Coop's Corner: March 2024

Monday, March 25, 2024

Better Check In - 2024/03/25

It's been awhile, I know but figured I should make my presence known and to let a few of you way out there know that all is well.

Just busy.

Mom is settled in her new home, still second guessing the need for change but my resolve hasn't wavered; she needs the care she's now getting (and paying for). Her last belongings are finally cleared out of the "3 Months Half Price" storage facility, the space's lease cancelled early. Plastic tubs of every color, make and description are piled in our garage, squeezed in between and too often towering over motorcycles that I was trying to allow space between. Not all together a bad thing that we just received 8" of new snow, our largest drop so far this winter.

I got home the other day, all set to get back to my often-interrupted sorting of the thousands of old family photos only to discover that the big double door wouldn't open, wouldn't open like it just had the day before.

Broken spring.

Son Ben and I built the garage, we installed the door and did everything after Rob poured the slab. Now there was (small) temptation to repair the door mechanism myself but a quick "should I" online and I was easily swayed. A local guy not only answered the phone, but came on time, fixed the door as promised and did so while I was away at work, bill yet to arrive. Color us astounded.....this chain of events just doesn't happen, not around here. Thank you Dave!!

I'm still at Walmart, 4 days/week but that will be changing. I've got my Class B School Bus CDL Permit (air brakes too) and am now practicing, a driving test in early April. Soon I will be entrusted to transport local youth.....a seasonal job.

Now, back to family history....

Do you recognize these at all? I'll bet that you don't.

Kevin and I grew up with these, these slide magazines, each of them full of 36 slides, mostly Ektachrome, Kodachrome though a few Agfachrome. Gramp had them, dad had them and together, I've inherited just over 100 of these magazines with the oldest dated in the early 1950's. Gramp had a projector, dad had a projector and now I have both of them.

I fired this projector up last week to see if everything still worked, the bulb most importantly. There was a bit of oxidation on the aluminum mechanism but a bit of alcohol took that right off. For your benefit, I went through the two magazines shown above as a sample and to confirm what was ahead. As time allows my plan is to run through the magazines, keeping/scanning/photographing slides deemed to be Keepers.

A representative sample below from 1962. A young Dougie and Kevie with their parents, their Auntie and a couple of friends of my grandparents' circle that I don't recognize, there were many that I would have. I won't keep this slide, it will (someday) be in the Toss bin....there will be too many of the same ilk, both older and newer.

If anyone of you would like this particular one, send a self-addressed, postage-stamped envelope.

Back before the snow and cold that have now stubbornly returned, I did get the 500 Stealth out. Two loops, one south, one north each just happened to be about 80 miles. It was wonderful.

South, Zumbrota.....

North, Ellsworth....

We walk.....

We play....

And he sleeps....

Still here, plan to be, still smiling and still feeling blessed.

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)