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Petals of Fucking Perfection
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So, as Yidakina was pouring vinegar onto my scrotum the other day (no, it's not a sex thing - though it does bring enough tears to my eyes that I think she gets off on it a little) she was telling me that my new grandson, Loki, was turned down by his doc for a standard circumcision because his package is too hefty for the equipment. Well..... gloriacious. As the man whose "kukri" was "too big to be legal in Canada" and almost got confiscated at the border onetime, I can heartily sympathize with the lad's delimma. I'm afraid it's a "curse" that will plague him for the rest of his life. a-heh.
(poor kid - there ought to be a calendar for people like us. Grandpa sympathizes.)
So, what are they going to do with little stud-puppy, since they don't want him to be an anteater or an Arab? I guess the suggestion was that when he gets to be 4-years-old they take him to a vet, or something. That, my friends, will be a sucky birthday. Grandpa will get him a trike, or something, to make up for it; you betcha.
Can't you just see it? They turn the headcatch loose and he comes hobbling out of the chute, snottin' and bawlin' - and there's Grandpa with a brand new, shiny red trike with a big blue ribbon on it. Hugs and fond memories runneth over at that point. 
The vinegar deal? I can't believe you're still fixated on that after the whole "studly new grandson" story. Fine. Here it is, then. I got me some sort of diabetes crotch rot (no, it's not diaper rash, you fuckers, though it may look similar to the uneducated eye. And no, I'm not posting pictures of it) which has been hanging on despite lathering it up with Bag Balm and other other topical oinkments (I'd try bacon grease, but the dogs sleep in the same room, and they're good dogs, but they are almost as prone to temptation than their master, sometimes. I just don't want to go there...) with no good results, so I decided to try and burn it off/out with some heavy-duty apple cider vinegar I have on hand here.
I asked Yidakina if she wanted to help with the project and she was all over it. I should have known it wasn't my best idea by how enthusiastic she was for it. Sometimes I think the girl has a bad mean streak in her - other times there's no doubt in my mind...
So, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to spraddle a campfire naked, but you hate the smell of burning meat and hair, get yourself a fine dose of athlete's crotch, or whatever - something that eats the hide off and leaves you with some nice raw spots in strategic places - pack a towel all up in there, and have your wife assume a wicked grin whilst she pours Mrs Bragg's All Natural, Extra Strong Apple Cider Vinegar - With "The Mother" on it.
For extra fun: man it out as long as you can, then get up and pop a couple of lortabs you have hoarded away so you can sleep. You will have strange and erotic dreams involving sauerkraut and midget Nazi dominatrixes with tiny, sharp teeth. You will wake up craving pickles - and more lortab.
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I am the rock in stream/
flow over me, not around/
together, we sing/
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By forest's edge, grey and weathered/
skin decayed, and with moss feathered/
thrust from the earth, like lithic lump/
is my favorite sittin' stump/
green awnings stretch, cedar's shade/
tunes drift from brook lacing glade/
the chickarees scurry and twit/
counterpointing just how still I sit/
and if I sit there still as stones/
I feel earth rhythms with my bones/
pulsing in from deepest spaces/
up my spine its drumbeat traces/
open my heart, shut off my head/
no ears can hear just what is said/
message repeats, and does not cease/
“love all of life and live in peace”/
soaring hawk drifts in the skies/
a message writ for slitted eyes/
soft clapping of the aspen's rounds/
coded whispers of earthsounds/
Where do I end, where starts the stump/
when I sit there on my hairy rump/
sinking down into the earth psalm/
riding on the wave of earthy calm/
Where ends the stump, begins the me/
ensconced upon gravestone of tree/
where flee concepts of bad and good/
when I root myself deep in the wood?/
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Posting my reply in suncrafter's wallet stealing thread brought back some old memories. Not necessarily good ones, either, though it doesn't seem so bad now.
When we first moved onto our Hell's Gulch property, the house was not in the finest of conditions. Really. If you looked up "hovel" in the dictionary a picture of that decaying shack would be associated with the description. The ridge sagged. The windows sat loose in their frames. The wiring was a nightmare. One look at the plumbing and I grabbed a shovel and went out back to start digging a hole for an outhouse.
One of the odd things about the house was a trapdoor in the middle of the (sagging, squeaky) dining room floor which gave access to a crawlspace too low and and cramped for even an Ethiopian midget to use. When I asked its function I was told it was there so that you could feed the rabbits in the winter.
Rabbits? I didn't want any danged rabbits under my floors. And I particularly didn't want any danged rabbitholes leading to the outside and letting cold air in under my floors, so I bug-bombed the crawlspace to chase the bunnies out and went around sealing the holes in the foundation that they used to get under there.
I also built that outhouse over the hole I dug, and later was quite glad of it.
Late November brought a week of terribly cold weather which froze the pipes and broke the pump. It was then I learned why the ramshackle old shack had a bunny-feeding hole in the middle of the floor. The previous owners had used them, more specifically their body heat, to keep the pipes thawed in winter. Well, damn. I wish they'd bothered to tell me that part of it.
We were quite broke at the time and the plumbing was such a nightmare that I finally quit chainsawing holes in the floor (the crawlspace was useless, remember) and settled the family down to talk about life without indoor plumbing. We came up with a number of innovative ideas which I'll refer to later.
For now, however, we'll concentrate on the bunnies and the now-very-important outhouse. You see, the outhouse I built was quite large and roomy as I had to make sure there was space for a bookrack, headroom for a person and a lantern, etc. It served also as a hunting blind, as I'd set a salt block just at the treeline a hundred yards away across the creek. I called it my Blue Moon Hunting Lodge. I took three bucks from that vantage point over the years, so was quite pleased with it.
Anyway, it was quite a commodious commode. The pit beneath the seats in back did not extend beneath most of the floor and it was beneath that flooring that my evicted bunnies moved to when I threw them out of the main house. And they took their revenge on us for that eviction.
Bunny breath is warm and full of moisture. Heat rises, and humidity collects on particularly cold surfaces. For us that meant that each morning we drew straws, the kids and I, to see who would have to go out and shovel the path to the outhouse - then melt the hoarfrost off the plastic toilet seat.
It was not a pleasant job, nor a very pleasant winter. But that bunnybreathfrost, among other things, made it easy to implement an austerity program so that we could save up enough money to dig a well and re-gain somewhat civilized living standards before the next winter came around.
Austerity that meant eleven months without indoor plumbing. And here're some of those innovations I alluded to earlier.
Drinking water wasn't a huge problem. In spring, summer and fall we were able to take from the little creeks and streams on our property. For the other six months of the year, I purchased 4 5-gallon gas cans and would fill them once a week at a frost free spigot in the city park down in Saint Maries. Good, clean water off the city's system in winter.
I put a hundred-gallon horse trough in the utility room and would siphon fill it from a spring up the hill. My wife would bucket that water into the Maytag for clothes washing. A lot of the time we smelled like moss.
The hardest part was showering or bathing. We had a big washtub and tried warming snowmelt on the woodstove to fill it for baths once. Only once. It didn't prove to be a workable option.
What I came up with was setting a clean 60-gallon drum next to the cooking range and purchasing an old half-horsepower "pony pump" with in- and out- flow fittings for garden hoses. I then nailed a lawn sprinkler to the ceiling above the bathtub for our showerhead.
We wanted to bathe in the cleanest water, so in winter this meant several trips to town to fill the “gas” cans, then dump them into the shower barrel. Sundays would start early with cauldrons of water on each of the range's four burners, and those burners jacked up to their glowing orange highest setting. With the shoddy wiring it's a wonder we didn't burn the place down – but, we lucked out.
All day long we would bring water to a boil, then dump it into the barrel, stir it around a bit, then dip out another kettleful of slightly-less-tepid water and start the process over. We found it takes a prodigious amount of time and energy to warm 60 gallons of water to showering- comfortable temperatures that way, but it was necessary. My wife and I both worked in town at the hospital, so had to be clean (we snuck showers in during the week there). The kids didn't want to be the funny-smelling ones at school (a bit of a lost cause for the boy, I'm afraid), particularly since they had to twice daily tend and milk the several goats we kept in a lean-to attached to the utility room. (Doubtless you're familiar with the effluvia of goat and no more need be said on the subject. heh)
If we blew no fuses or had no other mishaps, the water would finally be warm enough around four in the afternoon. Nominally there was ten minutes of water for each of us, but the girls needed a bit more, so they went first and did the best they could, the boy and I split whatever was left in the barrel when they finished.
We could have had more water and showertime, I suppose, if we'd doubled up. I know I certainly missed showering with my wife. But, it was thought that this might provide a bad example for the kids (of what, I'm not sure), and it was unthinkable that we try mother/daughter, father/son so we went singleton. It was still a cooperative effort,nonetheless.
The procedure went like this: One went in and stripped down, then stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain (in the spring and fall one checked the tub for frogs or snakes that sometimes found their way up the drainpipe following the warmth). You got your soap and cloth in hand then hollered, "Let 'er rip!" and someone outside would plug in the pony pump.
No dillydallying was allowed. You only had a short time to hit the hot spots with a thorough cleansing, then swipe over the rest of yourself. The plug tender was armed with an egg timer, but also kept a judicious eye on the barrel. "One minute left!" they'd call out in warning when your session was almost over.
Geeze, what a pain in the ass it all was. But even so we realized, and explained to the kids, how much worse vast multitudes of earth's peoples have it where clean water and basic sanitation is concerned. And not just over in Africa and Asia and France, but right here in Benewah County. They knew a number of children who would have been more than delighted to get such a salubrious weekly shower as they, once their eyes were opened. I think it helped teach an important lesson about "judging books by their covers" as well as not taking the gifts of science and our nation for granted.
But, maybe that's because I can rationalize almost anything. It's a gift: like finding the bacon in even the worst of situations. 
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My dad gave me his old camper from when he lived in Alaska. Sonovabitch was custom built and ungodly heavy. Even after I had heavy-duty shocks and springs put on my truck (so it bounced around like a fucking jackrabbit when it didn't have a huge load crushing it down) it was kind of squirrelly, but manageable, so we liked taking it to sleep in, etc. Saved motel fees, you know.
So, we're headed to Bellingham to visit our boy Alex, Judy and I are. We both worked full shifts, then loaded up and left late in the evening. We figured we'd drive 'til I got tired, then just pull over and sleep in the camper.
We got as far as Post Falls and decided we'd better gas up before heading into the long, straight stretch to Moses Lake. Pulled into a truckstop, topped her up, and went into pay. As I was standing drowsing in line a... a “rapture” came over me. I heard angel's trumpets, I saw a heavenly light, my gaze was pulled as if by divine magnets to a glassed-in case to the side of the counter where, displayed gloriously under bare light bulbs were something wondrous to behold: Long loaves of French bread with a big length of sausage baked into the middle, stretching end-to-end. My, lord, they looked like the world's most delicious baseball bats, or something.
“Next!”
I shuffled up to the counter, not looking anywhere but at the glorious sausage rolls. “Are those.... for sale?” I husked, fearing that they were only there to show us mortals what we may not have this side of the Pearly Gates.
“Yeah. $4.50.”
Oh, thank you, Jesus!
“Lookit this!” I crowed as I hopped back into the truck.
“Oh my God.” Judy said, her tone certainly not as worshipful as her words.
“Yeah, I know! Can you believe it?” I enthused as I peeled back the saran wrap, releasing a gush of salty sausagy scent that made all my mouth cream itself like a virgin pussy.
But, being the gentleman I am, I offered Judy first bite.
“No. God, no.”
They had wrapped the ginormous sausage in dough and baked it, so none of the wonderful oils or juices were lost. The bread was the consistency (and internal coloration) of a soggy diaper – but warmer and steamier. The sausage was all a sausage should be: coarse ground with nuggets of gristle and suet interspersed throughout the salty, swiney flesh. Each bite was a glorious grease gusher that made your vision dim with ecstasy as it slid down into your hallelujah pit.
The entire thing was gone in half an hour, but the flavor kept coming back for encores as the belches rolled out of me like thunder from Mount Olympus – godlike and gargantuan - for another two hours. Judy, to whom a regurgitory repeater is far more heinous an alimentary crime than a gluteal outgassing, was less than amused. Woe unto her, for her amusement level would plummet further that weekend.
We rolled into Moses Lake about 2 AM and dog-ass tired. Pulled into a deserted Shari's parking lot and crawled into the camper for some shut-eye.
I loved the header bed over the cab in that camper. It had a soft, faux fur mattress liner and crawling up there into that little space just made you feel like a kid getting into a bunkbed fort. Because of cupboarding, the center slot for entering the sleeping space was restricted, making you really feel like you were in a little cave, or den, up there. We cuddled up and drifted away in that coziness like a couple played-out puppies.
There are few things more panicky then a guy who comes suddenly awake into pitch black darkness with the dire knowledge that his 10-second “gonna shit yo pants” warning went off 3 seconds prior to his waking up. When,confused and not recognizing that he's not in his bed at home, he starts thrashing like a landed salmon, flailing his head and legs into the walls trying to find the exit, the panic-level ratchets up another 5 notches or so.
By the time I'd maneuvered myself through that little fucking hole and landed on my feet, naked, I was running scenarios through my head at the speed of light. In nanoseconds the thoughts that flashed through my mind were:
Q1. Do I have time to pull on some pants, leap from the camper barefoot and run into the restaurant to find a bathroom?
A. Uh. Fuck no. You're 4 seconds away from a Krakatoa-level ass eruption. There may be no summer next year.
Q2. Can I make it out the door and into those bushes 5 feet from the camper? Fuck the pants, it's the middle of the night.
A. Still, fuck no. Your sphincter is thinning as you begin to crown up. This baby is being born here!
Inspiration! I remembered that I had stuck a 5-gallon feed bucket in the sink and lined it with a plastic grocery bag to use as a trashcan. I yanked it from the sink, jammed it on my ass and felt a dizzying head rush as everything broke loose, the sound like monsoon rains beating on a tin roof. I just hoped I wouldn't blow the bottom out of the bucket.
How long I stood there, spasming and shaking, moaning and muttering, I don't know, but it must have been a couple of minutes. When the gust front of the storm had passed I grabbed a fuzzy yellow work glove (I could remember their placement in the dark) and sluiced off the worst of it. Gagging a bit – the smell was unholy and stunning – I knotted the top of the bag, then opened the door and flung the steaming bundle into the bushes by the fence.
“What's going on... Oh, my Christ, what's that smell? You rotten, foul bastard!”
My bride was awake.
No time for explanations. I switched on the lights and started yanking my pants on. I knew round two was coming down the pike at ramming speeds.
“Get up! We gotta go!”
My beauty had been trained well. She knew that tone of voice meant things were urgent.
As I handed her down from the camper door, she immediately spotted the lumpy grocery bag, heaving and writhing like a maggot pile next to the fence.
“What is that?”
“My aborted devil fetus, damn it! Get in the truck!”
A quarter mile down the road I pulled into the gas-mart and asked her to start filling the tanks while I skittered with ginger urgency for the restrooms. By the time I'd destroyed some good plumbing and felt like, perhaps, I was out of the woods, she had figured out what was going on. When I came back out she gave me a look of ultimate disgust and snottily asked, “How's that monster sausage roll treating you, idiot?”
“Shaddap. Load up.”
We climbed in the cab.
“We have to go back for it, you know.”
Her words filled me with horror and revulsion.
“Fuck that!”
“You can't leave it there for someone to find. Oh, my God!”
“No way. No how. Shut up. We're rolling.” (I imagined the mental trauma inflicted on whomsoever was unfortunate enough to interact with that bag with a mixture of sorrow and glee, but, you know: Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.)
Like a capricious maid, full of mischief and flirtation, the sausage roll dallied with me for the next few days, teasing me cruelly at times – leaving me frustrated and with a tiny bit of background nausea to keep me aware that it was there – and I was its bitch.
Alex lived in the back room of an old, converted church across the alley from a Korean restaurant, at the time. There was no room in his dank little hovel for us (which was fine), so we parked across the street and slept in the camper.
When I shot awake the next night, I knew what was going on instantly, so made a little better time getting out of the header. There was really no place to run to, though, so I grabbed the pre-prepped bucket and let the band play on. When the set was finished I could see Judy's beady little eyes glinting in the darkness, so instead of flipping the door open and hucking the bag into the weeds of the empty lot next us, I wearily pulled on my levi's and trudged across the street to the dumpsters behind the “Super Teriyaki!” (I know, but the owner was an old Korean guy and everything he cooked tasted like bulgogi and kimchi).
Fling. Clang.
(Ya happy, bitch?)
“That dumpster says 'cardboard only!' is what I hear the second I open the camper door to climb back in.
“So what? I don't think they have a 'necrotic, bubbling sausage shit only' dumpster.”
“You can't leave it in the 'cardboard only' bin.”
“The fuck, I can't.”
So my dainty little Norwegian nymphet, dressed in her little white nightie gets this defiant look in her eye, pushes me into the kitchen bench seat, and traipses out the door, across the street, to go dumpster diving at 3 AM for a hot bag of her husband's shed intestinal lining and rotted pork products. I wanted her bad, right then, but funnily enough she wasn't in the mood when she got back. Especially since she had to change her nightie after it got dumpster goo on the belly when she hoicked herself onto the rim to reach in for my poop pouch. Just my luck.
She even turned away from me to change, so as to deny me the pleasure of looking at her fine, fine titties, so of course I prodded her in the asscrack with my finger to make her jump and spin. It was worth the furious pummeling from her bony little girlfists. Heh
The next night when my “friend” came to visit (this sausage had endurance, baby) I had the routine down and didn't even break a sweat as I rolled out of bed and onto the bucket like a trained gymnast. I did my “floor exercise,” tied off the bag, then tried to think what I could do with it that wouldn't involve me knuckling under to her will (using the “other” dumpster) or having her do her little defiance
demonstration, martyring herself to pack my shit to a “proper” repository while letting all the world know, just by her gait and pulsating, blinding aura, how much she suffers to be a good wife to me and a superior human being.
Screw you, beyotch. You won't win this round!
I dressed and took my little (well, not so little) purseful of potpourri out the door, climbed into the cab and took off to find a gas station that was still open, because I could tell that the old colon had one more installment he wanted to pay off that night.
I got out of the truck and swinging my ghastly bag of gutsloughings nonchalantly sauntered into the gasmart and used their facilities (much nicer than my 5-gallon bucket, I must say), bought some jerky and exited – bag still in hand. I could see the curtain of the header twitched back, and knew the harpy had her eye on me. I held the trophy up, like a shrunken head, and jiggled it at her tauntingly, then set it down – next to the trash can outside the door. Sneering victoriously, I strutted back to the truck – snickering at the sound of her trying to force the back door open – which I had bungeed shut, as usual, as a precaution against it flopping open while driving.
Before I could get in the cab, however, and make good my escape, the side window on the camper slammed back.
“YOU PICK THAT SHIT UP, OR GOD HELP ME, JIMM GORDON, I WILL CALL THE COPS ON YOU!!!!”
I squinted at her red little face glaring at me from behind the screen for a minute, then slouched back – being eyeballed by everybody at the pumps – to pick the sonovabitch up and fling it down the trash chute. Because I knew she wasn't bluffing, damn her.
On the trip back home we had to stop at the Shari's restaurant in Moses Lake and take care of some business there, too.
No, I was not allowed to stop in Post Falls.
Mean old woman.
God damn I love her. heh
And that's the 5-gallon bucket story.
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So, I've been fighting an upper respiratory bug since New Year's Eve. During the past week I've been getting pain in the left side of my chest and shoulder; it sort of migrates around. Some nights it starts stabbing me to the point where I can't sleep. I decide it's pleurisy (inflammation/pain of the chest cavity), so have a co-worker pop me through the scanner this morning. Sonovabitch if I don't have a pleural effusion on the left - probably from the pneumonia I've been mostly ignoring.
So, we get our asses handed to us today. The ER doc is an order freak and there's weird shit coming in the doors and off the ambulances next to non-stop. I'm running on one good lung and a partial, turning the wall O2 on 20 liters (sandblaster level) to suck on the hose while I do paperwork between patients, and just hoping that I can make it through to 1730 without ending up on a gurney myself. No, there's nobody to call in to take my place. No, we're too short-handed for me to just go home. No, I won't abandon my co-worker (who is recovering from a recent hysterectomy with complications, herself). It's almost 1700 now - and out-of-the-blue they want me to take call tonight. WTF? And just last week they cut our call pay.
I'll probably end up doing it - just out of my sense of duty to the job and community, but motherfucker - I wonder how far they think they can push us.
That's all. Next!
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Blame it on Mugtoe. His sonnet stirred the ashes of an old, old fire.
I think that I shall never feel/
so good as when I made you squeal/
And bite your lip - and then bite mine/
skins sweaty and wet in the moonshine.../
Will I ever feel again that particular joy/
when you looked in my eyes and said I'm your boy/
And that you, of course, would now be my girl/
loud beat the drums. oh the 'pipes scream and skirl/
God, we danced a mad dance of passion and grace/
eyes locked-and-loaded, much sucking of face/
and we knew us unique,"excelsior evolution!"/
in our breath and our blood, the next revolution/
Love conquers all, but Death wins in the end/
He reaps all you sow, He steals every friend/
and He ravishes your lover and takes her away/
as He took you from me, one burnt summer day/
revolution was thwarted, evolution did choke/
when I lost my fair darling to some devil's cruel joke/
chill stone opened up, took her deep within/
and there's no way in Hell I'll be so lucky again/
as to find me a girl whose every breath moves my chest/
whose voice in the darkness leaves me warmly caressed/
whose light fills my days, grafts to my blood and bone/
She promised forever and always - but I'm here all alone/
wondering if ever again I will feel/
like a boy with his girl, making her squeal.../
for Kelly 1959-1977
I still remember, Love
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When we first moved to Idaho the house we bought was not in the finest of conditions. The roof sagged and leaked, the wiring was a nightmare. One look at the plumbing and I grabbed a shovel and went out back to start digging a pit for an outhouse.
One of the odd things about the house was a trapdoor in the middle of the "dining room" floor which gave access to a crawlspace too low and and cramped for even an Ethiopian midget to use. When I asked its function I was told it was there so that you could feed the rabbits in the winter.
Rabbits? I didn't want any fucking rabbits under my floors. And I particularly didn't want any fucking rabbit holes leading to the outside and letting cold air in under my floors, so I bug-bombed the crawlspace to chase the bunnies out and went around sealing the holes in the foundation.
I also built that outhouse over the hole I dug, and later was quite glad of it.
Late November that first winter brought a week of terribly cold weather which froze the pipes and broke the pump. It was then I learned why the ramshackle old shack had a bunny-feeding hole in the middle of the floor. The previous owners had used them, more specifically their body heat, to keep the pipes thawed in winter. Well, damn. I wish they'd bothered to tell me that part of it.
We were quite broke at the time and the plumbing was such a nightmare that I finally quit chainsawing holes in the floor and settled the family down to talk about life without indoor plumbing. We came up with a number of innovative ideas. For this story, however, we'll concentrate on the bunnies and the now-very-important outhouse.
You see, the outhouse I built was quite large and roomy as I had to make sure there was space for a bookrack, headroom for a person and a lantern, etc. It served also as a hunting blind, as I'd set a salt block just at the treeline a hundred yards away across the creek. heh I called it the "Blue Moon Hunting Lodge."
Anyway, it was quite a commodious commode. The pit beneath the seats in back did not extend beneath most of the floor, and it was beneath that flooring that my evicted bunnies moved to when I threw them out of the main house. And bunny karma came to visit revenge on us for that eviction.
Bunny breath is warm and full of moisture. Heat rises, and humidity collects on particularly cold surfaces. For us that meant that each morning we drew straws, the kids and I, to see who would have to go out and shovel the path to the outhouse - then melt the hoarfrost off the seat.
It was not a pleasant job, nor a very pleasant winter. But that bunnybreathfrost, among other things, made it easy to implement an austerity program so that we could save up enough money to dig a well and re-gain somewhat civilized living standards before the next winter came around. heh
Ok - my next story. Still to do with going eleven months without indoor plumbing.
Drinking water wasn't a huge problem. In spring, summer and fall we were able to take from the little creeks and streams on our property. For the other six months of the year (heh), I purchased 4 5-gallon gas cans and would fill them once a week from frost-free spigots in the city park down in St Maries. Good, clean drinking water it was, back before they started dumping chlorine and alum in it to make it "acceptable" by government "standards." blech
I put a hundred-gallon horse trough in the utility room and would siphon fill it from a spring up the hill. Then we'd bucket that water into the washing machine for doing laundry. Sometimes the clothes came out smelling a little mossy, but what the fuck do you want, eh?
The hardest part was showering or bathing. We had a big washtub and tried warming snowmelt on the woodstove to fill it for baths once. Only once. It didn't prove to be a workable option.
What I came up with was setting a clean 60-gallon oil drum next to the cooking range and purchasing an old half-horsepower "pony pump" with in- and out-flow fittings for garden hoses. I then nailed a lawn sprinkler to the ceiling above the bathtub for our shower head.
We wanted to bathe in the cleanest water, so in winter this meant several trips to town to fill the gas cans, then dump them into the shower barrel. Sundays would start early with a cauldron of water on each of the range's four burners, and those burners jacked up to their glowing orange highest setting.
All day long we would bring water to a boil, then dump it into the barrel, stir it around a bit, then dip out another kettleful of slightly-less-tepid water and start the process over. We found it takes a prodigious amount of time and energy to warm 60 gallons of water to showering- comfortable temperatures that way, but it was necessary. My wife and I both worked in town at the hospital, so had to be clean (we snuck showers in during the week there). The kids didn't want to be the funny-smelling ones at school (a bit of a lost cause for the boy, I'm afraid), particularly since they had to twice daily tend and milk the several goats we kept in a lean-to attatched to the utility room. Doubtless you're familiar with the effluvia of goat and no more need be said on the subject. heh
If we blew no fuses or had no other mishaps, the water would finally be warm enough around 4 in the afternoon. Nominally there was ten minutes of water for each of us, but the girls needed a bit more, so they went first and did the best they could, the boy and I split whatever was left in the barrel when they finished.
We could have had more water and showertime, I suppose, if we'd doubled up. I know I certainly missed showering with my wife. But, it was thought that this might provide a bad example for the kids (of what, I'm not sure), and it was unthinkable that we try mother/daughter, father/son so we went singleton, but it was still a cooperative effort.
One went in and stripped down, then stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain. (In the spring one checked the tub for frogs or snakes that sometimes found their way up the drain following the warmth.) You got your soap and cloth in hand then hollered, "Let 'er rip!" and someone outside would plug in the pony pump.
No dillydallying was allowed. You only had a short time to hit the hot spots with a thorough cleansing, then swipe over the rest of yourself. The plug tender was armed with an egg timer, but also kept a judicious eye on the barrel. "One minute left!" they'd call out in warning when your session was almost over.
Geeze, what a pain in the ass it all was. But even so we realized, and explained to the kids, how much worse vast multitudes of earth's peoples have it where clean water and basic sanitation is concerned. And not just over in Africa and Asia and France, but right here in Benewah County. They knew a number of children who would have been more than delighted to get such a salubrious weekly shower as they. Those kids didn't even have electricity running to their cabins. I think it helped teach an important lesson about "judging books by their covers" as well as not taking the gifts of science and our nation for granted.
And, rich as I am now - I think I might have been richer then when each day dawned with a fresh new challenge and the smiling faces of my kids and wife who knew that, together, we were equal to it.
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quote:
..."my poems
have not eaten poems--
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
..."
- Pablo Neruda
Lytic Lyricism
my poems are carnivorous
unlike Neruda's mine
will eat others of their kind
eat their own sibs and kith and kin
devour the flesh from which they sprang
my poems form like lizard chicks beneath my skin
rip their way to freedom with razored egg teeth on their snouts
open smoking vents of sweet agony on the slopes of my shoulders
emerge starving, hostile, unblinkingly patricidal
my beauties feed on the erupted placental tissues of my mind
gorge on the ache in my throat, the hot wet orbs of my eyes
devour whole the bones and cartilage of my spine and skull
rapacious as cancer, are my poems
tumorous and tumescent, poisonous and priaptic
but what rose is there that hides not sharp thorns
what gem doesn't shatter into shards of glassine razor
what pen flows not with blood as well as ink
do not hearts beat strongly from pain as well as passion
...
what nightshade weed, like me, knows not the notes
of opium perfumes
Cherry Yidaki
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Oh, mmmaaannn! This is so sweet!
A couple of months ago I stumbled across a Youtube video that portrayed this kid hoping and be-bopping on this floorboard thing in time to some techno-pop. He was watching a blurry screen and evidently following some instructions scrolling up the monitor. There was a crowd ooing and awwing, and it just looked like a lot of fun.
So, I checked it out on the net. Wild. A lot of schools have evidently included it in their PE programs. And did you know DDR is a recognized sport in Norway? The Norski's are an ancient and athletic people - so I sent away for a home version.
You can get a pad and a disk for not much outlay, but it sounded like you get what you pay for. I popped for the reinforced metal ersion rated for 500 pound standing, and considerably more for point impact.
And it came today. It sooooo ROX! My kids would laugh their guts out, I'm sure, but me and the old lady pounded that puppy this evening. I can see it becoming the exercise routine I've always fought against.
heh Anyway, it's cool. And surely a lot more fun than fasting, etc. So fun that I bet my post-per-day avg. takes a beating. heh
Later
Cherry
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I didn't have a reliable, touchstone parent or guardian growing up, so have never really thought in those terms during my stint as "daddy." I'm pretty sure my kids knew how much I loved them and would always be there for them - we have pretty good relationships now - but my main goals as a parent were to teach them inventiveness, self-competence and -confidence, and to relish their uniqueness in the world. In some ways I think I must have been a bit of a bizarre and disturbing a parent for them, but I was fun, eh?
Saying that puts me in mind of a time back on the Marias River of Montana where both my kids were born and spent their earliest years, as did I.
It was late September and already frosting hard in the nights. Almost hunting season, so the freezer was near empty and I'd been cleaning my guns and planning my hunts. Late one afternoon the dogs set up a ruckus in the back yard and I went out to see what the fuss was. We lived many miles from the nearest neighbor, and even further from the town of Cut Bank - the closest metropolis-, so if it was a human, they'd be lost or in trouble; if it was animal they were just in trouble - because both the dogs and I were hungry.
Outside, my mutts were baying at the foot of a big old Russian olive with a few silvery-green leaves still clinging to its gnarled branches. Perched high up at the top was a raccoon clinging tight and waiting patiently for everyone to get bored and go away.
As I mentioned, the nights had been quite chilly, so I thought there was a chance that the coon's hide might be prime enough for marketing. I trapped most winters (beaver, fox, coyote, bobcat, mink, badgers and raccoons) and a decent coon pelt would bring $15, so I picked him off his high branch with my .22 rifle - a cheap little Ithaca single-shot my dad gave me when I was 8 years old, but still shoots sweet to this day.
Anyway, I cased the coon out and found the underside of his pelt was still black as a bullrider's Stetson; that is to say nowhere near prime, and therefore worthless as a salable fur. The coon's carcass, however, was heavily larded and to my eye perfect for the table. My wife was in town working the evening shift, so supper was up to me. heh
I gutted him out and slicked off as much of the fat as I could, then seasoned him up and put him in our big enameled turkey roaster with some spuds and onions and carrots. The aroma as he cooked was toothsome. We all had wet mouths by the time I judged him table ready.
The kids had been napping during the kill and cleaning portions, but I had told them we were having a surprise for dinner. They were hand-clapping, dancing-around anxious by dinnertime, what with that delicious smell filling the house.
I took the roasting pan out of the oven and set it on the table. I whisked the lid off with a flourish and beamed down upon my work with pride. The coon was beautifully done with a dark, crispy carmalized finish that promised to hold succulent, tender meat beneath.
I beamed, but the children's delight did not quite match my own. In fact they seemed quite taken aback. I looked back to the coon, then realized what they saw...
I had neglected to remove either the head or tail from the animal when dressing it. Laying there curled up, with teeth bared, it look not at all like a racoon.
"I don' wanna eat the puppy!" my daughter wailed suddenly. "Me neither!" squalled my boy.
"It's not a puppy," I explained. It's a raccoon I shot out back. And it will be delicious, you'll see."
"We don't care!" was followed by a storm of tears.
Well, I wasn't about to let a little persnickitiness ruin my appetite or my plans, so I just let them know that "this" is what we were having for dinner and they could either eat it or go without. And they knew I meant it.
I made up three plates and set them on the table, then sat down and began to dine. The coon, as I had hoped, was as delicious as it smelled. The dark, tender flesh tasted much like the finest roast beef, with just a slight tang of wild gaminess in the fat. I smacked my lips with melodramatic gusto for the children's benefit and fell to with verve.
They soon couldn't stand it and crept quietly to the table. I nodded encouragement as they tentatively took tiny shreds of meat to sniff suspisciously, then taste with their eyes squinched shut. But you just know before long they were rattling cutlery with as much enthusiasm as dear old dad. heh They enjoyed it so much, in fact, that for awhile I had to spend at least one night a week out along the river, coon hunting to supply their demands for this fabulous delicacy. heh
The only downside to the story is that my wife, being town-bred and not so thoroughly under my influence as the children, refused to try coon and defied me to just try and stop her from making "decent" food.
The poor woman missed out on a number of tongue-tantalizing delights through her city slicker squeamishness: rockchuck cooked in a bucket, cliff pigeon squab, crawdad-and-catfish bouillabaisse to name a few. And all because of the day she came home as a newlywed to find her new husband cooking, to her eternal horror, rattlesnake egg stew in her wedding present crock pot.
But that's another story. heh heh heh
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