Summing Up and Forging On

I've recently been feeding a stray cat on my porch. Lately the plastic bowls have been coming up missing. It took most of a week to figure it out. The people across the way have taken to letting their dogs roam part of the day. I thought maybe the suspect dog had found a hole to exploit in the wire fence. After walking it this morning and finding nothing amiss, as I stood on the porch that dog came down the driveway. I had a good look and he is small and skinny - enough to squeeze under the gate. So I just need to wire something to the gate to thwart him. Then I will have to regularly walk the wire fence. The little **** has the nerve to bark at me when I go near my own fence to get to the back yard.

I just completed the first draft of Teapot's Empire. Later today or tomorrow the editing, beginning with the first story can begin. I'm notoriously slow. Just have to see how it goes.

As a boy in California, I went with my brothers on weekend hikes. In Fresno (Calwa, actually) we came out on the main road right across from the cotton seed processing plant. Other times we went around to an unmanned railroad switch station and played on a hand car. Next down the road was an industrial tank with a moat of water and a black oily substance. We sometimes went through (or over, not sure now) the fence and poked at the evil smelling stuff with sticks. We'd pass a large garden and steal a couple of green bell peppers to snack on. The last part of the hike ended at a railroad camp which was occupied by Pima Indians. The camp was surrounded by a wooden fence. The only way in was via an a-shaped stair over the fence. Only Roger was welcome inside, as his lifelong best friend lived there. They sometimes talked about getting railroad jobs at $2 an hour when they reached 18.

Another place we hiked was from Campbell. We hiked to Los Gatos and a beautiful woods that later became Silicon Valley.

From some places of residence I randomly wandered, favoring hiking through and around the vineyards.

I hated leaving California. In Calallen by Corpus Christi the hiking days were over.

Started the editing this evening. Formatting as I go the first story so far. It was largely edited before I began the others. Story 2 shouldn't be a great task. It's short and is a rewrite of an earlier story. Number three could bog down. We shall see. I hope I can query as early as April.

Quite a few years ago, my daughter became a vacuum salesman. She was to keep appointments made for her by a representative who would pay her each two weeks. We had her come to our home to show us her presentation. Then we bought the vacuum.

The small print to her position stated that if a quota for demonstrations was not met the salesperson would forfeit their pay. The sneaky sob would send his people to houses where no one was home for the last demonstration, causing them to miss their quota. But he liked my daughter so much that he paid her in full and was set to promote her. She took her money and promptly quit. He blustered and threatened to sue, but he was finished. She went on to better things and has become very successful.

As for our vacuum, it was too heavy and awkward to use. We didn't enjoy it for very long.

It wasn’t, per chance, a Rainbow vacuum cleaner? (“wait, wait, it’s not JUST a vacuum cleaner”!)

I believe it was Hoover. Capable of doing a shampoo.

In my early ‘20s after my Air Force days, I tried selling Rainbow vacuum cleaners. That lasted a week as I didn’t like the training as it was crazy and afterward they had you try and sell to a preferred list of ‘potential customers.’

Glad to see she came out of the sales experience relatively unscathed. That doesn’t suck!

She's very resourceful. Went from there to a fast food place for a few months, moved on to comanage a restaurant, was hired by a fast food chain to open their first restaurants in Colorado, went from that to managing a major retail store in Houston.

Readers here likely know the meaning of the word "precludes." I once had fun with my late brother Jack when he discovered "precludes." In his sales pitches to customers he used it synonymously with "includes." Likely we all have made similar mistakes. Most of my public mistakes come from reading and later mispronouncing words, such as, when I was about sixteen, pronouncing "suave" as "swave." These days when I discover words wrongly used I keep it to myself. The erring one may or may not react with anger or embarrassment but it's not my place to put someone on the spot.

Jarring juxtapositions. Came across three while editing the first of my three story book. One, I solved by deletion. The others are too important to do away with. I kept them, essentially unchanged. Maybe in the future I will work them over some more. Not certain.

My brother and his wife were buying a house. Both died. Eventually the mortgage company got around to selling the property. They needed the assent of all the siblings to go ahead. But now that a sale has gone forth, our lawyer says there is a delay while they determine if the siblings get money from the excess, as we were told to expect. I'm not greedy, but it galls me that in the first place they don't simply give us our money without a lawyer stepping in for 30% and if we don't get any of it the mortgage company presumably gets to keep my brother's money. - (The parents are all four deceased)

The stray cat constantly on the porch, eager for food, didn't show yesterday or this morning. Hopefully someone has adopted it. Don't want to contemplate a bad scenario. It never let me get closer than about four feet. Still I will miss it.

The cat was here today. I guess since it rained so much yesterday it preferred to miss a meal over getting wet.

Editing Quiet Beneath the Moon, I began to see my writing style as overly sparse. Can't be corrected. I don't have a lifetime to work it out.

Just saw "in lou of" elsewhere. Thought it was cute.

Thank you, Edgar!

I'd take a crack at a page or two.

I consider this collection the culmination of my work, regardless of what else I come up with. I don't know when it will be completed. Much of it rides on the assumption that the mass extinction event underway right now will include humanity.

Concerts I've attended.
1. Conway Twitty - 1958 - Just four hundred fans showed, despite the popularity of his records. But Jerry Lee Lewis was just up the road and most went to see him.
2. Van Cliburn - 1963. He played mostly modern pieces and because of that I didn't enjoy it.
3. Bob Dylan - 1965. Highway 61 album was still new. He performed the second half with the same band. Barry McGuire sat a few rows away.
4. Ray Price - maybe 1966. I didn't appreciate him as much then as I do now.
5. Hugh Masekela. 1967. Spirited lively show.
6. James Brown - 1967 - The warm up performances were exhausting, but I got to see and hear him eventually - at Madison Square Garden
7. The Fugs - 1968 - Tuli had a rubber doll with a burned face. He bayonetted it and at the end crammed a chocolate bar in its face.
8. Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder - forgot the exact year. At the Astrodome. It included Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Roger McGuinne, Ringo Starr and a few others.
9. I forgot about this one. It belongs in 1962 or maybe 1961. Rex Allen and Anita Bryant at the San Antonio Rodeo.
10. Willie Nelson - forgot the year - At the Houston Rodeo.

I didn't mention one other concert, because I walked out during the first song. Bob Dylan in the Astrodome during rodeo. His band sounded incredibly good. But on the first few lines his voice made two prolonged bleats that destroyed it for me. I prefer to remember him on earlier albums. I'm still a big fan, but I thought then he should either form a trio or just hire a performer to sing his new stuff - of which I am not enthralled. It seems to me most of his new songs grabs a pretty fair line and then anything that rhymes is groovy. Oh well. He is about a year older than me.