Bravery

She has interested me slightly in the two years she has weighed us in and out at the elevator we hauled Brent’s harvest to.  I knew she was back again this year when I saw her black Dodge short bed truck with the same small dent in the otherwise flawless finish. 

I think she recognized me this year, but it is hard to tell.  She is so quiet and doesn’t smile much, if at all.

I tried to chat with her a bit, this time involving her children who were spending some of the days with her at work, since school was called off.  But I hardly got anywhere.  Not that I felt like I had to.  I was trying to be friendly and courteous.

Until today. 

She had her daughter there whom I hadn’t seen yet.  I asked her if these were all her children.  She said no, she had one more, but he was too young to be there. 

She paused a bit, thinking something over, and then said, “Actually, I have four children.  My oldest was killed by a drunk driver when he was 2 years, 3 months old.”

“Oh, No!”

“Yes,” she said, “he would be eleven years old now.”

“Were you with him in the wreck?”   

“No, he was playing on the side of the street in front of our house, and a guy left the bar and drove down our street and hit him.”

“You have been on a journey,” I replied.

“Yes,” she said quietly. 

I stepped back into my truck, distraught.

All the way to the field and back her news weighed heavily upon me. 

I stepped off the truck again to get my ticket from her.

I removed my sunglasses and looked kindly at her.  When she met my gaze, I said, “It takes a brave person to tell me what you said on the last load.”

“Yes,” she said.  And her eyes shone ever so slightly. 

And she gave me a Mona Lisa smile.

I stepped back into the truck humbled.  Her loss is beyond my comprehension.  Her poise and quietness of the last two years now understood.

****

To My Canadian Friends . . .

I learned something the other day about you good folks on the other side of the 49^th.  Just give me a little space here and I’ll get around to telling you what it was.

For the past ten years or so, I have helped my friend Brent and his family in the fall harvest.  It’s been an enjoyable tenure; I’ve learned a lot.  I’ve learned how to drive a semi a little better.  Learned how to unload a graincart full of corn in less than five minutes with minimal spillage, most of the time.  Learned how to scoop up that spillage when I did spill, and laugh about it.  Learned how to have some very good times together and ate some really good food along the way. 

We haul to an elevator named Missler.  I realize that name is probably foreign to most of you northern folk.  Although I’d be willing to guess that a slight variation of it has whispered across the lips of any number of young dandies when the beauty they were following for the last several months slipped just beyond their reach.

The elevator is about 9 miles from most of Brent’s fields.  It’s a little one-horse affair that I wouldn’t trade for the bigger affairs any day.  At the most, there might be 5 trucks there at one time.  Most of the time, there are only one or two, as compared to the 15-20 at your regular elevators. 

You get to know the folks on a first name basis there.  Time is in your favor.

Obviously, it was built long before semis existed; the doors to the dumping pit are way too narrow, and the exit from the pit is blocked off by more bins that only a small bobtail truck could navigate past.  So, you must back up a hill, into a narrow opening, without scratching your truck or the elevator. 

Numerous gouges and chunks of missing concrete in the side of the door bear mute witness to unfortunate individuals who thought they were lined up but really weren’t.  It’s often that you’ll see someone backing up the hill, stop, look things over, start lurching in reverse towards the door, only to pull all the way forward to start all over again.  One harvest, Brent and I had a contest to see who had the fewest times to start over backing up, but that is a story for another time.

There was a new dude there, running the pit and dumping the trucks.  He struck me as rather interesting.  Ball cap was always on bill backwards.  Hefty chew either in his bottom lip or cheek. Orange seemed to be his favorite color.  Beer belly, an easy size 6.  Electronic equipment his weakness.  For a while, every day showed a new gadget.  His new earbuds must have had some kind of power.  I’d often get a mirror portrait of him jamming out to what must have been some bad heavy metal. 

I hopped out one day and started visiting with him.  Sounded like his life had been rather interesting, if not tragic.  We talked for a while, comparing likes and dislikes and backgrounds.  I told him I hated heights and wouldn’t do well climbing the bins like he had to.  He told me he loved em’.  Felt so free and good way up there.  Turns out he used to be a truck driver.  Of course, he was a bit braggy about most things, so the truck driving thing was really emphasized.  I guess he thought I needed a few ideas on the finer points of it. 

I asked him where all he had traveled during his trucking days.  He named most of the U.S. and parts of Canada.  Said he liked driving in Canada better anyways.  Talked about hauling to a little town called Brandon, west of Winnipeg. 

“Really,” I said, “I have two sisters who live up there and use that as their shopping town.” 

He must have figured I was still a little wet behind the ears.  He leaned in and told me, as the smell of his chew wafted around me, that one has to be really careful driving truck in Canada. 

“Especially in the winter.  So many horses.” 

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you know, they get lots of snow up there, man.  Gets so deep, man, they have use horses and sleighs to get around.”

“Mmmhmm.” (non-convinced)

He worked there a couple more years.  By the end though, his pants hardly stayed up around his midsection anymore.  I counted him hitching them up 23 times during one time while I unloaded.  And his attitude about life in general seemed to need some hitching up also. 

So, there you have it, my northern friends.  And, since I’m planning on visiting some of you fine folks up there come November, I’d recommend that you keep your horses in good shape. 

I don’t want to be stranded up to my armpits in the snow somewhere on the other side of Brandon.

Wishes

Sometimes, when I have plenty of time to think, I start making wishes.  Not the negative kind of wishing, where all a person does is pine away for something that wouldn’t be good for them.  Really, I think the right kind of wishing is a good thing. 

I usually do this wishing in sort of a conversation with myself, although it has involved others if we’re all just sitting around, shooting the breeze.  My conversation with myself goes something like this. 

“If I could go eat out at the place of my choosing this evening, where would it be?”  There are no holds barred with that question.  It’s a deal where expenses would be paid, and you would be transported at warp speed to the restaurant of your choice and back home again in time to tuck yourself in for night.  Of course, you are thinking that someone my age going down this track is also partially senile.  And, of course, you may be partially justified in your thought process. 

The answer to that question, for me, has been interesting.  For quite some time I would have been back to India in a heartbeat, driving up on the sidewalk beside the only good two miles of four lane road for miles around. I’d get out of the vehicle and walk back down the way we had come, maybe some 500 feet, because there is no parking nearby, and enter the courtyard of a little building complex.  I’d walk downhill on the pavers that have grass growing through the cracks here and there, to the building straightaway from the entrance I had come into.  I’d enter the door and would be greeted by the waitress and be seated near the door.  I would have to ask Bryce to order for me, as I don’t speak the language.  I’d order an orange pop, because that is probably all they have for pop, and more than likely it would be warm.  Then I’d order their fried chili potato strips.  I’d probably be tempted to make a meal out of these, and if they are as spicy as the last time, I’d probably be too smoked and sweated up by the time I was done with them to order anything else.  But, just for the taste of it, I’d order chicken tikka masala.  I’d eat a little and then the waitress would offer to ‘package’ my food to take home.  My drink would never be empty, nor would my plate never loose it’s bounty, because as was then, so now, the waitress would come ask what I needed, even if I had accidentally, only momentarily glanced her way.

Closer home, I’d slip over to Ardmore Oklahoma and find my way to a little joint we happened in on one afternoon.  Catfish Corral.  Their fish was incredible, and their hushpuppies were mysteriously good.  I left there with the roof of my mouth scorched, either because I couldn’t control myself and ate too fast, or else because the food was too hot.  After that, I’d stop by the convenience store just down the street to get what I say is about the best candy bar made.  Wrapped in red plastic, and if you get the King size, you get 4 neat little bars.  Silky smooth dark chocolate with creamy coconut couched inside, just waiting to give you the burst of flavor it always does.  I’d eat two of those neat little bars, and then I’d do like I normally have to do, sneak the other two inside once I get home, and hide them way in the back of the fridge, lest the daughter who lives at this house find them and immediately make them disappear.  But the real reason for stopping at that convenience store would be to see if my singing friend still worked there.  As I stepped in the first time, I heard the most wonderful singing, in voice so clear and beautiful.  I found its source in a colored man who worked behind the counter and told him how much I enjoyed his voice and singing.  He was singing Gospel, by the way.  He told me he had spent a number of years in the pen and had found out singing helped get him through the dreary days.  “Now, I just sing for de Lawd, an try to point de way out to others.  Ain’t never going back to jail.  Learned myself a lesson dere.”   

But lately, I’ve been hankering to visit a little joint somewhere east of Pickensville, Alabama.  I have no clue what the name of it is, and I wonder if it is still in business.  We were on our way home from Huntsville, the way I recall, when my brother-in-law Galen mentioned knowing of this place.  I was looking for some big sign and a place with vehicles crowded around, since I was a bit unacquainted with southern style cooking yet at that point. 

We dropped off the little two lane we were on, to an even lesser traveled two lane road and headed north, the way it seemed to me.  And for the next few miles, we passed nary a sign about restaurants, and not much more of civilization.  We rolled up to a little cabin style building, with rough sawn walls, both inside and out, and were welcomed in and seated in a side room to the main building.  And then it happened.  The food started getting plopped on our table, and the smell and taste were something I have yet to find again.  I do believe it was there I first tried what has become a staple to any barbeque for me, fried okra.  Red and white plastic checkered tablecloths, paper towel rolls here and there for napkins as we needed, and the smokiest, juiciest, best tasting meat I have ever eaten.  Of course, the saying is, “The older I get, the better it was,” but I don’t think my memory is playing jokes on me tonight.  That’s where I’d be if I had my wish tonight. 

I could name other places, definitely.  But I’ll spare you the agony. 

Oh, and one more, I wish you a good night, free of indigestion from the meal you just had.

Disfunctional Welder

The welder of today is a sweet looking affair.  The machine, that is, although, perchance, that description could include the one doing the welding.  The welders from the 1980’s got their styling, I suppose, from necessity.  They were large boxy things that took up a lot of space, were heavy on their feet and generally talked trash to you anytime you tried to move them around the shop. 

They were simpler; I didn’t see a one of them that I ever found a computer board on.  Just a series of wires connected to resistors and coils.  But sometimes those connections exposed the worst in some of us.

The welder we used, back in the combine shop at the local John Deere where I worked, was a bit dysfunctional at times.  Of course, the same description could be applied to those of us who used it if you wished to.

There were three of us who worked back there.  I worked in the middle bay.  The fella on the one side of me was your normal, friendly and helpful type.  He and I had lots of good times working side by side and got along most generally.  He once left the service call he was on to come help me on my service call, some 30 miles from where he was, and that at 11:30 at night.  I tried to do the same for him. 

The guy on the other side of me was from a different time and place entirely.  One might describe him as a bit churlish.  We tried to involve him in our shop banter and back and forth, but he would have nothing of it.  He came to work 20 minutes early in the morning and came back 20 minutes early from lunch every day.  He always worked long and hard right up to closing time.  He turned more money for that dealership than I can imagine in his 30 plus years working there.  But, if I needed help with something, I knew it was probably best not to ask him.  Although he didn’t have any scruples asking the rest of us for help.  I did ask him for help several times and got enough riff-raff back that I didn’t care to ask again.  He could be very demeaning when he wanted to be and didn’t seem to have any sense humor whatsoever.   

I was intrigued with him.  And that aura of mystique that he carried about himself only piqued my curiosity more every day, to the point that it seemed necessary to lighten up his world a bit; draw him out, so to speak.

Back to the welder in our shop.  It had developed a maddening problem of losing contact with itself somewhere deep inside.  In each section of the shop, there was one person designated to keep the shop equipment serviced and maintained.  This person happened to be our humorless friend, and so we looked to him to get this welder fixed.

But since the problem was so intermittent, he had a very hard time finding and fixing it.  He finally told us that if it acted up while we were using it, to kick the side of it and that usually got it back up and going. 

So, we kicked.  For several weeks.

Now I don’t want to sound rude or disrespectful; rather, I would like to appear as somewhat sympathetic to the betterment of humanity, and thus I took up an experiment to prove what really made this man that worked to the east of me tick, er, kick.

A prime opportunity presented itself not to long thereafter.  My humorless friend needed to do some repairs inside the bin of the combine he was working on.  These repairs involved the use of the aforesaid welder to do so. 

I waited until he was well down into the bin and had started welding before I made my way over to the load center and located the circuit breaker that was labeled, “welder.” 

I flipped it to the off position.

My other colleague, the helpful friendly one, watched with a questioning look on his face, but he quickly caught on to what my plan was and joined in by starting a conversation with me in the leeside of his combine. 

Our humorless colleague, muttering dire threats and implications against said welder, climbed up and out of the bin, down from the top of his combine and over to the welder.  The instant he delivered a kick to its side, I flipped the circuit breaker to the on position and right on cue it started running again. 

Again, I waited until he was deeply ensconced in his welding job down in the bin before flipping the breaker.  Again, we visited in the leeside of the combine.  Again, mutterings and dire threats.  Again, a swift kick.  Again, I flipped the breaker on.  Again, the welder ran.

And all over again the third time, except by this time, the threats had turned into curses and the implications into promises. 

I stepped out from the leeside of the combine in time so my colleague could see me before he delivered the kick that I was afraid would injure his toes and mentioned casually that I would probably stop flipping the breaker to the welder now and get back to my work.

In the rarest of instants, chivalry trumped churlishness, and he smiled. 

And it was soon afterwards that our welder was fixed.

Disturbin’ the Peace

There are those, namely my daughter, who have lately cast a certain smudge upon my name with a reference to me being a wild child back in my teen years.  It seems rather preposterous that such comments would be made, first of all, in the face of one who is largely innocent, and secondly, those who make such charges weren’t even around at the time of which they speak.  I say, if they want to make such charges, they need to have been there and witnessed it.  Those same folks say I snore; well, it may be that they think they hear me snore, but since I have never really heard myself snore, it can’t be proven.  I think I make myself clear in this matter.

Now on to my story.  I have found it interesting to read the police reports from time to time in the local newspaper of where I happen to be at the time.  In a paper some years ago, I read of several who had either been arrested or given citations for disturbing the peace.  Most of these police encounters were a result of a neighbor complaining of loud noises, arguments, etc, etc. I had never heard of such citations, as the paper of the town in which I reside has never had to run police reports for disturbing the peace.  Leading me to believe, then, that I live in a rather peaceful locale.  Also leading me to believe, since there were no articles of such listed in the paper during my teen years, more than likely I wasn’t the wild child some make me out to be.  But on with my story, as it seems I have gotten a bit sidetracked in that last sentence. 

There were some enterprising young men from down south who regularly came to spend their winter with their relation here in southwest Kansas.  Their time here sometimes needed something to fill it with to keep it from becoming tedious.  One day, these young men devised what we later called, ‘The Cannon.’  This was a very simple piece of construction, made from two 3-foot pieces of approximately ½ inch wall pipe welded together and a plate on one end. 

A small pinhole was drilled in the end with the cap and experiments, for them, began.  The first challenge was finding enough gunpowder, and the right kind, to do what they had in mind.  Namely, make a big boom and propel something out of it far and away.  Times back then were a fair bit more relaxed than today; we lived simply, without cell phones or internet, so quick references and background checks couldn’t be made.  Gunpowder, rifle gunpowder that is, was obtained in bulk quantity quite easily. 

At first, the thing was a fail.  The powder didn’t ignite properly, actually not at all, so a larger pinhole was drilled.  Now things were moving along nicely, sound effects and all.  They started with small amounts of powder and gradually worked up to a decent quantity.  These guys were engineers in the bravest sense of the word.  Rather than work it out on paper, they simply worked it out of the cannon, with a bit more powder each time.

Their main objective with the thing was to see how destructive it could be.  Once they had established a good ignition sequence of the gunpowder, they started using it to push more than just wadded up rags.  One day, they took numerous shotgun shells apart to harvest the shot that each one had inside of it.  An aerosol paint can lid did nicely to hold the shot.  They set this whole thing up approximately 30 feet from a piece of metal they wished to make a damage assessment on once the blast had been set off.  Engineers though they were, they didn’t expect the strain to be as great as it was on their weld in the midsection joining the two pipes.  The relentless force did a number to it and what was once one long pipe now reverted to the original two.  But they were not to be outdone and simply welded it back together and experimentation resumed.  As the fields were drying up down south, they soon left and bequeathed their legacy to my friend Ron and me.  Whether they gave us the injunctions to carry on with the R & D phase, I do not remember, but we felt it our duty to do so, nonetheless.

We continued to perfect their brainchild by building an appropriately sized ramrod to tamp the powder down and then to ram the intended projectile home to the wad lying on top of the powder.  We had been testing different weight and sized projectiles, and one day we found the ideal match for our cannon.  It was just your ordinary tennis ball.  Suddenly, the nearby Walmart did a blistering business in tennis ball sales.  The bore of this cannon was exactly 2.5 inches in diameter.  A tennis ball is a wee bit less than 2 5/8-inch diameter.  This size was the best you could get.  It provided a decent amount of drag on the sides of the cannon whilst ramming the tennis ball home.  That drag was just enough to build a rather high amount of head pressure against the ball once the powder had been ignited.  Between the head pressure and the explosive idea in the gunpowder, you had a first-class tennis ball launcher. It sent the balls off so far away and so fast that we never did find one again.  Occasionally we would aim it straight up, and then, once in a while, if you were lucky and had good eyesight, you might see a speck of that ball now and then.

You might say our next idea was a loose cannon.  I’ll give you that if you want to call it as much, but don’t go down the wild child line of thought.  I recalled at this point of R & D, some experimentation I had done earlier exploring the effects of a 30/30 slug ramming at high speed into a tin can full of water.  If you don’t know what happens, allow me to explain.  Water does not compress.  So, when a high-speed slug enters the tin can, the force of the slug has to be dissipated.  Either the force will continue in the line it has begun, or else, in this case, be exerted at right angles of the original trajectory since the non-compressibility of water acts as an impenetrable wall.  The can blows up, and you will often find the slug unscratched, lying on the ground about in the middle of where the can used to be.   

Why not, I intimated to my friend, use the same concept with our cannon?  Brilliant, we thought.  Or at least I did.  Field trials were begun immediately, and test results started sputtering in.  It soon became apparent to us that we had something on our hands that could be taken to the next step. 

That next step was this. . .

Load the cannon with aforesaid gun powder, wadding and tennis ball.  Tamp down tightly to ensure maximum projectability.  Lay an extra-long ridge of fuse powder. (What we had in mind had the potential to do harm, or so we thought.) Prop the cannon up on a three-inch block of wood so the front end is angled up.  Find a five-gallon bucket that we didn’t ever plan to use again.  Fill the five-gallon bucket approximately two thirds full of gasoline and place within two feet of the cannon’s muzzle end.  Light the fuse and run the 100-meter dash in record time, all the while casting fearful/inquiring looks over your shoulder.

In a tremendous flash of flame and sound, we realized this was the epitome of all craziness.  Only at night could the true dimensions be verified somewhat correctly.  The fireball stretched an easy 100 feet upwards, although I would guess it was likely more, and extended much the same horizontally. 

Field trials proved successful on several later occasions, with more and more spectators gathering each time.  I wish I could be around, some 1,000 or 1,500 years in the future, when archeologists are conducting a dig somewhere in what used to be my back yard. I’d like to see the puzzlement on their faces as they try to deduce what went on anyway, based on the fossil fuel sediment and scorch marks.  I bet they’ll decide this is what made dinosaurs go extinct and that it happened millions of years ago.

* * *

I would hope that the common sense of my reader is verified in the fact that he/she does not attempt to emulate the above scenario in its raw form.  While it was fun, and hair raising, it would be best if such things were, ahem, a little less flamboyant, could we say. 

A couple of years later, the cannon proved its dangerous capabilities when a cousin of mine was using it in much the same manner as we had.  It fired prematurely, before the 100-yard dash had been completed, and my cousin sustained severe enough burns to spend some time in a burn unit.  I suppose I am partially responsible for his pain and agony.  

Broken Doors, Broken Promises

Places and names have been changed to give privacy to those involved.

The place had a haunted feel to it.  Perhaps it was still a case of the jingles I was entertaining from the phone that had gotten this all started. 

I was descending the stairs from the cattle auction ring when my phone alerted me of an incoming call.

“Hello?”

“Hello my name is Penny Barode and I know I still owe you money from the last job you did for me but could you please come look at something that is terribly wrong with my wiring?”  All delivered at maximum speed in a sooty voice that was sure to have been exhaling the last drag of smoke with it.

“Your name is what?”

“Penny Barode.  And I know I still owe you money, but I’ll pay for that right away if you’ll come look at my problem.”

“Okay, but I can’t recall that we have done any work for you or that you owe us money.”  

“Yeah, you did about a year ago.”

“Ah, okay.  Do you live in Sublette?”

“Yes.”

“At 205 Westslide?”

“Yes.  But could you come look at my problem?”

Now I knew who I was talking to and yes, she did still owe money.  Actually, had never paid a cent on the first work we had done.  It wasn’t a lot she owed, and I figured if worse came to worse I could write it off.  I had never gotten her last name and then lost her phone number after we did the last job for her and always wondered if my invoices were going through with just an address and first name on them.  But they must have gotten through alright.

“Okay, I’ll send someone out to take a look at your project and then we’ll make a plan on how to proceed.”

“Oh! Thank you so much.  Thank you so much!”

After Josh looked at the project, the plan to proceed was simple.  Get paid in full up front and we would be happy to do the job.

I called her back. 

“Penny, we can fix your problem.  We can be there tomorrow morning.  But before we start, we need to talk over how you plan to pay.”

“Yes, I’ll pay.”

“Okay.  It will cost around $1,200.  Are you able to cover that?”

“Yes.  I have some saved up, about half of it, and my Mom says she will pay the other half.  We’ll pay you right away.”

“Okay.  We will have the power off for quite a while.  When would be a good time of the day to do this?” 

“Anytime.  Well, wait.  My daughter may be home doing a Zoom.  Hold on.  Let me ask her.” 

“No, she says she goes to college tomorrow so you will have the whole day and the place to yourself.”

* * *

I hefted the tool bag while Josh rummaged about inside the trailer for power tools and supplies to do the job.  I paused after a couple of steps and looked whimsically at an off green Kia Soul parked on the side of the street.  I recalled as I stood there, a comment one of the boys had made about that make of vehicle.

“If you owned one of them, you could trade it off on something else and then you could tell folks that you had traded your Soul for what you were driving now.”

I walked on, parallel to a fallen down, paint peeling picket fence.  I entered the yard and paused again.  To my left a generic brand, electric push mower was still parked where it appeared to have stalled in the 5-foot by 10-foot clump of weeds its owner was trying to mow down.  In front of me, a scattering of cigarette butts lay, about as far as a finger would flick them, should the smoker have been sitting on the bottom of the broken-down wooden steps.  Tinseled glass caught my eye; cheap impulse buys that were just as impulsively jabbed into the ground here and there.  Yard adornments of the not so rich or famous.  I climbed the porch, leaning off level with it as I climbed and was arrested again in my forward motion.  Right against the other side of the porch was an above ground swimming pool.  Fetid water half-filled it.  Green scum and slime at least 2 inches thick floated in the water and clung to the sides of it.

Somewhere inside, dogs were barking frantically.  I opened the door and pushed in.  I had to push, because I was hit by a wave of ammonia that could almost be seen and definitely felt.  The two dogs were barking, bug eyed and scared of me, just inside the door.  I stood there for a bit, trying to acclimate to the stench and dark interior.  There was just barely a path that wound its way by the furniture in the living room and on through the kitchen.  Articles too numerous to mention and of varied description sloped upward on either side of the path.

Cats were everywhere. Most of them were orange with puss filled eyes. 

I was looking for the load center; Josh knew where it was, but he was still out at the trailer getting tools.  I suspicioned that since he had been here earlier, he wasn’t any too anxious to reenter.  I started my locomotion again, but the floor held on to my shoes, only giving way at the last instant with a loud sluksch sound.  Cat pee pooled here and there.  I presumed that was what held so tenaciously to my shoes as I walked across the floor. 

I got to the far end of the house and had found several fresh piles of cat poop, but not a load center.  I started in the other direction.

The last room on the other side of the house appeared to be a storage room.  Next was a bathroom, as cluttered and full as the other rooms.  The tub faucet dripped steadily; so did the sink faucet and toothpaste was smeared up the side of the sink.  The stained shower curtain hung at an angle and finally fell off at the end.  A hairbrush, full of hair, rested on a shelf near by the small vanity mirror. 

I got to the next door on my way back to the central part of the house.  From the looks of things this was the room that had the load center in it.  A storage room/closet/mechanical room, per se.  I threw the door open and stepped through the doorway, scanning the walls for the load center.

But the wall scanning was quickly halted as I saw, to my chagrin, the daughter, who was supposed to be gone all day, climbing out of bed.  My step through the doorway, into the smallish bedroom, had me rather too close for comfort.  A 1/3 second glance gave relief that she was fairly well covered.  I quickly backed out, calling out a cheery, “Good morning!” and pushed the door shut. 

But it kept going past shut. 

And by the time my panicked momentum had been arrested, I was face to face with the daughter once again. 

The door had no door jam, and I was now in a verbal jam.  I decided, in that 1/3 second, that spoken words were unnecessary and I quickly closed the door, gingerly latching it this time. 

We found the load center.  And more cats.  And more internally processed cat food.  But we got the job done. 

I called Penny when we were done, and she said she would have money for us when she got home.

“But only $400.  That’s all I could come up with between my mom and me.”

Food

Now I know already that some of you are going to sniff at what I say next.  And that’s just fine.  Admittedly, there are some who slide up to the table with nary a thought but of the hunger pains they wish to calm in the shortest amount of time possible.  If you are one of those, then you will sniff at what I say next and it would probably do you well to skip the rest and, say, go eat a Snickers candy bar.

But for those still interested, I have some opinions to share with you.  There are certain foods that are an experience.  And that experience is part and parcel of the whole meal.  It includes the process, if you will.  And, there are certain utensils that must be used in certain applications or you’ll miss the process.  Not all foods or utensils fall into this category.  Some fall into it only occasionally. 

Take grilled hamburgers.  Most of the time, they don’t fall into this category, being a non-issue food done in a sort of non-issue way.  But. Get yourself a couple hundred of them to grill.  Get several grills and a number of guys hanging around.  Get yourself plenty of salt on them and even more pepper. (Some wives take issue with the pepper) Get your grill good and hot and then.  Then they fall into this process.  They are discussed and strategically flipped and positioned on the grill.  Mention is made of how well or not they hold together.  Thought is given to make sure they are done.  Different grilling approaches are discussed.  Finally, take one straight from off the fire, slice it in pieces, and toss a piece of it in your mouth.  In fact, eat enough of them out there by the grill, that you really don’t need any meal when it’s time for the meal.  But then, when you are going through the line with all your grilling buddies, do just like them.  Make yourself a heaping hamburger with two, maybe three patties, bacon, onions, pickles if you care to, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and a splash of barbeque sauce.  Skip the lettuce.  If you have done all this, then this meal falls into a thing called an experience and can be properly rated as such.

I must treat on the subject of discada.  I don’t know how to spell it, so this will have to do.  If some of you haven’t sniffed your way off here by now, you may do so after what I say next.  This isn’t for the hamburger and bacon aficionado.  Those of you who think a discada is strictly made up of such, and I know you are out there, should sign off now.  Because there is a better way.  There is no process to hamburger and bacon.  But.  Go get some beef stew meat.  Get some pork tenderloin.  Get some chicken.  Cube it up into ¾ inch pieces.  Get some onion.  Get some garlic.  Get some green pepper.  Get some tomato.  Get a nice amount of jalapeno.  Get salt, and a fair amount of black pepper.  Now here is where the process begins.  You don’t want to rush the next part.  Gather your friends around your disc and get comfortable.  You’ll be here a while if you are going to do this right.  Throw your meat on, with a half stick of butter.  Slow is the word here.  Cook it slow.  Add the garlic right soon after the meat.  Next the tomato, so they can have disappeared by the time you eat.  You don’t want anything giving you the red eye.  Toss on your green pepper and onion towards the end.  Don’t let them go limp and pass out on you.  Keep a little backbone in them.  This whole process should take around 30 minutes.  It’s important to talk weather and other various and sundry whilst the cooking is being done.  It’s okay, if you are the head cook, to invite suggestions about the cooking process, but don’t let too many of those suggestions ruin your stew.  Because that is what you want it to turn into.  Any less than 30 minutes and you’ve missed a prime process.  Anymore, and you spoiled a prime process.  Serve straight off the disc, with tortilla’s, of course.  You can have cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and some spicy salsa as sides, but if you have done your process right, after the first one, folks won’t even bother to put the sides on.  Yeah, I know some of you like hamburger and bacon.  That’s okay.  But this beats yours all hollow, both in process and experience.

You can’t get a decent iced coffee without the right utensils.  My friend Frank shared the original recipe with me a number of years ago, including utensil selection, and I have improved on it some.  Allow me to share.  In order of importance you will need, a 30 oz Yeti cup, a regular knife like goes beside your plate at supper time, and a straw. (Preferably green or purple) The knife is almost more important than the cup, but not quite.  Of course, we’ll get to the ingredients, as they play a part, but I can’t emphasize enough, the importance of the proper utensils for a good, chilled coffee.  Spoon in two tablespoons of sugar into your Yeti.  I’m not so picky on this part; two is a good place to start. Toss in a scant ¼ teaspoon of Nestle chocolate powder.  Also, a scant ¼ teaspoon vanilla.  Next, head over to your espresso machine.  Be sure to say it esssspresso, not expresso, or the teenagers nearby will snort.  Grind you some fresh beans and get yourself a fresh shot of essspresso. Two shots are fine if you are the type that has umm, yeah, we’ll maybe leave that unsaid.  Pour the espresso over what’s in the bottom of your cup.  Now.  Get the knife.  Mix what’s in the bottom of your cup with the knife until it has all dissolved into a wonderful smelling brew.  The knife helps give it the smell.  Clean up your mess at the espresso machine and shut it off.  Next fill your cup ¾ or a little more with chunky crushed ice.  Fill almost full of 2% milk.  Add cream if you want to gain weight quickly.  Now.  Get the knife again.  Stir this mixture, using a circular, up and down motion like you see the animals do on the merry go round you rode on as a child, or possibly as recent as last week.  Stir until the milk starts changing color.  Here’s where the knife shines.  A spoon would lift that flavor from the bottom of your cup too quickly and leave it in clumps throughout the glass.  A knife does perfectly to get the right mix of flavor, milk and ice. Lastly, snap the lid on and reach for the straw.  Slid it through the drinking slit in the lid.  Sip slowly.  If done properly, you should be able to make this cupful last for a good 4 hours.  Don’t forget to clean the knife; be sure to bestow a few kind words upon it as you do so, as it has been an indispensable article in the process and experience of your drink.                  

Pressed to the Limit

I say that life is basically made up of two types of people.  The kind who set limits and the kind who test those limits.  I would have said that the folks who tested the limits were generally trying to scratch an itch based on pecking order, and once they found the limit on the piece of machinery they were dealing with, they had subconsciously one-upped the guy who had built the machine. But I don’t say that anymore.

I tip my hat to the limit testers.

I’ve seen guys jump into Mustangs with the gas pedal already halfway down before they cranked her over.  I’ve seen men roll down their window at stoplights, in a sort of camaraderie with the fellow beside them whose engine sits there snapping and loping away until the light changes.  I’ve even seen old men try out the limits of new lawn mowers. 

I once heard of a grandma who wanted to test out her grandson’s new car.  The first thing she asked, “Does it have a sport mode?”  Her comment, while easing along at a clean 100 m.p.h., “You gotta speed up for curves you know,” tells me she sits right in the middle of the limit testers group.

My friend Wes is a limit tester.

But before I shed some light on his personality, let me explain to you how a telescope, or ‘scope’ in our slang, works.

The type of scopes that we used had a large mirror housed in the back, or bottom end.  I hear tell on some of the bigger scopes they have little cooling fans for that mirror as the light coming in heats them up enough to warp the mirror and distort the images.  Up towards the front of the scope, suspended on a thin shaft, is a much smaller mirror.  The big mirror in back collects the incoming light and beams it up to the small mirror in crystal clarity.  Situated directly above the small mirror is a housing that fits any number of strength eyepieces.  Thus, the little mirror becomes the same thing as a slide on a microscope, couching the specimen for you to look at and magnify with your eyepiece.  The key word, here, is magnify.

The date was June 5, 2012.  We, who had an interest in astronomy, were on point and ready.  There was a six-hour event set to happen that we didn’t want to miss.  The next time it is set to happen is 2117.  What I’m talking about here is the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.

There are a couple of things critical to catching this—the first is a scope, and the second is a filter for your scope.  I have explained the scope.  The filter looks like a lid that snaps over the open end of your scope and cuts the sun’s rays and power down to where your scope and your eye can handle the light and heat as it collects each of those and transmits them up to the small mirror hanging on the thin shaft and then up through the eyepiece, into your eye. 

My friend Wes didn’t have a filter for his 12-inch scope.  But he was just as determined to capture this event as the rest of us were.

Wes is a welder by trade and had just purchased a very nice auto-darkening welding helmet.  He called us up on the day of the event and told us that even though he didn’t have a filter for his telescope, he figured he could get his scope lined up and sighted in without looking down the eyepiece.  Then, when it was all set, he could use his welding helmet as a, sort of, filter.  He wondered what we thought.

We said no, you are crazy. 

At that point, though, we didn’t know that Wes was a limit tester. 

We found out, later, after his scope was all lined up and focused, Wes took his shiny nice new welding helmet and took a quick glance down his eyepiece.  We also found out, as a result of his heroic actions, that welding helmets don’t meet muster for filters on scopes.  There was a nice clear spot burned into its tinted lens. 

Seeing what his helmet looked like, Wes instinctively touched the glass aperture of the eye piece on his scope with his thumb, thus checking out another set of limits, this time that of his own personal equipment and that of the scope’s eyepiece.  A sizzling sound and a clearly defined thumbprint burned into the glass of the eyepiece proved both thumb and eyepiece to be at their outer limits.

If that eyepiece were still laying around somewhere, say, in Haskell County, I’d be tempted to pay a small sum to call it mine.  I’d mount it for display in my office. 

Underneath would be inscribed, “Pressed to the Limit.”

Pipe Bombs

My friend Gregg called me up one morning and said he needed a little help on a project he was working on.  I agreed to be at his place shortly after dinner.

Beings as I was born and raised on the other side of the tracks from Gregg, I was perplexed as to what he was working on when I saw it.  He patiently explained that he was in the process of building and detonating a pipe bomb. 

He proceeded to show me his creation.  He had been to the hardware to purchase a 9-inch piece of 2-inch black pipe.  He had them thread both ends of the pipe and bought two end caps to screw on it.  He had drilled a 1/16-inch hole in the body of the pipe to route the fuse through.  He spoke in hushed tones as he gently, almost reverentially, unscrewed the cap, telling me that guys had been killed unscrewing it too quickly when the minutest spark from friction on the threads had ignited the powder inside.  Once he had the cap off, I saw that he had purchased a suitable amount of what I recognized as the flaky, highly explosive type of shot gun powder.  This was in the days when a cell phone was unheard of, the internet didn’t exist to track any movement or point of sales and drone flybys from inquisitive neighbors had yet to be seen.

It was a several minute process of screwing the cap back on, me holding the pipe ever so steady, and Gregg handling the cap with measured motions. We hunted up some twine to do for a fuse, making sure it was about ten feet in length.  Next, we discussed our Plan of Action (POA) and our Plan of Escape (POE).

Our POA appropriated the use of the blue 1974 F-100 for conveyance.  We would install the pipe bomb in a sheltered place in the bed and gingerly drive out to a point of our choosing in the field to the west of the house, some 3/8ths mile away.  For those who still live in this area, this base of operations is now owned by Jerril Koehn.  Once we had a site chosen that fit our needs, we would dig a small hole and carefully place the pipe bomb in it.  Our fuse would be laid upwind from the pipe bomb and pushed into the fuse hole.  A little gasoline would be doused on the end of the fuse nearest the pipe to insure good ignition.

Our POE called for us to leave both truck doors open, so that once the fuse was lit, no time would be wasted in getting a move on to get out of there.  We didn’t know what potential destructive power this device had and didn’t want to be anywhere near once it detonated.  Next, our POE called for maximum acceleration until maximum speed was reached.  Our plan detailed pulling up to the house, entering through the utility door, rushing through it, up the stairs to a second-floor bedroom whose window faced northwesterly in the general direction of the imminent explosion.  Lastly, our POE mandated that only the portion of our face from the bridge of our nose upwards be exposed to the blast radius.  Our philosophy was that such a small face area of exposure was less likely to attract shrapnel than a larger one and we felt it was imperative that we witness what might happen in case we wished to duplicate this in a future event, if we were around for the future, that is.

The POA went largely as planned.  All we lacked was to light the fuse.  It took a little time to screw up our courage and get ourselves talked into what we knew we needed to do.  But eventually we did the right thing and after several shaky attempts to get a match lit, and several more attempts after the wind blew it out, we had our fuse lit.

Sprinting at near Olympic record speeds we made for the Ford.  I, who needed to get to the far side of the truck from the bomb, was at a disadvantage and had to make a leap for all I was worth into the already accelerating truck.

We mostly floated back across the field towards the house, front end canted up and back-end scrambling for all it was worth to get traction in the loose soil. 

The engine screamed right up against redline all the way until we neared the west end of the shed that sits west of the house. 

At that point, I took in several sensory perceptions all at once.  I saw the field rapidly retreating behind as I glanced to see if there was any explosion yet.  I smelled the rich smell of carbureted gasoline forced back through the cab by the high rate of fan rev’s up front.  As the corner of the shed flashed by, I saw Gregg’s foot come unstuck from the floor, where it was holding the accelerator, and smash itself into a similar position on the brake.  My glance continued its z-pattern and I saw the speedometer registered a little over 50 m.p.h.  My brain cognitively told me we were going to have two explosions.  One behind us and one in front as we smashed into the house.

But Gregg has never disappointed me with his driving yet, and that day was no exception.  Steering deftly on four locked up tires, he aimed for a small inset on the south side of the utility.  We slid into that nook as neatly as toast into a toaster.  The front bumper not more than two feet from the house as we again blasted Olympic records and mountain climbing ascent times all to pieces through the utility and up the stairs.

We ducked down in the two-foot space below the bottom window casement and hyperventilated.  To hyperventilate in that type of a crouch can only be done in extreme conditions such we found ourselves in.

After 10 minutes our respirations had decreased to a decent level of comfort, and the pipe bomb hadn’t detonated. 

Now what?  Was our fuse still burning?  Would it reach the pipe just as we were reapproaching?  We gave it a little more time and eased our way back out there in our adrenaline drenched bodies and faithful truck. 

The fuse had gone out right as it entered the pipe.  It appeared that the hole was too small to sustain enough oxygen and fuel at the same time. 

I heard later Gregg had achieved detonation by use of a servo robbed his RC airplane which in turn was hooked into about 30 feet of wire which was then hooked up to a model rocket igniter.  This allowed him to maintain a much safer distance, as he crouched down behind the trusty ole Ford for protection.  I heard the neighbors reporting feeling a concussion sometime on the same afternoon that the thing went off.  It could be it was related to the actual incident. 

What is interesting, is that I don’t recall anyone being home at the time of our experiment, for whatever reason.