Softball Hardtime

In the early 1980’s, I had the opportunity to play softball with some of my co-workers, if only for one game however, a game for which they had failed to recruit enough of their regular players. The game took place at an exclusive ball field where the opposing team always had the home team advantage: The Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Ky. They were rumored to be undefeated.

We assembled our group of fresh fish at one of the razor wire entry gates leading to the ballfield located within the confines of the “Castle on the Cumberland”. We passed through this gate as it closed up behind us. A second gate would find us walking down the first base line toward home plate. Freedom was a long way off from here.

A few minutes later, a massive steel door along a tall stone wall screeched open and the inmates began to trickle out and gather in small groups around the field. A half dozen sunbaked, wild eyed ball slingers took the infield and began to warm up. Slow pitch softball has nothing to do with base to base hurling. The inmates were putting on a show, a very high speed show.

Other inmates talked with us as we waited for the game to start.

“You see dat infield, boy?” One of them asked. “If yo ball don’t get out dat infield, you out! Don’t you worry ‘bout fust base. You ain’t gone make it.”

“An all dem boys is murderers.” He pointed to the infield. “Dat home plate umpire…he a murderer, too.”

I could see why some of our regular players were unavailable.

Anyway, win or lose, playing the game was now the only way out of here.

“Batter up!”

Our first at bat was uneventful, other than confirming the captive Prophets’ predictions. “What I tell you, boy?” Laughing as he called the play-by-play from behind the dugout.

Our fielding wasn’t much better, giving up several runs before the inning was over.

Tommy, one of our better players, stepped into the batter’s box with all of the confidence of a big hitter, having, on occasion, pointed to an out-of-park location in a prophecy of his own making. 

He dispatched the second pitch high over the right field fence, bouncing off the roof of one of the perimeter buildings.

“Double!” The empire bellowed.

One of the little known rules of this particular field was that any hit striking the roof of the building beyond right field was counted as a double.

Tommy was dismayed but stopped at second base. He later dropped one over the fence to left field for a home run.

Probably the smallest, yet best all-around athletes on our team was a fellow nicknamed “Wiener”, who somehow managed to advance to third and was threatening to steal home. A fly ball gave him the green light as he dove across the plate, taking out the legs of the catcher who was none too happy about it. The Umpire stepped up to discourage any discussion that the catcher might have as Weiner trotted to the dugout. He was pronounced “out” but I think he was proud just the same.

One of our guys had worn a pair of loud, plaid “Bermuda” shorts; not a good choice, we thought, considering where we were. Somebody called him by name but what the inmates heard was a little bit different.

“Lisa! Lisa!” They heckled. He must have felt like the day would never end.

But eventually, the game came to a close, having let the inmates eek out a win of about 20 something to three. They were really good sports about it though and invited us back anytime, as they really had nothing better to do.

We knew that.

Slowly the inmates made their way back up to the big steel door where, when the last man passed through, the door slammed shut, echoing off the nearby hill. It was an imposing sound followed by an eerie silence. 

We just couldn’t get through those gates quick enough. We lost the game but having come away from there, we felt like winners.

Dead End Street

Trying to pinpoint a year in my life is like locating your upper floor hotel room from the parking lot. And if by chance, I should be on the wrong side of the building, I hope someone lets me know.

Somewhere in the early to mid-nineteen sixties, I lived near the end of North College Street in Marion, at number 502.  College Street was a no outlet street, terminating at creek’s edge, three houses down. In those days, a “no outlet” street was unheard of, as they were commonly called Dead End streets. Ours had a big white wooden sign with black letters spelling, “DEAD END”, right there at the end of the pavement, so that there would be no doubt, exactly where you were. An eight or nine year old might read into this, “BEYOND HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS”, and in our minds, there probably were.

The last house on our side of the street was home to Johnny. He was almost a full year older than me. Plus or minus a year usually makes a big difference when you’re a kid, but if it did, I didn’t notice it at the time. He was already building plastic models; one in particular was an Army tank of some sort with several machine guns mounted on top. I really thought this was cool.

The sidewalk in front of Johnny’s house ended like the street: abruptly, dropping off into the corner of the yard before leveling off in their driveway. This was the perfect launching site for many a red wagon juggernaut and later, a ramp for our bicycles.

I remember once seeing a multicolored string lying on the ground after our wagon made a pass. I went back to pick it up but it decided to slither across the yard.  After much commotion, Johnny’s Dad, a tall thin man, came out and dispatched the snake with a hoe. We were always on the lookout after that. Snakes were probably common around the creek side, but us being the terrors of the neighborhood, they were probably more afraid of us than we were of them, so we didn’t see very many.

There was a street light situated right over the dead end sign, drawing night bugs and of course, bats. On summer nights, when we were allowed to play outside after dark, we would throw small rocks up in the air and watch the bats chase them. This was also the place to hone ones skills with a slingshot, culminating in lots of pock marks in the sign from BBs and small stones.

If you gathered two or three boys together, chances are, one of them had firecrackers in his pocket and they were crying out to be lit. We blew up everything: toy soldiers, stick huts, crawdad holes, you name it, and when we ran out of things on the ground, we looked to the skies.

With some regularity, the “Air Force” as we called them, passed overhead in C-119, Flying Boxcars. We knew they were Air Force, because they were the ones with the airplanes, right?

Anyway, we would find an old pipe, or in one occasion, an old Pogo stick with the handle gone, and stick it in the ground, lined up with the flight path of the oncoming planes. We placed a firecracker in the top end of the tube and hooked the fuse over the edge. Once the fuse was lit, and the hook burned away, it fell down the pipe and went off. The U.S. would boast the world’s largest Air Force, but when I was a kid, we shot a whole lot of them down.

We learned a lot about science, you know, why things do what they do. We discovered that, if your firecracker failed to go off, all was not lost. We broke the firecracker in half, and lit the exposed powder. This would provide a show of sparks and if you still wanted to get the bang, you stomped it while it was spewing. This was hard on my old tennis shoes.

We knew that Mom’s Strike-Anywhere kitchen stick matches fit nicely in the end of our BB guns and when fired at the sidewalk, would pop and ignite into flames.

Caps were a great invention. They were not only a fun supplement for your cap gun; they were also a singular source of amusement in themselves. These could be set off, one at a time, or even a whole roll under the impact of a good claw hammer. This was amazingly loud for a roll of caps.

We played Army a lot, hiding in the weeds or bushes along the creek, ready to shoot or be shot, and then argue as to who shot who first. We were into camouflage long before it was a fashion statement, with weeds sticking out of our plastic helmets and sometimes our clothes. I think we could have had as much fun with simply a game of hide-and-seek, as the hideout was the biggest part of it all. But, we were too big for that, we thought, so our toy guns and garb made all the difference.

But, life was not all about pyrotechnics and such.

There were also baseball cards. It was a proud display to have your cards lined up on the sidewalk, set up your “Dream Team”, or trade for someone else’s. Names were everything. Names like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle or Yogi Berra just sounded like great players, even if they hadn’t been. So many future valuable cards were lost in the spokes of our bicycles, not to mention, many of Mom’s clothes pins.

The Ben Franklin store, on Main Street, offered a kid everything he needed to survive in the world. They carried all of the fodder needed to cultivate the imagination. The people who worked there knew this, as they watched kids very closely.

There, I was introduced to the world of wind-up balsa airplanes, making a dead end street a fine runway for our rubber band squadron. The flights were short and often ended disastrously, but every once in a while, one unlikely take-off would catch the breeze and soar on a seemingly endless flight, only to turn and make a perfect landing right in front of me.

I still live for those moments.

23b: Cruising the Town

The 23b repair sled was on-call for the evening but the boss seemed to be having a good night and it looked like we were not going to have to work. For a delivery guy who only works one night out of the year, he has a pretty good record of satisfied customers.

Anyway, it was a quiet but cold Christmas Eve here in Princeton, so I thought I would take the team out for a spin around town. I laid down the better half of my leftover burrito, harnessed the team and popped the whip just over their antlers. They turned and looked back at me as if to say, "Are you crazy??"

"Uh...fellows...?" I said, as the sled suddenly lurched forward.

We zipped out across the yard and banked up to the left, clearing a split rail fence and clipping the top of the neighbors hackberry tree before leveling off at a couple hundred feet above an asthmatic barking dog on Cadiz Street. I could see the Christmas lights around the court house as we cruised out along North Jefferson.

As we approached the city limits, the team suddenly dipped and made a hard left. I realized that we were lining up on the East bound lanes of I-69, specifically, the overpass under Providence Rd. I pulled the reins hard as the steel and concrete whizzed just over head. We just squeaked by an oncoming eighteen-wheeler and buzzed the top of a family in a white SUV with fuzzy antlers on the luggage racks.

It was close...I counted 8 points.

We made the turn back towards town and stopped next to Wal-mart where I went in and bought some donuts and a couple of banana moon pies for Rude and Nasty and we were off again, just missing the power lines along the highway.

Passing just south of Main Street on the way home, I could see a white SUV at the Police Dept. with a mess on it's roof. I guess I know where the other half of my burrito went.

He's not called Nasty for nothing.

I was a Robot

It was in the fall of 1963, when I was nine years old, that I began to prepare for that ultimate costume celebration.  At that time, robots were big. All a fellow needed was a couple of big boxes, some silver paint, lots of duct tape, and after a few craftily made cuts with one of Mom’s steak knives, it was “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!”

I was a skinny kid and, of course, there were no skinny legged robots, so I decided that I would beef up my appearance with those round tube boxes from the Quaker Oats company. I really felt brilliant as they were just about the right size to fit inside my pants legs with one at the thigh and another at the shin with a space in between for my knees. I finished it off with a torso wrap of cardboard and duct tape and a box for a head.

Man, I was ready.

I grabbed an appropriate sized pillow case and set out to plunder the neighborhood in the quest for the treasure more precious than gold: Trick-or-treat candy.

As the evening progressed, and the pillow case filled up, gravity began to tug at the oatmeal boxes and it wasn’t long before the space designated for knees was no more. So, while I could still sort-of walk and drag my loot, we decided to finish up at a couple of high porch houses along the home stretch.

I managed the stairs and collected a popcorn ball, and dropped it into the sack amongst caramel apples, Milk Duds, Sugar Daddies, a black banana, 47 different chocolate bars, eighteen and a half pounds of everything else and 38 cents in nickels and pennies from people who just wanted the varmints off of their porch. I turned and reached out for a non-existent hand rail and found myself in free fall without a chute.

I crashed through the prickly top of an evergreen shrub and rolled out into the yard, a broken robot. I limped home dragging the bottom out of the bag and leaving a trail of hard candy and licorice.

 The rest of the night would find me sorting and eating the inventory and feeding the piggy bank.

A Taunting

I remember a really good story teller from my younger days who could make my hair stand up with her ghost stories and tall tales. She was mother to a friend of mine when we were guitar players dreaming of fame.

One night when she was walking home after visiting a nearby nieghbor, we dicided to hide in a late summer garden alongside the road, to see if we could rattle the great rattler.

As she walked by, we tossed corn cobbs into the road and made noises, which she ignored at first. After a couple more attempts to get a rise from her, she stopped, turned to face the garden, and took one step forward, pulling a 10-inch butcher knife from her purse.

"C'mon out, ye sons-o-bitches!" she scowled. "I'll cut yer guts out!"

We came out...the other side of the garden...running.

Careful who you mess with.

Sprung

Back around July of 1971, my older brother and I went to the Marion Jail to visit a friend of his who was, at that time, a guest of the County. The old jailhouse, having been built in 1901, was a bleak environment of stone and iron bars and in every respect, a bad place to be.

It was the heat of the summer that found us standing beside an open second floor window where a slight breeze might be felt coming through the bars. The window sash had been cocked to stay up because the sash wieghts no longer held the window.

At some point I leaned on the window sill which displaced four or five molecules of the window frame, just enough to send the sash crashing down in a shower of flying glass.

The Jailor and his Deputy came running up the stairs in typical SWAT team fashion, to get to the bottom of what he might have thought was a failed jail break. We explained the situation which seemed to suffice but the less than amused Jailor proclaimed that our visit was officially over.

That's right.

We were kicked out of jail.

The Beast

This was as far as I was going to go. I knew this moment would come, and that the outcome was inevitable, so it would be here, that I would be forced to make a stand.
From the deepest part of the woods, it had come. Every other creature that roams the night had fallen silent, even the dogs were strangely quiet, perhaps knowing that this was way out of their league.
It gave a low, rumbling growl, the kind you felt as well as heard. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt a numbing cold and became acutely aware of every other small noise in the house. A great breathe exhaled outside as the weight of something large pressed heavily on the wall and the door.
My eyes were drawn to the top of the door where the panels were beginning to bulge and crack. The sound of enormous claws raked the woodwork as it quickly became enraged. I knew that the old door would not stop it and I braced.
Suddenly the door panels gave way as I reached for my last line of defense, holding it out in front of me, my thumb quickly pressed down. For a moment the room went dark and then…
“And now, your Local on the 8s. The temperature for your area is 62 degrees under partly cloudy skies…”

Just a Pair of Pliers

Manufacturing today is all about “team” with sometimes little regard to what is practical, logical or simply the right thing to do.

Over the years, I have made several trips to a particular out of state factory to assist with mechanical problems of one kind or another. On one such occasion, having finished with the designated business at hand, I mingled around the production work areas exchanging ideas and discussing procedures.
It was then that I noticed the operators were using the same pliers as was used in our processes, but with one small difference. I had modified our pliers to make them spring return after closing, a convenient feature not available in this particular type of pliers at that time.
I mentioned this to one of the operators, who thought this might be helpful and less fatiguing in the long run. She produced an extra pair which I carried to the maintenance shop and proceeded to install the spring feature.
The maintenance people I had been working with, had retired to their perches in the shop, leaned back with feet up on the work bench, awaiting the next reactive call. Blatant, I thought, but still, none of my business.
Anyway, it was a simple task. I drilled a small hole through one handle near the hinge and halfway through the other. I inserted a small compression spring through the hole and drove a spring pin in behind it. In ten minutes I was done.
The operator liked the pliers and two other operators requested the modification. I added the spring to these and later, at the hotel, drew up instructions for the maintenance guys to follow-up with pliers on the other shifts.
Months later, on a return visit for a different mechanical problem, the operators informed me that the maintenance people had opted out of making the pliers modification. Fine, I thought, however, I was completely perplexed when they told me of their reasoning.
It seems they had formed a team of people to evaluate the conversion. They had produced parts estimates, man-hour estimates, with full color displays on charts and graphs, all meticulously prepared to convince themselves that this modification was a total waste of time and resources, unlike, of course, the time spent fabricating the detailed report itself.
Furthermore, they believed they could purchase the pliers, with this feature, cheaper than they could make the change.
Remember, this is just a pair of pliers, but of the type that wasn’t going to be found on the market with spring return, and they knew that. We had already looked and I had told them. But the issue, as far as they were concerned, was closed.
The team had spoken.
Unbound by this impediment, I reworked several more pairs of pliers before I headed for home, knowing that this team directed workforce was destined to litigate itself to a standstill.
The factory later closed for unrelated reasons.

Adventure in E.R.

Yesterday, while working on some kind of crap from the production area in the maintenance shop, I ran into a little problem. I had just put a purely professional weld on something and was moving around the end of the table when my hand snagged on something.
You know all those little weld wires that tend to accumulate on the table from every body's little "habitual pre-test" before welding? Looks like a porcupine from hell, right?
Well, I found one. At first I figured that I just had another cut. Cuts help form calluses. My hands look like feet. So big deal, another cut.
Not this time. Sticking out of my right hand little finger was about 1/8 inch of MIG wire. "Hmmn," I thought. "This is different".
I walked back to my wood carry-around box in the production area and fished out my needle nose pliers to perform an extraction. Wouldn't budge. Then I noticed that there was a little protrusion on the opposite side of the finger, almost through the skin. Entry was just below the second knuckle on the palm side and would have come out between first and second knuckle had it passed through. I felt like ignoring this would be inconvenient at times as it would snag on most everything and generate an instant and appropriate audio response.
So, it was 1pm and I decided to take the afternoon off and visit the local hospital. After some expected show-and-tell amongst my constituents, the plant manager took me to the E.R.
I got checked in and placed in a small room with more than enough provisions to explore body cavities, deliver babies, and put eyes back in their sockets. I hoped they would stick to this one little finger.
They sent me to get a few 8 X 10 black and white glossy pictures on their gamma burst machine, interesting, but really couldn't see the pictures very well from across the hall where it looked like a railroad spike through a stick of bologna on their screen.
Went back to the little room with all of its torture devices and the babies screaming down the hall, where they told me that there was no barb on the wire and that it had not hit any bone.
The nurse came in and washed my hand and commented, "Is this as clean as you hands get?" My lips were fighting to contain a colorful metaphor, but I wanted a sucker, so I kept quiet. I’m a mechanic, I thought, not a pastry chef.
The Nurse Practocator came back in and presented me with the options. We could take the feeling out of it, (which really wasn't an issue as long as they left it the hell alone) by injecting it full of Don't-know-don't-care, which upon entry would feel like having your digit ripped off by hungry piranha... or she could just take her pliers and jerk it out. I had tried that but I figured that this was a "maybe" on the pain scale where the other was sure to peg the needle.
"Well, just pull it out," I said, "And I apologize now for what I may say in the next few minutes."
She left the room to get her toys...and back-up.
These two ladies took my hand and laid it out on the delivery table, latched on a small pair of hemostats to the wire just under the small weld stubble and before she could say...or think...
She popped out an inch long piece of straight weld wire.
"I want that", I said. "That's my souvenir". They thought this was funny but I had not thought to get a picture on some one's cell phone, so this, I thought was the best I could do. The Proctocator then offered the small hemostats along with 2 more pliers, a nice pair of tweezers, and a small specimen bottle with my wire sample inside.
I took 'em.
They said that's it and I prepared to leave. I asked for a telephone to call the plant to come back and get me...
That's where I goofed up.
"Oh wait, we have one more test for you". Again I struggle to keep the automated response system from kicking in.
I had not studied for the urine test but felt I had a good chance of passing it. They don't tell you your score, it's simply a pass or fail thing.
When they finally let me go, I made the phone call and sat outside in the much warmer 45 degree breeze and waited for deliverance. It was nearly 5 pm.
I have worked 38 years without a lost time accident. Oh well...
And you know, this was the second accident I'd had that day.
Oh yeah, I'll be back...

Moonlighting on the 23b

I am off work now from my regular day job till after Christmas, so my friends think I will be kicked back taking it easy. The semi-truth of it is that I will be on call Christmas Eve and the early part of Christmas day. I know several fellows around the area who do the same, working for a certain manufacturing company, specializing in seasonal overnight deliveries. This is “off the record” work, so most of the other guys try keeping it hush-hush.
While I am a small subcontractor for the company, filling a few overflow orders in my workshop, my main function for the 24th and 25th will be any late night service calls for the primary delivery system.
Kris, owner of the company and its principle driver, is for the most part, pretty self-sufficient. However, there have been a few times in the past when the equipment just breaks down and that’s when we get called.
I’ve been getting my tools ready and a few spare parts loaded up in the 23b service vehicle, mostly team harnesses and replacement runners.
We use the second and third string reindeer for the service sleighs, and this year I again drew Rude and Nasty for the 23b. Distant relatives to a few on the main delivery team, these two, unfortunately, live up to their names. Among other little tricks, they like to step on my toes while I adjust their harnesses. That little huffing sound that reindeer make is their way of not laughing out loud. Lucky for me, I need only two of these jokers for the service sleigh.
I got a call last year, not far from Adsmore when Kris snagged some power lines and hit a small TV dish, badly bending one of his sleigh runners. The runner was a quick fix but it took me some time to straighten the dish. The boss insisted that I leave no trace of damage, work in the dark and make absolutely no noise. This was not easy with Rude trying to push me off the roof and Nasty dropping my tools down the chimney.
“Now, look here, Kringle…” I started to say, but was interrupted by a half dozen picketing members of the E.L.F Union Local #1 who were still unhappy about me making toys in my shop, as the 23b began to slip off the roof right above somebody’s new car.
I quickly pulled Rude and Nasty back from the edge just as the boss cleared the treetops with his usual “HO-HO-HO!” He always has a positive outlook while doing an impossible job.
Well, I’d had enough reindeer games for one night so I picked up a grape soda at the Ideal Store, with a couple of moon pies for Rude and Nasty, circled the courthouse once and headed for home. Aside from a near miss with a flight of geese over Cadiz Street and running over my mailbox, spilling my soda, it was an otherwise ordinary night.
Anyway, I am in hopes that this year is a little better as I hear some of the B team reindeer have undergone behavioral therapy, the E.L.F. members were satisfied after reviewing a particular Claus in their contract and I now have a cup holder on the 23b.
By the way, if anyone should find a 10-inch adjustable wrench in their fireplace, it’s mine.

For the kid in all of us,
Merry Christmas!

A Lesson From Iris

My earliest recollections of Iris find her making her way down the row of school desks to find her place in the classroom. She was tall and thin in those early years of elementary school, with white-blonde poker straight hair that just touched her shoulders. I thought it odd the way she held her pencil to write, as if it has been driven through her clinched fist, as she labored to scribe her work.
Iris seemed an otherwise shy girl, speaking aloud only when schoolwork required it and never more than a few hard fought words. Her speech impediment revealed the struggles of a person fighting for the very control of every movement. With legs bracketed in hinged metal and brown leather straps, her walk was stiff, making small but noticeable balance corrections with every step.
Iris was shackled by polio.
For Iris, life on the playground was that of watching rather than playing with the others. On those rare occasions when she could participate, she gave it her best, but more often than not, found herself getting up off of the ground, brushing the grit from her bare knees. She was pretty tough in those early years, but then I guess she really had to be, because, unfortunately, kids can be cruel even when it‘s not intended.
She was in and out of school throughout the years, mostly out though, to parts unknown, only to return a year or more later.
At the end of our senior year there were three formal graduation events, one of which would pair the graduates in order of height. I was the third tallest guy in the male line-up and I could see that Iris had been situated at the other end of the girls line, having over the years been surpassed in height by nearly everyone.
At some point, it was realized that there were more girls than boys and the two lines randomly converged in a conscious attempt at a more favorable pairing.
When the shuffle had just barely settled, there, at the other end, standing alone with tears streaming down her face was Iris. It must have seemed like a cruel climax to a life long struggle to break free of her bonds and to realize the dream of being accepted by her classmates.
A hush fell over the group as the gravity of the moment quickly began to sink in, which probably seemed like a very long time for Iris, and it had been. Since the very beginning she just wanted to fit in, to be picked in kickball without being the last, to walk without being expected to run, to speak and know someone was listening because they wanted to.
At that moment, an average looking senior named Jack stepped up to her and said simply, “I’ll walk with you, Iris.”
If I learned nothing else in high school, it was that I am not the center of the Universe, that other people matter and that winning at anything is not nearly as important as simply being a part of it.
I have seen neither Iris nor Jack since school. I know Jack came out of school in good shape, as he demonstrated his firm grasp on being an adult with those few kind words.
I think often of Iris, and I’d like to think that there is a calling for everyone, and that no matter what their obstacles might be in life, there is a place of comfort and belonging for each of us.
And I hope that when it mattered the most, Iris was picked first.

Yardsale Bargains

Well, it’s been a long hot summer, and there were many times when I just knew what the hog felt like when he was about to render lard. For the most, part I’ve had to work every day of it, but on a few Saturdays, when I was off, I made it a point to go to the local yard sales. This is my favorite way of stimulating the local economy.
At first, I just expected to find a few movies on DVD or some rusty hand tools that I could put back to work, but by summers end I had acquired a wide selection of treasures.
I am a woodworker, so finding a barely used Deluxe Workmate for $10 had special appeal. From the dollar menu, I found a backsaw, a hayfork bent into a potato hook, a variety of new hinges and a few clock inserts for making table top clocks.
I saved a broken vanity seat from almost certain demise for one dollar. I reassembled it, refinished it and replaced the seat covering. It is now waiting to be “adopted” at one of the Main Street antique shops.
I found book bargains like the LIFE book Century of Change, America in Pictures 1900-2000, a $60 hardback, for which I paid one dollar.
One of my favorite finds was an issue of Scribner’s Magazine, dated April 1897, which features a detailed account on ocean crossings, 15 years before Titanic, with ads for typewriters, the latest tonics and the newest rage, the bicycle. I paid all of $.25 for this, as was the original subscription price.
Of course, there are always those little things that, as one lady put it, “You just can’t live without”, like small glass bottles with cork stoppers, a carousel Christmas music box, a 1920’s forgotten photo of a group of men standing on a raft, and a few small dishes that I used to find in oatmeal when I was a kid. My wife paid a one dollar ransom for a nice set of 4 Christmas mugs that will serve up steaming hot cocoa this winter.
I expect someday to find one of my oil painting from the 1980’s and buy it back for a fraction of my original commission. I’m not so sure that would be a good thing.
Sometimes the best part of a yard sale is the people you meet, old friends you might have lost tract of, or new friends with common interests. We exchange pleasantries, ideas on backyard décor and maybe a few bits of pocket change for things they thought was worth selling and that I thought was worth buying.
“How much you got on that box of hammers?”

Radio Bye-Bye

I was probably around 10 years old when my older bother and I were introduced to the then expanding world of radio communication. Our Grandfather, who operated the local John Deere dealership, was in constant communication with his mechanics when they were out on service calls via CB radio.
In those days, the CB craze had not yet caught on and it was important to maintain the correct etiquette of professionalism of the day. There was no “Rubber Duck”, no “Pig Pen”, no “Smoky” and no “Bandit”. Grandpa’s call letters were KLK6645 and that’s what he answered to, along with “base” when talking from the shop.
One Christmas, Jerry and I received a pair of walky-talkies. This was a prime example of modern technology and a real handy gadget for two boys prone to playing “army” around the neighborhood. On days when the weather was just right we could sometimes hear the local CB people with their usual numbers coded banter.
We marveled at what great fun it would be if only we could only talk to Grandpa, just up the road using our walky-talkies. All we really needed was just a little more power.
One of us, and it may never be known exactly who, decided to replace the 9-volt battery in the back of one of the radios with a significantly increased power supply. We used an old cord and plug and wired into the battery terminals and we were “go” for launch. Jerry pushed the plug into the wall receptacle under the desk in our bedroom.
The house system quickly pointed out our folly by sending a series of supernovas dancing across the floor followed by a scaled down model of a hydrogen bomb explosion rising above the radio and rolling off of the ceiling. We had not officially learned to cuss at that time, but new words were definitely forming.
The wall plug had already self-ejected and the smoke was beginning to clear when we noticed that the small fan in the room had stopped. We tried the ceiling light and then the lights in some of the other rooms and found that half of the house was down. We knew this would mean big trouble.
We quickly got the fuses replaced, got the lights back on then cleared the remaining smoke out though the bedroom window. I picked up the non-radio active remains and discovered that the radio that was just sacrificed to the Gods of 10-4 was, in fact, mine.
I don’t remember feeling particularly bad about this though, I think largely because I knew that the other radio might just as well have been vaporized too, since one walky-talky has almost no use without the other one.
Though we never did get the chance to hale Grandpa’s call letters, somewhere during that white-hot instant, the faint sound of two boys yelling is thought to have crackled the airways on a radio in a capsule named Mercury.
Of course, NASA would have called this a “glitch”.

Backyard Ups and Downs

In my teens, I climbed to the tops of trees to enjoy the view and to feel the world swinging in the wind. I was aware of the presence of gravity and, of course, felt immune to it. It was a special moment to be alive.
Now, at age 55, the physics have changed. Last fall I leaned a ladder against a tall maple in my yard to cut down a hanging limb leftover from the ice storm. The distance from the ground to the top rung was twenty feet, but the view from that top rung to the ground was closer to 75 and I certainly wasn’t interested in the swaying effect.
I climbed up the ladder and stood precariously on the rung second from the top. Putting a chokehold on the tree trunk, I nervously sawed through the limb with a small handsaw. I watched the limb fall away, like Wylie Coyote, disappearing into the desert floor. When the limb bumped the bottom of the ladder, I dropped the saw and went for the double chokehold on the tree trunk. Visions of insurance policies and long-term recovery flashed through my head.
Despite my initial unwillingness to release the tree, I did eventually manage to climb down. It occurred to me that there, standing on the ground looking up, while pulling the bark from under my fingernails, was yet another special moment to be alive.
It’s springtime now and most of the significant busted limbs are down from the trees and I am concentrating on more “down to Earth” projects.
I decided to repaint an old metal yard chair, a veteran of many a back yard campfire and a dependable step-up for a guy who’s sometimes too lazy to get out a ladder.
This chair had the peelings of maybe 26 different coats of paint, the colors of which, none would be considered for this particular facelift as I decided to go with a nice bright safety yellow, something festive for my classic “Whatever‘s out there” yard décor collection.
It’s a little rough in texture, but looks good with my John Deere windmill and red painted bluebird house. And though it may someday be the finest piece on the scrap wagon, it’s safe for now and waits near the ever-extending ladder to see if I want to get dangerously up in the world or just hold on to my iced tea and simply sit down.
Well, right now, the chair sits pretty good.

Workshop Trolls

My woodshop is my place of refuge. This is the place where dreams are manifested, where trees become cabinets and scraps become toys. I can also spend all day there doing nothing and at the end of the day have nothing to show for it. But I feel good about it and consider it time well wasted.
However, the older I get, the more I have to deal with a strange phenomena of misplaced tools. I don’t worry too much about an item that I might have used last month or last year, I find myself losing track of things that I am currently using on a project.
In my woodshop, a bright yellow tape measure has a bench life of about 30 minutes before it disappears within feet of me. Pencils last long enough to make about three lines for sawing.
To counter this, I try to keep a good half dozen tape measures and twice as many pencils on hand during any given wood project. When I have exhausted all of the replacements, it’s time to go in the house .
These illusive items are sometimes found later hidden between two boards or buried under the sawdust on the floor. These things and others often find themselves in my scrap bucket or even into the house, days later, covertly stashed into one of my sweatshirt pockets.
It’s almost as if there is a band of trolls hiding in the wood rack just waiting for me to turn my back so they can pull their tricks.
I suppose it could be a simple matter of forgetting but really, I pay very close attention and if I have actually forgotten anything in over fifty years, I certainly don’t remember it.
For verification, I will occasionally recall events or details with my wife, who will freely admit that we both naturally remember things differently, however, she will further point out that her version is always the correct one.
Well, I see the trolls have stashed a tape measure behind this computer. I am not letting go of the mouse.

Big Game Hunting

A lot of folks will tell you that you have to be, as Elmer Fudd would say. “Verwy, verwy cwafty”, to get a deer. Well, I feel pretty crafty if I can miss a deer in the early morning hours on my way to work. It’s not as though I’m sneaking down the road in my stealthy bright red anti-camouflaged ford pick-up truck with the radio blaring.
It could very well be that these rascals simply know when we are not packing a weapon, and taunting us is somehow a kind of game for them: sort of like hunting.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for the hunter and for all of the conservation reasons behind the sport, but really, is it as much of a challenge as it could be?
Consider this: I’m standing here looking out my back door at a yard full of shallow tunnels, mini-mountain ranges and mud piles, proof positive of an alien invasion. Any one who has ever tried to destroy this cloaked enemy of civilized landscape will tell you that there are few greater challenges in the predatory arena. It is an ongoing battle of winner takes all, to thwart the efforts of that lawn-tilling varmint: the mole.
One could go to the sporting goods store and spend a ridiculous amount of money so that he could look like a bush, but this prey does not need to see us, it feels us when we move.
I could get a high powered rifle with a big scope that can see Jupiter’s moons, but the mere discharge of that personal cannon can make cell phones all over the neighborhood automatically dial the police station. And if I miss, I’ve just dug another hole.
So I set traps, and I wait. And I wait… and I wait some more.
Occasionally, I score a direct hit, and when I do, I feel like throwing my kill onto the tailgate of my truck, and having my picture made for the newspaper with my orange hat and my garden hoe in hand.
So, my brother just got an eight-point buck.
Big deal. It’s not like getting a mole.

Immortal Plastic

Plastic water bottles: 700 years in a landfill.
They make it sound like a bad thing, but the “problem” could turn out to be some kind of solution. In these modern times, so many products are not really made to last and soon have to be replaced. But there are a lot of things that could benefit greatly from a slow molecular breakdown.
Take paint for instance. Maybe we should grind up these plastic bottles to a powder and add it to paint. After your painted building finally rots away, one could be left with a huge 500-year-old tarpaulin with windows. You could just rebuild your structure and just throw on the old paint like a slipcover for another 200 years!
Roof shingles made from this immortal plastic would give a whole new meaning to “Lifetime Warranty”.
And there are all kinds of wood products that the salvaged plastic bottle could replace.
“Well Sonny, they say there was a factory somewhere that made stuff out of plastic bottles that they used to just throw away.”
“Really, Grandpa?”
“Sure. See that ancient fence row? Legend has it that those fence posts were set by your Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great…”
Sound unlikely?
Well, I remember when water first hit the market in plastic bottles. On a planet that is something like two-thirds water on the surface, it seemed silly at the time to think that people would actually buy something that they could get from the tap for free. But they did.
Personally, I’m hoping for something truly profound, like perpetual lawn chair webbing so I can avoid the yearly struggle to climb out after the seat drops me on the ground.
Just imagine that.

Camping 1968

We twenty-nine Scouts and two Scout leaders went to the woods for four days and three nights in the first week of January around 1968.
Our campsite was a place called Salt Peter Cave; a couple of miles walk cross-country from a back road near Piney Fork, Kentucky. The “cave” was an undercut bluff providing shelter maybe a hundred and fifty feet across the rock face to a depth of fifty to sixty feet from front to back.
This was a dry shelter with woods all around. So dry, in fact, that the ground within was six to fifteen inches of finely powdered dust and ash from the campfires of a hundred years and countless inhabitants. Small animal bones as well as teeth resembling human, might be sifted from any good scoop of dust.
Now, a good Scout could start a campfire in any weather using only one match. That good Scout also knew that extra canteens were for kerosene. The scout leaders frowned on this short cut to a quick fire, so we kept this to ourselves as best we could.
We had scattered out in groups of four or five so we could sleep close to a campfire within the group. The first night we had several campfires under the bluff, which was convenient and warm, but the increased smoke caused one Scout to have an asthma attack. We were then limited to one central fire full time and individual small fires for cooking only.
After that, the nights were near sleepless as we shivered in rolled up balls, without the benefit of a nearby fire. Completely buried in my sleeping bag, my only respite from the cold seemed to be my own breath warming my fingers.
For bedding, we laid our sleeping bags atop leaves we’d gathered earlier, which were piled, into hollows in the dust. No matter how many leaves we gathered, there was always some big pointed rock that wasn’t noticed during the day that would keep you company all night long.
In the very early morning hours many of us would gather near the main fire to warm up, listening to the splattering of the water in the pool and the chase of squirrels in the woods.
Icicles had formed on the overhang high above a shallow, partially frozen pool. Most of us immediately placed eggs and other perishables along the edge of the pool, which served as our outdoor refrigerator. A good idea, we thought. The raccoons thought so, too.
One morning it had snowed and must have warmed up somewhat to cause the icicles to fall into the pool, dispatching anything that the raccoons might have missed.
I was not, at that time, familiar with the role of cooking oil in food preparation, so scrambled eggs ultimately became egg crumbs scraped from the mess kit’s fry pan. They were tasty just the same.
Partially burnt Vienna sausage and cold pork and beans with mustard is an acquired taste. Food like this builds memory cells in the brain, for after forty years, I still vividly remember the taste, but at the time, we felt like we were eating like kings.
One of the Scouts within our group used an improvised foil reflector oven to bake biscuits, which turned out a little doughy but did not go uneaten. Some also baked potatoes or corn on the cob wrapped in foil and laid in the coals of the fire.
We learned to smear dish washing soap on the underneath side of our mess kits to make an easy job of removing the black soot after cooking.
We tended to lean more towards military type provisions rather than the traditional Scout supplies. Many a surplus WWII artifact came out of retirement in those days. Nearly every Scout had some memento of their fathers’ service during the war: a shovel, a duffle bag or a canteen. One Scout even brought a helmet. I had one of my fathers’ Army belts, along with a canteen on an ammo belt, which I got from the Army Surplus store.
My Yucca pack always looked very straight and uniformed. I was complemented on this and felt no need to mention that there was a cardboard box neatly fitted into the pack to hold its shape.
I had borrowed my father’s leather boots, not to be deterred by the fact that they were a little small and smaller still with two pair of socks. They had that military look about them that blended well with my “look”. As always, fashion before function.
But the boots soon got wet and then froze overnight. I placed them by the main fire in the morning only to see the toes curl up as they thawed. The boots became torturously small and contorted with almost no room for feet let alone any socks.
I suffered though the third day before resorting to my only backup, a pair of low top house moccasins. The moccasins had a low tolerance for the wet weather and soon gave up their very soles in protest. I ended up using my bootlaces to tie the fragmenting moccasins to my feet. These lasted long enough to make it to the last day.
By the time we were ready to go home, the dust had thoroughly infiltrated everything we had brought with us. I was obviously filthy from head to toe, but didn’t seem to care since everyone else was equally mortified.
I remember standing in the shower at home watching the streams of mud swirling down the drain. I was certainly happy to get into my warm bed that night.
I lost most of my toenails over the next few weeks, which grew back eventually. I still wonder if it was the cold or if it was the constrictive boots which caused this.
Maybe it was both.

Relativity

We were having dinner with my son Michael and his girlfriend Marinda recently. It’s inevitable that at some point in women’s conversation there will be an exploratory into matters of relativity. This can be difficult for a man to follow and is sometimes better left to the experts.
I returned my attention to the noodles, the meatballs and the Parmesan Cheese. Eating spaghetti and not wearing it was as much challenge as I wanted right then, but I listened in just the same.
“Do you know (So & So)?” my wife asked Marinda.
“Is that the (So & So) who was in the paper with the 50th anniversary?”
“Oh, no. (So & So) is young, she’s (What’s his name’s) daughter from his second wife, you know the one with the pretty hair. Anyway, she married (Some guy) who is the sixth oldest of (The poor parents) who had those thirteen children. (Some guy) drove a school bus in (Elsewhere) County where he ran into (So & So) when he rear ended (The poor parents) car with a pick-up he borrowed from (What‘s his name).”
I thought to myself, “Huh?”
Marinda took it up, “Okay… I went to school with (Some guy’s) sister, (What’s her face), who’s double jointed. She married (Another guy) and they have triplets. (Some guy) and (Another guy) run their daddy’s farm where (Still another guy) works part time. (Still another guy) is brother to (Someone else) who married (What’s his name), her fourth husband. I know who you’re talking about.”
“Well, she’s the new (Doesn’t really matter).” My wife concluded as a meatball danced on my fork.
Some ladies are fluent in kinfolk connections and can make it sound like a well practiced recital. There is probably a college course that men can take to compensate for this but women were obviously born with a masters degree.
I suppose it’s all part of the complex topic of general relativity.

Ice Storm 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009 gave no indication of impending bad weather, but that seems to be the way of it; the only warning we had came from the weather reports on TV. It was enough to cause me to schedule a day off for Tuesday just in case I was to have trouble getting to work. Monday evening I also gassed up the truck and bought an extra 5 gallons of kerosene for my workshop heater. This heater had been used in the house before but very rarely, and never as the primary heat source.
For years, I have kept a journal. The following excerpts are a personal record of the days of the Ice Storm of 2009.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009.
An ice storm came during the night and is still raining and freezing here at 10am. Everything has a good coating and trees are giving way and crashing down all around. I am only now beginning to hear chainsaws around the neighborhood.
The electricity has been off since around 6:30 am. I don’t expect it will be back on today. I have lit the kerosene heater and it is doing a fine job, almost too good. It is in the carport room where the temperature is around 75 degrees. The rest of the house has dropped into the 60’s, which is not too bad for a 30-degree day.

I had awakened to 4:30 am expecting to get an early start on my thirty-four mile drive to Hopkinsville. Upon hearing the sound of limbs crashing down, and knowing that the roads were thickly coated in ice, I decided to call in to confirm that I would be taking the day off as scheduled.
The “carport room” is an enclosed carport, made into a “TV” room. When the power went off we moved the heater to the kitchen where we would spend most of our time anyway.
I walked around the yard during the day surveying the damage. I stayed clear of the trees as limbs were still falling without notice. The noise was like that of a rifle shot, with the bigger the limb, the higher the caliber. This sudden crack was followed by what sounded like applause and the breaking up of long spaghetti, ending with the crash on the ground. The larger limbs made a heavy thumb, which could be felt as well as heard.

McKinney lost his utility pole when a limb came down on his wire.
A limb from the cherry tree behind the shop broke off, bending the gutter on the backside, but I don’t think it hurt the roof. The two maples and the sassafras have all dropped limbs and I think it’s not over yet.
The back yard birds are having a tough time of it, but I crumbled up some cornbread for them and they seem to be eating it without complaint.
It’s after 4 pm now and limbs have continued to fall all day. I called in to arrange to take tomorrow as a vacation day.
6:30 pm and the power came back on for about 10 minutes and then shut down again. The furnace ran for this brief time…the temperature had surprisingly only dropped to 62 degrees.
Went to bed around 9 pm…a very unrestful night.

When people talk about storm damage, they always seem to compare the sight with a war zone. This was very much the case, as I have seen tornado damage that was similar to this ice damage. It just looks like a war has raged.
Trying to sleep Tuesday night was like being under siege. I was very tense, anticipating that a branch from the big maple out front might come crashing through the ceiling at any time. I rose on many occasion, trying to locate the closest impacts, but for the light of my flashlight, the town was pitched in darkness. Only wiggling limbs on the ground gave evidence of a recent nearby fall.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009.
Woke around 1:30 am to the sound of more limbs, probably the box elder.

This small but stocky tree was about forty feet from the bedroom. I had hoped that it would hold up as it had so many times before, but an eight-inch limb finally gave way, as did many smaller ones to nearly strip the tree of any sustaining growth.

I woke again at 4:30 and finally got up at 8 am. We had gotten two inches of snow to cover up the ice.
I cooked sausage and scrambled eggs on the fire at the pit. The gas grill decided to malfunction so my plan “B” was a good backup.

The ice was so thick on the grill that the orifices were apparently clogged resulting a full force flames coming out the bottom of the grill.

We went to Hopkinsville to try to find a kerosene heater for Michael. With some hundred thousand people out of power, everything was bought up.
We went by Brazeway and arranged to be on vacation till, at most, Tuesday of next week.

The direct route down highway 91 was presumed blocked by trees so we drove up the West Kentucky Parkway then took the Pennyrile Parkway over to Hopkinsville.
Hopkinsville had faired better on the damage but were somewhat swamped with people trying to find gasoline, kerosene and groceries. Many businesses were operating by generators with very limited stocks on their shelves.
Wal-Mart was open but had been picked clean of everything of non-electrical heat, or anything that was camping related. Flashlights, batteries, blankets and such were in high demand but short supply.
On the way back we were delayed about 45 minutes on the WK by some kind of problem with two tractor-trailer rigs stopped in the middle of the road.
All utilities were down with water being the only exception. I remarked that, “At least we have water.”
By the time we got home the water pressure had dropped significantly.

Thursday, January 29, 2009.
Out of bed around 6:30. Very low water pressure. Deb filled three buckets of 5 gallons each in case the water stopped altogether.
I made a fire in the pit…and scraped her car off.
Deb went to the courthouse for jury duty…there was no court in session. When she returned, I fried sausage and eggs on the fire.

I had begun to collect icicles from the roof eaves and anything else representing clear ice. I poured them into a washtub and melted them on the fire to gather water for flushing the toilet or any other non-drinking utility water use.

I used the chainsaw a little around the house and cut some limbs off of Michael’s house.

My son Michael, an employee of the Caldwell County Road Department, had been working some 14-hour days. He had not had the time to even access his own damage. I sawed some of the limbs from an elder tree in his back yard that was resting on his house and grill. These were so covered in ice that they could not effectively be moved. This at least gave him access to his grill. He had no heat and his indoor temperature had fallen to 37 degrees.
He had been spending his nights with his girlfriend‘s family. He could have stayed with us but I’m sure that given the choice, it’s natural for a guy to choose girlfriend over parents and Marinda is a very nice girl.

We left for Cadiz to try to find some kerosene as we only had about seven gallons left. We managed to find gasoline at Cadiz but no kerosene.
We went on to Hopkinsville and stood in line for three hours for 8 gallons @ $3.99 a gallon.

Much of Cadiz was still without power with only a few businesses open. We managed to find a couple of gas stations doing business and fell in line behind another car. A lady from the other side of the pumps came up to us and asked that we let her and her husband get to the pump ahead of us as they had entered from the wrong side by mistake. We were in no hurry and obliged. We had heard reports of price gouging and rude behavior of some who were in a tight spot. I felt like we were just along for the ride and felt no need to be difficult.
I noticed that people were not only filling their vehicle’s fuel tanks but were filling a half dozen or so 3 to 5 gallons plastic containers. This, I assumed, was to fuel generators, as gasoline is too dangerous to be used for indoor heaters.
We moved on to Hopkinsville where upon coming into town, we could see that Dodge’s Store was showing signs of activity. The pumps were cordoned off from traffic but a standing line was formed at the front door, with each person carrying several fuel containers.
We parked next door at the Dollar Store and walked across carrying our two 5-gallon cans. We got in line and waited out turn.
A half hour or so passed, and we were ushered inside the store where the line snaked its way down one of the aisles. The procedure was to pay for the kerosene at the counter and then go outside to another line leading up to the pump. Kerosene is notoriously slow to pump so delaying inside meant that you could at least stay inside out of the cold a little longer.
Eventually were made it to the counter where we paid $32 for 8 gallons. One of my cans still had a little in it so I figured that 8 gallons was a good amount. They gave us a small receipt with the number 27 on it and told us that there were 22 people ahead of us at the pump. They told us that if we bring the receipt back afterwards we could get free coffee.
Waiting in line outside was probably the coldest I had been in days, but still not too bad as I had been dressing for it for several days. We had left our coats in the truck so Deb went back and got them while I held our place in line. This helped immensely but I felt bad for some of the people who were shivering in little more than sweat shirts.
Before long, the Dodge’s Store employees came out with a large platter of hot wings, which were very tasty and warming. Just after that, they brought hot coffee. This was one of those kindnesses that sadly gets swept under the rug as time goes by. This is one that I will not forget.
We finally got our turn and filled our cans. We headed home with an additional 5 days supply of heating fuel.
We decided to take the direct route down State Highway 91 back to Princeton. We had talked to several people in the kerosene line who would be making the same journey so we now believed it to be passable.
Trees were ripped apart all along the way, which seemed to get worse at the county line, the halfway point of the 34-mile trip. There were several places where the road was reduced to one lane. Nearing Princeton, we were detoured over to a county road to bypass utility work on the edge of town.

Got home around 6:30 and heated ravioli on the fire.

Friday, January 30, 2009.
Still no electricity, water or anything. Michael came by around 6 am to pick up some hot soup for lunch. A sunny day, should be around 30 degrees.

The quality of some of our freezer food was coming into question. We decided to cook as much as we could before spoiling. This cooked food could be placed on the back porch where it would refrigerate and be reheated later.
Breakfast found me frying the remnants of a smoked ham from Christmas. This made a skillet full, which I tried to peddle at the neighbors. I found that at least one house had a surplus of food and loaded me up with several boxes of crackers. I returned home with more food than I went out with.

5:00 pm-Water pressure is returning. The irony is that I have spent the day catching the gutter drips and managed to get 50+ gallons of water to flush the toilet.
Most of the ice is off of the trees as it warmed up pretty good with the sun out.
Finally got (Dad &) Linda on the cell phone. They are living in the basement and are going to hunt a generator tomorrow.
Michael got power today.

Saturday, January 30, 2009. High temperature 59.
Still no lights. Some reports say it may be another week or more for the west side of town. I hope we are considered South Princeton. We can see streetlights to the west at night.
Was around 20 degrees this morning with heavy fog, which coated what’s left of the trees.
Got a hot shower this morning. Made scrambled eggs with ham bits, green peppers, onions, red peppers and cheese. Tasty and cooked on the fire.
We moved some of the food from the freezer to Michael’s house. I filled bags with ice and put them in (our) freezer in hopes of saving the rest. Cannot eat this food faster than it ruins. We are going to take a loss.

I had long felt like not buying a generator back in the summer was a major mistake. Not standing in line in Hopkinsville or Paducah these past few days to buy one was feeling like an even bigger one.
In an effort to keep our heat bill down, the “hobby room” containing the freezer was shut off from the heat. We had kept the freezer closed in this coldest room of the house. Despite our efforts, we had conceded to the fact that we were going to lose most if not all of the food in the deep freeze.
When we learned that Michael’s power had returned, we removed the upper portions of food and repacked them into his freezer, which had a lot of empty space.
I had heard of people standing in line for bags of ice at the few stores that were open. This seemed absurd to me as ice was lying on the ground everywhere. I shoveled ice from under the maple tree, which had fallen off the day before, and bagged it in some hamburger bags. These were placed in our freezer as a last ditch effort to save the remaining food.

5:30 pm- I cut up a lot of firewood from these downed limbs. Helped clear J. B. McKinney’s front so that the power people can set a new pole. Gave some of my cut firewood to Woody. Helped the guy across the street get a limb off of the telephone cable.
Used the John Deere mower and trailer to move firewood around the yard. This was a good productive day.
The electric bucket truck came down the street today checking pole-to-house connections. I hope this is a sign that the power is forthcoming.

Recooked cheese dogs on the fire for supper. I should sleep good tonight.

We had gotten very good use from my John Deere lawn tractor. The small trailer was very handy in moving firewood around the yard and to the neighbors.
The smallest of the line, this JD would later pull the highway trailer to and from the neighbors to help clear their brush.

At 7:40 the electricity came back on. At this point we don’t know how long it will last, but we are sure glad to get it.

I waited for some time before turning the light out on the kerosene heater. It had burned non-stop since Tuesday morning and was even refueled without turning it off. This is not something that the manufacturers recommend. When I turned down the wick, I found it to be stuck, apparently melted into a fat spot, which refused to retract. Eventually it gave in but I will have to replace it before the next catastrophe.
I sat down in front of my television and decided to watch a movie on DVD. One of the movies had a setting in the ice and snow of Mt. Everest. I’d had enough of that and picked something else.
I began to feel a little uncomfortable, as I knew that some of my neighbors, though surviving with gas heat or generators, were still without power.
I turned off the television and went to bed.

But there are still plenty of people out there who still do not have all of their utilities restored. The process may seem slow but the devastation to the system is enormous and will take a lot of time to rebuild.

Meanwhile, we recover and exchange our stories, with friends and nieghbors, as we will for years to come. Everyone will have a tale to tell about the big storm of 2009 which stopped everything and changed everything we thought we knew about what happens when the lights go out.