Wishing on a rainy night

Hey! It's raining! In Texas! Even better it's not a gully washer type rain like we usually get after a drought. Most every bit of rain we've got lately has been slow and fairly steady. Okay, sometimes it's been nothing but a light sprinkle.But other times, like tonight, it's fairly constant and sometimes a hard shower. The rain is actually getting a chance to soak into the ground.

Makes we wish  that I'd had the cash this summer to put in rain gutters, downspouts and rain barrels on every roof on my land as well as dig swales out in my pasture. Its just too bad I hadn't heard about something called hugelkulture back during the summer either. Then, if I'd had the money to hire someone to dig the ditches on the contours of my pasture (that's what a swale is. A ditch meant to catch and slow down water so that it can soak into the soil of the ditch) I could have also paid them to take all the downed trees and tree branches in the pasture and near my house and put them in the ditches. Ta DA! hugleswales!

Then of course, some of the soil dug out of the ditch could be put on top of the wood while the rest would be piled on the down hill side of the wood filled ditch. Then it should be easy for paths to be made across the swales so I could get to all the area's of my pasture without climbing in and out of ditches or building some kind of bridge to drive what ever machinery I need to out there. (Machinery like a fire truck to fight grass fires or just my vehicle to haul fence building/fixing material to where it's needed.)
Then, being rich, as I'd have to be to afford to pay for all that,  I could have bought the trees, bushes and such that I want to plant just down hill of those little berms and got some body to plant the suckers.

Sigh.

But I'm not rich. If any ditch digging is done on my place I am the most likely candidate. The problem there is that there IS a reason I'm on disability. Those forty plus hours a week spent standing, walking and hurrying around on concrete floors in shoes with little or no support did a real number on my feet and knees.
I'm just going to have to figure out a way to getterdone without money and with my rice crispy joints.

Yeah, I'm still here!

Okay. I know. I've been ignoring this blog for some time now. However on looking over it's stat's I see that the most popular blog I've ever had on it seems to be the one about my paltry attempt at worm farming.

Well, I may be posting more about the little wigglers. Don't know how soon, though. I've fallen in with the folks over at a place called Community Seeds. They are a faith based organization, which makes me working with them seem odd I know, as I don't rightly care what any one believes about such matters as faith . . . as long as they don't start telling ME what to believe. Then, Bubba, we will have a problem.

As to my association with the C. Seeds folks and the worm farming thing. They started a community garden. They wanted help with it and as they said they wanted it to be as organic as possible I was there! I am one of those of the opinion that the more gardens, for food, for flowers, for the public, that a town or city has the better. Especially if they are organic and sustainable. If you can get some info in there about Permaculture and get the word out about that, why, then it's all good!

Basically I and another lady who is an ex-master gardener in this area, (Ex as she had to stop going to all the meetings for some reason, I think. Or couldn't afford the dues. Or some such) and I got invited to go up to Michigan to learn about this thing called Growing Power. The stuff I saw and learned there was way cool, especially the way they were growing worms. Those feisty little wigglers were everywhere and in every pot of plants they had!

Needless to say those plants were very healthy and happy looking plants. If you want to find out about Growing Power just run the two words to gather and put a dot and 'org' after it. You'll get there. When you do you'll see as I did that the organization is right along the same lines, generally, as Permaculture.

Hey, they both like worms. Check them out. Check out Community Seeds to. Just do a search. I found their site that way.

Community Seeds is planning to use vermiculture and vermicomposting to expand it's community garden plans into bigger and better things. The hope is to eventually use the gardens, worms, hot houses and hoop houses to supply food for the community food pantry and perhaps even a local farmers market. A side issue, tied in with that will be something called transitional housing that will house homeless, jobless or underemployed folks until they learn a job, or get one or better themselves generally. Way I see it if they can be taught to garden in any kind of space they will be way better off than they were, period.

After all that old saw about giving a person a fish or teaching him to fish is even more true of gardening.

All we have to do is survive this drought and start growing stuff and building things. Money would help and they are working on that.

What I hate about cable and satalite television: A rant.

Hey! You may be thinking! What's to hate? Plenty if you ask me. The top problem is that if you use cable or satellite to get your TV programs then you are paying to watch them twice!

How'd I come up with that you may wonder. Well, I'll tell ya!

I figure I pay plenty to watch the programs I pull in with my antenna. I pay by watching, suffering through and putting up with all the freaking commercials they stuff into the shows. Y'all do realize that for an hour drama show, for example, you are getting; I'm guessing here so don't get out the stop watch! maybe forty minuets of drama! The rest is commercials trying to convince you to eat more fast food, go to a gym, use deodorant, soap, and go into debt for that really fine car so you can be either a chic or a guy magnet. I know because, writer wanna be that I am, I once read a book about writing for television and that's what they said. The story plot had to have space built in for the commercials and for an hour show could only cover about forty to forty five minuets. Now that was an old book and I read it some time ago so it may be down to thirty minuets by now for all I know. Sure seems like it sometimes.

Then here comes the cable or satellite folks wanting me to buy into their service. Do they take out the commercials and just show the bare shows. Not on your life they don't. Not only do I think it may be impossible to do, but they probably wouldn't if they could. There's likely some contract thingy about having to show the programing as delivered. So. There you have it. You pay for satellite or cable and you essentially are buying not only the shows you want to watch but the commercials that try to get you to buy stuff as well. The commercials that pay for the programs. The programs you pay for by watching the dratted things. You pay for the show twice!

Yes, I have other gripes against the cable and satellite folks. Especially these bundles of shows they want you to sign up for. What's with that? What I want is to say, "I'll take the fifty channels for 29.95, please. And these are the channels I want: . . ." But I can't DO THAT!

No. If I sign up for the basic package I get the channels I could get off my antenna plus maybe one or two programs I'd really like and a whole raft of channels I have NO INTEREST what so freaking ever in! They are usually sports channels. GHAAAA!

I have no interest in baseball, football, soccer, golf, hockey, or racing of any kind. I might, occasionally watch figure skating on a hot summer day when nothing else is on, or gymnastics. If I don't have something interesting to read or an idea to write about. Get the picture.

All those stupid sports dedicated channels will be ignored or quickly flipped through so why would I pay to have them available!? National Geographic, the History Channel, Animal Planet, Oprah's channel, the Sci Fi channel and such, I would gladly pay to have available. There just might be fifty channels out there I'd really be interested in. Probably more like thirty or forty. So can I get that kind of deal? Say only pay 19.95 for the few channels I really want? NO. Why? Cause they got all these channels they want me to see even if I don't want to see them. Surely if I click on one of the shopping channels I will see something I just can not live without and buy it! Or find I can't live with out some obscure little channel I wouldn't normally choose.

Fine.

So what's wrong with letting me pick say twenty five or thirty of the fifty channels and then rotating through all the others twenty to twenty five a month so I can check them out and see if I'd like them? I'm still paying for the fifty channels and they still get to tempt me with all these other goodies, some of which I might actually decide I like and choose to keep, right? Nope. That don't fly either. They probably have some dumb contract with somebody, like the sports channels, so that they have to push them on folks who don't really want them just so the folks who are addicted to sports can get their fix if they happen to show up at my house during a game.

My other gripe against the cable and satellite folks? Glad you asked.

It seems to me that we are being forced to get these darn services like it or not. I live out in the country, several miles from the broadcast stations that send out the TV channels. If I don't have my antenna lined up exactly right, now that we've gone digital, I either can't get diddly or all I get is a massively broken and pixalated screen and audio so mangled I can't piece together what is being said. Oh, I do get a nice picture when I get it lined up right. Big deal. I got at least as decent a picture with the old analog tech. So it'd get a little fuzzy or snowy if the antenna was a little off! Big deal, I could still see the show without having to tramp out to my antenna to use a pipe wrench to realign it! Every time the wind blows hard enough to move the antenna around I have to fiddle with it!

Besides all the problems I had with the old analogue antenna I would still have with cable or satellite. Storms can interfere with both just as easily as they did with the old fashioned antenna. Ice or wind might have broken off some of the old antenna's and wind may have moved them around but they'd still work! With satellite you have to brush off the snow or accumulated rain from the dish, providing you can reach the thing and I swear rain wet cable just plain messes up. At least it did the one time I did have cable.

All in all I'm quite put out with the whole deal. If I weren't addicted to watching the darn TV I'd just turn it off and leave it off. Maybe get Net Flix and just use it to watch movies. Unfortunately I do so like to watch the weather reports.

I know, I know. I can get my weather fix off of the Internet, but all I have at the moment is dial up and that is so freaking slow! I definitely can't get Net Flix over it either, or that internet TV thing a friend has told me about. That may be my biggest gripe. If I want half way viewable TV, just half way! I'll likely have to get either satellite or cable. Like it or not. Grrr.

Kittens

Kittens. Kittens. Kittens! Cute, cuddly but such a pain. Especially when they try to climb your leg while you have shorts on.
I have two. One a black, yellow/orange tabby female with darn near no tail at all. Just a little stump and I don't think it was gnawed on by anything. The other is a light, light yellow? orange? male with enough tail to make up for his sister's lack there of.
A friend has already laid claim to the tailless kitten but so far no one has said much about the little blond boy kitten. If I didn't already have two cats, his mother being one of them, I'd keep him.
Him and his sister have figured out how to get up here on my desk. So now I have to fight with them and their mother to get to my keyboard.
Honestly, they are, like all baby animals, cute as little furry buttons. But I already have more than enough mouths to feed so I am looking for homes for this little boy. 
Sorry. Can't ship him anywhere. If you want him you'll have to come get him.

The Path, part three: Compleat fiction. Sci-Fi in fact so be warned.

Sometimes I wonder if the path I tramped into the soil between the Old Homestead on Baranga Hill and the Millers place is still there. Back then in Year 355 after the first landing on Middle Earth, Baranga Hill was a good fifty miles north of the original colony landing site and still considered raw frontier. I’d learned early on that the cookie Mom would deny me at home could be had with just a quick trip to the Millers house on the land they called Eden Valley. The land our house sat on, and that between us and the Millers had been well fenced, so even at a tender five years I didn’t have to worry about wild wargs. During the long hot summers of childhood that path would also lead to where I could nip into Adda Miller’s kitchen to snatch a salt shaker before raiding the cherry tomato patch Orra Miller always planted.

At least once a week my Mom’s feet would join mine on that path as we went to the Miller’s house to share the weekly chore of washing using the home made washer kept outside just below Adda’s kitchen window. All the Miller’s sons were grown and gone on to other settlements by then and the Miller’s treated us like family. Mine, and all the ladies clothes were washed separately with the under clothes. To save money the men’s work clothes were brought home from the space port to be laundered separately, then ironed.

Dad told me he’d met Orra at that space port when he had first come to the Middle Earth Colony in the second wave of settlement. Orra had helped him get a job there and, when he married my mom, Orra had even helped Dad get the land allotment next to his.

Oh, how I wanted to help with the laundry so I could play with that old fashioned contraption Orra and Dad had built. But adult caution kept me away from that fascinating machinery.

“No, you may NOT put the clothes through the wringer!” Mom would yelp when I asked. “That thing could squash your fingers clean off! Then how’d you do your school work on the computer?”

“Wouldn’t lose’m if I didn’t let’m get caught!” I would mutter as I angrily stalked off to sooth my hurt feelings with one of Adda’s sugar cookies. “Side’s the doctors down in town’d jus’ grow’um back.” Sometimes I wanted to accidentally break either the teaching computer, or the antenna that brought in the education programs from the town that had sprung up around the old landing site. But then I’d have not been able to use it to find out about other, more fascinating things.

Where there is an old time washer there must be a clothesline. Orra and Dad had built a huge clothesline in the fenced orchard between our two house plots. There were three uprights made with plastcrete beams left over from building the colony’s space port. The two men welded metal cross pieces on to it. Those held up four thick wire lines. These lines stretched east / west across my path down to the Millers house. That part of the path was in a clearing. With no trees over the lines, any clothes hung on them could get sun all day. This was important on cool or damp days when it took more time than in the hot, dry summer for the clothes to dry.

As I grew taller, around the colony year 360, I found myself hauling clothes Mom had washed at home, in a cleaner built by the colony’s new factory where Dad had gone to work, to that clothesline. Thus eroding that path just a little deeper. After Orra was killed building the Katy Dam that was needed to provide more power, and water for the factories; I pounded it deeper still going to Adda’s house to get the washing she needed done. I took it up to our house where Mom would wash it in her modern clothing cleaner.

Adda really needed the help by that time as one of those super bugs had infected her eye’s, blinding her, when she went in for new cornea’s. That was really sad as she had already had her last rejuvenation treatment fifty years before my birth and would never have the chance to grow new ones. She could take care of most things herself, but my folks and I helped with the farming and such. When the clothes were crisp from the cleaner and folded, I’d haul them back to Adda’s along that same path that went under the now seldom used clothesline.

By the time I left to go to the orbital University for college in 368 the path was worn so deep it was still there whenever I was able to come home from school. It was just part of home, the quickest route down to check on Adda. She was still getting along on her own, but was starting to complain that her boy’s weren’t coming around to help or even calling to see how she was anymore. Her eldest was already into his second rejuve.

After earning a basic degree, then four years in Star Forces, and a failed attempt at setting up a geologic mapping business over in one of First Continents other settlements, my old course along that path was reversed. Adda’s boys had told her to sell off most of Eden Valley as they weren‘t interested in farming, nor were any of their kids. It was 377, there was a spiffy new space port, bringing in a lot of a softer breed of colonist, and the population pressure of folks who had no intention of roughing it, had forced my folks to sell off most of their land. Adda’s boys were paying me to be live-in care for her and what acreage she had left. I was saving the money so I could go back for a master degree in Permaculture at our local college. I had to go up to visit Mom and Dad occasionally on what was left of the Old Homestead, just to keep in touch. I was an only child after all.

It was a good thing that path was still there when I came home in the spring of 382 for my father’s and then Adda’s funeral as grief hung over me like a dark cloud. I moved on automatic between the two houses during the family gatherings centered on these two tragedies. Adda’s death was acceptable, even expected, but my dad hadn’t even gotten old enough for his first rejuve yet. Even after leaving school for the last time that year with a brand new master’s degree I felt surrounded by loss, by death. Change had accelerated while I was at school. Baranga Hill and Eden Valley were now a subdivision outside of the sprawling capital of Middle Earth colony. Despite that I bought out Adda’s youngest son who had inherited what was left of Adda’s land. Mostly, I bought it to keep new homes from being built too close to me. I added it to what I inherited when my mom died, in an air car accident two years after her first rejuve. By this time the population around my land was nearly as dense as it was nearer New Washington itself, and I was working hard on the Planning and Land Use Committee to keep our growth from destroying Middle Earth as it had Old Earth. I was heart sick at our suggestions always being overridden in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘profit’.

Then the Uppies came out from old earth; the ones who cared not a whit for the land, or the people who lived there. All they cared about was ‘upping’ their personal wealth.

“Hey! Hi, there! My name’s Muffie! My husband and I bought a lot just down the street and a block over from here! We’re getting up this petition to change the ordinances to keep farm animals and other large beasts out of the neighborhood. We’d like you to sign it!” The woman said perkily after I got off the ridding grass harvester and came over to see what she wanted.

“What do you mean by farm animals?” I asked, leaning on the wide double gate across my driveway. The gate kept my tame warg and my horse as well as my partner’s safely on my 10 acres. Hopefully, it would keep Earth bred dogs out as I was thinking of getting some more chickens. A warg won’t touch anything with feathers. They can’t digest feathers and any thing that small they’d eat whole.

“Oh, you know,” she grinned, “The smelly and noisy ones like chickens, goats and horses.” Her face showed her revulsion. “And those horrible big dogs! They can get out so easily and frighten people! Not to mention the loud barking!”

I looked her up and down. She was dressed in the highest fashion from old Earth. Right down to the high heels wobbling on my gravel driveway. Her big fancy air car was floating right at the end of it. I hadn’t been paying attention while I was running the grass harvester but I doubted she’d walked from the house next door. I turned toward what was left of my ancestral land, and whistled a couple of loud notes before turning back to the Uppie. I knew what that whistle would call up.

“Why?” I asked as I turned back. “Why no animals like that?”

“Why, because they lower property values! We’ll never get the property in this neighborhood up to a decent value with all these farm animals around.” Her voice was emphatic even though she obviously wondered why I’d whistled.

“Now why would we want the property values to go up?” I asked reasonably, as my, and my partner’s tame wargs loped up in answer to my whistle. “You do know that’d just cause these damn new land taxes to go up even further, don’t you?” She’d turned white at the sight of the fearsome looking wargs.

“B-but,” she stammered as our horses came out of the shade of the orchard behind me, and her eyes widened further. “T-then you could sell your property for more?”

“But not enough to buy anything where we could keep our critters,” I pointed out. “Not here in New Washington. And some of us old timers here might not want, or be able to move. So you just keep that silly petition. I hope to hell no one is dumb enough to sign it. Bye.” I turned from her and walked back to the house to make a glass of lemonade. I almost started crying as I sat in the shade of a fig tree I’d ‘helped’ Dad and Orra plant beside the drive way, and drank my ice cold lemonade. I knew that Uppy was just the first salvo of faster, more drastic change. Change I couldn’t stop.

That path and the clothesline were still there when I sold out and moved to the Shire, a settlement on the last continent opened on Middle Earth. As the Master Permaculture Designer for the Shire I have a good bit of say on how we grow this place so I’m doing my best to set it up to stay in harmony with the planet. I don’t know if the Uppies got their silly petition passed. I do know that before I finely sold out, the city tore up the creek just South of mine and the Millers old houses to “improve drainage.” It was the creek that had run through the Millers old Eden Valley. The one where I’d learned the basics of geology from my Dad.

Then the police air cars started shattering the night with their low flying whine, sirens, and the bright light they used to look for the criminals who started hiding out in what was by then a plastcrete drainage ditch. The stolen air car found abandoned there was the last straw. New Washington and the greedy ways it had imported from old Earth was oozing out to envelop me, my animals, and my land. The only things I could pick up and move to safety were myself and my beasts.

I bought a place with the settlers headed for that last uninhabited continent on Middle Earth. It took all the money my parents had left to me plus most of what I managed to get for the land, and my severance pay from the Planning Committee. I, and my new partner, with the help of some relatives who really couldn’t understand our need to leave, loaded up an intercontinental shipping, and livestock container before taking off one warm day in February of 385. We headed for the Shire and a life far from the problems of big cities.

For me that move was as if my parents, and the Millers had died again. I had hoped to live out all my lives on that land. Now, I’m spending my first rejuvenated youth building a new life here in the Shire.

The clothesline is surely gone by now. The land divided up into at least ten city blocks, maybe more, with “little houses made of ticky tacky” built on them, if not a mall. Perhaps even the path is gone.

Yet, in a way that foot path goes on. I’m wearing extensions of it on the allotment acres I’ve bought here in the Shire. Paths I’m wearing on land bought with money left to me by my parents, and from the sell of the land I’d worn that old path on. So, perhaps Tolkien was right. The path does “go ever on” from the place where it begins. After all, after my third and last rejuve treatment, maybe I’ll finely settle down and start a family to leave this land to.

The Path, as creative Non-Fiction

Sometimes I wonder if the path I tramped into the soil between 8811 Old Homestead and 8814 Eden Valley back in the old Pleasant Grove neighbor hood of Dallas is still there. I’d learned early on that the cookie Mom would deny me at home on Old Homestead could be had with just a quick trip up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Eden Valley. During the long hot summers of childhood, that path would lead to where I could nip into Grandma’s kitchen to snatch the salt shaker before raiding the cherry tomato patch Grandpa always planted.

At least once a week, my Mom’s feet would join mine on that path as we went to Grandma’s house to do the weekly washing using the old time washer kept outside just below Grandma’s kitchen window. Mine, and all the ladies clothes were washed separately with the under clothes. To save money the men’s work clothes were brought home to be laundered separately, then ironed.

Oh, how I wanted to help. But adult caution kept me away from that fascinating machinery.

“No, you may NOT put the clothes through the wringer!” Mom would yelp when I asked. “That thing could squash your fingers clean off!”

“Not if I didn’t let my fingers get caught!” I would mutter as I angrily stalked of to sooth my hurt feelings with one of Grandma’s Vanilla Wafers.

Where there is a washer there must be a clothesline. Grandma and Grandpa owned a full half acre on Eden Valley, so Grandpa and Dad had built a huge clothesline. There were three upright old telephone poles with metal and wood cross pieces, which held up four thick wire lines. These lines stretched east / west across my path up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. With no trees over the lines, any clothes hung on them could get sun all day. The access to sun all day was important on cool or damp days when it took more time than in the hot, dry summer for the clothes to dry.

As I grew taller, I found myself hauling clothes that Mom had washed at home up to that clothesline and wearing that path just a little deeper. After Grandpa died, my feet compressed it deeper still going up to Grandma’s house to get the washing she needed done, and taking it down to our house where Mom would wash it in her newer style washer and dryer. Then, the clothes crisply dry from the dryer and folded, I’d haul them back up to Grandma’s along that same path that went under the now seldom used clothesline.

By the time I entered college, the path was worn so deep it was still there whenever I came home from school on holidays. It was just part of home, the quickest route up to check on Grandma or visit with relatives who came to visit.

After earning a BS, then four years in the Army, and a failed attempt at setting up a soil analysis business in Kentucky, my old course along that path was reversed. It was 1977 and my uncles were paying me to be live-in care for Grandma. I was saving the money so I could go back for a master's degree. I had to go down and visit Mom and Dad occasionally, just to keep in touch. I was an only child after all.

It was a good thing that path was still there when I came home in the spring of ’82 for my father’s and then my grandmother’s funeral as grief hung over me like a dark cloud. I moved on automatic between the two houses during the family gatherings centered on these two tragedies. Even after leaving ET for the last time that year with a brand new master's degree I felt surrounded by loss, by death. Despite that I bought out my Uncle Wayne’s share of Grandma’s land.

Then came the yuppies; the ones who cared not a whit for the land, the neighborhood, or the people who lived there.

“Hey! Hi, there! My name’s Muffie! My husband and I bought a lot just down the street and a block over from here! We’re getting up this petition to change the ordinances to keep farm animals and large dogs out of the neighborhood. We’d like you to sign it!” The woman said perkily after I stopped mowing and came over to see what she wanted.

“What do you mean by farm animals?” I asked, leaning on the wide double gate across my driveway. The gate kept in my big dog and my horse as well as my roomy',s big dog. Hopefully, it would keep other dogs out as I was thinking of getting some more chickens.

“Oh, you know,” she grinned, “The smelly and noisy ones like chickens, goats and horses.” Her face showed her revulsion. “And those horrible big dogs! They can get out so easily and frighten people! Not to mention the loud barking!”

I looked her up and down. She was dressed in the highest fashion. Right down to the high heels wobbling on my gravel driveway. Her big fancy car was parked right at the end of it. I hadn’t been paying attention while I was mowing but I suspected she’d driven from the house next door. I turned toward the half acre of my grandparents land I’d just finished paying off, and whistled a couple of loud notes sure to attract every beast I had that connected the sound to food before turning back to the yuppie.

“Why?” I asked as I turned back. “Why no animals like that?”

“Why, because they lower property values! We’ll never get the property in this neighborhood up to a decent value with all these farm animals around.” She continued, though obviously curious about why I'd whistled like that.

“Now why would we want the property values to go up?” I asked reasonably, as my, and my roomy's big dog loped up in answer to my whistle. “You do know that’d just cause the taxes to go up even further, don’t you?”

“B-but,” she stammered as my horse came out of the shade of the small bunch of trees behind me, and her eyes widened even further than the appearance of the dogs had caused. “T-then you could sell your property for more?”

“But not enough to buy anything where we could keep our critters,” I pointed out. “Not here in Dallas. And some of us old timers here might not want to move. So you just keep that silly petition. I hope to hell no one else is dumb enough to sign it. Bye.” I turned from her and walked back to the house to make a glass of lemonade. I almost started crying as I sat in the shade of a tree I’d ‘helped’ grandpa plant beside the driveway, and drank my ice cold lemonade. I knew that yuppie was just the first salvo of change . . . a change I couldn’t stop.

That path and the clothesline were still there when I sold out and moved to Lone Oak. I don’t know if the yuppies got their silly petition passed. I do know that the city tore up the creek where I’d learned the basics of geology from my dad. Then the police helicopters started shattering the night with their low flying whup whup whup and the bright light they carried while looking for the drug dealers who were hiding out the creek. The stolen car found abandoned there was the last straw. The big city was oozing out to envelop me, my animals, and my land. The only things I could pick up and move to safety were myself and my beasts.

I found a place. It took all the money my parents had saved up and left to me plus most of what I managed to get for the land and two houses I had inherited and bought. I, and my roomy, with the help of some relatives who really couldn’t understand my need to leave, loaded up a borrowed box trailer, a two-horse trailer, and the back of my pickup truck before pulling out one warm day in February of ‘85. We headed for Lone Oak and a life far from the problems of the big city.

For me that move was as if there had been a final death in the family. I had hoped to live out my life on that land. I had had no other plans.

The clothesline is surely gone by now, the land divided up into at least three lots, maybe more, with “little houses made of ticky tacky” built on them. Perhaps even the path is gone.

Yet, in a way that foot path goes on. I’m wearing extensions of it on the twelve plus acres I bought here in Lone Oak. Paths I’m wearing on land I bought with money left to me by my parents and from the sell of the land I‘d inherited; land I’d worn that old path on. So, perhaps Tolkien was right. The path does “go ever on” from the place where it begins.

The Path, a memory

The folks who live there in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas now might wonder how it came to be. That little narrow foot path between the northwest corner of the back fence of 8811 Old Homestead, and the back door of 8814 Eden Valley. I know exactly how it came to into being. You see, my feet wore it there.

There was the daily tramp from where I lived with my Mom and Dad up to where my Grandma and Grandpa lived. It was a daily exercise as I had quickly learned that if Mom said I couldn’t have a cookie, that little walk up to Grandma’s house would place one in my grimy little hands. Of course during the long hot summers of childhood, I could always nip into Grandma’s kitchen and snatch the salt shaker before raiding the cherry tomato patch that Grandpa always planted.

As I grew older, I began to notice that those big folks around me often did some interesting things. Most fascinating to me at the time was washing clothes. You see, Grandma had this wonderful thing called a washing machine. It was old fashioned by today’s standards and could safely be left out in the weather so it was never necessary to build a shelter around it.

At least once a week, my Mom’s feet would join mine on that path as we went to Grandma’s house to do the weekly washing. Mine, and all the ladie's clothes were washed separately with the under clothes. The men’s work clothes, despite being uniforms supplied by the company, were brought home to be laundered separately, and ironed.

In conjunction with the washing machine, there was the clothesline. Grandma and Grandpa owned a full half acre, so Grandpa and Dad had room to build a truly huge clothesline. There were three upright old telephone poles with metal and wood cross pieces. Those cross pieces held up four thick wire lines. These lines stretched east and west across my path up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. With no trees over the lines, any clothes hung on them could get sun all day. This arrangement was important in the winter, or on damp days when it took more than the summertime thirty minutes for the cloths to dry.

Later I found myself hauling clothes that Mom had washed at home up to that clothesline, and wearing that path just a little deeper. Later I pounded it deeper still going up to Grandma’s house to get the washing she needed done and taking it down to our house where Mom would wash it in her newer style washer; one that had to stay inside the house. Then, the clothes crisply dry from the dryer and folded, I’d haul them back up to Grandma’s along that same path that went under the old clothesline. That path and the clothesline were still there when I sold, what was by then my property, and moved to Lone Oak. The clothesline is surely gone by now. But I’m sure it would take some work to remove that foot path.