old timers

This is my grandmother's family. (paternal).
Grandma is the girl on the right.
What strikes me is how much she looked like my granddaughter Jessica at that age.

baths

One reason little boys liked to go camping is that they did not have to take baths.

Think about it. No one could bug you, because you could not. I went to camp as a kid, went a number of times. There no showers, you had to go swimming to get a bath.

The water was cold and I did not like swimming, so. . .

Even the early camping trailers did not have any bathroom facilities. Even pretty good sized units did not. I don’t know who it was that messed it all up. It might have been Wally Bynum and his Airstream trailers, I don’t know.

But now every camper has an RV of some sort and ALL of them have very adequate bath/shower rooms.

And that is why some of us still camp in tents and tear drop trailers. We are just tall small boys. I have a “shower” tent, but don’t always take the trouble to set it up, and sometimes the camp officials do not like the idea any way.

So we can camp pretty well conscience free,

That is my story, and I am sticking!

Store bought tomatoes are wonderfully consistent.
This one is from a rather knobby strain. No slicers here, but the hunks can be pretty wonderful.
Right now is the height of tomato season.

forgetful

It was a good “vacation.”

We took the teardrop which is on the edge (in my mind) between camping and camping.

I put up the tent the first evening we were there. The mosquitos were pretty insistent, so I set up the tent, put our folding chairs in the tent and we were bug free.

When it got too dark to read easily, I started the coleman lantern (out of the tent) and hung it inside. That does not make good reading light, but it was easy to do some journaling.

Over the weekend we had heat (close to 100º), rain, wind, and lots in between. Five couples came for the weekend, and another 5 came up Saturday afternoon. We had a couple of shared meals and that was good as always.

I intended to make a Dutch oven cake, but I discovered I did not have a cake mix (nor the ingredients to make a scratch version). One of the gals had a package of Lemon bar mix that she shared with me.

When I packed the cooler, I remembered looking at the egg carton, but then I was distracted, so no eggs. Another friend rescued me there.

I added some pancake mix to the lemon bar mix, put in another teaspoon of baking powder, assembled the cake (melted butter, brown sugar, walnuts, pineapple pieces and then the cake mix.

Any way it turned out much better than I deserved. Since it was the only desert we had for that meal it was REALLY appreciated.

Miriam an I went a day before the others so I could have a day to ourselves. IT was wonderful.

Oh, and not only did I forget the cake mix, I forgot my camera! So, no pictures.

Oh well.

Fresh organic salad, on the hoof, as we might say in cattle country.

camping again

We are going camping again.

When my friend David lived here, we went camping a lot more often. He would just announce that he was going next weekend, and at least some of us would go. It was great. Without David’s prodding, we have not gone as often.

Camping is our recreation event.

On the last trip I spilled the juice from Rhubarb crisp on my bed and it left an ugly stain. So, we had to wash the sheets (I prefer to have sheets and blankets in the tear rather than sleeping bags) and tomorrow I’ll make the bed again.

Imagine making your bed and laying on it while you are doing it! Alas, I must make sure I have clean knees!

Our next trip, the middle of September will be for two weeks, and we have been invited back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving. The tear goes with us on that trip, so we will sleep in it a good bit yet this fall.

Our last camp trip was a tent trip. We should have taken the tear, but we did not. In the morning I’ll re-stock the galley, load the water and the shade tent and try not to forget anything.

We are only going about 50 miles to an old town site where my great grandfather lived and worked about 1920. Grandpa Lew and his brother John were surveyors who worked on the Black Canyon Dam project. Uncle John had a heart attack and died while working on the project. Lew was my mother’s grandfather.

The townsite can still be seen. The campground is operated by the Bureau of Reclamation. Idaho has only two campgrounds under their jurisdiction. The price is right, once you get the gear together. The fee for this park, the last time I was there, was a whopping $3 per night for old timers.

I intend to sit in the shade, read a bit, do some writing and drawing and generally charge my battery. Miriam is good company. Of course Leo is going with us!

So, I’ll be off until Tuesday.

scared

This portrait was in my grandmother's photo album.
I have no idea of who the child is, other than a distant relative!
But, it is the expression of horror that gets me.

wild cards

When my kids were in high school one of the teaches worked hard to give them a real life experience.

The teacher matched students into “couples.” They were given the opportunity to plan and execute their life. There were broad guidelines, but the students had great opportunity for choice.

They could choose their own jobs. They were allowed to spend their money as they choose, with certain guide lines.

The first rush included a lot of new 4 wheel drive pickups and nice spendy things. And then, just to make it all interesting, the teacher would distribute a random “wild card.”

It might be that the washing machine quit. It might be a job loss. It might be an unplanned pregnancy and on and on.

Some “couples” flourished and had cash savings, some had to go through “bankruptcy.”

But it is that “wild card” idea that fascinates me of late.

Life is full of these, and the cards are often way larger than we would like. A chronic illness, a personal disease, an accident; a friendship that went astray; a marriage that ended; The list goes on and on.

I have a chronically challenged grandson, family members are facing frightening health issues, Miriam has Alzheimer’s, all wild cards.

Some well meaning souls try to give comfort by saying that it is all part of god’s plan. They are amazed at the ferocity of my rebuttal.

But before I get mired in all of this, there are good wild cards too.

Those are easy to forget, I fear.

certificate of surrender

I just came across this rather intriguing document.
This man was my great grandfather.

loss

I must be getting old.

Some one told me not to become cynical as I got older, but it seems inevitable.

Our country faces so many problems, but we are seem to have our fingers in our ears as we shout and scream at any who don’t see the world our way. Most of the time we don’t even know what our way is, but we scream any way. Meantime, little gets done.

My church is the one I attended the first week after I was born. I have generations of loyalty, but that loyalty is being put to the test. Lots of reasons, not many I want to write about right now, but they are churning in my gut.

There is a verse in scripture describing people of another time: “They did what was right in their own eyes.” That is both a positive statement and a horrible condemnation. And, I am caught in the confusion.

Even as my head has spent a lifetime swimming upstream, I had hoped that some how, by some magic my daughters and their families would have a better handle on it all. In a lot of wonderful ways they do, but those cussed elephants are going well too.

I have lost so many friends lately. Another is seriously ill of lung cancer. I do not seem to be making many new friends, and I hold the old ones close. I do not require a lot of friends, and I do not mind being alone.

That is a good thing, I guess.

Mom used to say that canned food was money in the bank that you could not cash in early!

cherries

Yesterday my brother in law came to visit.

He works part time at a wholesale produce house. (Before he retired he worked for them full time).

About once a month he comes over and bring something from the over ripe shelf at the warehouse. Usually the produce is perfect for eating right now, but by the time it goes to a retail outlet and sits there, it will be over ripe very soon.

Any way, he brought a lug of Cherries. There is a town not too far from where Miriam grew up in Eastern Oregon that has the latest cherries in the North West. And since they have no competition at that time of year, they get a premium price.

So he brought this 30 pound lug.

So yesterday, in spite of what I might have thought I should do, I worked on cherries.

I called a daughter, looked on the internet and decided I would pit and freeze some of them to be used in Smoothies later. I borrowed a pitter, but the cherries were too big to pit well, so I ended up doing quite a bit of it by hand, and what a messy job that is.

But, at the end of the day I had a stack of pitted cherries, bagged and in the freezer as well as 14 pints, ready for the shelves.

We have not been eating a lot of canned cherries, but I told Miriam we would have cherries with our hot oatmeal cereal this winter!

With luck this blossom will produce dinner sized squash soon.

living good

When I get dinner, my first stop is our garden.

Sweet corn available from my neighbor garden, or now from my own plantings; potatoes still in the ground and tomatoes. I have those three in abundance.

Then we have zucchini, egg plant, green peppers and green beans for the fun of it.

So, our meals right now are about straight out of the garden, and pretty much the same each day. We won’t have fresh corn and vine ripe tomatoes too much longer.

As always I oven roasted the sweet corn, potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and then steamed purple beans that turn green! There was a whole plate of fresh sliced tomatoes.

In a month and a half dinner will have different ingredients. We will eat well, but there is the best time of year, for good fresh food.

The produce section of our grocery store will be chocked by the usual varieties of veggies all winter. Just about the same inventory always, but it is not the same as good vegetables in season.

Without moving to Arizona or El Paso, I wish I could extend that fresh vegetable season.

warm

Some might see scrap lumber, even worthless.
I look at the pile and feel the warmth for my small house, when it is cool outside.
And as my grandpa used to say: A wood fire will warm you twice, once when you cut the wood and another when you burn the wood.