"Letters to Miss Emily..."

[backhoe]

Edward, I just finished "unrigging" 'our' car...

A pair of binoculars from her brother's now-shut camera store...

All of a "Girl, Interrupted..."

Those binoculars had never even been used- still in the protective wraps...

Life, interrupted...

[backhoe]

“Iron Rations, Tires, & Other Things”

Well, Miss E, sometimes a poor start can end better.

After lunch the mail came, and looking over our finances, we spent $2,000 less than the last month-- and this was halfway in or less to the Iron Rations and Austerity program I started. Should have marked the calendar, durnit. Still probably going to need to do what I mentioned at first, or some of it, but there's some breathing room. Still have to find work, but it's not quite so dire a time frame.

Checked the phone book, and Tom's Tire advertised recaps, so I decided to stop there on the way to Haase Farm Service. Danged if he wasn't in the location of those crooks who sold me that Lincoln welder that failed after 10 hours on the clock and wouldn't repair it.

I ran my story by Tom, and while he noted recaps were history, he says he'll put a set of new, cheap tires on “our” car for about $110.

I jumped for joy, and when he gets the next batch in, “our” car gets new tires.

I replaced the kill switch on the deck, and it fires again, but only runs as long as there's ether in the carb, so we have a fuel supply problem.

Decided to tackle that another day-- I was tired, it's still hot as the Hinges here, and I still have shopping to do later.

All in all, a great improvement over some of the days here...just...
wish you were here.

[backhoe]

“Potpourri of Pennick Road”

I can't get those Pennick Road Adventures off my mind, for various reasons that I will outline here.

It's off a fragment of Old Jesup Road-- the same name of the road Miss Emily and her family lived on those many years, but there are some differences.

The Haase spread is on a part still connecting busy areas- indeed, it is being four-laned, and only the age of their place saved it from being flattened.

The section that connects to Pennick road darts off New Jesup, then rejoins it miles later, but it's only used by residents going home, so it is in the state it was in the 1940's-- narrow concrete two-lane, and poorly maintained-- I mentioned the trees growing together overhead in places.

A lot of this part of Georgia is bottom land- swamps and rivers, creeks and ponds-- and when the original roads were driven through- often with chain-gang labor-- the didn't always get the best route the first time. Indeed, when my Dad traveled this road many years ago it was “corduroy”- dirt with railroad ties laid across it to lessen bogdowns.

The section of Old Jesup that connects to Pennick Road is very scenic in itself- every style and income level of housing, dapper ranches and farms, quaint country churches with their tiny, neat graveyards, and I could write a a whole separate essay about it, given a little time and goading. The only drawback to photographing it is that it has no shoulders- just ditches and private driveways. But it, too, is scenic in charming, surprising and eclectic ways.

Pennick is more sweeping-- the stretch I remember from that time long ago when life and marriage were new had a long curve of road with broad and close-mown grassy shoulders, a neat and long wooden fence, and a field and a lake beyond.

This time around, the trees behind the fence had grown so much they hid the view beyond-- apparently the owners are tree farming, like so many with some land do-- but it was still spectacular.

I won't say “I can't put my finger on why all this was so appealing”-- I can, in a way, poking it at the edges.

In later years- after quitting Honey Creek, Miss Emily became something between a homebody, and housebound. The only place she drove on her own was the hairdresser's. She rarely went anywhere with me-- indeed, I half-joked, half-seriously complained

“You're getting underfoot”

and

“You know what they say about Guests & Fish? Wives are the same way...”

As you know now ( and I, too late ) a lot of that was feeling so bad. If only she had piped up...

Well, you tie all of that in with going to a place seen long ago, and looking at it with fresh eyes, in a new world- and yes, it's an alien world, but it is all I have left to me, now-- and the going, and the doing, were a good thing.

I wasn't kidding about having a tarpaper shack to go home to-- as long as the roof was sound and I could heat it in winter and cool it in summer, and had a place where my furry children could run safely, I'd be content. Of course, moving water would be a plus.

It probably isn't far enough out though-- here, both the City and County governments have metastasized out of control-- our property taxes have quantum-leaped from the $200 we paid when we came here to over $1,600 now-- it is an insufferable burden, and we sure aren't getting 8 X better government-- we are getting 8 X more oppression and petty bureaucracies.

I'd like some place like Pennick/Old Jesup where the government is small and minds its own business.

Probably a trailer in Brantley County...

Q: What do you call a six-year old Brantley County girl who's still a virgin?
A: A girl who can run faster than her brothers...

Exit, ducking & weaving all the way
Stage Right

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v117/rollinson/chcat2-1.gif">

[backhoe]

“Memories of New Jesup Road...”

...The section that connects to Pennick road darts off New Jesup, then rejoins it miles later, but it's only used by residents going home, so it is in the state it was in the 1940's-- narrow concrete two-lane, and poorly maintained-- I mentioned the trees growing together overhead in places.

A lot of this part of Georgia is bottom land- swamps and rivers, creeks and ponds-- and when the original roads were driven through- often with chain-gang labor-- the didn't always get the best route the first time. Indeed, when my Dad traveled this road many years ago it was “corduroy”- dirt with railroad ties laid across it to lessen bogdowns.

The section of Old Jesup...

What I remember about traveling New Jesup is far different than what you would see now if you were to drive it...

Today, it is a broad, four-lane, low and wide with ample shoulders and a median so broad and low that even today's new, low-slung cars can cross and turn around on.

I used to travel this road on business in Atlanta, at least four, and sometimes eight or sixteen times a year, back in the seventies and eighties.

Back then, it was a two-lane, no median, and the shoulders? Well, they were elevated- remember what I wrote about “bottom land?” All were narrow, and featured a drop-off to the sides ranging for a few feet to over thirty.

Yes, 30- feet, down to that bottom land. Usually in to water. It wasn't a place you wanted to pull over, or break down on.

You knew when you were starting out for The Big Evil City when you hit that stretch of road, and you knew you were finally getting near “home” when you got back on it coming back.

Bridges and railroad trestles and piney woods-- houses and ranches and farms- some with windmills-- in the distance on the sides.

At night, lights, like Fairy Lanterns, sparkling and twinkling far away. Little houses with asbestos siding- remember that? sitting alone with lots of land surrounding them.

I will never forget the time, coming home in the handicap van with that first wife, from the Atlanta markets, buying for our stores, when we were behind a car in the dead of night.

Tired, so tired, from walking the Market for days & days, glad to be on that home stretch...

There was a “bang!” ahead of us, and something-- I could not tell what it was-- dark & big flew up in front of that car...

It commenced weaving and jinking all over the highway, and suddenly pulled over on that narrow, high shoulder with the precipitous drop to water, and stopped.

As we flew past, I caught a glimpse in the headlights of the van what had happened-- his hood had flown open, and up, blinding his forward vision.

How he got it stopped- on a few feet of shoulder-- without plunging over the side- was a minor miracle.

We couldn't stop to help-- remember, there was no median to turn around on, and I doubted I could whip the van around over both shoulders without risking plunging to the bottom ourselves...

But he did get his car stopped safely- what he did after that?

Who knows?

It's all changed now- neat, homogenous, road like you find everywhere across America-- but it wasn't always like that.

For us in South Georgia, it started with Jimmy Carter's ( “Wee Jimmy-- He's like a Real President, only smaller... ) Corridor Z, the next major east-west road south of New Jesup. New Jesup is 341, Corridor Z- the old Waycross highway-- is 82. It was much like New Jesup, high and narrow, long and straight, cutting through the swamps and pine woods, until it got homogenized.

Now, they all look alike...

And much has been lost in the translation.

Gone...

Like that asbestos siding.

[backhoe]

Well, munchkins, I went back to HFS to work on the deck, and while running portable cords I noticed a small tree down on the aerial power feed to your Dad's workshop.

You may remember you and Robert were going to clear all those lines since it hurts my shoulders so badly to reach up like you have to...

Obviously won't happen now. I can get that part, but I will have to take brush cutting tools there- you can't even walk over, it has grown so wild.

Pity- it was such a showplace when it was in business.

I pulled the float bowl, and Lo! it was full of jellied gasoline-- that's why it dies when the ether runs out.

Since I was in the area, I stopped at WallyWorld, like I used to, and got carb cleaner-- but I need small needle-nose plier, and a prick with an "L" or "U" in it to reach the pin that holds the float.

I'll go back later, but for now I'm home, running the dogs.

Zoey actually swiped some of Cole's dry Lassie food, which she normally doesn't like to chew. I take that as a good sign-- she's doing fine for such an old dog, but still kind of lethargic.

i love you, bastus...
johnny

[backhoe]

I'm going to wrap this up early, baby- barring any later inspirations to write more, which seems to be happening a lot, at least for me.

Glad the dry spell I've had since 1987 is broken, but Jesus! what a horrible way to do it...

I cleaned the carb, got a new needle and seat, but just didn't feel like finishing today.

Then, I just checked Accuweather-- the heat index is 118 degrees!

Son of a Sea Cook- no wonder I feel a little punky.

The dogs are good, and nothing came in the mail I can't manage without you.

Had some bad moments at your Mom's place, remembering you & me, her, the work I did out there for the two of you...

Had more when Cole greeted me coming home-- being very loving to me, unusual for him, and remembering what you said right before you pulled The Ultimate Pratfall:

"He makes me smile more than anything I ever had..."

But I pulled myself together, kid. I may be shrunk down to a shadow of what I once was, but I've got a diamond core. So far...

It was another "glorious!" or magnificent day--

"Heaven and Earth are full of Thy glory..."

johnny misses you

[backhoe]

A little addendum to the day?

You remember when I told you the Customs station on Bay Street was drilling its own well? The drilled a deep well, installed pumps, the installed solar panels as big as barn doors to power them-- the fancy kind that track the Sun.
( As my Dad always said, "It's so easy to spend other people's money." )

We speculated a lot about that-- the City water supply is extremely reliable, not even going out in hurricanes-- what was it they are anticipating?

Now, they are drilling another well at the County Annex- a blockhouse-like building named after one of the most ineffectual Commissioners ever to plague us. The Annex had hurricane shutters on all the windows, too. ( Return to Dad's observation, above. )

Wonder what in blue blazes these bureaucrats know, or think they know, that they aren't telling us folks who pay their way?

[Edward Kennedy]

Have you ever seen this wildman perform in his day?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubSCPBkTyWY

[backhoe]

Have you ever seen this wildman perform in his day?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubSCPBkTyWY

Somehow, I missed the guy- but I love a good fiddler...

Which, oddly enough, Miss Emily also was, besides playing a half-dozen or so other instruments... there's a violin somewhere here, among all her other "stuff..."

All that talent and skill...

"Gone, forever, to the Sea..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Ev4r0MKLc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvwrSdMY7dQ

Lead vocal--Eric Woolfson ( Yeah, he's dead, too...RIP Eric Woolfson 1945 - 2009. )

Time, flowing like a river
Time, beckoning me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the sea
Goodbye my love, Maybe for forever
Goodbye my love, The tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea
Till it's gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore
Goodbye my friends, Maybe forever
Goodbye my friends, The stars wait for me
Who knows where we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea
Till it's gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore

[backhoe]

...Had some bad moments at your Mom's place, remembering you & me, her, the work I did out there for the two of you...

Had more when Cole greeted me coming home-- being very loving to me, unusual for him, and remembering what you said right before you pulled The Ultimate Pratfall:

"He makes me smile more than anything I ever had..."
<B>
But I pulled myself together, kid. I may be shrunk down to a shadow of what I once was, but I've got a diamond core. So far...</b>

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/v ... 50#1520350

"He rides an eight-legged mechanical horse with diamond hooves and plays a banjo."

[Edward Kennedy]

...Had some bad moments at your Mom's place, remembering you & me, her, the work I did out there for the two of you...

Had more when Cole greeted me coming home-- being very loving to me, unusual for him, and remembering what you said right before you pulled The Ultimate Pratfall:

"He makes me smile more than anything I ever had..."
<B>
But I pulled myself together, kid. I may be shrunk down to a shadow of what I once was, but I've got a diamond core. So far...</b>

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/v ... 50#1520350

"He rides an eight-legged mechanical horse with diamond hooves and plays a banjo."

When my father deceased three years ago, I recall calling my mother one day and caught her in an emotional moment...i asked her what was wrong and she said "I miss your father".

I understand the "moments" you are talking about as I also suffer same, especially when I am in the sticks hunting, fishing, or just hiking in the same places when there were others close to me in their days, who are now gone.

We all have those same experiences and this is the real discomfort of losing someone, the reminders after the fact, from being in the same places with those gone and the re-igniting of events that validated their previous existence in our life.

It causes loneliness and longing and sorrow all combined to exert a synergistic effect on our spirit that cannot be rightly described but you know of what I speak.

This then is one of the frailities of humanity, common to all.

I try to enjoy the moments in the midst of the loneliness, to relive and enjoy that which was, but still is, even though it is gone.

[backhoe]

...Had some bad moments at your Mom's place, remembering you & me, her, the work I did out there for the two of you...

Had more when Cole greeted me coming home-- being very loving to me, unusual for him, and remembering what you said right before you pulled The Ultimate Pratfall:

"He makes me smile more than anything I ever had..."
<B>
But I pulled myself together, kid. I may be shrunk down to a shadow of what I once was, but I've got a diamond core. So far...</b>

http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/v ... 50#1520350

"He rides an eight-legged mechanical horse with diamond hooves and plays a banjo."

When my father deceased three years ago, I recall calling my mother one day and caught her in an emotional moment...i asked her what was wrong and she said "I miss your father".

I understand the "moments" you are talking about as I also suffer same, especially when I am in the sticks hunting, fishing, or just hiking in the same places when there were others close to me in their days, who are now gone.

We all have those same experiences and this is the real discomfort of losing someone, the reminders after the fact, from being in the same places with those gone and the re-igniting of events that validated their previous existence in our life.

It causes loneliness and longing and sorrow all combined to exert a synergistic effect on our spirit that cannot be rightly described but you know of what I speak.

This then is one of the frailities of humanity, common to all.

I try to enjoy the moments in the midst of the loneliness, to relive and enjoy that which was, but still is, even though it is gone.

Edward, I probably have not expressed it, or explained it, as well as I should, but even the most agonizing of moments have a sweetness to their hurt.

At least I remember her, and many others-- and that keeps a little, tiny bit of them alive, in my Heart of Hearts.

In 1998, I was atop a power pole at Haase Farm Service, restoring power via the aerial feeds that run all over the place, and which had mostly been brought down by falling limbs and trees-- most of the old store area was powerless.

You couldn't hire an electrician to do it-- the buildings, while not wired dangerously, were no where near Code-- so I did it, for Miss Lucy.

She came up to the pole, and yelled up

"Your friend Roger Parsons has had a stroke..."

I've mentioned Roger- the "old guy" that taught me machining and mechanicing and welding and police work, and so much more...

Well, Roger lingered for years in a nursing home before dying, but the fella who could "go most anywhere and do most anything" had been reduced to a hulk who didn't even know who or where he was...

Miss Lucy had five more years before "breathing problems" turned in to a terminal disease.

And back then, it looked like Emily would live forever.

I hold them in my heart, and while there is much pain... there are smiles, too... none were perfect, all bore flaws, like people do- but they were good folks.

"May we all meet again,
in a better World
than this sorry place..."

[backhoe]

Well, Sweet Pea, during the nite, this:

<img src="http://image.weather.com/images/maps/current/cur_se_720x486.jpg" height="232" width="313">

rolled over the house. Sturm & Drang, Donner & Blitzen...

The roof hasn't leaked- so far-- but Zoey piled herself next to my place in the bed and wouldn't move, despite needing to pee badly, until it had passed.

At least it broke the heat for a while-- I had to run the big plants to get the house cool enough to go to sleep. 118 degrees! Son offa ___

Going to try to repair the mowing deck and get it moved here before it gets so damn hot again.

Wish me luck.

johnny loves you, child O my heart
from
Oh!
So!
Far
So Very Far
Away...

[backhoe]

<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/CreaturesOfLightAndDarkness%281stEd%29.jpg" height="301" width="200">

The Prince
who was
a thousand...

or perhaps

just another
Fallen Angel...

[backhoe]

"Housekeeping Notes?"

( Or maybe "the department of really unhappy revelations? )

Just opened the first can of mixed nuts I bought since you died, Dear. Wanted the salt, it's so Damn Hot...

Realized I don't have to save the cashews for you, anymore...

Shaved with the electric razor and went to wash the 'Lectric Shave off my hands and face-- remember how hard I looked for preshave that isn't loaded with alcohol, because I'm allergic to volatile solvents? If I don't rinse that stuff off, fast, my tongue starts to burn.

I automatically turn the "hot" tap, because it doesn't squeak like the "cold" does... that always wakened you for some reason.

I don't need to do that anymore.

Damn it all.