Good Old Days! Or, How I First Started Recycling.

A LONG time ago, in a small country community where people helped their neighbors without thought of being paid or filled with beer as a reward, I was helping a neighbor clean out his basement.  My neighbor was old, about ten times my age, and I was about eight years old.  I was a stick with skin on it, not strong, but I had endurance and speed.  I could only carry small boxes or bags of "this gets thrown out" up the stairs and out to the garage for more sorting, but I could run them up the stone stairs, out the door, and across the back yard in just a minute.  Then dash back to see if he was ready with the next box or bag.  The last box to appear was much larger than all the rest had been and I remember Mr. Rosewarne saying something like "I'd sell this for a dollar if anyone wanted it."  Looking inside the box I found that it contained a bicycle.  I immediately told him that if he was going to sell it, I would buy it but I would have to make payments because I did not have a full dollar saved up yet.

My allowance at that time was 40 cents a week, a nickel for each year in age.  Every Saturday we received our allowance and I would put a quarter into savings leaving me with 15 cents to spend.  Usually a nickel was spent on Coke and the rest on bubblegum and comic books.  I realize now that Mr. Rosewarne was probably well aware of my financial situation.  He agreed to sell me the bicycle for 50 cents now and 25 cents a week for two weeks.  He also warned me that the bicycle had never been put together because the person he had originally purchased it for had moved away and had gotten a much better bicycle as a moving present from his parents.  The tires and inner tubes might be bad because he had put the bicycle into the basement many years before.  I informed him that I could take care of any problems that it might have as I half carried, half dragged it up the stairs, out the door and down across his side yard and our sandy driveway to our garage.

A bicycle! One of my very own!  I quickly started removing items from the box.  In those days a bicycle arrived in pieces, completely.  There were no parts pre-assembled, you had to do all of the work yourself.  There were no instructions in the box. There was not even a diagram of how the parts needed to be assembled.  No  problem.  I would figure it out.  Axles, washers, nuts, and gears.  Wait! GEARS!  It was a 3-Speed!  This was no run of the mill bicycle!  I dragged out our "Sears and Roebuck" catalog and thumbed back to the well worn section on bicycles.  There I found just what I needed, a diagram of all the parts in a 3-speed bicycle in an exploded diagram so you could order just the part you needed to replace.  Only, I needed it to see what order to put this advanced bicycle machine together properly.  It took me a full day to assemble the bicycle except for the tires.  The tires might be OK to ride on for a little while but the inner tubes would not hold air and they were in such bad shape that they could not be fixed.  With all of my money for the next two weeks accounted for there was only one place to possibly find the parts I needed... the dump!

Today they are called "Landfills" but back when I was a kid they were just dumps.  My father worked as a heavy equipment operator and repairman for an excavation company (he fixed bulldozers, front end loaders, cranes, trucks, etc).  He made parts and tools that he could not obtain otherwise and I often helped him in the shop.  I had used the Oxygen/Acetylene torch and the Arc Welder a few times under his supervision, and I had full access to his hand tools or the drill press.  My dad often had to take items to the dump for work and we would tag along with him to see if anyone had thrown away any interesting items that we might use to make a go-cart or other contraption.  We often found broken bicycles and since they were metal pipes, we usually ended up going home with more that we actually took to the dump.  On the next trip to the dump after I had acquired my new bicycle I did find tires and tubes that might work, and several spares too.  I was in business!  With a little testing I found two good inner tubes and was soon riding my new bicycle around the neighborhood.  THANK YOU MR. ROSEWARNE!

Herding Cats

If you regularly watch any kind of nature television programs then you should be familiar with the herding of caribou or other similar animals.  They run for long distances at high speed and the photographer is in a plane or helicopter filming from above looking down upon the herd.  The animals bunch together when they pass through a narrow point in their travels to the point that they are shoulder to shoulder.  Have you got the picture firmly planted in your mind?

Now imagine that the herd scene is taken from your walking height and the herd that you are watching consists of just cats.  OK, now reduce the numbers of the herd until you end up with three cats being herded in front of you.  They run ahead of you seemingly with some urgent purpose in mind, some desired destination.  And what is the destination?  The bathroom.  Yes, the bathroom.

I spend a lot of time at my computer, surfing the web, filling out job applications, playing games, etc.  I sit in an old worn out computer station swivel chair.  The kind with five foot rests with wheels sticking out from a central post.  It has a handle to adjust the height if you lift up while you pull up on the handle the seat raises a little bit.  If you apply a little of your weight to the seat while you lift the handle you can make it go down slowly until you reach the height that you prefer.  The seat swivels around and has an adjustable backrest that goes back/forward or up/down (no fancy stuff like leaning back, or adjustable arms).  The backrest swivels so that maximum surface meets your back as you lean back onto it.  The hydraulic lifter has some sort of spring on top so that when you get up the seat springs up a few inches until it reaches a mechanical stop.  With the seat higher and when you sit down it lowers back to the normal position with some resistance.  I'm not sure what function it does, maybe is is to boost you in getting up and to cushion your sitting when you "Plop" onto the chair.  The seat cushion is fastened to a plastic shell which in turn is mounted onto a metal plate welded to the top of the hydraulic lifter piston.  Only the plastic shell is broken on one the left side and I sit on a slightly left-leaning seat.  I am no longer getting the cushion support so after long periods of sitting it feels like I am sitting directly on the left side of the mounting plate. The rivets that held the backrest to the swivel mount broke a long time ago so I replaced them with a piece of bent coat-hanger sticking through the mount like an axle.  By now you should be asking yourself; "What does this have to do with Herding Cats?"

While I am at my computer I usually have the company of three of our four cats.  "The Girls" hang out with me. If all three are not on the bed right behind me, then Miney (Mine-ee) is sleeping under my chair between the legs, Baby and Missy are somewhere close.  Being in the condition that it is, my chair makes a bit of noise when I get up.  The backrest rattles, the seat pops up and thumps against the stop, and the hydraulic lift makes a whooshing sound.  This seems to be a signal for all three cats to stop what they are doing and run ahead of me to the bathroom.  It does not matter why I am going to the bathroom, I get the company of all three cats.  Baby, being the most nimble, jumps up onto the window sill and sits.  Missy usually jumps up onto the sink counter where the food is kept.  And Miney stays on the floor (she seems to have a problem in jumping up onto things).  When I turn to go out the door, all three cats again run ahead and usually end up on the bed.

I'm not sure why the "Three Girls" act this way.  Perhaps they are trying to protect me, or maybe it is a "Pride Movement" when I get up from my chair.

Wildlife rebuilds after fire

As I was walking through the burned area from 3 weeks ago, I noticed this line in the ash/sand.  At first I thought it was from someone drawing with a stick.

But someone drawing with a stick would not have gone across another stick in the ground making a mark like this.  So I looked closer.

And much closer I could see that it was an ant trail that had been cleaned out by the ants.  I noticed the husks of some seeds laying beside the trail.  Perhaps when we get some rain in a month or so, the seeds will sprout and the area will turn green again.

Is this my friend's house?

The city has finally removed the road blocks from the area of my neighborhood that was burned by the fire on September 5, 2011.  I walked down the street to see how well a friend's house did in the fire.  I think this picture is the house.  It used to be a beautiful two story home and now it is a pile of brick and charcoal.
I wonder if they are going to put a "car for sale" sign on their car.. it is fairly new as I remember it, low mileage.  It could use a paint job (who is it... Earl Shibe? $299 paint special) but it should sell good.