Buck Fever

Oh why do I do this ?

The self deprecation, the whining and worst of all, undisguised sarcasm. "So many snowbirds, so little freezer space," the bumper sticker on a car in Phoenix read. I reword it to, "So many blogs, so little room for trash."

A circuitous route from one cutesy blog with a catchy title to another. Minute investigation of the narrow roads of cyberspace that people travel leads to a dead end in upper New York, a picture of a person driving a car without a door and erotica. Following the next blog tag is a puzzling journey from Michigan and an invitation to a pot luck to the island of the stars. In the end it's not just the dog that moans on the carpet.

The fall photo of Kickapoo Center seems lack luster compared to the dozens of awards some garner. A Sunday afternoon spent reading about Aunt Emily and writing pithy comments would bolster my thin list of readers and expand my data profile to extend beyond the US. What for? I'm just waiting on a Kundalini Snap and the outline for the novel. In the meantime I'll enjoy the word play and clever writers who comment about gubernatorial sounding too much like the character in the Andy Griffith Show with the resultant comment from five ignorant readers that the character's correct name is Gomer. ...And the Brazilian Reverend writes the woman who jogs that he'll pray for her soul. Oh, please.

Score one more for the weatherman. Our dinner salad contains five different greens, fresh radishes and accumulated tidbits. "Do ya wanna cover the garden?" Dawn asks. "Check the weather," I tell her. The local weather forecast is for lows in the high 30's. The eighty foot row in garden number one has survived temperatures as low as 20 degrees with a white row cover draped over bent wire to resemble a miniature hothouse.

In the morning I check the thermometer in the breezeway. Forty four degrees. Wow, that's pretty warm. The thermometers next to the kitchen window report a different story. Twenty two degrees. I let the dog outside via the deck door and traipse out behind her in sweats. There's a fine accumulation of frost on my meticulously manicured front lawn. The combination of low temperatures and dryness allow me to fine comb the grass. The radishes are wilted. The buttercrunch lettuce falls over from shock.

Mandy stares at the highway. Something's has attracted her attention. On the hill leading up to the highway an eight or nine point buck wanders through the high weeds. She barks once in recognition and runs to the barb wire fence line. The buck stands still in an alert posture. Mandy barks again, deep throaty -I'm watching you-barks. The buck would have crossed the highway just before the bridge. Oncoming morning traffic is heavier than the quiet day yesterday. Deciding to avoid the barking menace between him and the highway, the buck trots back down the abutment, leaps over a depression in front of the ten foot high culvert and bounds off for protection of trees lining the river. Mandy has saved his life. In another three weeks he'll be hounded by orange clad hunters who'll cut off his head and display it on a wall in the hardware store.

The only thing that the Hunchback of Notre Dame and I don't have in common is a bell to ring. I get up with a groan and walk like an eighty year old. Wood gathering has extended two more days of bending, tossing, stacking and dumping down a chute to the basement. Avoiding the outside with the excuse of installing a french door, I use the extra hour afforded by the time change to perform one thousand minute tasks that thankfully I didn't enumerate here on a previous post. I would have, though, if time hadn't interceded. In my advanced state of dementia brought on by overwork, I thought my list humorous at best. Who wouldn't find dusting the blades of the ceiling fans and vacuuming Japanese beetles in Dawn's studio noteworthy.

In the afternoon with temperatures outside in the 60's, I load corn shocks and pumpkins in the back of the truck. The corn shocks go on a burn pile. The pumpkins I pretend to be part of an Olympic shot put competition. They are too fresh and don't splatter when they hit the cement debris previously dumped to make a barrier against spring floods in the north forty. To make matters worse, they bounce and roll back toward the truck.

Today we'll screw off royally. I've one garden plot to clear of stakes and weeds. Hopefully, the weather man will wait for another day before forgetting to forecast ground freezing fronts moving in from the west. We're gonna hit the big city for supplies. We'll buy a months worth of butter, wine, cat food from an employee owned grocery chain that beats Wal-Mart's high prices. I briefly imagine picketing the Wal-Mart in our town which takes advantage of the 65 miles to the larger metropolitan area to charge exorbitant prices but succumb to "why bother". The This Week news magazine I read every week reports that most grocery stores now stock garlic imported from China, supplanting California growers. Briefly, I imagine 10,000 square feet of organic garlic growing in our 11 garden plots. I should quit this mind theater.

We'll go outside-later.

Teaching a dog the concept of later could be compared to putting up wood for the winter. The former is a futile task. The latter is never ending. I'm on day five of cutting, splitting, throwing and stacking soft maple, box elder and fresh Chinese elm. Mandy looks at me with an empty expression when I say,"in a minute."

I glance out the kitchen window looking at the sidewalk which is stained with tannic acid and the outline of wet autumn leaves. "I wonder what those spots are?" It's raining. Yet the eastern sky is partially alive with the same golden light that filters down our valley in late afternoon. At the river bottom where our house is situated, it's overcast and somewhat dark. The hill to the north is illuminated in a wide swath of sunlight. As I continue staring, a rainbow appears across the white house on the ridge top which overlooks a sloping hill crowded with unharvested corn.

Shoot. There goes one spur of the minute task. Sawdust from the recent tree cutting covers one half of the corn plot. If I get dressed quickly, skip a shower and stack the breakfast dishes I can till the sawdust under. My hope is that during the winter it'll decompose and make for a softer, looser soil. Our front field is prime topsoil. Over the years I've beefed it up the soil with organic components-fine chopped leaves, horse manure, organic composted poultry manure, wood ashes and now fine wood chips. The already sandy soil is like brown gold. Since it's a corn plot, I'll add more nutrients. Corn sucks up more than it replaces in nutrients. The farmers of the area will pay the price for single cropping year after year, similar to the 1800's when the Wisconsin soil was so depleted that a subsistence crop of the time-wheat-disappeared.

In the west the sky is bright blue. The temperature at 7 am is in the 40's. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to till the corn patch and run the gas out of the Troy- Bilt Horse. It's a moot point since any gas I've used in the past month has an additive to stabilize the remaining gas in the tank. I'm ultra-conservative looking at the investment I've got in machinery. For five months the machinery will be at rest in the shed near the highway. The recent warmer weather gives me respite to complete more work before snow. My neighbor comes over with a log splitter. Half way through splitting monster chunks of the main trunk of the silver maple felled last Friday, he's down to a sleeveless t-shirt. I'm down to a single long sleeve shirt. Mother Nature has been especially kind of late.

Harpies

On the back cover of the magazine is a large green rectangle. I won't mention the product or magazine to save me a peevish comment from either of the two. The green rectangle proclaims in large bold print yellow " Save Up To $5000 . In smaller print underneath the bold statement the advertisement qualifies the savings with the word "annually". In even smaller print below the large banner is an endorsement from John Doe, abbreviated John D. ,New Mexico. "With the ...I saved $5000 last year." I mention the ad to my wife. "Can you believe this?" I growl peevishly. They make an undocumented claim and back it up with an endorsement equally without proof. Unless there's some federal agency reading the back pages of magazines like this one, the claims might as well be tooting Dr.Feelgood's Tonic and Elixir. Sorry Dr. Feelgood, but at least your product sold from the back of a wagon made people feel good since the old time swindlers laced their concoction with alcohol. Madison Avenue. A coverall term I use to describe the advertising tricks and gimmicks used to sell a product.

Yahoo news this morning warns people to beware of the 50% off deals. There is more to the claim than meets the eye.

Of course I look inward for answers. Am I peevish because the coffee this morning was leftover from Sunday. "Are you cranky because you've another day of hard labor hauling firewood?" Oh wow. Peeve. Cranky. Get out the Oxford Etymology. I learn that "peeved" is a past participle formed upon a supposed verb stem. Does that mean the English language is a fake, too. There is no verb to peeve. The closest thing is what we did behind the barn as kids. I am really peevish now, because I lost my cursor. "Where the heck did it go?"

Cranky? The Oxford dictionary says it's obsolete , a fanciful turn of speech of US origin.

My sister sends me a cookbook she helped to publish. In the evening my phone rings. I see her name on the display. I don't pick up. For reasons that are too involved to explain here, such as: 1. I look at the telephone as an intrusion. 2. After a phone call from the other sister, I usually have to pour a glass of wine to calm myself. 3. My oldest sister is most like my crazy step mother. The next day I e-mail her a thank you note. I include a few details about life here in Kickapoo Center. When I retrieve her voice mail message, I get a detailed summary of the next five days of her travel plans. There's no way I can remember when she's home and when she's on the road. I call several times, leaving no message on her home phone. Finally we connect.

"Did you get my cookbook?" she asks. I counter with, "You didn't read my e-mail, did you." "No I never got one," she says. I tell her to get another ISP if she's losing mail. "Oh, they told me they couldn't fix the problem until they lay another cable next spring. I start gnashing my teeth. Further in the conversation I mention the new windows we've been busy installing before the cold winds of winter lash this old schoolhouse. "Oh. I remember a thing someone wrote about windows. No it wasn't you. It was somebody else."

A day or two later I get an e-mail telling me she finally got my e-mail.

Krikey. The ends that people go to save face. My premise. People are so used to deception, they employ many of these same tactics of omission, half truths, coyote yarns(exaggeration) , lies and distortions that they see and hear on the media.

Yes. I looked up harping, too. There wasn't an entry in the Oxford etymology. My dictionary gave two definitions: to play the harp and to dwell on a subject tiresomely.

Yodelling Raccoons

I'm stalling. Waiting out the cold weather.

I wake up at the designated time expecting to feel a slurpy dog tongue lapping at my face. She jumped on the bed sometime during the night. She'd still be asleep, if I had not lured her outside at 6 am.

At six in the morning the sky behind the eastern hills is outlined with soft light. I hesitate in letting the cat outside, since it's peak time for night critters to head for home after nocturnal prowling. My cat's no match for an angry coon or hungry coyote. I rationalize that Mandy Mae will chase off intruders with her deep throat, angry growls, therefore, I let the raccoon tailed cat out the back door.

I'm wearing the fleece robe Dawn made for me years ago and nothing else. There's no wind, but 24 degrees isn't comfortable on bare legs. The cat follows the dog everywhere. First, Mandy runs out to the gravel driveway/road and stares down the lane at the woods near the river. I walk down the sidewalk in front of the kitchen window and Mandy follows. The cat sits at the junction of the sidewalk which continues to the wraparound deck while Mandy runs across the white frosted grass leaving a trail of paw prints. I hear a high trilling sound coming from the floodplain near the river. I can't determine if it's the sound I've heard raccoons make when in distress, coyotes or a laughing deer. My chainsaw damaged ears ain't that good anymore. I grab the Pooch. Mandy follows me into the house.

Inside I boot up the triplex of spotlights over the deck and front yard. Mandy jumps on the couch for a dog nap. My usual morning routine is to dump fresh grounds in the Krups coffee machine and feed the kids. I cut up fresh frozen chicken liver and slice off some raw ham steak for the cat. Nine seconds in the microwave heats it to perfection. I slide it next to his dry food and a water bowl. He scarfs up the liver and raw pork.

Mandy Mae gets the remainder of the ham steak, browned in Crisco. The cat being a rescued stray prefers raw meat. Mice are hors d'oeuvres. My neighbor tells me that in the months the Pooch lived under his front porch, he'd find the cat walking the rafters of the barn looking for venison hanging there. In the dark days of February when night time temperatures plunged to -10, the Pooch wandered over to our place. A warm bed and regular meal have kept him here. Dry dog food and scrounged venison weren't much of an attraction. He returns the favor of Purina One, organic chicken livers and cat treats with a never ending supply of head butts and leg grazing. Our house has been mouse proofed. The yard, once overridden by rabbits, is clear of the pests. Mandy helps to ensure we have no trespassers other than the itinerant kind going to the swamp and woods.

We have a clump of silver maples behind the house. Lazy old folks who resided here before us let saplings grow into clumps. On the left side is one tree with three branching main trunks . On the right side is a single silver maple. At the base of this tree the bark is peeled and the bare wood exposed. In the picture, you can see an art deco cross with a gargoyle guardian I planted between the two maples. Over the years I've worried about that maple decaying and falling, God help us, on the house. In wind storms like one last week with gusts over 50 mph, the yard is littered with limbs. I hire two tree trimmers with a bucket truck to take down the tree.

For a reasonable fee they top it and drop the main trunk between two Norway pines toward the west. Dawn and I spend most of Saturday cutting and cleaning up the mess. Phase two, cutting the massive trunk with my big Stihl and storing the maple for next year's firewood will consume a week on and off. There were a few surprises. On the outside the only discernible damage to the tree was the bark at the base. I guessed that sometime in the past, someone had run into the trunk with a car, truck of tractor. As I cut the bigger logs into pieces, I jump back when the 150 pound chunks split in half to reveal a rotted core. One log splits in half and the brown insect ridden core has kernels of corn stored there. If the log chunk hadn't broken in two with the impact of the monster chainsaw dropping it on the ground, one would have only noticed a brown streak across the face of the chunk. I swear there was no entrance where a squirrel or mouse could have gotten into the core of the tree. Dawn and the tree trimmers scoff at my notion that black carpenter ants dragged the corn from the field behind us. Even I can't imagine that an insect could perform such a feat.

I have stalled enough. Mandy will spend another day stealing twigs while the cat will steer clear of the whining din of the chain saws . By late afternoon, I'll collapse into my recliner for 30 minutes of rest and relaxation before I tackle installing a window frame for the second floor bedroom.

Snippets

Bits of unrelated information.

Dawn leaves for work with a "sampler pack" of potatoes in a cardboard box. My auto mechanic-it's nice to be able to have a personal mechanic you can trust-fixed a tire for me last week. Johann comes over and points to the right rear tire on the Prism. "You gotta flat," he says. Luckily, Johann has an air tank in the back of his Nissan truck. He fills it with enough air to get me to the filling station. At the Kwik Stop, I connect the air hose and gauge. It registers less than 10 lbs of pressure. When my mechanic checks the tire, he can't find anything wrong with the tire. Curious?

Then, yesterday I walk out to the mailbox. Opening the lid, I find a bank statement ripped open. Calls to Dawn and the postmaster follow. Dawn alerts the bank. I ask a neighbor if they got a piece of our mail by mistake. Another dead end. The statement is dated last Wednesday. Mailed Thursday, we should have received it Friday or Saturday. If another neighbor got it by mistake, they held onto it. Anyone coming down our road would be spotted immediately by our viscous ( not a typo) dog. Curious. And why was it ripped open?

At the end of each episode of Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre, the creator of the series writes a short blurb. To read the fine print, I zoom the DVD player and push "pause". I'm surprised by the frequency of posts he writes about the censorship of certain episodes. After this post I'm going to Chuck Lorre dot com.

Lee Valley is a company that sells quality tools. At Christmas they issue a gift catalog with interesting, new inventions for specific uses and old timey things like clothespins. The invention that catches my attention is a clip that screws onto a two liter plastic pop bottle. When the bottle is filled with sand or water, the bottles act as weights for tarps. I scoff at clothespins offered for sale. Some of their items are a bit pricey, for example, the apple peelers we bought when we first moved here sell in the Lee Valley catalog for $29.95. That's much more than we paid even accounting for increases over the years. I read the excerpt for wooden clothespins. I'm hooked. The ones we have come apart and the springs fall out. I'll hand the clothespin basket to Dawn and ask her to assemble all the ones lying in the bottom. Lee Valley's clothespins have a stronger spring. They claim they don't spring apart and have grooves at the ends of the pins fora better grip. leevalley.com. (I get no commission for this).

Today's featured pumpkin weighed in at 46 pounds. I am systematically, carving and saving seeds from this years crop. I selected the largest and nicest jack o' lanterns. Initially, I intended to put up signs at the entrance of our road. I repainted the chalkboard and made several new smaller boards. With the rush to put in the windows on the house, the signs never made it to the highway. I have 40 smaller pumpkins that'll go to the compost heap in the low spot at the far end of the front field. If we get another flood like the one in 2008, there'll be pumpkins growing in all the cornfields around our place. The crop of long necked squash dumped in 2007 produced a nice crop the following year a half mile from our place. Several of this years pumpkins exhibited strains of bumpiness which indicates cross breeding with rough necks or crook necks. We grew no crook necked squash this year. ???

The Pooch comes inside for the fifth time since breakfast. Wild winds after a night of rain discourage him from sitting in one place for any length of time watching mice movements. Mandy's enjoying an after breakfast fondle of her blankie. Breakfast is chicken shreds and dry dog food. Today will be a day to putter or install a french door between Dawn's studio and the living room.

In late summer I sent a response to an e-mail from a friend. Before I go into the details of the e-mail, I should explain that one of the blogs I follow dissects, enlightens and explains the vagaries of the English language. I have an interest in the workings of language and the blog writer is a professional. Today's post in Throw Grammar From The Train discusses the debate over I could care less AND I couldn't care less. Curiously, the writer also goes into detail about the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. I wonder if there is a connection between the insanity definition and the debate over I could and I couldn't.

In my e-mail response, I mention a dilemma in replying to her e-mail. Should I write, "Thanks for the information," and just let it pass into cyberspace? Or, should I comment and risk censure. I chose comment. In this case I responded to the friend's description of her daughter's new roommate. By way of analogy I related that my neighbor's daughter is attending college for the first time. She finds her roommate to be a "holy roller" ( not my description but the neighbor's). I suggest that they cut to the chase and find a new roommate instead of a year of Life In Hell ( one former friend once told myself and several friends that we'd be cast into a pit if we didn't cow-tow to his bible thumping ways).

I didn't mention in the e-mail repeated offensive comments over the course of the summer in previous e-mails. I did point out the inadequacy of e-mail as a means of good communication.

In response to my post about research to find a ground cover to cut down on the hours I spend on a riding mower, she threatens me with her daughter's ire over contemplating planting an invasive species not banned by the state. She followed that up with forwarding my post to the daughter who is studying prairie ecology in her first year at college and goes on to explain how the ground cover "burns" her earth connection. Wow.

An e-mail from me after hernia surgery complains about the medical profession and the tendency to omit unpleasant and undesirable side effects of treatment. Her response, "You sound like you were high." I tell her there's no high to Tylenol-3. She once sent me one of those popular and useless memes and later a funny forward, yet the daughter makes fun of low brow computer users who find fun in noxious forwards as their daily musings like the one I received from a former colleague of Dawn who warns of the dangers of overheating water in a Pyrex cup.
At the busiest part of the summer, Dawn and I hustle to send a personalized graduation gift to the daughter. I later write and ask if the box was delivered. The daughter never writes a thank you.

WhatdoesitallmeanMr.Natural?

In the absence of face to face communication a phone call is better than an e-mail. With the advent of unlimited minutes or at least huge banks of minutes, a phone call is a better substitute, albeit somewhat impersonal, than six lines of brief comment. The-I'm so busy e-mails, Facebook one liners, tweets about a new sushi bar, are in my estimation another sign in the demise of the written word.

I'm Roger Gavrillo and I approve this post. Neener, neener.

Eccentric

I've another lesson on English etymology. You can fast forward to the end or do what Mandy is doing right now. Lying on her side next to me groaning. She knows we're gonna leave in a minute for milk from the Amish. The cat is outside, feet curled around his body on a rug I washed last week. He's lord of Kickapoo Center mouse land. The rug is gracefully aging on a deck railing in the rain until I find a spot out of the elements for it to dry. I wouldn't have washed it if the cat hadn't barfed multi-colored cat food over one corner. Yes, I have digressed.

Eccentric: not concentric, not central or referring to a centre (my spell checker dislikes that word). If you make further excursions down usage lane, it means irregular or odd. Specifically persons.

What makes one person eccentric, another odd and a third psych-neurotic and crazy is a matter of opinion. It's also opinion as to what the world calls normal.

I'm sitting on the stairs to the second floor. Mandy will sit behind me on a higher step. Often she'll stick her tongue in my ear. Sometimes it's referred to as a "wet Louie" such as when I was in high school back before the telephone and invention of the gramophone. Except we didn't stick our tongues in another's ears. We'd wet our pointy finger and insert it into a victim's ear. Oh, I have digressed.

Sean Connery plays an agoraphobic author in Finding Forrester. In one scene, the young kid he's mentoring, Jamal Wallace, asks why Connery is putting his socks on inside out. Connery explains, "The seams are on the inside. It's more comfortable wearing them inside out. " Eccentric? No. I tried the technique when I put on my Red Wings boots this morning. Much better.

Eccentric would be the neighbor from Cuba who raises Elk. Disregard that he's heavy into Vodka, it's a matter of dispute on the sense and sensibility of raising elk here in Southwest Wisconsin. I won't get into the donkey, llamas, pot bellied pigs and other assorted critters grazing on the hills behind his place. You can't sell elk meat. The fences around his place have to be specially made so that deer can't get into the elk herd and intermingle. CWD plays a big factor in this law.

My dog is eccentric. I mentioned the tongue in the ear thing. If you ask her for a kiss, she'll get her face right close. Then she'll lap her tongue across your mouth. Usually it's a version of a French kiss. No, I didn't teach her this. Then I'd be more than eccentric. They lock people up for doing things like that. Despite the claims that a dog's mouth is cleaner than our own, I avoid dog kisses. Chicken feet, rooster heads, old dog bones buried for weeks, ratty pieces of rawhide, discoloured, brown and slimy have passed those lips that shall not touch mine. The scientific explanation for her dog behavior is simple. She likes the smell of my breakfast breath, despite strong coffee fumes. Breakfast sausage and pancakes are her favorite. A lingering waft, a special froozy fume of food on the humans breath is manna for the pup.

Eccentric? Take my wife, please. Pah dum duh drumroll. This is a tough one. She monitors my blog. It's a way to glean info that our early morning fast and furious routine doesn't allow. Mention Johann is back with his old girlfriend and her ear is to the ground for details. I'll take the safer way and avoid the dramatic, the sensational, the weird. Remember, she's a kickboxing champion. At night Dawn has to have a robe, small coverlet, some remnant of blanket or afghan over her on top of an already mountainous pile of covers. She says, "I like the weight," as a matter of fact. The really eccentric part. Usually her feet stick out from under the covers. Oh the burden I endure.

On to the Amish for the morning news.

For three weeks I'm suspicious that we're living in Arizona not the Midwest. The dearth of rain makes my five acres of lawn mowing a simple and easy task. The carpet of crispy multi-colored leaves are easily mulched. I use the Cub Cadet which is old and slow to make a long windrow and then vacuum up the fine mulch to dump in the corn patch. Clouds of dust billow when I take the riding mower over bare patches of dirt. Farmers harvesting corn and soybeans around us leave tell- tale clouds of airborne topsoil.

Warm days are followed by nights thirty degrees cooler. The coldest of which is 26 degrees. Again, typical of a desert climate. Used to variable skies filled with menacing weather, there are no clouds-just endless blue filled with dispersing vapor jet trails. The drought ends on a Friday night. In the morning I open the breezeway door for Mandy. She looks at the wet sidewalk and turns back to the warm and dry house. The cat is undisturbed by the wet and fine mist. He walks the perimeter of buildings where overhangs offer cover. As I walk to the steel shed where I'd parked the truck filled with another load of firewood, he scampers behind me. Good dog.

When my youngest daughter asks about the picture of Arb Yardly I put up at Facebook, I tell her it's a representation of my current disguise. The full white bearded gnomes that Dawn creates from bottle gourds we've grown decorate high shelves around this old schoolhouse. I've been working on this beard nearly a year now. As Dawn and I sit at the China Inn waiting for takeout, she comments that with my Best fertilizer hat pulled down low, I look like a farmer.

My day started early Saturday. The phone rings. ___ the caller asks. My ears dulled from chain saws hears "Rob". "Yeah," I answer looking at the local phone number on the screen. "You think you can come up with that money you owe me?" the caller asks. "Uh, I think you have the wrong number," I tell him. I repeat my full first name. When he asks about ___, I realize he's looking for a local scofflaw, deer poacher, trouble maker, bon vivant. "Never heard of him," I reply. Ten minutes later the phone rings again. "You wouldn't happen to know____'s cell phone number? He doesn't answer his phone. "No," I answer curtly. It's about full moon time and I'm thinking the zombies are coming out of the woodwork. Since he may have my cell phone number written down by mistake, I don't answer with what I am really thinking. " Are you really that stupid, you'd depend upon this dickweed for payment and then ask me to volunteer as a phone directory?

The night before the Amish Patriarch calls me on our land line asking for dimensions of a window frame he's putting together for our new upstairs thermopane windows. He neglects to tell me he's calling from a neighbor's home phone. I ask to call him back after I take measurements. That's when another full moon inspired comedy exchange begins.

I hit the number of the neighbor's cell phone on my speed dial. The wife answers. "Can I speak to ____?" I ask. "He's not here," she says. Before I can explain, she adds,"He's Amish. The Amish don't have telephones." Confused because I usually picture her husband sitting next to the Amish Patriarch in their kitchen while Dad makes a number of business calls. I ask for her husband. "He's not here. He's in Illinois," she barks. "I'm watching a movie," she says with menace. Disgusted with her snotty temperament, I ask for the home phone number. I mention the witchy behavior to the Patriarch. Dawn offers that she's a FIB. "They're from Chicago," she says.

Looking back to when I first met the woman, like a bad odor, her opinionated, brassy demeanor permeated the house. She's in a wheelchair. Surprised to find her in a wheelchair, I ask if she had an accident. Rather than explain in a normal, simple way, she lifts her nightgown exposing a maimed stump on one of her legs. Momentarily taken aback by her gross display, I quickly put together the facts. She walks with a limp due to an artificial leg. Both she and her husband are overweight. He's missing teeth and smokes. The house is a mess. The garage smells of cat urine. Since these people are the closest neighbors to my Amish friends they overlook horribly offensive behavior to Amish principles for the convenience of using their phone. Hmm.

The Day of the Dead figure, you ask? Diego Rivera, two time husband to Frida Kahlo pictured the women of Paris as empty skeletons when the famous pair visited the City of Love. Dressed impeccably in stylish rags, the statue graces a dresser in an upstairs bedroom. I guess one would call them airheads in our time. The contrast is curious. Showing a symbolic reverence for ancestors on All Saints Day coupled with a political statement of the European women of a bygone era.