Tick Magnet

In my younger day, I had a friend who considered himself to be somewhat of a "chick magnet."  He may have been right, for he seemed always to have a plethora of young ladies hanging about.  I have never been a chick magnet, but I may well be a tick magnet.  Two experiences in two days in  addition to numerous other incidents in the past seem to support the notion.

I am thinking that since Cookie went over the Rainbow Bridge that I am the only old dog left on the premises, which may account for this undesirable attraction I have for the little arachnids.  (Have I mentioned spider bites in the past?)

Sunday evening I had a burning sensation on my thigh.  I examined the spot and decided that I had again been subject to a spider attack.  Monday evening there was clearly a blister at the center of the wound.  I squoze it.

Fast forward to Monday evening.  I settled in the La Z Boy with a book.  As I turned a page, I glanced at my left wrist for no particular reason and spotted a tick attempting to burrow into the skin. I grasped the critter, and though he was reluctant to let go, I managed to dislodge and dispatch the varmint.

Tuesday, lunchtime.  We had been working in the yard, and a shower was in order before we ate.  As I removed the breeches, I noted a very black spot on the red spot I mentioned above.  It was a tick backing out, having apparently so deeply lodged within my hide that I did not know it was in there, and so I had hosted it for two days!

I am believing that I am healing now.  Nature is wonderful, but not all nature's creatures are welcome here!

Ta Da!

Fork in the Road: Four

The fork taken when the Kaiser was loaded and headed east took us in reality back to the Midwest.  The child had just turned two, and Jeanie was seven months pregnant.  (The expression "we are pregnant" was decades in the future.  Some expressions can stay in the future.)

I am so easily distracted.  Were that not so, I might have become a writer.

Two principal orders of business pressed in upon us.  One, I needed employment to provide a means of livelihood for the family; and two, we needed a place to live.  Camping with the parents should never last longer than would a visit during a vacation.  So I started looking for work.

I interviewed with Marhoefer.  They were looking for a young man for the office, with, as they put it "opportunity to move up the corporate ladder."  Pete Marhoefer was all business, but considerate, and  he listened as well as he spoke.  He showed me the entire operation, and of course concluded with the saw, "We use every part of the pig but the squeal."

Chrysler was seeking a management trainee, young, recent college graduate.  I qualified on both counts and was offered the job.  I was also offered a job teaching sixth grade in a small community fifteen miles to the west.  The road wyes, and

I accepted the position at Chrysler and we started at once looking for a house in New Castle.  We found a very nice little home less than three miles from the office.  The rent was a rather steep, I thought, $225 per month.  But the six hundred dollar starting salary was nearly one hundred more than I had been making on the West Coast.  We would manage quite nicely, and there was that promising "opportunity for advancement."

Of course a member of Chrysler management couldn't be driving a Kaiser, so right away we found ourselves with a car payment.  The Dodge Polara was a step up from the more affordable Plymouth Belvedere, but I was in management, you see.




And so our lives progressed for the next few years.  There was always one more thing we "had to have" and it was always important that we choose a "step up," for I was climbing the corporate ladder.  The mandatory new car every two years, as well as a second car became standard features of living.  During the sixties and  early seventies, the New Castle plant was rapidly growing, production facilities were increased in size and employees were added.  As I was in management, I imagined that I was an important cog in the development of this manufacturing facility.  The new home we had constructed southwest of town on the Big Blue River stretched the budget, but I was still upward mobile!

Then came the Carter Years.  Inflation soared, gasoline was increasingly difficult to obtain due to the oil embargoes, and the expense of doing so was outrageous.  The automotive industry was headed down a steep slope.  Chrysler, along with everyone else, was switching over to front-wheel drive vehicles.  Between the mid-seventies and 1985, employment at the New Castle plant plummeted from 3000 workers to fewer than 600.*  Management was not immune to these cuts.  My job with the company was eliminated in 1984.  I was out the door on June 30.  Five days later, unemployed and in debt up to my eyeballs, I observed my fiftieth birthday.  And wondered.

*New Castle Plant is a Flagship for Henry County, indianahistory.org

C'mon, Bloom Already!

I anticipate bloom of naked ladies on July 28 each year.  Missed for sure this year!

July 29, 10 a.m.  One shoot, less than an inch.

July 30, 10 a.m. Same shoot, over 2", plus four more shoots,

two of which can be seen in this picture.

July 31, 2 p.m.  First shoot now 7".  Eleven sprigs above ground!

August 1, 11 a.m.  13".  Fourteen spears, two showing color.

August 2, 2 p.m.  19".  Sixteen have emerged.

August 3, 1 p.m.  23".  Seventeen, but not yet.

August 4, 10 a.m.  Two feet, eleven of seventeen show color.

Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us

This hymn was stuck in my head Saturday afternoon. Parts of the lyrics and some of the tune leaked out via humming and vocalization. So I'll carry a good thing forward another day. Perhaps it'll stick in your head, too!

Four Rabbits and a Catalpa Leaf

Beautiful and I walked to the secret garden in the cool of the evening.  We were perhaps six or seven yards from the edge of the garden when a rabbit burst forth and ran behind the neighbor's barn.  "She's eating our bulbs," BBBH remarked.

But then as we stepped into the fringes around the plantings, we saw these bunnies.  We stood about five feet from them, oohing and aahing.  The one farthest from the camera couldn't take it, so it ran off into the grass under the windmill. When we took another step closer, a second one ran, but at first it ran toward us.  Then it realized that that was not the right direction and turned away.

The other two remained still, supposing that maybe we couldn't see them if they didn't move.  But finally when BBBH slowly crept toward them, cooing and talking to them, they, too, decided that they had someplace else to be.

Mama Rabbit seemed to have instincts for self-preservation stronger than the proverbial mother's instinct to protect her offspring.  I have had birds attack me when I approached their nests.  So "flight or fight" proclivities differ from creature to creature.  In the case of the birds, they used both.  

I nearly allowed myself to be sidetracked here with a rehash of Jimmy Carter's rabbit tale.  But that's 35 years old, and has been done to death.

Industrial Trucks

The forklift was designed to lift and move things.  By the very nature of its job, it must move forward and backward.  (beep, beep, beep, beep, beep)  Some enterprising genii in a government bureaucracy (OSHA, 1971) decreed that industrial and commercial trucks must sound a loud (level to exceed level of ambient noise in the area) and annoying intermittent alarm whenever it is in reverse (beep, beep, beep) mode.  This applies to forklift trucks. (beep, beep, beep)



A block and a half from us is a small concern that makes and installs granite countertops.  It is a very thriving business, inasmuch as Mrs. America has now discovered that she cannot live without this marvel in her kitchen.  Guess how the materials are handled on this site. (beep, beep, beep, beep, beep)  We enjoy our screened porch im(beep, beep, beep)mensely, but we could live without (beep, beep, beep, beep) that.  We are in favor of the factory, though, as they are otherwise good neighbors, and they provide numerous jobs for workers in our community.

I was a forklift operator in a previous life, and prior to OSHA.  No beeper, never ran over anyone.  Most people who work in an environment where such known hazards exist pay attention to what they are doing.  Those who are not so inclined need to be elsewhere. (beep, beep, beep, beep, . . . )


A very happy birthday today is my wish for my baby sister, Ilene!

Fork in the Road: 3.2

Jeanie and I examined the situation from every angle we could imagine.  Youngsters.

We decided we would move to the area in any event, and that in all likelihood I would take the job. We wrapped up our business in Seattle, packed our possessions into the Kaiser and a two-wheel utility trailer  we bought from our landlord.  The three-hundred mile journey across the Cascades and into the Okanogan was without incident.  It was a lovely trip with scenic marvels all along the way.




We sailed into town just at sundown on  a Friday evening in late July.  It was a bit hot, and the motel did not have air conditioning.  The baby was fussy, we were tired, and above all we wondered what we were doing in this place where we knew not a soul and had only the letter we had received a week earlier.

Saturday, we contacted the board secretary.  We were taken to the parsonage.  We visited the church.  We met half-dozen "leading citizens."  Services, we were told, were at ten in the morning.  Clearly it was assumed we were the new pastors.

How do I finish this story of my life in the remaining half-page?  Did I mention that I was not a preacher?  I was, though, raised in a parsonage and thought I had some idea of how a church worked.  I had not the slightest clue.  However, I did believe that the people and their needs, spiritual, physical, and intellectual were the first concern of a minister.  I made it a point to tend to those needs first.  The rest of the job flowed from that.

At the end of our eighth year, the board offered me a sabbatical year at half-salary if I wished to pursue further training at seminary.  Though we now had three children and a fourth on the way, we believed that by careful management and a bit of part-time work we could make it.  So to the Midwest for a year in seminary!  Coincidentally, it was a year in which we could spend some limited amount of time with our parents before returning to the Northwest.

The following June, we returned to the little parsonage on the river and to the duties and responsibilities of guiding the flock.  The congregation grew.  We established a new congregation in a village a few miles distant with a core  group of missionary-minded young couples.  A young man from my alma mater was selected to lead this budding work.

The completion of our fiftieth year in this pastorate coincided with the celebration of my seventy-fifth birthday.  This was the Sunday on which I announced our retirement.

We still live in this beautiful valley, beside the sparkling river.  We enjoy very much watching our grandchildren grow and establish their own homes.  And we have some great grandchildren, too!

This is the second of the fantasy lives I have reported in this "Forks" series.  I like to think, rightly or not, that I could have been successful in this endeavor.  Notice, too, that I was not a widower at any point in this fantasy life.  Other than the possibility that that might have been reality, I do not regret having chosen the other branch of the road.