The Times & Travails of Manny

Got out of bed, poured a cup of coffee, added a splash of half & half and looked on unbelievingly as it instantly curdled. Not a good start to my Thursday morning and despite a Christian tongue I did let loose with a few loud “Damn! Titty-Titty, Damn Damns!” Nobody wants to get in the car to drive five miles for more half & half when they’re standing at the kitchen counter in nothing but a pair of ratty shorts at 7:00 A.M. 

Thirty minutes later a fresh cup of coffee with a splash of good-until-next-month half & half erased my sour temper. 

By anyone’s count it has been much too long since I gave some attention to writing in this blog. Not surprising how practice can easily dwindle away, every day aims becoming once a week goals and soon enough something that was once a week diminishes to an infrequent trickle. I have to hope it isn’t the nature of life in these woods around Old Dixie Lane that has turned my head from spending more time in Scriblets. It prompts the question, what is the nature of life in these woods? 

Manny and Jimmy were barbecuing Mexican sausages across the fence late yesterday before sunset. Back at the edge of the woods where Jimmy’s trailer is set up, it’s nasty to imagine what the mosquitos must’ve been like around their picnic table. Jimmy’s sister, Jean threw him outta the house because she had company coming, told him he could buy a trailer to park out in the backyard. And he did. Then she upped his rent from 400 to 500 a month, her own brother. Since he had that quintuple bypass surgery last summer, and with an assumed prognosis of little time left, he’s busy drinking himself to death, trying to spend the 50,000 in savings he’s got left. Jimmy is a Vietnam vet living off his pension, which seems to do him okay. Thin as a rail, somewhere in his early 60s, I guess. Along those jungle paths back in the day he got shot up and came home with a Purple Heart. Now he smokes funny cigarettes and drinks all day long every day. I don’t see much of Jimmy but sometimes hear his 70s rock booming out of the trailer. Manny says he plays it so loud they can’t hear each other talk inside the trailer, have to go outside and sit in the mosquitos.

Speaking of Jean, about a week ago I walked over with Farina to say hello around 4:30 and stayed until 7:00 sipping on Randy’s nasty Canadian whiskey and ginger ale. Jean sat across from us throwing back Southern Comfort on the rocks. At one point Manny came tooling down the road on his lawn mower pulling a baggage cart, come to pick up some laundry Jean had done for him (a bedcover she said later hadn’t been washed in 36 years) and without even the foam off of one beer managed to drive his mower and cart bang into Jean’s car, a broadside to the passenger door. In her state, Jean didn’t give a damn but Manny was discombobulated. Conversation came around to pests in the area and Jean announced she wouldn’t harm a single pink hair on an armadillo’s belly and even enjoyed watching two babies play out in her yard. Two seconds later she told us if she ever got her hands on one of those guys who raise fighting dogs she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet through his medulla oblongata and walk away like she’d just swatted a fly. Me and the dawg didn’t get home until after dark, treading carefully along the dirt road, eye out for night vipers.

Hard to understand Randy and Jean getting all over Manny for fattening a wild hog in his pen down the road. Not sure how they did it, but they badgered him into letting the hog free, saying it was cruel to pen it up for fattening and eventual death on the chopping block. Wild hogs are popular with hunters in these parts, a delicious meat for the table which is what it’s all about for Manny and his small government pension, barely enough to live on. Missing the point, Randy and Jean tell him if he wants to eat roast pork to go to the supermarket and buy it. Not the first time they’ve freed his catch, last year they sent Jimmy down to Manny’s place when he was gone and let loose another wild pig he was fattening. Well, Jean is a forceful kind of animal lover, but she’s given up on me and the pesky critters. I told her she better make sure those not so cuddly armadillos stay on the south side of the fence because I’ll blast them to smithereens without blinking an eye and go off hunting more of them.

Manny had a roadkill cookout last week but nobody showed up so he was unhappy about that. Walked up here later, grumbling, bringing his insurance guidebook and needing help picking an eye doctor out from the list inside. I looked at the book for ten minutes and told him I couldn’t find any eye doctors, full of dentists, orthodontists and periodontists, without an eye doctor in the bunch. So he took the book on next door to have Jean, a former blood technician study it. Last time Jean drove him to the doctor, the doctor was head down over Manny’s lab report when Jean snatched it out of his hand to get a look at it herself. The doctor told Manny when he was leaving not to bring that woman back again. 

Hallelujah! The county tractor came to mow down the head-high weeds on the verge of our road. Farina had a conniption fit, running up and down the fence line barking her fool head off. We’ve needed those weeds chopped down for a while now. The last time they sent a guy out here who’d never done it before and he drove his ginormous tractor halfway down into the canal and came out of it with a dozen water moccasins coiled around the underside. 

Big mufflers on muscle cars are rumbling hard across the way. Haven't laid eyes on another person today but the air has been seasoned with gunshot and roaring engines, pow! and vroom! all day long. Doesn’t bother me much, all part of the soundscape out here. Distant airplanes, trains, birdcalls, barking, lawnmowers, and who could ignore the goats that at a certain time of day conduct goat talks that sound like recess at the nuthouse.

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Life gets serious around here once in a while and there are always a few books to enjoy in the cool of my back porch. A couple of good ones here of late that I’ve given thought to writing about but always falling short in my distraction with dawg, yard or visit from Manny. Here is a list of some recent good reads that have impressed me.

                

                

                                   

The Bone Collector (1997) by Jeffrey Deaver — This first in a long series featuring forensic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme is surely one of the best and most compelling crime novels ever. It offers a fascinating look into the history of New York City as well as introducing a devilish serial killer pitting himself against a bed-ridden detective.

Alan Turing: The Enigma (1983) by Andrew Hodges — A big book of 800 pages about Alan Turing, the man who helped break the Nazi Enigma codes in WW2 and was also the first to conceive of thinking machines (computers). An awful lot of math, logic and physics but nonetheless a satisfying look into the man Turing was and the tragedy of his short life.

The Martian (2014) by Andy Weir — No, not science fiction, but an incredibly convincing tale about a fictional astronaut’s time on Mars. This first novel by a software engineer-space hobbyist is funny, compelling and believable down to the last tiny piece of space hardware. This one went from blog to Kindle to bestseller to movie deal in a matter of months.

All the Light We Cannot See (2014) by Anthony Doerr — A Pulitzer Prize winner and National Book Award finalist, this one tops my list of books read this year, an exquisitely written story of a young blind girl finding her way through the rubble of WW2. 

Sympathy for the Devil (2015) by Michael Mewshaw — The latest biography of the iconoclastic and prolific writer, Gore Vidal. With such a colorful life to work with, the writer has balanced well both the serious and outlandish sides of his subject. Vidal was a remarkably intelligent man who could turn his words from reason to scandal in the blink of an eye and Mewshaw catches all the colors and shadings.

Neighbors

Up around 7:30 the morning after Christmas, I was outside ten minutes later yelling at Farina to shut up her non-stop barking. She ignored me, barking and snarling at nothing I could see. Everything looked normal, no squirrels, birds, armadillos or passing cars to spark her excitement, she mostly paced back and forth barking her fool head off at the high wooden fence that separates us from the neighbor’s house next door. 

One of Farina’s calmer moments

Sometime around 10 o’clock, thereabouts, Farina long over her noisy barking, neighbor Randy came over wondering if I’d seen or heard anything out of the ordinary around 7:30. Said he had gotten up and left in his truck to go fishing about 6:30 leaving his wife and brother-in-law asleep in the house. Once out in his boat, he remembered the Friday trash pick up and called home to tell Jeannie to put the trash and recycle bins out on the road. She told him to forget the trash and skedaddle home, the police were on their way, her car stolen out of the driveway and Jimmy’s truck tossed for valuables. The thief walked through the wide open gate in broad daylight, rummaged around in Jimmy's truck, then found Jeannie's car also unlocked but with the keys on the driver's side floor. He jumped in and made a getaway with Jeannie looking out the window just in time to see Santa Claus speeding out through the gate in her car. And there the source of Farina’s barking is revealed. Unfamiliar smell in the yard next door and she stood at the fence sounding an alert the whole time. In most cases out here, if a stranger walks silently through an unlocked gate and up to the house—even one in a Santa suit—he can expect someone from inside to step out the front door either shooting or waving a gun.

Gate & garage open and nobody home 

I have wondered half a dozen times about Randy’s & Jeannie’s habit of always leaving their gate unlocked and wide open, garage door yawning wide and nobody at home.

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You might remember my neighbor down the road. He’s the good guy always willing to help out, always full of backwoods tales, the one with the gap in his front teeth who said he has a “dentist” that works out of the trunk of his Pontiac Le Grand and uses laughing gas as an anesthesia. That’s Manny. We were chatting at the gate the other day, him telling me, “Hell, I'll shoot the *!!%#^!&*^%#. I ain’t got long to live anyways.” He was talking about the rednecks over the way with their giant killer dogs, muscle cars, all night Loretta Lynn parties, and Sunday afternoon Iraqi war re-enactments. In fact, for the past couple of months the dogs are rarely seen, the parties diminished and the big gun shoot-outs even rarer. Seems most of what they do over there these days is run heavy duty equipment like road graders and other Caterpillar giants. Hard to tell what it is they’re doing with all the big yellow machinery, but what used to be invisible behind the trees is now a house revealed by the gouging out of trees and brush. Kind of like they are preparing the command post in a jungle hot zone, 500 feet on four sides of the house denuded of all but flat grassless dirt between them and an encroaching enemy. One thing easy to see without the wall of enclosing trees is the enlarged alligator pond and the rough and tumble 4-wheeler track running around the property.

View of ploughed up ground once blocked by trees

Couple of days after our conversation, the whole area a chilly mess of mud and mist, I was hoping there would be no need to go out. Manny called needing a ride to the store for some smokes. I appreciate his no car, no driver’s license situation and try hard not to turn down his infrequent requests for a ride. So, we drove south two miles to the Kangaroo Store where gas is down to $2.20 and three packs of Manny smokes cost $15. He told me that word from Randy was there's been no news from the police about Jeannie’s stolen car. Doesn’t surprise me. If they haven't found it by now, it's probably long gone, a diminishing blip on the radar headed for the North Pole.

Far down the road Manny’s small trailer sits snug under the trees. 

Yep, that’a toilet just to the left of center.

Life Among Frogs & Bookmarks

My neighbor Manny was over late yesterday afternoon doing some touch up work on the grass outside the gate and during a pause over the idling lawnmower he pointed to the gap in his front teeth and said he found a guy that’s going to put a new tooth in next week or the week after, a guy—I didn’t hear the word dentist—that works out of the trunk of his Pontiac Le Grand and uses laughing gas as an anesthesia. Didn’t know what to say to that, my mind running with images of dentistry by way of a tire iron and Krazy Glue. 

Finding mouse droppings on the floor of the back porch recently, I set out a mousetrap, baiting it with a small piece of Boar’s Head herb chicken neatly wrapped around a dab of lo-cal peanut butter. Next morning the mouse trap was gone, disappeared, snatched up in a poof of nighttime magic. It occurred to me that the mouse might have been too big for the trap and undeterred by the snap of steel, but held by leg or tail dragged the trap and itself off to an emergency exit. I looked around the porch and soon spied the mousetrap upside down in a corner by the screen door. I flipped the trap over with a broom and couldn’t believe my eyes—a frog caught by the toes of one leg and still trying to hop away. I rescued the poor creature, figuring it must have brain damage after a night of that, and it quickly hopped out the open door, apparently uninjured.

Later, I stood for thirty minutes watching a lengthy black snake nosing around outside the back porch. I decided finally, judging by the way the snake pushed its nose into the leaf litter and small holes, that it was looking for a meal of insects or lizards. It paid me no mind as I stood back at least ten feet hoping not to alarm it. Best not to bother or kill these non-venomous snakes since they help keep rats, mice and bad snakes away. I haven’t seen any of the small rattlers around, even though the climate and geography are magnets for their breed. 

Days pass in my country jungle jumping with every kind of life save elephants and giraffe, a place that brings back to a transplanted city boy some of the small wisdoms that concrete, swimming pools and shopping malls forced us to either discard or forget. Live with them long enough and even the dullard will find a way to cope with mosquitos, diminish the ant bites, avoid the hairy caterpillars and manage the summer heat. I’m learning how to blend. 

I transplanted a big tub of mint to a spot just off the back porch three days ago. For a long time it was a beautiful, lush and bountiful plant happy and snug under the table situated on a beach patio. Starting out as a small $1.99 pot of mint from Publix, for some reason only science can explain, it went wild on that salty windblown spot just off the ocean. When I brought it here to the country it fell straight into a decline, turning scragglier by the week. Thinking it might be root bound I dug it out of the large tub and planted it beside a clump of purple lantana behind the camphor tree, then brought home another small pot of supermarket mint to plant as a bolster beside the ailing cousin. 

Squirrels are doing their best now to munch through the seed-packed magnolia fruit-cones that succeed the fall of the tree’s large white blooms. I try to dissuade the pesky varmints but they are tenacious devils. Put together in a bowl the fruit-cones have a certain beauty.

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Bookmarks are something I’ve always thought you can never have too many of. Kindle and its electronic brothers have naturally gone a step toward making the old-fashioned paper bookmarks obsolete, but there must be more than a few of us who hope that never happens. There was a time before they went out of business that Borders offered its customers a series of very stylish bookmarks that I continue to use. Simple but bold, black and white lithographic designs characterize the bookmarks offered by Borders in its last two years of business. Only wish I had the full set of designs they produced. Below are three examples.

Pull out, Betty!

Since moving to the country three months ago mosquitos have taken on a new meaning in life. Never thought much about the little devils during the time I lived at the beach, the almost constant ocean breeze keeping them off and away. But that was then. In my new home among the tall moss draped oaks, palmetto scrub and marshland, along with a host of less bothersome creatures, mosquitos are a force to be reckoned with. Stepping into the outdoors is no longer a casual action, but one measured by the preventatives necessary to hold off the ever present swarms of hungry blood suckers. The five minutes it takes to walk out and lock the gate at night require either a beekeeper’s costume or a nasty head-to-toe lather of chemical sprays. Ever in the market for a working solution, I’ve gathered an almost cumbersome collection of products that promise to keep mosquitos at bay. So far, none have truly solved the problem.

Blood gorged, the mosquito passes blood to make room for more solid nutrients in her gut.

The first trick I tried was the heavily scented Bounce fabric softener sheets, but they turned out to be like most remedies, working partially or with some atomic mosquitos, not at all. “Tuck one in your pocket when you go outside,” advised my sister. At one point I had them pinned all over my T-shirt and jeans with one in each pocket, and was still slapping at the dozen or so who enjoyed a hint of Fabreze with their blood. Next came the much stronger chemical spray, Off. This one worked well, but left me feeling uncomfortable with the chemical residue on my arms, neck and legs. And the monsters still went for my face because I refused to put the spray there. Next came the pleasantly scented cream, Skin-So-Soft Bug Guard made by Avon. I continue to use this one, convinced I’m not rubbing agricultural pesticides on my body and pleased that it keeps the mosquitos away for the most part. In the hardware store one day, I came across a large spray bottle of Cutter Backyard Bug Control. This one promised to keep mosquitos away for six to eight weeks. Problem is, I have to take it back to the store and ask someone to explain how the baby-safe top works to get any spray out. I can’t even pry it open to pour the contents into a Flit can.

Remembering how well the old Pic mosquito coils worked at the drive-in movies way back when, I looked on Amazon and found Off mosquito coils, but while serving well enough on the screened back porch where a few pests can always find a way in, they work not as well when friends sit around the backyard. I doubt that the company ever considered mosquitos in the numbers that plague my backyard. Next came sonic mosquito repellers made by the PIC Corporation. I bought three and discovered they work to repel mosquitos about as well as macaroni and cheese. I later read that a professor of entomology at Rutgers University does not believe electronic devices that transmit sounds to mimic male mosquitoes or dragonflies work, and even suggests that claims made by distributors are next door to fraud. Hearing that the Bounce sheets didn’t suffice, my sister advised last week that I try eucalyptus oil. So now I apply several drops of the oil to ears, neck and other exposed areas before going outside. The result? The tiny vampires buzz around until they sense an oil-free spot of skin and then dive bomb for lunch.

With my ongoing battles I’ve managed to collect some interesting info about our favorite pest. Some of it might be useful on Jeopardy! or in a trivia contest, the kind of facts few of us ever encounter. Did you know that…

Mosquitos are the deadliest animals on Earth.
More deaths are associated with mosquitos than any other animal on the planet. Mosquitos can carry malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis. They also carry heartworm, which can be lethal to your dog.

Only female mosquitos bite humans and animals; males feed on flower nectar.
Female mosquitos need protein for their eggs and must dine on blood in order to produce another few hundred pests. Since males don’t produce young they avoid humans completely and look for flowers instead. When not trying to produce eggs, the females too are satisfied with only nectar. 

Mosquitos fly at speeds between 1 and 1.5 miles per hour.
Mosquitoes are the slow pokes of the insect world. If a race were held between all the flying insects, nearly every other contestant would beat the mosquito. Butterflies, locusts, and honey bees are much faster on the wing.

Early twentieth-century Japanese poster ad for mosquito coils

A mosquito’s wings beat 300-600 times per second.
Rapid wingbeats produce the warning buzz you hear just before a mosquito drives her snoot into your ear.

Mates synchronize their wing beats to perform a lover’s duet.
At one time scientists thought that only male mosquitos could hear the wing beats of a potential mate but recent research has proven that females also listen for males. Wing beats are synchronized in mating pairs.

Adult mosquitos sometimes live from 5 to 6 months.
Few probably make it that long, given our tendency to slap them when they land on us. Under the right circumstances, an adult mosquito has a long life expectancy, in the insect world.

Growing Accustomed

This Thursday marks one week that I’ve been in the Oak Hill house and not surprisingly a week of trial and error, discovery, realizations and not more than a couple of small disappointments that will no doubt mellow out in time. Inside, the rooms continue to be much of a jumble apart from the bedroom, the living room still in-progress and the guest room a heap of books, boxes and files I am reluctant to face. Of course, I’ve lost things that don’t turn up no matter how thoroughly I search, the arrangement of kitchen drawers and cabinets is not to my liking and fourteen paintings still wait to be hung, their places on the walls not yet clear in my mind. Apart from cooking, showering, sleeping and watching television on some evenings, most of my hours are spent either on the back porch or sitting in the yard.

The biggest and most pleasant surprise has been the screened back porch where I am happy to sit for hours reading or watching the cardinals—three families at least—and the often mischievous squirrels, all of them no more than ten feet from my chair. Imagine a cool shaded spot free of mosquitoes and other bothersome insects offering a panorama of two dozen oak trees hung with Spanish moss, and now a regular setting for lunch each day. Later in the afternoon I prefer sitting out in the yard to better enjoy the play of light filtering through trees all around me. Don’t think I have ever fully appreciated the countless facets and voices of the passing day in a rural setting. 

One of the problems, and it isn’t really, is the nasty smell and taste of the well water. It comes out slightly greenish brown reeking of iron but smelling like first cousin to a fart. Undrinkable to me, though I suppose some do eventually get used to it. I rely completely on bottled water and bags of ice from the store. Brushing my teeth with the well water is bearable, but only just. Somehow, showering in the water doesn’t bother me at all. The shower is much better than the one I used for so long at the beach and being from a well in my yard, the water is free. Something to get accustomed to.

My iPhone won’t work in the house, so I either miss calls or run outside when it rings. Looks like the only alternative is to change providers, not something I want to do, but Sprint has no solution. It wouldn’t be all that bad switching to AT&T if it weren’t for the need of buying a new AT&T compatible iPhone. They tell me the architecture is different on a Sprint iPhone and an AT&T iPhone. Sounds like a good deal for Apple, forcing customers to buy a new iPhone when a problem arises with the provider.

My neighbor gave me a treadmill the other day, one in perfect working order that he didn’t want any longer and was taking to Good Will until I showed interest. Living at the beach I walked almost daily and since coming to the country have wondered how to manage the same walking exercise. Somehow, walking on a dusty dirt road in the hot sun, doesn’t sound like a fair tradeoff for a walk on the beach. For the past two days I have used the treadmill set up on the back porch and it’s a good substitute. While walking I look out at the redbirds flitting about, some of them coming to within arm’s reach of the screen. Only thing missing is the suntan.

The male…                           and the female

I tell myself it is time to establish a routine of sorts for this new life where quiet is all pervading and where it is easy to be lulled into comfortable torpor. At least three writing projects lay waiting for my return and I know this is something where momentum is vital. One day soon I will have to turn away from the verdant wanderings that now hold me in thrall and get back to scribbling.

For the Birds

Tuesday saw the wagon train of goods moving once more to the wilds of Oak Hill. Lucky me, four friends wanted to see the house and offered to load their SUVs with lamps, two tables and a big bin of miscellaneous trappings that included the last of the ink and another two stacks of books that surprised me in the back of a closet. We also squeezed in one more painting, leaving only the four largest still to be wrapped and transported. On Wednesday I brought over all the hanging clothes, with only the folded things in the chests of drawers waiting to go. The movers will wrap the chests in bubble wrap with the contents still in the drawers. What I call an easy deal.

A favorite painting on the bedroom floor

A good part of the morning was frustrated by automated telephones and their idiotic questions. “What is your first name? Please say the name and then spell it. For example, if your name is Robert, say “ROBERT” and then “R-O-B-E-R-T”. If you understand, say “OKAY.” If you don’t understand, please say, “WOULD YOU REPEAT THAT.” And God forbid you let out an unsolicited groan, or any sound of frustration escape your lips. Twice I made small noises to myself and twice the robot voice snapped, “I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THAT. I AM RETURNING YOU TO THE MAIN MENU.” It took twenty-seven minutes to accomplish a change of address for a magazine subscription.

Next on the agenda was the same chore at the DMV. I had been warned to check the website for the necessary documents in changing the address on a driver’s license and now I suspect it is easier to cross the border into North Korea. They wanted my birth certificate or a valid passport, my social security card and two documents showing the new address with my name included. Then I had to hand over $25 to proceed to queries asking if I were a drug addict, a convicted felon and if I suffered from either epilepsy or insanity. Last, the woman wanted to know how many times my license had been suspended for either DUI or hit and run. I was sorely tempted to ask if the big screen on her desk was a computer and did it show any of these descriptions under my name and license number. However, it is best not to antagonize a bureaucrat. I walked out with a new license showing a loopy picture that suggests an insane epileptic with a drug problem.

The friends who came to see the place yesterday brought an excellent housewarming gift. I have mentioned before all the birds, and now there is a bright red octagonal bird feeder hanging from a limb of the elm tree outside the back screened porch. For now, it hangs there empty of any seed and swaying gently in the late afternoon breeze. It came with a big bag of seed—a mix of sunflower seeds, thistle, millet and sunflower chips—but I am saving it for the time when I move out here to stay. No fun in putting seed out, going away and missing the action. Pretty sure if I filled the feeder today half would be gone before I next return.

Today I’ve seen two cardinals, a male and a female, and a solitary woodpecker. There is a steady chorus of birdsong out there beyond the screen, but today I’ve had only fleeting glimpses of anything other than cardinal and woodpecker. Birds aside, I did see a fox crossing the road as I drove up to my gate.

A Scrap of Rain

Thirty minutes after a rain shower mosquitoes are on the prowl in Oak Hill and a bright yellow, heavily scented wristband is coiled about my wrist as I sit on the screen porch pondering the backyard concert played by whistling birds, rasping grasshoppers and their buzzing cousins. The wristband is something called Insect Repelling Super Band and directions say, ‘Just slip it on wrist or ankle and enjoy a bug free day.’ In only ten minutes I’ve watched two different mosquitoes land on my arm a few inches from the wristband and casually begin searching for a vein. That said, it has a fragrance I really like that includes Philippine geraniol (geranium oil), Indonesian lemongrass oil and citronella. As pleasant as the fragrance is, when the third mosquito landed on my arm I added a spray of insect repellant to arms and neck. Since then I’ve been left alone.

Driving here earlier a fleeting sprinkle of rain made me hope—despite the mosquitoes—for my first thunderstorm in this setting. I imagined rain dripping from Spanish moss and frogs croaking in the joy of an afternoon deluge. But it was dry again when I drove through the gate and into the carport. Just as I began to unload the boxes and bags from the trunk, the rain started again but the covered pathway from carport to front door alleviated the problem of wet boxes. I got them inside and returned outside to enjoy the rain falling through layers of green, but it stopped in the space of three minutes. Not enough for me but apparently enough to stir the mosquitoes from their torpor.

Interesting discovery today. On my first occasion to use the bathroom for something other than washing my hands, I found the toilet to be rather like a highchair, a height that made me sit on tiptoe. You have to be over six feet if you’re planning on having feet flat on the floor while sitting on this grand throne. Otherwise, it’s an average appliance.

Received my first mail at the Oak Hill address today. Don’t know why I even bothered to look in the mailbox, but before turning onto my road I pulled up to the mailbox and was surprised to find mail. I’ve never before had one of the long, domed tin mailboxes with a little metal flag to signal mail. Must remember to take a picture of it. If anything ever epitomized rural, this mailbox is it, with its worn wooden post wreathed in weeds and the box itself creaky with rust.

Each day I feel a little more comfortable in Oak Hill, looking forward to the time when I don’t have to lock up and drive back to the beach for the night. Just two more weeks, but something tells me this slow transition to the rural is ultimately the better way of shifting my environment.

Thoughts Under a Tree

Out to the house in Oak Hill with packed boxes, all of it unpacked and piled in out of the way corners, I sit now in front of the bedroom window, future site of my desk when eventually delivered. I thought at first the desk would go in the guest bedroom with its view out onto the large backyard, but on second thought the view from the front seemed better. Inaccurate really to call it a “better” view, but then the giant magnolia now coming to bloom changed my mind. I also like that the front bedroom gets more natural light and is considerably larger. 

I’m finding things in the house I can make no sense of, but can’t really say it surprises me. Switches, lights and ceiling fans have a mysterious electrical order, but more puzzling is the hidden telephone inside a walk-in closet, a phone with a dialtone. Nothing to do with me, I wonder who is paying the bill. One more question for the property manager.

Since my arrival was at lunchtime, I brought a sandwich and ate it sitting on a stool at the work island in the kitchen. The ham sandwich was particularly good and the pleasant setting with views out to both back and front yards were definitely an enhancement. Certainly the perfect quiet helped, a blessing only rarely enjoyed at the beach with its constant tourist soundtrack. Looking out to the long screened porch that stretches across the back of the house, I decided that a small table with a couple of chairs would be perfect on the porch, a shaded spot with its wide view of the backyard extending to the woods. Just the thing to improve the flavor of summer lunches.

Today was my first opportunity to try out the Henry Lever-Action .22 rifle I bought last week. With all the years since I last shot a gun, it was a slow process, performed with exaggerated care and the hope I wouldn’t blow a toe off. The first loud crack of the rifle surprised me and I worried that someone beyond the next clump of trees might be taking cover. Not likely really. I heard gunshots from down the road the first time I visited the property, and talking later with my October to May neighbor I learned that rifle and shotgun fire this far out in the country is usual. Making sure that the direction and angles were safe, I set up a couple of tin cans and from about twenty feet did pretty well at knocking them off the stump. Took me two shots to hit a ping pong ball, but the second shot was right through the middle. Two or three squirrels ran scampering up the tall trees but their alarm was unnecessary. Squirrels are not on my hit list.

To get a better feel of the outdoor sounds I move my chair to a part of the backyard just outside the screened porch. For the moment I hear nothing but the rasp and click of insects. Far overhead an airplane's roar is pared to a fraction, fading gradually into the distance. Waiting in my place under the arch of limbs I soon catch a hesitant trill of birds beginning their shy recital. The first songs come not from my yard but from the nearby woods. The wind is there as well, slight, ruffling the leaves overhead. Occasionally a heavy twig falls with a small thump on the carport’s tin roof. Looking at the tall oaks around me, each one hung with Spanish moss swaying slightly in the breeze, I remember a friend in New York who longs to see this well-known southern sight. Doubtful that a photograph would capture the full effect.

Now a cardinal has flown into the tree in front of me, and on another tree to the left what I believe is a woodpecker bounces on a limb but doesn’t stay long. Another bird out of sight on the other side of the house chirps and whistles with all its heart.

Too soon surely to make comparisons of the beach and the country, but maybe it is enough to say that the familiar peace of walking the surf line on an off-season morning is no more soothing than the calm of a backyard in the country.

Armed & Dangerous

Mine was a childhood filled with western movies, cowboys and Indians, quick draw heroes and villains and images of Richard Widmark galloping across the plains firing his trusty lever-action Winchester 73. At other times it was Randolph Scott facing down a bunch of marauding Comanches, his rifle firing off a blaze of 30-30 bullets. I grew up wishing for one of those battered old lever-action rifles.

Despite the early dreams of cowboys and rifles, unlike many boys growing up in the sportsman’s paradise of south Louisiana, I never did get a rifle. My father had a shotgun that I was allowed to use on hunting trips a few times and my best friend and I sometimes spent an afternoon shooting his two .22 rifles out in the woods, where we figured birds in the tall trees were fair game. From around the time of high school the idea of shooting or wanting to own a gun receded, never to be revived. Until last month. 

When I got the idea to move and began looking at a house in the country, in our walk around the property the realtor pointed at some rustling leaves on the ground and hinted that it was the kind of place that might call for having a gun around the house. Later, telling friends about this place I was considering moving to, I got the same suggestion from more than one advising me to at least think about it. The immediate reaction on my part was an “I don’t know about that” kind of hedging, not ready at all to run out to a gun shop. First thought was that there are enough people with guns already, that I don’t feel any threat, and for the time being see no need for adding my name to the gun register. 

Still, the idea had been planted and I found myself thinking more about whether it would be a good idea to buy a gun. And for that matter, what kind of gun? Turning it over in my thoughts for several days, somewhere from out of the past rose up those old childhood images of cowboys and their lever-action rifles knocking hostiles off the ridge and rattlesnakes off the doorstep. A little bit of research told me that the same style of lever-action rifle was available in a smaller caliber and I began to think that a .22 might be just the thing to fit my still undefined needs out there in the ‘wilderness’ of south Oak Hill. So, I typed ‘lever-action .22’ into the Google search box and came up with 1,260,000 hits. At the top of the list was: ‘the Henry lever-action, a classic western-style rifle and one of the most popular .22s on the market today.’  I looked at the picture for no more than half a minute and my interest in owning a gun flared. Suddenly I saw myself decked out in raunchy cowboy regalia, a rumpled black Stetson shading my eyes as I sat atop a roan mare squinting into the sun and levering a cartridge into my rifle.

A week later, now $392 poorer, I am the owner of a Henry Lever-Action .22LR rifle. What exactly I’m going to shoot at with this handsome piece of American workmanship I’m not sure, but I’ve already spent too much time striking dangerous gun-wielding poses in my bedroom mirror, closer than ever to feeling like Richard Widmark or Randolph Scott. “Take that you red-skinned varmint!” BAM!

A little unsure just where this .22 rifle is going to fit into my soon-to-be country lifestyle, I must admit to a little bit of excitement in having a rifle that fulfills at least a tiny portion of those long ago childhood dreams of fighting off outlaws and protecting the homestead from rattlers and rapists.

Dressing the Part

One of the more pleasant aspects of life at the beach is the long established and widely accepted custom of casual clothing anywhere anytime. Even the better restaurants are filled with diners in shorts, T-shirts and flip flops—what passes as dressing up for dinner—and many of the people seen walking down the street are in something more casual: a swim suit, maybe a faded and well-worn shirt over it. With all the sand and warm sun typical of a beachtown, leather shoes, dress shirts and ties are definitely out of place.

From my first day here, shorts, T-shirt and a pair of Crocs became a uniform. Give me a chest of drawers with three pairs of shorts, a pair of jeans, a drawer full of T-shirts and another with underwear and I need little else, maybe a baseball cap. Sure, the colder months call for a sweater, a pullover or two and maybe a jacket, but even in chillier times shorts will usually do the trick. As for socks, I’ve forgotten what they feel like, and in the shoe department a pair of Reeboks and the Crocs fill the bill just fine. On rare occasion when I feel the need to be a little less casual, I replace the shorts with a pair of jeans and the T-shirt with a polo shirt, but at the bottom I am still sockless.

I’m going to miss all that.

The day I decided on moving to the house in the country I realized it would call for a few new items of clothing, something casual but in a different direction. Shorts may be fine inside, but outside is a place where long pants, socks and high top leather shoes bring more peace of mind—peace of mind in the arena of safety. In Oak Hill you don’t want to step on anything in bare feet or brush up against unfamiliar foliage with bare legs. And rather than a baseball cap, a wide-brimmed hat will do more to stop the hairy caterpillars from dropping down a shirt. Though I’ve always disliked them, gloves for working in the yard might also be a good idea.

Walking over the acre of property with the realtor a couple of weeks back, he suggested, with a small adjustment to his Daniel Boone attire, that it was an area where having a gun in the house would be wise. I couldn’t imagine he was talking about crime in the form of robbers or kidnappers, and I looked at the ground around me with new eyes, expecting to see something slither under a log. For a moment my head was filled with the vision of me as a rugged pioneer uncovering a nest of rattlers in my garden at the edge of the woods. A moment later I told the realtor I had to leave, that I had an appointment at the gun shop.

It’s still a couple of weeks before I move out to the house in the country and I’m still enjoying my shorts, T-shirts and bare feet, but I have been to Sears for a pair of sturdy shoes and while there I thought maybe a Bowie knife would come in handy, something to hold between my teeth in a wrestling match with unwelcome critters. I’ve seen Animal Planet and the scenes of anacondas released in the swamps of Florida. I just want to be prepared.