TheBanyanTree: Honey Moon

[Dale M. Parish]

My son Luke said he was only reading, and he would be glad to go up
to the ranch to help me load the freezer.  I told him that I'd go
ahead and start taking the camper off my pickup while he drove over
from Beaumont.  

It was probably only in the low 90s F, but the camper had been
sitting out in the sun all morning, and the navy blue top had heated
the thing up.  I went back inside and got some old T-shirts from the
rag drawer to keep from burning my hands.  I routinely take it off
by myself, positioning myself under the center of gravity and then
raising up on my knees and walking to the back of the tailgate and
stepping down with it.  But when I came up, it wasn't balanced, and
I tried to catch it with my head.  Bad mistake.  I quickly branded
the aluminum frame member into my bald spot and leaned forward to
take the weight on my khaki shirt.  Still too hot!  I let it slide over
on the rail of the bed and crawled out.  Took a minute to get it
down into the grass.  HOT!  Next time I'll wait for Luke. ;-)

We stopped in Mauriceville for a bottle of tea-- mine Liptons and
his Arizona-- before hitting the road north.  At Newton, we stopped
again at the pawn shop and picked up a few two-dollar CDs and an old
Gene Wilder movie, before heading on up to the ranch.  

We stopped inside the entrance and took down the population sign--
POPULATION 4.5.  That was a 2nd generation joke-- the previous sign
had said 9.5-- the family of seven Mexicans, Daddy, my step mother
and their spoiled, blind, incontinent minature poodle.  When the
Mexicans moved out, someone gave him a new sign to lower the
population.   I'm going to hang it in the office back in Orange.

We backed the truck up to the door to the bunk room where the
freezer is located and Luke threw and I caught everything in the
freezer and dropped it in the tailgate of the truck.  Next, we went
inside and emptied out the freezer over the refrigerator in the
kitchen and most of what was left in the refrigerator.  Daddy's been
dead nearly a year and a half, and some of the stuff in the
refrigerator was stuff that only he ate. 

We drove down past the hog pen with a couple of trash cans.  I
didn't want to leave any trash, so Luke and I began the unpleasant
task of butchering every bag and box of frozen stuff, emptying out
every jar.  One of the jars of Italian dressing had broken when it
had been dropped into the trash can, and I cut my index fingertip
deeply enough that we had to stop and dig out the first aid kit and
bandage it to stop it bleeding.  It gets awkward to use a knife to
cut open boxes and bags in bandaided fingers.  Mustard, mayonaise,
wild rice, frozen mash potatoes, TV dinners, boxes of frozen
strawberries, dozens of packages of venison and beef, salad
dressings, barbecue sauces, dried up yogurt, butter, margerine, and
lots of stuff in ZipLoc bags that we never could identify.  The
coons, possums, skunks, bobcats and coyotes will have a field night
tonight.  But we both bet on the fire ants getting the best of the
stuff.  We filled two 30 gallon trash containers up with just the
boxes and bags and wrappers and jars that came out of that freezer
and the refrigerator.   There's entirely too much packaging on
American products today.  We'd cut open a box to find that it
contained a plastic molded serving tray in which every compartment
had an individually bagged component, the whole of which was sealed
into another bag.  Took us the better part of an hour to open all
the frozen packaging and empty the contents.  

We went back to the camp and washed out the other trash cans and put
a lit on the one we were going to take back with all the wrappings.
We knew that if we left them up there, badly as we wanted to, that
the critters would have it scattered all over when we came back.  
The grass is already belly-button high in the yard.  With no cows on
the place, it's gotten away and there are too many weeds.  We need
to get the place leased if we're not going to be able to sell it
soon.  Got to call some of the hay mongers up there and see if
they'll cut it for halves. 

Luke and I both felt pretty slimy by the time we got the trailer
hitched and the freezer tied down.  Forgot to put the license tag on
the trailer, and found that this trailer had no lights nor license
tag holder, so we made one out of barbed wire and hit the road.  
Back in Orange County, as we come throught the gate, we see that the
bee keeper has restacked the hives.  The tallow trees are in bloom--
his mainstay-- and he's stacked hives up two extra supers to take
advantage of it.  Last week, we had a little blow, and several of
them blew over, and one row cascaded over with four hives all
leaning onto the one at the end that was supporting them.  It was a
mess.  I'd called him to tell him he needed to check those hives and
he promised to get to them that week.  

We unloaded the trailer and recharged the air tank.  At home
Luke helped me lift the camper in the dark and place it on the
truck, admonishing me not to drive off tomorrow without remembering
to buckle it down.  We both want a hot bath and a cool shower.  He
 heads home to finish his book and I head to the laundry room to strip
out of the dirty clothes and then to bathe.  

Ain't it great that they invented Sattiday Nite Baths?  I'd have hated to have waited another week.

Hugs,
Dale
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Dale M. Parish           |     Lamar University's Token         
628 Parish Road          |         Perpetual Student       
Orange TX 77632-8055     |       dmp8910 at hal.lamar.edu
(409) 745-3899           |    http://hal.lamar.edu/~dmp8910  
             
   




--
Dale M. Parish 
628 Parish Rd 
Orange TX 77632 
(409) 745-3899 FAX 745-1581 
http://hal.lamar.edu/~dmp8910