French Toast, Shed, Shingles, Laps

This morning we had French Toast.

I did anyway.

Doggers had French Dog Feed.

It was cold out.

Delmar came in. 

But he licked the butter.

Anyway...

Here is the sawmill shed now...

I have been double dirty dog dared to put shingles on the roof...

as opposed to steel.

No, not asphalt...

Wood shingles.

Oak.

That I rive.

By hand.

Looks like I need to slap together a shave horse.   

Speaking of double and dirty...

You can't sit down for a minute around here...

Without everbody climbing into your lap.

Ha!

Mines not big enough.

Trick, or Treat...

A

It has become a bit of a tradition around Halloween, for me to re-work this story and post it at whatever venue I happen to be pimping my wares in exchange for criticism. So, with no further ado, let me present...

"The Ballad of Lucy Harper and Timmy Golightly"

Lucy Harper was drunk that night. Drivin’ her Mamma’s big black Lincoln. Hell, Lucy Harper was drunk every night. Drunk and with that Golightly boy, Timmy.

Timmy must have been pretty tore up himself. I guess he passed out in the passenger seat of the Lincoln. They were up there at Sugar Grove, around the corner from my place. Lucy got pretty ill about havin’ to drive home. She told the law her foot gets real heavy when she gets hot like that.

Boy, and her mamma’s Lincoln could flat out do it to. Once you got it rollin' anyway. They say it had the biggest engine Detroit ever put in a Lincoln. I couldn’t say. Never saw it. Timmy did though. Up close. In fact I heard a chunk of that big block was what removed his head.

Lucy t-boned that guard rail the County put up over there at Fairview Baptist, to keep folks out of their cemetery. The Lincoln’s speedometer stuck at 103 miles an hour, Law said. Not a skid mark one. That ol’ guard rail did a right smart job of keepin’ Lucy’s mamma’s Lincoln out of the Fairview cemetery, but Timmy... he made it in just fine.

Timothy Randolph Golightly, was what the paper called him. Said he left the car with the windshield draped over his shoulders like a god damn poncho. Cleared the hood, the guardrail and three plot markers. A total of 117 feet. I reckon that’s some kind of record somewhere. But that ain’t the half of it. That son of a buck landed right next to a hole, fresh dug for a great aunt of his. To top that, Timmy hadn’t even been invited to the funeral.

They say a human head is still thinking for nine seconds after it leaves the body. Can you believe that shit? Longer if it ain’t bleedin’. And Timmy’s didn’t bleed a lick. Whatever chunk of that Lincoln’s motor that took his head off was hot as hell. I guess it cauterized everything. Not a drop of blood anywhere.

They don’t know if his head was still thinkin’, but his body was sure enough busy for all of nine seconds. I saw the place where it hit. The grass was smashed down good. Landed smack on his back...hard.

I'll tell you what. I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't seen it my ownself. There were hand prints... knee prints too... right there in the dirt where that sumbitch rolled over and got himself up. Then four boot prints... Red Wings, same as was on Timmy's feet... walked right over to the edge of that hole. Old Timmy was after that head of his... chased it right on down into his aunt’s grave, slicker ‘n owl shit.

Lucy, she didn’t last long after that. Wasn’t much left for her to do, I guess.

The Right to (not) Vote

It’s voting time. I know this only because I was stuck in a truck with Bret every day this past week, to and from the job. I don’t vote. It’s not because I’m making a statement or anything, it’s because I forget that there is a big, weird World out there.

And what a World… Why does everyone have to be the “…wacko lefties…” or the “oppressive right-wingers”? Somewhere, not far behind that name calling, there is a fist clenched, people, a mob with a rope.

Oh well. They’ll never change.

Anyway… I am back up on the Mountain for a while.

Neighbors and Hermits

A

Mr. Harper came to check on me last night. I got home late again—well after dark. He had seen that I raised a few rafters (pictures forthcoming) on my sawmill shed and tried calling—I assume to tell me that he would come over with the tractor and help, and for me not to be lifting those rafters alone. He’s a daddy hen. When he didn’t get an answer, he immediately assumed I had hurt myself with the rafters and was laid up in bed… or worse.

There are a few things to note here: One, I have great neighbors. There are about five. They all keep an eye on me—the special needs kid. You don’t know they’re doing it until my truck doesn’t move for three days, or there’s no sound of tools being put to use. That’s when they drop in to check, “It was awful quiet around here. Thought maybe you was laid up or somethin’.” Anyway, I wanted to hug Mr. Harper, but they don’t go in for that kind of nonsense around here. When in Rome.

The other thing to note is that Mr. Harper assumed that since I wasn’t home and in my house at seven o’clock, I was somewhere else… hurt. This is direct evidence of the infrequency I leave my home. Which would be only when I need groceries, or now, unless Bret and I are working out. Basically, next to never.

John, the guy up at the church paint job, told me that I should become a hermit. His thinking being that it would bring me closer to nature and God. I laughed. Bret even laughed. I’m not starting another religious spiel, but it had quite the opposite affect concerning God.

Where am I going with this? Free-write. I don’t need a summary statement. But I need steam to forge ahead, and I am out of both it and time. But it gives me some subject matter for next time… the Hermit.

Until then… Love thy neighbor.

Dinner at the Pope's and the Genius of Mormons.

A
So I got to eat dinner with eight, maybe nine, priests last night. Bret and I worked late, so they fed us. What were they going to do?

It’s funny; the guys who actually know their religion don’t readily discuss it, or even offer opinions on many things other than their favorite sporting events. While guys like Bret and another fellow who works there, John (for that matter, every layperson I’ve met there), come out of the gate swinging on all the hot issues. That’s all they do, all day, back and forth. I brought ear plugs.

I guess the priests have found their ‘purpose’ in life and learned that going around in circles over politics and what-not, with folks whose formal education was finalized by a GED they received by mail, is a waste of energy better spent in servitude. I wish I could transcribe some of these debates… goodness. Anyway, I know that fretting over such nonsense gives guys like Bret and John, the ‘purpose’ they need to feel fulfilled. So I let them rock.

It does bother me a teeny bit though, that it is guys like Bret and John: simple minds, easily heated to a boil, who are imposing their world on my world… and everybody else’s world. They’ll deny it… but they are.

I think the Mormons got it right, having their own State and all. We have fifty States. That should be enough to delegate one to every major religion, race and lifestyle. If not, we can split up a couple of the big ones. Then, everyone is free to do their own damn thing, in their own damn State: fix their own roads and open all the abortion clinics they want. If you go the way of the Shakers, so be it. We’ll sell your furniture and give some one else your property.

Just a thought. Or maybe it was the paint fumes.

Dumps and Slumps

A

I grew up on a 500 acre farm that had half a dozen barns, ponds, a river, an eternity of forest and a dump, loaded with an inexhaustible supply of old cars and assorted explorable junk. I even had my own BB Gun, a .22 rifle and a bow and arrow. And would you believe that there were days, in the summer time, when I would sit in the house with the sun shining right down on the roof and say, ‘I don’t have anything to do.’

I kind of feel like that right now. I’m sitting here, surrounded by roughly one hundred and fifty of my most favorite books, and I have nothing to say. Not one word. I mean, I do, but it doesn’t feel very interesting… like I’ve already explored the whole dump.

Wind, Books, Another Different Book, Squirrels and Nuts

A
It’s windy. I don’t like the Wind. I don’t trust the Wind. I trust the Rain and even the Lightning, who tried to blow up my house. But I don’t trust the Wind. It’s like the big, retarded kid who came to my church when I was little... it wants to play, but doesn’t know its own strength. I miss that kid. I guess I'd probably miss the wind too, if it where gone forever.

But! I love, love, love getting books in the mail! I ordered four. Barnes and Noble's used books on line… the best, and please don’t inform me otherwise, because I don’t want to know.

I got some more kid’s books to help me with ‘Sarah Abigail’… ‘James and the Giant Peach’, ‘Sarah, Plain and Tall’, ‘When You Reach Me’ and ‘The (mostly) True Adventures of Homer P. Figg’. ‘James and the Giant Peach’ is up first. Not quite as heady as the Qur’an, I know.

Speaking of books… I’ve also been reading ‘Great Expectations’… for like the past eight months. I read it in high school. I couldn’t get past the grammar… the pomp and wordiness. I have the same problem with about anything written before 1910.

Since my brain translates everything into images, it makes reading even modern literature tediously slow, but that old school stuff is nearly impossible... picking through all that fluff just to see who’s standing in a room. Anyway, despite only being able to read about ten pages at a go, I love it. It’s much better this time around.

So...

Nothing real exciting at the paint job.  Unless of course you consider... maybe... the huge Pecan trees, who were handing out free pecans by the bucketfull, and the gazillion new squirrel buddies I made exciting… which I do.