November 29, 2005

Being Amish

I am staring out the west office window trying to reinvent a title for this essay. I cannot remember the title I created when I awoke at 4:15. A crow flies off in the distance with a slow flap of wings. The dark crow outline is silhouetted against the light tan of the dry corn in the hillside field. Pecking at something furiously, a blue jay has food in its clutch. Another blue jay flies up in an adjacent tree. Sparrows are chasing each other. Food is scarce since we cut off their free food supply. On any morning when there is bacon fat in a cast iron fry pan, I mix in birdseed and distribute the cakes to the platform feeders. Until this morning, only the blue jays noticed the treat. The feeder platform on a pole next to my office is clean. I noticed an opossum feeding there last winter so I’m assuming another possum found the meal. I don’t think skunks can climb steel poles. I have no idea why robins have remained here. Most of the migrating birds left weeks ago and juncos are beginning to arrive on the early morning train.

One of the few things enjoyable about living in Arizona was the absence of daylight saving time. I assume that old people like me don’t like their time schedule messed with. Saturday night the official time switched back to Amish time. The time change affects me by getting lighter earlier in the morning and darker sooner in the evening. Last evening I took out the ash pan and dumped it on the tangle of tomato vines and debris next to the compost heap. Walking around and closing up buildings, it became too dark to work. I lit a fire in the wood furnace and went upstairs. The kitchen clock said it was 5 o’clock.

Thanks to REA, I might work in the garage by electric light, but Dawn and I carried my tomato table into the studio earlier that afternoon. I have nothing to tinker. She removed all the blue masking tape around the studio doors and swept out the Japanese Beetles and lazy bugs looking for a winter home. Before I closed the double thermo-pane doors, I sprayed the entire perimeter with Pest Tab. Noticing the bare 2X6 at the base of the doors, I decided it was time to finish the steps from the studio. Dawn is inside at the computer checking lottery numbers and surfing the iwon.com website. I open the door, poke my head inside and ask, “Do you want to be able to sit on a deck outside your studio?” The reply is affirmative. On our Lacrosse supply run, I will purchase green treated lumber to build a four foot by six-foot deck.

The previous evening we watched Peter Lorre play “the brilliant and inscrutable detective” Mr. Moto. George Sanders and his evil friend, Fabian the ventriloquist plot to sink the French fleet. My automatic movie critique mechanism works perfectly. I do not fall asleep. Last night Bela Lugosi played the “mild mannered Chinatown merchant” Mr. Wong. It’s strange to hear a Chinese man speak with an Austrian accent. Even stranger are men who look like Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy playing Chinese henchmen. Occasionally a real Chinese person is involved. The end of the movie shows the NRA blue eagle symbol in the credits. I imagine these real Chinese people were collected from desperate throngs of unemployed. They certainly looked beaten and whipped. The leftovers could be cast as desperate people for the Grapes of Wrath. The cop is Irish; the newspaper reporter is classified as a “newshound”. A better description would be mongrel, mangy or mutt.

By 8:00, I am ready for bed. My internal clock says 9:00. Lying in bed at 4:30 am, I am thinking about Amish Enis. He tells me at the Readstown farmer’s market that he gets up at four and goes to bed at eight. My thought is, “that is strange”. Then I realize the only thing missing from this picture of me is a beard and a team of horses. Each time I pass by my neighbor’s herd, they whinny at me and gather by the fence. I think about the team of horses I owned in the 70’s. Bill the Amish workhorse and his companion Dolly were not much of a team. They could pull a stone boat or my four-wheel drive truck out of the ditch. However, it was nice having them around and watching their horse behavior. Let me see. The image of Dawn wearing a green frock and tights? Oh my!

I Could Have Danced All Night

Seems like a long time ago, that we'd act silly. Dawn would sing in a high operatic voice and we'd waltz to a tune such as the title of this post. It has been ages since we've done that. Three decades ago, on a memorable warm night camping in Terry Andrae State park on the Lake Michigan shore, some long, lost friends and I ride the swings in the playground, high on wacky weed, and push ourselves higher and higher to the tune of I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire. This morning the light is subdued. It rained all night. Dawn and I snuggle a little closer to keep warm and I change the tune to, I Could Have Slept All Day.

There's a possum in the live trap. I get my sweat shirt on, muck boots and a yellow slicker when I see the gate to the trap is closed. Darn. The possum is wet and paces the cage. I notice that the wire at the back of the trap is bent. The last occupant tries a Superman stunt to free itself. I'm too lazy to drive the critter to the park outside of town but I won't repeat the last episode of "varmint wars". That's where I open the gate to the trap and the possum quickly scurries under the deck. I still haven't bothered to remove the back of the deck boards and crawl under the deck to find what died under the rear addition. Being smarter than the average bear, I pick up the trap and move it to the cornfield behind our house. My video brain sees the possum scurry between the short corn plants and down to the edge of the river. The possum is agitated having a human so near. I'm glad the wires handle are far enough away from sharp claws and teeth. To set it free, I hold the cage vertically. My left hand keeps the door open while the right hand holds the trap. At first the possum clings to the back of the wire trap. Then, probably because this is the same varmint I caught a few weeks ago, he drops to the ground and scurries off into the weedy edge of our property and the corn field. The Pooch is right behind him. Oh Jeez.

To keep our cat from following the animal into the weeds, I whistle to him and walk toward the house. He's on top of the woodpile deciding: fun with possum or treats from Pork Chop( his name for me). If he follows that possum, I fear there will be a cat with a ripped ear and a bite to the nose to take to the vet. Treats from Pork Chop win out in the decision making. I let him out the deck door hoping the hummingbird circus will keep him entertained and away from the rat tailed possum.

In the sheltered corner of the junction between the rear entryway and kitchen, I hang three nectar feeders. Three feeders are necessary to keep any one male from claiming it as my territory and the ensuing fight. It's like O'Hare field without an air controller out there. I count 8 different birds. Some are feeding. One can see their throats gulping as they insert their long beaks into the artificial flowers on the feeder. One bright red breasted male swoops down on a few females, chasing them off. Sometimes a macho male will make U-shaped loops between the house and the pine tree near the kitchen window to ward off encroaching males. It reminds me of a state trooper on I-17 in Phoenix swerving from side to side across all four lanes to let motorists and me driving 85 mph know they're way too far over the speed limit.

I'm upstairs changing clothes. The Pooch comes up with his wet punk look. His fur is spiky. I grab a hand towel from the linen closet to dry him off before he jumps on the bed. Then, in the course of an hour the same scenario is repeated several more times. I thought cats didn't like water. I get the feeling that he's thoroughly enjoying the attention and the rub-down when he smiles one of those cat smiles. You know, his mouth slightly open, eyes closed. If he could talk he'd be saying, "oooo that's so nice." When the rain turns from drizzle to a serious downpour, I remove the stop on the pneumatic door closer. The cat jumps on the back of the couch, sinks deep into the cushions and snoozes. I'm tempted to join him.

Giving Doubt A Fair Hearing

Dear Ella,
If we start today, clean one room at a time, this old house may be ready in time for your visit. Yeah, yeah, don't bother you'll say. You didn't say, but I'm assuming, the girls are coming with you? Bring old clothes and comfortable shoes. We may need help. (I'm kidding). Tell Jenna and Julie that we'll be butchering a hog. They can help scrape and skin the pig. ( Also just kidding). Timing is important here. Wait until you see their faces drop before you tell them it's a ruse on my part.

At dawn I wake the cat. He opens his eyes, stretches, yawns and rolls on his back. We're nearing a full moon. Daytime and night-time activity is peaking. The black clouds in the west this morning disappear and I continue with wide circular arcs of water in the gardens . Early morning and late afternoons the brand new pump in the basement runs continually. When I flip a lever on the pulse sprinklers, they leave a circular pattern of dark brown on the soil. Raised in a square world, the garden plots are rectangular-10X80 feet each. I'm the Japanese gardener in this park. I'm a perfectionist almost reaching obsessive-compulsive. Almost. I leave that moniker to my neighbor, who with a new riding mower has his four acres of lawn manicured and tidy. You could chip and putt in the front yard. I hand water parts the sprinklers can't reach.

I wish it would rain.

I retrieve my phone from Scatterbrain in town who leaves the house almost daily forgetting her coffee, last night's rented movie, her glasses and, yes, my phone. My last stop is at the Amish. Thursday is pie day. Since they're due to leave on the Patriarch's birthday for an outing in a rented RV, I bring smoked polish sausage, sauerkraut and horse radish mustard for their picnic. The Mr. is in his workshop talking to an elderly couple. They brought him an old trastero( kitchen cabinet) that they sandblasted. The birch surface is clean and neat. Titus is showing them samples of birch to match the damaged top of the cabinet. The old lady explains that the cabinet was painted. Chipped and peeling, she wanted it to look new. I grimace at a valuable antique that has been whipped by sand into a plain wood box. Finally, the old man says, "Let's go Gladys. He's got a nice top there. If you gab anymore this will end up costing us a fortune."

"Dawn will hurt me, Titus if you don't finish the cabinets," I say to him. He points to the shell of the island counter he's put together. Then he shows me a pile of lumber that will be the cove moldings. "I've got to get the horses out of the barn,"he says. " Take this to the house and let my wife decide what to do with the sausage." Their outing has been cancelled due to a death . The man who was hired to drive has to attend to a funeral.

Both dogs are asleep on the front porch as I walk in. I wave to a daughter weeding a small garden near the house. One of the daughters is making a pile of pancakes at the wood stove. Another is taking peanut butter cookies off a baking sheet and onto a short segment of Formica counter top salvaged from a kitchen remodel. I hand the Wal-Mart bag of frozen sausage to Titus' wife and explain what he said. "Do you have a pie for me?" I ask. She goes off to another room and fetches the pecan pie. "How much do I owe you?" "The cost of pecans has jumped," she says. I hand a twenty to the daughter standing nearby. The pie costs four dollars less than the bakery outside of town. Titus' wife hands me a warm peanut butter cookie. On the way back home I savor the cookie as I look at fields with new cut hay on the ridge top and a newly graded and graveled road.

Our house is a mess. I spend too many valuable minutes looking for my phone (in Dawn's purse) looking for the receipt from the building supplies company for the counter top recently purchased(also in Dawn's purse). Along with the custom counter top, we special order an end cap kit to finish the edge of one cabinet counter top. When we decide to change the kitchen plan by removing a broom closet, the cabinet built to stand next to the broom closet now has an exposed edge. I skillfully hide the screw holes which previously would have been hidden and mix Dawn's acrylic paint to match the color of the birch finish.

I can't find the end cap kit.

In desperation before making the call to Lacrosse, I remove the counter from the cardboard box. It's in the bottom of the box. I bring the counter in and lean it against one wall. There's a rose pattern piece of fabric hanging from one end in the east window. It reduces the heat and light in the early morning. In the evening it blocks the view out of the east window. I pull one of the push pins letting it hang. Pots and pans fill a temporary console table near the window. Boxes of cereal, crackers, vinegars, oil, and other boxes of kitchen essentials line the shelf of a teak buffet in the living room. I removed the back cushions on the old blue plush couch and replace them with larger back pillows. My hope was that the new cushions would make it easier to get up out of the couch in the evenings. It doesn't. Like the cartoons, Dawn puts her foot on my butt and gives me a shove as I lift myself off the couch. As an explanation, the couch is extremely low to the ground. Without my bad knee, it is still difficult to get up after a day working in the fields.

Rugs hang on the deck railing. Furniture that was once in the living room is now stored in Dawn's studio to make way for additional cabinets I bring from the barn for storage. The buffet in the living room doesn't hold the mountain of kitchen debris, even with some of the new cabinets in place.

It seems like the remodel is taking forever. It started on Thanksgiving Day. Dawn had to work that day, so with nothing to do I start removing molding around cabinets...

Looking forward to your visit. Keep in touch.
R________________

Gorgeous

note: This image was shot in 1200X1600 size format.
For a better view click on the photo. For expediency
I usually download photos in a 640X480 size. In the future,
"I'll make a note when pictures are larger format.
RG

I hesitate to use gorgeous. It's a girlie word. Don't want to be no girlie mon. It's a perfect descriptor of this morning. I dash outside to turn off the radio in the garden. No plants have died, nobody is wilting from an overnight session with 95.7, all rock all the time. I leave the bedroom curtains open last evening as I read in bed. The Pooch is curled on the comforter and keeping watch on the garden. It's surprisingly light at 9:30 pm. He moves closer to me as the night progresses. I can't sleep because I'm used to total darkness. A good comparison would be Titus' travel stories. He says he finds it hard to sleep in places with electricity. The hum of motors keeps him awake since he's used to dead silence. I assume that crickets, spring peepers, toads , frogs, coyotes and neighbor's dogs don't fit into the category of dead silence.

In the barn I flick the switch on the interface where I've connected two extension cords that reach to the drying tables in the cover less drying tent. I quickly hunt down a recycled plastic bag from my friends a Wal-Mart. I bring a piece of artwork from the house to store there. I hand carved a bear head from cottonwood root and added an excerpt from a novel. The simple prayer is nicely worded, the bear-an image of the person speaking through the novel. The novelist tells a woman that she makes him feel holy. I find it a moving and thoughtful compliment to the woman. On the reverse side of the retablo( flat board) I had written a description of the bear carved on the front. It makes me smile reading that the bear wants to settle down with a plush animal he met at Puddins' Bar in Seattle. Of late, I have to search for humor in everyday events. It's not that life is grim-it isn't. I'm just so caught up in everything.

This morning for example, I wouldn't be on the computer if I hadn't booted up the weather service to find out if it will rain in the near future. Don't want to waste time irrigating if it'll rain today or tomorrow. Things look dry. Tuesday I drove to Cashton for CPM, composted poultry manure, and bone meal. I purchase fifty pounds of bone meal at a fraction of the price I paid for a 1 lb. bag at the home improvement store in Lacrosse. A half ton of organic, composted poultry manure fills the bed of the pick-up. The poultry manure I use as a side dressing for the onions which are beginning to bulb up nicely, now that we have extended daylight. I shoot long streams of pelleted chicken and turkey manure along the rows of corn. The corn garden is a first timer in this location. I want to make sure that the plants are tall, sturdy and produce well. The bone meal I drizzle over the potato plants with a cottage cheese container. It has a pungent odor that would attract animals, therefore, I make sure I wash the bone meal off the leaves and well into the soil. My X-Ray eyes see the tiny potatoes stretching their invisible arms up for joy at the added natural calcium and phosphorus.

I've made my search on the net for a sausage stuffer. After my hog casings arrive on Monday, I make a ten pound batch of polish sausage. The grinder I use for stuffing the casings is slow and tedious. An added disadvantage is that the electric motor and inner components turn the ground pork into an excessively fine consistency for sausage. A good comparison would be the difference between liver sausage and polish sausage. I prefer a coarser ground sausage. I find a vertical hand crank stuffer at $99 with poly gears and a stainless steel body. The all stainless steel body version costs $200 more. I'll mull the price over while I cultivate the corn and water portions of the 10 garden plots.

Demons of Frivolity

In the north and east the sky is a quilted gray of puffy cumulus clouds. In the south and west the solid gray cover says rain coming soon. At a leftover breakfast of buns dipped in egg and sour cream and a link of new smoked sausage, I come across a phrase in the book Driftless by David Rhodes. It's a beacon in fine print like the sign on the highway telling you there's a gas station ahead when your tank's on empty.

In the book, Winifred Smith is in town shopping. She contemplates purchasing a lottery ticket as a visual aid for her next sermon at church. "Momentarily possessed by demons of frivolity," she says she changes her mind and purchases a pack of red gum instead.

Too often I feel I fight demons of frivolity when writing in this blog. "Does it really matter?" "Who cares?" Before you rush to post a reply(that's a laugh), know that I'm not fishing for comment here. They'll bury me with pen and paper because I'll want to add a few thoughts about that, too.

A long time ago, I put inspirational posters in my classroom. One said, There is beauty in the simplest things. Most often I wasn't trying to reach my fourth graders but trying to convince myself of some small truth. The Vice Principal walks into my room one morning and questions a new poster slogan I've put on the bulletin board near the windows. "Do you think they'll understand?" he asks. I don't remember my reply. I really didn't care because I got it.

Winifred Smith struggles with spending a dollar on the lottery. I struggle with simple things that I trivialize and dismiss. Case in point:

Daily I struggle with notions about our cat. I called him Pooch and gave him a formal name of Pucci showing how clever I am. I feel foolish calling him in toward dusk because he's a cat not a dog. He comes from around the lawn shed bounding in the grass knowing I've got treats in my pocket. As he gets closer, he slows to a trot, follows me across the deck and waits inside for his surprise. It's always a surprise because he's a cat. A theme in rural America is to ignore cats. They're unkempt, abandoned frequently, poorly fed and kept mostly for mouse predation.

Dawn and I are watching a movie. We watch a lot of movies. I've written a thousand times about the Pooch's night time behavior. Last night, he knocked a glass chimney from a kerosene lamp into the bathtub shattering it into a million minuscule pieces. I close the trap, sweep up the mess and make a mental note to shower upstairs in the morning. The rubber mat in the downstairs tub is still wet. It will take a few days for the tub to dry and get the fine slivers of glass that might shred a bare foot. The Pooch was climbing into an open window in the bathroom when the mishap occurred. After his dinner, he went from window to window in a fanatical chase to keep track of his outside.

The night before I find him in the dark basement. He's sitting in the middle of the floor. When I turn on the light, he doesn't move toward me. Instead he stays still and stares at a spot on the basement wall. The former owners had a hot tub in the basement(oh yes). To vent the heat and humidity they install an exhaust fan in the wall at the ceiling. It blows under the deck. I won't go into the stupidity of the former owners. I remove the fan, patch the opening with hardboard and add the exhaust fan at the peak of the barn. It helps vent heat in hot July and August days. The Pooch knows something is going on under the deck. It set the live trap with fresh pork bones wrapped in plastic so my hands don't get greasy. In the morning the trap is sprung. The plastic is outside the trap. The bones remain inside the wire mesh. The trap is empty.

When The Pooch tires of racing from window to window and begging to be allowed outside, he jumps up on the couch to groom himself. Sometimes Dawn and he will wrassle. Wrassling involves curling in a ball while Dawn tickles his stomach. He kicks at her hands with his hind feet and gnaws her fingers. Sometimes he gets too rough and she'll have to yell, NO in a loud voice. On TV the characters are tunneling into an old tomb. The Pooch is sleeping soundly, or so we think. In an instant, he stands up, looks toward the window. He cranes his neck as far as he can to see out the two large living room windows. Something is in the yard. I get up and look out the window. It's almost nine o'clock. The sun hasn't disappeared and dusk is bright at the northern horizon. Under the pine tree a lone doe bends to nibble at something below the tree.

I'd just replanted the yellow wax beans which another deer had dug up two weeks previous to now. I grab my rifle at the back door. I fire off three warning shots with the twenty two caliber rifle which sound like rocks in a 2 gallon tin popcorn can. The deer bounds away toward another pine tree. I walk inside before someone sees me with a rifle shooting at deer. I'm surprised when Dawn asks," Did ya hit it?" "No way," I reply. "I just fired into the air to scare it off. " She says the deer paused by Jonathon Pine and bounded away into the corn field .I shake my head in disbelief and praise the cat. "Good watchdog." In the morning I tell him again how much I appreciate his skills as a watch cat.

What surprises me is that over the sound of rocks caving in a burial chamber on TV , the Pooch can hear a doe walking in the short grass of the front yard. He's one hell of a cat. Over breakfast, I toss around ides for the next blog, trivializing the cat's skill as a watch dog. Now if I could only train him to bark.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

The town dump opens at 10:00 am on Saturday morning. When we first moved here, I imagine a landfill pit in a pasture where junk is stacked according to category. In the pit would be smoking garbage. That's what I was used to in the past. Our dump is a steel building that has various bays for town equipment and large parking apron in front,usually mud filled, and a central storage area for two large dumpsters. Off to one side is an enclosed area with a small heater and window. The town chairman presided over informal meetings in this warming room. With the town chairman facing prosecution for "Elder Abuse" when it was alleged that he threw the 65 year old town clerk to the ground breaking several ribs, the town chairman was forced to resign. In the April election the son of one of the town board members is elected chair.

The run to the dump is a bi-monthly event for us. A chance to meet Kickapogians and get the latest news of the world through the eyes of rural America. The access ramp to the opening of the shed is clogged with pick-ups backed up to the door. On either side are an equal number of trucks. The noise of people dumping glass containers into a dumpster is deafening. "You serving doughnuts today?" I ask the father of the town chairman who's been picked to watch over the dumpsters and prevent outsiders or townsfolk from throwing nuclear waste into them. "Yeah, but they're all gone. You're too late." Darn. Then, I remember an Amish woman on Parsonage Road makes doughnuts on Saturdays.

Dawn and I unload the plastic garbage cans of sorted trash: aluminum cans, recyclable glass plastic and tin, garbage bags in clear plastic, a laundry waste basket for basement trash, two cardboard boxes filled with refuse from garden and outdoor work. I stack the plastic garbage cans in the truck and drive off for doughnuts. On Parsonage Road, a narrow gravel road right off the US highway, I spot Titus' brother with a beekeeping veil tending to hives near his fence line. His children stand in a row far enough away so they won't be stung . I wave. There's no sign in front of a single story white house with a circular drive and two tractor tires painted white holding a bed of petunias. Darn.

I remember last week's auction. There was a mention of another antique auction the following week. Same place, same time. "How much money ya got?" I ask Dawn. " Eleven dollars," she says. I have four left over from the forty dollars I made selling woodpecker doorknockers the previous week. I don't see any cars lining the road. Dawn reminds me that the auction site is further down the road past the goat farm with an unusual limestone outcropping behind the single story white farmhouse. Turning the corner, I can see their farm yard filled with a crowd of people outside and a full parking lot. There's one Amish buggy parked on the other side of the fence. We walk down the gravel drive toward the house and barn. In front of the barn, one of Titus' daughters is grilling hot dogs and bratwurst. We both wave and stop to chat. The perimeter of the barn is lined with tables. The tables are filled with bakery. The auctioneer inside is moving fast selling old tools. Dawn says, "His nasal twang would drive me nuts if I had to be here all day." Behind the auctioneer's podium are tables filled with auction items. We move past people sitting bench style, eating hot dogs and watching the bidding. Most of the items up for sale are what I'd expect at a farm auction. Old signs, glass milk bottles from the day a milkman came to your door, pulleys and tools, cast irons toys and lunch boxes. When the lunch boxes come up for bidding, the auctioneer starts at $25. "Old lunch boxes are hot right now," says Dawn. Most of the items offered for sale are featured in articles in Country Home magazine and the like where women decorate suburban houses to look like a farm kitchen. The problem is that they're too neat, too cute, too organized, too, too! No farm kitchen would be decorated in this fashion-the creation of an over active imagination of a housewife with nothing to do. Dawn says the trend nowadays is minimalism. Country kitsch with just a few antiques.

We are jaded artists. There's a missing feeling from the assemblage. No nostalgia, no presence just the feeling of greedy antique dealers hoping to sell Grandma's granite ware or earthen crocks for twice what they paid. We scan the bakery. I spot a pecan pie selling for $5 but remember I'd asked Titus' daughter to bake one next week. A round faced rosy cheeked Amish woman sits in front of a table with cheery kolachies. I peel off three of my four singles and hand them to her. Driving back home, I resist the temptation to sample a cherry Danish. A 10 minute trip to the dump takes over an hour. Isn't that what life in the country is all about?

Twenty Cent Rains

Dear Ella,
We had another of what the neighbor up the road calls, a twenty cent rain. The NWS out of Lacrosse forecast for the past few days was a 20% chance of rain. Elmer shortens it to 20 cents.

The Pooch was gone most of yesterday. When he did return he was owly as my mother would say. I vacillated between leaving him out all night to fend for himself with the local lions and tigers and bears. Then, I started calling him. My last trick is to walk up to the neighbors and talk to Ron, which I did. I notice he has a new riding mower. We discuss the new mower which he recently took on a maiden voyage. I mention that I'm getting impatient with the Pooch's bipolar behavior. Some days you can't pry him off your leg and others, he's gone all day. If I mention buying the friendly white horse Ron keeps in the back corral, I'll find the Pooch waiting for me by the deck. The Pooch dislikes the noise from riding mowers. The rationale is that he finds a quiet spot and hides out until the noise is over. Ron's test ride before dusk keeps the Pooch away from their place. True to form, the cat pops up from behind the deck as I walk in the house for the last time. He walks by me when I hold the deck storm door open. I thought he'd be hungry missing his pre-lunch snack, lunch, afternoon tea, late afternoon dry food crunch and pre-dinner warm up. His owly behavior keeps him walking to the sidewalk where he plops down on his side and rolls in the sand washed there from the patio under construction. I have many tools to lure a cat inside. I shake a bag of Good N' Crunchy treats and the cat follows me inside. I don't even say good night to the little turd. In the morning, there's the usual wake up call and short nap at the foot of the bed.

Remember Jorge? I have seen him once in the past year. In Lacrosse Dawn and I run into him and a girlfriend at our favorite Mexican restaurant. When he mentions her name everything becomes perfectly clear.

At the propane co-op I talk with the office manager about gas prices and the coming year. We're on a budget account. Instead of putting $1200 into a contract which freezes the price of propane, we pay a monthly charge. The price of propane is also contracted at the summer price. We just don't have to shell out lots of money. The office manager tells me we haven't used the minimum amount required for the budget program. But, she says, "Since you're a good customer, I'll waive that rule." Good customer means she's still thinking of me as a board member. I tell her, "I'll give you some good gossip in return." She knows Jorge and asks about him frequently. He's retired and once when he hadn't been around for a long time, the office manager asked him, " Where've ya been, Jorge?" "In jail," is his reply. She laughs at the absurdity of the statement.

You remember, Ella, that University professor and the African dance program we attended. The dancers all huddle together. They're bent over whispering. A narrator or one of the dancers, I don't remember which, says loudly, "Gossip is the glue of the fabric of society." I'll always remember how we laughed at that statement because it is so true in the world of the America Indian. The professor was chairman of the Native American studies department. I tell the office manager that I'll spread some more glue.

Jorge is dating. He tells me on a mountain bike ride down country lanes that a woman he met at the gym called him sixteen times in one day. I caution him. He also tells me that she is married. More cautionary remarks from me. When Dawn and I meet Jorge at the restaurant, Jorge spills out her name. It's the same woman. She's cute and about twenty years younger than Jorge. There's quite a few "oh my's" and "you're kidding" when I relate more Jorge gossip. The other woman in the office looks at us and shakes her head.

More to come.

R_________________