Sometimes I just like to drive fast

An essay on not losing your edge.

All the years I exhibited at art shows, I drove at least thirty thousand miles a year, in all kinds of conditions. I learned how to drive in everything; only ice kept me off the road. I always drove fast.

Driving is a pretty boring occupation; the sooner it’s over the better. I drove standard transmission cars from the onset of my driver’s license until I drove extended vans; I know how to handle a vehicle, from a sporty little turbo six speed to a high profile van.

Oh, and I rode a motorcycle for years, too. Now, that’s a vehicle to handle. When put to it, I could lay sparks on the road.

That was all a long time ago. Now I drive a car friends call The Red Bullet, but it’s just a sturdy, automatic transmission, compact crossover that sits the road.  If I’m in a thoughtful, meandering mood, I obey the speed limits and enjoy the ride. My dad and my sister would be so proud. Dad taught us that if our passenger’s knees moved, we were a careless driver. My sister still obeys the rule of the knees.

The roads I drive to work wind steeply into the valley. In the olden days, good motorcycle roads. On a morning the blood needs a little pumping, a fine road to handle. Two handed driving, eyes open for wildlife, and those motorists who brake at every hill and curve. They certainly ruin a good road.

The road I take almost every morning is posted forty miles per hour. Many years ago it was fifty, but too many teenagers didn’t know how to drive it that fast, so it’s forty, now. I’ve never exceeded sixty, on a fine day with a tail wind. But the one day I hit the sweet spot going into the last bend, what came up the hill but two village patrol cars. Two!

The first rule of exceeding the speed limit is: don’t give them the satisfaction of braking. As a courtesy, I do lift my foot from the accelerator. As we crossed at the curve I had the sight of two flat light bars blazing, one in my rear view mirror and one in the passenger side mirror.  They were out of sight in a second. I knew the soonest they could turn around would be the Boy Scout camp, and I would be nailed before I passed the golf course and stopped at the stop sign.

It never happened.

I recognized one of the officers, and the next time I saw him he said don’t do That again, and I would know what he meant. I generally don’t. But sometimes I need to be sure I haven’t lost my edge.

It's spring; we're on it

I introduced my gardeners to "no till" gardening today.

It's been four years since this project started, in officially terrible dirt.

A layer of topsoil was broadcast today. By hand! 

I think of how beautifully Hamilton swung the shovel for the same job.

 A layer of mulch on top.

We put all the pots in place.

We only need the nursery to stock our list of plants.

I did find butterfly weed today, and we planted four.

I need to look into milkweed.

Stand back spring and summer, we are ready.

I promised Pig his nasturtium next week.

I have a succulent I've named Pete Seeger.

Immediately to the left of the watermark a succulent has come up through the sidwalk.

We'll plant more anemone bulbs in the fall. 

Can't have too many anemones.

And here is number three from yesterday.

For the last two years we have no outdoor cat.

The chipmunk population has grown exponentially.

I no longer stalk them.

They stare me down.

One more step and I could have touched this fellow.

Bold as brass.

I turned and went in the house.

If we do wind up on a first name basis, I'll call him Rocky.

Story number two would always have a happy ending, but it got better

 December 2012

You all recall, I know, the township property that interested me so I could be accused of stalking. It was a small family campground named Lazy Acres.

It was a fifties and sixties kind of place; then the laughter and fun moved on to new attractions. Lazy Acres went on the market, sold by the sons of the owners,(in their seventies, I learned) to two families; grandparents and one of their daughters and son-in-law.

March through September 2014

Demolition continued

Laura and I went exploring one day last summer

We found a big house and a little house.

The stuff of stories.

We decided the big house belonged to Mama and Papa,

the little house the Grandma and Grandpa.

I intended to stop back and meet someone, but I never saw anyone.

Yesterday I did.

I drove straight back, introduced myself, and confessed my obsession with the place.

I met the Grandparents, 

who live in this house, since last August.

Weekends, holidays, and come this summer,

thirteen grandchildren have the run of the main level.

How cool is that.

The little house belongs to a daughter and son-in-law, who hope to occupy it this summer.

Now, I must take my watermark off my collection of pictures, and send them to the grandparents.

“Three with one blow,” the brave little tailor said

I went to work at a reasonable time this morning, and worked straight through to two o’clock. I wanted to get the checks in the mail so all our creditors could pay their creditors, and I wanted to get through constructing the very difficult set of minutes from last night’s two and a half hour trustee meeting.

I wasn’t all drudge, drudge, drudge, though. At eleven thirty the road guys came in and the new road super (Ron, you might as well get used to him) stopped to show his new Sullivan Ln. road sign. Ron is as irrepressible as Timmy, but on totally different subjects. Timmy would make me go look at snapdragons in the slag bin; Ron is like a magpie. He likes to show off bright, shiny things, like new road signs.

By two I had my day wrapped, except mailing the checks and depositing money. Hungry as I was, I am a good fiscal officer and drove the extra ten miles to mail the checks and deposit the money. This took me a different way home, and there was Ron, installing his new Sullivan Ln. sign. “I defy you to miss this,” he said, when I pulled into Sullivan Ln. “This should make the new guy at the end happy.”

I knew of the new guy at the end, just starting the zoning process for a landscaping business. For years, Sullivan Lane was Sullivan Road, until the county rerouted Sullivan Road in favor of the freeway, and cut off the old road past the old Sullivan residence.  Eventually the Sullivans left this earthly tent, the property remained unsold and in decay for many years. I drove down to the guard rail a few times, to watch the decay progress. I thought I took some pictures, but I cannot find them.

After lunch I went back to the end of Sullivan Lane. Look what I found.

The last time I was down here, this entire property was brush and weeds and junk up to the outbuildings. I did not know the drive went all the way back.

The outbuilding is newly clad in steel siding. The picket fence is prefabricated, but it is white and wood, by golly. Grass is planted, grown and mowed!

This little outbuilding seems to have the same steel siding, or, perhaps, painted red. It certainly has been given a second chance. I like the poster in the window. I wonder what it is. I wish the new guy at the end every success.

And then, on the way home, I found two more happy things to post about another day. Like the little tailor, I had a good afternoon.

The tangent line

We went out for supper tonight. When we left I announced I have come to dislike chain restaurants as much as I dislike tuna-noodle casserole, and we were going to try out a little restaurant called Nosh.  And, if it were closed, being Monday, we would go to Yours Truly, a local to NE Ohio chain.

I could hear eyes rolling, and agreed Yours Truly is an “old people’s restaurant,” but not as old people as Denny’s, a childhood favorite of Laura’s, or her especial three year old favorite, Bob Ebans. And as it happened, Nosh is closed on Monday and we went to Yours Truly.

We walked in the door and my shoulders twitched to the music. Something Kris Kristofferson. Emily and Laura exchanged meaningful looks. While we waited for our supper, I delighted in telling them the title and artist of each song and some history.

Their eyes rolled a bit, but they are polite young ladies, especially when Grandma is treating. Sometimes they connected. “This is ‘The House of the Rising Sun,’ I said of that song, and they listened politely to a few bars, until they recognized it from a movie. “But it was a lot faster then,” they said. “Just wait, it gets faster,” the old lady said.

And so it went, as we munched on through a good supper. “Oh, wait, what is this song,” one said. “Big wheel keep on rolling,” replied the other. They traded possible titles of a song they both knew they knew, and then looked across the table. “Proud Mary,” announced the old lady on the other side. “Yes, that’s it!” the music lovers announced, and I was amused that our lives actually touch in some places.

We drifted into other topics, and the two of them were deep in discussing a problem that has Laura very concerned. Who will help her with math homework next year, when Emily is gone? “Don’t worry,” advises Emily; “you’ll be just fine. We have computers to talk to each other.”

Laura worries; she must take geometry, algebra, pre-calc at minimum. Supper over, waiting for the bill and the card to make its trip to the front and back, Laura began rearranging things on the table. She pushed two glasses together. “The tangent line,” announced Emily. “What????” from Laura. “You already know a tangent line,” Emily retorted. Both dissolved in laughter, and Laura admitted she did. 

Red faces from laughing hard.

Laura's tangent line.