I’ve been here in Fairborn since Saturday morning and I am heading back today – but I am waiting for rush hour to clear because it is raining very hard over the very busy exits and entrances and construction barriers on I-75. I don’t know if the rain with be easing up, but I think if I leave at 9 I will be after the commuters and before any people hit the roads heading to malls and wherever they go for solace on a rainy day.

I have on my grungy shoes because of the rain. Looking at my feet propped on the coffee table is not a nice sight, but it is better than bemoaning a nicer pair of shoes turning into giant heavy sponges of squishing water.

I have a task right now – to bound out on the balcony and pull back the potted tree to the relative safety of the corner. Hang on, little guy . . . here I come.

With all the dumpstering and yard work and sorting of stuff, I’m not quite certain of anything.

Ah, the “and” part: We used the weed-eater to cut down these really huge weeds that we thought might possibly have been the inspiration for sci-fi movies. They were not tall in relation to their width; no they were big, ugly leaves that reached out to cover the area of an end table. Of course, the wise thing to do would have been to cover those leaves with weed killer, but we couldn’t wait. We needed to defend ourselves; we will go back later and put down some anti-weed stuff and we will probably arm ourselves with more than a weed-eater.

I love my curved pruning saw; well, love may be too strong a word, adore might be more appropriate. I mean you don’t want to get too intimate with a saw.

With the exception of the saw, all our tools were corded – I have given up on battery-powered tools for yard work. We probably used 350 feet of cord – light green, dark green and yellow. We put the yellow one next to the tool we were using, making it more noticeable. Of course, now I am toying with the idea of adding more cord . . . and more . . . and more – sort of like those million light Christmas displays.

We were able to make it look so much better so fast because it was so overgrown to begin with. I suppose we could have filmed it for a cable TV special. The only thing that went awry was that we left a spool of weed-eater cord hanging from an old clothes line; we thought of it about three miles down the road, but we were hot and sweaty and tired and figured it could hang there for a little longer. Besides, we might have pulled up to see those huge weeds had called the Mother Ship for re-enforcements.

We were going to go on Sunday – to mow, to weedeat, to trim, to spray poison ivy killer, but it rained and was cold. We planned then for Monday but the skies were a heavy overcast and the temperature low and the dew would hang on forever where we were going,  just a couple of miles south of the Michigan line, so we planned for today. And, yes, the sun is out and the sky is blue. Somehow this isn’t like waiting for Christmas.

First on the agenda is loading the car with tools and cords and mosquito stuff; that’s such a festive activity. Almost as much fun as unloading said car, but not nearly as much as the traditional untangling of cords.  We have to be very careful about scheduling the bush trimming – a little too frustrated and gosh, that bush might be a stump, a little too much of good spirits and that bush might start to resemble some sort of “art work” statue. Of course, there is the crazy option which is a variation on the chain saw massacre.

May the force be with us.

My cousin Glenda forwarded to me an email she had received containing getting old jokes. I could relate them all here, but I’m going to highlight the one that tickled me the most and seemed like something my dad would have said.

Just before the funeral services, the undertaker
came up to the very elderly widow and asked,
‘How  old was your husband?’
’96,’  she replied: ‘Two years younger than me’
‘So  you’re 98,’ the undertaker commented.
She responded, ‘Hardly worth going home, isn’t it?’

I forwarded the message to LZP and he sent back this reply:

Count Old Kook in

Well, all right, I decided to write something, but a I’m still at the stage where it could wind up being really literal , such as: SOMETHING.

So, I have been outside and fiddled with the weedeater and used the electric mower a wee bit in back; I am envisioning the backyard a solid mass of hostas – sort of like the tulip fields, only perennial and green and white striped.

Last evening we put out the trash, stomped and ready, but it was not picked up this morning. At first I thought about walking over to the brick wall of the house and banging my head against it, but then I remembered Monday was Memorial Day and trash days are delayed by a day. My forgetfulness could have initiated headbanging, but I thought maybe there might be a connection between the two. What I need are soft bricks.

Bit by bit, I am going through things and in my pile of hats, I found Der Bingle’s Reaper/Predator hat from the program he has been working on. And I put it on my head; I don’t think I’m going to give it back. (Pay no attention to UBO, who is making a sneak attack to grab the hat in the background.)

This tattered old thing belonged to my Grandma Jessie Shimp and then somewhere along the line Mother dug it out and started using it. It would be nice if I could say that I use it while whipping up great dishes like Grandma and Mother used to do, but I don’t like to cook. Usually it hangs on a nail in the kitchen reminding me of those two women.

I think I may have actually worn it once or twice, but there is no magic in it. I think even the Stouffer’s put in the oven lasagna sagged in the middle. Sigh. However, I need to make some poncho-like covers to throw on over my clothes when I am doing some things . . . such as gluing. We’ll just put that story in the never mind bin.

Some pictures make you smile a special way, accompanied by a tightening throat and tearing eyes. Here are two that do so:

This first one is my cousin Susie Woodrow Anderson, standing behind the bouquet she puts together for her Uncle Bob every year. She has an eye for bring colors together in a gentle balance. She’s been doing this for 16 years now. And I wanted to post this this year so I can always take a look at a family memory.

This second picture seems like it should have been presented first, but I don’t know, I guess I felt the finished product should be top of the post. This second one, though it obviously precedes the first one, reflects a deeper story. Notice how Susie is fussing over just how everything should be. If I’d been filming, you would hear her say how she wanted to get two of one of the blooms, but they only had one and she was disappointed and doing her best with the situation. This was no plopping of flowers in the vase. This took time. The lady on the right is Phyllis Sackmire Woodrow, my cousin Duane’s wife. They live about a mile down the road and often stop by to water the geraniums. One year, one very hot summer, they carried a milk jug of water and Phyllis fretted when they went on a trip . . . but when they returned it was flourishing and she wrote me a note about how happy she was. There is something extremely touching about this – Duane was Daddy’s first nephew, born back in the days before WW II. To be remembered is a wonderful thing.

The grave is right beside the roadway in a country cemetery in west/central Indiana. It is hours away from where I now live, but since the development of the Hoosier Heartland Highway, that time has been cut down and the vistas crossing the state are soothing, at least better that red lights and obscure turns.

I first made this trip to my father’s gravesite in 2000, the year he died and I think the monument had just been erected. We had a big pot of geraniums and ivy and a spike; it was quite attractive and it rode down seatbelted into the backseat of my mother’s car. She drove down. The way my parents had always gone – two lane roads, towns and cities to get through and moments of “Was that our turn?” No GPS and roads by the Wabash River that followed settlers. I drove back; I think I went a little out of my way and did Interstates.

That was a long time ago. This past Tuesday was not and this past Tuesday once again my cousins and I left flowers on our parents graves. We ate lunch together in Kingman, the town in which our parents grew up. Duane, Ann, Glenda, Susie and me . . . and Phyllis, Duane’s wife, whose folks are buried very close to Duane’s. She was at the basketball game when Duane broke his arm – one of my bedtime stories, dontcha know. It was an old-fashioned, down home eatery with a table of (cough, cough) older clientele. It was Tuesday, chicken and noodle day; I need to remember that Thursday is meatloaf day. Actually, I need to find an all you can eat meatloaf buffet place, but that’s just one of my quirks.

It was a cool day, but there was some sun; it wasn’t like the steamy day when we were rained on, sauna-ed and Daune heard something and said, “Isn’t that the tornado siren at Kingman?” I imagine the pot of geraniums got watered really well that day.

As the years pass, the visit to the cemetery seems like a revolving door of perception: yesterday, long ago, just yesterday, years ago . . .

When we were eating I sat across from my cousin Ann, and I recalled how when I was little and afraid, I would run to my dad, yelling, “Take. Take. Take.” I said sometimes things in life happen and I feel that impulse and have to fight to keep my arms from reaching up. Yesterday, long ago – all the same in your heart.