Month: June 2021

After spending four weeks of travel to and from Wisconsin (three of them at my #3 daughter’s home), I arrived home to a yellow lawn because it had been rained on only once during my absence.  When I’m gone from home I shut off the water at the main valve.  Strange things can happen in my absence, and I have no wish to come home to a flooded basement.  With the water turned off, I could not ask anyone to water the yard while I was in Wisconsin.  And, so, even though there was a little (very little) rain during that time, the effect on the lawn was pretty devastating.

For years and years, I drove a 1997 Suburban.  Three seats.  Plenty of room to carry art equipment and materials to New Mexico.  Enough room to carry my family in one car to a destination.  Then came the time to trade the Suburban for another vehicle.

I’ve said before that my friends are a treasure of gold to me.  When it was time to get another car, Keith (HM) started looking for a new car.  He really knows where to look.  I made a list of what I wanted in the new car.  It included three seats, plenty of cargo space, four-wheel drive, working air conditioning, radio, CD player, adjustable seats.  “You don’t need three seats, any more,” he said.  He was right.  So, I adjusted the list to two seats, etc.

Years ago – and, I do mean YEARS AGO – Larry, Lee, and I went elk hunting every autumn.  Years before that, Larry and Lee would go, and I would buy something expensive “to get even.”  Even for what?  I don’t know, but I guess that I must have felt put-upon for some reason.  Then, after we started camping and motorcycle riding, I decided I’d join them for hunting.

Lee and Larry set up the camp (tent, porta-potty, etc.).  Larry and Lee made a shepherder’s stove.  It was a barrel with a stove pipe that went through the roof of the tent.  They welded a grate to separate the wood fire from the ashes.  It kept the tent toasty warm.  I cooked.  They did the dishes.

When I was forty years old, I decided that everything I had learned in the last fifteen or so years was academically oriented.  BA degree.  Master’s degree, with an intent to work on a doctorate.  So, I thought I would learn something non-academic.  Like horseback riding.  Or motorcycle riding.  It didn’t take too long to rule out horseback riding.  I could not keep a horse in my back yard.  A horse takes food every day.  And, clean up.  And, to ride a horse, one must have a saddle, and the horses head gear to direct it in the path you want to take.

A motorcycle,  on the other hand, is self contained.  It can sit in the garage, and eats only gasoline and a little oil, occasionally.  Of course, a helmet is advised.  The decision came in overwhelmingly for learning to ride a motorcycle.  The next thing was to beg someone to teach me.  A friend, Lee, had motorcycles, and he agreed to teach me to ride.

You may remember that I’ve described my neighborhood in glowing terms.  People help people.  It has a relatively quiet nature.  Albeit, one of our houses was used to cook meth, but that was taken care of by our local police, and after the house was gutted and cleaned, another family lives comfortably in the house.

Within the past six months, another of the houses has changed ownership.  The house is to my immediate east.  It is a corner house and faces the corner in a somewhat catewampus fashion.  Faces neither one of the streets nor the other.  Just faces the place where both streets meet.