courtesy and manners.

“She thought him rather much like Count Galeazzo Ciano.

“’You just had to get to know him,’ she always said.”

to be continued

[BlueStateSaint]

Keep 'em coming, Coach . . . I'm intrigued.  H5 duly given.

[franksolich]

Keep 'em coming, Coach . . . I'm intrigued.  H5 duly given.

There was a problem with the last chapter.

There's two audiences here, decent and civilized people reading the DUmpster, and a rather larger one consisting of lurking primitives.

While decent and civilized people can "get" even obscure references, the primitives aren't so good with history and I'm sure that chapter flew over the head of most primitives.

Excepting for the adroit sparkling old dude, who's one of my most-diligent readers; I have no doubt he got all the obscurities.

At the time I was writing it, I was looking at the panoramic landscape of the Sandhills outside the two picture-windows of the dining room,

and thinking of the adroit sparkling old dude, wondering if he's healthy and doing okay.  One doesn't see him hanging around Skins's island as much as he used to.

As with all these stories, it's a mixture of non-fiction from people and events in real life, and fiction inspired by a particular primitive, maybe about 50%-50% in the case of the above chapter.  The realistic parts actually took place--but not necessarily in that order, nor not necessarily recently--and the fictitious primitive parts were inspired by kindly thoughts of the adroit sparkling old dude.

(The first chapter, the beginning, is strictly straightforward factual reporting.)

[GOBUCKS]

I'm sure Sparkly Mike recognized Anastasia and Lansky.

He has their photos in the little shrine over his catbox.

[franksolich]

It was drizzling early this morning, and as I have to work only two days this week, today not being one of those days, I started dragging out the 4x4 walnut posts from the cellar, in preparation for hauling them up to the top of the William Rivers Pitt.

This particular cellar’s on the south side of the property, and is about 15x20 feet, but only five feet high, which makes for cramped working if one’s 6’3”.  There’s two other dirt cellars here, smaller, and not used.  The place is actually catacombed with old cellars, all but three of them having caved in a long time ago. 

They date from a time when refrigeration wasn’t around, and storage space a rare commodity.

After a couple of hours, after I’d dragged out eleven of the 12’-long posts, the neighbor’s older brother dropped by, seeing me lighting and tossing firecrackers down into the cellar.

The neighbor’s older brother is an exact contemporary of mine; we were both born the same year, went to school the same years, and pretty much lived parallel lives almost down to the same hour.  He however did more with his life, being married with children, having been in the military, and earning a master’s degree, as compared with my modest bachelor’s degree.

Despite our contemporaneous lives, while he likes me, he thinks I’m odd.

He asked me what I was doing, tossing firecrackers in there.

“Well, there’s snakes down in there,” I told him; “about the time I started dragging out the third post, I looked down, and there was a big old snake--about as big around as my forearm--slithering right in between my feet.

“Oops, I hadn’t counted on snakes being in there.  That one was the biggest one, but there’s plenty more smaller ones. 

“It creeps me out, reaching for a post in the darkness, and feeling one of them crawling across the top of my hand.  It’s of course a good preventative for warts, but warts have never been a problem for me, and so I’d just as soon not bother.

“There were some firecrackers left over from the 4th of July last year--bundles of ladyfingers and M-180s--and I’ve been lighting them and tossing them in.”

“You’re trying to kill snakes with firecrackers?” he asked.  “What kind of snakes?”

No, I said, “and I dunno what kind of snakes.  Just snakes.  You know I don’t pay attention to nature; I just leave nature alone to do its own thing, while nature leaves me alone to do my own thing.”

And no, I added; “I’m not trying to kill them.  I’m just trying to scare them away, with the odor and the noise.”

“Well, why was it a surprise to you?” he asked; “you should’ve figured beforehand they might be in there, which is why [his younger brother] told you to wait until he was around first, in case something happened.”

I got exasperated.  “If I had to wait for somebody before I did anything, I’d be spending all my time waiting.

“And no, I didn’t expect any snakes in there.  It was a total surprise.”

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

“Oh, don’t be that way,” I sputtered.  “You go in there, and you hear all sorts of rustling and slithering and crawling and rattling and hissing, and your ears tell you there’s something there.

“I go in there, and not hearing anything to clue me in that there’s something there, just naturally assume there’s nothing there.

“It’s of course an erroneous assumption, but it’s an eminently natural assumption to make--no noise, nothing there.

“And if I were to stop and contemplate the perils and hazards of everything before I dive into it, I’d get nothing done, damn it.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Well, a whole lot of good that did me,” I said to the neighbor when he was here in early afternoon.

“I spent about three hours dragging those 35 walnut posts up out into the open, to use for an observatory atop the William Rivers Pitt, and now it turns out I won‘t get to use them after all.

“Here, I‘d battled rain, mud, dirt, dust, the smoking stench of firecrackers, vipers, and possibly mice and rats and rabbits and bats that I didn‘t know were there, and it was all for naught.”

“Yeah, I heard about it,” he said.  “They’re going to use them for the solarium they’re putting in on the south side of their house in town.”

“As they have a right to,” I said, resigned.  “After all, it is their property.

“I’m being a good sport about it, but damn, this sort of thing seems to happen too much.”

“Well boss, it’s your own damned fault,” the property caretaker, who’d arrived at the same time, pointed out.

“Ever since you moved out here, you’ve been reminding people of things they forgot.  They knew, maybe forty years ago, those posts were down there, but then forgot all about them.”

What had happened was the oldest son of the ancient owners of this property had come out here, and learned of the antique walnut 4x4 posts that had laid dormant in a dirt-cellar since 1927, and upon inspecting the wood, decided it was far too good to be used on the William Rivers Pitt.

Because of the decrepitude of his parents, causing his own home place to become central to all family activities--and it is a very large family, very close-knit--he has plans to expand his house.  The whole family--47 personages--spent last Thanksgiving there, and he didn’t like having to use the three-car garage as the dining-room.

He’s an amateur draftsman and expert carpenter, and had planned on adding a modest solarium, but upon inspecting this excavated lumber, abruptly changed course.  A solarium still, but not a modest one.

When dreaming of a solarium, whenever he was out here, he had been perusing my collection of antique architectural and home magazines, looking for ideas.

I showed the neighbor and the caretaker a page that had been torn out of one of the magazines, oh, maybe about a year ago, when he first got the notion.

“This was something he’d been thinking of,” I said.

“But now he’s thinking of something along these lines using those posts,” I added, showing them a second torn-out page.

“He says this way, he’ll have some room.

“Well, it’s all good,” I finished; “I mean, it is his stuff, and he does need the room.  But still--”

“Now, hold on, boss,” the caretaker said.  “With what you were thinking about those posts, it looked as if you expected me to build a forest ranger’s lookout tower up there.  That wasn’t ever gonna happen.

“There’s plenty of other lumber here, and I got a 4’x8’ sheet of 1” plywood at the lumberyard, to be cut in half and one piece put on top of the other, for a 4’x4’ platform.

“That’s all you were ever going to get, a platform to stand on, not some observation tower six stories high with all the comforts of home up there.”

to be continued

[GOBUCKS]

not some observation tower six stories high with all the comforts of home up there.

If you got that, DUmmy DUmotex might show up.

He'd sit up there all summer, collecting government checks, scanning the cornfields for forest fires, and regaling you with made-up stories about his fantasy miliitary career. He stormed the Siegfried Line shoulder-to-shoulder with TomInTib.

[franksolich]

“Well, boss, orders from the old lady,” the property caretaker announced.

“Tomorrow, [the neighbor] and I are coming over, to cave in the dirt-cellars around here.

“Do you still have a copy of those maps that archaeological guy made when he was here three years ago, showing all the underground holes on the property?  That’d be handy, in case we’ve forgotten anything.”

I groaned.  “Why?”

“Well, it appears you scared [the neighbor’s older brother] this morning, and he went and talked to her.

“He told her what you’d been doing, and said you weren’t aware that the dirt over your head was shivering and shifting while you were doing it.  He felt himself turning white, because apparently you weren’t aware of the danger.”

“Oh geezuz,” I groaned again.

“I moved out here because I wanted to be left alone, and it’s like I got a whole team of Mary Poppinses, nannies watching out for me.

“Nothing happened.”

“Well now, boss, you know his history,” the caretaker said; “it happened before he and his younger brother were born, but they had an uncle who was crushed to death when he was eight years old, when the top of an old dirt-cellar fell on him.

“I remember that, even though I was only four years old.  It wasn’t a pretty way to leave this Mortal Coil.

“So the old lady says all the dirt-cellars have to be collapsed, so they won’t be a peril to you.”

The “old lady” of course is the wife of the ancient elderly gentleman who owns this place.  He’s in the nursing home, having suffered a series of strokes the past few years, and his wife and oldest son pretty much run things now.

She’s also an aunt of the caretaker, and he says “old lady” with affection, not derision.

She caused problems for me two and a half years ago, when during leasing discussions, she insisted I needed to have a telephone out here.  I’d lived here five years by then, and never had a telephone, never had a problem…..but that didn’t keep her from worrying about my safety.

I finally had to cave, and every month have to send twenty-four dollars to the local telephone company for…..exactly nothing.  After all, what use is a telephone for a deaf person?

She’s a very nice person, and I love her a bunch, but…..

“Whatever,” I finally said.  “Here’s the maps, and as you can see, there’s three of them with access, and four others he detected that are holes still there, but no way of getting in and out, that could collapse sooner or later.

“But I dunno why the concern; nothing’s ever happened, because I watch out for things.

“I consider this a lack of confidence in my competence, as if I’m some idiot needing protected from things.

"You know, I'm starting to get hypersensitive about this 'he needs to be baby-sat' thing."

“I dunno, boss, and don’t take this too hard, but don’t be too proud, too sure, of your competence,” the caretaker said.

“I’ve seen a lot of things happen out here the past eight years, at least four and a half hundred instances where some dire catastrophe, some horrible accident, some bloody bodily injury, could’ve happened to you, but at the last split-second, the razor’s very edge, it didn’t.

“A cat with nine lives isn’t anything, compared with you.

“It’s not because of your wits, but simply because, as Swede says, you’re the luckiest son-of-a-bitch one‘s ever seen.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

About suppertime, the wife of the retired banker came out here, to collect some of the William Rivers Pitt for her gardens.  She’s a champion gardener, winner of all sorts of awards and featured in magazine layouts, and has six of them, three for vegetables and three for flowers, in addition to hedges and shrubbery.

Grumpy, the retired banker himself, who wears his polyester pants hiked all the way up to his midriff, came along, as did some young kid aged vaguely between childhood and adolescence; a grandson of theirs.

The kid had come along to do the manual labor; his grandparents are getting up in years, and it’s too difficult for them to lift the one-bushel aluminum “baskets” of the fertilizer into the bed of the truck.

While the elder male of the two shoveled the dirt into the baskets and the younger male loaded them onto the truck, the wife of the retired banker came inside the house with me, as she wanted to see how the river looks.

It’d been a fine spring day; a nice pitter-pattery of rain in the morning, clear skies and temperatures in the 70s in the afternoon…..and as of this evening, we’re bracing for the onslaught of a blizzard.

Back in the mid-1940s, when the wife of the retired banker and Grumpy had been in high school and dating, they used to come out here from town and park “and stuff” down on the river.  And then promptly at 10:00, the old woman who lived here before I did, went out to the back porch and unleashed some musketry in their direction (they were too far away for any harm to be done), the noise reminding them it was time to go home.

She has fond memories of this place.

When the two were done outside, while Grumpy sat in the truck harrumphing, the young lad came inside the house to join us. 

“Are you going to have hippies there again?” he asked me.

Then I recognized him; he’d been one of the three boys floating down the river that time the Packer clan camped here, three years ago.  Mrs. Alfred Packer, the hippywife primitive, thought they were “cute,” resembling Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer; hippyhubby Wild Bill whetted his cadaver-carvers, thinking of supper.

The three boys then floated two miles up to the highway, where they set up shop, selling directions to the freak show going on here for a dollar per gawker, and did a land-office business.  Just about every vehicle passing by on the highway stopped, and sought guidance to where they could go to see the hippies in their natural state.

There’s no road from the highway to where the hippiecamp was; drivers had to maneuver between deep ruts and ravines and ditches, but that scarcely hurt traffic, great billows of dust and dirt rising into the sky as people drove by to stare--and a few, even to snap photographs--and an enraged Wild Bill tried scaring them away, waving the enormous cadaver-carvers around.

The last straw was when a television camera-man from Sioux City circled the camp, taking moving pictures.

The county sheriff finally put a stop to it--after all, the Packer clan was camping on private property for which they’d gotten the tenant’s permission (my permission), and needn’t be discombobulated like that.

But concerned for my own sensibilities, when he looked at the stout drab grey Mrs. Alfred Packer, Warpy with her morose Hindenberg mien and body of a football tackle, the addled old pie-and-jam primitive, and the greasy slatternly slut Horse With no Name, the sheriff coerced a promise from Wild Bill that he wouldn’t have his womenfolk running around without any clothes on as did hippiechicks in days of yore.

“You’re welcome here, but we don’t put up with any crimes against good taste.”

I told the young lad that I hoped I wouldn’t have any hippies here this summer, but I probably would. 

to be continued

[ChuckJ]

If you got that, DUmmy DUmotex might show up.

He'd sit up there all summer, collecting government checks, scanning the cornfields for forest fires, and regaling you with made-up stories about his fantasy miliitary career. He stormed the Siegfried Line shoulder-to-shoulder with TomInTib.

That might not be too bad. If he happened to spot any fires frank's cousin could come and get the scoop. Think of the stories frank could tell.


By the way frank, excellent job as always thus far.

[franksolich]

By the way frank, excellent job as always thus far.

You realize I have no idea, no idea at all, where this story's going.

Anything can happen, and I have no idea what's going to happen.

Nothing's happened so far today, though, because it's pretty cold and windy right now.  We got pummeled by rain during the night, and sooner or later it's supposed to change to snow and ice.  It's quite a change from yesterday (Monday), with sunny skies after a warm morning downpour, and temperatures in the 70s.

I'd planned on taking down the winterizing stuff this morning, but when I woke up, I figured, uh, no.

The only excitement was during the middle of the night, in the bedroom.  I'd opened two of the windows in there, about 2" up (I don't have the screens on them yet).  In the bedroom, the windows are ceiling-to-floor, and also the floor's ground level, meaning the bottom of the windows extend nearly that low.

Some sort of wildlife detected the presence of the cat Jack in the bedroom, and spent much of the night trying to squeeze inside.  Which of course drove Jack nuts, as he wanted to get out so as to deal with this creature.  As it was dark and I can't hear, I have no idea what nature of wildlife it was, other than that it was about Jack's size.  Jack is an abnormally large (not fat, just large) cat.

[Dori]

Some sort of wildlife detected the presence of the cat Jack in the bedroom, and spent much of the night trying to squeeze inside.  Which of course drove Jack nuts, as he wanted to get out so as to deal with this creature.  As it was dark and I can't hear, I have no idea what nature of wildlife it was, other than that it was about Jack's size.  Jack is an abnormally large (not fat, just large) cat.

Sounds like a raccoon. Maybe she was cold and wanted to snuggle 

[ChuckJ]

You realize I have no idea, no idea at all, where this story's going.

Anything can happen, and I have no idea what's going to happen.

Nothing's happened so far today, though, because it's pretty cold and windy right now.  We got pummeled by rain during the night, and sooner or later it's supposed to change to snow and ice.  It's quite a change from yesterday (Monday), with sunny skies after a warm morning downpour, and temperatures in the 70s.

I'd planned on taking down the winterizing stuff this morning, but when I woke up, I figured, uh, no.

The only excitement was during the middle of the night, in the bedroom.  I'd opened two of the windows in there, about 2" up (I don't have the screens on them yet).  In the bedroom, the windows are ceiling-to-floor, and also the floor's ground level, meaning the bottom of the windows extend nearly that low.

Some sort of wildlife detected the presence of the cat Jack in the bedroom, and spent much of the night trying to squeeze inside.  Which of course drove Jack nuts, as he wanted to get out so as to deal with this creature.  As it was dark and I can't hear, I have no idea what nature of wildlife it was, other than that it was about Jack's size.  Jack is an abnormally large (not fat, just large) cat.

Sometimes when you don't know what's going to happen and just let the story write itself is when it's the best.

[franksolich]

Sometimes when you don't know what's going to happen and just let the story write itself is when it's the best.

That's the plan; let it write itself.

Anyway, it's an Ice Wonderland out here late this afternoon.

^^^the cat Jack, the protector against wildlife, but the arm's mine, in the hopes I'm not giving stalking primitives too much of an idea of what franksolich looks like.

[ChuckJ]

That's the plan; let it write itself.

Anyway, it's an Ice Wonderland out here late this afternoon.

^^^the cat Jack, the protector against wildlife, but the arm's mine, in the hopes I'm not giving stalking primitives too much of an idea of what franksolich looks like.

I think it was in the 80s here today.

[BlueStateSaint]

That is one BFC, Coach.  I thought Oreo was a big cat, but she's probably a size or two smaller.

[franksolich]

This place is going to be about a foot in mud and muck tomorrow (Friday).  It never got really cold, but man, there was a lot of snow, sleet, hail, and rain.  All coming down at the same time.  There’s substantial damage to trees, which confuses me because it never got really windy.  Maybe 40-50 mph, but in Nebraska, that’s just a gentle breeze and hardly discombobulates trees.

Anybody who alleges there’s no trees in Nebraska hasn’t ever had to clean up after them.

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife was carted to the hospital in the big city late last night, and by the time I knew about it, she’d been delivered of a healthy infant girl.  The neighbor and his wife have four others; two eleven-year-old twin girls, one 8-year-old boy, and one almost-4-years-old boy.  This makes five, and she’s always wanted six, but I dunno if she’s going to make it, as she’s nearly 39 years old now.

She never did put her degree and license in dental hygiene to use.

But one takes life as life comes.

- - - - - - - - - -

Earlier in the day (yesterday), I received news of the death of a good pal, a hard worker and salt of the earth who gave life more than what life gave him; the 420-pound guy who since 1972 has shoveled grain at the local elevator five and a half days a week.  He was 58 years old.  I dunno exactly what he died from, but it could’ve been one of three dozen things.

His wife, a year younger than him and about a hundred pounds lighter, used to be one of the most popular hair-dressers in all of northeastern Nebraska.  But she gave that up on January 1 of this year, because it wouldn’t be worth it, the Democrats taking too much of her money away.

He also leaves behind a son, a daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren.

I felt really badly about this, given that my last encounter with the cherubic pair had ended abruptly, almost rudely.  I sat across the table from them at a community pancake feed a couple of weeks ago, and was just getting ready to dig in when the wife pulled out one of these pill-boxes--42 compartments in this one--so that he could take his drugs before chowing down.

When she opened the box, these nostrils immediately picked up that pill odor, and I had to excuse myself, leaving uneaten a stack of eight big pancakes.  I can’t take it.

I have really bad memories of pill-boxes, those things that look as if transparent plastic fishing-tackle boxes.  In fact, when I even see a mere fishing-tackle box, which has nothing to do with pharmaceuticals, I get, uh, sort of nauseous.

Now, it’s true the guy ate like a bison, but I don’t think that’s why he was so grossly obese.  He may have taken in tons of calories, but at the same time he worked off tons of calories.

It’s always been my observation--I haven’t found an exception yet--that people on pharmaceuticals tend to pack on the pounds.  It doesn’t seem to make any difference what sort of pills they’re taking--for blood pressure, for diabetes, for blood cholesterol, for blood dilution, for arthritis, for male complaints, for female complaints, for attitude adjustment, &c., &c., &c.--they pad on those pounds.

It’s disheartening that here in one of the reddest parts of America, many people have the lazy primitive attitude that drugs can take care of the consequences of poor life-style choices; that one doesn‘t have to go through all the hard work and trouble of altering bad habits so as to avoid taking pills.

<<<not a believer in “better living through chemistry.“

Recalling my family, which was a very large but now with only one of us still surviving, every morning the past 30+ years whenever I’ve gotten up, the first thing I’ve prayed is, “oh God, if today’s to be the day, please let it be from a bullet in the side of the head, or shattered to pieces in an accident, or the sudden explosion of a blood vessel in the brain--anything but myself ending up like they did.  Please God, don‘t let it be that; anything but that.”

I loved the older brothers and sisters dearly, even though they’d evolved into bitter resentful spiteful hippies when I was still young, but I wouldn’t call their departures from this time and place exactly uplifting.

- - - - - - - - - -

And so in late afternoon today arrived a friend of mine from southwestern Nebraska.

She’s a soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a few years ago spent two summers out here with me, studying and evaluating the William Rivers Pitt.  Born and raised in Maryland, she married a veterinarian born and raised in Iowa, and they ended up in Nebraska.

Her best friend, a sorority sister, is from town, the daughter of the local dentist, which is why she’s coming.

The dentist, one of the richest men in town, and the grain-shoveler, one of the most modestly-living guys in town, were brothers. 

Such is the republican (small “r”) egalitarianism in red-state rural America, where both the great and the humble tend to be related, and treat each other as socio-economic-cultural-professional equals.

Something one doesn’t see in the sharply-stratified class system and castes of the congested blue states.

- - - - - - - - - -

I updated her on my plans for building an observatory atop the William Rivers Pitt, and she said it won’t work.

“To you, it looks like plain old dirt, but really, it’s different,  The texture, the composition, the properties, are wholly different from dirt.  Anything that’s built on it, no matter how light, is going to sink.”

Well, she would know.

“I’m surprised [the property caretaker] didn’t mention it, that it can’t support something like that,” she added.

In his defense, I pointed out that he would’ve figured it out before he got started, and so wouldn’t have gone ahead with it; it’s just that he’s never in his life been asked to built something on top of a pile of pig shit, and so hadn’t gotten around yet to thinking of it.

to be continued

[franksolich]

Beginning late Friday afternoon, because the mud and mire was drying, the property caretaker came over to deal with the underground dirt-cellars the wife of the owner of this place wanted filled in, as she thinks they’re a hazard.

The neighbor had been hired to help, but given the recent arrival of an infant daughter, he was busy elsewhere, and so two friends of the caretaker came long, to operate two small earth-moving vehicles.  They’re all about the same age, veterans of the war in Vietnam, and they drink like fishes.

They knew where the holes were, from the maps of this place made by the prairie archaeologist three summers ago, and it was an easy matter to scoop and smash in.  Probably something less than an hour, but that long because the caretaker’s a perfectionist.

I wonder how much wildlife perished in the cavings-in, but on the other hand, if one chooses to live in a hole, one has to accept the consequences of living in a hole.

"Well, boss," the caretaker announced, "temptation moved out of your way, and the rest of us are going to sleep easier at night," referring of course to the preposterous notion that I have a habit of venturing into places best not ventured into.

Leaving the miniature bulldozers outdoors overnight, they came out again in the morning and started moving downed trees around.

I have to repeat it, because there’s obviously a perceptual problem about Nebraska, on the part of non-Nebraskans.  Anybody who says, “oh, there’s no trees in Nebraska,” hasn’t ever had to clean up after them.

In years past, the downed trees were simply dragged to the center of one of the pastures, and the caretaker, myself, and anybody else who happened to be around, cut, arranged, and bundled the wood.  The caretaker sells the bundles of wood at convenience stores and gasoline stations for $5 a bundle.

But this time around, the three older guys picked-and-chose, which mystified me.

I was told there were just too many downed trees, and so they were selecting only the best ones for cutting, bundling, and selling, and discarding the rest (about two-thirds of it all).

Now, to me, wood is wood is wood.  If I really pay attention to small details, which I usually don’t, I can differentiate between “hard” wood and “soft” wood, but that’s it.  It’s just not a big deal to me.  Wood is wood.

I got alarmed however when they dragged the junk wood over to the property adjacent.  On that property, alongside the river, there’s a really big area devoid of brush and wholly of sand, and the caretaker said that sooner or later they’d get around to burning it.  Anywhere on this property, it’d be too close to flammable flora.

I protested that the property belongs to Italianate interests in New Jersey, and they might not care for it, but the caretaker said not to worry about it.

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Do I give the impression of being too nice of a guy?” I asked the caretaker when he was here this morning.

He wasn’t out here to do anything--it’s Sunday, after all--but rather, to hunt turkeys.  There were four or five other guys with him, but they congregated on the back porch.

“Boss, you’re too nice for your own good,” he said; “in fact, it’s a sheer miracle you haven’t yet left this Mortal Coil due to some sort of mishap that happens to people too nice for their own good.”

He was “clicking” something on his firearm, but continued, “You gotta stop being that way, boss.  You’re going to get into trouble some day, always being so nice.”

“Well, I don’t know any other way to be,” I replied, “but at any rate, nobody’s ever written a bad check to me, nobody’s ever failed to repay a loan I made them.

“And you have to admit some of these people had negative credit-ratings, couldn’t rub two dimes together.”

“You could be cheated in other ways, boss,” he answered, referring to my abrupt discovery last year that the femme drinks, before which time I’d had absolutely no idea.

“Oh, but that’s nonsense,” I countered; “she’s always been free to do what she pleases, without any criticism on my part.  All I cared about in it was that she wouldn’t expect that I do it too.”

“But she did it behind your back, with all your friends, boss; that’s a form of deceit.”

Well, whatever, I said.

“And I suppose you can even be cheated by trusting some people too much,” the caretaker went on.

“Like the time those damned hippies were up here from Oklahoma three years ago, camping over there.

“Everybody else was leery, real leery of them, and we were actually worried for your life when one of us wasn’t around.

“The hippyhubby guy, Wild Bill with the ponytail, kept looking at you with a certain gleam in his eyes while he sat there sharpening those big knives of his.  And the hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer in her greasy muu-muu kept sizing you up for bedroom fodder.

“Everybody else saw it but you; and here, you were treating them like Lord Curzon and the Duchess of Cambridge, not seeing that at all.

“You’re so nice of a guy it scares the rest of us, boss.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Whoa, boss, I see you pulled out your whole arsenal,” the property caretaker said this morning, looking at the two police-grade batons and the taser masquerading as a cellular telephone laying on the table in the dining room.

“Expecting an unwanted visitor?”

It’s downpouring this morning, and both of us were very wet from having been outdoors.

I just thought it was a good idea to have them handy, I said; “there was someone here last night.

“It was in the middle of the night, and the cats suddenly rushed into the bedroom, scrambling all over, waking me to alert me that something was up.

“There was a figure outside one of the bedroom windows, looking in.

“Of course, it was dark, impermeably dark, and I couldn’t catch much, if anything at all.

“Just a figure whose forehead was pressed against the window, trying to look in; he couldn’t see anything himself, because the bedroom was dark, and there’s that plastic I haven’t yet taken down, that makes looking inside--or outside--blurry and indistinct.

“Or perhaps it was just my imagination, and the cats were all agog an excited about something else..

“At any rate, thanks to you and everybody else for making me paranoid.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, boss, you do have to be careful.  I’ve never seen anybody so reckless about his personal safety.  You can’t hear, you’re out here all alone, and not aware someone’s around because you don’t pick up the noises they make, but you could use your eyes more--”

Nonsense, I interrupted.  “I was sleeping.  My eyes were shut.  One can’t sleep with the eyes open.

“Life used to be a whole lot easier, until everybody suddenly got paranoid for me, and I caught it.

“I’ve lived as long as I have, and am generally still whole and complete, which suggests to me that the perils and hazards everybody else sees don’t really exist.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“We were talking about this the other week, down at the bar,” the caretaker illuminated me, “when Swede mentioned it was ‘overkill,’ everybody giving you those self-defense things for Christmas.  He insisted you don’t need them, will never have to use them, and so people should’ve given you shirts and books and toys for Christmas, rather than these things, and those cans of intruder-repellant that you got.

“Swede said, again, you’re the luckiest son-of-a-bitch he’s ever seen in his life.

“’If Genghis Khan and his hordes suddenly rode in on horseback to the front yard out there, just before they reached the front porch, a great chasm would open up in the ground in front of them, swallowing them, he’s that lucky.’

“’He doesn’t have to do a damned thing; luck just naturally happens to him.’

“Those perils and hazards are out there, boss; you’re just lucky.”

- - - - - - - - - -

The caretaker went outside to examine the ground underneath the window I’d indicated through which the night-time visitor had looked.

The caretaker, even though shriveled and bent by age, bald, and with a bug-eye, is an extraordinary tracker.  Hunters from outside this area assume he’s at least partially of Native American derivation, he’s so sharp, but that’s not the case.

He’s a descendant of the Swiss who first settled this area circa 1875--one of the very few enclaves of Alpine emigrants in America (not many Swiss came to this country; and hence many around here have the softer-sounding Germanic last names, rather than the harsh Teutonic names from further north)--and his ancestors for more than a thousand years, back in the Old Country, had made a living tracking in the shifting blindingly-white snow of the mountains.

Even if something was buried by six feet of newly-fallen snow, they could find it.

After examining the mud on the ground underneath the window outdoors, he came back into the house announcing, “Well, boss, it wasn’t a figment of your imagination.  It was real. 

“The tracks have been washed away by the rain, but it appears to be some guy about 250 pounds, who’d be too much for you to handle, given your, uh, frail and sickly condition.  Keep the cats inside at night so as to be an early-warning alarm, and your arsenal at your bed-side, not out here in the dining room.

“I’ll ask in town if anybody’s seen an old overweight hippie hanging around lately,” he said, showing me two strands of long grey hair he’d found in the mud and water.

“Thanks for making me paranoid,” I said.

to be continued

[Karin]

I'm sorry to hear about the Grain Shoveler.  He's been featured in your writings for years now.  RIP. 

[franksolich]

“Well, boss, nobody’s sure if there’s been an old overweight hippie around lately, because there’s been so many strangers passing through here people don’t pay attention any more,” the property caretaker informed me this morning.

“They’re all from the rust-belt blue states, and all headed west, to Oregon,” he added.

“Just like the Okies of old, going off to the promised land.”

I asked if there was anything new in town; given my state, I haven’t been there but for a few minutes at time, a few times, since the afternoon of Christmas.  I’m obviously at the terminal end of mononucleosis, but it’s still a drag.

“Swede was all upset and bent out of shape last night,” the caretaker illuminated me.

“When collecting the cash-register receipts, he found a counterfeit $10 bill, the first bad bill the bar’s known to have ever taken.

“None of the waitresses could remember who passed it.

“Of course he has to turn it in to the state patrol, but he made some photocopies of it, to pass around to other businesses, to alert them that there’s funny money floating around.”

Hmmmm, I said; I supposed I would go to town to see what it looked like.

Professional interest; I've collected currency since I was a little lad.

“No need to do that, boss; Swede printed off a hundred copies of it and passed them around to customers, too.  I got mine here, because the back side’s blank, handy for keeping notes.”

The caretaker does that; he uses the other side of old paper to write notes to himself about where he’s supposed to go, and what he’s supposed to do.  The county covers a lot of territory, and he caretakes all over the county.  By writing notes to himself, he saves a great deal of time and travel.

I looked at the photocopy.

“Oh Hell,” I said; “it’s easier than strawberries-and-cream, who passed this bill.

“Counterfeiters, when making fake bills, borrow from a brand-new bill, rather than a used one.  It’s probable whoever passed the fake bill derived it from a crisp new bill, just gotten from the bank.

“Now, normally, currency once put into circulation, travels fast and travels wide.

“The original bill was apparently a new bill, freshly minted, and so it didn’t have hardly any time to get around.

“This bill’s--or rather, the original bill’s--from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, Texas, issued through its subsidiary bank in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

“All anybody has to do is not take $10 bills from outsiders whose cars have Oklahoma license-plates.” 

to be continued

[franksolich]

This afternoon, I was out in a pasture, collecting and bundling cut-and-split wood, loading the bundles into a trailer made of the bed of an old pick-up truck.  The property caretaker and his friends deliver loads of these to convenience stores and gasoline stations all over northeastern Nebraska, where they’re sold for $5 a bundle.

It’s not any business enterprise in which I’m involved, but I do what I do anyway because all these people do me favors, too.  It’s gotten to where I’m the only one who collects and bundles, but the others have already done the hard work, the work demanding talent and skill, and so it’s all good.

Besides, there’s much to be said for arduous manual labor, working oneself to the point of exhaustion.

The activity purges out bad feelings, bad attitudes, and worry and stress, besides keeping the fat off, keeping the body in reasonably good condition.  I can still fit inside clothes I wore in high school--if I still had them--and that’s not only because of a diet that avoids grease, sugar, and calories.

- - - - - - - - - -

In late afternoon, when I was almost done, the nephew who lives in Denver drove up.

As usual, he’d been visiting friends in Omaha, and was on his way back to Denver.  Omaha-to-Denver is generally a downward-sloping line going west, but this isn’t really much of a detour, more like an arc going west, from Omaha to up here and then down there to Denver.

I have six nephews, three of them married with children.  I once had two nieces too, but one died as an infant in an automobile accident, and the other died at the age of 30 years because she expected doctors and drugs to do all the work while she herself didn’t have to do a thing.  It was very sad, but her parents had been hippies, and so naturally she had their attitude too.

They’re scattered all over the central United States, and this one from Denver is the one I see most often, even though he’s my least favorite.  He’s always so down, so negative, so pessimistic, so sour, so angry, so bitter, so resentful, so primitive, about people and things.

Like Atman, he’d been his mother’s favorite child and ostensibly at a young age betrayed talents in the artistic direction.  His mother, an old hippie, had persuaded him that he had to be an “angry young artist,” bitter and resentful and raging against the injustices of the world.

But unlike Atman, he really had no artistic talents, and again unlike Atman, he really had no motivation, and so now in his late 30s, he’s working at a natural food store in Denver, where he sits around with other malcontents and hippie wannabes and Democrats, grousing and railing against all that is decent and civilized.

- - - - - - - - - -

They’re the only “family” I have left, these six nephews (and those with wives, their wives) and to tell the truth, we’re not close; we never have been.  But to all of our credit, we’re at least formally and distantly cordial, which is not the worst possible association to have.

The older brothers and sisters were much older than my younger brother and myself; when we were small, they were already teenagers resentful of the babysitting burden we placed upon them, as the parents were too busy running small-town hospitals.

The oldest nephew is only a few years younger than me, and all of them are close enough to my own age that they’ve always seen me merely as an equal, a peer, of some sort, and not as I am, an august adult uncle worthy of at least some awe and respect.

When they were growing up, I was pretty much out of their lives, attending college and somesuch, the only evidence of my existence being the occasional birthday card (and I did miss more birthdays than I noted), an odd present, and postcards from faraway places.  After my parents died, I spent holidays with my grandmother in Pennsylvania, not with the siblings and their families in Nebraska and adjoining states.

I was however a frequent topic of their parents’ discussions, and the nephews absorbed that, too, coloring their perception of me.

Well, that’s all in the past, and here we are now, in the present.

- - - - - - - - - -

This nephew lives with a woman a few years older than himself, a once-married registered nurse.  I’ve never met her, but for years have been given to understand by those who have, that she’s a moonbat sans peer, a really flaky she-woman who’s not exactly stable.

For the past three or four years, he’s been trying to break off the association, but there’s a problem.

He doesn’t make much money, while she makes truckloads of it.  And he rather likes having his own stuff, including a stable of expensive bicycles and cycling trips to exotic places.  He can’t afford these things himself; she buys them for him.  And lots of little things too; she’d financed his trip to visit friends in Omaha, for example.

This, I’ve heard from other people.

However, on this trip, he for the first time expressed to his august adult uncle who knows a thing or two, that he was greatly unhappy in the association, and wished to be free of it.

Of course, it’s always easy to break off relations if one doesn’t owe the other person anything--and so the “trick” is to never owe anybody, period, anything--but I didn’t mention that, figuring it would be good for him to keep stewing for a while yet.

to be continued

[GOBUCKS]

Good story, coach, with just one glaring error:

But unlike Atman, he really had no artistic talents

The guy who created the "Piss Christ" has more artistic talent than Atman.