Years ago there was a country / western song about a farmer.
It was the end of summer, he had crops that were ready to harvest, he had kids that were ready for school and his wife, whose name poetically was Lucille, decided to leave him.
The songs main line was: “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.” Like a lot of country songs, you had to weep at the poor chap’s hardship.
Then someone did a parody (this was after Homer and Jethro, so it wasn’t them). In the parody version a guy was riding a bicycle at a good clip when the front wheel came off. The title for that version was: “You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel!”
Either version reminds me that there is eerily true.
As I get older, my “you picked a fine time to leave me” list is lengthening!
In our Idaho house there seemed to be just too much space between things. In the bus there sometimes seems to be too little space. Things are pretty compacted. Things I thought were important are not so much any longer.
The stuff that we no longer have is gone and I have made peace with most of that
Right now when Miriam and I could be having such a good life, we are not having the life we might have planned. It is not all bad, by any measure, but it is different. Other family members are slipping too. There are a lot of things that are leaving us.
I wrote this piece a few weeks ago when I was in Idaho:
Pat Tagasugi died this week.
Of course few reading this knows who Pat was. He was a farmer (around here if you are a “rancher” you are a cattleman). Pat’s farm was a thousand acres or so of Onions, mainly. He worked as director of the Agriculture department in the state government under 3 governors. Later he was elected to the state house of representatives. I never met Pat, though I read of him often. This last session of the legislature a woman I do know stood in for him while he went through treatment for the cancer that would finally take his life.
Last night there was a TV program about the Japanese internment at the beginning of the Pacific part of World War II. Pat was Japanese and would have been a little young for that internment, but his family wasn’t. At the beginning of World War II we were so frightened we rounded up all the Japanese -Americans and put them into “internment camps.” They were actually jails, remote and in isolated horrible locations.
There were a lot of fine Japanese farmers around southern Idaho where I grew up. They were some of the best. But they were rounded up.
But the piece on TV went on to compare the hysteria about the Japanese with the more recent bewilderment after 9-11 attack.
None of us are as wise as we wish we were, but in retrospect I think most agree that the internment of Japanese Americans was a horrible mistake. No one locked up Germans or Italians, just those who did not look like us.
Hind sight is so wonderful, but we learn from our past or we do not, and I am not sure we are doing well on this one.
Very few homes are really built for the area and climate they endure.
We tend to overcome our bad design with lots of BTU’s either as heat or cool. But I have lived in badly designed and built houses in very cold areas and it is not fun.
Our house in Idaho was built to be comfortable in cold winter and warm to hot summers, and it worked pretty much as I designed and hoped.
Living in a tiny house (under 400 square feet) does not change that idea. Any RV has to many limitations to be really good in either intense heat or cold. The laws of physics come into play here, as much as we would like otherwise.
When I brought our vintage travel trailer up here a few weeks ago, I decided to put it in a barn that was very well designed and insulated for the hot and cold of SE Washington. And since there was no “perfect” barn space available, I decided to built a barn that surrounded the existing trailer.
When that is complete I’ll build an add on that will extend the square footage up to that 400 number.
So far I have the posts in place and the collar beams lag bolted in place. Next is the roof trusses, which will be built in place (I am not 65 any more!).
It won’t be finished for this winter, but should be ready for us to occupy by summer.
The design: Pole frame for simplicity; tight sealed exterior; super insulation; along with a good bit of light and a great view across the valley.
I don’t get as much work done now as I once did, age is part of it, and taking care of Miriam takes some of my time. It gets dark here a little after 4 in the afternoon, so a 3 or 4 hour work day is pretty good. Besides it can be a bit cold.
(This was written a couple weeks ago when I was in Idaho).
I am not very optimistic right now.
No one seems to have any viable answers for anything more complex than next year’s garden. The people on top who are supposed to have all the answers are clueless, but won’t admit it.
My grandkids are college age now, or soon will be. Going to college is not all that difficult, but they could spend the rest of their lives paying for it. Not good. To make it even more scary there is no guarantee that they will find a job that is remotely in keeping with their eduction. The trends are not good.
My daughters and their spouses will work longer, meaning they will be older when they retire, but that longer work life will deprive a young person of a job. Will there be any kind of safety net when they retire? There are many who want to eliminate all such “foolishness.” And there aren’t enough jobs to go around now, and it does not seem that there will be much change in any future we can see from here.
We have a house that is paid for (thanks to a daughter). We sold her half interest in the house to pay for the rather modest student loans WE took out when we went to college.
The house is for sale, sort of. Yet, I wonder what the future will hold and if a house somewhere along the line would be of great benefit to some one in the family. No one knows.
Today I work on cabinets to make the down bedroom more useful and workable. I enjoy the work. I would be truly lost without some sort of a shop, I fear.
It was a great Thanksgiving time, to be sure.
Saturday afternoon, the house was full of family I felt something funny in my throat. OhO. Within half an hour I had a full blown cold. My throat felt like someone had taken a wood rasp to it. My nose was running, and my feet were smelling.
The classic misery!
I drank water and stayed close to the couch in the Bus. lI took NyQuil, which is, hands down, the nastiest stuff in my cupboard. If a cold settles deep into my chest it takes weeks to get rid of it, so I puled out all the stops.
It is early Monday right now and i am feeling a lot better. I might even get to sleep in my own bed tonight.
Of course, it could all reverse and I could spend the next week in bed, but I hope not.
I am father to incredibly devious women. That is how I have to start this post.
Several weeks ago daughter 4, who lives in Portland asked if she could come to Fort Nash (my name for daughter 1’s house -- I’ll explain later). Her new husband was out of the country and she was looking for family.
Of course the answer was in the affirmative. That meant that we would have Thanksgiving with 3 of our 4 daughters. San Francisco is a LONG way away, and 3 is a good number.
Wednesday evening when I drove up to the front gate Wednesday evening on my trip back from Idaho, there was a visiting car in blocking the gate. I recognized the car and knew it would be leaving soon, so I got out of the car to open the gate.
Two figures (it was pretty dark by then) advanced toward me. At first glance I recognized the profile of daughter 1 and assumed the other was granddaughter Jessica, but the information did not all jig well. I didn’t have long to think about it.
It was daughter 3 from San Francisco! She noticed that the whole family (except her and hers) would be together for T day except them and decided to come up but keep it a secret from almost everyone else.
She was there with her husband and two teen sons. WOW. My cup was running over!
Daughter 4, from Portland, was due in another hour or so. She did not know her sister was coming either, and was as surprised as I. Thanksgiving day grandson 1 and his wife drove in from Sacramento, making the complete family together. It was good.
So, today is the day after Thanksgiving. It is called black Friday some places, but it is a great friday for grandpa! For dinner we had 4 daughters, three sons in law, 11 grandkids, a grand daughter in law, my aunt and her husband, my sister and a dear family friend, plus Miriam and I.
The house is not small, but with 25, it was a houseful and it was wonderful. Daughters are fab cooks alone or together, and the food was superb.
Today we are going to have a family picture taken. It has been 5 or 6 years. An old photographer friend who has photographed our family in one way or another for a very long time will do the honors. We will all be together, all that is except for the new son in law. I am very pleased.
These family portraits are getting more precious as the years go by. We have had a lot of them taken through the years. Those portraits are priceless.
I woke up Tuesday thinking (not unusual!).
The car needs new front tires. If I am going to build anything, I desperately need some power tools that are in Idaho. I need to visit with a few friends about my building project. I needed a haircut (it takes a while to teach a new barber, and I haven’t done that in Washington yet). And, my sister needed a ride up for Thanksgiving.
That was a good list.
So, after consulting with daughters, I headed out. It was midmorning. It is a 3 1/2 to 4 hour and there is a time zone change. I drove right to the tire shop and got the two tires I needed. The two friends I needed to consult with were home, and I got good advice from them.
When I got to our house it was cold, of course, so I brought in an armload of firewood and built a fire in the wood stove, and boiled some ramen noodles. The bed was warm and comfortable and I slept well.
After breakfast wednesday I got that haircut. Since I still own the house and expect to for a while, I wanted the utility and insurance bills sent to our Washington address so I made several change of address, change of bank visits. In the middle of all of that I did a load of laundry and took a long hot shower.
You can take a good hot shower in an RV, but not a good LONG hot shower. The water heaters are in the 5 or 6 gallon size!
So, a little after noon, sister and I headed back for daughters homes. I was to leave my sister with daughter 2 who lives half an hour away from daughter 1, where Miriam and I now live.
My little car (a 20 year old Chevy Coupe) had the trunk loaded with tools (air compressor, chop saw, cords and hoses, 8 or 9 hand power tools, my chain saw, 4 or 5 air nailers along with nails for them, as well as a box of hand tools. The back seat was quite well loaded with my travel gear as well as my sisters.
But the trip went well. Sister and I visited. I left her off at daughter 2’s house and headed for home.
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