unbridled spirit

now that i live in the land of the unbridled spirit, i think i want to get a horse and name it “colonel sanders.” race horses are always named things like “war admiral” and “man of war” and “dumber than a road apple.” (that's the one that loses all the races because it’s too busy ogling all the pretty girl horses.)

but i would name mine “colonel sanders.” it would be an especially appropriate name, because i would want a fat, lazy horse that had been put to pasture years ago. one that liked to search for particularly tender clumps of grass, and had gray hairs on its nose. i wouldn’t ride it or anything. i’m actually afraid of riding a horse. this comes from the few experiences i've had with those old, tired trail horses that are just supposed to follow each other in a line down a familiar path, but who, whenever i happen to be the rider suddenly decide that they've had enough of the quiet life and feel like taking off cross-country to see the world. that's another story entirely. suffice to say, i think a dilapidated horse would be a fun and stylish way to tip the tall grass by the fences without ever having to bust out the weed whacker.

this would be a horse for whom the very thought of being ridden casts his whole world into upheaval. occasionally i’d put charlie up on his back and he would cast me a sardonic glance. i imagine him standing so still that my goldfinches build nests above his tail, or maybe k’tigu decides his back is a good place to sun herself.

i don’t even know why the idea appeals to me so much. maybe just the idea of some otherwise washed up critter to love. i could feed him sugar cubes and lean on him. of course, i do have joe for that, but i don’t know what he’d do if i tried to feed him sugar cubes.

a phone call from ozzie

i was sitting around the holler one day when, as happens frankly more often than i like, the phone rang. i picked it up, expecting either a telemarketer or my husband. i tend to hang up on one of the two. i’ll leave which to your powers of deduction. instead i heard a distorted voice on the other end that sounded somewhat like my brother-in-law, jim, might if he was trying to mess with me.

“jimmy?” i asked.
“this is ozzie osborn,” the roughened voice said.
“ozzie osborn, huh? so how are you?”
my mother-in-law, who was visiting at the time, shot me a quizzical look.
“um, i have a complaint,” ‘ozzie’ said. “i’m sick of everybody always asking for my autograph.”
“okay,” i told him, “i haven’t asked for your autograph, but i’ll spread the word.”
“um, okay. um, ‘bye.” i guess ozzie’s not much of a conversationalist.

just one more of the nuances of country and small town life. i guess there are, in fact, still people out there bored enough to make prank calls. either that or i’m having elaborate hallucinations. i guess i’ll let you know if i receive any important messages from the almighty.

when you come to a horse in the road

before we ever got the washer and dryer, charlie and i spent considerable time at the scuzziest laundromat on the face of the earth. it was returning from one of these laundering trips that we came upon something unusual. once you get off the state road, the rest of the roads out to the holler are hilly, twisty, and narrow. at one point, you come to a little colony of sorts where eight or so houses are clustered and it is here that we make a turn by a dilapidated red barn. we were driving the blue truck, which has a turning radius little better than the average aircraft carrier. once i maneuvered it around the corner, we were met with a humorous sight. smack in the middle of the road, just as if she belonged there, stood a beautiful red-brown mare. it was a good thing she was near between a major curve and a turn off, or surely someone coming from either direction would have hit her. i rolled down my window and said, “what are you doing here, buddy?” and she gave me a look that plainly said, “i live here. what are you doing here?” ultimately, she moseyed most of the way off the road, at least enough so that i could drive around her. when i looked back, i saw she had resumed cropping the side ditch and enjoying the sunshine.

i found the whole situation so remarkable that i had to tell someone about it. i dialed my parents from my cell phone. reaching their answering machine, i left this message: “this is your ‘things you don’t see every day’ update. driving home from the laundromat, i turned the corner and found a horse in the middle of the road.”

the following day, my parents were meeting us at our old house to follow us down to the holler to see our new place and help with whatever they could. it was late in the afternoon when we came through town, and eventually turned that same corner.

there she was again, just a little further from her previous position, standing for all the world as if she belonged in the middle of the road. i turned to dad and said, “well, i guess it’s something you do see every day.”

the cat 3

one day, i had just laid down for a rest when i heard joe from the front door, “come here! come here! quick!” presuming he had chopped his finger off in the garage, i vaulted from bed and went running. instead of a severed limb, much to my relief, he showed me a little lizard catching sun on the driveway. it had a yellow and black striped body that tapered into a green and black tail which ended in a blue-purple tip. i looked it up in my reptile book and found it to be either a female or an adolescent five lined skink.

i have always loved reptiles and was happy to learn that there were some indigenous to our area. ultimately, it turns out this one was probably an adolescent, but i’m getting ahead of myself.

another afternoon, i was hanging out laundry when the great gray lump finally decided to show her hunting prowess. when she stalked past the clothes line to the clump of weeds that currently passes for a flower bed, i wondered what had attracted her attention. i found out, a moment too late, that it was one of my family of mourning doves. well, two actually. they must have been making out in the bushes, and one of them flew away fast enough, while the other didn’t. i whacked the great hunter with a dish towel that i had in my hand, but too late. she had already killed the dove. i laid it in the fence row so its mate could mourn.

ever since, k’tigu has been trying to prove her loyalty by delivering various dead things to our doorstep. i generally forgive her for the gifts, but i wasn’t too happy when joe showed me the severed tale and dead body of the skink, who must not have been experienced enough to get away. at least we won’t have mouse problems.

there is only one creature who is safe around here, and that’s the resident toad in the garage. he’s a big fellow who comes out to blink at us whenever it rains. often, the cat goes up to sniff him. he gives her a disdainful expression, because he knows, as we do, that no sane cat wants to eat a toad. he is the king of all he surveys. now, if only she would show me that much respect.

skipping town

for some reason, i can never sleep on a night before i have to fly somewhere. i think it's because i’m carefully planning out all of the important things that i need to put in my checked baggage so the airline can lose them. this time around, i tried to go to bed at midnight, which sounds late, but is, in fact, pretty good, considering i put charlie to bed at 11:00 and then packed, cleaned, balanced the checkbook, and wrote a note telling joe where every conceivable item he might need while i was gone was located in the house. it didn't matter anyway, because i couldn't sleep until 2:00 a.m. during that time, i pelted God with inane questions like, "why can't i ever have an excess of adrenaline when the dishes are piled up in the sink twelve feet high and the energy would be useful?" He didn't answer me directly, but i'm definitely going to save that one for when i get to heaven.

so, to sleep at 2:00, and up at 5:45. i guess adrenaline is useful sometimes. i launched out of bed and ping-ponged off of the ceiling wide awake and ready to go through airport security. unfortunately i fell three quarters of the way back asleep during the drive to the airport, so when i actually got to security, i was mostly inclined to stumble and drool on myself. i guess this worked in my favor though: i didn't look like a threat.

flying to winnipeg via minneapolis was an exciting prospect. i've never been out of the country before, and i was also going to get a sister-in-law in the bargain. but before that i had to get nauseated, pained, and then menaced by border security. i never fly well, and this time around, i was on a little 60 seat job, near the back, with a window seat. it sounds like a good setup. it would have been a good setup if the individual next to me had not been large enough to take up half of my seat as well as hers. that made it a little cramped. add to that a ten year old boy in the seat in front of me with exhibitionist tendencies who gave the entire plane a blow-by-blow analysis at 100 decibels of everything he noticed outside the window and on the flight attendant’s cart, complete with dramatic screaming when we hit minor turbulence. i couldn't decide whom to smack-- him or his parents-- so i just had to grimace and bear it.

the next plane was bigger and i was relieved. that is, until i realized that "e" comes between "d" and "f." oh, joy-- the middle seat of three, and right on top of the turbine too. to top it off, the man to the right of me felt compelled to fall asleep in the sprawling pose with which my two year old son usually occupies his crib. then the two rows of men behind me had a spirited discussion at the top of their voices about all of the possible hunting and fishing spots in the entire world, how many times they've been to them, and the exact dimensions of everything they ever killed in each. had i not been to ill to speak, i might have found myself pushed beyond good manners to turn around and tell them that the plane they were on was about to become numbered among those great hunting spots, as i was going to shoot them if they didn't keep it down to a dull roar.

but all good times must end, so we landed in winnipeg, and i, significantly greener than usual, staggered through customs. this was a fun experience.
"what is your destination?"
"canada, obviously."
"how long will you be staying?"
"three days."
"what is the purpose of your visit?"
"i'm going to my brother's wedding."
"you were born in the states?"
"yes."
"why is your brother getting married here?"
"because he's marrying a canadian. why, isn't that allowed?"
"will you be taking any fruits or vegetables to the wedding?"
"yes. where i come from, we pelt the newlyweds with artichokes as they run down the isle."

obviously, i didn't say some of what i was thinking, or he would've invited me to stay in canada a lot longer, in a holding cell.

winnipeg is a pleasant city, except for any time you want to drive anywhere. then you wonder if the place was laid out by a drunken orangutan. there’s actually a place called “confusion corner.” and that was where the church was. but it turned out fine. after getting lost twice on the trip to the rehearsal, my parents and i were well prepared for the drive to the wedding. one simply has to treat merging as a personal challenge, and everything goes smoothly.

joel and sue’s wedding was simple and beautiful. sue had flowers in her hair and a jade necklace, but none of it compared to her beatific smile. joel looked at her in a way he has truly never looked at another person, and i knew that his heart had been moved by her as it had never moved before.

afterwards, i was as certain of their shared love for each other as i was of their shared desire to punch the next person who aimed a camera at them or blew bubbles in their faces. as the best man said, though, when you get married in a public ceremony, you bring such things upon yourself.

everywhere i went those three days, there were mother’s kissing their little boys on the tops of their heads. three days turned out to be a long time to be so far away from the top of charlie’s head.

the return trip was almost as fun as the way out had been. my flight was at 7:30 in the morning and when you have to go back through the border authority, they want you to get there three days ahead of time. okay, ninety minutes. at any rate, we set our alarm for 4:45 just to be on top of things. we got checked out and loaded in plenty of time so that we could get lost and do three u-turns on the way to the airport. my parents navigating is a lot like a three stooges routine, not because they can’t read a map, but because they can’t agree on what to do after they’ve read it. however, we eventually found a route that all parties could agree on. i didn’t care. i was too slaphappy from lack of sleep. we were almost to the airport, when mom brought up the question of whether or not we were going to be there early enough. i noticed that the vehicle clock said 6:01. but i was relatively sure that was the indiana time, meaning that locally it would’ve been 5:01. i said, “mom, i think i’m going to have a ridiculous amount of time.” when we all realized that it was, in fact, five in the morning manitoba time, a debate ensued as to how on earth that might have happened. we never did figure it out, but i definitely had enough time to go through customs and then fall sound asleep on a bench at the gate and almost miss my flight.

i made it onboard only to find myself in seat “e” again. this time it was okay because everyone else was too tired to be obnoxious, and i firmly claimed my arm rest so that no uncouth sprawling could happen on either side of me. i fell asleep before we began to taxi, and woke up when the wheels hit the tarmac in minneapolis.

in minneapolis i had so much time i could’ve crab walked from arrival gate to departure gate, then sat and read a book until i was tired again. that was when they announced a delay because of a problem with the aircraft. always a fun thing to hear before you get into a vehicle that is going to take you 35,000 feet in the air. still, i exercised my uncanny ability to fall asleep anywhere under any circumstances and went to sleep on the floor tucked up next to one of the gate desks. i woke up in a panic. i don’t know whether that was because i was afraid i’d missed my flight or because of the two children who came running past my head like a herd of rhinos every thirty seconds. they were seriously old enough to know better. i felt like teaching them to be considerate of others by stretching right as they came level with my leg but, as it turned out, i was seriously old enough to know better too.

when we did finally get on the plane, i actually had a very good seat: last row, next to the window. i watched the midwest pass beneath us until i fell asleep, and then awoke just before landing. unfortunately, when i landed in cincinnati, it seems my bag had planned a more extensive trip. which brings me back to that night of sleeplessness and careful planning.

at the laundromat

at the risk of being unfairly charged with libel, i’ll change the names here to protect the guilty. on the evening of the laundry drenching, charlie and i went into town to “smith’s wash-n-dry” to dry said laundry. “smith’s” would be better called “smith’s washing machines that don’t work and dryers that never get clothes beyond damp” but i suppose they couldn’t fit that on the sign. so i split my load between two dryers, put in about twenty seven dollars worth of quarters, which bought me thirty two minutes per dryer, and then took charlie off to macdonalds.

as a general rule, the french fries at the macdonalds here in town are slightly burnt and the burgers are very lopsided, and anyway, i wasn’t really in the mood for fatburger. so i went to the only chinese restaurant in town, aptly named something like, “chinese food.” if you’re ever in my town and want chinese food, you better have your own high chair and carry lots of cash, because “chinese food” is not equipped to serve anyone normal. or am i the only mother of a two year old in kentucky who doesn’t normally carry around a wad of bills?

so we got our leaning tower of double cheeseburgers and headed back to the laundromat where we found our two loads not even remotely close to dry. i wish i could say i was surprised, but frankly, i think i could probably dry my clothes faster by blowing on them if it wouldn't give me an aneurism in the process. so we killed time while waiting for the dryers by blatantly disobeying the sign that instructs patrons, "do not play with the laundry carts." when i got too tired to whiz charlie around the room in a wheeled cart any more, he climbed up into the driver's seat of an arcade game that he likes because it makes him feel like he's a drivin' man, and i passed the time by pacing and glowering impotently at the dryers. i was deeply immersed in this activity when i swore i heard a meow. this being the second time in a month that i had meowing hallucinations, i was seriously considering getting a cat scan. no pun intended. but i kept hearing it. and it sounded like a distressed kitten. so i began to search for the source. as if by magic, now that i actually had something to do, my laundry because suddenly dry as a bone. but i was determined to find the kitten. so i kept searching and calling, "kittykittykitty," to charlie's great amusement. i was about to give up, when i saw a small black streak run into the island of malfunctioning washers in the middle of the place. i took charlie's burger that he wasn't eating and went to try to entice the kitten out, ignoring the voice in my head that told me that if i brought another stray home, joe was going to make me sleep out on the porch with it.

when i was a kid, i had a painting of a stray kitten sitting surrounded by litter next to what appeared to be the big top tent at a dilapidated circus. this kitten had a tiny body and a huge head, like japanese animation characters, but with giant yellow eyes, it was the very soul of sadness. as a child, this picture filled me with the almost irrepressible urge to cry. the kitten at the laundromat could have been the model for this painting. it wouldn't come to me, but looked at me with huge, yellow eyes that spoke volumes of despair. it ran from me out the door into the rain, and no amount of calling would bring it back. so i left my burger, crumbled into bits, just inside the door of the laundromat, and drove home with charlie in the passenger seat and melancholy in my heart.

reasons i'm glad it rained on my laundry

the washing machine that the laundry benefactors gave us works very well. the dryer is in need of a switch or something before it will be in running order. believe me, though, i'm not complaining. to get a washer and dryer for about the thirty bucks it will take to get the switch it needs, well, you just can't beat that with a big, heavy stick. anyway, being dryerless hasn't been a problem, considering that it has been hotter than hell's half acre here lately. i wash a load, hang it on the line, and in five minutes, it's dry. in six minutes it spontaneously combusts, so i do have to keep an eye out or we'll be going through an awful lot of underwear.

so the other day (country lingo for "some ambiguous day that could be any time since i was born") i got up to another bug zapper day, so hot that even the dragon flies were gasping, and i thought, "perfect. i can do half the wash today and it will dry with no trouble." i also thought, "crap, i promised joe i'd try to do some mowing. maybe i'll drop a bowling ball on my toe to get out of it," but that's another story. so i washed and hung two loads. they dried. i rescued them from the line before all that was left was a fine ash ghost in the shape of the former garment. i washed a third load, lost a third of my body weight in sweat while hanging it out, and charlie didn't even fight me about going inside for once. " 'ot,' " he said. "yessireebob," i said, " 'ot' doesn't cover it. soon there will be spontaneous fission and we will all be gone in the blink of an eye." perhaps i'm overstating it just a tad.

anyway, we went inside and were watching baby einstein for the three thousand seven hundred eighty third time (that day), when i heard a noise i couldn't figure out. it seemed to be coming from the stove, so i was on my way past the kitchen window to see what it could be when i happened to glance up and find that a torrential downpour was blowing in at a thirty degree angle under my porch roof. so much for dry laundry. but in this case, i wasn't going to complain. for one thing, it saved me simultaneously from having to mow grass in the nuclear heat and from having to befall bowling ball related injuries. for another thing, we depend on rainwater to fill our cistern so that we have water for washing, flushing, and showering. some people drink it too, but i haven't quite gotten over the possible amoeba content yet.

the cistern phenomenon gives the lie to the common city slicker misconception that kentucky hill folk are too dumb to come in out of the rain. in fact, they are normal people of normal intelligence. it is simply the fact that, with a cistern, you need to let your roof "wash" for a few minutes before dashing into violent thunderstorms to flip the switch that reroutes the gutter catchment system so your cistern will fill. as a matter of fact, i believe this drill has bumped your average "country bumpkin" up a few notches in the skill arena because they have learned to predict lightening strikes and dodge golf ball sized hail. city slickers just stay inside. what's that about?

so i let the roof wash, then sprinted into the sheeting rain, flipping the switch just in time for the rain to dwindle to a trickle and then piddle out completely. if it hadn't been for the fact that the sky predicted more rain on its way, i would've been inventing new swear words at that point. but i thought i'd better wait to call down the wrath of the almighty and see if it rained enough to fill our cistern up at least a reasonable degree. and it did. in fact, it rained on and off all afternoon, which meant three things: 1) we were good for water for another couple of weeks. 2) i had a legitimate reason for not mowing grass. 3) a trip to the grungiest place on earth-- no, not a honky tonk bathroom. the laundromat.

good times.

the cat 2

one night i decided to sit and brush “catface” for a while. i must have brushed her for an hour and, to be honest, i’m surprised there was anything left when i was done. i’m not entirely convinced she is a corporeal cat, but rather possibly just a large, animated ball of fur. i could have made a fake mohair sweater from the fur i pulled out of the brush. but still, it was a very pleasant experience for all parties. she has a purr that puts a diesel to shame, which prompted me to reflect that, despite her fatness and laziness, she is still a nice sort and doesn’t really deserve to be called “catface.” maybe we’ll call her “caterpillar” or “cummins” or “mac.” but no, none of those strike me as especially feminine.

then i thought of how charlie gets so excited every time we are about to go outside. he looks at me and says, “k’tigutigutigu!” with his little tongue darting in and out between his lips. i think i’ve hit on it. we’ll call her “k’tigu,” which will sound exotic, possibly african, but in fact will just be the cute mispronunciation of “kitty” that my two year old came up with. i find myself strangely comfortable with it. i haven’t asked the cat what she thinks. she’ll just want me to harvest more fur.

the armchair bird watcher

on the day i was up at mary’s house washing the infamous poo sheets, i noticed an abundance of goldfinches on her clothes line. the reason for this, she explained, was the pair of feeders hanging at either end of the line-- finch feeders, full of thistle seed that can be bought at your average hardware store by the bag full. i had already noted at the independence day bash that the hummingbirds around the haley hills seem to be unusually bold. butch has feeders hanging all around his spectacular wrap around porch, and these little hovercrafts came up for sips with a crowd of people standing barely two feet away.

when we moved into the holler, i found, amongst other objects abandoned in the cabinets, a hummy feeder that had seen better days. as a testament to my miserly nature, i spent twenty minutes scrubbing black gunk off the red plastic with a soapy tooth brush rather than go buy a feeder for probably about seven buck. i filled it with sugar water, but lacked the red food coloring that attracts the hummies most strongly. for the first few days, the feeder was a failure. but on the next trip to town, i bought a finch feeder (yellow for goldfinch luck), some thistle seed, and some red food dye and returned home to see if i could stir any birds from the woods across the road. within the week i had two hummies, and one goldfinch on my clothes line. the hummies are quite brave. they hover at the feeder a few feet above "catface's" head as though daring her, although i think they’d have to land on her head for her pulse even to go above flat line.

along the hedge line there is a bird apartment that my grandfather used to call a marten house. i don’t know if this is because it is supposed to house martens, or was invented by martin short, or even what a marten looks like, but our particular house seems to be home mainly to a flock of swallows and one spectacular royal shaded eastern bluebird. add to that the two fat mourning doves that sit loving each other on the far clothesline post, and i no longer mind washing the dishes because of the view from the window above the sink.

the drive into town is a bird watcher’s boulevard. mark haley is a tree lined road... well, more of a one lane chip'n'sealed goat track, but overhung with lush green forest in the summer. it is fairly common to see three bluebirds, a cardinal, a goldfinch, some suicidal rabbits (after summer breeding season is over and they feel the need to thin their numbers) and a chipmunk or two on the way into town, and then again on the way back.

perhaps my favorite of all “my” birds, as i have come to think of them, are the common sparrows. a mother sparrow has built a nest on one of the track lights under our porch roof, and i pouted at joe so he didn’t knock it down. there were four little eggs in it up until a couple of weeks ago when we noticed momma and dadda bird flying back and forth with bugs for dinner. now from our bedroom window we can see four little heads with open beaks sticking out, heads covered in gray feathers like little punk rockers waiting for fame. or maybe just waiting for some nice, tasty regurgitated worm.

joe has hung two little birdhouses from the porch roof edge as well. on the bottom of each is the inscription “stolen from ed zunic on” and then a date. ed was a dear friend of joe’s from his pennsylvania hunting lodge days who preceded us to heaven a little over two years ago. i think it a fitting tribute to see his birdhouses hanging outside our windows. i have seen at least one little sparrow wrestling twigs through one round doorway, so i know they are being lived in now. hopefully there will be some babies for my little songbird in her white house next year.

the cat 1

one night we were sitting out on the porch swing, a pastime we have embraced now that the night sounds include cricket song instead of deafening car stereo and the nightlife includes tree frogs instead of drunken brawlers, when a sound came from the darkness in the general direction of the driveway. i said to joe, “was that a cat?” and answering meow saved him from the need to tell me that my auditory hallucinations should generally be kept private.

out from under the red truck she sauntered, a fat gray and white lady rubbing our ankles and, frankly, kissing up for all she was worth. but it worked. after some kissing up of my own, i convinced joe to let me feed her some old taco meat from the fridge. charlie was so taken with her that he immediately started to follow her around, even imitating the way she rubbed between joe’s ankles. he heard me call her, “kittykittykitty,” and even tried to pronounce it himself, though it came out, “k'tigutigutigu.” i couldn’t deny the boy his hearts desire. at least, that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.

when we got out of bed the next morning, there was a gray face peering in the glass at the bottom of the front door, and plaintive meowing could be heard faintly through the windows. we had been adopted. so i dug out the old pet bowls and the next time i went to town, i picked up some cat food and a cat brush. it did occur to me that i might be spoiling this creature that we had so cavalierly dubbed “catface.” but over time it became evident that she couldn’t really get much more spoiled than she was.

our new mistress spends most of her time lying around on the lawn mower seat, or the lawn chairs when it gets too hot. whenever i go outside, she demands to be fed. for a while we thought she might be pregnant, so lethargic and round she was, but on second thought, we’re pretty certain she’s just fat and lazy.

the mayor

the next character to stop by the holler was the mayor himself. not the mayor of the town or anything. someone much more important. butch is known to all the residents here as the mayor of mark haley. he too came ambling by in a big truck, green and rumbling. considering that the man for whom this road is named managed to pack more curves into a three mile stretch than your average mountain pass, big trucks are an unsurprising trend.

at any rate, my folks and i were just about to pile into our own trucklike monstrosity and head into town when butch passed and took the opportunity to introduce himself. he is a remarkably young-hearted old timer: gray haired, weathered, skinny- legged, and beer gutted, but free with his good will. the first words out of his mouth were to offer me a beer (an appendage, it seem, that butch is never really without) and the question, "do you like farm-fresh eggs?" well, my family eats enough eggs to spike the national cholesterol average by about twenty points, so of course i told him yes. immediately he fetched three dozen beautiful brown eggs from his truck, some complete with red feathers still stuck to them like tiny mohawks. part of the label "farm fresh" means you have to wash them before you crack them. but still, i wasn't about to look a gift-egg in the... i was going to say mouth, but never mind.

like our laundry benefactors, butch had noticed a we lacked another critical piece of machinery. highly critical in light of an almost acre and a half of yard: a riding mower. over a can of busch, he offered joe (my husband) a loan of his "spare" until such time as we could procure one of our own. evidently the men on this stretch share a common belief that one can never have too many lawn tractors. butch was insistent. he wouldn't take no for an answer. it took us a week, but eventually we took him up on the offer.

butch's house was easy to find. it is at the end of the road. out here in the hills, most rural roads don't actually intersect, but simply dwindle. and butch's farm is the dwindling point for mark haley, appointed beautifully with a two story, tin roofed log home that butch built with his own two hands (borrowing the two hands of several of his friends as well), a pole barn, and a flock of scatterbrained guinea hens. when joe did go down to inquire about the mower, he involuntarily crashed a party, but these welcoming folks were unfazed. instead of evicting the party crasher, they invited him and all of us to their next party: a fourth of july bash the next night.

the party was fun. there was good food, free flowing busch beer, and charlie got to chase chickens with mary's boy and get stomped on by snowball, a chow/retriever cross who thinks he ought be a lapdog despite his noble bulk. i watched some of the gang play drunken cornhole, a game played with beanbags and ramps with hole near the top. the rules are similar to horseshoes, but the injuries sustained when a drunken player tags another with a bean bag are much less severe than those that would result from being hit by u-shaped pieces of heavy iron. joe took a four wheeler ride, and then there were fireworks. sort of. they were more of a sad display of inebriated men launching weak bottle rockets, but entertaining just the same. charlie lost patience with the loud noises not necessarily connected to brilliant showers of light, and we had to take an early leave, but all-in-all, i think we felt we'd been well and truly welcomed to the neighborhood.

haley hill folks

so about these neighbors i mentioned. we had been here about a week when people started dropping by. the first was mary, who lives up the hill and around the bend with her spouse creature (i mean that in a very complementary way) and son, lots of rhode island red chickens, three dogs, two cats, some guinnea hens, a bunch of beautiful gurnseys, and some fish. that's not mentioning the finches and hummingbirds, but they're another blog altogether.

mary was driving up the hill in a very large, white truck, with a water tank in the back big enough to swim in, but she stopped anyway. apparently the steepness of our hill didn't worry her enough to prompt conserving momentum. she introduced herself and cody, her son. we chatted a bit about her job at the high school, and my disdain for the price of local phone service, and then she amazed me for the first of many times. this dear woman had known me for a grand total of 7.38 minutes, when she offered to watch my two year old "any time i needed a break." i think she can be absolved of suspicion of insanity by the fact that she did not, as yet, have any idea how energetic my son is. i feel justified in viewing her offer as something which should make her eligible for sainthood.

over the following weeks, i found out just how deep her charity went. it was probably a week later when i made the mistake of putting charlie to bed in just his diaper and a tee shirt. this is a mistake because he has figured out, by now, how to take off his diaper. what he hasn't learned yet is that his bed is not a good place to go poopy. and we didn't have a washing machine, or a car in which to drive to the laundromat before bedtime. what to do?

the only thing i could think of was to call up mary and pray she was sincere in her offer of friendship. after all, i think letting an almost total stranger wash baby poop-smeared sheets qualifies as the acid test of charity, don't you? and she said yes. not only did she say yes in a heartbeat, but she offered to drive down and pick us up. i declined in favor of walking up the hill for some excercise. all i can say is there were no extenuating circumstances to absolve me of suspicion of insanity.

when we got to mary's house, she interrupted her own laundry to wash my poop sheets, offered us drinks, and let charlie terrorize her house with amazing good will. but what follows is the real clincher: upon learning that we didn't have a washer and dryer, mary offered me her old units which she said had just been "sitting in the old house because we didn't know anyone who didn't have their own." and when i gladly asked her how much she would like for them, she wouldn't hear of it. she told me to call it a housewarming present, then promptly went out and cleaned the units up. she had her hubby load them on the back of the tractor, and he drove them down to the holler and hooked them up within the hour.

then they invited charlie and me to stay for homemade pizza.

the first holler

i think we've officially lived at the holler for a month now. let me explain that word," holler." being a northern hoosier by birth, i grew up thinking that "holler" was a verb, i.e. "to yell." "remus, go out and holler for the kids. it's suppertime." but as a new tucky misfit, i think i ought to adopt the southern drawl definition: "a space between two hills or mountains." but just for english major fun, i've made a double entendre out of it.

so we've been here a month now, and though i will never master the cadence of southern speech, or, apparently, which way to flip the switch for the cistern to fill, i can still think of no more idyllic place to live. let me start with the silence. moving from cincinnati, the silence is an entity itself to be loved. at night, i can actually hear tree frogs instead of drunken deadbeats yelling at their kids. when it rains, i go sit on the porch to revel in it. sometimes in my underwear. i love living in a place where maybe three cars pass per day.

i'm going to have to rethink the underwear thing, though. the neighbors, though they be relatively few, are extraordinarily friendly, and given to stopping by unannounced. i don't want to give them a bad impression of hoosier/buckeyes. they don't know i'm a misfit, after all.