A good time

So, the other evening I’m over at the Kids’ house.

Their son, my Grandson, was his usual happily bouncing ball of irrepressible enjoyment. He had recently turned five and I’d brought along a back-ordered birthday gift, a 60-second timer designed as an educational tool for youngsters. He loved it, setting and re-setting the device, applying the timer to any and every domestic event of the evening and taking extended pleasure in the brief alarm bell at their culminations.

For the last couple years my Grandson has displayed a penchant for the mechanical and I figured he’d like the timer, plus his parents could use it to help him learn time management as he approached the kindergarten milestone. It was successful well beyond my imagining.

All around, I could not possibly think of a better way to occupy myself than being with the three of them.

I take a deep pleasure in spending time with my daughter and her husband. She is a joy to my heart and he is one of the most even-tempered, hard-working and dependable guys I’ve known. My Grandson, of course…well, if you’re a grandparent, you know what I mean.

Afterward, driving back to the RV park, a half hour run up I-10, I was thinking about a story I’d told the kids, about some family events from my past. You know the kind of story; typically it begins with something like, “I remember when…,” or, “Have I ever told you about the time…?”

But it wasn’t the story itself that occupied my thoughts; it was just one more of dozens I’d told them. In fact, I’m quite certain I’d told them this particular anecdote numerous times before—hence the glassy look in their eyes when I was telling it again. Rather, I was reflecting on the fact that I knew I’d related these particular events to them before and I went ahead and did it again anyway.

Used to be that I figured older people repeated a story because they didn’t realize they’d told you that particular tale before. Now I know that’s not the case. No, those stories are re-told just for the sheer pleasure of the re-telling, the rekindling, the re-living of cherished memories and significant emotions. It simply helps to have an audience.

Too bad, Kids. Looks like you’ll be hearing it again..

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Here comes the sun

Probably my least favorite part of the “full-time” RV experience is the heat.

The sun-baked RV experience.

If you can bring to mind the POW labor camp depicted in the motion picture The Bridge on the River Kwai, or the fenced rural prison enclosure in Cool Hand Luke, you may also recall the cramped punishment boxes that were features of those—as well as staples of many other—prison movies. In those cast iron or roofing-metal coffers the recalcitrant prisoner was slow-roasted day after day in the unmerciful sun until he saw the error of his ways.

Alec Guinness being assisted from his overheated

dressing room trailer on location for the filming of

The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The RV experience—baking in a metal box fully exposed to the intense radiation of a million-mile-wide nuclear furnace only nine minutes away (as the photon flies)—can be similar. Especially if one is too cheap to turn on the roof-mounted air conditioner that is an almost-standard feature of such recliner-, shower- and refrigerator-equipped sarcophagi.

So life in an RV park is not all potlucks, pinochle and swimming pools; there’s a great deal of self-inflicted punishment as well.

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Not really

Chillin' out

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Been cool here in Tucson the last couple days; got down to the lower 30s last night.

There was a threat of snow yesterday, but the snow line melted into rain at about 2500 feet; we're at about 2300 feet here in the Old Pueblo. The mountains surrounding Tucson were well dusted with the white stuff, however.

I enjoyed listening to the rain on the RV's roof yesterday, and then threw on an extra layer for sleep last night--supplemented by hot chocolate at bedtime.

Can't really complain.

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Can can

Perhaps it is that winter leads to introspection, because I continue to stumble into opportunities to contemplate my foibles.

I have a thing about empty containers; it’s difficult, often nearly impossible, for me to throw them away. Bottles, cans, boxes, crates, jugs, even paper sacks—all must be held for evaluation prior to any decision about disposal. This can be especially difficult in a travel trailer, where space is at a premium.

Right now, the four-inch wide strip between my stove and sink (a significant work surface in my miniscule RV kitchen) is crowded with an empty coffee can, a round quart plastic orange juice bottle and a large square hand soap container. These are perfectly good receptacles, capable of years of continued service in any number of significant applications. Plus, I’ve already purchased them, incidental to other goods, so they have the additional significant advantage of being free. At the moment, I can’t imagine to what uses I’d likely put them, but you just never know.

I come from a line of proud container re-users, so the source of the disorder is most likely genetic. We saved the sturdy little baby food jars for my grandfather, my Mom’s Dad, who filled them with a large and varied collection of used hardware—screws, bolts, nuts, washers nails, all saved from other projects—that he kept on special shelves and racks he’d built between the wall studs in his garage. He was always sending me out there to fetch one particular jar or another, which I could never seem to find. Then he’d have to come out to pluck it from the exact spot he’d told me to look. He never made a big deal out of it, but still, not good memories.

With my mother it was cigar boxes. Don’t ask me where she got them; nobody in the family smoked, let alone cigars. But she had stacks of them on her closet shelf, ready for scout projects, school pencil boxes, or as a home for bug and beetle collections.

My Dad specialized in coffee cans. Again their source is a mystery, since my folks drank instant coffee, which came in too-fragile-to-reuse (as I knew too well) jars. I suspect he may have brought the coffee cans home from the fire stations where he was assigned. I liked those cans the best because the aroma of coffee tended to linger long after they were put to use holding lawn mower parts and bicycle chains.

I knew I was in trouble when they came out with the plastic coffee cans a few years ago. A dedicated drinker of “real” coffee, I soon had a formidable collection of all sizes—and in matching color and brand logos! Those cans are perfect. They're easily cleaned, have potential applications in both the kitchen and the shop, are able able to hold dry goods and fluids, and don't leave a rusty stain behind when set down in the unnoticed wet spot.

By the time I moved from my last house, I had accumulated over 30 of those beautiful, wonderful plastic cans—all empty, of course; but still, a distinguished matched set unlikely to be found elsewhere outside of a major metropolitan area. However, I was moving into smaller quarters provided as part of my employment, and the cans had to go. I couldn’t bear throwing them away, so I set them out with the other yard sale items, ten cents for the big ones, a nickel for the small. And there they sat. Not a single taker! What was wrong with folks?

It was then I took that long, cold look in the mirror and saw the maniacal face of a coffee-can horder staring back.

Since then, I’ve allowed myself to hold empty containers for a week. If, within that time, I have not thought of a probable use that I, in my present circumstances, am likely to encounter, then, reluctantly, I dispose of them, to recycling as appropriate.

And right now, as I look at the can, bottle and jug occupying about 40% of my kitchen work space, I know it’s time. This will not be a happy day.

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Do not copy

Over the past few days I had been corresponding with my friend, the Otter, about recently popularized words in print. Particularly, I took note of “fraught” and “one-off” as words I had come across in the internet news and commentary pages to a degree that was becoming annoying.

And that gave me pause: why should I be annoyed?

It came to me, suddenly, in an uncomfortable bolt of realization—I am an anti-faddist!

Fads aggravate me. I mean, except for a brief period between 1966 and 1971 when I was into everything—Nehru jacket, paisley shirts, bell bottoms, pea coat, madras jacket—I pretty much go the other way on everything I can think of.

When hair styles were long, I kept mine short; when they went short, I grew mine long. Beards were popular, I went clean-shaven; when facial hair faded, I let my whiskers grow. Everyone is wearing shorts? Then mine languish in the drawer.

Folks buy big cars, I drive an Isuzu; gas prices go up, I buy an old Suburban. White sox are in, I’m wearing gray. Rooting for one team? I’ll cheer the other. Serving romaine while I stick with iceberg, popularizing sushi and I’m seeking out natural casing wieners.

One of the reasons I resisted starting a blog for so long was because “everyone” was doing it. Now I have four.

So what is it with me, anyway?

Best I can figure is one of two things. It’s either some sort of twisted DNA strand or else, when my mother scolded me so many times in my childhood, “If everybody goes and jumps off the bridge, are you going to do that, too?,” I took it way, way too seriously. I suspect the latter.

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Sadly

As I was writing this on Monday afternoon at about 4 PM MST, I received word that MJ, of whom I wrote last week, had passed away about an hour before.

The world seems a stranger place.

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