I Think

Did you see that exchange I had with farmerman yesterday JT?

I had asked him what to do when you have a tiger by the tail and he informed me that tigers are a large cat with stripes. And accused me of being dumb for not knowing.

I imagine he leaned back from the keyboard with a triumphant snort.

I watched some geese, attempting to form a wedge, earlier. But between the two of them it was just not happening. Number two goose kept shifting position, seeking that wind drag, looking to be minimally successful.

Got my work week wrapped up. Today was a mix of installing a light fixture, replacing the seats on benches and cutting a limb that was dangling.

A five story apartment complex, under construction, in Houston, has burned to the ground. My wife asked if they had given a reason the fire started. Not yet. Then we got home and I looked at the headlines. It's the same place that was in the news this morning, because it was built right up against a cemetery and people were bitching. Now I think we know why, even if not how, it began.

The key to accomplishing anything, for me, is motivated inertia. If I can get moving I tend to accomplish much. I came home from work still energized and kept busy. This morning, I will need to be self starting. Not right away, of course. It's a deceptively simple formula and an easy one to violate.

Arson or the fires of Hell?

There were just two workers at the site. That leaves little opportunity for accidents and lots of privacy for anybody else.

There is now a huge church fire, in the Heights, which is not that far from Montrose. Could be coincidence. Could be two accidents. One never knows, do one?

Rocky seems pretty needy this morning. He sits by me, seeking attention, but not in a playful way. Just wants to be loved on.

I started constructing the wheelchair ramp, yesterday, but the weather kept me from staying at it. I have enough to build the platforms (it goes 18' one way, then doubles back).

Deer are running in new areas, these days. I had to stop for one on a busy road. How it got that far, without being hit, I can't guess.

In Texas, thanks to tort reform, this is the sort of thing we have to put up with:
The story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch is so alarming as to be almost unfathomable. It's the sort of story a person could make a compelling horror movie about: A handsome, well-spoken neurosurgeon moves to town, hires a slick marketing team, and begins to assemble a base of patients in need of minimally-invasive spinal surgeries—only to perform such bizarrely incompetent operations that his fellow doctors slowly become convinced that the surgeon is actually intentionally maiming, paralyzing, and killing the innocent patients who have come to him for pain relief.

In the movie version of the story, though, there would—one would expect—be some justice for the survivors of Duntsch's operations, or for their families. But this is Texas, and thanks to tort reform, such justice is hard to come by. And, if a recent intervention by Attorney General Greg Abbott into federal lawsuits filed by three of the families who suffered on Duntsch's operating table works out the way the Republican nominee for Governor hopes, it may stay that way.

I mentioned, the other day, I would tell some about working at a car wash.

When vacuuming the cars, my arms worked furiously, my head stayed down and I never looked up, until signaled to quit. I would go home, exhausted, for a time. It was a fairly large operation and I soon became familiar enough with a few employees to form friendships. I will call one of them Anderson. It didn’t take long to figure out he wanted to run around with me in hope it would lead to connections with white girls. He didn’t realize that I had no expertise with women.

You could tell Anderson’s Mama loved him. She sent him out in the neatest, cleanest, clothes imaginable, daily. She provided him with an older model Ford, which was as clean as a new one, with big sidewalls, and in excellent condition. We took it to bars, mostly. He struck out with every single white girl he approached. I could do little but watch.

One night I bought him a prostitute. She was a black girl, with honey skin and blonde-dyed hair. Good natured, always smiling. Later, Anderson mentioned, in a disappointed tone, that she was not really white.

Working the register was a pretty girl, whose station allowed her to look over the gas and vacuum lines, and we liked what we saw of each other, enough that we dated a few times. She knew my circumstances. She drove her own car and handed me fifty dollars. “Let me know when that’s gone, and I will give you some more.” We went to the sort of bars where singers played piano and sang songs like “Georgia on My Mind.” She took me to LA’s wax museum. That night, I slept on her couch.

A few days later, Anderson came near me and he looked up at the cashier. He made it known he wanted to get with her. I learned somewhere in all this that he had recently been in prison. Nobody mentioned a reason.

One afternoon, I saw in the daily paper that Anderson had been arrested. He had entered a home and raped a woman at knife point.

I was in court when Anderson was charged, because I had found it hard to believe he would do such a thing. It became obvious he was guilty, by the look on his face, when he looked out and saw me. I washed my hands of him.

The cashier gave me a tip where to find a better job and I quit the car wash a few weeks later, to learn to be a machinist. I was a misfit there, and soon moved on, to join my brother, in Kansas City.

What grist for a chapter in a book.

I met other odd characters, there. It has been long enough I am beginning to forget pertinent details.

I'm not sure if you men understand, but. Life is extremely confusing. I'm to the point I have no idea any more about anything.

I'm not sure how wet it's going to be, out. I don't want to work in mud, using wet lumber.

The pages to my hang up calendar are wilting, curling away from the wall. I never saw one do that. I suppose the sudden days of high humidity are to blame.

Rocky is strange about the wife and me conversing. He barks to keep us from hearing one another, or to be part of the conversation. Once we are through, he is through.
.

I'm not leaving the thread.

I missed it, Spendi. But missing one of farmer's posts can only be a blessing.

And Edgar wouldn't want you to, A.

You were not asked to leave.

A man called to buy my octagon table. He was working in Rockport, so, he wanted to send his wife by with the money. I told him I would hold the table for him, but would not accept his money before he had a look at it. He will bring his trailer to my house tomorrow. I will have to take down a portion of fence, to get it out. Hope he still wants it. It is sitting right where I want to build the second platform on my wheelchair ramp.

Mrs edgarblythe says she sometimes feels guilty for having the handicap placard, but she has no cause to feel that way. It is obvious, in the way she walks, she needs it.