…And To All A Goodnight.

It was early December, 1993. In Southern California, December weather is often very pleasant, and this year was not to disappoint. It was on account of this nice weather that my new husband decided upon on outdoor project which, as usual, incorporated me into the plans.

“Really, there’s nothing to it. This tree is too close to the shared fence, see how it hangs over into their yard? I’m going to put a rope around the upper trunk. You will hold onto it tight, and I am going to saw through the lower trunk. The whole thing will fall on this side of the fence.” He stated it all so simply.

But the facts were: the fence was made of flimsy 6′ tall cedar planks, with sharp points on top of each one. It was located very much next to the garage – just about 8′ away (they really do pile homes on top of each other in California). The tree was a mature smooth barked variety and stood about 15′ tall with a 8 inch diameter trunk. It probably weighed several hundred pounds. I weighed 114 pounds at the time. But it did in fact lean over into the neighbor’s yard, shedding leaves and some sort of spikey nugget that was painful when stepped on.

Being a new wife, I ignorantly said, “But Honey, this doesn’t make any sense. If we could get some distance from the tree and tie it off to something huge…, don’t you see this is just folly?”  He came back sternly, “Are you always going to argue with me?  Now,  I have the rope set. Here are some gloves. You just hold it tight and brace yourself.”  I backed up to the garage wall, and Husband happily began sawing with his grandfather’s old crosscut saw.

ABout the time that  my husband’s strength was fading, I began to feel the great beast leaning away from me. “Hon, uh, I don’t think this is going to work…”    Husband’s last words were, “Oh stop complaining, it’s almost ov…”    WHAM!  The tree crashed down — onto and over the fence, and in that instant I was jerked the full 8′ – my face splatting against the cedar fence. Still holding onto the rope, my wrists were wedged between the pointed cedar planks. My husband regained his footing, and, brushing himself off, said: “You were SUPPOSED to hold the tree on THIS side of the fence.”  Then the fence that I was crucified on gave way with a loud crash.  I will not go into detail here regarding the conversation which followed, but I will say that the project was put on hold until the following day.

Much the wiser now, I followed HIM into the neighbor’s yard to inspect the mess from their side. Yep, there was a tree on the wrong side, atop a flattened cedar fence, which in turn was atop the neighbor’s Nativity scene. It was one of those really large, outdoor lighted affairs. One of the Wisemen had a hand blown off, but fortunately the box of gold he was holding was also attached to his tunic.  Mary had a huge hole in the back of her neck. The baby in the manger had a large gap in his forehead. The manger legs were no more.  Not looking good. And since this display was set up every Christmas, there was no hiding the carnage.

Well, we spoke to the neighbor, explaining our good intentions. Apologies all the way around. She was very sweet about the matter, unbelievably so. We got busy sawing and cleaning up limbs, and making arrangements to have the fence repaired. Late that afternoon, she knocked on our door. A bit apprehensive, I asked if everything was alright. “Oh my, yes. I am so glad you did that. I don’t know if you noticed, but we had also cut a tree down near the fence, and you hauled it off, too!” She handed me a gift certificate for dinner at Tony Roma’s.  I had to be sure, so I asked, “You did see the Nativity set, didn’t you?” “Oh that’s okay. I was just telling my son that after Christmas this year we really needed to find a new Nativity on sale.”  Wow.

A few days later, my husband and I had a lovely dinner at Tony Roma’s. As we headed down Great Smokey Street to our house, we saw the neighbor’s had plugged in that same lighted Nativity scene - and it was breathtaking! The Wiseman’s box of gold glimmered bright on account of the light shining through where his hand was missing. The Mary had what looked like a bright halo from behind her hooded head where a limb had taken out her C6-C7 vertebrae. And the blessed baby had a bold stream of light shining from his forehead, straight up into the night sky.  Aside from the cedar splinters I was still finding, everything tuned out pretty well.   Now, as the Holidays come around,  I like to reflect back on that incident, when a minor catastrophe turned out to be a Christmas surprise.

“That Candy is HOW OLD?”

A few Valentine’s Days ago, I received a little package in the mail from Mom. I asked my husband, Gary, for his knife. Not to protect myself from it’s perhaps venomous contents – because that really was an accident and she did apologize, but to open it.

“What are you opening there?” My husband, putting down the paper, asked. It was a clear tube of M&M candy from my Mom’s package. It was corked with a plastic Christmas tree ornament: The M&M guys in a caboose.  Yes, yes, Christmas.

Placing the little ornament on the table in front of my husband, I answered him, “Candy, from my Mom”.  He looked at the little Christmas caboose. He paused, then sternly informed me, “I would NOT eat ANY candy from YOUR Mom. And YOU shouldn’t either. You have NO IDEA how old that is.”  I was not offended because I grew up in Mom’s time-haze, and it has been known to be lethal.

“That is true, I don’t have any idea how old it is. If red-turning-pink M&M’s are any indication, it’s probably from several Christmases back. But, it WAS sealed…”

He quietly replied, “So was King Tut’s tomb”.

Toilet Wars Revisited

Last February I wrote a little spewlage called Toilet Wars. And here were the photos from that entry:

 

As you may recall, my efforts were in vain.

 One day I was in the local hunting store when Irealized my coffee was catching up with me. The clerk indicated where the new restroom was. She also warned me that now it was for both genders and I needed to watch where I stepped. Remembering the above photos, this made me chuckle.

I found the facility, and look what I found to my sheer delight! Someone else was fighting the same battle!

After washing up, I found the clerk again. SHE (this had to be the one that wrote the sign) said that after the remodel they ended up with just one restroom, to the horror of the few ladies that work or frequent the establishment. The clerk said the toilet was always full of urine – in and around it. So she hoped this note would help. I showed her the above photos that were still in my phone. We laughed.

The next time I was in, I asked if the note had helped. The clerk said the guys were peeing on it less now that they were accustomed to seeing it!

It can always be worse.

“Well Now, If It’s Amish…”

As you may know, I work at a local farm store called The Co-Op.  Or The Coop. Either would be correct. Lately, I have worked some long hours. While I prefer to be a part-timer, this allows for more opportunity to observe people…

“Are these watermelons grown locally?” a tourist asked. “Well now, I don’t know. Let me ask,” I answered from behind the register.

After several inquires, no one seemed to know.  So I rooted around in our sorry-example of a computerized inventory (it is neither alphabetical OR numerical, and it is also fickle.). “Hmmm. It looks like they came from Ol’ Doc. Lemme give him a holler.” So I phoned Doc:

“Hey, Doc! This is Julie at the Co-Op… Oh yes, just fine Doc. Busy as usual… Doc, we were wondering about these melons here… No, we don’t need more yet… Doc, we were wondering where these watermelons came from? Oh, the Amish? Okay then… Well thanks Doc!”

I told the customer they were from our Amish. That’s where Ol’ Doc got them. “OH! The Amish! That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. Before she got all giddy, I felt I needed to be up front with her: “Ma’am, while the Amish tend to be a hard-working lot, I gotta tell you from experience, aside from dressing funny they are not so different from us…”   She heard not a word. “The Amish are so thrifty and clean! I’ll take two.”  And she left a happy customer. 

(See, I am guilty of having been a horse-trader a few years back.  Most Amish are also horse-traders. We went to the same auctions. Enough said.)

 Shortly after that, our office lady came up front.  ”Betty?” I asked.  “I was lookin’ for you a bit ago to find out about those melons. Then I learned Doc got them from the Amish.”  “The Amish? Did he tell you that? Well maybe he did, but THEY got them from trucker out of Georgia!”

Tell Me Again, What’s a Tater Day?

 

I took this photo last year and it pretty well sums up Tater Day: trucks, beer, Confederate flags, funnel cakes, vendors, and everyone in shorts. Not everyone should wear shorts. But they’re having fun. And not a potato in site.

Tater Day is held on the first Monday in April.  Though it is not a national holiday, schools are closed.  So are the banks and Post Office.  

The Co-Op is not.

You can read up on it from my April 2010 “What’s A Tater Day”.

 

These Can’t Be Your Horses…

 

This is Randy. He was figuring fertilizer prices, or, perhaps where he’d go for BBQ. Randy has nothing to do with this story.

Karen and I decided to go for a hike in the hills. It was really the “Santa Monica Mountains something-something Preserve or something”. Well, it got that name after the Feds spent millions putting in ugly-stupid trash cans all over the place and fenced it in, but from what I do not know.  Anyways, we locals always called the area Old Boney, because the big mountain head looked like huge a pile of bones. If you hiked anywhere near Old Boney, you could see the Pacific Ocean. On a good day you could see an island. It’s been so very long now, but I believe it was Ana Capa. A few years after this hike, I was to be “Adrift at Sea” (one of my drivels) off of Ana Capa.  But as I was saying…

Karen and I were bored so we put on our running shorts and Adidas running shoes (we lived and breathed high school track back then) and drove out to the new Old Boney Parking lot.  We headed down the 9 mile trail to the coast, but we didn’t intend to go all the way. See, it’s 9 miles of winding trail. Mostly it’s gradual downhill, but sometimes very steep. And a gruelling 27 miles back up. Well okay, it felt like it was three times as hard to get back up. So we were walking and sort of step-jogging along because when it gets steep sometimes it’s easier to go a bit faster. The trail turned to switch-backs and we couldn’t see what was ahead around the corner. Chatting about Steve Smith and Keith Hall or some other local track hero, at first we didn’t hear it. But then: “Hey, you hear that?” I asked Karen. “Yeah! It sounds like horses coming up the hill!”  I suggested we talk a little louder so they wouldn’t get spooked. The side of the trail dropped off 50 feet.

Soon enough, we begin to see two horses rounding the corner, only, they were alone. The saddles were empty. So we caught them. Checking out the situation, we saw they had saddle bags. I must interject here that back then, Karen and I were around each other so often that we had much the same absurd sense of humor and wild thoughts. Although mine did often go a bit too far.  So I don’t exactly recall which one of us said what, because it could have been either. One of us asked, ” You think there’s food in the bags?” And the other one said, “Well I can think of only one way to find out!” So we searched the saddle bags. “Oreos! Cool!” and the other bag had diabetic syringes. “The dudes that lost these horses are probably pretty sorry they got off. I bet they stopped for lunch and hadn’t thought about how to tie the horses,” we surmised. “Yeah, and now the idiots have to hike up this pinhead hill in their cowboy boots!” The scenario tickled us until we were laughing out loud. “Hey! Let’s take ‘em for a ride, I mean, ride while we search for the riders!” “Yeah! That sounds fun!” So we tied up the broken reins (the horses had stepped on them while left to their own devices), and climbed into the saddles.

I picked the Appaloosa (big spots all over) and Karen took the Bay (brown with black points). “You think they were down that way?” One of us was pointing down a pig trail. “Not likely. It’s really off the path…” Laughing, we happily guided our new mounts down the pig trail. Manzanita and brittle shrubs were tall enough to scratch our bare legs, but we didn’t notice. The sun was directly overhead. Scrub jays screeched from the canyon wall. We silly girls chatted as we rode along, eating Oreos. After a short while, one of us suggested that maybe we ought to look for the riders for real. So we took a short-cut back the 9 mile trail.

 Where it joined up was at the bottom of the steepest hill, that would be the hill we were already headed down to begin with. From here on the slope to the sea was more gradual. It wasn’t long before we saw two dudes walking slow like their feet hurt. They wore cowboy hats. “What do you wanna do now?” Karen asked. “Should we get off?”  I said, “Naw. WE rescued the horses. Let’s see what they have to say for themselves.”  So we stopped the horses and waited for THEM to come to us.

It was sort of a stand off:  they stood two abreast staring at Karen and I, and we stared back. “So then, you guys looking for something?” I asked.   ”Yep. We sure are.”    I prodded a little more: “Whatcha lookin’ for?” as if it weren’t damned obvious.  “We’re lookin’ for our horses,” the other one answered.   Karen still said nothing, but I could tell she was a little surprised. This wasn’t like me. I’m usually quite humble, unless it comes to horses. That’s something I know my way around and have always had some confidence. “Wellll,” I began, “Can you describe these horses?”  The first guy says,”Mine was brown, like that one!” pointing at Karen’s horse. The other guy says, “Yeah, and mine had spots, like that one!”  pointing at mine.  Proud of myself and still staring them down, I took it further: “Was anyone on these horses?”   Believing they had us now, they came back, “Nope! No one was on ‘em!”   The guys looked at each other like they’d clinched the deal.   I had one last thing to say: ”Well, then. There you have it. These horses cannot possibly be your horses, because WE’RE on these horses!” Finally Karen laughed. It was pretty funny, to us anyway.  We kicked-up the horses to ride past the guys. You know,  just testing. Those guys must’ve been mighty tired and pissed off because they jerked us off those horses so fast that we stumbled onto the ground. They hopped on and headed up the hill, wasting no time to thank us.

We pulled ourselves together and yanked our shorts back into place. Standing in the middle of a dusty trail with a hot sun overhead, we turned to watch the horses and dudes riding back up the steep switch-back hill. Squinting against the sun, Karen said, “Hmph. Now I’m glad we ate their Oreos.”

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Feel free to click on “leave a comment” and leave one.   Thanks, Jules

Robert, Ronnie, and the Three Little Pigs

A horseshoer stopped by the Co-Op. He and his family bought some jerky and roasted peanuts for a long drive. I asked where they came from. “We live in Tennessee, but I come up here to shoe. I used to live here.” Sounded like my cue: “Do you know a guy named Robert H—man?”  “Robert?! Are you kiddin’ me? Why I sure do!  We grew up near each other. I lived on the street and Robert lived in the holler sorta behind us. We lived so close that in the morning we’d yell to each other: ‘Woooooo! Get up now!’   So how’d you know I knew Robert?”  “Aw, just a lucky guess I suppose. I write stories on Robert. And Ronnie, too”, I answered. He was all too ready with the next sentence, “Man can I tell you stories about Robert!” And that’s how this very odd story began to unwind…

“…Robert and Ronnie had a sow they kept at Ronnie’s. Now she wasn’t one of those little ol’ sows. She was a good 300 pounder. Everyone called her Gertie. They had a big boar, too: Spartacus was a 350 pound or more Duroc – one of those big-old red pigs. Wellll, when Gertie got around to being  ’in‘ , Robert and Ronnie got it in their minds that they wanted to breed her to a little ol’ neighborhood pig named Spike instead of Spartacus. Spike was one of those little ol’ Pot Bellied pigs. The neighbors owned him. Why, he didn’t weigh over 60 pounds. I think they were fixin’ to have some of those ‘designer’ pigletts, only that’s not what they called that sorta thing back then.

So big Robert and Ronnie climbed into Ronnie’s little yaller-colored Datsun and headed for the neighbor’s place. They found scrawny Spike and tossed him in the back seat, and drove back to Ronnie’s. Well naturally as soon as they got onto the property ol’ Spike got a whiff of Gertie. She was hotter’n a firecracker now! She got a whiff of Spike, too. They got to talkin’ sweet to each other before the car stopped and Spike jumped right outta’ the window! Right down the lane and through the fence to Gertie. Gertie was ready, but puny ol’ Spike had to find a way to climb up on that big ol’ sow. Finally she just lay down and Spike figured it out. He started gettin’ busy when he noticed Spartacus was watchin’. Well now that fired-up Spike so much that he jumped off Gertie and ran under the fence to Spartacus. Such a fight you never saw! That little Spike was giving Spartacus a good whoopin’. There was squealing and grunting and blood.. Ronnie and Robert started kicking and swinging boards to break them apart.

That done, Spike slid back under the fence to Gertie. She’d stood up to watch the fight, but when Spike returned she lay back down! Well the little guy got busy again, and just like before, Spartacus was watchin’! Spike jumps off Gertie and back under the rail he goes. The two males start fightin’ again. Only this time the dogs jump in on it! Ronnie says to Robert, ‘He’s not behaving very neighborly. Let’s just take the little feller’ back home’. So, they break up the fight and Robert goes to catch Spike. Spike darts under fences and between their legs! But finally he spies his sweetheart laying-in-wait. As he was heading for her, Robert grabs the little Pot Belly and heads for the Datsun. You ever been around a boar at breedin’ time? Well, it not good at all, it’s (whispering now) messy. So Robert starts cursing the pig,’Great day o’ the morning, Ronnie! He’s breedin’ ME! Let’s get him in the car!’  And they toss Spike in the back seat of the little Datsun.

Now it wasn’t a far drive to the neighbor’s but Ronnie’s got a long driveway. Spike was still worked-up over Gertie and started breeding the back seat, then the back of Robert’s head: that’s when Robert started choking the poor little guy. Oh it was just an awful mess. Those two couldn’t get rid of that darn little pig fast enough. They pulled up at the neighbor’s and Ronnie  hopped out of the car. He opened the back door expecting Spike to jump out. But he didn’t. Spike was humpin’ up the floor mat.  ’Robert? I believe Spike thinks it’s a lot more fun with us…’   ’My stars Ronnie!’ as Robert’s wiping the back of his head, ‘This ain’t funny anymore!’ So Robert climbs into the back seat and kicks the pig out the door.  ’Drive!’  Robert shouts, ‘Spike’s trying to jump in the back window!’ And they tore off down the driveway…”

“Wow”, I stated.  Now that’s quite a story. Can you send me some more? I’ll give you my email… I can use other names if you like…”  “No-no, I don’t computerize.” And with that they left, and I never got his name.