Jax, Jesse, August

September 10, 2011

I was at home in a house that was a combination of our current house and an older one.  Several people were visiting.  I was sitting on one end of the couch and Bill Jackson was lying on the other end w/ his head on the armrest.  The couch was big enough that his feet weren’t touching me.  We were talking about Bibles and he was saying that he didn’t like The Message because, in his words, “it doesn’t encourage God”.  Rufus Campbell came and flopped down on the couch next to Jax.  There wasn’t enough room and it was just play anyhow, so Jax pushed him off onto the floor.

I asked, “What are you reading now?”, which Deb Riffle heard as she was walking by.  She thought I was talking to her and started telling me about a novel that she was in the middle of.  It had lots of intrigue and violence and she said she really enjoyed it, which surprised me.

Jim Egli came in and sat down at a little desk and opened a bible w/ tiny print.  The light wasn’t very good there either, and he didn’t have reading glasses, so he bent down w/ his face about 3” away from the page and curled his index finger and made a little pinhole to look through.  He was looking for something in relation to Jax’ comment.

Before he could comment Emma came down the stairs carrying Jesse saying, “Someone let the dog upstairs and look what he got into while no one was paying attention”.  She set him down and he was wearing a white, lace tutu.  He hated it and was completely humiliated, but Emma thought it was tremendously funny.  He tried to slink away, but I called for him to come to me and he eventually did, but he was only walking w/ his front legs, dragging his back legs as though he refused to acknowledge that the rear part of his body belonged to him.

There was a crowd of kids playing baseball in the front yard, which was huge, like the place we lived in Hopedale.  One of them really got hold of one and it bounced off the house making a big thud inside, enough to stop the conversation and make everyone look.  I went to the window to watch as another kid hit one that came up to the bushes in front of the house and stopped just short of it.  The outfielder came and looked around but couldn’t find the ball.  Since I’d seen where it went in I went out to help.

We looked around the bushes and found the nearly decomposed remains of two other balls.  One was just a leather shell with a hole in the top and the other was rubber that had hardened and broken.  Todd Milner was walking down a sidewalk next to the house that turned and went behind the house next to ours and he saw the ball lying there between the two houses where it had apparently rolled from behind the bushes.  He picked it up and tossed it back to the kids, then turned and walked off w/ two other guys, all three of whom were wearing black leather jackets w/ some motorcycle emblem on the back.

September 12, 2011

I was walking on a pathway that was cut or worn into solid rock, about waist deep.  There was a piece of plywood across it a little ways ahead that someone had tied in place w/ wire to make a door.  I could see small hands working on the wire, trying to untie it, but couldn’t see the person on the other side who wanted to get through.  I came up to the door and untied the wire and it was August standing on the other side.  When I opened it he didn’t come through but went back up the trail toward a shelter.

The shelter was about 20’ wide, 40’ long and 8’ tall and had a flat roof, dirt floor and 2’ diameter columns about every 10 feet that held the roof up.  My Grandpa Wegman was sitting under it in a folding chair and watching August run around.  He said, “That little boy has a lot of energy.”

Off to one side there was a car port that was recessed into the ground about the same depth as the trail.  It had the same height roof as the shelter, which put the roof 4 or 5 feet above ground and there was a row of bushes next to it blocking the view of the inside of the carport.  I saw Jesse run over and go down into the carport so I walked over by it and picked up a couple little rocks and tossed them between the bushes into the carport. 

I heard a woman yell, “Ow!”  She came out of the garage and said a rock had hit her.  I felt terrible and apologized.  I told her I’d seen my dog go in there and was trying to chase him back out.  She wasn’t really hurt, and said it was no problem, but there were a couple guys there with her who wanted to make a big deal out of it.  One of them asked me what I thought I was doing throwing rocks at a woman.  I repeated that I didn’t know she was there.  He huffed and puffed like he wanted to fight, but she told him to cool off.

A cliff

I was in a gift shop at a state park.  I walked out the back door and there was a flat open space about 50 feet long and the width of the store, then nothing.  I walked out to the edge and there was open air straight down about 100 feet.  No fence, no warning signs, just air.  The store and space behind were apparently built on a cliff overhang.  The edge wasn’t a straight line, but stuck out farther in some places than others.  It was all very solid and there was no curve or taper down, just flat ground, then air.

At one point there was a column of rock, almost like a stalagmite, that stretched up from the valley beyond the base of the cliff and ended just below the store level and just beyond the edge.  I looked at it and realized that it had a columnar structure, like basalt, with flat hexagonal tops tapering all the way down, so it would be easily climbable.   The first step would just mean stepping out 3’ and down 3’ to a flat spot about the size of a chair seat and then I’d be able to climb my way down with solid footing at reasonable distances, but that first step would be tricky. 

I’m not sure why, but I really wanted to avoid going back through the store.  Of course I had to weigh that against the notion that if I slipped or lost my balance on that first step I would die.  But I was pretty confident that it would be no trouble.  I thought of the many times I’ve been rock hopping at various state parks – I can’t remember ever missing a step when it mattered.  So I told myself, just look at the landing spot - the step.  Don’t look at the air all around.  Then I pondered whether I should jump w/ both feet or step down w/ one.  I ruled out lying down on my belly and touching my legs to the landing spot, because then I’d have to push myself upright away from the edge and that seemed chancier than jumping or stepping.  However I got there I’d then have to get down to hands and knees to be able to start the climb down, all on a space about 2’ in diameter w/ nothing to hold onto about 100’ in the air.

I decided the best thing to do was the two legged hop, so I hopped, landed, and didn’t even try to straighten back up, but let the momentum carry me down to a crouch, put my hands down on the platform and hung my legs down to the first step below.  From there I always had places to hold onto and places to put my feet before I moved my hands, so I was comfortable heading down.

At one point I had the thought to take a picture.  I noticed that the cover over the battery slot in the bottom of my camera was slid off to one side and the flat, rechargeable battery seemed to be missing.  I slid the cover back and instead of sealing up the bottom of the camera it exposed the flat battery.  This was puzzling, so I slid it back the other way and now there was a cylindrical hole exposed that would have fit a C battery, but it was empty.  I thought it was strange that the cover was made so that it would cover whichever battery I was using, but wouldn’t cover both.