Where's Hazel? Pet Hazel.
Scratch Hazel behind her ears.
Summer Solstice to Mad Hatter's Tea
Nothing much to write home about for the first half of
july. Enough time was taken just watching half a month go
by that little else was recorded. Included among the Days
of Our Lives was The Two Worst Mournings of the 21st
Century. (so far...)
Fifty Years From La Luna
Really tired today. I napped for a few hours after supper
last night and then woke up to brush teeth and go to bed.
Must be the full moon; or all the specials and reruns of
specials and news rehashing the specials of the moon
landing. Where were you fifty years ago? I could swear I
was on the Mall, parked out front of the Smithsonian
Castle with a van-load of Scouts. That was the tour when
Lester was misplaced. But my photographic record is
seriously lacking from that year... Where have all the
photos gone? Did I dream the whole thing?
Responding to my letter regarding “...the
real origin of ok?” D writes: “ The origin of the
term "OK" is the Scots dialect for the affirmative "Och
Aye".”
Summer Camp on Wheels
Someone else has this idea. Similar but
different. Cottonwood
Gulch Expeditions fields several moving camps
each Summer. Eighteen campers are here this weekend
for a rest/work day after a Rim to Rim hike in the Grand
Canyon. Eighteen campers ... they remind me of what I left
behind all those years ago. Colin Fletcher, author of The
Man Who Walked Through Time, said: "The best
dress for walking is nakedness." He also said, with
regard to carrying his house on his back: “You mind the
ounces and the pounds will take care of themselves.”
Dump & Fill
Usually I get a month out of both tanks. Give or take a
week, depending on how many times I wash dishes and where
I dump the dish water and how many nearby trees need
watering... Today, Man On The Moon Day, I am dumping and
filling just because.
Monsoon Monlate
Monsoon Finally Here? Maybe jumping to conclusions but
the humidity has been up several percentage points for the
past week. Three mornings in a row there has been
significant dew on the bonnet of TinyTruck and
thunder storms every afternoon. So far not much rain but
lots of noise and lightning.

2019vii30—We Ei8ht Are Now 4our
My sister Donna called this evening. Gordon, first
brother younger than me, died of Alzheimer's a little
while ago. He'd been placed in hospital somewhen after I
visited last year and then recently, with his condition
deteriorating rapidly, moved to hospice. He was married to
Phyllis some forty years.
At bananagrammes a few days ago we were questioning the
origin of the Hoover brand name: In 1908, a department
store janitor named James Murray Spangler was suffering
from a mean case of dust allergies. So, he did what any
entrepreneurial asthmatic would do: he mounted a motorized
fan motor on a carpet sweeper and filed a patent for the
world’s first household vacuum cleaner. Spangler soon sold
the patent to his cousin’s husband, William Hoover, who
launched
The Hoover Company and began selling the devices all
over the US and Europe. For decades, the Hoover brand
enjoyed a near-monopoly on vacuum cleaner sales. The
machines were so ubiquitous in England that ‘hoover’
became a generic noun (like Kleenex or Band-Aid), used as
a synonym for ‘vacuum.’ Its provenance earned it a
reputation as one of the world’s most trusted brands.

The
Hoover, in grim silence, sat,
But
sucking no more at the mat;
Quietly it grunted
As
slowly it shunted,
And
messily disgorged the cat.
--David Woodsford
Labour Day
I'll drink to that. In the meantime I hope this finds you
well also. In over my head here at Pie Town. Seems there
is only one other person here who knows how to fix
anything but pie. But the money is great. I'm saving up
for new tyres on TinyTruck and next Summer's adventure.
Trying to anyhow.

Pie Town Pie Fest
Pie Fest was a wash, IMHO at least. Almost a washout.
Occasional squalls of rain-hail-thunder kept visitors
running between events and shelters. I mostly walked
around and did a lot of people-watching. The best part was
the traditional pasta feed at the Toaster House.
Engineering this sunset display has been my major project
this time in Pie Town. Not to belittle rebuilding the well
PV array or helping Camilla with Bill's radio inventory,
mounting these two mural sections on the wall above the
roll-up door took a crew of six men and a boy. The mural
sections weighed about 120 pounds each and were lifted
into place by the lifting squad and then clamped by the
two clampers. Prob'ly the critter happiest to see
completion of this project was MommaBird. You canna quite
see her nest up inside the canoe but she was some put out
every time I was in screwing around with the structural
modifications.

Rain Thunder Hail
1.17” in 24 hours. Most rain I've seen in a long while.
Union Pacific’s historic Big Boy steam locomotive No.
4014 is touring the Union Pacific system throughout 2019
to commemorate the transcontinental railroad's 150th
anniversary. The Big Boy’s return to the rails is the
product of more than two years of meticulous restoration
work by the Union Pacific Steam Team. No. 4014 is the
world's only operating Big Boy locomotive.
On the leg between Gila Bend and Casa Grande Big Boy will
climb the long grade past Train Spotter Hill to the height
of land at Shawmut. That should be a sight to see.
Presby ER Socorro
This storey started a few days ago, no doubt as I was
building the scaffold to hang this sunburst mural on the
wall of the shako. I have no idea when for sure; a few
days later I noted a swelling, a discomfiture, about the
middle of my right outer calf. Later I was aware there was
something in there, under the skin, some foreign object. A
few days of applying a black tarry drawing salve,
occasionally mixed with a green healing salve, produced no
particular result other than to make a mess of my sleep
sack. Retired Nurse Terri agreed that I should have my leg
looked at by someone more professional than the usual
gawkers hereabouts. After the tagline “I've had a
wonderful life. Just wish I'd realized it sooner.”
appeared in an email Nita twisted my arm and if I was that
scared of the hospital offered to accompany me to the
ER.
Some of you gentle readers are no doubt aware how much
paper is involved in an ER visit however I'm gonna tell
you anyhow. “Patient Rights and Responsibilities...”
(Eleven half-pages plus one intentionally left blank),
“Privacy Practices and ….” (Six full-pages: three each
English and Spanish), “Notice of Nondiscrimination...”, (I
get to keep all those) plus a page each of Medical
History, Financial Responsibility, Next of Kin, When Was
My Last Tetanus, and finally: What seems to be your
Emergency?
Two nurses and an orderly later, after Incoming Vitals
were taken and recorded, I was walked down the hall and
around the corner, through these huge double doors, to the
Altar of The Ultra Sound where an object was observed
(gender not specified) under the skin of my leg right
where I said one would be found. On the screen this thing
looked like a headless common pin. “2.5mm hyperechoic
linear area in the area of swelling and redness which
could represent a foreign body...” is the final result
rendered. Back to the admitting treatment room where,
after reading several pages of the current Smithsonian
(Thank you Nita very much for that magazine), Dr Tim
appeared.

A great bear of a man, wearing, among other things, a
great silver bracelet. “Wait”, I said, “before you get
started, let's compare silver bracelets.” His bear was
bigger than my bear but we were instant bear buddies. He
palpated my wound, conferred with a nurse, and said: “I
think I'm going to try something new. I've never done this
before, just saw the idea on FaceBook.”
Oh great, I said, I charge extra for being a Guinea Pig.
He went off and returned a moment later with a syringe,
about the diameter of my thumb and twice as long, which
he'd cut off the needle fixture from the business end.
This he pressed against the entry wound of my swelling and
pulled on the plunger. My skin was sucked up a bit into
the syringe. He did this several times, Each time the
bubble of swelling was larger and a droplet of icky stuff
appeared. Then he removed the syringe and with a pair of
forceps deftly removed the foreign object from my leg.
Wow! Neat trick.
The doctor was out of the picture now and the nurse
returned to take “Your End of Visit Vitals” [just to make
sure one is still ambulatory?] after which I was free to
go. But wait, the ER visit was not over. There's another
few pages of Billing Information, Insurance ID Card, and
copies of everything for me. After all that I had the
temerity to ask: “What about the co-pay?” She said: “We'll
send you the bill.”

`Yes, that's it,'
said the Hatter with a sigh: `it's always tea-time,
and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.' The
Mad Hatter's Tea Party this year also included a Teddy
Bear's Picnic. Quite a party! Scones and crumpets
and muffins with honey and watermelon, and lots of tea of
course. We met at Nita's Toaster House on the Continental
Divide Trail in Pie Town.
The Ides of October
The grade at Train Spotter Hill was not as much of a
challenge as I'd sort of hoped for. BigBoy and his
entourage of vintage passenger cars made short work of the
hillclimb. The flyby as it were did not last long enough
for a careful appreciation of the mechanism nor more than
about thirty seconds of close-up video.
Getting there was half the fun. Departing Pie Town was as
usual fraught with last minute tasks, tying up incomplete
projects, packing tools, one last dump and fill, and of
course the ritual forgetting somethings important. This
time I remembered the sugar bowl.
Once The Cat Drag'd Out a day late the drive went
well. Cool weather, mostly all down hill from there, no
problem with over heating. There's at least one air leak
but not leaking enough to be a problem, yet. One night at
the Wally World Caravansary in Show Low and an afternoon
of shopping for Coffee-Coffee-Buzz-Buzz-Buzz at Basha's in
Maricopa got me to the Shawmut Switch and Train Spotter
Hill several days ahead of the crowd to watch for the
4-8-8-4 Union
Pacific BigBoy.

The several days of sunny weather gave me opportunity to
decompress, pick up two bags of trash, and fix a
couple of broken radios—which was when I discovered I'd
left my Fluke DVM on the red saw horse in Nita's shako.
On the 16th Union Pacific's 4014 came rumbling through.
Kodak would have made a small fortune had this celebration
been 50 years ago.

Click on the 4014 headlight to download a 30 second (10MB
.MKV format) video clip of Big Boy coming round the bend.
If MKV does not work then there is a 27MB WMV format here.
One more night on the road to fuel around and do the
Annual Weigh-In (the bus and toad combination scaled at
33,300 pounds) and The Cat Drag'd Inn to Winter
Quarters at Tonopah. Time to get this letter in the mail
and begin composing the next one.
Samhain and Internet Addiction?
Not sure what the hoopla is all about. My "phone"
-camera-datebook-alarm clock-magazine-check
book-transistor radio-music player... still has an off
button. Perhaps we need to recall Nancy Regan to teach us
how to D.A.R.E. to Just Say No!
This Just In--Monsoon Revisited
My friend in NOAA's Ark sent this chart
concerning the lack of precipitation in the Desert
Southwest this Summer.
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