Wednesday, May 13, 2009
A matter of perspective
Last Sunday was Mothers Day, and a Sunday. I don't know if that always lines up, but I suppose it does. We had planned on going up to my parents farm after church and visiting for a bit. This happened, and then that happened, and then it was sort of late, and my frustration level was up two or three notches above too much coffee. We finally got on the road, and I drove too fast. I like to drive fast, and always have. I do not know of many thrills in this life that compare. Being older, and having my wife along, and not having my radar detector, I chose to moderate this proclivity. Some. I did let her stretch out her legs on the interstate, and made the horses talk to me a couple of times. Once off of the four lane after Carthage, and heading north on a very straight road I know so very well, I just went a little fast. I remembered, and recalled, days of a hot rod Lincoln on that road, and coming down from 100+ at the first tree line to keep from bottoming out the shocks as the road fell away, and then back up for a bit, and then down for a hard left turn. Mostly my imagination this day. But as I made the hard left, my wife said the GPS says I should go to the right. Now I knew in my heart that this is just wrong. I have been this way many times. But That GPS has proven my facts wrong before, so a hard brake, and back to the intersection and on through to what would have been a right at the hard left. My wife says you just passed the road. I say: "That was a dirt road", we can't take it, I will parallel it at the next blacktop. We do, and sure enough tractors and implements that take up the whole road keep appearing. I try to make up time by going just above uncomfortable. More implements and hard stops. Suddenly we are on the gravel, and I am believing this is shorter, but not faster. Up over a rise, and we are on a dirt road with ruts so deep that if a wheel were to go in, we would be high centered, and stuck there, and probably be broken, until a large truck came to pull us out while the hillbillies laughed. Having grown up where roads are often bad, I made it about a mile down this road (being shorter) to an impasse, where a tree had fallen across the road, and the GPS said I only had a thousand yards to go to the highway. I considered going to the field to go around, but thought better of it, and turned back. Once again through the ruts big enough to take a proper bath in. Back onto the blacktop, and south. (remember I had wanted to go north) and just considered it a bad deal. When we got back to the wrong town, and got back on the road, and came to where the road actually came out, I found I had made the right move. The ruts on that last hill down to the highway were monstrous, and would have required a four wheel drive big big truck to negotiate.I think I should rely on my instincts more. I have become dependent on this tech stuff. Oddly enough, my mood was much better than it had been in days. My wife noticed and asked why. After some thought, I decided that it had been a bad plan, but well played. Sort of an adventure. We overcame obstacles, and made the goal. The only thing that could have improved it at all would have been a cop on my tail.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Full of Myself
Well, here I am again. Wife is out. Son who lives here gone. Just me and the small screen. I haven't been putting my thoughts down lately, because they are thoughts of anxiety and uncertainty. Not my normal self. Generally, I find humor in the juxtaposition of normal circumstances crossed with a chaos philosophy I seem to work within. I had some blood taken last Friday for cancer tests, and will know the results mid-morning Friday to come. It has been six months since my last go around with this, and my last results were not horrible, or comforting, as far as that goes. I have had some troubles associated with the last rounds of radiation, and fear the worst. I suppose this is a way to get that WOW what was I thinking feeling when the results all come back with low numbers. My dad says "Why worry". Sounds right, but doesn't seem to work for me. I brood. And, I suppose it serves me right, after all of those years of not paying any attention at all to my health. I really only became "Vincible" three years ago. It is relatively new thought for me. In my heart I know I will be fine, regardless of which way the test goes. The worry is not the twist your hands, self introspection, sort of brooding I see in others. More of a steam vessel concept. Set for ten lbs. and the pressure is 9.6 lbs. Small jolts seem to break the seal, and tiny bursts of steam escape without my permission. It seems like a stupid way of dealing with it when you think about it. Not so very productive in any way. Yet, here I am. I can't think of a worst way to deal with this. (With the possible exception of my friend Verne, who has this and just chooses to ignore it) I am an angry man it seems. That fellow who we all see, and think, Man what made that happen. It is totally arrogant on my part to have this attitude I suppose. I did not design this plan. I wasn't there when the foundations of the earth were laid. Who the heck gave me permission to have any thoughts on this in the first place. Shaking my fist at the sky is just pitiable. Writing it down does not help either. The truth is: I am glad I was born, and happy I got this far. I feel very fortunate to have had the life put before me. I suppose I could have acted better at times, but then I wouldn't know the depths of being sorry, or feeling foolish when I made really stupid mistakes. I truly have been blessed, and if I never get older, I certainly got more than I deserve. I have a few regrets, but am not fully prepared to make reparations, and will just have to count of the grace of my friends in these matters. Assuming the worst. If I get better, and win the lottery, then this will just be a moment of weakness and indecision. It only deserves posting because of the contrast to the glitter that truly has been the bulk of my life. I once had a man tell me that my promotion over him was just and right, and had nothing to do with being deserved. It was just part of my path. I don't know exactly what that means, but have thought on it at times when things went my way for no reasonable explanation. Just possibly I should use the light of that epiphany on this time as well.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Where will I live
Baby Bear
The three bears had been having some trouble recently and had ended up in family court. Mama and Papa bear were splitting up, and baby bear had to decide who he was going to live with.
So, the judge wanted to talk to baby bear to see what he thought about living with either of his parents. When he asked baby bear about living with his father, baby bear said "No, I can't live with Papa bear, he beats me terribly."
"OK," said the judge, "then you want to live with your mother, right?"
"No way!" replied baby bear, "She beats me worse than Papa bear does."
The judge was a bit confused by this, and didn't quite know what to do. "Well, you have to live with someone, so is there any relatives you would like to stay with?" asked the judge.
"Yes," answered baby bear, "my aunt Bertha bear who lives in Chicago."
"You're sure she will treat you well and won't beat you?" asked the judge.
"Oh definitely," said baby bear, "the Chicago Bears don't beat anybody."
The three bears had been having some trouble recently and had ended up in family court. Mama and Papa bear were splitting up, and baby bear had to decide who he was going to live with.
So, the judge wanted to talk to baby bear to see what he thought about living with either of his parents. When he asked baby bear about living with his father, baby bear said "No, I can't live with Papa bear, he beats me terribly."
"OK," said the judge, "then you want to live with your mother, right?"
"No way!" replied baby bear, "She beats me worse than Papa bear does."
The judge was a bit confused by this, and didn't quite know what to do. "Well, you have to live with someone, so is there any relatives you would like to stay with?" asked the judge.
"Yes," answered baby bear, "my aunt Bertha bear who lives in Chicago."
"You're sure she will treat you well and won't beat you?" asked the judge.
"Oh definitely," said baby bear, "the Chicago Bears don't beat anybody."
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Industrial Terrorist
5 18 94
Yesterday, a small, smelly spot in the east parking lot by the old office building was brought to my attention. When I walked over there, it was apparent that the ground was saturated with human waste. The bricks actually gave way under my feet. On investigation, it turned out that the sanitary sewer for human waste to the Publicly Owned Treatment Facility was blocked big time. If you know how this thing is constructed, it's an amazing concept. The piping is over a foot in diameter in most places. When it goes into the man holes for distribution, the spaces are over five feet in diameter. Every thing from the street back into our rest rooms was plugged up twelve feet deep, which caused the sewage to back up to the surface at the lower parking lot. I called A.J. Allen Co. to get some help with the situation. The secretary from there was now involved. She helped find her boss, who was glad to come right over and evaluate the problem. We decided we would have to dig, so we called the one call operator for locations of utilities in areas where one has to dig. She is person number four. She calls the Midwest Power supervisor who authorizes the job and sends two people right over in a truck to check the power situation out. The one call operator next calls the Water works supervisor, who sends a truck and a person to see if we are going to dig next to any water lines. Next comes the several phone services, the Gas Company, City of Des Moines maintenance crews to check on storm drain locations, and sewer placement. I'm not sure if anyone else came, but we finally decided it was safe to call the back hoe in. His supervisor authorized it, and he came right over. We pulled the brick up and found the man hole we wanted and called the person from Smith's Sewer Service to put his high pressure hose down into the smelly mess. After a couple hours of sweat the first bundle of shop towels came bursting down the line. ( Did I mention Larry P., and Elmer M. were out to help earlier on) Several more attempts and we could finally see the bottom of the big manhole in the shipping lot. The bottom was covered with hundreds of shop towels and human waste. Now, if this happened at your house, and you found out that your kids, or your wife, or your neighbor had done it, you would probably put a stop to it. I mean right now!
All of the people who take the time to read this note, and talk it over with someone else will have eventually become involved. This is not a simple prank. It couldn't have cost more if the person had taken a gun and robbed a store. He would have gotten something out of it then. This person is involved in the crime I asked you to be aware of and report just last week. If you know who is doing this, and remain silent, you are part of the problem. This person is a criminal, and is costing every person around him more than they should want to contribute. Turn them in. Don't even think twice about it. They deserve no consideration at all. If you let these people have a say in your life, you are jeopardizing your own future. They certainly won't stop if you don't stop them. Don’t let yourself be terrorized by hoodlums.
Steve Forrester
Yesterday, a small, smelly spot in the east parking lot by the old office building was brought to my attention. When I walked over there, it was apparent that the ground was saturated with human waste. The bricks actually gave way under my feet. On investigation, it turned out that the sanitary sewer for human waste to the Publicly Owned Treatment Facility was blocked big time. If you know how this thing is constructed, it's an amazing concept. The piping is over a foot in diameter in most places. When it goes into the man holes for distribution, the spaces are over five feet in diameter. Every thing from the street back into our rest rooms was plugged up twelve feet deep, which caused the sewage to back up to the surface at the lower parking lot. I called A.J. Allen Co. to get some help with the situation. The secretary from there was now involved. She helped find her boss, who was glad to come right over and evaluate the problem. We decided we would have to dig, so we called the one call operator for locations of utilities in areas where one has to dig. She is person number four. She calls the Midwest Power supervisor who authorizes the job and sends two people right over in a truck to check the power situation out. The one call operator next calls the Water works supervisor, who sends a truck and a person to see if we are going to dig next to any water lines. Next comes the several phone services, the Gas Company, City of Des Moines maintenance crews to check on storm drain locations, and sewer placement. I'm not sure if anyone else came, but we finally decided it was safe to call the back hoe in. His supervisor authorized it, and he came right over. We pulled the brick up and found the man hole we wanted and called the person from Smith's Sewer Service to put his high pressure hose down into the smelly mess. After a couple hours of sweat the first bundle of shop towels came bursting down the line. ( Did I mention Larry P., and Elmer M. were out to help earlier on) Several more attempts and we could finally see the bottom of the big manhole in the shipping lot. The bottom was covered with hundreds of shop towels and human waste. Now, if this happened at your house, and you found out that your kids, or your wife, or your neighbor had done it, you would probably put a stop to it. I mean right now!
All of the people who take the time to read this note, and talk it over with someone else will have eventually become involved. This is not a simple prank. It couldn't have cost more if the person had taken a gun and robbed a store. He would have gotten something out of it then. This person is involved in the crime I asked you to be aware of and report just last week. If you know who is doing this, and remain silent, you are part of the problem. This person is a criminal, and is costing every person around him more than they should want to contribute. Turn them in. Don't even think twice about it. They deserve no consideration at all. If you let these people have a say in your life, you are jeopardizing your own future. They certainly won't stop if you don't stop them. Don’t let yourself be terrorized by hoodlums.
Steve Forrester
Time Capsule for thoughts
1 1 00 Steve Forrester
These things appear to be self evident, and intuitively obvious.
1. Do not interrupt a conversation to make corrections when two other persons are speaking.
2. When only two persons are speaking, always wait until you are sure the other person has stopped speaking before you give your opinion about what they were saying. The conversation will never get where the first person was going if you divert it by interjecting your thoughts about a portion of the topic, or fail to accept the suppositions. You can always go back to correct the person when they are done. This is how proper conversation is supposed to happen. Cutting one another off mid thought makes for argument. (Summation is critical)
3. Listen the way you want to be listened to.
4. Ask for clarification if you do not understand the whole thought, but not until you have listened all the way.
5. Very often group conversation dynamics are faintly disguised pecking order contests. One-Up, Drop of the Name, Put downs, Over the head, Shot to the heart, Manly defamation, Emasculation, Head trip, Who’s your Mother, to name a few. Don’t play if you can’t stand to lose.
6. Actions speak volumes, words are deceitful. If you don’t act the way you speak, everyone knows, and assumes you are trying to mislead them by your statements. If you act the way they believe is right in the first place, it is difficult to make them believe you are misleading them, no matter how many words.
7. If you want something out of the conversation, let the other person think they are giving you a gift. Really appreciate it. Never beg or plead. If you must trade something, begin your offers at 10% of the Street Value. If you must have the item, and it is a bargaining situation, only go to 80% of the value, unless they are the only possessor of the item or information. If it is a common item, and you must pay full price, just go to K-Mart and close the negotiations. You loose all bargaining face if you pay the full price. The only time to do this, is to set the person up for a future gig.
8. Sharing your intimate thoughts gives people power over you.
9. People who you currently trust may in the future betray you.
10. When in doubt, go with your heart. It may mislead you, but you have to go with the percentages. If you don’t believe in yourself, you can’t believe in anybody else.
11. Always defer to your master. He would not be your master if he were not better. Never speak against him.
12. If your master fails you, find another one, or wait until he is deposed.
13. Give your all. Never give up. Overcome at all costs. Make them prove you wrong.
14. Never fear to fail. If you truly fail, you have been beaten and must accept it. Trying is more important than winning.
15. Ask advice from a broken man. He knows where he went wrong.
16. Ask advice from a great man. He knows where he went right.
17. Never betray a friend. If he betrays you, you were not his friend. You can still be friendly, but you can never be his friend again. If you betray him, you loose part of your soul. It will never be the same again. Know that you can never be friends again, and be a better friend the next time. This will haunt you forever.
18. A dog is always glad to see you.
19. If you are in despair, seek your friends. If you are honest with them, and they give you the advice of Jobs friends or wife, you have gone to the wrong friends. If you have a new perspective after talking with them, you made the right choice.
20. Respect other peoples personal space, and their property.
21. Stay away from gifts and obligations.
22. Make someone happy.
23. Overcome your natural instincts to obsess on mistakes. Choose to be happy.
24. Marry for love. Never Quit.
25. Brush your teeth.
26. Eat Well.
27. Travel.
28. Travel more.
29. Watch the Dawn’s early light.
30. Respect your parents.
31. Respect the elderly.
32. Learn something every day.
33. Try harder than anyone else, and choose wisely what you try.
34. Submit only if you have exhausted all of your resources.
35. Lay on your back on the hood of an old car on a moonless night & watch shooting stars. (Say money, money, money before the star flames out)
36. Build a fire in the woods, and sleep by it.
37. Get lost as often as possible. You never know what you might find.
38. Speak to people in the bazaar’s, they are almost always friendly.
39. Eat at the road-houses, and talk to the farmers.
40. Listen to good music.
41. Share your music with your friends.
42. Listen very carefully to what they say.
43. Hug your children, no matter what age they are.
44. Arm wrestle with a friend.
45. Write letters, send e-mail’s, call, walk over, drive by, drop in, keep in touch with people you care about.
46. Embrace the goofy, stupid, unkempt, un-lovely people you are related to. It isn’t easy, but it’s right.
47. Open up your house to your friends. Make them feel welcome.
48. Ride a motorcycle in the rain.
49. Come home to the place that feels like home.
These things appear to be self evident, and intuitively obvious.
1. Do not interrupt a conversation to make corrections when two other persons are speaking.
2. When only two persons are speaking, always wait until you are sure the other person has stopped speaking before you give your opinion about what they were saying. The conversation will never get where the first person was going if you divert it by interjecting your thoughts about a portion of the topic, or fail to accept the suppositions. You can always go back to correct the person when they are done. This is how proper conversation is supposed to happen. Cutting one another off mid thought makes for argument. (Summation is critical)
3. Listen the way you want to be listened to.
4. Ask for clarification if you do not understand the whole thought, but not until you have listened all the way.
5. Very often group conversation dynamics are faintly disguised pecking order contests. One-Up, Drop of the Name, Put downs, Over the head, Shot to the heart, Manly defamation, Emasculation, Head trip, Who’s your Mother, to name a few. Don’t play if you can’t stand to lose.
6. Actions speak volumes, words are deceitful. If you don’t act the way you speak, everyone knows, and assumes you are trying to mislead them by your statements. If you act the way they believe is right in the first place, it is difficult to make them believe you are misleading them, no matter how many words.
7. If you want something out of the conversation, let the other person think they are giving you a gift. Really appreciate it. Never beg or plead. If you must trade something, begin your offers at 10% of the Street Value. If you must have the item, and it is a bargaining situation, only go to 80% of the value, unless they are the only possessor of the item or information. If it is a common item, and you must pay full price, just go to K-Mart and close the negotiations. You loose all bargaining face if you pay the full price. The only time to do this, is to set the person up for a future gig.
8. Sharing your intimate thoughts gives people power over you.
9. People who you currently trust may in the future betray you.
10. When in doubt, go with your heart. It may mislead you, but you have to go with the percentages. If you don’t believe in yourself, you can’t believe in anybody else.
11. Always defer to your master. He would not be your master if he were not better. Never speak against him.
12. If your master fails you, find another one, or wait until he is deposed.
13. Give your all. Never give up. Overcome at all costs. Make them prove you wrong.
14. Never fear to fail. If you truly fail, you have been beaten and must accept it. Trying is more important than winning.
15. Ask advice from a broken man. He knows where he went wrong.
16. Ask advice from a great man. He knows where he went right.
17. Never betray a friend. If he betrays you, you were not his friend. You can still be friendly, but you can never be his friend again. If you betray him, you loose part of your soul. It will never be the same again. Know that you can never be friends again, and be a better friend the next time. This will haunt you forever.
18. A dog is always glad to see you.
19. If you are in despair, seek your friends. If you are honest with them, and they give you the advice of Jobs friends or wife, you have gone to the wrong friends. If you have a new perspective after talking with them, you made the right choice.
20. Respect other peoples personal space, and their property.
21. Stay away from gifts and obligations.
22. Make someone happy.
23. Overcome your natural instincts to obsess on mistakes. Choose to be happy.
24. Marry for love. Never Quit.
25. Brush your teeth.
26. Eat Well.
27. Travel.
28. Travel more.
29. Watch the Dawn’s early light.
30. Respect your parents.
31. Respect the elderly.
32. Learn something every day.
33. Try harder than anyone else, and choose wisely what you try.
34. Submit only if you have exhausted all of your resources.
35. Lay on your back on the hood of an old car on a moonless night & watch shooting stars. (Say money, money, money before the star flames out)
36. Build a fire in the woods, and sleep by it.
37. Get lost as often as possible. You never know what you might find.
38. Speak to people in the bazaar’s, they are almost always friendly.
39. Eat at the road-houses, and talk to the farmers.
40. Listen to good music.
41. Share your music with your friends.
42. Listen very carefully to what they say.
43. Hug your children, no matter what age they are.
44. Arm wrestle with a friend.
45. Write letters, send e-mail’s, call, walk over, drive by, drop in, keep in touch with people you care about.
46. Embrace the goofy, stupid, unkempt, un-lovely people you are related to. It isn’t easy, but it’s right.
47. Open up your house to your friends. Make them feel welcome.
48. Ride a motorcycle in the rain.
49. Come home to the place that feels like home.
Unreliable Press
6 2 94
Don Brown
200 Ton South Danly
We are having daily problems, electrically, with the southern most 200 ton Danly press on the East side of the Press room. This is one of the presses that came up from Dresden Tenn., at the closing of our plant there. It has an antiquated two cam, rotary cam protection system,which has been wired in such a way as to use the same cam twice, when what is really needed is a four cam limit switching assembly. Beyond that, the starters, and switchgear in the main control box are so beat up that it is a wonder they work at all. What is needed, is to get a new box, and start over. ( with programmable controllers ) The trouble shooting on a press like this is like looking for wheels with a flash light. It can be done, but it might take an hour, or it might take a day. The deal is, I need to rewire this press, and it is going to cost about $5,100. I have attached the non- inventory request for outside purchases necessary for the rewire. The labor should be about 55 man hours for the electricians, @ $19.84/hr. This adds up to $1,091. This press will never be reliable until this work is done. Please request an AFE to upgrade the wiring on this old press. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please call me.
Steven Forrester
Plant Engineer
Dico Inc.
Des Moines Ia
Don Brown
200 Ton South Danly
We are having daily problems, electrically, with the southern most 200 ton Danly press on the East side of the Press room. This is one of the presses that came up from Dresden Tenn., at the closing of our plant there. It has an antiquated two cam, rotary cam protection system,which has been wired in such a way as to use the same cam twice, when what is really needed is a four cam limit switching assembly. Beyond that, the starters, and switchgear in the main control box are so beat up that it is a wonder they work at all. What is needed, is to get a new box, and start over. ( with programmable controllers ) The trouble shooting on a press like this is like looking for wheels with a flash light. It can be done, but it might take an hour, or it might take a day. The deal is, I need to rewire this press, and it is going to cost about $5,100. I have attached the non- inventory request for outside purchases necessary for the rewire. The labor should be about 55 man hours for the electricians, @ $19.84/hr. This adds up to $1,091. This press will never be reliable until this work is done. Please request an AFE to upgrade the wiring on this old press. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please call me.
Steven Forrester
Plant Engineer
Dico Inc.
Des Moines Ia
BUMS
At 12:45 PM. today, I called the Des Moines Metro Police regarding a homeless person who was down on the ground at the levee west of the factory, apparently experiencing some sort of personal gravity storm. Upon seeing him, I decided that he didn't need a rescue unit, but, he did need picked up. I waited at the gate at Wabash and SW 17th street, and guided the police to the person when they came. When we approached the person, ( Male, 200 lbs., Caucasian, bearded, Grey shirt, blue jeans ) he tried to run away, but was unsuccessful. The police apprehended the young man, gave him silver bracelets, and he left with them. As you know this is an ongoing problem on our property. Almost weekly similar incidents happen. I have mixed feelings when I see a young man hauled off like that. I don't want to deal with them personally, but, then again I feel almost guilty adding to their existing problems. Another day, another bum.
Steven Forrester
Plant Engineer
Dico Inc.
Des Moines Ia.
Steven Forrester
Plant Engineer
Dico Inc.
Des Moines Ia.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Bad Cat
Snowball meets Peaches
Due to an unusual set of circumstances your dog ended up spending the weekend with new friends. She seemed happy enough with the idea as it was explained to her, and in fact enjoyed sticking her head out of the car window on the ride to the Forresters. Once she saw the large fenced in yard, and the lovely flower gardens to dig in, it seemed like Paradise. The freedom to run at large in an area protected from the neighborhood toughs like the dachshund across the way, and the terrier in the adjoining yard. She could bark at them, and they couldn't get at her. What a perfect place. She ran and played. She ran in circles. She found some smelly stuff near the bushes and rolled in it just for the fun of it. Her little home was just inside the open door to the garage, and a familiar smell was to be had from her blankets in there. Pup Heaven.
Then, along came a cat. A pretty big cat. She looked friendly enough. Steve told me her name was Peaches, and to play nice. She looked a little old. Big, but old. Didn't seem to walk very fast, I could run circles around her, and she just sat there. I lunged at her, and she just sat there. She appeared to be a big, old, boring cat, that just didn't have the time of day for me. I played in the yard for an hour or so, and barked at all of the neighborhood pets that I could see. Steve let me inside the house to look around, and he went off to do something with the colored screen John is always working on. I saw my chance, and made a dash for the cat bowl. It was full of yummy cat food. I looked around, and no one was watching, so I began to make a stolen meal. The next thing I know, that stupid old cat is right behind me making a fuss. Whack, I take a paw up against the head that sends me spinning into the wall. Yelp, and I'm out of there. That cat does not like me eating her food. I am sure of it. I think I will lay low for a while, and get back to the cat food when she is not looking. An hour passes, and I think the coast is clear. I sneak over to the bowl, and suddenly, I am knocked into the corner, and that cat is everywhere I turn. Paws to the left. Paws to the right. She must have taken lessons from George Foreman. There is no way out. Yelping doesn't help. I run, but she is right after me. Outside, and into the yard. I only thought I could run fast. That cat is everywhere. She actually got me down, and held me there. I put my paws over my head and just waited. Apparently, waiting is what cats do best. Each time I lifted a paw, she whacked me again. She did this until she got bored. Then, she walked away about three feet, and waited some more. I do not believe I will be eating any more cat food. It really wasn't that good. Besides, Now, every time I want to go into the house, or the garage, or through the garden. If she is there, I have to walk around her. She just sits there daring me to get close. I think she is a bully. A big, fat, old, sneezy, stupid, sneaky, bully cat. Lucky for me she likes the front yard better than the back yard. The yard is still fun, but that cat acts like she owns the place. I think I will be glad when John & Joyce get back.
Due to an unusual set of circumstances your dog ended up spending the weekend with new friends. She seemed happy enough with the idea as it was explained to her, and in fact enjoyed sticking her head out of the car window on the ride to the Forresters. Once she saw the large fenced in yard, and the lovely flower gardens to dig in, it seemed like Paradise. The freedom to run at large in an area protected from the neighborhood toughs like the dachshund across the way, and the terrier in the adjoining yard. She could bark at them, and they couldn't get at her. What a perfect place. She ran and played. She ran in circles. She found some smelly stuff near the bushes and rolled in it just for the fun of it. Her little home was just inside the open door to the garage, and a familiar smell was to be had from her blankets in there. Pup Heaven.
Then, along came a cat. A pretty big cat. She looked friendly enough. Steve told me her name was Peaches, and to play nice. She looked a little old. Big, but old. Didn't seem to walk very fast, I could run circles around her, and she just sat there. I lunged at her, and she just sat there. She appeared to be a big, old, boring cat, that just didn't have the time of day for me. I played in the yard for an hour or so, and barked at all of the neighborhood pets that I could see. Steve let me inside the house to look around, and he went off to do something with the colored screen John is always working on. I saw my chance, and made a dash for the cat bowl. It was full of yummy cat food. I looked around, and no one was watching, so I began to make a stolen meal. The next thing I know, that stupid old cat is right behind me making a fuss. Whack, I take a paw up against the head that sends me spinning into the wall. Yelp, and I'm out of there. That cat does not like me eating her food. I am sure of it. I think I will lay low for a while, and get back to the cat food when she is not looking. An hour passes, and I think the coast is clear. I sneak over to the bowl, and suddenly, I am knocked into the corner, and that cat is everywhere I turn. Paws to the left. Paws to the right. She must have taken lessons from George Foreman. There is no way out. Yelping doesn't help. I run, but she is right after me. Outside, and into the yard. I only thought I could run fast. That cat is everywhere. She actually got me down, and held me there. I put my paws over my head and just waited. Apparently, waiting is what cats do best. Each time I lifted a paw, she whacked me again. She did this until she got bored. Then, she walked away about three feet, and waited some more. I do not believe I will be eating any more cat food. It really wasn't that good. Besides, Now, every time I want to go into the house, or the garage, or through the garden. If she is there, I have to walk around her. She just sits there daring me to get close. I think she is a bully. A big, fat, old, sneezy, stupid, sneaky, bully cat. Lucky for me she likes the front yard better than the back yard. The yard is still fun, but that cat acts like she owns the place. I think I will be glad when John & Joyce get back.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Eleven seconds
Eleven, point one, Seconds
The light of race day found us heading into the sun, pulling a trailer of hope with our old pickup. The bike on the trailer was covered with an old canvas to protect our dream from the elements. The leathers were between us on the seat, and the toolbox sat under my partner’s feet. We didn’t speak. Just drank coffee and stared at the highway before us. An hours ride to the track, feeling for all the world like we were heading to battle. Very few words were spoken. The months of preparations to prove this machine would do what it said were all wrapped up in the moment. We were some of the first to pull onto the race grounds for the day. Our moment would come just after ten o’clock. We found our spot in the pit area, and began to unload the bike. We used the pickup like the funded racers used their trailers. Suit up, and over to the time trials. We had been here before, but had not done as well as we had hoped. A snapped chain tightener had ended that day badly with a locked back wheel, and a skid to a stop half way down the track. At the staging area behind the starting lights we burned off the back tire, poured bleach onto a spot on the ground, and did it again to liven up the rubber and make it sticky. As we came up, a “Snortin Norton” pulled into the lane across. This was suppose to be a time to qualify, but the true enemy sat there roaring next to us. This monster thirty feet away was supposed to rival our three cylinder, two stroke, as the world’s fastest production motorcycle. The rider nodded his helmet as we exchanged glances. I had only hoped to qualify, and here was the race that any street rider would have given everything to participate in. His bike weighed more, but he had more horsepower. The driver looked to be two hundred pounds, and I was a very trim 130. The two stroke I was riding had almost no torque at the lower rpm ranges, but at 6 to 11 hundred, outperformed any known machine. My bike weighed less. It really was up to the two of us to eliminate the other.
The starting lights from the “Christmas Tree” fell evenly. No advantage to either rider. I throttled up to sixty five hundred, and snapped the clutch a light from the bottom. I knew that I needed the rpm’s to get the torque, and that I would slip the tire badly at first with no forward momentum. Blue smoke rolled up around my feet as the back tire began to spin and scream. I began moving forward on the tank to keep the front tire on the ground. I knew from dynamometer testing that my highest torque curve was between 7 and 10 thousand. After 10.5 it dropped dramatically. I shifted at 9.5, and moved a little farther up on the seat. The back tire was still burning, and I began to move my body down closer to the handlebars to break any possible wind I could. The bike began to rise, as I shifted to third. By now I had my helmet forward of the gauges, and was no longer in the seat. Still spinning, with the throttle full open, the front tire came to the ground just as I shifted for fourth. It came up a little, but I was back in the saddle with my head behind the rpm indicator as I shifted to my last gear, the rpm guage bumped my helmet in a small raise. I put my feet back to the rear pegs to become as wind worthy as possible. We crossed the finish line at what looked to be dead even. We knew that only the camera would tell who was king as we coasted down to the turnaround. I had turned the illusive eleven-second race, and beaten the Norton by a hand breath. I didn’t care if I trophied that day or not. Qualification was a joke. We had run full out, nothing held back. I won by a hair, and possibly by my weight, but winning is winning. Only a few of us knew, and it really only mattered to us anyway. This day is like oxygen to me. It comes into my mind when I hear the scream of an engine at the upper end of it's torque range. The memory fills me up with new air in far less time than it took to experience.
The light of race day found us heading into the sun, pulling a trailer of hope with our old pickup. The bike on the trailer was covered with an old canvas to protect our dream from the elements. The leathers were between us on the seat, and the toolbox sat under my partner’s feet. We didn’t speak. Just drank coffee and stared at the highway before us. An hours ride to the track, feeling for all the world like we were heading to battle. Very few words were spoken. The months of preparations to prove this machine would do what it said were all wrapped up in the moment. We were some of the first to pull onto the race grounds for the day. Our moment would come just after ten o’clock. We found our spot in the pit area, and began to unload the bike. We used the pickup like the funded racers used their trailers. Suit up, and over to the time trials. We had been here before, but had not done as well as we had hoped. A snapped chain tightener had ended that day badly with a locked back wheel, and a skid to a stop half way down the track. At the staging area behind the starting lights we burned off the back tire, poured bleach onto a spot on the ground, and did it again to liven up the rubber and make it sticky. As we came up, a “Snortin Norton” pulled into the lane across. This was suppose to be a time to qualify, but the true enemy sat there roaring next to us. This monster thirty feet away was supposed to rival our three cylinder, two stroke, as the world’s fastest production motorcycle. The rider nodded his helmet as we exchanged glances. I had only hoped to qualify, and here was the race that any street rider would have given everything to participate in. His bike weighed more, but he had more horsepower. The driver looked to be two hundred pounds, and I was a very trim 130. The two stroke I was riding had almost no torque at the lower rpm ranges, but at 6 to 11 hundred, outperformed any known machine. My bike weighed less. It really was up to the two of us to eliminate the other.
The starting lights from the “Christmas Tree” fell evenly. No advantage to either rider. I throttled up to sixty five hundred, and snapped the clutch a light from the bottom. I knew that I needed the rpm’s to get the torque, and that I would slip the tire badly at first with no forward momentum. Blue smoke rolled up around my feet as the back tire began to spin and scream. I began moving forward on the tank to keep the front tire on the ground. I knew from dynamometer testing that my highest torque curve was between 7 and 10 thousand. After 10.5 it dropped dramatically. I shifted at 9.5, and moved a little farther up on the seat. The back tire was still burning, and I began to move my body down closer to the handlebars to break any possible wind I could. The bike began to rise, as I shifted to third. By now I had my helmet forward of the gauges, and was no longer in the seat. Still spinning, with the throttle full open, the front tire came to the ground just as I shifted for fourth. It came up a little, but I was back in the saddle with my head behind the rpm indicator as I shifted to my last gear, the rpm guage bumped my helmet in a small raise. I put my feet back to the rear pegs to become as wind worthy as possible. We crossed the finish line at what looked to be dead even. We knew that only the camera would tell who was king as we coasted down to the turnaround. I had turned the illusive eleven-second race, and beaten the Norton by a hand breath. I didn’t care if I trophied that day or not. Qualification was a joke. We had run full out, nothing held back. I won by a hair, and possibly by my weight, but winning is winning. Only a few of us knew, and it really only mattered to us anyway. This day is like oxygen to me. It comes into my mind when I hear the scream of an engine at the upper end of it's torque range. The memory fills me up with new air in far less time than it took to experience.
The Here and Now
Well, we have skipped around the years backwards from now a bit. Each page a snapshot of the day. Like Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse Five, I have drawn a picture of some important, and some not so important days that happened up to now. If I were any good at this, I would be able to post snaps of tomorrow, and maybe next year when some event happens, and still be able to jump back to the here and now. It all happens within the framework of my lifetime, and somehow that appeals to me.
Take the beginning of time. In the beginning God separated the night from the day, and made seasons that we could use for reference in the passing of years. He didn't need time. He plainly lives outside of it. He made it for our convenience. He, on the other hand, can step into it, and out of it at his discretion. This is how he can be everywhere, for everyone, all the time. He is simply much larger than we can conceive.
Now we move about in the time allotted to us in a normally one way track that starts in our beginning, and ends at our end. I think, since the Bible says he knew us before we were born, that we are placed into time at exactly the right moment to serve his will. And, taken out at the other end in much the same way. Everyone has a day appointed for each. The Chinese worship their ancestors, and feel that they can change the present by praying to relatives who have passed on, or stepped out of time. I think, when we step out of time at the far end, we will not only be able to see our grandparents who have gone on before. I think we will see our great great grandchildren who have not been born yet. We are the only ones in the present, not them. When we step on out, they will be there possibly waiting and watching how we did while we had the opportunity to impact time. I can only hope I did well enough for them to be interested. I want to make that impact, and hope I do. Some days I am just not up to the challenge. I do not want to be that guy who just takes his time wasting time, and making time for something that is not yet here. This present moment, that rushes the air before and after me, is just too precious.
The deal is, this whole blog is about what I think about life, what I think about travel, and what I think about time. I am not at this point even able to ask the right questions I think.
Steve Forrester 2 09 09
Take the beginning of time. In the beginning God separated the night from the day, and made seasons that we could use for reference in the passing of years. He didn't need time. He plainly lives outside of it. He made it for our convenience. He, on the other hand, can step into it, and out of it at his discretion. This is how he can be everywhere, for everyone, all the time. He is simply much larger than we can conceive.
Now we move about in the time allotted to us in a normally one way track that starts in our beginning, and ends at our end. I think, since the Bible says he knew us before we were born, that we are placed into time at exactly the right moment to serve his will. And, taken out at the other end in much the same way. Everyone has a day appointed for each. The Chinese worship their ancestors, and feel that they can change the present by praying to relatives who have passed on, or stepped out of time. I think, when we step out of time at the far end, we will not only be able to see our grandparents who have gone on before. I think we will see our great great grandchildren who have not been born yet. We are the only ones in the present, not them. When we step on out, they will be there possibly waiting and watching how we did while we had the opportunity to impact time. I can only hope I did well enough for them to be interested. I want to make that impact, and hope I do. Some days I am just not up to the challenge. I do not want to be that guy who just takes his time wasting time, and making time for something that is not yet here. This present moment, that rushes the air before and after me, is just too precious.
The deal is, this whole blog is about what I think about life, what I think about travel, and what I think about time. I am not at this point even able to ask the right questions I think.
Steve Forrester 2 09 09
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The "Get Together"
Thanksgiving at the Farm
2001
Thanksgiving at the Forrester farm doesn’t really start on that special Thursday in November. It starts weeks before with a hint and a question from Mom about three or four weeks before. Shortly afterward an email from a brother or a sister will question what the other will be bringing for the meal. Notes such as these pass for a fortnight discussing who will attend, what they will bring, and a little of the latest happenings in their lives. By the time the day arrives a meal fit for Kings is prepared, and attendees have some background on what is happening with each other. Despite prior knowledge of some things, this is not something you are really ever prepared for. I am the oldest of nine children. Five share my gene pool, and four are adopted. Bill and Deb and I mostly have grown children, and Mark has a mix from diapers to on their own. Actually, Marks oldest daughter has a new baby, and is starting the next generation of Great Grandchildren for my parents. In a short interlude with my mother she told me that she had no idea what would come to be when she and my dad set up house in a little apartment above the river bridge in Burlington fifty some years ago. At that moment there were more than fifty people in and around her house that she and my father were in some way responsible for.
People start arriving early in the morning. In this case Marks daughter Diana and her new baby (with new life pardner) had arrived a day early and planned to stay for the weekend. They had recently come from the West Coast, and had been staying with her parents in Minnesota for a month or so since the baby had been born. They are what we used to call flower children, and very committed to each other, the baby, the planet, and all things good and natural. They make their living by going to the various concerts and happenings around the US and selling home made personal items. Casper (new life pardner) is a site to behold. As much like a hippie as any child of the 60’s. He tells me his parents are like him, and he is the product of his heritage. He was well liked, and accepted into this amalgam as very medium clay. There are worse, and there are better. His status will be determined over the years. My three mostly adult children were together for the first time in many months, and my wife and I were as pleased as punch to break up the wrestling match in the back of our van on the way up. My brother Bill, who is next youngest to me, brought his new lady friend, and even though I know she has met some of these people, I have to think it must have been a little overwhelming to see them all at once in one place, at one time. Bill has been divorced for quite a few years now, and it appears that love has finally come his way, and it pleases us all to know he is happy again. He has two adult daughters who were not able to attend. Mark, Diana’s dad has eleven children. They left for downstate IL after he got off work on the late shift in the factory where he works, and arrived with all intact early Thursday morning. He had gotten about 2 hours sleep, and was tired as can be expected, but obviously pleased to see the place he grew up, and the people he loved. My sister Deb has three mostly adult children who were all able to attend, and as soon as people started arriving cousins who had not seen each other for years left off the conversation, and the play, where they had dropped it when they were last together. Deb has some pretty serious female problems, and will be going into the Hospital the next Monday for surgery. I expect each of my brothers, who can get there, will attend, and I know my mom, and maybe even me will go to her house to take care of her after she gets home. Her husband Bob is a teacher and will have to be away the following Friday, but I know he will take off work the rest of the week to be with her. He is three days younger than I am, and we have been fast friends for many years. He is devoted to Deb and the kids, and the best brother in law a guy could ever ask for. My brother Jeff is married to Michele and they have one adopted son Nate. He is a city boy by nature and nurture. I have heard that he has a game port instead of a left index finger. Nevertheless, when the country cousins show up, he is right in the middle, and makes no bones about staying overnight with them no matter what or who says what. As soon as they arrive, he is out of the truck and running like he never has to stop. I saw him lead a charge of cousins across the creek from our cabin in the woods up the cliff to the Indian mounds like Custer. No fear. Earl and his wife Jodi brought their boy Brandon. Casey brought his live in, and her kids. His first wife showed up later with his genetic kids, and taunted his girlfriend a little. My dad’s cousin’s wife Millie, who was the oldest person there came, and brought my cousin Sharon. I always liked them both, and spent quite a while talking with them about their families.
Lunchtime arrived, and the meal was served. This always turns into a buffet, because no one could set that many people at one place without a banquet hall. Well my brothers and sisters can all cook. They all brought something spectacular, and we all ate until the turkey took over and sat us down for a rest. Brothers and sisters separated off into a nook, or on a couch, to tell each other of their lives, and cousins played outside and at our feet. Mom went from grandchild to grandchild like a happy bee pollinating each one with love as she stopped. Dad drank it in like the freshest water he had drank in years. Too soon afternoon wore on, and family responsibilities caught up with all of us. We started back for our own lives happy and blessed that this could happen one more time. The hippie and his new family were staying the weekend anyway, and I started a fire in our log cabin so it would be warm for the baby when they got there later in the evening. Most of the cousins and brothers had walked or drove down earlier in the day to let the kids get their fill of a place set aside for them forever. This little park in the woods has seen many happy Forresters, and I expect they will come as long as possible. My kids sat in silence for much of the trip home reflecting on what had just happened, and I suspect their cousins had similar rides. The family times at the farm will someday come to an end, and we all know it. But, just one more time we all left full of love and turkey. Very Thankful.
Steve Forrester
2001
Thanksgiving at the Forrester farm doesn’t really start on that special Thursday in November. It starts weeks before with a hint and a question from Mom about three or four weeks before. Shortly afterward an email from a brother or a sister will question what the other will be bringing for the meal. Notes such as these pass for a fortnight discussing who will attend, what they will bring, and a little of the latest happenings in their lives. By the time the day arrives a meal fit for Kings is prepared, and attendees have some background on what is happening with each other. Despite prior knowledge of some things, this is not something you are really ever prepared for. I am the oldest of nine children. Five share my gene pool, and four are adopted. Bill and Deb and I mostly have grown children, and Mark has a mix from diapers to on their own. Actually, Marks oldest daughter has a new baby, and is starting the next generation of Great Grandchildren for my parents. In a short interlude with my mother she told me that she had no idea what would come to be when she and my dad set up house in a little apartment above the river bridge in Burlington fifty some years ago. At that moment there were more than fifty people in and around her house that she and my father were in some way responsible for.
People start arriving early in the morning. In this case Marks daughter Diana and her new baby (with new life pardner) had arrived a day early and planned to stay for the weekend. They had recently come from the West Coast, and had been staying with her parents in Minnesota for a month or so since the baby had been born. They are what we used to call flower children, and very committed to each other, the baby, the planet, and all things good and natural. They make their living by going to the various concerts and happenings around the US and selling home made personal items. Casper (new life pardner) is a site to behold. As much like a hippie as any child of the 60’s. He tells me his parents are like him, and he is the product of his heritage. He was well liked, and accepted into this amalgam as very medium clay. There are worse, and there are better. His status will be determined over the years. My three mostly adult children were together for the first time in many months, and my wife and I were as pleased as punch to break up the wrestling match in the back of our van on the way up. My brother Bill, who is next youngest to me, brought his new lady friend, and even though I know she has met some of these people, I have to think it must have been a little overwhelming to see them all at once in one place, at one time. Bill has been divorced for quite a few years now, and it appears that love has finally come his way, and it pleases us all to know he is happy again. He has two adult daughters who were not able to attend. Mark, Diana’s dad has eleven children. They left for downstate IL after he got off work on the late shift in the factory where he works, and arrived with all intact early Thursday morning. He had gotten about 2 hours sleep, and was tired as can be expected, but obviously pleased to see the place he grew up, and the people he loved. My sister Deb has three mostly adult children who were all able to attend, and as soon as people started arriving cousins who had not seen each other for years left off the conversation, and the play, where they had dropped it when they were last together. Deb has some pretty serious female problems, and will be going into the Hospital the next Monday for surgery. I expect each of my brothers, who can get there, will attend, and I know my mom, and maybe even me will go to her house to take care of her after she gets home. Her husband Bob is a teacher and will have to be away the following Friday, but I know he will take off work the rest of the week to be with her. He is three days younger than I am, and we have been fast friends for many years. He is devoted to Deb and the kids, and the best brother in law a guy could ever ask for. My brother Jeff is married to Michele and they have one adopted son Nate. He is a city boy by nature and nurture. I have heard that he has a game port instead of a left index finger. Nevertheless, when the country cousins show up, he is right in the middle, and makes no bones about staying overnight with them no matter what or who says what. As soon as they arrive, he is out of the truck and running like he never has to stop. I saw him lead a charge of cousins across the creek from our cabin in the woods up the cliff to the Indian mounds like Custer. No fear. Earl and his wife Jodi brought their boy Brandon. Casey brought his live in, and her kids. His first wife showed up later with his genetic kids, and taunted his girlfriend a little. My dad’s cousin’s wife Millie, who was the oldest person there came, and brought my cousin Sharon. I always liked them both, and spent quite a while talking with them about their families.
Lunchtime arrived, and the meal was served. This always turns into a buffet, because no one could set that many people at one place without a banquet hall. Well my brothers and sisters can all cook. They all brought something spectacular, and we all ate until the turkey took over and sat us down for a rest. Brothers and sisters separated off into a nook, or on a couch, to tell each other of their lives, and cousins played outside and at our feet. Mom went from grandchild to grandchild like a happy bee pollinating each one with love as she stopped. Dad drank it in like the freshest water he had drank in years. Too soon afternoon wore on, and family responsibilities caught up with all of us. We started back for our own lives happy and blessed that this could happen one more time. The hippie and his new family were staying the weekend anyway, and I started a fire in our log cabin so it would be warm for the baby when they got there later in the evening. Most of the cousins and brothers had walked or drove down earlier in the day to let the kids get their fill of a place set aside for them forever. This little park in the woods has seen many happy Forresters, and I expect they will come as long as possible. My kids sat in silence for much of the trip home reflecting on what had just happened, and I suspect their cousins had similar rides. The family times at the farm will someday come to an end, and we all know it. But, just one more time we all left full of love and turkey. Very Thankful.
Steve Forrester
Betsy
Betsy the Cow
The woods surrounding my parent’s home came right up to the yard in those days. This made getting wood heat relatively easy, but owning land has more possibilities for use than firewood. After a couple of years of cutting the closer trees, it became apparent that the grass grew abundantly when sunlight was allowed in. Dad decided that growing boys needed milk and what better way to get it than to have a milk cow. We took lessons in fence building, and before you know it had an enclosure we now call the upper pasture. Once there was a place to stay, animal husbandry seemed obvious. Betsy came to live with us when I was about twelve years old. She was a Guernsey by breeding, and had no manners whatsoever. In fact she was ornery and superstitious. After some instruction from my dad, it became my job to milk the cow. She liked to hang out at the far end of the pasture in the daytime, where the grass was obviously better, and had no sense of time at all. I always had to go get her at milking time. As I said, she was superstitious and would never take the same path to the barn twice. It apparently was bad luck. I would walk down to get her, and she would remember what this was about, and off to the barn we would go. On muddy days I would hop onto her back and ride up the hill. She didn’t mind, and it sure was better than mucking across the swampy bottom land.
Milking her was always a treat. She had extremely small teats, and even my small hands would not fit properly. Milking required a stripping motion that I believe left something to be desired on her part. She would fidget. She would prance about. She would step in the bucket. Every thing a cow is not supposed to do at milking time. If I showed any sign of irritation at her antics, she would kick. That cow could kick forwards, backwards, sideways, and had a special kick she invented herself that was a round house sort of motion that caught you right on top of the head when you were in the kneeling position for milking. As a young teenager there was nothing I liked more in the morning than to get a rock hard frozen tail up along side of my face just before time to get on the school bus. And there was no hiding the barnyard fragrance that goes along with the morning milk session. She was a blooded cow all right though, and gave almost five gallons of milk per day. Just what we needed.
Betsy became lonely, it seemed, and one day a Shetland Pony stud joined her. His name was Sparky, and he lived up to his name. He was every young cowboy’s dream. He was perfectly formed, and just the right size for us. (Not too far to the ground) He became a fast friend with Betsy, and they hung out together constantly. He even took on some of her superstitious ways. He was friendly enough when he wanted to be ridden, but if he decided that he had had enough, then look out. The first sign of too much was a stiff legged, bone-jarring trot that would shake your insides loose. If this didn’t convince you that the days ride was over he would just put his head down and plant all fours at a gallop. You can imagine the result. It was here that I learned a very important lesson in equestrian etiquette. Never let loose of the reins for any reason, under any circumstance. If this happens, then you have to chase the horse on foot until he wants to be caught to take the bridle off. Even if you are done riding for the day. Sparky would rear up on command, just like Roy Rogers’s horse Trigger. It was truly impressive to city kids. He was the second to join our little animal kingdom menagerie. We had many more horses and cows, and goats, sheep, pigs, and a pack of dogs over time.
The woods surrounding my parent’s home came right up to the yard in those days. This made getting wood heat relatively easy, but owning land has more possibilities for use than firewood. After a couple of years of cutting the closer trees, it became apparent that the grass grew abundantly when sunlight was allowed in. Dad decided that growing boys needed milk and what better way to get it than to have a milk cow. We took lessons in fence building, and before you know it had an enclosure we now call the upper pasture. Once there was a place to stay, animal husbandry seemed obvious. Betsy came to live with us when I was about twelve years old. She was a Guernsey by breeding, and had no manners whatsoever. In fact she was ornery and superstitious. After some instruction from my dad, it became my job to milk the cow. She liked to hang out at the far end of the pasture in the daytime, where the grass was obviously better, and had no sense of time at all. I always had to go get her at milking time. As I said, she was superstitious and would never take the same path to the barn twice. It apparently was bad luck. I would walk down to get her, and she would remember what this was about, and off to the barn we would go. On muddy days I would hop onto her back and ride up the hill. She didn’t mind, and it sure was better than mucking across the swampy bottom land.
Milking her was always a treat. She had extremely small teats, and even my small hands would not fit properly. Milking required a stripping motion that I believe left something to be desired on her part. She would fidget. She would prance about. She would step in the bucket. Every thing a cow is not supposed to do at milking time. If I showed any sign of irritation at her antics, she would kick. That cow could kick forwards, backwards, sideways, and had a special kick she invented herself that was a round house sort of motion that caught you right on top of the head when you were in the kneeling position for milking. As a young teenager there was nothing I liked more in the morning than to get a rock hard frozen tail up along side of my face just before time to get on the school bus. And there was no hiding the barnyard fragrance that goes along with the morning milk session. She was a blooded cow all right though, and gave almost five gallons of milk per day. Just what we needed.
Betsy became lonely, it seemed, and one day a Shetland Pony stud joined her. His name was Sparky, and he lived up to his name. He was every young cowboy’s dream. He was perfectly formed, and just the right size for us. (Not too far to the ground) He became a fast friend with Betsy, and they hung out together constantly. He even took on some of her superstitious ways. He was friendly enough when he wanted to be ridden, but if he decided that he had had enough, then look out. The first sign of too much was a stiff legged, bone-jarring trot that would shake your insides loose. If this didn’t convince you that the days ride was over he would just put his head down and plant all fours at a gallop. You can imagine the result. It was here that I learned a very important lesson in equestrian etiquette. Never let loose of the reins for any reason, under any circumstance. If this happens, then you have to chase the horse on foot until he wants to be caught to take the bridle off. Even if you are done riding for the day. Sparky would rear up on command, just like Roy Rogers’s horse Trigger. It was truly impressive to city kids. He was the second to join our little animal kingdom menagerie. We had many more horses and cows, and goats, sheep, pigs, and a pack of dogs over time.
Water at the house
Water at the House
We moved to the little house on the hill in the country before I started school. You could tell it was country because it was five miles down a one-lane sand road to the closest gravel road. This meant that there were no amenities like a furnace or running water. The wood for the stove was pretty close. All you had to do was walk outside and look in any direction. There was the wood for the heat. My dad would cut down the big trees, and then drag them up close to the house with his old two-cylinder John Deere tractor. Then he would hook up “Johnny” to the buzz saw and we would drag the wood to it to be cut to length. Since I was the oldest of the boys, and I only came up to his belt buckle, dad would split it and throw it into a big pile. From there it was up to me to get the wood to a pile closer to the house, and then to keep the wood bin inside full all of the time. The big joke at the time was that I thought my name was “Get Wood” until I was about fourteen years old.
I had several smaller brothers, a baby sister, and now a newborn baby brother. My mother was young, and it could be said that we all grew up together. There were two big rooms in the house and three smaller ones. You came into the kitchen, and then went on into the living room where the wood stove was. On the side were three unheated rooms that were separated from the rest of the house by curtains. When I say unheated, that is exactly what I mean. On cold winter mornings when you first get out of bed the linoleum floors were so cold that they would stick to your bare feet. That was OK, because it was just a short run to the kitchen where mom had the propane oven going, and the door open. We would put the kitchen chairs around the front, and put our feet on the door of the oven to warm while the heat from the wood stove started warm up the rest of the house.
One year after I had started going to the big school, my grandmother had stayed overnight with us. It happened that the window by my bed had a broken windowpane, and there was a small snowdrift on my covers when she came in to wake me up. I had about five layers of blankets on me, so I was toasty warm underneath it all, but the site was disturbing to her. Not being a subtle person, she began to scream at my dad who was getting ready for work. “Charlie, Get your self in here” (Paraphrase) All I know about that is we had a kerosene stove with an electric blower motor in there right after that. It ran all night, and the house was warm all of the time after that.
Well, water was quite another story. There was a hand pump well about 75 feet from the house, but the water from it was pure rust. It was undrinkable, and unusable for washing. The next closest source was still a hand pump, but it was way down past the barn, and down the hill from there. I’m talking a hundred and fifty yards away, and down a pretty good size hill. The well there was a dug well, and bricked up on the sides. My grand dad had dug it, and the water was cold and pure. One time it ran dry, and my dad said it had filled in with sand. He lowered me down to the bottom on a boatswain’s chair with a bucket and a shovel. I would fill the bucket with sand, and he would haul it out and dump it. My job was the easy part. The well was so deep that looking straight up in the daytime I could see the stars in the sky. What a weird feeling. When I found water, I found it all at once. It came in so fast that dad couldn’t pull me out faster than the water came in. I basically swam out, holding onto the rope. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suppose there is still a perfectly good shovel down at the bottom of that well. One very cold day when my cousin Johnny was visiting he was “asked” by his dad to help me carry water to the house. He was a year older, and every bit as country as me. He had one thing I didn’t though. An older brother, who was a mechanical genius, and extremely fond of jokes. I found out that day why not to put your tongue onto the pump handle.
The water I carried in two five-gallon buckets every day was used for drinking and washing. There were seven of us in the house, so the trip down the hill was frequent. We kept a five gallon galvanized bucket just inside the kitchen door with a drinking ladle in it. This was our communal drinking source. When one member of the family had a cold, we all had a cold. As far as washing, that was another matter. On a daily basis, it was pretty much wash your hands and face in the sink, and that was that. Bathing, on the other hand, was once a week in a galvanized tub we would put in the center of the kitchen floor. It held four trips to the well of water, and was heated by putting an electric “doughnut” into the water. This doughnut heated the water all right, but it was poor practice to touch the thing when it was heating up. The shock would feel like it was jerking your arm right off. I hated carrying the water, and complained bitterly. No one else was big enough to bring enough water that mattered, and I felt put upon. To make things a little easier than just carrying two buckets in my hands, I made a yoke to fit my shoulders, and was able to fill the buckets up even more. Still a pain.
My mother had lived in a house with running water, and had some problems with the concept of raising five children without it. Our toilet was a short path to a small outhouse at the edge of the yard. Cold winter days made that an extremely short trip. As I said, my mother was not enthused by the conditions, and I had heard some comments to my dad on their remedy. He had explained in the hearing of all, that a four-foot deep trench would have to be dug all of the way to the well, and a pit big enough to fit the pump in dug to actually get running water to the house. He generously said that he would buy the pump and hose once the trench was dug. His health prevented him from digging the trench himself, and since he grew up that way in the first place, what was the big deal anyway. There was obviously no money for a trenching machine, so this would all need to be dug by hand with a spade. One day my mother had heard all of this she wanted, and went to the barn for the spade. She started digging at the side of the house where she thought the line ought to go, and started a trench wide enough to stand in towards the barn. We all thought we would pitch in with our coffee cans and other implements of destruction, until dad came home. He said: “Your mother wants this, let her dig it”. For the next week we all watched her dig that trench like a set of vulture cheerleaders. She got most of the way across the yard, and was entering the garden area when dad came out to check on her progress. It seemed plain to him that she wasn’t going to give up, and that it would be much easier for everyone if he let us boys help along. He told us to simply “Help your Mother”, and we all jumped in like badgers at an Amish house-raising. Coupled with our other chores it took all summer to get the trench down to the well. Dad was good to his word, and one day he showed up with a brand new Sears’s pump and reels of plastic pipe. Before winter we had water in the sink in the kitchen. Our life changed forever. We still heated water on the stove, and in the big galvanized tank, but the communal water bucket and that dreaded trip to the well were things of the past.
We moved to the little house on the hill in the country before I started school. You could tell it was country because it was five miles down a one-lane sand road to the closest gravel road. This meant that there were no amenities like a furnace or running water. The wood for the stove was pretty close. All you had to do was walk outside and look in any direction. There was the wood for the heat. My dad would cut down the big trees, and then drag them up close to the house with his old two-cylinder John Deere tractor. Then he would hook up “Johnny” to the buzz saw and we would drag the wood to it to be cut to length. Since I was the oldest of the boys, and I only came up to his belt buckle, dad would split it and throw it into a big pile. From there it was up to me to get the wood to a pile closer to the house, and then to keep the wood bin inside full all of the time. The big joke at the time was that I thought my name was “Get Wood” until I was about fourteen years old.
I had several smaller brothers, a baby sister, and now a newborn baby brother. My mother was young, and it could be said that we all grew up together. There were two big rooms in the house and three smaller ones. You came into the kitchen, and then went on into the living room where the wood stove was. On the side were three unheated rooms that were separated from the rest of the house by curtains. When I say unheated, that is exactly what I mean. On cold winter mornings when you first get out of bed the linoleum floors were so cold that they would stick to your bare feet. That was OK, because it was just a short run to the kitchen where mom had the propane oven going, and the door open. We would put the kitchen chairs around the front, and put our feet on the door of the oven to warm while the heat from the wood stove started warm up the rest of the house.
One year after I had started going to the big school, my grandmother had stayed overnight with us. It happened that the window by my bed had a broken windowpane, and there was a small snowdrift on my covers when she came in to wake me up. I had about five layers of blankets on me, so I was toasty warm underneath it all, but the site was disturbing to her. Not being a subtle person, she began to scream at my dad who was getting ready for work. “Charlie, Get your self in here” (Paraphrase) All I know about that is we had a kerosene stove with an electric blower motor in there right after that. It ran all night, and the house was warm all of the time after that.
Well, water was quite another story. There was a hand pump well about 75 feet from the house, but the water from it was pure rust. It was undrinkable, and unusable for washing. The next closest source was still a hand pump, but it was way down past the barn, and down the hill from there. I’m talking a hundred and fifty yards away, and down a pretty good size hill. The well there was a dug well, and bricked up on the sides. My grand dad had dug it, and the water was cold and pure. One time it ran dry, and my dad said it had filled in with sand. He lowered me down to the bottom on a boatswain’s chair with a bucket and a shovel. I would fill the bucket with sand, and he would haul it out and dump it. My job was the easy part. The well was so deep that looking straight up in the daytime I could see the stars in the sky. What a weird feeling. When I found water, I found it all at once. It came in so fast that dad couldn’t pull me out faster than the water came in. I basically swam out, holding onto the rope. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suppose there is still a perfectly good shovel down at the bottom of that well. One very cold day when my cousin Johnny was visiting he was “asked” by his dad to help me carry water to the house. He was a year older, and every bit as country as me. He had one thing I didn’t though. An older brother, who was a mechanical genius, and extremely fond of jokes. I found out that day why not to put your tongue onto the pump handle.
The water I carried in two five-gallon buckets every day was used for drinking and washing. There were seven of us in the house, so the trip down the hill was frequent. We kept a five gallon galvanized bucket just inside the kitchen door with a drinking ladle in it. This was our communal drinking source. When one member of the family had a cold, we all had a cold. As far as washing, that was another matter. On a daily basis, it was pretty much wash your hands and face in the sink, and that was that. Bathing, on the other hand, was once a week in a galvanized tub we would put in the center of the kitchen floor. It held four trips to the well of water, and was heated by putting an electric “doughnut” into the water. This doughnut heated the water all right, but it was poor practice to touch the thing when it was heating up. The shock would feel like it was jerking your arm right off. I hated carrying the water, and complained bitterly. No one else was big enough to bring enough water that mattered, and I felt put upon. To make things a little easier than just carrying two buckets in my hands, I made a yoke to fit my shoulders, and was able to fill the buckets up even more. Still a pain.
My mother had lived in a house with running water, and had some problems with the concept of raising five children without it. Our toilet was a short path to a small outhouse at the edge of the yard. Cold winter days made that an extremely short trip. As I said, my mother was not enthused by the conditions, and I had heard some comments to my dad on their remedy. He had explained in the hearing of all, that a four-foot deep trench would have to be dug all of the way to the well, and a pit big enough to fit the pump in dug to actually get running water to the house. He generously said that he would buy the pump and hose once the trench was dug. His health prevented him from digging the trench himself, and since he grew up that way in the first place, what was the big deal anyway. There was obviously no money for a trenching machine, so this would all need to be dug by hand with a spade. One day my mother had heard all of this she wanted, and went to the barn for the spade. She started digging at the side of the house where she thought the line ought to go, and started a trench wide enough to stand in towards the barn. We all thought we would pitch in with our coffee cans and other implements of destruction, until dad came home. He said: “Your mother wants this, let her dig it”. For the next week we all watched her dig that trench like a set of vulture cheerleaders. She got most of the way across the yard, and was entering the garden area when dad came out to check on her progress. It seemed plain to him that she wasn’t going to give up, and that it would be much easier for everyone if he let us boys help along. He told us to simply “Help your Mother”, and we all jumped in like badgers at an Amish house-raising. Coupled with our other chores it took all summer to get the trench down to the well. Dad was good to his word, and one day he showed up with a brand new Sears’s pump and reels of plastic pipe. Before winter we had water in the sink in the kitchen. Our life changed forever. We still heated water on the stove, and in the big galvanized tank, but the communal water bucket and that dreaded trip to the well were things of the past.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
On back another couple of decades
IN THE CREEK
During the early 1970’s I was working as a construction mechanic and foreman at an earth moving concern. This company moved dirt. We built levees. We remodeled pumping stations. We dug drainage ditches. We cleared land, and we filled in ditches. This meant that we had plenty of big earth moving equipment. This also meant it all had to be repaired constantly and usually where it sat at the job site, in whatever type of weather the season brought. During those years I developed a theory about machinery that has held true to this day. Essentially, “Time and friction have an affect on moving pieces of steel” This means that everything eventually breaks over time. Mostly the timing of when it breaks depends on how hard you work it and how well you oil it.
If it was possible, we brought equipment for repair back to the main garage in Oakville Iowa. This is up the river about 20 miles from Burlington. Cranes would tip over, or be overloaded, or smashed in transit, and I would dutifully cut out the bad section of boom, and weld up new sections. Semi tractors would get piled up in the ditch, and I was the one who would straighten them out. The cranes and dozers at the job site always needed a morning greasing and a noon time fueling. I got to do that. If a crane broke a clutch or a brake for the house to spin on, I would do that type of work in the field. Now we are talking about some pretty big pieces of equipment, and it comes to me that I never really understood how big and heavy this stuff actually was until a bulldozer blew out the clutch brakes for the main drive.
This was a Euclid (Yuke) tractor with a separate V-8 diesel engine for each track. It had three gears forward, and three gears back. The blade had to be moved separately from the main unit during transport. It wouldn’t fit onto a regular highway. Well anyway, the clutches that delivered power from the engines to the tracks had been burned out by a cowboy operator who never got the hang of just putting the thing in gear and pushing dirt. The only way to get to these clutches was up from the bottom, between the tracks. There was a “Splash-plate” between the tracks to keep debris out of the works. The plate was about 5 inches thick, and had a series of large bolts holding it in place that had heads larger than any tool I owned. So, the first order of business was to flame out a wrench. That it, to make one from metal stock with my torch. Crude, but effective. Once the wrench was made, the business of blocking the tractor up, and breaking the bolts loose came to play. I used a small winch on my new tool, and was able to break the bolts loose relatively quickly. I then put some hydraulic jacks under the plate to hold it up, and began walking my wrench around, until all the bolts were loose. There were two locating pins to hold the plate in position, and even after all of the bolts were out this thing would not budge. I was under this thing a dozen ways trying to get it loose. Eventually, I decided to bump the plate with a tracked pick up vehicle we had, called a “Weasel” It broke free all right. And when it did, it was so heavy that it literally punched the hydraulic jacks that were supporting it right on down through the concrete floor. That thing was Heavy! My thoughts raced back to the previous ten minutes when I had actually been crawling underneath that thing. “Whew” Well, now I had a whole new problem. How do you move a piece of steel that heavy out of the way, and plan for returning it to position. I had seen a funny picture of granite blocks being moved by slaves during a High School history lesson, and decided that there was no other way to move it by myself than to do as they had. Put a series of rollers under it. First, I had to drive wedges underneath it to get one end high enough to get a roller under, and after that it was all downhill. I put a winch attached to a building column onto it with a cable, and that baby rolled right out of there like nobodies business. I was feeling very much like the Pharaohs assistant. I still had to get the jacks out of the floor, and pour new cement into the broken place before I could go on, but I felt nothing was too big after that.
The work was hard, and the hours crummy. My boss drank a lot, and that interfered with just about everything. I felt put upon by him, and he made every effort to comment on my long hair, or my dubious friends. One day my friend had padded his crane into a very swampy area of a river bottom, and was digging a ditch with a drag line attachment. He was putting the dirt he removed into a sort of a straight pile, and when I would come out to fuel him up at lunch time I would straighten it up with the newly repaired bulldozer. Now dirt pulled up from a creek bottom is usually pretty wet, and this dirt was no different. I would wait for it to turn to just the right consistency before shaping my new levee with it. My boss came out to check on the job one day, and I was setting on the dozer just finishing up with it as far as I felt I could comfortably move ahead. He was drunk, and started shouting that the job was behind schedule, and it was never going to get done if he let us nincompoops finish the work. He told me to get off. He was going to show us how it was done. Well, he moved ahead about 30 feet and the tractor slid out of control right down into the creek. The creek bottom was rock, and fairly solid, and the intake for the engine was out of the water, so it was still running. Marvin decided to just drive it down the creek to where the bank was not so steep, and to turn, and climb out there. It really was a working plan, except for the large granite rocks that got under the carriage and broke the track. Now Marvin had broken the dozer. It is in icy water just over the top of the broken track, and somehow that was all my fault. He had me pick him up with the weasel, so he wouldn’t get his feet wet, and said fix that thing or you’re fired.
I was eventually able to fix it in place, but the water was cold, the grease was slick, I had to keep going to get fuel to keep it running, and I was not happy. The water was so cold that every so often I would have to get out and get up onto the manifold to get warmed up or just shake to pieces. The broken part was at the bottom of the track, and that meant any fixing had to be done in whatever burst of time that I could hold my breath. I eventually got the broken piece of track to the top, and made the repair. I then drove it up the bank, as in the original plan, and then just kept on driving it on back to town, because that jerk had taken the truck and left me out there in the middle of the night. All of the time I was making this repair, there was a thought that kept revolving through my mind. “There has just got to be a better way to make a living.” I had said it over and over in my mind a hundred times. I had put the emphasis on every single word. It all made sense, and there was no part of it that did not make sense. Soon afterward, I sold all I owned, and went off to the University of Iowa to try something very different from what I knew.
Steve Forrester
During the early 1970’s I was working as a construction mechanic and foreman at an earth moving concern. This company moved dirt. We built levees. We remodeled pumping stations. We dug drainage ditches. We cleared land, and we filled in ditches. This meant that we had plenty of big earth moving equipment. This also meant it all had to be repaired constantly and usually where it sat at the job site, in whatever type of weather the season brought. During those years I developed a theory about machinery that has held true to this day. Essentially, “Time and friction have an affect on moving pieces of steel” This means that everything eventually breaks over time. Mostly the timing of when it breaks depends on how hard you work it and how well you oil it.
If it was possible, we brought equipment for repair back to the main garage in Oakville Iowa. This is up the river about 20 miles from Burlington. Cranes would tip over, or be overloaded, or smashed in transit, and I would dutifully cut out the bad section of boom, and weld up new sections. Semi tractors would get piled up in the ditch, and I was the one who would straighten them out. The cranes and dozers at the job site always needed a morning greasing and a noon time fueling. I got to do that. If a crane broke a clutch or a brake for the house to spin on, I would do that type of work in the field. Now we are talking about some pretty big pieces of equipment, and it comes to me that I never really understood how big and heavy this stuff actually was until a bulldozer blew out the clutch brakes for the main drive.
This was a Euclid (Yuke) tractor with a separate V-8 diesel engine for each track. It had three gears forward, and three gears back. The blade had to be moved separately from the main unit during transport. It wouldn’t fit onto a regular highway. Well anyway, the clutches that delivered power from the engines to the tracks had been burned out by a cowboy operator who never got the hang of just putting the thing in gear and pushing dirt. The only way to get to these clutches was up from the bottom, between the tracks. There was a “Splash-plate” between the tracks to keep debris out of the works. The plate was about 5 inches thick, and had a series of large bolts holding it in place that had heads larger than any tool I owned. So, the first order of business was to flame out a wrench. That it, to make one from metal stock with my torch. Crude, but effective. Once the wrench was made, the business of blocking the tractor up, and breaking the bolts loose came to play. I used a small winch on my new tool, and was able to break the bolts loose relatively quickly. I then put some hydraulic jacks under the plate to hold it up, and began walking my wrench around, until all the bolts were loose. There were two locating pins to hold the plate in position, and even after all of the bolts were out this thing would not budge. I was under this thing a dozen ways trying to get it loose. Eventually, I decided to bump the plate with a tracked pick up vehicle we had, called a “Weasel” It broke free all right. And when it did, it was so heavy that it literally punched the hydraulic jacks that were supporting it right on down through the concrete floor. That thing was Heavy! My thoughts raced back to the previous ten minutes when I had actually been crawling underneath that thing. “Whew” Well, now I had a whole new problem. How do you move a piece of steel that heavy out of the way, and plan for returning it to position. I had seen a funny picture of granite blocks being moved by slaves during a High School history lesson, and decided that there was no other way to move it by myself than to do as they had. Put a series of rollers under it. First, I had to drive wedges underneath it to get one end high enough to get a roller under, and after that it was all downhill. I put a winch attached to a building column onto it with a cable, and that baby rolled right out of there like nobodies business. I was feeling very much like the Pharaohs assistant. I still had to get the jacks out of the floor, and pour new cement into the broken place before I could go on, but I felt nothing was too big after that.
The work was hard, and the hours crummy. My boss drank a lot, and that interfered with just about everything. I felt put upon by him, and he made every effort to comment on my long hair, or my dubious friends. One day my friend had padded his crane into a very swampy area of a river bottom, and was digging a ditch with a drag line attachment. He was putting the dirt he removed into a sort of a straight pile, and when I would come out to fuel him up at lunch time I would straighten it up with the newly repaired bulldozer. Now dirt pulled up from a creek bottom is usually pretty wet, and this dirt was no different. I would wait for it to turn to just the right consistency before shaping my new levee with it. My boss came out to check on the job one day, and I was setting on the dozer just finishing up with it as far as I felt I could comfortably move ahead. He was drunk, and started shouting that the job was behind schedule, and it was never going to get done if he let us nincompoops finish the work. He told me to get off. He was going to show us how it was done. Well, he moved ahead about 30 feet and the tractor slid out of control right down into the creek. The creek bottom was rock, and fairly solid, and the intake for the engine was out of the water, so it was still running. Marvin decided to just drive it down the creek to where the bank was not so steep, and to turn, and climb out there. It really was a working plan, except for the large granite rocks that got under the carriage and broke the track. Now Marvin had broken the dozer. It is in icy water just over the top of the broken track, and somehow that was all my fault. He had me pick him up with the weasel, so he wouldn’t get his feet wet, and said fix that thing or you’re fired.
I was eventually able to fix it in place, but the water was cold, the grease was slick, I had to keep going to get fuel to keep it running, and I was not happy. The water was so cold that every so often I would have to get out and get up onto the manifold to get warmed up or just shake to pieces. The broken part was at the bottom of the track, and that meant any fixing had to be done in whatever burst of time that I could hold my breath. I eventually got the broken piece of track to the top, and made the repair. I then drove it up the bank, as in the original plan, and then just kept on driving it on back to town, because that jerk had taken the truck and left me out there in the middle of the night. All of the time I was making this repair, there was a thought that kept revolving through my mind. “There has just got to be a better way to make a living.” I had said it over and over in my mind a hundred times. I had put the emphasis on every single word. It all made sense, and there was no part of it that did not make sense. Soon afterward, I sold all I owned, and went off to the University of Iowa to try something very different from what I knew.
Steve Forrester
Friday, February 6, 2009
Always Take The Train
Getting Back from Phoenix
Tuesday night, October the 16th. I have just helped a friend drive all of his earthly possessions down Route 66 from Illinois, and what appears to be the best mode of return is the Amtrak Chief. They have just this week suspended service from Phoenix, and so the only connecting link is a Greyhound bus, and it leaves from the south side of Phoenix at 10:00 P.M. to catch the Chief in Flagstaff at 5:00 A.M. We arrived at the station with 15 minutes to spare, and found ourselves in a typical bus station. People with garbage bags for luggage. Tattooed wonders wandering toothlessly and worthlessly. Women in wild prints with half-naked kids that really needed a bath (both). Almost nobody that spoke my mother tongue and the smell of diesel fuel. My friend waited with me until I was in the right line for the right bus, got the willies, wished me well, and left.
As soon as I boarded the bus a couple of young people completely covered with tattoos and wires sticking out of their faces that were behind me, got into a muffled argument about giving up their weapons to the driver ahead of time, or taking the chance of getting caught with their knives and being kicked off. Finally, the girl won him over, and they came forward with their switchblades, and gave them up to the driver before we started out. Similar people sat to the left, the right, and directly in front of me. I kept my bags close with the handles wrapped around my foot. The bus was an old greyhound, but apparently made for the mountain route we were about to take. Big horsepower. The truck I had driven from Illinois to AZ had been powerful enough on the flats, but in the mountain climbs it sometimes slowed to 20-mph at full throttle. This baby went up the mountain at an easy 75-mph fully loaded. At Glendale we all had to get off of the bus while they fueled. A 60ish black woman spoke to me while standing, and asks if I was going on Amtrak. When I spoke, she lit up, and said: Someone who speaks English! She was obviously as out of place in this environment as I was, and asked if I knew that the bus station in Flagstaff was 3 miles from the Train station, and that she had just been told the cabs may not run at night. I knew that the train left at 5 A.M. and thought about this the rest of the way. Once there, the bus station was nearly identical to the one in Phoenix, and I went up to the ticket station to call Amtrak. They said since we had booked our tickets through them that they would send over a courtesy car, and we were saved. The black woman, Ida, sat down next to me and thanked me for getting us out of the scrape. I imagine she would have found out the same thing, but she was glad to have someone to talk to, and we sat together for the next three hours and got to know one another.
She had moved to Phoenix in ‘97 with her husband to retire. She was originally from Cincinnati, and was going there to attend the wedding of a close friend, and had taken the train as a lark. She said she just wanted to do something different. Neither of us had been on a bus since the 1970’s, and made all of the appropriate comments on the changes that had taken place. She showed me pictures of her husband and grandbabies, and I showed her pictures of my family. We talked like soldiers in a foxhole, and got to know one another. I told her about my children, and she told me about hers. She was very bright, articulate, and I found a kindred spirit in her.
The train finally came, and two travelers boarded for the east. We tried to nap before the sun came up, but the trauma of the bus trip had wired us both up tight. So we talked, and listened, until the sun rose up on some of God’s most spectacular works. New Mexico on the Southern route is a sight every person should see several times in his or her life. I had seen it on the drive out, but not having to pay attention to a 60 foot rig with a car tied on the back, and sitting in a luxury seat up high with no worries are two different points of view. The buttes and the mesas glow in the dawn’s first light, and become absolutely spectacular as the light brightens up the day. There are antelope in herds, coyote, and prairie dogs sticking their heads up out of their holes, cattle, and the most beautiful scenery it has ever been my pleasure to witness. I was suddenly overpaid for my discomfort on the bus ride. Well worth the price, with change to spare. Neither of us had slept that night, but we were as excited about the trip as children, and talked for hours. It turned out that she was diabetic, and so we found ourselves eating every couple of hours. Not an altogether bad thing. The food was good, although expensive. One time I paid eight dollars and fifty cents for a hamburger, not realizing that the cheese and tomatoes were a dollar and a half extra. Coffee or tea was a dollar and a half, and an egg muffin for breakfast was over five dollars. I was glad I had brought more cash than I thought I needed. By the time I got to Illinois I was down to five dollars cash.
The train has always fascinated me, and this trip was all of the things about the concept that interested me. It seems that people who know they are going to be together for a while will develop a little community, and water certainly seeks and finds its own level. They break into groups, and clicks, and regard the people who are only on for a half a day as passerby people. The smoking car is where people of like minds find solace in each other. They ask about each other, and tell about themselves. I met at least 15 people on the trip that I would be glad to ask to my house. Actually, when I got off in Fort Madison IA. a group of about ten people got up to the window and waved me a happy life. I sat with Ida most of the time, and we had the time to discuss politics, work, family, friends, music, places to live, and places it would be nice to live. She was rare find in this circumstance, and would be in any. The dining car was china on linen, with real monogrammed silver and perfect waiters. Meals with scenery and a friend are a true treasure to remember.
The train was called the Chief, I suppose because we went through such a big part of the Navajo Nation. It is what we used to call a double-decker. The seating is on the top level, and the restrooms, handicapped seating, and luggage are on the lower level. The train had a cafe that was on the lower level of one car, and I suppose the lower level of the dining car is where the food is prepared. We were in coach, but I know the train had at least 6 Pullman cars for the first class traveler. I had inquired about this, but the fare was $350. more than coach, and I opted to join the proletariat. I had picked up a little book that explained the benefits of first class, and showed pictures of the comfy beds and private rooms. I will have to say that I wished I had taken that option several times over the days to come while trying to find a comfortable way to sleep in the coach section. I never did get more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time, but somehow the excitement of the adventure took me all of the way to my destination. I will admit I slept fourteen hours in a row in my water bed the night I returned, and after about four hours awake, took another three-hour nap.
We stopped for fuel and a window washing in Albuquerque New Mexico. Apparently, an Indian guide gets on a couple of stops before this stop and gives a travelogue and tells tales of the Indian nations in preparation for this stop. The train stops for 45 minutes, and the front of the station, and the parking lot to the side are full of vendors with dream catchers, t-shirts, turquoise and silver jewelry, authentic Navajo blankets, and all of the things you would expect. I was told by people who make the trip regularly to think ahead, or you would go hungry the last half of your trip. Lots of good stuff. I got a New Mexico T-shirt, but my eyes certainly did wander towards the silver earrings. I knew Peg would look good in several.
The light of day Thursday found us just before Kansas City, and me in particular in the viewing car. It is almost all glass from your knees up. They have first run video movies for the kids in the evening. The conductor told me that the movies are especially edited for Amtrak to remove any language or scenes that would offend children, or other right thinking people. I had not watched these, because I had found plenty of things of interest in other cars. I even watched a dice game in the early morning hours in the smoking car. I had never heard some of those things said. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, and watched the sun come up around Olathe, KS. Ida found me there, and we watched the perfect sunrise. Fresh coffee and a good breakfast and we were in Kansas City. This was a fuel stop too, and it took quite a while. Oh boy did the train start to fill up with people. What had been a very quiet car of sleeping people turned into a circus. A family of about 8 took up three seats in front of us, and two to the side. The children were high-class miscreants, wound up on sugar, screaming, bouncing off both sides of the car. Dad and mom were busy buying food, and cleaning up spills the whole way. A group of 7 women were a support group for the one who was turning fifty, and had all decided to take the train to Chicago for a couple of days of shopping. I called them a shopping cult in the cafe over breakfast, and they all giggled like schoolgirls. They were in the seats directly behind me, and when the little girls in front of me started singing playground songs, they joined in. They not only joined in; they encouraged them, and made up new ones. The ever-changing personality of the car had taken on yet another virus. Now different things were different again. At first Ida and I felt like all of these people had broken the adventure / trip spell, but we were soon infected with it all and joined into the melee. Before it was over I did my solo rendition of Paper Doll. It was quite well received I might add.
I got into Fort Madison, IA. that same day about noon. It was Thursday, and my ride was over. It was very neat to get the big wave from the people going on towards Chicago and points east of there. My wife arrived almost immediately. The train was still in the station when the big red van pulled up. If she knew how many people on the train knew that my wife was coming to pick me up in a red van, she would have waited down the block until the train pulled out. We went on over to my parents for a little while because we were so close, but I was passing out tired and fitfully slept in the bed in the back of the van about half of the way home to Quincy. Very few know how refreshing to your soul a road trip can be. The car load of people I had met on the way waving me goodbye was just icing on the cake.
Tuesday night, October the 16th. I have just helped a friend drive all of his earthly possessions down Route 66 from Illinois, and what appears to be the best mode of return is the Amtrak Chief. They have just this week suspended service from Phoenix, and so the only connecting link is a Greyhound bus, and it leaves from the south side of Phoenix at 10:00 P.M. to catch the Chief in Flagstaff at 5:00 A.M. We arrived at the station with 15 minutes to spare, and found ourselves in a typical bus station. People with garbage bags for luggage. Tattooed wonders wandering toothlessly and worthlessly. Women in wild prints with half-naked kids that really needed a bath (both). Almost nobody that spoke my mother tongue and the smell of diesel fuel. My friend waited with me until I was in the right line for the right bus, got the willies, wished me well, and left.
As soon as I boarded the bus a couple of young people completely covered with tattoos and wires sticking out of their faces that were behind me, got into a muffled argument about giving up their weapons to the driver ahead of time, or taking the chance of getting caught with their knives and being kicked off. Finally, the girl won him over, and they came forward with their switchblades, and gave them up to the driver before we started out. Similar people sat to the left, the right, and directly in front of me. I kept my bags close with the handles wrapped around my foot. The bus was an old greyhound, but apparently made for the mountain route we were about to take. Big horsepower. The truck I had driven from Illinois to AZ had been powerful enough on the flats, but in the mountain climbs it sometimes slowed to 20-mph at full throttle. This baby went up the mountain at an easy 75-mph fully loaded. At Glendale we all had to get off of the bus while they fueled. A 60ish black woman spoke to me while standing, and asks if I was going on Amtrak. When I spoke, she lit up, and said: Someone who speaks English! She was obviously as out of place in this environment as I was, and asked if I knew that the bus station in Flagstaff was 3 miles from the Train station, and that she had just been told the cabs may not run at night. I knew that the train left at 5 A.M. and thought about this the rest of the way. Once there, the bus station was nearly identical to the one in Phoenix, and I went up to the ticket station to call Amtrak. They said since we had booked our tickets through them that they would send over a courtesy car, and we were saved. The black woman, Ida, sat down next to me and thanked me for getting us out of the scrape. I imagine she would have found out the same thing, but she was glad to have someone to talk to, and we sat together for the next three hours and got to know one another.
She had moved to Phoenix in ‘97 with her husband to retire. She was originally from Cincinnati, and was going there to attend the wedding of a close friend, and had taken the train as a lark. She said she just wanted to do something different. Neither of us had been on a bus since the 1970’s, and made all of the appropriate comments on the changes that had taken place. She showed me pictures of her husband and grandbabies, and I showed her pictures of my family. We talked like soldiers in a foxhole, and got to know one another. I told her about my children, and she told me about hers. She was very bright, articulate, and I found a kindred spirit in her.
The train finally came, and two travelers boarded for the east. We tried to nap before the sun came up, but the trauma of the bus trip had wired us both up tight. So we talked, and listened, until the sun rose up on some of God’s most spectacular works. New Mexico on the Southern route is a sight every person should see several times in his or her life. I had seen it on the drive out, but not having to pay attention to a 60 foot rig with a car tied on the back, and sitting in a luxury seat up high with no worries are two different points of view. The buttes and the mesas glow in the dawn’s first light, and become absolutely spectacular as the light brightens up the day. There are antelope in herds, coyote, and prairie dogs sticking their heads up out of their holes, cattle, and the most beautiful scenery it has ever been my pleasure to witness. I was suddenly overpaid for my discomfort on the bus ride. Well worth the price, with change to spare. Neither of us had slept that night, but we were as excited about the trip as children, and talked for hours. It turned out that she was diabetic, and so we found ourselves eating every couple of hours. Not an altogether bad thing. The food was good, although expensive. One time I paid eight dollars and fifty cents for a hamburger, not realizing that the cheese and tomatoes were a dollar and a half extra. Coffee or tea was a dollar and a half, and an egg muffin for breakfast was over five dollars. I was glad I had brought more cash than I thought I needed. By the time I got to Illinois I was down to five dollars cash.
The train has always fascinated me, and this trip was all of the things about the concept that interested me. It seems that people who know they are going to be together for a while will develop a little community, and water certainly seeks and finds its own level. They break into groups, and clicks, and regard the people who are only on for a half a day as passerby people. The smoking car is where people of like minds find solace in each other. They ask about each other, and tell about themselves. I met at least 15 people on the trip that I would be glad to ask to my house. Actually, when I got off in Fort Madison IA. a group of about ten people got up to the window and waved me a happy life. I sat with Ida most of the time, and we had the time to discuss politics, work, family, friends, music, places to live, and places it would be nice to live. She was rare find in this circumstance, and would be in any. The dining car was china on linen, with real monogrammed silver and perfect waiters. Meals with scenery and a friend are a true treasure to remember.
The train was called the Chief, I suppose because we went through such a big part of the Navajo Nation. It is what we used to call a double-decker. The seating is on the top level, and the restrooms, handicapped seating, and luggage are on the lower level. The train had a cafe that was on the lower level of one car, and I suppose the lower level of the dining car is where the food is prepared. We were in coach, but I know the train had at least 6 Pullman cars for the first class traveler. I had inquired about this, but the fare was $350. more than coach, and I opted to join the proletariat. I had picked up a little book that explained the benefits of first class, and showed pictures of the comfy beds and private rooms. I will have to say that I wished I had taken that option several times over the days to come while trying to find a comfortable way to sleep in the coach section. I never did get more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time, but somehow the excitement of the adventure took me all of the way to my destination. I will admit I slept fourteen hours in a row in my water bed the night I returned, and after about four hours awake, took another three-hour nap.
We stopped for fuel and a window washing in Albuquerque New Mexico. Apparently, an Indian guide gets on a couple of stops before this stop and gives a travelogue and tells tales of the Indian nations in preparation for this stop. The train stops for 45 minutes, and the front of the station, and the parking lot to the side are full of vendors with dream catchers, t-shirts, turquoise and silver jewelry, authentic Navajo blankets, and all of the things you would expect. I was told by people who make the trip regularly to think ahead, or you would go hungry the last half of your trip. Lots of good stuff. I got a New Mexico T-shirt, but my eyes certainly did wander towards the silver earrings. I knew Peg would look good in several.
The light of day Thursday found us just before Kansas City, and me in particular in the viewing car. It is almost all glass from your knees up. They have first run video movies for the kids in the evening. The conductor told me that the movies are especially edited for Amtrak to remove any language or scenes that would offend children, or other right thinking people. I had not watched these, because I had found plenty of things of interest in other cars. I even watched a dice game in the early morning hours in the smoking car. I had never heard some of those things said. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, and watched the sun come up around Olathe, KS. Ida found me there, and we watched the perfect sunrise. Fresh coffee and a good breakfast and we were in Kansas City. This was a fuel stop too, and it took quite a while. Oh boy did the train start to fill up with people. What had been a very quiet car of sleeping people turned into a circus. A family of about 8 took up three seats in front of us, and two to the side. The children were high-class miscreants, wound up on sugar, screaming, bouncing off both sides of the car. Dad and mom were busy buying food, and cleaning up spills the whole way. A group of 7 women were a support group for the one who was turning fifty, and had all decided to take the train to Chicago for a couple of days of shopping. I called them a shopping cult in the cafe over breakfast, and they all giggled like schoolgirls. They were in the seats directly behind me, and when the little girls in front of me started singing playground songs, they joined in. They not only joined in; they encouraged them, and made up new ones. The ever-changing personality of the car had taken on yet another virus. Now different things were different again. At first Ida and I felt like all of these people had broken the adventure / trip spell, but we were soon infected with it all and joined into the melee. Before it was over I did my solo rendition of Paper Doll. It was quite well received I might add.
I got into Fort Madison, IA. that same day about noon. It was Thursday, and my ride was over. It was very neat to get the big wave from the people going on towards Chicago and points east of there. My wife arrived almost immediately. The train was still in the station when the big red van pulled up. If she knew how many people on the train knew that my wife was coming to pick me up in a red van, she would have waited down the block until the train pulled out. We went on over to my parents for a little while because we were so close, but I was passing out tired and fitfully slept in the bed in the back of the van about half of the way home to Quincy. Very few know how refreshing to your soul a road trip can be. The car load of people I had met on the way waving me goodbye was just icing on the cake.
Road Trip with yet another friend
Road Trip with Cory
Last Tuesday evening I got a call from my friend Cory about 10:30 P.M. just as I was returning from a concert in Macomb that my daughter had been singing at. She is a third year, almost fourth, honors student at Western Illinois University. She is also a Resident Assistant on an all girls freshman’s honors floor at Thompson Hall. It had been an odd sort of day from the start, and here it was finishing up true to form. I had been stopped for speeding in Colchester on the way home, and was not apparently the sort of person this particular young man was looking for, so he let me go, and he apologized for taking up my valuable time. I had a suit on, but I didn’t think it looked that impressive. Anyway, Cory called to ask if I could come over the next day and help load up the Ryder van they had rented to take their furniture to Phoenix for his new job there. Having nothing better to do with my time, and being forewarned by his wife's friend Mary the previous Sunday evening, I accepted the days work gladly. Cory was leaving town, and it looked like a good chance to get in a last conversation or two. Okey Dokey says I. See you before 8 in the morning, and we can get a good start.
Wednesday morning rolls around, and its off to see what’s up with Cory. He had made some sort of arraignment with the trucking company beforehand, and so it was a fairly painless pickup. We got the 24-foot diesel van, and headed back to the house. Having followed Cory driving this large truck to his house in his Ford Escort it became intuitively obvious that it would be much better for me to back the truck into the narrow driveway. Apparently, or obviously, he had never driven a large truck much, if at all. His idea of hugging the center line was to straddle it and leave about three-foot of truck in the oncoming lane. Tree limbs on the side streets were being thrashed about, and turning corners by driving the back wheels up onto the curb was the order of the day. Things being what they are, the first obstacle popped up first. The tree in the driveway had limbs way too low to allow this huge truck to back down the driveway to where the furniture was already packed and in boxes in the garage. We got an extension ladder from the garage and a back saw from the basement that is supposed to be used for making fine cuts on furniture grade wood, and went to the tree. Since my name is Forrester, it appeared that I would be more qualified to climb the tree and make the cuts. It was a tree after all. The limbs were soon history, and I backed up the truck with several inches to spare between the fence and the side of the house. Cory was standing back in the driveway making motions to keep coming, and I did. (To within about ten inches of an electrical high line over the truck that he failed to notice.) My confidence in his making this cross-country trip safely dwindled by the moment.
Almost as soon as the truck was in place, friends from church, Cory’s relatives, his wife's friend Mary , and a pastor from a Methodist Church who Cory sings with occasionally showed up. Our friend Jim was first, then Doug, then Dr. Greg and kids, relatives, and friends. Mary his wife got there just as the truck was finished being loaded with Ding-Dongs and sodas. Really, it was quite a commentary on what kind of people these people are. Lots of friends, willing to help in any way they could. It had been raining, and the sky held the promise of more. Luckily, the rain held off until we were done. People brought refrigerators, washing machines, boxes galore, and all of the things it takes to live in this society of ours. I stacked each item like a tetras puzzle, to get as much loaded into the truck as possible. It was plain to see that there was going to be more furniture than truck. I stacked it to the truck roof, and packed each corner with smaller items. When we reached the end of the truck, as expected, we had bicycles, grills, patio furniture, antique chairs, and garden tools that did not look like they would go, and still have a safe area around the new electronic piano that Mary Jane had made extremely plain must come to no harm. Lydia, Cory's daughter, at this time, was playing on the truck ramp with a neighbor boy, and doing what little girls do best. Bouncing like Tigger the tiger in a Winnie-the-Pooh book, and laughing and running with her little friend. Suddenly, we all heard the awful thud of a small person landing on the concrete beside me. The breath was knocked out of her at first, but soon it became clear that she had a voice. She had landed face down, with her hands outstretched in front of her. We found out later, after a trip to the emergency, that she had gotten a pretty good cut on her left palm and a fat lip from a tooth. It seemed so unfair for her to be so absolutely happy one moment, and then hurt the next. It happens all the time to kids, and I suppose it is just what it takes to grow up. I think it hurts the adults almost as much to see it, and know that we were right there and helpless to prevent it. My Grandpa Earhart had a saying for such things, as he did for most situations, but this one fits. He said: Kids are like little trees, they just have to lose so much bark to grow into an oak. Not that profound I suppose, but it always brought comfort to me in similar situations.
Well, it started raining about then, and everybody left except for me. I was left to try to get what of the overflow of items still in the garage I could into the truck. Cory and Mary Jane were both aware of the surplus item situation, and each had made concessions of proprietary items. Mary Jane was willing to leave bicycles and a couple of antique chairs. Cory graciously gave his new gas grill and patio chairs to his friend Jim. I took things off, and consolidated even more. Finally, I decided to just start stacking bicycles vertically and tie them in place with ropes. We got most of it in, and loading day was over as far as I was concerned.
Somewhere in this finishing up of the truck, Cory jokingly said it would be nice if I would just come along and help on the trip to Phoenix. I, having nothing better to do anyway, said I would ask my wife and see what her reaction would be. At that point, I don’t think either of us was all that serious about it. But, I do dearly love a road trip. And, I had no excuse to not go. And, it was plain to me that unattended Cory's trip west would turn into an oddesy of unhappy events. After all, what sort of a friend would let this happen if he had the power to smooth things over. When Mary Jane asked me if I would go, it cemented the idea into my mind, and I decided to go. It was suddenly clear to me, that this thought was shared by all of the players.
I went on home, and finished the day out on the Internet searching for work, but my mind was on the upcoming events. My wife came home from her new job full of problems of the day and talked about them for quite some time. I listened attentively, but the possibility of a ride down route 66 was waiting for a break in the conversation. I posed it. Red flags. What about getting back. Did I intend to fly the terrorist skies? No Way! I was not going to be allowed into any airplane that held enough fuel to blow up a road sign. I have always loved trains. In fact I have model trains from my childhood days, and run them around the Christmas tree each season. So I suggested that. This cemented it. I would leave for the surface of the sun first thing in the morning.
Thursday morning rolled around, and the light of day found me packing my clothes for an adventure. Cory was supposed to pick me up at 7:30 A.M., and called just after that to tell me he was on his way. The rig, with the little Escort hooked up to the back on a two wheel trailer, showed up around 8, and we started off down the road back towards town. Yep, that’s what I said. Apparently, his little car had a problem with the air bag and the part had just come in, and they were waiting at the Ford Dealership to make that car just like new. I am not much for omens, so we just drove over and had it done with. While waiting, we went to the nearby Wall-Mart to get some so-called breakfast. An elderly lady served up our biscuits and eggs as well as any diner waitress along Route 66. She literally tossed the tray of food onto the counter, and it slid perfectly up to the edge. Obviously a practiced maneuver. We found ourselves on the highway just after 9 A.M. and began our daily ride as we would for the next four days, with prayer. We were in need of protection, and we prayed that Angels would ride with us. As you will see, they clearly rode on the hood. We spent an hour getting used to our new environment, and then it began to rain. Slowly at first, then steady, and then really steady. We worked our way south on the narrow curvy Missouri highways. We were talking and missed our first important turn off. The only thing to do was to explore county road XX; later to be determined a byway. The road was extremely rough and narrow. Thankfully, it only lasted about 30 miles to the point where we could hook up with our intended route. The last time I had been on our intended route the road was new. Truck traffic and time had had its way with this stretch of road, and it was bumpy at best. The rain started in earnest just as we got to Kingdom City, and since we were having such good luck, we took the first of Cory’s “Shortcuts”. Apparently, this two-lane road would cut an hour off of our journey. Nobody will ever know if the shorter route was shorter in time or not. One thing I know for certain, is that this overloaded truck was under-powered for the task at hand. The hills of Missouri do not compare with what we would encounter in New Mexico, or in Arizona, but we found out early that this truck at full throttle was never going to go up a hill of any size at faster than 35 to 40 mph. Later in Arizona we would climb mountains at the stately speed of 20 to 25 mph. Cory was convinced that he could outrun the truck for a short distance. The shortcut finally ended and we eventually found ourselves on the Oklahoma Toll system. The roads were better, but the rain was still with us, and the state operated protection business collected more than we had planned from Cory’s billfold. Almost eleven hours after we left Quincy we found a little known piece of Route 66 that had been abandoned by time in Tulsa, and a hotel where we could park our Behemoth.
We got a room for the night, and were pointed to “Freddies” for dinner. Apparently, they had authentic Lebanese cuisine, and were close. Not being willing to drive the rig another yard, it appeared to be just fine. We were pleasantly surprised by the fare. Being in Tulsa, it only seemed right to get a steak. How wrong could you go when you are getting meat from the place it comes from. The menu was a little confusing to our mid-western tastes, but we were hungry, and the waitress made it sound appealing. The steaks came with a small group of side dishes that were served as individual entrees. First came a clove smelling rice, wrapped in a cabbage leaf that was interesting if not what we were used to. Then a Tabuli, whatever that is. Humas with the salad, and we were thoroughly confused. The food was good to this point, but nothing compared to the steak with Freddies special smoke sauce. It may have been the best steak I ever put into my mouth. Wonderful only begins to call upon its names. Always order steak if you’re in Tulsa.
As we found out, each of us is an early riser. It is common for me to rise at 5:00 A.M., but I was not aware other people do this. I was pleased to find a kindred spirit in this way, and we got off to a good early start. We had traveled nearly 500 miles the first day, and decided that if we were to get there in three days we would have to outdo our previous day in miles. Albuquerque was the goal, and we would have made it too, if it hadn’t been for the wind. What I know about weather could be put into a small cup, stirred up, and have plenty of room for coffee. Cory explained the front that had passed over us, and that a front of some sort or other was dragging this high wind behind it. He said it would stop soon, and we began the climb to higher elevations. The wind beat the front of the truck like a red headed stepchild. I am not certain, but I believe it actually tore the roof loose from the front of the van a little. The wild Texas winds brought up stories and songs of frontier life. I believe it actually lifted the near rear tire off of the ground a couple of times. All of the semi’s were leaning precariously, and the flatbeds that had loads you could see, often had shifted loads. Always in the direction of the blowing wind. The speed of the truck was severely hindered, and our fuel mileage dropped from 9 mpg, down to less than 6. We never made Albuquerque. We stopped in a town a couple of hours short of there called Santa Rosa something. The Comfort Inn had a hot tub, and I spent a pleasant hour letting my muscles unwind from the strain of pulling the steering wheel to the right all day. I met a couple there that were discussing their upcoming marriage over a glass of wine and a ring, and happy thoughts filled my dreams that night.
Saturday morning found us in one of Gods most spectacular sites on this earth. Early on we passed through the Indian nations and saw the poorest conditions in which I know Americans to live. I have seen inner city ghettos, and I do consider the lifestyle to be worse, but as far as having the means to survive, it is possible that many of these places outrank even the inner city. The high plains gives way to the mountains in the distance, and our first Mesa’s appeared. I do believe God himself planted route 66 in between these red cliffs to let us feel a little closer to him. They are majestic. The truck was running effectively, if slowly. Our intentions were to head straight out highway 40 to Flagstaff AZ. and then turn south down the big hill. First we had to stop in Albuquerque to pick up the train ticket for my return. It seems that getting a train ticket is more complicated than one might think. When I had called the ticket agent, about 5 options had presented themselves. None of which included my being able to get a ticket in my hand before a manned, or as it turned out to be, womaned station, where people are actually there to give you one before now. My next chance would be Flagstaff after 4:20 P.M. and before 10:00 A.M. in the morning. This worked out well, because it turns out Cory had gone to his wives sisters wedding in this town just a couple of years before, and we actually stopped in the hotel where the wedding was held to ask directions to the Amtrak station. After getting the ticket, we decided to stop into a restaurant where the wedding reception had been, and the food was supposed to be excellent. As it turns out, the food was all it was supposed to be, but the advice on shortcuts left something to be desired. We talked with the owner of the establishment about the food, and after some questioning it turns out he knew Corys Brother-in-law. In fact he said he “knew him well” It appeared to be a compliment, but in hindsight I believe he does not like the man. He told us of a shortcut from Holbrook south along a more scenic route than the one through Flagstaff. I told him we were driving a 60-foot rig, and ask if the road was good, and if there were any big hills we would have to climb on two lane roads. I do not know this mans heart, but he said no. It is entirely possible that when you are in your Cadillac on cruise at 75 mph they do not seem so big as they do in a truck like ours.
Now, a thing I have not mentioned to now, is that bonds that develops between people when they are confined in each others presence for days on end. It could be called a foxhole mentality. I suppose how it works out depends on whether you are compatible or not. Luckily, we were. We prayed together. We talked about things we have done and things on our minds and in our hearts. We commented on our surroundings, current past and present. Our hopes and our expectations. I find I like him more than ever, and wish I had spent more time with him in the past. Anyway, nighttime found us in Holbrook AZ with four more hours to Phoenix, and not quite enough willpower to continue as dark approached. A rather large and jovial man behind the counter at the Holiday Inn Express where we stopped for the night described the cuisine of the local eateries with gusto, and because of his girth we took him at his word. Apparently good taste has nothing whatsoever to do with girth. Nuf said.
Sunday morning we left went down to the quiet village of Holbrook determined to videotape a spoof commercial in front of the local Ford dealership. The batteries for the camera had not held a charge for our earlier attempt, and this time they were fresh off of the charger. The camera worked well. However, it took several attempts before we were able to get an acceptable copy. Probably the mountain air. We headed south from there on our promised “shortcut” and found that the half hour of two lane road was actually about two and a half hours, and if it wasn’t downhill at the sharpest decline you ever saw, it was uphill at 20 mph. We pulled off the road to let our “following” pass several times. Eventually, we came to the foothills and the cactus. On into Phoenix, and the splendor of Sun City. It really is beautiful, as was the whole trip across southwestern America. It was an adventure, and a pleasure from start to finish. Their new home is lovely. The neighbors came out to greet us. Neighborhood children joined in unloading the truck to ask questions about what sort of children would follow. A local minister’s wife grew up in Ursa, just north of Quincy, and they know Cory and Mary Jane well it seems. They were some of the first to arrive, and they brought some young men from their church to help unload the truck. We were able to get it all inside in about four hours. We took the rental truck to the stable where they are kept, washed the road grime off of the little car, and headed for the shed. Spent and exhausted, too tired to eat, we set up a couple of beds and jumped in. Cory starts work in the morning. He has held up better than most would have, and this is Monday, October 15, 2001. He left for his new position at the TV station here this morning, and I have been putting together bed frames, and now this computer. Today is a day of recuperation for me, and I do not intend to do too much physical work. Setting here after putting all of the boxes in the right rooms, and putting together the things where there is “Some Assembly Required” has left me ready for a nap. Tomorrow evening I leave Phoenix for a bus ride to Flagstaff, where I will catch a train to Fort Madison IA. My mom is going to pick me up there, and I will spend a couple of pleasant days in their company before I return to Quincy.
Steve Forrester
Last Tuesday evening I got a call from my friend Cory about 10:30 P.M. just as I was returning from a concert in Macomb that my daughter had been singing at. She is a third year, almost fourth, honors student at Western Illinois University. She is also a Resident Assistant on an all girls freshman’s honors floor at Thompson Hall. It had been an odd sort of day from the start, and here it was finishing up true to form. I had been stopped for speeding in Colchester on the way home, and was not apparently the sort of person this particular young man was looking for, so he let me go, and he apologized for taking up my valuable time. I had a suit on, but I didn’t think it looked that impressive. Anyway, Cory called to ask if I could come over the next day and help load up the Ryder van they had rented to take their furniture to Phoenix for his new job there. Having nothing better to do with my time, and being forewarned by his wife's friend Mary the previous Sunday evening, I accepted the days work gladly. Cory was leaving town, and it looked like a good chance to get in a last conversation or two. Okey Dokey says I. See you before 8 in the morning, and we can get a good start.
Wednesday morning rolls around, and its off to see what’s up with Cory. He had made some sort of arraignment with the trucking company beforehand, and so it was a fairly painless pickup. We got the 24-foot diesel van, and headed back to the house. Having followed Cory driving this large truck to his house in his Ford Escort it became intuitively obvious that it would be much better for me to back the truck into the narrow driveway. Apparently, or obviously, he had never driven a large truck much, if at all. His idea of hugging the center line was to straddle it and leave about three-foot of truck in the oncoming lane. Tree limbs on the side streets were being thrashed about, and turning corners by driving the back wheels up onto the curb was the order of the day. Things being what they are, the first obstacle popped up first. The tree in the driveway had limbs way too low to allow this huge truck to back down the driveway to where the furniture was already packed and in boxes in the garage. We got an extension ladder from the garage and a back saw from the basement that is supposed to be used for making fine cuts on furniture grade wood, and went to the tree. Since my name is Forrester, it appeared that I would be more qualified to climb the tree and make the cuts. It was a tree after all. The limbs were soon history, and I backed up the truck with several inches to spare between the fence and the side of the house. Cory was standing back in the driveway making motions to keep coming, and I did. (To within about ten inches of an electrical high line over the truck that he failed to notice.) My confidence in his making this cross-country trip safely dwindled by the moment.
Almost as soon as the truck was in place, friends from church, Cory’s relatives, his wife's friend Mary , and a pastor from a Methodist Church who Cory sings with occasionally showed up. Our friend Jim was first, then Doug, then Dr. Greg and kids, relatives, and friends. Mary his wife got there just as the truck was finished being loaded with Ding-Dongs and sodas. Really, it was quite a commentary on what kind of people these people are. Lots of friends, willing to help in any way they could. It had been raining, and the sky held the promise of more. Luckily, the rain held off until we were done. People brought refrigerators, washing machines, boxes galore, and all of the things it takes to live in this society of ours. I stacked each item like a tetras puzzle, to get as much loaded into the truck as possible. It was plain to see that there was going to be more furniture than truck. I stacked it to the truck roof, and packed each corner with smaller items. When we reached the end of the truck, as expected, we had bicycles, grills, patio furniture, antique chairs, and garden tools that did not look like they would go, and still have a safe area around the new electronic piano that Mary Jane had made extremely plain must come to no harm. Lydia, Cory's daughter, at this time, was playing on the truck ramp with a neighbor boy, and doing what little girls do best. Bouncing like Tigger the tiger in a Winnie-the-Pooh book, and laughing and running with her little friend. Suddenly, we all heard the awful thud of a small person landing on the concrete beside me. The breath was knocked out of her at first, but soon it became clear that she had a voice. She had landed face down, with her hands outstretched in front of her. We found out later, after a trip to the emergency, that she had gotten a pretty good cut on her left palm and a fat lip from a tooth. It seemed so unfair for her to be so absolutely happy one moment, and then hurt the next. It happens all the time to kids, and I suppose it is just what it takes to grow up. I think it hurts the adults almost as much to see it, and know that we were right there and helpless to prevent it. My Grandpa Earhart had a saying for such things, as he did for most situations, but this one fits. He said: Kids are like little trees, they just have to lose so much bark to grow into an oak. Not that profound I suppose, but it always brought comfort to me in similar situations.
Well, it started raining about then, and everybody left except for me. I was left to try to get what of the overflow of items still in the garage I could into the truck. Cory and Mary Jane were both aware of the surplus item situation, and each had made concessions of proprietary items. Mary Jane was willing to leave bicycles and a couple of antique chairs. Cory graciously gave his new gas grill and patio chairs to his friend Jim. I took things off, and consolidated even more. Finally, I decided to just start stacking bicycles vertically and tie them in place with ropes. We got most of it in, and loading day was over as far as I was concerned.
Somewhere in this finishing up of the truck, Cory jokingly said it would be nice if I would just come along and help on the trip to Phoenix. I, having nothing better to do anyway, said I would ask my wife and see what her reaction would be. At that point, I don’t think either of us was all that serious about it. But, I do dearly love a road trip. And, I had no excuse to not go. And, it was plain to me that unattended Cory's trip west would turn into an oddesy of unhappy events. After all, what sort of a friend would let this happen if he had the power to smooth things over. When Mary Jane asked me if I would go, it cemented the idea into my mind, and I decided to go. It was suddenly clear to me, that this thought was shared by all of the players.
I went on home, and finished the day out on the Internet searching for work, but my mind was on the upcoming events. My wife came home from her new job full of problems of the day and talked about them for quite some time. I listened attentively, but the possibility of a ride down route 66 was waiting for a break in the conversation. I posed it. Red flags. What about getting back. Did I intend to fly the terrorist skies? No Way! I was not going to be allowed into any airplane that held enough fuel to blow up a road sign. I have always loved trains. In fact I have model trains from my childhood days, and run them around the Christmas tree each season. So I suggested that. This cemented it. I would leave for the surface of the sun first thing in the morning.
Thursday morning rolled around, and the light of day found me packing my clothes for an adventure. Cory was supposed to pick me up at 7:30 A.M., and called just after that to tell me he was on his way. The rig, with the little Escort hooked up to the back on a two wheel trailer, showed up around 8, and we started off down the road back towards town. Yep, that’s what I said. Apparently, his little car had a problem with the air bag and the part had just come in, and they were waiting at the Ford Dealership to make that car just like new. I am not much for omens, so we just drove over and had it done with. While waiting, we went to the nearby Wall-Mart to get some so-called breakfast. An elderly lady served up our biscuits and eggs as well as any diner waitress along Route 66. She literally tossed the tray of food onto the counter, and it slid perfectly up to the edge. Obviously a practiced maneuver. We found ourselves on the highway just after 9 A.M. and began our daily ride as we would for the next four days, with prayer. We were in need of protection, and we prayed that Angels would ride with us. As you will see, they clearly rode on the hood. We spent an hour getting used to our new environment, and then it began to rain. Slowly at first, then steady, and then really steady. We worked our way south on the narrow curvy Missouri highways. We were talking and missed our first important turn off. The only thing to do was to explore county road XX; later to be determined a byway. The road was extremely rough and narrow. Thankfully, it only lasted about 30 miles to the point where we could hook up with our intended route. The last time I had been on our intended route the road was new. Truck traffic and time had had its way with this stretch of road, and it was bumpy at best. The rain started in earnest just as we got to Kingdom City, and since we were having such good luck, we took the first of Cory’s “Shortcuts”. Apparently, this two-lane road would cut an hour off of our journey. Nobody will ever know if the shorter route was shorter in time or not. One thing I know for certain, is that this overloaded truck was under-powered for the task at hand. The hills of Missouri do not compare with what we would encounter in New Mexico, or in Arizona, but we found out early that this truck at full throttle was never going to go up a hill of any size at faster than 35 to 40 mph. Later in Arizona we would climb mountains at the stately speed of 20 to 25 mph. Cory was convinced that he could outrun the truck for a short distance. The shortcut finally ended and we eventually found ourselves on the Oklahoma Toll system. The roads were better, but the rain was still with us, and the state operated protection business collected more than we had planned from Cory’s billfold. Almost eleven hours after we left Quincy we found a little known piece of Route 66 that had been abandoned by time in Tulsa, and a hotel where we could park our Behemoth.
We got a room for the night, and were pointed to “Freddies” for dinner. Apparently, they had authentic Lebanese cuisine, and were close. Not being willing to drive the rig another yard, it appeared to be just fine. We were pleasantly surprised by the fare. Being in Tulsa, it only seemed right to get a steak. How wrong could you go when you are getting meat from the place it comes from. The menu was a little confusing to our mid-western tastes, but we were hungry, and the waitress made it sound appealing. The steaks came with a small group of side dishes that were served as individual entrees. First came a clove smelling rice, wrapped in a cabbage leaf that was interesting if not what we were used to. Then a Tabuli, whatever that is. Humas with the salad, and we were thoroughly confused. The food was good to this point, but nothing compared to the steak with Freddies special smoke sauce. It may have been the best steak I ever put into my mouth. Wonderful only begins to call upon its names. Always order steak if you’re in Tulsa.
As we found out, each of us is an early riser. It is common for me to rise at 5:00 A.M., but I was not aware other people do this. I was pleased to find a kindred spirit in this way, and we got off to a good early start. We had traveled nearly 500 miles the first day, and decided that if we were to get there in three days we would have to outdo our previous day in miles. Albuquerque was the goal, and we would have made it too, if it hadn’t been for the wind. What I know about weather could be put into a small cup, stirred up, and have plenty of room for coffee. Cory explained the front that had passed over us, and that a front of some sort or other was dragging this high wind behind it. He said it would stop soon, and we began the climb to higher elevations. The wind beat the front of the truck like a red headed stepchild. I am not certain, but I believe it actually tore the roof loose from the front of the van a little. The wild Texas winds brought up stories and songs of frontier life. I believe it actually lifted the near rear tire off of the ground a couple of times. All of the semi’s were leaning precariously, and the flatbeds that had loads you could see, often had shifted loads. Always in the direction of the blowing wind. The speed of the truck was severely hindered, and our fuel mileage dropped from 9 mpg, down to less than 6. We never made Albuquerque. We stopped in a town a couple of hours short of there called Santa Rosa something. The Comfort Inn had a hot tub, and I spent a pleasant hour letting my muscles unwind from the strain of pulling the steering wheel to the right all day. I met a couple there that were discussing their upcoming marriage over a glass of wine and a ring, and happy thoughts filled my dreams that night.
Saturday morning found us in one of Gods most spectacular sites on this earth. Early on we passed through the Indian nations and saw the poorest conditions in which I know Americans to live. I have seen inner city ghettos, and I do consider the lifestyle to be worse, but as far as having the means to survive, it is possible that many of these places outrank even the inner city. The high plains gives way to the mountains in the distance, and our first Mesa’s appeared. I do believe God himself planted route 66 in between these red cliffs to let us feel a little closer to him. They are majestic. The truck was running effectively, if slowly. Our intentions were to head straight out highway 40 to Flagstaff AZ. and then turn south down the big hill. First we had to stop in Albuquerque to pick up the train ticket for my return. It seems that getting a train ticket is more complicated than one might think. When I had called the ticket agent, about 5 options had presented themselves. None of which included my being able to get a ticket in my hand before a manned, or as it turned out to be, womaned station, where people are actually there to give you one before now. My next chance would be Flagstaff after 4:20 P.M. and before 10:00 A.M. in the morning. This worked out well, because it turns out Cory had gone to his wives sisters wedding in this town just a couple of years before, and we actually stopped in the hotel where the wedding was held to ask directions to the Amtrak station. After getting the ticket, we decided to stop into a restaurant where the wedding reception had been, and the food was supposed to be excellent. As it turns out, the food was all it was supposed to be, but the advice on shortcuts left something to be desired. We talked with the owner of the establishment about the food, and after some questioning it turns out he knew Corys Brother-in-law. In fact he said he “knew him well” It appeared to be a compliment, but in hindsight I believe he does not like the man. He told us of a shortcut from Holbrook south along a more scenic route than the one through Flagstaff. I told him we were driving a 60-foot rig, and ask if the road was good, and if there were any big hills we would have to climb on two lane roads. I do not know this mans heart, but he said no. It is entirely possible that when you are in your Cadillac on cruise at 75 mph they do not seem so big as they do in a truck like ours.
Now, a thing I have not mentioned to now, is that bonds that develops between people when they are confined in each others presence for days on end. It could be called a foxhole mentality. I suppose how it works out depends on whether you are compatible or not. Luckily, we were. We prayed together. We talked about things we have done and things on our minds and in our hearts. We commented on our surroundings, current past and present. Our hopes and our expectations. I find I like him more than ever, and wish I had spent more time with him in the past. Anyway, nighttime found us in Holbrook AZ with four more hours to Phoenix, and not quite enough willpower to continue as dark approached. A rather large and jovial man behind the counter at the Holiday Inn Express where we stopped for the night described the cuisine of the local eateries with gusto, and because of his girth we took him at his word. Apparently good taste has nothing whatsoever to do with girth. Nuf said.
Sunday morning we left went down to the quiet village of Holbrook determined to videotape a spoof commercial in front of the local Ford dealership. The batteries for the camera had not held a charge for our earlier attempt, and this time they were fresh off of the charger. The camera worked well. However, it took several attempts before we were able to get an acceptable copy. Probably the mountain air. We headed south from there on our promised “shortcut” and found that the half hour of two lane road was actually about two and a half hours, and if it wasn’t downhill at the sharpest decline you ever saw, it was uphill at 20 mph. We pulled off the road to let our “following” pass several times. Eventually, we came to the foothills and the cactus. On into Phoenix, and the splendor of Sun City. It really is beautiful, as was the whole trip across southwestern America. It was an adventure, and a pleasure from start to finish. Their new home is lovely. The neighbors came out to greet us. Neighborhood children joined in unloading the truck to ask questions about what sort of children would follow. A local minister’s wife grew up in Ursa, just north of Quincy, and they know Cory and Mary Jane well it seems. They were some of the first to arrive, and they brought some young men from their church to help unload the truck. We were able to get it all inside in about four hours. We took the rental truck to the stable where they are kept, washed the road grime off of the little car, and headed for the shed. Spent and exhausted, too tired to eat, we set up a couple of beds and jumped in. Cory starts work in the morning. He has held up better than most would have, and this is Monday, October 15, 2001. He left for his new position at the TV station here this morning, and I have been putting together bed frames, and now this computer. Today is a day of recuperation for me, and I do not intend to do too much physical work. Setting here after putting all of the boxes in the right rooms, and putting together the things where there is “Some Assembly Required” has left me ready for a nap. Tomorrow evening I leave Phoenix for a bus ride to Flagstaff, where I will catch a train to Fort Madison IA. My mom is going to pick me up there, and I will spend a couple of pleasant days in their company before I return to Quincy.
Steve Forrester
15 years of dust on this post
Independence Day at Miss Debbie’s
(7-4-1994)
Well, I’m back in the city again. Fresh from a family reunion at my sister Deb.’s house over in Illinois. A reunion to beat all reunions, and I lived to tell about it. We took the kids and went down to my Mom & Dads house late Friday afternoon to get into the holiday spirit. My mother’s Uncle George Monroe was there with his wife from Nebraska. We talked until late in the evening, and just before he went to bed I found out that George had been a Plant Engineer almost all of his life. This is what I currently do, and compared to him I am a polliwog. The technologies have changed, but the dynamics of factory life stay the same from generation to generation. George is a humble, yet very able person who is very old and is losing his eyesight. I truly enjoyed his stories.
Saturday morning we headed up to my sister Debbie Joy’s farmhouse in Geneseo Illinois. (About an hour and a half from Mom & Dads.) I was looking forward to having the kind of fun you can only have with your relatives. They share inside jokes that would not be funny outside of the situation, but under the circumstances are really fun. People have always said about the Forrester clan; “They really know how to have a good time”
All of my brothers and sisters that I wanted to see were there. My brother Bill had my mothers’ sister Arlene, her husband, her brother Dick and his wife Barb, staying with him in Galesburg. The women of that group were there, but the men were golfing in the Quad cities, and hadn’t shown up yet. My brother-in-law Bob (Debbie Joy’s husband) was there so I had a pal right off. He is just three days younger than me, and we have always got along great. Friendship with most people seems to grow and wane depending on how far we live apart. I never feel this way about family. My brother Mark and his wife Sharon, and their seven (soon to be eight) children were staying with my youngest natural brother Jeff in Galesburg. Jeff is married to a very nice lady named Michelle, and they have a three or four year old adopted son. That crew was there when we got there, and things were beginning to percolate. Earl (my younger brother) and his wife Roxanne were there with their five-year-old son Brandon and drove up just after us. My brother Casey and his new wife showed up on Sunday. My Aunt Arlene’ oldest son Lee and his new wife Myra were up from Tennessee. My Uncle Dick from Kansas City (who was staying with Bill) had his son Rich down from Detroit. He had brought his girlfriend, and I suspect this may have overwhelmed her a little. My parents, Bills kids and ex-wife and it was a quorum.
We sat outside at my sisters beautiful farm. We talked and ate. We ate and talked. Bob had roasted a pig, and everybody brought way too much food. This crew of ladies have no peers when it comes to putting on a feed. I believe they call each other ahead of time to see what each other is bringing, and then try to out do each other with their specialties. Between the food and the company of good friends we sat in lawn chairs, and little nooks of the farm until the small hours of the evening, and enjoyed each precious minute.
When that many people get together lodging is an event all by itself. People were sleeping on the floor of anyone who lived remotely close. Deb. had made arrangements at a nearby motel for a block of rooms for those who could afford it. We chose that, because I am not good with a sleeping bag on the floor, even with close friends. The motel was called the “Deck”. I had never looked at the motels in Geneseo before, so I just assumed the name meant a deck like you might find around a pool, or a patio. It meant like a deck of cards. It apparently was the brainchild of a mason who had hit it big at one of the riverboat casinos. The place was huge. Built entirely out of masonry and cinder blocks. To take the chill out of the concrete he had furnished the walls with carpeting from the 1960’s. Privacy is not a concern with walls like that. The rooms were big, although I did have the impression that I was in the dressing room for the pool at summer camp. Well, I slept well enough, and morning brought new adventures. We met Lee and Myra down at the motel restaurant, and were treated to choices like “Full House”, “Blitz”, and the ever popular “Dealers Choice”. I did get tired of trying to explain the food references to our kids. The food was good, and afterward Lee and Myra went down to the First Baptist Church where we were treated to a service by traveling, singing, and musically entertainingly evangelists. It was very Baptist. We enjoyed it, and then went on out to the farm.
Once again, food was being prepared, and a group of guys was just getting back from the golf course up the road that Bob belongs to. Some were recovering from a late night soiree to the gambling boats at the river. I believe they all lost money except Billy. He does have a knack at that. I believe he calls it the bad bearing theory. The food was on, and the flies came out for war. They attacked in formation at first, but later broke up into individual dogfights, sort of like Corsairs, and P51 Mustangs in WW2. (Did I mention this was on a farm)? After food, some sitting to recover, and some small talk, the adults made it around the house to where Bob had set up volleyball net. He had marked the grass neatly with red spray paint to make a perfect playing field. A couple of games in the heat, and everyone looked like they were ready to expire. The family is competitive, so no one was giving up short of a heat stroke.
On the other side of the house mischief was afoot. My son Gabriel had had the extraordinary foresight to bring a water balloon launcher, and had recruited a small company of guerrillas for an attack on the old people. He had deployed this machine out of sight behind a hedgerow, and munchkins were busy building an impressive arsenal of water balloons. The first balloon fell short of the playing field, and water sort of splashed about the feet of the back players. They were so intent on the game that they couldn’t quite figure what was happening at first. In the short confusion, the bush gang moved forward with as many water grenades as they could carry. They charged. Met the enemy. And years of discipline from these people jumped into their minds. The attack stopped midway across the yard, and the little people changed direction and fled. This had really only been a diversion set up by the command post, and it created the confusion necessary to get the artillery into affect. It began to hail water balloons. Old bald men with bellies over their belts saw a chance to escape from the rigors of the playing field with no loss of honor, and the fight was on. No one escaped unscathed. Some people were even taken bodily by the little bandits out of the house, and dunked outside. Well, no one and nowhere was safe after that. The next thirty minutes of mayhem was as entertaining as any pay per view event I have ever attended.
The day went on, and we ate and we talked. We talked and we ate. It was purely the fun I had been seeking. My cousin Rich and I found a couple of Debbie’s kids moto bikes, and tore up the ditches for a while. Deb. got mad, and told me her kids didn’t even know that those bikes could do those things. My mom came up to me later and said she had overheard the funniest thing from some children. She said she heard them say “ Come quick, there are a couple of old fat guys in suspenders acting like kids on motorbikes” I know my mom thought this was funny, but it did put me in my place. Mom enjoyed seeing all of her children and grandchildren, and went from one to another each day like a bee pollinating her flowers. As the evening wore on Debbie informed us that she had rented the pool at the golf course up the road for the evening. Snap your fingers, and twenty some children were in swimming suits lined up by the cars, screaming for parents to hurry up. A lifeguard came with the pool, so it was carefree for the adults. We sat around the pool drinking beer, and watching cousins’ dunk each other. My kids chose to sleep this last night on the trampoline in Bob’s yard with their friends. We went back to the motel, and at least woke up able to travel home the next day. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. The truth is, you can’t have any more fun than that without getting arrested. I hope it happens again soon.
Steve Forrester
(7-4-1994)
Well, I’m back in the city again. Fresh from a family reunion at my sister Deb.’s house over in Illinois. A reunion to beat all reunions, and I lived to tell about it. We took the kids and went down to my Mom & Dads house late Friday afternoon to get into the holiday spirit. My mother’s Uncle George Monroe was there with his wife from Nebraska. We talked until late in the evening, and just before he went to bed I found out that George had been a Plant Engineer almost all of his life. This is what I currently do, and compared to him I am a polliwog. The technologies have changed, but the dynamics of factory life stay the same from generation to generation. George is a humble, yet very able person who is very old and is losing his eyesight. I truly enjoyed his stories.
Saturday morning we headed up to my sister Debbie Joy’s farmhouse in Geneseo Illinois. (About an hour and a half from Mom & Dads.) I was looking forward to having the kind of fun you can only have with your relatives. They share inside jokes that would not be funny outside of the situation, but under the circumstances are really fun. People have always said about the Forrester clan; “They really know how to have a good time”
All of my brothers and sisters that I wanted to see were there. My brother Bill had my mothers’ sister Arlene, her husband, her brother Dick and his wife Barb, staying with him in Galesburg. The women of that group were there, but the men were golfing in the Quad cities, and hadn’t shown up yet. My brother-in-law Bob (Debbie Joy’s husband) was there so I had a pal right off. He is just three days younger than me, and we have always got along great. Friendship with most people seems to grow and wane depending on how far we live apart. I never feel this way about family. My brother Mark and his wife Sharon, and their seven (soon to be eight) children were staying with my youngest natural brother Jeff in Galesburg. Jeff is married to a very nice lady named Michelle, and they have a three or four year old adopted son. That crew was there when we got there, and things were beginning to percolate. Earl (my younger brother) and his wife Roxanne were there with their five-year-old son Brandon and drove up just after us. My brother Casey and his new wife showed up on Sunday. My Aunt Arlene’ oldest son Lee and his new wife Myra were up from Tennessee. My Uncle Dick from Kansas City (who was staying with Bill) had his son Rich down from Detroit. He had brought his girlfriend, and I suspect this may have overwhelmed her a little. My parents, Bills kids and ex-wife and it was a quorum.
We sat outside at my sisters beautiful farm. We talked and ate. We ate and talked. Bob had roasted a pig, and everybody brought way too much food. This crew of ladies have no peers when it comes to putting on a feed. I believe they call each other ahead of time to see what each other is bringing, and then try to out do each other with their specialties. Between the food and the company of good friends we sat in lawn chairs, and little nooks of the farm until the small hours of the evening, and enjoyed each precious minute.
When that many people get together lodging is an event all by itself. People were sleeping on the floor of anyone who lived remotely close. Deb. had made arrangements at a nearby motel for a block of rooms for those who could afford it. We chose that, because I am not good with a sleeping bag on the floor, even with close friends. The motel was called the “Deck”. I had never looked at the motels in Geneseo before, so I just assumed the name meant a deck like you might find around a pool, or a patio. It meant like a deck of cards. It apparently was the brainchild of a mason who had hit it big at one of the riverboat casinos. The place was huge. Built entirely out of masonry and cinder blocks. To take the chill out of the concrete he had furnished the walls with carpeting from the 1960’s. Privacy is not a concern with walls like that. The rooms were big, although I did have the impression that I was in the dressing room for the pool at summer camp. Well, I slept well enough, and morning brought new adventures. We met Lee and Myra down at the motel restaurant, and were treated to choices like “Full House”, “Blitz”, and the ever popular “Dealers Choice”. I did get tired of trying to explain the food references to our kids. The food was good, and afterward Lee and Myra went down to the First Baptist Church where we were treated to a service by traveling, singing, and musically entertainingly evangelists. It was very Baptist. We enjoyed it, and then went on out to the farm.
Once again, food was being prepared, and a group of guys was just getting back from the golf course up the road that Bob belongs to. Some were recovering from a late night soiree to the gambling boats at the river. I believe they all lost money except Billy. He does have a knack at that. I believe he calls it the bad bearing theory. The food was on, and the flies came out for war. They attacked in formation at first, but later broke up into individual dogfights, sort of like Corsairs, and P51 Mustangs in WW2. (Did I mention this was on a farm)? After food, some sitting to recover, and some small talk, the adults made it around the house to where Bob had set up volleyball net. He had marked the grass neatly with red spray paint to make a perfect playing field. A couple of games in the heat, and everyone looked like they were ready to expire. The family is competitive, so no one was giving up short of a heat stroke.
On the other side of the house mischief was afoot. My son Gabriel had had the extraordinary foresight to bring a water balloon launcher, and had recruited a small company of guerrillas for an attack on the old people. He had deployed this machine out of sight behind a hedgerow, and munchkins were busy building an impressive arsenal of water balloons. The first balloon fell short of the playing field, and water sort of splashed about the feet of the back players. They were so intent on the game that they couldn’t quite figure what was happening at first. In the short confusion, the bush gang moved forward with as many water grenades as they could carry. They charged. Met the enemy. And years of discipline from these people jumped into their minds. The attack stopped midway across the yard, and the little people changed direction and fled. This had really only been a diversion set up by the command post, and it created the confusion necessary to get the artillery into affect. It began to hail water balloons. Old bald men with bellies over their belts saw a chance to escape from the rigors of the playing field with no loss of honor, and the fight was on. No one escaped unscathed. Some people were even taken bodily by the little bandits out of the house, and dunked outside. Well, no one and nowhere was safe after that. The next thirty minutes of mayhem was as entertaining as any pay per view event I have ever attended.
The day went on, and we ate and we talked. We talked and we ate. It was purely the fun I had been seeking. My cousin Rich and I found a couple of Debbie’s kids moto bikes, and tore up the ditches for a while. Deb. got mad, and told me her kids didn’t even know that those bikes could do those things. My mom came up to me later and said she had overheard the funniest thing from some children. She said she heard them say “ Come quick, there are a couple of old fat guys in suspenders acting like kids on motorbikes” I know my mom thought this was funny, but it did put me in my place. Mom enjoyed seeing all of her children and grandchildren, and went from one to another each day like a bee pollinating her flowers. As the evening wore on Debbie informed us that she had rented the pool at the golf course up the road for the evening. Snap your fingers, and twenty some children were in swimming suits lined up by the cars, screaming for parents to hurry up. A lifeguard came with the pool, so it was carefree for the adults. We sat around the pool drinking beer, and watching cousins’ dunk each other. My kids chose to sleep this last night on the trampoline in Bob’s yard with their friends. We went back to the motel, and at least woke up able to travel home the next day. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. The truth is, you can’t have any more fun than that without getting arrested. I hope it happens again soon.
Steve Forrester
Down by the Creek
I was born close to a tiny log cabin in the 100 acre wood that sits close to a slow meandering stream called the Ellison. It was the bitter cold of winter, which means the stream was iced over as hard as a table.
I very likely refused to be born, being naturally rebellious, and at least must have screamed and shouted for hours at the unfairness of being pushed and pulled into a cold place I had not chosen.... In truth, I could not have selected a more suitable site.
The ice in the stream set the theme of my early development. Cold, hard, immutable. A pauper in worldly things, but rich in the God given beauty of my surroundings. The creek seems fierce to those not born to it, and yet exquisite in its purity and form. Ice is after all, just one of the many forms of water. Supposedly there is treasure there.
The ice eventually gave way to warmer times, and it scoured the creek bottom as it broke up, washing last years farm fields towards the mighty Mississippi. Spring once again brought its promise of abundant life for those having eyes to see it. The smell of the earth again as it warms in the sun. Springtime fills the senses like nothing else can, and promises covenant. Blue bells and Johnny Jump ups flower the hills along the creek bank the same as they have for years uncounted. Buds of the new leaves promise a flowering of the wild fruit trees, and leaves begin to cover the naked oaks.
The soil is clay in the fields, and hard as the hubs of the tractor wheel I follow down the furrow as it is plowed. The earth smells waft up to me as I steal worms from the crows for fishing when the sun is full overhead. At the bank the crawdaddies make a place for me as I tempt the fish to become supper for me and my brothers. The mud from Ellison is smooth and warm between my toes, and suddenly clothes seem just a little silly on such a hot day. Fish in these waters can be felt with your toes, and once petted a little, are happy to be picked up behind the gills and taken to the bank.
The cabin was not always there. When I was a boy the area was not well taken care of. Not by me at least. I suppose nature kept it the way she always has, but people have a way of changing things they admire. I have tried over the years to shape the land, but have only succeeded in moving it a little, and when I am gone, I imagine it will revert to its former self. The creek used to meander a little too much in the bottom ground close to the tiny town of Hopper. A little imagination, some dynamite, and oxbows become straight lines. The creek would have gotten around to it eventually, we just helped it along. Anyway, it doesn’t back up in the springtime anymore. This changed the level of the creek in the upper portions, and causes a troop of engineering beavers to start an annual works project to raise the level up to where they believe it should be each spring. As soon as the ice is out, so are they.
They take on responsibility for the otters, minks, bobcats, raccoons, foxes, deer and even the skunk, who come daily to the waters edge for refreshment. It is their duty to maintain the level, and assure bountiful pools for their neighbors. You can see them all if you walk the banks on their terms. City people have no sense of this, and trample about in a way that makes sure that these wild animals are long gone before they get there. I assume they sit just out of site and make jokes at passerby persons much the way construction workers mock the pedestrians in the city. A month without shoes will teach those who can learn to tread lightly. The wild life still knows your around when you come this way, they just don’t seem to mind so much.
Anyway, as I said, I felt the need to somehow “Add” to this natural setting, and during my late twenties began my own works project. A log cabin. I put it just upstream of my teachers the beavers, to take advantage of the still waters they provide. I was beginning to have children at that time, and my reasons for this structure, were a little about me, but more about wanting my sons to have a place to escape from the busy world. My oldest was in diapers when I started, and now he is a man on his own. Sometimes I hear things are a little tough for him, and find he has been to this special place to let the waters wash town living off of him. My other children visit from time to time, but I am not quite sure what they see when they look.
I harvested mature trees. Cut them to shape. Pulled them into place with my dads old tractor named “Johnny”, and after a couple of years of real work, found myself standing in front of what we just call the cabin. It is not especially easy to get to, but that is intentional. The quiet is deafening. The whole area has a beauty that can not be seen with just your eyes. Each person who has taken time to stay awhile finds peace from the busy life they lead outside this very special 100 acre wood. The Ellison gurgles you to sleep, and the stars just fill up the sky. A den of foxes is just across the creek from the cabin, and they feel obligated to share their joy of the moon when it is full. There is no electricity, and most of the time it just sets empty. The animals know this, and feel the cabin is part of their world, and do not go out of their way to stay clear of it. When you stay overnight, it is common for furry friends to come up and look in the window, to see what kind of a bear you might be.
A pair of Canadian geese call the Ellison their summer home. They nest about 100 yards upstream from the cabin, and come back to raise a new gaggle of goslings each year. They like their privacy, and the gander tends to enforce this if boundaries are not properly observed. I have seen dogs learn this lesson the hard way, and have even been known to back away myself. When the leaves turn, they all swim the seven miles to the Mississippi, and head south with old friends.
I am called back, time and again, to this simple place. This refuge from a busy life bequeaths a peace in my spirit like a serenity vending machine. The rates are affordable, and the benefits immense. Join me there soon.
Steve Forrester
I very likely refused to be born, being naturally rebellious, and at least must have screamed and shouted for hours at the unfairness of being pushed and pulled into a cold place I had not chosen.... In truth, I could not have selected a more suitable site.
The ice in the stream set the theme of my early development. Cold, hard, immutable. A pauper in worldly things, but rich in the God given beauty of my surroundings. The creek seems fierce to those not born to it, and yet exquisite in its purity and form. Ice is after all, just one of the many forms of water. Supposedly there is treasure there.
The ice eventually gave way to warmer times, and it scoured the creek bottom as it broke up, washing last years farm fields towards the mighty Mississippi. Spring once again brought its promise of abundant life for those having eyes to see it. The smell of the earth again as it warms in the sun. Springtime fills the senses like nothing else can, and promises covenant. Blue bells and Johnny Jump ups flower the hills along the creek bank the same as they have for years uncounted. Buds of the new leaves promise a flowering of the wild fruit trees, and leaves begin to cover the naked oaks.
The soil is clay in the fields, and hard as the hubs of the tractor wheel I follow down the furrow as it is plowed. The earth smells waft up to me as I steal worms from the crows for fishing when the sun is full overhead. At the bank the crawdaddies make a place for me as I tempt the fish to become supper for me and my brothers. The mud from Ellison is smooth and warm between my toes, and suddenly clothes seem just a little silly on such a hot day. Fish in these waters can be felt with your toes, and once petted a little, are happy to be picked up behind the gills and taken to the bank.
The cabin was not always there. When I was a boy the area was not well taken care of. Not by me at least. I suppose nature kept it the way she always has, but people have a way of changing things they admire. I have tried over the years to shape the land, but have only succeeded in moving it a little, and when I am gone, I imagine it will revert to its former self. The creek used to meander a little too much in the bottom ground close to the tiny town of Hopper. A little imagination, some dynamite, and oxbows become straight lines. The creek would have gotten around to it eventually, we just helped it along. Anyway, it doesn’t back up in the springtime anymore. This changed the level of the creek in the upper portions, and causes a troop of engineering beavers to start an annual works project to raise the level up to where they believe it should be each spring. As soon as the ice is out, so are they.
They take on responsibility for the otters, minks, bobcats, raccoons, foxes, deer and even the skunk, who come daily to the waters edge for refreshment. It is their duty to maintain the level, and assure bountiful pools for their neighbors. You can see them all if you walk the banks on their terms. City people have no sense of this, and trample about in a way that makes sure that these wild animals are long gone before they get there. I assume they sit just out of site and make jokes at passerby persons much the way construction workers mock the pedestrians in the city. A month without shoes will teach those who can learn to tread lightly. The wild life still knows your around when you come this way, they just don’t seem to mind so much.
Anyway, as I said, I felt the need to somehow “Add” to this natural setting, and during my late twenties began my own works project. A log cabin. I put it just upstream of my teachers the beavers, to take advantage of the still waters they provide. I was beginning to have children at that time, and my reasons for this structure, were a little about me, but more about wanting my sons to have a place to escape from the busy world. My oldest was in diapers when I started, and now he is a man on his own. Sometimes I hear things are a little tough for him, and find he has been to this special place to let the waters wash town living off of him. My other children visit from time to time, but I am not quite sure what they see when they look.
I harvested mature trees. Cut them to shape. Pulled them into place with my dads old tractor named “Johnny”, and after a couple of years of real work, found myself standing in front of what we just call the cabin. It is not especially easy to get to, but that is intentional. The quiet is deafening. The whole area has a beauty that can not be seen with just your eyes. Each person who has taken time to stay awhile finds peace from the busy life they lead outside this very special 100 acre wood. The Ellison gurgles you to sleep, and the stars just fill up the sky. A den of foxes is just across the creek from the cabin, and they feel obligated to share their joy of the moon when it is full. There is no electricity, and most of the time it just sets empty. The animals know this, and feel the cabin is part of their world, and do not go out of their way to stay clear of it. When you stay overnight, it is common for furry friends to come up and look in the window, to see what kind of a bear you might be.
A pair of Canadian geese call the Ellison their summer home. They nest about 100 yards upstream from the cabin, and come back to raise a new gaggle of goslings each year. They like their privacy, and the gander tends to enforce this if boundaries are not properly observed. I have seen dogs learn this lesson the hard way, and have even been known to back away myself. When the leaves turn, they all swim the seven miles to the Mississippi, and head south with old friends.
I am called back, time and again, to this simple place. This refuge from a busy life bequeaths a peace in my spirit like a serenity vending machine. The rates are affordable, and the benefits immense. Join me there soon.
Steve Forrester
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Another Friend
I recently went on a weekend trip to my cabin in the woods with a relatively new friend who is an architect that grew up in St. Louis. I work for him sometimes on an old house that he is restoring, and have gotten to know him fairly well. He is a smallish fellow, and sort of a Constitutional scholar. He had heard about the cabin in conversations with me and had made it a point several times that he was interested in going to see about it, so one weekend I took him up to my parents for a day trip, when he saw it the first time, and then two weeks later he and I went up to spend a weekend. I never saw a fellow so un-camp ready (with the possible exception of a fellow who brought an umbrella once). I do believe you will relate to his story.
Late Friday afternoon, after the workday was finished, I picked him up at his house. He had mentioned bringing along some hip waders, and a few other things I thought were odd, but in my mind I thought: “I have a big van, and he can bring whatever he likes that would make him feel OK about the camp out.” He grabbed a sandwich, and a few things. A common friend of ours stopped by for a half hour. It was almost two hours before he got what he wanted and we were in the vehicle and moving north. We needed to get a few groceries to stave us over, and so we stopped at a grocery store and picked up some essentials, and made it to Camp just about dark (it was the longest day of the year, or at least the day before that). I lit a fire in the old wood stove, and within an hour the damp of an unused cabin melted away to a warm fireside chat. The temp was just above 50 degrees outside and the fire felt good. We wandered outside to take a look at the spectacular night sky that can only be seen from an open field deep in the woods, and the sounds of the night began to waft our way. “What’s that? A couple of foxes. “What’s that?” A whip-o-will bird. What’s that? A deer getting water at the creek. “Did you hear that?” Yes, it was a bullfrog. Honest to goodness, this fellow had never been in the woods in his life. How do you suppose I could resist an opportunity to fill him up with just a little baloney? The fireflies were across the fields by the tens of thousands. The road way we had driven in on had twenty times as many as were in the field, and it looked like a lighted path to the road less taken. I mentioned that my uncle John had called them “spook lights” when we were growing up. He said: Each one of them is a spirit trying to find his way home. No comment. I mentioned that my uncle John had lived in a nearby place, that we had just passed through, and swore that he had seen a ghost/man drag a huge chain down the stairs of the hotel there, out the door, and down past the mill stone, around by the creek, and then right into the earth just under the old bridge. Nervous laugh, and “Well, some people believe anything” I said I don’t know whether to laugh or not at things people say. I had once been on a hay rack ride over by where the old cabin used to set, and my dad and I were taking the tractor and wagon home, when we saw two spook lights of our own. They moved faster than an airplane, but were only fifty feet over the tops of the trees, and then just stopped right over the hay field, which was just out of our sight. We killed the engine on the old John Deere, and could hear a sound that sounded like a huge transformer coming from my dad’s hay field. I had wanted to go to the house and get a gun, but my dad suggested that a shotgun would only piss off someone who might very well be an alien. By the time we got to the field, all we were able to find was a big smashed down triangle in the field, where something very heavy had set recently. The weeds were smashed all the way flat, and were just beginning to rise back to their place in nature.
As you know, timing is everything, and just about then a bobcat began to make her noise. I don’t know if you have ever heard the sound before, but it sounds like a woman in dire straights. Sort of a high pitched scream that goes right through you. My friend said: Did you hear that? I said, my brother Bill and I had heard that when we were children, and always believed it was the sound of a headless lady who had been killed and beheaded by highway men at the turn of the century. He said: That is just pure BS. What was it? Truthfully, I told him it was a bobcat. He said: That is more frightening than the goofy story ever could have been. We need to go inside and leave the stars out here for the night. It had been a long day for us both, and we had both worked, so we made up our beds and let that be a day.
The morning sun brought a relative thunder of birds singing the sun up. I am a light sleeper, and got up to start a fire to take the morning chill off, and get some water boiling for my tea. I started a fire in the big fire ring out by the buckeye tree, and hung up a hammock between two trees for taking the mandatory afternoon nap that goes with my idea of ideal camping. My friend eventually woke up, and we had a breakfast fit for bachelor kings. I made pancakes, bacon and eggs, and had my second cup of tea. Since the fire was already going, I decided to bake off a couple of old iron skillets that my wife had gotten at a yard sale that were caked up with years of cooking grease. As they became cherry red in the fire the years melted away from them. After a coating of new oil they looked much as they probably did fifty years ago when they were new. We use the cast iron skillets and pots to cook in as everyday cookware, and the addition of these new ones will add to our cooking enjoyment. My friend had brought an iron skillet of his own, that his mother had given him, and that had come from a great aunt, or some such, and we put it in the fire later in the morning. When it came out of the fire, it had a red coloring that came off on our hands when we tried to clean it, and it somehow never actually got clean. We decided that at one point someone must have painted it red and hung it in the kitchen as an ornament, and then just cooked with it until it became black with use. At the time this must have been done, the only red paint available was lead paint, so we put it back into the fire and built and especially hot bed of coals to make sure this stuff was all the way gone from his family treasure. More paint came off each time we fired it, but it took several more tries before we were satisfied that no one was going to be poisoned by using it.
Mid morning found us with fishing poles in hand on our way to the old fishing hole in the Ellison Creek that flows nearby. As we came to the creek and started down over the bank, we surprised a yearling whitetail deer. He was so startled at our presence that he leapt fifteen feet straight away from us, and landed right in the middle of the creek. He shot out of there in a shower of white tail and water drops glistening in the morning sun. No one knows who was more surprised. As I mentioned earlier my friend shakes a little and fishes very seldom, so tying trylene knots in fishing line was beyond him. I made up his tackle, dug some worms, and pointed him to where I knew there to be fish, and began to fish myself. I caught a little bullhead (catfish) and threw him back. My friend was not content to let the line actually lay in one place long enough for a fish to find it, but kept moving about and catching his hook on a limb or a tree, or a something, and then I had to go re-string him up. He got a very large catfish up to the bank one time, and then the fish wrapped the line around a log and got away. I threw my line up under the shadow of a tree that had fallen across the creek, and my line landed on the back of a very large fish, which took umbrage and leapt out into the middle of the stream in a single bound. I found myself fixing things more than fishing, and the sun was getting up pretty high, so I suggested lunch, and we headed back to camp to make our noon day fare.
We had gotten some pretty nice cuts of steak on the way up there, and decided that since the fire was still hot from our morning chores that it would be a very good idea to just stick the meat on the marshmallow sticks and roast it right then and there. That seemed to work well, and we salted and peppered them, put them between two slices of bread, and whoa, what a good lunch. No fuss, no muss, no dishes, just burned meat on a stick. What could be better? My friend had brought along a book on constitutional law, and after such a lunch, I thought rest from our labors seemed natural. After that, I went up to the big house, and got the riding mower and mowed the grass for a couple of hours. There are four or five acres that I keep mowed, so it takes a while, even on a big rider. As evening came, the bugs came out. We had had the foresight to bring chemicals swearing to be sufficient to kill each and every mosquito in the surrounding area for months. In fact nearly all insects were supposed to leave the immediate vicinity at the mention of the pesticide according to the commercial. I sprayed it, and it worked. One of those thinks you don’t really believe will happen did. They all left. Amazing. Well, we began our evening meal, and this time decided to have the good steaks that we had brought. We set up the grill on the big fire ring outside, and cooked our dinner to as near a perfection as possible. I am certain I have never had one that tasted better, except for one time in Omaha, near the cattle lots. At any rate, it was first rate, and we sat and talked about things on our minds for several hours by the fire. The sun went down, the birds became quiet, the frogs began their mating calls, and the foxes began to howl at the moon, and chase their fellows through the wood very noisily in pursuit of some unknown prey. A deer jumped in the creek, and by the time we got to where the sound came from the tracks were filling in with water, but Mr. White Tail was long gone.
Inside the cabin again, just before bed, my friend said there was definitely some animal upstairs walking about. I looked several times, but was unable to see what made the sound, but he was insistent. I didn’t put too much stock in it, but soon enough a big mouse came wandering down the wall behind him, and when he caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, he leapt up and said. “Did you see that”? Well of course I did, but I pretended not to have, and he described the largest black rodent since the plague. It had been a little Grey wood mouse, and many times smaller than his show of size by his hands. At any rate, I was not interested in a mouse, and had had a full day. So up the ladder I went, and was out with the foxes in my dreams before my head hit the pillow. As it turned out, I had left my tackle box open just outside of the door, and around three in the morning some marauders came slinking up to the cabin with permanent black masks in place. I woke up when one began to scream at the top of his little lungs. He had gotten a fishing lure out of my box and stuck a three pronged hook just under his nose. I was down the ladder, and had the light on him before I even knew what I was looking for. It really was an awful scream. At any rate the little fellow was doing his best three stooges imitation, with two friends following close behind for support. He was leaping. He was twirling. He lay on his side, and kicked his way around in a circle. All the while screeching like a banshee. Now it would have been a shame to miss a thing like that. I am certain that you are not about to be able to buy tickets for anything quite as entertaining.
Once the sun and the birds got their early business out of the way, I started making some bacon and eggs on the stove inside the cabin. The smell was outrageous, and who could sleep through a thing like that. At any case, my buddy got up and around and we began our morning feast. I had opened the door because of the heat from the stove, and we were sitting about eating and getting ready for the day, when who should appear in the doorway, but the bat from hell. He flew in uninvited, and circled my friend sizing him up for a breakfast of his own. At least that is what my friend thought. I thought, Oh a bat, and went back to my cooking. It finally landed behind the couch on the wall, and I do believe my friend’s breakfast had been ruined. Well, being a good host, I got a broom, whacked the bat, and then swept him out side where he belonged. Apparently I had hit him a little hard, and he appeared not likely to recover, so he went the way all good bats go, and the foxes will have a little feast when they come to see what the noisy people were doing over in the big clearing last night.
The trip home was relatively quiet, as we both considered our lives, and how they were very different. He had not done badly for a first time in the woods, and most probably better than I would have done in the big city among the art and the architecture. We stopped at a flea market about half way home and picked up an electric waffle iron that was exactly like the one his dad had used all the Sunday mornings of his growing up years. He bought it because he knew his older brother had dibs on that one when the time came, and now he would have that memory just as if it were his dads, and when they both become senile, no one will really know which one is which, and they can argue about it like it was important.
We got back to civilization about ten thirty in the morning, and began doing things we need to do to get along with those around us. I certainly will never tell anyone he knows that he sat up all night with his sleeping bag huddled around him waiting on the return of a monster cabin mouse.
Steve Forrester
June 2003
Late Friday afternoon, after the workday was finished, I picked him up at his house. He had mentioned bringing along some hip waders, and a few other things I thought were odd, but in my mind I thought: “I have a big van, and he can bring whatever he likes that would make him feel OK about the camp out.” He grabbed a sandwich, and a few things. A common friend of ours stopped by for a half hour. It was almost two hours before he got what he wanted and we were in the vehicle and moving north. We needed to get a few groceries to stave us over, and so we stopped at a grocery store and picked up some essentials, and made it to Camp just about dark (it was the longest day of the year, or at least the day before that). I lit a fire in the old wood stove, and within an hour the damp of an unused cabin melted away to a warm fireside chat. The temp was just above 50 degrees outside and the fire felt good. We wandered outside to take a look at the spectacular night sky that can only be seen from an open field deep in the woods, and the sounds of the night began to waft our way. “What’s that? A couple of foxes. “What’s that?” A whip-o-will bird. What’s that? A deer getting water at the creek. “Did you hear that?” Yes, it was a bullfrog. Honest to goodness, this fellow had never been in the woods in his life. How do you suppose I could resist an opportunity to fill him up with just a little baloney? The fireflies were across the fields by the tens of thousands. The road way we had driven in on had twenty times as many as were in the field, and it looked like a lighted path to the road less taken. I mentioned that my uncle John had called them “spook lights” when we were growing up. He said: Each one of them is a spirit trying to find his way home. No comment. I mentioned that my uncle John had lived in a nearby place, that we had just passed through, and swore that he had seen a ghost/man drag a huge chain down the stairs of the hotel there, out the door, and down past the mill stone, around by the creek, and then right into the earth just under the old bridge. Nervous laugh, and “Well, some people believe anything” I said I don’t know whether to laugh or not at things people say. I had once been on a hay rack ride over by where the old cabin used to set, and my dad and I were taking the tractor and wagon home, when we saw two spook lights of our own. They moved faster than an airplane, but were only fifty feet over the tops of the trees, and then just stopped right over the hay field, which was just out of our sight. We killed the engine on the old John Deere, and could hear a sound that sounded like a huge transformer coming from my dad’s hay field. I had wanted to go to the house and get a gun, but my dad suggested that a shotgun would only piss off someone who might very well be an alien. By the time we got to the field, all we were able to find was a big smashed down triangle in the field, where something very heavy had set recently. The weeds were smashed all the way flat, and were just beginning to rise back to their place in nature.
As you know, timing is everything, and just about then a bobcat began to make her noise. I don’t know if you have ever heard the sound before, but it sounds like a woman in dire straights. Sort of a high pitched scream that goes right through you. My friend said: Did you hear that? I said, my brother Bill and I had heard that when we were children, and always believed it was the sound of a headless lady who had been killed and beheaded by highway men at the turn of the century. He said: That is just pure BS. What was it? Truthfully, I told him it was a bobcat. He said: That is more frightening than the goofy story ever could have been. We need to go inside and leave the stars out here for the night. It had been a long day for us both, and we had both worked, so we made up our beds and let that be a day.
The morning sun brought a relative thunder of birds singing the sun up. I am a light sleeper, and got up to start a fire to take the morning chill off, and get some water boiling for my tea. I started a fire in the big fire ring out by the buckeye tree, and hung up a hammock between two trees for taking the mandatory afternoon nap that goes with my idea of ideal camping. My friend eventually woke up, and we had a breakfast fit for bachelor kings. I made pancakes, bacon and eggs, and had my second cup of tea. Since the fire was already going, I decided to bake off a couple of old iron skillets that my wife had gotten at a yard sale that were caked up with years of cooking grease. As they became cherry red in the fire the years melted away from them. After a coating of new oil they looked much as they probably did fifty years ago when they were new. We use the cast iron skillets and pots to cook in as everyday cookware, and the addition of these new ones will add to our cooking enjoyment. My friend had brought an iron skillet of his own, that his mother had given him, and that had come from a great aunt, or some such, and we put it in the fire later in the morning. When it came out of the fire, it had a red coloring that came off on our hands when we tried to clean it, and it somehow never actually got clean. We decided that at one point someone must have painted it red and hung it in the kitchen as an ornament, and then just cooked with it until it became black with use. At the time this must have been done, the only red paint available was lead paint, so we put it back into the fire and built and especially hot bed of coals to make sure this stuff was all the way gone from his family treasure. More paint came off each time we fired it, but it took several more tries before we were satisfied that no one was going to be poisoned by using it.
Mid morning found us with fishing poles in hand on our way to the old fishing hole in the Ellison Creek that flows nearby. As we came to the creek and started down over the bank, we surprised a yearling whitetail deer. He was so startled at our presence that he leapt fifteen feet straight away from us, and landed right in the middle of the creek. He shot out of there in a shower of white tail and water drops glistening in the morning sun. No one knows who was more surprised. As I mentioned earlier my friend shakes a little and fishes very seldom, so tying trylene knots in fishing line was beyond him. I made up his tackle, dug some worms, and pointed him to where I knew there to be fish, and began to fish myself. I caught a little bullhead (catfish) and threw him back. My friend was not content to let the line actually lay in one place long enough for a fish to find it, but kept moving about and catching his hook on a limb or a tree, or a something, and then I had to go re-string him up. He got a very large catfish up to the bank one time, and then the fish wrapped the line around a log and got away. I threw my line up under the shadow of a tree that had fallen across the creek, and my line landed on the back of a very large fish, which took umbrage and leapt out into the middle of the stream in a single bound. I found myself fixing things more than fishing, and the sun was getting up pretty high, so I suggested lunch, and we headed back to camp to make our noon day fare.
We had gotten some pretty nice cuts of steak on the way up there, and decided that since the fire was still hot from our morning chores that it would be a very good idea to just stick the meat on the marshmallow sticks and roast it right then and there. That seemed to work well, and we salted and peppered them, put them between two slices of bread, and whoa, what a good lunch. No fuss, no muss, no dishes, just burned meat on a stick. What could be better? My friend had brought along a book on constitutional law, and after such a lunch, I thought rest from our labors seemed natural. After that, I went up to the big house, and got the riding mower and mowed the grass for a couple of hours. There are four or five acres that I keep mowed, so it takes a while, even on a big rider. As evening came, the bugs came out. We had had the foresight to bring chemicals swearing to be sufficient to kill each and every mosquito in the surrounding area for months. In fact nearly all insects were supposed to leave the immediate vicinity at the mention of the pesticide according to the commercial. I sprayed it, and it worked. One of those thinks you don’t really believe will happen did. They all left. Amazing. Well, we began our evening meal, and this time decided to have the good steaks that we had brought. We set up the grill on the big fire ring outside, and cooked our dinner to as near a perfection as possible. I am certain I have never had one that tasted better, except for one time in Omaha, near the cattle lots. At any rate, it was first rate, and we sat and talked about things on our minds for several hours by the fire. The sun went down, the birds became quiet, the frogs began their mating calls, and the foxes began to howl at the moon, and chase their fellows through the wood very noisily in pursuit of some unknown prey. A deer jumped in the creek, and by the time we got to where the sound came from the tracks were filling in with water, but Mr. White Tail was long gone.
Inside the cabin again, just before bed, my friend said there was definitely some animal upstairs walking about. I looked several times, but was unable to see what made the sound, but he was insistent. I didn’t put too much stock in it, but soon enough a big mouse came wandering down the wall behind him, and when he caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, he leapt up and said. “Did you see that”? Well of course I did, but I pretended not to have, and he described the largest black rodent since the plague. It had been a little Grey wood mouse, and many times smaller than his show of size by his hands. At any rate, I was not interested in a mouse, and had had a full day. So up the ladder I went, and was out with the foxes in my dreams before my head hit the pillow. As it turned out, I had left my tackle box open just outside of the door, and around three in the morning some marauders came slinking up to the cabin with permanent black masks in place. I woke up when one began to scream at the top of his little lungs. He had gotten a fishing lure out of my box and stuck a three pronged hook just under his nose. I was down the ladder, and had the light on him before I even knew what I was looking for. It really was an awful scream. At any rate the little fellow was doing his best three stooges imitation, with two friends following close behind for support. He was leaping. He was twirling. He lay on his side, and kicked his way around in a circle. All the while screeching like a banshee. Now it would have been a shame to miss a thing like that. I am certain that you are not about to be able to buy tickets for anything quite as entertaining.
Once the sun and the birds got their early business out of the way, I started making some bacon and eggs on the stove inside the cabin. The smell was outrageous, and who could sleep through a thing like that. At any case, my buddy got up and around and we began our morning feast. I had opened the door because of the heat from the stove, and we were sitting about eating and getting ready for the day, when who should appear in the doorway, but the bat from hell. He flew in uninvited, and circled my friend sizing him up for a breakfast of his own. At least that is what my friend thought. I thought, Oh a bat, and went back to my cooking. It finally landed behind the couch on the wall, and I do believe my friend’s breakfast had been ruined. Well, being a good host, I got a broom, whacked the bat, and then swept him out side where he belonged. Apparently I had hit him a little hard, and he appeared not likely to recover, so he went the way all good bats go, and the foxes will have a little feast when they come to see what the noisy people were doing over in the big clearing last night.
The trip home was relatively quiet, as we both considered our lives, and how they were very different. He had not done badly for a first time in the woods, and most probably better than I would have done in the big city among the art and the architecture. We stopped at a flea market about half way home and picked up an electric waffle iron that was exactly like the one his dad had used all the Sunday mornings of his growing up years. He bought it because he knew his older brother had dibs on that one when the time came, and now he would have that memory just as if it were his dads, and when they both become senile, no one will really know which one is which, and they can argue about it like it was important.
We got back to civilization about ten thirty in the morning, and began doing things we need to do to get along with those around us. I certainly will never tell anyone he knows that he sat up all night with his sleeping bag huddled around him waiting on the return of a monster cabin mouse.
Steve Forrester
June 2003
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