WHY I WEAR A SEATBELT

the donkey hay barn

 

A friend of mine hit a tree with his Chevy pickup dead center the front bumper at 70 mph without seatbelt. The motor was pushed back almost to the seat with transmission under the seat. The air bag knocked him out. He woke lying on the seat with the gear shift lever in his hand, separate from the transmission. Totally wrecked his truck and he survived without a scratch. Ever since then, he has been an advocate for not wearing a seatbelt. The wreck occurred when he was carrying in the back of the truck a big, heavy front-end loader for a tractor. He took off racing with a friend. In the excitement of the race, he forgot about the weight. He went around a curve, the front-end loader in the back fell over and radically changed the truck's center of gravity in an instant. The shift caused the right front tire to leave the road, which pulled the rest of the truck off the road into the locust that remained in place. He has not convinced me I don't need a seatbelt.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

I grew up in the 1950s when there were no seatbelts. I remember seeing car races on television where the drivers wore seatbelts. It seemed reasonable to me that we needed seatbelts in cars. A lot of times people drove as fast as on a nascar track then, and when they wrecked, bodies were slung like shrapnel from an exploding grenade. I never wanted to fly through the windshield face first, nor fly out a door that suddenly vanished. In high school, 1959, a guy a year ahead of me had graduated and, like high school graduates, friends tend to hang together during the first summer they're out of school. One night he with a carload of his buddies went to a bar where he had an altercation with the man working the bar who pulled a shotgun on him and told him to get out. He drove his 57 Plymouth with his friends in the car back to his house to pick up his shotgun and go back to create a problem. Drunk out of his mind, of course. In Wichita, Kansas, where all the roads are straight lines.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

He crossed a river bridge going over 100mph when he lost control and the car wrapped around a huge oak tree trunk just a few feet from the bedroom window of the people sleeping in the house nearby. Killed his friends. He was thrown from the wreckage. The driver's side door wrapped around his body and kept him safe as they flew, slid, bounced and rolled down the highway. He survived, but it wrecked his life utterly. I was dating his sister at the time and she filled me in on the details of the event. I knew a guy here in Alleghany who, several years ago, left the road in Glade Valley in a curve, too drunk to even stand up. The road on the left side had a bank that went almost straight down to a meadow with cattle. He went through a power pole twelve feet above the ground, breaking it in half, and woke up lying on the hood next to his 12 year old nephew, also on the hood. No seatbelts. Both survived without a scratch, though he lost his driver's license for life, and the car was totally destroyed. It was a good car too. I hated to see it die.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

I'm recalling my friend Jean who once made fun of me using a seatbelt when I told her I was not going to start the car until she fastened her belt. She said she didn't use a seatbelt. I told her you do now or we're not going. She said, "Are you afraid of dying?" Like it's unusual to fear death. I said it's not dying that's the problem. Chances are, if something happens, death will not be the outcome. I told her of a time I had to leave the road over somebody passing a line of cars in my lane. That's happened more than once. I said when you leave the road, it's bumpy, really bumpy. I don't want to be thrown all over the inside of the car, lose control and hit a tree. A seatbelt keeps me in place when something unforeseen happens. I want to be in place to avoid losing control. I think she got it. She wore one afterwards. Old man Tom Pruitt, who, by the way, cut the trees and built the barn in these pictures, also never wore a seatbelt, drove his pickup over meadows like it was the road. I used the belt to keep my head from getting bashed over and over by the truck's roof. It was soon after NC passed a law requiring seatbelts. Tom asked, "You use your belt on account of the law?" I said, "Yes," though I was considering the vertebrae in my neck. The law never entered my mind.

 

the donkey hay barn

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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BUSH-HOGGIN THE DONKEY MEADOW

justin bush-hogs the donkey meadow

 

This evening it rained after dark. Perfect timing at the end of a week of people working in the hay all over this region of the mountains. It was an ideal week for putting up the hay. It cuts so much easier when it is dry. It rakes better and bales better. Keeps better through the winter. Justin brought his step-dad's tractor and bush-hog today to bush-hog the two donkey meadows, mow down all the wildflower growth. I did not have it bush-hogged earlier for wanting to see the meadow flower through the whole season, from the spring flowers to the autumn flowers. The meadow was a flower garden all year. Last winter's hay spread wildflower seeds all over the meadow. Donkey droppings are loaded with wildflower seeds too. I won't let it go so far next year. It's impractical for grazing donkeys. They need as much to eat as they can find in two acres. Bush-hogging the meadow chops down all the big stems from beautiful purple asters, ironweed, queen anne's lace pods and stems, goldenrod, takes it down to the grass that is growing under all the taller growth. Dry from a few weeks of no rain, the growth was easy to mow with the bush-hog.

 

bush-hog

 

The bush-hog is a big, powerful lawnmower. A blade turns under it like the blade under a lawnmower, just bigger and heavier steel. It runs off the pto (power take-off) shaft that turns behind the differential housing. It runs balers and mowers too. It is not something you want to get a shirt sleeve caught on. It doesn't stop. Tractors and their working equipment are mortally dangerous. They require knowledgeable attention. Sometimes, no matter how well you know them or how much skill you have with one, the least lapse of attention can be fatal, the unexpected happens by surprise. I had two incidents on a tractor. I said there will not be a third and stopped working with one. It was time to leave the farm, anyway. I survived both incidents by miracle. Old man Tom Pruitt would not ever drive a tractor. He knew too many people in his lifetime who died by tractor. Doc Watson's son, Merle, died of a tractor incident. Tractors are unforgiving. They are powerful beasts made of heavy steel, heavy flywheels, wheels so heavy it takes more than one man to stand one upright to put one on a tractor. The tires are filled with fluid, not air. Tractors are brutes.

 

bush-hoggin

 

Dry in the late afternoon, the growth mowed easily and chopped up nicely, exposing the grass the donkeys like. The meadow is wet in the early mornings from the dew. Jenny comes to me for morning carrots, her face wet and legs wet after grazing in the wet jungle of wildflowers. Justin mowed the meadow the donkeys were grazing in first. Before he was done, they were running and playing on their new grazing ground, dancing, having a lively time, a donkey celebration. The rain is a good rain for dry ground, steady, not hard. The damp ground will give a boost to the grass in the meadow, keep it growing in this end of its growing cycle. Timing just right. The grass will be perked up in the morning, easily accessible to grazing donkeys. The shredded stems and leaves will be topsoil by this time next year. Justin mowed the places where the donkeys cross the creek to help them be better able to see where they put their feet. It is a good time to have the meadow mowed with Jenny's baby on its way. I want to be able to find Jenny's baby. In a jungle so deep I could only see the donkeys in it by their ears, Jenny could hide anywhere. I'm all for her having good hiding places, but she has plenty among the rhododendron. I want Jenny's baby to have meadow to romp in. The donkey celebration tells me they like their meadow mowed.

 

finishing the last of it

 

I was glad to see the field the hay came from. I saw all around the mowed meadow the wildflowers that have seeded the donkey meadow. Transferring seeds from one meadow to another. Anybody wants wildflower seeds, come get a bucket of donkey droppings, throw them out on the ground and you'll have wildflowers galore. Finished bush-hogging, Justin drove the tractor to the place by my mailbox where he parked his truck with the trailer behind for the tractor. He drove the tractor onto the trailer, strapped and chained everything down for the drive to step-dad's house. I drove out to Justin's house in Glade Creek where we watched the end of the race, a good, clean finish. Crystal and Vada arrived home from a round trip to Maryland with Crystal's mother and dad to see grandma. Vada was wired from being in the car for so many hours and "on good behavior" at great grandma's house. She showed me some new fart putty she had that isn't so gommy. She gave me a big sheet of yellow paper with blue paint on it she had done at pre-school. I loved it and she was happy I loved it. She told me I could take it. I said I would hang it on my wall at home.

 

loading the tractor

 

 

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HAN SHAN AND BACKWARDS BALLCAPS

brice marden

han shan series

 

Things are changing so fast within, it makes me wonder what is going on. I have my friends I like to see, and do see them, and find the circle shrinking. Not because of people dying out, rather that I am drawing inward at a noticeable rate. Like when I'm used to driving fifty and then am going eighty. It takes more focus. The purpose behind the change from urban living to country road was to move inward, solitude however I define it. I saw my house a monastic retreat, a monastery of one following no religion, the still point of my interior journey to the heart of things invisible. I could not lock myself down in a belief system evolved over centuries and millennia of filtering through the male ego. I mythologized self an American Han Shan living outside the world on Cold Mountain. The likeness was thin, though the spirit close. Han Shan's Cold Mountain has accompanied my time in the mountains like he and I lived parallel lives in different times, different parts of the world, he in the mountains of southern China, I in the mountains of Southern Appalachia, America. It is here that I chose to live out my life in the world, not of it.

 

 

han shan

 

 

70

 

Talking about food won't make you full,

Babbling of clothes won't keep out the cold.

A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;

It takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.

And yet, without stopping to consider this,

You complain that Buddha is hard to find.

Turn your mind within! There he is!

Why look for him abroad?

 

                         ----Han Shan

                           tr Burton Watson

 

 

han shan

 

Han Shan has been my companion in these hills. Many others too, Robert Bly, John Berryman, Henry Miller, Tu Fu, a long list of good reading, Julio Cortazar, Naguib Mahfouz. I have a way of seeing other people's stories, poems in relation to mind, heart and spirit. I like my scriptures to have all three. Poetry, fiction, biographies, essays, histories, I read in the same spirit as reading scriptures. I say, why do a select number of books about God take precedence over a story of someone's life, the poetry of Nirala, Rumi, Hafiz, Rilke, Yeats? Possibly that a scripture is something one can read many times and see new meaning every time as one advances along one's path. The Gospel of John is about as incredible as scripture gets, and the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist Sutras, discourses of masters who have reached enlightenment. What I mean by mixing poetry and fiction and stories of people's lives with scripture is the subject of all the scriptures is the human heart. The people I know, I know by their hearts. Since letting go of desires, I have unfolded to know the people I know by their hearts.

 

 

brice marden

han shan series

 

It's not like I see good and evil in somebody's heart. Not at all. The heart is where the other is coming from. I don't mean heart like purity or perfection, but heart as in where we're coming from on the inside. Everyone else is coming from the same place in themselves. Some may have the energies blocked off and don't flow so well emotionally. I see what we call good in everybody's heart. I see the heart of everyone I know is where the real individual is. That's who I like to connect with in people I know. Somebody whose heart is not open is of no interest to me. I like to know real people, people who live their lives as themselves without masks. My friend Lucas, retired English professor, once said, "When I see a guy with his ballcap on backwards, I know he has nothing to say that I want to hear." When I need a good laugh, I don't need to rent a Marx Bros movie. Only need to remember Lucas saying that. I have laughed over this sentence a thousand times, at least. I think it every time I see a backwards hat. It comes to mind and I laugh sometimes out loud. I know he knows what he is saying. He's talking from experience.

 

 

 

My experience with ballcaps backward is mountain boys who drive pickups, work construction jobs, a style of a given generation, the tattoo generation that listens to heavy metal. Them and guys in punk bands are the hat-on-backwards people of my experience. I think they're cool people. It is as in-yer-face an anti-intellectual statement as The Sex Pistols. It's a style, like long hair is a style, short hair is a style, hat forward is a style, hat backward a style, brim straight across a style, brim bent in a curve a style. Milly Richardson wears ragged old tshirts with holes in them. It's her style. Ross, her brother, wears cammo pants all the time. It's his style. Justin wears a tshirt, the image a deer head with big rack. It says, White Tail Hunter. It is truly Justin's style. Kid Rock is Justin's style. If I looked askance at Milly's ratty tshirts I'd take her for nobody home. But when I know Milly and Justin by their hearts, who they are, I see full human beings, the whole person present, people I'm happy to have the opportunity to know.

 

brice marden

han shan series

 

 

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TALK ABOUT THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

milton avery

Media interest in pointing the finger of blame at the South over racism has become uber-tiresome. The southwestern quadrant of USA is at least as racist as the southeastern; so is the northwestern and the northeastern. To solve a deep-running issue, NY and LA media want to rid-a-flag they've defined racist. Suppress one, another pops up. In the Soviet time, religion was suppressed. As soon as the Soviet system went away, religion came back. American media is engaged in another frenzy of make-a-law-against. We're so overrun with laws against, we're about painted into a corner. Already, any one of us can be arrested at any moment for something we're doing or have done or conspiracy. Example: the word nigger has been suppressed for the last half century. The working class uses it freely, as does the ruling class. It is only the white middle class that says, "the enword," or uses asterisks between obvious letters. F*t is the same as spelling fat. Saying enword and using asterisks is an act of denial that denies nothing. It's being nice, denying it while saying it. Like it was ok to say shit in front of mommy if I quoted somebody else saying it.

milton avery

I don't mean to be going on like I'm serious about the matter. The flag is too complicated an issue to limit to right or wrong, true or false. Like everything in this phenomenal world we call living, too much is interwoven, experience, thought, beliefs, to call anything or anybody one thing or another. I don't like the way somebody who got drunk and did something stupid that lasted maybe three seconds is called a criminal. I also don't like the way people who have served their time are treated and watched as criminals after their time is served. This is getting into things I have a problem with that I can't do anything about, but I don't have to be that way in my own behavior. Ex-cons I've met along the way, I regard with the same respect as anyone else, with a bit more respect for what they have been through in what I consider an unjust legal system, especially if you're black or any version of non-white, colored, or poor white. Again, nothing I can do about it. I fall back on my boycott of one. Today, I set out to buy a watermelon, wanting to paint one again. I chose to buy it at a roadside stand instead of Food Lion. I can't see giving my five dollars to a corporation that underpays its employees and treats them like shit when I can give somebody an assist who goes into the field early in the morning and selects the produce herself. 

milton avery

I stopped by the welding shop on the way home to visit with Ross and Harry. Milly, Ross's sister, stopped by for a bit and we had a good time sitting and standing in a circle, smoking cigarettes, laughing like the bunch of rednecks we are. These are people I feel at-home free with. We're so close in the heart, I'm about the same as a Richardson. I'm natured a lot like one. Milly and I have been at each other's throats almost with knives, Ross and I have too, and they're my friends I can count on for backup if needed unto the grave. It runs both ways. The subject of the flag came up and we had different thoughts and passions on the matter. Harry most of all. Harry is a retired Army lifer. He said the Confederate flag is treasonous, they fought against the American Army. He called it "you-guys' flag." I said the Civil War was a Yankee invasion. The South defended homeland. Ross said he knows what the flag means. It don't make no differ'nce to him. Milly, the Civil War buff, went off on Yankees and we laughed quite a lot. Except Harry, who identifies Southern, but not with any glorification of the Civil War. It was the Richardson in the rest of us that got us wound up about the South the homeland. 

milton avery

Yesterday, watching the race, Justin told me he was out of sorts with Dale Earnhardt Jr, his favorite driver, for coming out and making a statement that Nascar shouldn't have anything to do with the Confederate flag. I hated to see him so disappointed by a guy he looks up to so personally, like an older brother. He likes Jr's character. I told him Jr is not his own man. I said every time you see him in a commercial, he gets at least hundreds of dollars per showing. He was told by Nascar and corporate sponsors this is what he will do. To say no would cost him hundreds of thousands, millions, maybe his career. I pointed out that television is about money not ethics. Jr is in that world of high-paid celebrities. Once you cross the line into celebrity, your life is no longer your own, you're a product, your name a logo. I wanted to remind him this is a show, this is not real. I knew he knew, just forgot it in a moment of passion. This just a pie-slice of my friends. Very few of them would repeat any other. One can give a hundred reasons for, and another a hundred reasons against, every one of the two hundred reasons valid from some point of view. 

milton avery

The only thing I can see coming of this banning of the flag is a new item in the inventory of underground collectables, flea markets loaded with inflated Confederate flag items, if you know who to ask. Suppression never works and the ones doing the suppressing never get it. We'll have roadside stands selling velvet wall hangings of the flag, tshirts, belt buckles, an infinity of possibilities, just like now. My solution: deal with racism up front and let interest in the flag fade away as it will when nobody cares anymore. I feel like it is healthy for collective American culture to face up to racism as our way of life. Everyone knows it, everyone lives it. We act like we never heard of it. Our racism is rooted deep in our American denial. Which came first, denial or racism? Something like this needs to be brought into awareness collectively, as it does individually, before any real work can be done toward untying the knots of habit patterns that go all the way back to the beginning. It's looking like the Charleston church slayings have brought awareness of pervasive racism in white rule to the surface. If we don't get past blaming the flag, it will have been for naught. I can't imagine television allowing awareness of racism in the white American heart to go beyond blame and punishment, especially not unto self-awareness. 

milton avery

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VADA THE YOUNG GIRL

vada

photo by her mother

I feel less a part of this world, week by week. It is the reverse of watching baby Vada grow into the world toward her fourth birthday, a week at a time, seeing the family on Sundays every week since before Vada was born. Every time I see her, she is new. A month ago, I saw the absence of baby and the appearance of little girl. Her mother keeps her in beautiful dresses, shirts, girl pants, shoes. In one way it seems like indulgence, which it is not, rather that she has such a beautiful face, living eyes, the wavy blond hair of childhood, a child so beautiful she needs pretty clothes to complement her face and personality. She is so accustomed, at almost four, to wearing pretty and colorful clothes, they have already become her personal style. Vada will be a woman few men will know how to know. When she finds one, he will be just like daddy, and daddy will go straight up through the roof. Hope daddy packs a parachute. In high school she will be among the best looking and best dressed girls in her class, a jock magnet. And, by the time she's in her teens, she will have at least as many deer kills as the hunters among the guys. She will be hunting with a bow by then. She will be a dancer, she will be a martial artist, and primarily she will be a singer. Mom, dad and I have talked at length about the necessity of a young girl being able to take care of herself. Rape culture is in full bloom in the colleges and military now, as well as out here in the  world. Rape culture will be in the high schools when Vada goes there, like it is in the colleges today and the last several years, and will go on for several more years. We want our babydoll to go into high school with a reputation that any guy wanting to dominate Vada Smith would only dare at serious risk to himself. Her daddy knows what guys are like. He's a good teacher. She will be winning archery tournaments by the time she goes into high school. She's likely to play on the girls' baseball team better than the guys, her daddy her coach playing catch.

vada and daddy

photo by her mother

Vada has her daddy's drive and her mama's drive too. They are different drives.  Her daddy's drive is to do everything he does well. Anything he takes up he learns it well. Last year he shot a running coyote in the head and called the shot. The friend with him said, "You'll never do it." He can robinhood an arrow at will. Doesn't do it anymore. Arrows are expensive, anyway the kind he uses are. Doing carpentry, he pays close attention to detail. House painting, the same. He can paint a straight line on a corner where two colors meet that looks better than taping it would. He likes to drive a powerful pickup with a rumble in the exhaust pipes and a Confederate flag in the middle of the front bumper. It means he loves the South and whatever else you'd suppose it to mean. He likes the rebel attitude of it. It's a sharp stick in the eye to them that don't like it. It says, I am I -- no apologies. He gets his meditation time on a boat fishing in a lake or the river. He throws back. Doesn't like to eat fish. He's straight-up honest in money dealings. It fires him up if someone doubts his integrity. His integrity he worked out for himself, not a supposed-to or religion thing. It's his own. In himself, it's his identity. It has meaning for him. He understands karma, that what you give out comes back. He has seen enough examples in his life of people too self-centered to value integrity, blaming others, unable to see self accountable for one's own fate. He is an excellent teacher. He can explain something with such clarity I can see what he's talking about. I like to hear him talk about hunting. It's something I cannot do. I don't want to kill anything. I stop when a squirrel darts back and forth across the road in front of me. Squirrels don't have long lifespans, which may explain why they never seem to get it about cars. I don't want to run over a squirrel. I don't even want to kill snakes. I understand hunters are the predators the deer need to keep the herds healthy. I like to hear hunting stories, but can't pull the trigger.

vada and elsa

photo by her mother

Vada's daddy's drive is introverted, while her mother's drive is extroverted. Crystal likes to have a business and go around to different businesses drumming up business. She enjoys working with people, individually and in groups, gives herself wide-open who-she-is in the exchange, is self-taught in everything she does, seeking and finding opportunities to learn what she needs to do, whatever it is she wants to do. She wanted to be a wedding and portrait photographer, got her learning on the job, apprenticed while she was in high school, set up a business and hit the ground running. Characteristic of her portraits is living eyes. She has a good eye and a clever visual imagination. She pushes herself keeping two businesses going, a child, a husband, and a house to keep spic-n-span clean and neat. She's an example of the saying, a woman's work is never done. I admire her ability to do so much and still have a life. She doesn't leave her life when she works. She works for herself and makes two businesses work well for her. She is a mother fully engaged with her daughter, her friend. She explains things to Vada, and Vada understands her. Vada does not need to be threatened or punished when she has an understanding of the rules of growing up human on earth. The furniture in the house, Crystal has bought for very little and restored in the basement workshop where she and Justin make things she sells. Her mind is popping with new ideas. I see Crystal's drive in Vada, as well as Justin's. I see their unique qualities in Vada woven together. I see the unique Vada, who is herself. Seeing her through her process of individuation, I am in awe of Vada, who she, herself, is, a three-year-old with understanding beyond her age, an automatically loving spirit.

vada conehead

photo by her mother

 
I had a horoscope done on Vada the day she was born. Reading it, I saw she is half her mommy and half her daddy. Almost four, she is the child I saw in the horoscope. Seeing her grow up, I see her grow into her horoscope. Sun in Gemini. Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars in Taurus. Ascendant in Scorpio. She's out-going and private too. Being a Gemini, the twins, duality, she can handle the apparent clash of seeming opposites. All her inner planets in Taurus. She's already stubborn as a donkey. She comes by it honest, too. Her mommy and daddy have it in equal measure. There is also the creative aspect of Taurus her mommy and daddy have in equal measure. Vada is at home. Venus, the planet of love, is the ruling planet of Taurus. I look at this picture of Vada above, conehead Vada, and see her horoscope. She loves to make others laugh. Knowing Vada, I see somebody who will endure. If anything comes along to knock her down, she'll get up, pull herself together and keep on. She has tremendous depth, a fast, retentive mind, a heart full of love and a charming personality. A few minutes ago I was looking at Vada's eyes in this picture of Vada conehead, and thought, Who are you? Who were you? Answer: Who I was is who I am, Vada with another name. If she wants to be a singer, possibly on regional bluegrass stages, she won't need a last name. Like Sade she'll be Vada. She loves her name. She has charisma in her presence. She performs in dances, song, acting. A few weeks ago when we were talking and she was in her Elsa dress, she said, "Are you glad to see me?" A flash in my mind's eye saw Vada with her band onstage in Seattle between songs saying, "I LOVE YOU SEATTLE!" Audience Roars. "ARE YOU GLAD TO SEE ME?" Audience Roars.

vada and her mother

photo by her daddy

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CONCEPTION OF A NEW ART PROECT

jenny

Went out in the morning to take carrots and hay to the donkeys in two degree air and a quarter inch of fine, dry, slick, crystalline snow. Rhododendron leaves were hanging straight down curled up tight as green pencils. Donkeys danced and squealed, brayed, bumped each other, snorted. They took the carrots like they'd not had anything yet to eat, remains of yesterday's hay covered with snow. They stood in their shed waiting to hear the Ice Cream Man's footsteps in his barn. By the time I reached the window where I could see them, they were walking out of their den and stood at the fence looking at me through the window. They were cold to the bone. I could see it in the way they slam-danced when I went out the door. It was different from usual; their movements were tighter, fluid, though not warm fluid. In motion by force of habit, too excited to stand still. They may be able to take it, thick hair makes a good blanket; below ten degrees is cold even wrapped in a polar sleeping bag. Both had a good mood about them. Donkeys are, indeed, rugged. I threw hay over the fence for them and returned to my barn. Made some Ethiopian coffee, settled in, read a few pages of Chris Hedges, and called Carole. Mostly I talked about my new project, an outdoor sculpture, explained it and the construction in detail, visualizing as I talked, She helped with some questions, was encouraging, as always. An hour of talking about it, I visualized the process of construction, building the big outdoor one and the small model, while we talked, back and forth, not just one way. Talked with Justin yesterday, told him I need his help on an art project. I really do need his help. It will take some carpentry skills I can do a rough version of, but he can do right.

new project

An hour of talking with Carole about it, feeling like Christo and Jean-Claude, a minor likeness, collaborating in the conception, walking through the process in our minds' eyes, making aesthetic and construction decisions together, I built it in my mind. It was done. Now is the time to start. We got off the phone and I started setting up the small plywood board handy for a table top on the footstool. Found a strip of some fir standing in a corner, just the right length for the three lengths of wood. Put a new blade on the hand-jigsaw, fir is some hard wood for driving nails in, sawing or drilling. The wood for the project itself will be square. The wood for the model is rectangular, eliminating making an exact replica at the beginning. Didn't want to make the model exact. Let it be itself. The bigger one to be made on the same principle, not exact. Needed two stove bolts, four eye-screws, two small s-hooks, string and a rock, all of which could be found in a collection of bolts, screws, nails and so forth. Looked around at rocks I have laying about and found a white one like the big one I want to use. Got out the drill and the extension cord, ready to go. A puzzle where I make the parts as well as put them together. Justin dropped by to use his pickup to bring six bales of hay from the barn to the donkey feeding station. I went out to assess the path to the barn hoping the snow would allow me to pull the car down in the hole and get out. I saw  his truck at the barn and felt blessed. We stacked the hay and put the tarp over it.. He came to the house for a cigarette and I told him the project, showed him the model and asked for some counsel on using treated wood. He said treated wood costs about a tenth of untreated. He said the hardware stores in this area, forty mile radius, have to special order untreated wood.  He said the treated wood takes three or four months to dry out, to let the moisture from the treatment escape the wood or no paint will stick to it. He said it will reject the finish put on before the drying process is completed.

new project

It's looking like the first one will go up raw, treated wood. The blue-green tint of the treated wood, is, after all, what it is. I'll buy the wood this week or next and start the drying process. It looks like June before the wood is ready for finishing. Thought I might buy wood to make two of the objects, put one together right away and save the other to put together later using paint. I might want to make two, anyway. The first one will have to be raw wood. I actually like it better for the unfinished aspect of it. We talked at length about securing it to the ground, considering the time or two a year a big wind comes through, the rock could start swinging and swing the construction out of balance, collapsing it. He suggested putting each of the three legs a foot or more into the ground. Great plan. However, I added I'm not sure about digging holes in a lawn to be refilled when the thing has had its day. I brought up driving a length of re-bar a couple feet long into the ground at each foot. He suggested drilling holes in the end of each one to drive the re-bar through. He knows somebody who can cut and shape the re-bar to specs. Bringing his mind into the project is a practical step. As I knew he would, he appreciated the mechanics of the thing and sees exactly what I want. I feel a little bit like Ai Weiwei, hiring craftsmen to make his art objects he doesn't have the skills or knowledge to make himself. Justin answered in a short time my questions about the construction and how to do things, like cut the notches, I can only do approximately, and he can do exact. He will make the construction's mechanics artful. The joint where two pieces of wood fit together will be a tight fit, and the angle of the holes drilled for the bolts will be right.

justin puts on his winter over-hauls

I like associations with my friends where we help each other as needed. I've known Justin all his life, we've been friends since he was a child, like I'm friends with his girl, Vada, now. He knows I can be trusted with his baby girl from all the times I baby-sat with him and his sister, Sheena, and being his adult friend all the way through his childhood. He needs help with something I can do, he's got it. I need help with something he can do, I've got it. No questions of why, just when. He won't let me pay him for this. We don't accept pay for helping each other. I have full confidence the finished product will be done right by somebody with a good mind and experience with carpentry. He could build an entire house by himself, though would do it like a contractor, hiring helpers for specific jobs. If I make two, which I think I will, if one or both are sold and I make a modest amount of money for them, I'll give it to Justin. I'm in balance with my fixed income, and it's not so easy for him and Crystal with a house, day-care, jobs, utility expenses, insurance, vehicles, on and on. All problems are solved toward the project. It's now a matter of when the snow clears and the temperature rises above freezing. He will go with me to select the wood. Justin has known me an artist, painter, all along his way. He is having fun with the idea of helping me construct an art object. It's important for me and it's important for him, each in our own ways. When it comes to naming the artist, I'll use both our names, a collaboration. I like the idea of making two. I know I can move one of them on right away. The second one will be painted. Original idea was to paint it. Then I liked raw wood better. May put the second one up at home. Now that I've committed my mind to the first one raw, I like it even better with the bluish tint in the raw wood impervious to the ground and rain. Won't even sand it. Use it straight off the lumber rack. I feel like a surfer who found a good wave, standing up on the board, flowing with the groove. .

here comes the snow

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THE CALF IN THE CREEK

the other side of waterfall road

It's not very often I have what I call a hell day. It's one of those days when you know even going back to bed won't prevent anything. Besides, once you're up, it's too late, hell day is on. This morning I forced myself out of bed at 8 to walk into the meadow to cut the strings on a new round-bale of hay and peel the outer layer of hay soggy and rotten from the weather and the ground. Made it to bed around three. I did not want to get up. It was cold, below 30. Yet I have this stronger force within that sat my mortal frame straight up and started forcing on outdoor clothes; sweat-pants, sweater, thick socks, shoes, hat, gloves. Though I felt like all my joints were fused such that I was about the same as a day-old corpse, I stepped out the door into the wind. It was cold, but not worrisome. I've lived with mountain winters 37 years. Kinda used to it. This was the morning before the day the forecasters predicted a drop in temperature all afternoon unto minus seven by morning. I walked out the meadow to the round-bale, a hundred yards, thereabouts. The wind was at my back and I was glad, dreading already the walk back to the house with face into the wind. No big thang, I told myself. If I cant stand five minutes of cold wind in my face, I need help desperately. I walked over the meadow covered with tiny white pellets that fell in the night, a kind of granular snow. It wasn't even ground cover. It gathered in the bowls of last year's leaves on the ground and on the blades of grass lying down drained of chlorophyll. It looked like the Green Bay stadium during yesterday's game with San Francisco. The view of the stadium from the blimp showed a pastel ochre rectangle in an oval and snow all over the cityscape outside the stadium.

 ,

jenny and jack

 

Jesse brought a new round-bale yesterday to replace the other one that was eaten down. He chose to put it the other side of the creek, wanting the calves and donkeys to cross the creek, which they don't like to do. I wanted to walk out there as soon as I woke to peel the bad hay off the good. I wanted them to have some nourishment as quickly as possible after a cold night. The curious thing about myself is I am having a good time going out early in the morning, whatever the weather, to feed my dependent friends. It's visitation time. They had watched me walking over the meadow the other side of the creek. They gathered in a line of four, two donkeys, two calves, watching from the bank the other side of the creek. They wanted to cross, but it was the worst place to cross. A few donkey lengths either direction would have been easy to cross. Calf 23 stepped into the creek and started up a bank that was maybe three feet high and a steep grade. 23 got sprawled on the bank, front forelegs folded under, stuck, unable to move, on knees in front and knees in back. I was looking at it while pulling chunks of hay off the bale, wondering what I could do to help it. I couldn't find anything I could do that would matter, given that the calf is around 400 pounds and I know my own limit. It never gamboled and played as a baby calf. It's legs are sadly uncoordinated to the point I've seen the calf walking and the front legs suddenly folded, dropping the calf to its knees, and then it unable to get up. I was hoping it would stand up on the back legs and step backwards. That, however, is approaching it rationally, remembering cow has no capacity for reason. This is human projection. The calf did what a bovine would do. It tried to stand up with its front legs and fell over backwards into the trough of the creek.

 

23

 

No time to think about it, jump down there and get the calf at least off its back. Tom Pruitt told me in my first years, working the farm, when a cow rolls onto its back, it cannot get up on its own. They have to be turned upright fast or they die. I found one that had rolled onto its back and its spine fell into the trough of the cow path that ran through the meadow. I attempted to roll it with its back legs, and might have but for the trough its back was in. I drove over to Tom's house, told him what I'd found. He was up and out the door almost in one move. One of us took the back feet and the other the front. We rocked the cow back and forth for the momentum to roll it beyond the hump of its belly on either side. We made it. Cow stood up and walked away to join the herd. What a time I had with the calf. All four legs trying to swim in the air. I couldn't get near the back legs that were going like a windmill. Front legs were in motion, but they're not as powerful as the back legs. I was able to take ahold of them. The calf was upside down on its back, head back. I pulled the legs and pulled. It was like the legs belonged to a water-logged sack of grain, head dangling, eyes rolled back showing whites. Nose never went underwater. I pulled the front half of the calf out of the creek onto the soft bank. The creek under the front of the calf was two or three inches deep. The back half of the calf, the giant basketball belly, fell into a hole a foot and a half deep. Its rear end completely underwater. I pulled until I realized that if I kept at this I'd be giving myself a heart attack. No point having two dead cows in the creek.

jenny

I somehow managed to pull the calf more or less onto its side and headed for the house just short of a run, reminding myself that if I fall down dead, the calf will die for sure. I walked steadily and went to the phone. Justin's phone did not get a response. I called Crystal's number and Justin was with her. I told him the situation, saying that it will be dead by the time anybody can get here. I stayed in the house unable to do anything outside. The calf was in place. I figured the water was warmer than the air, though the water probably felt colder than the air. I was stumped. I called Carole and voiced my frustration being unable to help the calf. I looked out the window from time to time to see if a truck had arrived yet. When I saw the truck, I left the phone and went out the door. Jesse had pulled the calf out of the hole in the creek and packed a mound of hay over it. When I arrived at the scene I saw a small haystack with the calf's head sticking out. I would not have thought to do that. Maybe, eventually, after puzzling over it awhile. I saw that if I'd got the calf out of the water, the wind would have probably given it pneumonia immediately. Jesse's little girl was with him, around eleven or twelve, watching everything. Jesse put a five-gallon bucket to the calf's face with grain in it, letting the calf eat as much as it could. The calf was dazed. Jesse put his hand on the calf's side under the hay and said it was like ice. Justin arrived in his truck, his little girl with him, Cheyanne. School was out today due to the weather forecast. Both guys are good daddies. Their little girls adore them. It was fun to see the kids so happy to be with daddy, showing it in their self-confidence. Both had about them an air of feeling completely safe.

jack

Jesse and Justin dragged the calf to another place about ten feet away, a bit less damp, where the ground was frozen, propped it kind of upright and covered it with hay again. He said he was going to go back to the house, pick up a trailer he has that is low to the ground to make getting the calf in and out easier. He would take it to the barn, put a heat lamp on it and a space heater, and give it a shot of some antibiotics. Jesse went off with the trailer. Justin and I took five square-bales of hay in the back of his truck from the barn to the place I stack them under a tarp by the gate for the morning deliveries. I've not yet heard about the calf. Will find out some time tomorrow. My feeling is that it will be all right. Jesse is one of the reasons I am grateful I took an interest in understanding mountain people, in appreciating them from inside their culture instead of from outside. Jesse and Justin, in my estimation, are as "brilliant" by the standard of their culture as I believe Rachel Maddow is brilliant by the standard of her culture. Jesse's and Justin's experiential knowledge impresses me. Jesse and Justin are the new generation of mountain people. Both appreciate where they live. I have stressed it to Justin since his childhood that his culture is valid, it is good. Never  be ashamed of being a hillbilly. Hillbilly is a good thing to be. They are thirty this year. Both did their wild thing for a few years after school. In the mountains, wild is the real deal. Some survive it, some don't. About the time Justin was starting his Wildman time, I made only one request, that he survive it. Both found super-fine women to marry them, Natasha and Crystal, who were and continue to be attracted to the Wildman in them. These are women who feel safe with their men, whose reputations are known all over the county. And when it comes to true human beings, I respect Jesse and Justin like I respected their grandparent's generation and their parent's generation. I feel good among them, knowing mountain culture lives in them.

 

 

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