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He never seems to me to grow older. His fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are those of a young man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as youthful as it is Western and American.
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one's brain.
I had lost sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her again after long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to him, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy that friendship.
His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her. I told him I had always felt that other people—he himself, for one—knew her much better than I. We might, in this way, get a picture of her. He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often announces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion took hold of him.
He stared out of the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes had the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees. It's through myself that I knew and felt her, and I've had no practice in any other form of presentation.
He had had opportunities that I, as a little girl who watched her come and go, had not. Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment one stormy winter afternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his fur overcoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him and tapped it with some pride as he stood warming his hands.
I did n't make any. I suppose it has n't any form. It has n't any title, either. My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim's manuscript, substantially as he brought it to me. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska.
I traveled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole , one of the "hands" on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake's experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world. We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey.
Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm , and for me a "Life of Jesse James," which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read.
Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant States and cities.
He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.
Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from "across the water" whose destination was the same as ours. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too! This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to "Jesse James.
I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska. I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached Black Hawk.
Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I could n't see any town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run.
In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby.
There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stood holding oil-cloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming.
I pricked up my ears, for it was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue. Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: "Hello, are you Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out.
Hello, Jimmy, ain't you scared to come so far west? I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern light. He might have stepped out of the pages of "Jesse James. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl.
The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet.
He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm wagons were tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed them.
I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon.
There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
No, there was nothing but land — slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it.
But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither.
I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be. I DO not remember our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon.
I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind.
A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, "My, how you do look like your father!
Bring your things; there's nobody about. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed — the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement.
Up under the wooden ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water.
When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help. Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.
It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously.
While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, "Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning! She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away.
As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum.
Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.
After I was dressed I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from work.
While my grandmother was busy about supper I settled myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat — he caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor traveled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbors.
We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper-table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbors there. My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative.
I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive. Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle.
His teeth were white and regular — so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.
As we sat at the table Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits.
His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia , and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck , a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather. The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a "perfect gentleman," and his name was Dude.
Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his "chaps" and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design — roses, and true-lover's knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels. Before we went to bed Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room for prayers.
Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Kings.
I was awed by his intonation of the word "Selah. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words. Early the next morning I ran out of doors to look about me.
I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk — until you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbors lived in sod houses and dugouts — comfortable, but not very roomy.
Our white frame house, with a story and half-story above the basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it.
The road from the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west.
There, along the western sky-line, it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I.
North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks , grew a thick-set strip of box-elder trees , low and bushy, their leaves already turning yellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had to look very hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificant against the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over them, and over the plum-patch behind the sod chicken-house.
As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running. I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, her sunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and asked me if I did not want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner.
The garden, curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house , and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane.
I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn-knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her way back and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle and had been sick all summer. I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early September morning.
Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping. Alone, I should never have found the garden — except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines — and I felt very little interest in it when I got there.
I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.
While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do. When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there in the garden awhile.
The big yellow and brown ones won't hurt you; they're bull-snakes and help to keep the gophers down. Don't be scared if you see anything look out of that hole in the bank over there. That's a badger hole. He's about as big as a big 'possum , and his face is striped, black and white. He takes a chicken once in a while, but I won't let the men harm him.
In a new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him come out and watch me when I'm at work. Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of the draw; when she came to the first bend she waved at me and disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content. I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin.
There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers , twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground.
There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave.
The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could.
Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
O N Sunday morning Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbors. We were taking them some provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no garden or chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, and several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box.
We clambered up to the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the road that climbed to the big cornfield. I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high wagon-seat one could look off a long way.
The road ran about like a wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down toward them.
The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought the homestead of a fellow-countryman, Peter Krajiek , and had paid him more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative of Mrs.
The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming.
He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which would n't be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it at home.
And I hear he's made them pay twenty dollars for his old cookstove that ain't worth ten. I'd have interfered about the horses — the old man can understand some German — if I'd 'a' thought it would do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.
Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. It would take me a long while to explain. The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw Creek , which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas' place and made the land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the ravine.
Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees in fairy tales. As we approached the Shimerdas' dwelling, I could still see nothing but rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots hanging out where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one of those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same wine-colored grass that grew everywhere.
Near it tilted a shattered windmill-frame, that had no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie our horses, and then I saw a door and window sunk deep in the draw-bank. The door stood open, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and looked up at us hopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The woman had on her head the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that she wore when she had alighted from the train at Black Hawk.
She was not old, but she was certainly not young. Her face was alert and lively, with a sharp chin and shrewd little eyes. She shook grandmother's hand energetically. Immediately she pointed to the bank out of which she had emerged and said, "House no good, house no good! Grandmother nodded consolingly. Shimerda; make good house. My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if they were deaf. She made Mrs.
Shimerda understand the friendly intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of bread and even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively curiosity, exclaiming, "Much good, much thank! The oldest son, Ambroz, — they called it Ambrosch, — came out of the cave and stood beside his mother.
He was nineteen years old, short and broad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face. His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother's, but more sly and suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food.
The family had been living on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days. I remembered what the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark color.
Her brown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom they called Yulka Julka , was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I stood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the barn to see what was going on.
With him was another Shimerda son. Even from a distance one could see that there was something strange about this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and held up his hands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the first knuckle, like a duck's foot.
When he saw me draw back, he began to crow delightedly, "Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo! His mother scowled and said sternly, "Marek! He was born like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer. At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore no hat, and his thick, iron-gray hair was brushed straight back from his forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and made him look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia.
He was tall and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at us understandingly, then took grandmother's hand and bent over it. I noticed how white and well-shaped his own hands were. They looked calm, somehow, and skilled.
His eyes were melancholy, and were set back deep under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like ashes — like something from which all the warmth and light had died out.
Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner. He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted gray vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was translating for Mr. In a moment we were running up the steep drawside together, Yulka trotting after us. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did not stop until the ground itself stopped — fell away before us so abruptly that the next step would have been out into the tree-tops.
We stood panting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushes that grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the girls' skirts were blown out before them.
She looked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she could not say. What name? I told her my name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She pointed into the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and said again, "What name?
We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like a baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. I gave her the word, but she was not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word, making it sound like "ice. She got up on her knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.
She clapped her hands and murmured, "Blue sky, blue eyes," as if it amused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind she learned a score of words. She was quick, and very eager. We were so deep in the grass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold tree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant.
When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I did n't want her ring, and I felt there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never seen before. No wonder Krajiek got the better of these people, if this was how they behaved.
When I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used to being taken for granted by my elders. We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother was waiting for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of his pocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English and the other Bohemian.
O N the afternoon of that same Sunday I took my first long ride on my pony, under Otto's direction. After that Dude and I went twice a week to the post-office, six miles east of us , and I saved the men a good deal of time by riding on errands to our neighbors. When we had to borrow anything, or to send about word that there would be preaching at the sod schoolhouse , I was always the messenger.
Formerly Fuchs attended to such things after working hours. All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first glorious autumn. The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again.
Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons ; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went.
The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs's story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.
I used to love to drift along the pale yellow cornfields, looking for the damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweed soon turned a rich copper color and the narrow brown leaves hung curled like cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem.
Sometimes I went south to visit our German neighbors and to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew up out of a deep crack in the earth and had a hawk's nest in its branches. Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons.
It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious. Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-dog town to watch the brown earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests underground with the dogs. We had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurking about. They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and owls, which were quite defenseless against them; took possession of their comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies.
We felt sorry for the owls. It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset and disappear under the earth. But, after all, we felt, winged things who would live like that must be rather degraded creatures.
The dog-town was a long way from any pond or creek. Otto Fuchs said he had seen populous dog-towns in the desert where there was no surface water for fifty miles; he insisted that some of the holes must go down to water — nearly two hundred feet, hereabouts. Almost every day she came running across the prairie to have her reading lesson with me. Shimerda grumbled, but realized it was important that one member of the family should learn English.
When the lesson was over, we used to go up to the watermelon patch behind the garden. I split the melons with an old corn-knife , and we lifted out the hearts and ate them with the juice trickling through our fingers. The white Christmas melons we did not touch, but we watched them with curiosity. They were to be picked late, when the hard frosts had set in, and put away for winter use. After weeks on the ocean, the Shimerdas were famished for fruit.
The two girls would wander for miles along the edge of the cornfields, hunting for ground-cherries. She would stand beside her, watching her every movement.
We were willing to believe that Mrs. Much less mayors and city councils. These kinds of comments display a complete ignorance of the nature of the human species. Since before civilization came out of the caves, there has always been a warped element that is a different kind of human. It is bred into them that preying on the rest of society is central to their own survival.
To that segment of society, criminality is a job. They have to be laughing their butts off hearing city governments talking about doing away with the police. The anarchists, which are proliferating like crazy and are forming themselves in to an insurgent-type of force, are cheering the anti-police factions on.
Politics are making their over-throw of the government easier. Yes, law enforcement reform is absolutely necessary. There are always a few bad apples in every barrel and the regulations have to be there to both guide the force and define processes for drumming the bad apples out. So, Congress has to get their act together and come up with a bipartisan level of reform that makes sense.
However, it appears that the concept of bipartisanship is seemingly impossible to apply these days. The concepts that are going to absolutely destroy this country are political correctness, politics in general, and a lack of understanding that lawlessness feeds on success. They always do. Normally, I would say we have a solution: The ballot box. We might have a really rough patch ahead, folks, so, keep your mags loaded and protection close at hand.
However, as the week worn on, there was a clarification of the definitions: We are clearly seeing the difference between protesting and rioting. I want to make this one as short and clear as I can. What is not written into the constitution is the wanton destruction of property, both personally and publicly owned.
What we have seen this week is a noble protest against the actions of an obviously out of control officer being high-jacked by a combination of anarchists ANTIFA , bad actors just capitalizing on a situation for personal gain and entertainment, with possible involvement by a criminal element. What we have to recognize is that every kind of population has a small number of individuals who basically bear more resemblance to animals than humans.
They are our criminal and socially unbalanced elements and they will take any opportunity to strike out against the rest of society, but only if they think they can do it with no consequences attached to their actions.
Some bad actors may be acting out of anger at perceived inequities of the system, some of which can be understood. The other is neither. A quick photograph of what points out different views of this is, as I was typing this, Marlene called me into see something on TV where celebrities are raising funds for rioters who were arrested.
I know none of the details, but that makes little or no sense. This calls for some careful research. They stood around inside the store where they could clearly be seen through the windows carrying ARs and handguns. The looters skipped past them to the store next door.
Remember what I said about their actions and consequences. They have no particular convictions so have no courage to back-up their actions. A number of low-income areas have lost their primary retail and grocery stores and, considering the threats associated with the area, companies may be a long time returning, if at all.
What I do see emerging out of this is a serious re-thinking of the use of police in these situations by some cities. Many suffered far more than they would have, had they responded to the rioters in kind sooner. I also see a spike in security companies renting out quick-response combat teams to large targets such as gigantic malls.
As soon as a target goes from being passive to having a risk attached to it, most of these groups will avoid it and go for easier pickings. This, however, is how I see it today. Who knows about tomorrow? You don't have to watch many of the videos of people rushing out of broken windows and doors, their arms loaded with loot to know that George Floyd is no longer part of this episode in history.
Then, when you see young people cruising the street and attacking single individuals, knocking them out and bloodying them up it's easy to see that this has all divolved to pure anarchy and hoodlumism. It is attracting the most extreme and violent elements of our society because they feel they can do what they want because there is almost no chance they'll be caught.
The cities hae become their playground. This kind of violence knows no logic and the authorities are going to have to get seriously tough to keep it from spreading.
PPS Did anyone notice the incredible launching of our first privately owned and operated space launch? It got lost in the shuffle. To me, the most incredible part is the technology of them landing the boosters vertically on barges.
That looked like CGI. The complexities to be overcome are mind numbing and SpaceX did it! Nice going Elon!! We have protests everywhere you look that are populated by basically normal people, not radicals, all of which are talking about freedom and financial survival.
Is this what our colonial revolt looked like in ? Think about it: The Revolutionary War, which could easily be renamed, The Freedom Fight, started off with regular people getting fed up with The Crown levying taxes and the population getting nothing for them. So, in , they turned Boston harbor into iced tea.
Then, in , the Crown decided the colonials were becoming too uppity so they marched to Concord to confiscate their arms. At that point, the fight for freedom from The Crown was inevitable and a nation was suddenly in the process of being borne. In effect, they have become the final authority on how freedom shall return to the people. And some appear to have gotten power hungry and approached the process in a mindless, dictatorial fashion: Do it MY way or suffer the consequences.
They are forgetting who put them in the position to govern in the first place. This, however, appears to mean little or nothing to them but means everything to the population of their states.
The news is full of stories about gyms, restaurants, beauty salons, etc, all of which have gone overboard to guarantee social distancing and mask wearing. The owners understand the risks involved and are trying to lower them as much as they can, but they are desperate to survive. Customers recognize the risk as well.
They are desperate to be free. Yes, they broke the rules but the response has been over-kill. It feels as if some governors are taking such actions as personal assaults on their authority. Watch this! They are, in too many cases, showing zero compassion towards those involved.
The voters who put them in office. In most cases, the local authorities have difficult decisions to make.
The law is the law. For the most part, we all agree on that. I just think some of them are going about it the wrong way while showing little or no empathy. They are prosecuting good people, not criminals, all of whom have their backs against the wall and going to work is the only way out.
In fact, I think some folks consider getting sick as nothing more than the price of freedom. Talk about ignoring self distancing! More important, will we remember that other things are equally as important. Five-Year-Olds Scare me!
Do it, then fix it. The only thing that seems to come naturally, is public speaking. Talk about being outside my comfort zone! Do you know how hard it is to talk for 10 minutes about aviation without using one piece of jargon on which all of av-speak is based or Home Depot Wood Projects Twitter swearing at some level? For instance, about every 18 months our main sewer line gets plugged up and we have to call Rotorooter.
The air conditioning is in cahoots with the sewer line because it conks out between the sewer episodes. AC is not a luxury.
Again, it always dies on Friday night when we have visitors. Never any other time. Last night it was our beloved Nikki, the puppy that refuses to grow up and absolutely owns our hearts. In a heartbeat, we were emergency mode and racing to the hour animal hospital.
And it was 10pm! And it was Friday. Nikki stayed overnight and finally, at 2 AM, they told Marlene to stop calling them. They let us pick her up at Not eating it. Just playing with it. The bracelet information about distancing is also being fed to a computer and they are going combine that information with follow-ups on the workers involved and quantify the correlation between distance and those who get sick.
That, I think, is going to answer a lot of questions about Covid In addition, they are being beat over the head with conclusions drawm from that data. Normally data makes sense out of situations, but not always. And this is one of the classic cases where the more data we have, the more confused we get.
Or you can take different sides of any of the arguments and easily find data that supports that side. Thousands of Pigs but no Butchers I was talking to my sister who still has a business in our little home town in Nebraska and she says local pork producers have run into a real bottle neck Nebraska is the 6th largest pork producer in the US and the 2nd largest beef producer.
Because there are no longer any local butchers to process them for purchasers. The skill has simply disappeared.
The age-window during which a pig is viable for market is quite narrow so they had to kill them all and bury them. No one knows how to butcher a hog!? Oh, wait…too late. There has been a lot of talk about what they were going to do and that shoe finally dropped earlier in the week.
Now those of us who have made it the seminal annual event have to deal with a new reality: Life without Oshkosh! As stay-at-home orders cascaded down on us and we started to see body counts of a thousand a day or more, Oshkosh timing became more and more critical.
Actually, there were two things happening at the same time: First, it takes the EAA nearly two months to get things ready to go and the work force during those two months is almost entirely volunteers.
An entire army of volunteers descends on Oshkosh and become working residents. Hundreds of them. The first hurtle was how many would be willing to be part of a work crew, given the situation.
The second hurtle had a similar decision point: The aviation population is, if not freaked out, at least they are very wary of crowds. At least the intelligent ones who are taking this thing seriously are. Even if the government were to wave a magic wand and suddenly there were no new cases and no deaths to report, the population would still be spooked about large gatherings. More important than all the above is the humanitarian side of this thing.
The EAA membership may be focused on airplanes but the organization itself is focused on its membership. This whole aviation fraternity thing is based on people functioning with people. Otherwise I was going to have to show up in a full hazmat suit with a forced-air painting hood.
This thing is passed from person to person, person to doorknob to person, person to five-dollar bill to person, etc.
Everyone on the planet knows all of this. The biggest drawback to them cancelling OSH is that the majority of us airplane gray dogs date our year from that week. Not January one. We date things as being either before or after Oshkosh. People who had never ordered on line now have dozens of empty Amazon boxes laying around their recycle bins.
This morning I ordered a half dozen cut-off disks for my angle head grinder. McMaster-Carr is doing the same thing. One click shopping with no shipping costs. Even Aircraft Spruce shipped some tubing to me that I had ordered Sunday night and it arrived Wednesday. Buying patterns were already changing but this has been a tsunami of change. Brick and mortar retailers are going to take it in the shorts.
Right now, if you scan through your e-mails and The Media of any kind there will only be three subjects being covered Covid19, Trump and Covidcombined-with-Trump. Enough already! Every movement is an exercise in pain. And God help you if you sneeze or cough.
Anyway, this was probably only my third or fourth journey out into the new world which has been re-sculptured by Covid19 and I ran head-on into a new me.
And the world around me. On went the uncontrolled mental rant. I surprised myself! I usually sluff that kind of thing off.
I went out the front door, mask and gloves still in place, hung a left and walked into a local grocery chain, Bashas. It was too late for the butchers so I had to take a couple of the pre-made, in a plastic container, sandwiches.
My mind took off again: who-handled-the-plastic-containers? Was that me over-thinking things? As I ran my card into the reader, I was acutely aware of pushing buttons half of the universe had pushed and sneezed on. I was mentally repulsed and very aware that I had handled my card and my wallet after pushing the final key.
Then she dropped my purchase in a plastic bag and all my brain could see were herds of bugs most were black, a few purple and one very aggressive yellow one running all over the plastic, just waiting for me to pick up the bag.
By this time, I was beginning to doubt even my sandwiches. Who had butchered the pig? Had they breathed on the ham while making the sandwich? I had never seen this me before! Back at the car, I took the gloves off before opening the door but then realized I had touched both my wallet and card with the gloves that were probably totally coated with germs.
So, I ripped a Lysol wipe out of the ever-present box in the other seat, got out, wiped the door handle, my wallet, my credit card, my hands, the steering wheel, the start button, the shift lever, etc. I think I wiped the rearview mirror because I had looked at it.
Well…you never know. Is that really you? Have you gone nuts? This was an entirely new concept for me. And was probably being too paranoid. Will we, as a nation, eventually come out of our social burrow and into the sunlight? The decisions being made by us and the federal, state and local governments are uniquely critical. None of these kinds of decisions have ever been made before. If they go too far, people will die.
Damned if they do, damned…etc. The political hate and divisiveness have further divided an already-divided country at a time, when both sides should be pulling together. At the same time, most of that division, but definitely not all, exists primarily inside political ivory towers.
And the media. Especially inside the DC beltway. The People are still The People, which is a very American way of thinking. This is as it should be. The sweaty-unwashed-masses, you and me, regardless of political persuasion, have clearly seen where governments, and more often specifically, politicians, have forgotten who put them in office and whom they are supposed to be working for.
Especially their actions in delaying critical funds for troubled businesses for political gain. Time will tell. November is going to be very interesting and will say a lot about who learned what during this trying time. And I apologize for there being no indents.
How obvious is that? You have to be kidding! With meatballs? It is, however, going to be crowded because weather has diverted traffic from other cities to Kennedy. The local New York weather is perfect, however, so there should be no problem. A pilot himself for over thirty years, he had his own thoughts on the matter. This ought to be a lot of fun. Molly knew the signs: Jack was just getting up a head of steam.
As soon as I saw how badly that jerk Buchanan was screwing up, we should have packed up and left England right then. Same thing with gas stations. We should have learned our lessons with the gas shortages. Or Katrina.
Then, guess what? They do run out of everything. Things started to go to hell a couple of weeks ago. And, what did Buchanan do? He just sat there acting like God. Now, not even the truckers are eating. We should have headed for home right then. Again, this will be no problem and our flight attendants will assist you and give you instructions on how to use the slides.
Take a look down there. Traffic filled every lane of highway as far as their eyes could see. The tunnels have to be a disaster. This is just great! Is that you, Jackson? What the hell do you mean; the station is leaving? Maloney got word that a gang was moving down his street in Secaucus cleaning the food out of every house as they go. Most of the other guys are gone too.
Heading back to their places. Hey, man! Jackson, what the hell am I supposed to do with this load of jail birds? Bo Black was enjoying the display immensely.
The van was sitting on a side street in Hoboken where the driver had stopped after being forced off the Jersey Turnpike because of a near riot at a traffic jam. It was pretty obvious that getting to the prison was going to be nearly impossible.
Even Black, himself a product of the inner city and used to a high level of localized chaos, was amazed at how quickly the area was unraveling.
It seemed as if every block had its own little battle in progress. The guard abruptly picked up a clipboard fastened to the dash of the big van. He scanned down it, his lips moving as he read. Satisfied, he reached into a lock box and came out with a ring of keys. He was shaking his head in disbelief as he moved down the aisle unlocking handcuffs and leg chains as he went.
He was free! Bo Black stood on the curb watching Officer Datillo drive away in the van with New Jersey government license plates. He had to swerve to miss a slow-motion fistfight between two elderly white women.
A broken grocery bag was at their feet. Black looked around at a part of Hoboken he knew well and rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had been. Life was suddenly very good, even though his old neighborhood was beginning to like a combat zone complete with a couple of burning cars.
As Black watched the van disappear, he saw something very symbolic in it: the law had just decided to abandon their jobs and return home to tend to family business.
Bo Black grinned his signature toothy grin. People had to eat. People had to travel. New Jersey had just become a commodities-based economy with the only two commodities that counted being food and gasoline. Yes sir, with the law at home guarding their own gates, there were some real opportunities here. Bo Black had a plan. Get his guys together, get a few guns and get going. Corner the food and gasoline market and he would be czar of New Jersey.
He grinned again. This was going to work! She was driving a middle-aged white male in a well-pressed business suit down the steps while beating him with a broom. I catch you in my building again and my man gonna cut you good! I can actually see mobs of people around the stores.
It looks like wall-to-wall riots and…oh, shit! A United Airlines was barely yards away slowly converging on them. Molly leaned over his lap and looked out. Oh, man! Slattery could imagine the runway dead ahead, but could see none of it. Even as he watched, a quick puff of dark smoke came from the left engine. One engine just flamed out. He must have been diverted from someplace else. I hope he has…oh, oh, there goes the other one.
Oh, my God! Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the paved end of the taxiway just ahead. But it was too late. The pilot corrected with a left bank but he was out of airspeed, altitude and luck all at the same time: the down wing tip caught the edge of the raised earthen berm at the airport boundary. The last Slattery saw of the airplane it was a cart wheeling mass of flame that catapulted wreckage up onto the taxiway.
He was having trouble processing what he saw. The massive JFK terminal was over a quarter mile away and the usually empty ramp between was a hodgepodge of aircraft parked at odd angles, like giant insects trying to build a nest.
Noisy groups of people were milling around not knowing what to do, and the occasional airport vehicle could be seen in the distance drawing a beeline for an exit somewhere.
Before jumping, he looked across the confusion and mentally marked the route he and Molly would have to take to make it to the parking lot where he hoped his truck was still parked. The situation was much worse than he had imagined.
I want my goddamn bags! What an incredible mess! People were just beginning to understand the desperate nature of their dilemma. Airports are not designed to have large numbers of people on the ramp. As Slattery dragged Molly through the frantic crowd, he was trying to apply what he knew about airport security and the way buildings are built to getting past the terminal to the parking lots.
Everywhere he looked panicked mobs were beating on locked doors at the elevated ends of jetways and ground level personnel doors. They were crammed against one another as if thinking that by shoving the people ahead against the doors they could somehow gain entry.
They were a good match. Without Jack saying a word, she hopped easily up on a belt loader, clambered over some baggage and crawled through the heavy plastic drapery that kept the weather outside from following baggage through the small portal.
Her small, but athletic, frame fit easily. Jack dropped off the conveyor belt beside her in a darkish room that was a mess of baggage, conveyors and baggage carts. Although the murmur of the crowds could be heard through the walls, a gloomy silence lay thick around them. She was right.
They needed a plan. There had to be a hundred airliners clustered on the ramp in addition to those already on boarding gates, so the problem of people getting out of the airport was reaching critical mass.
He tried to picture what was happening on the other side of the terminal wall and what it would take to make it to the parking lot. That will put us on the lower baggage claim area. I hope.
When we hit the terminal floor, we can count on every door and stairwell being packed to the point they are dangerous. He was looking for something. Nor did they question why Jack Slattery was dragging a heavy steel tow bar behind him to the center of the concourse. They were all too intent on forcing their way into the impenetrable mass of humanity that was trying to wedge itself through the hopelessly jammed revolving doors. Between the doors, huge windows offered an unobstructed view of people outside running one way or the other on the sidewalk.
She nodded. In unison, the pair lunged toward one of the glass walls of the terminal. Jack guided the tow bar into the exact center of a panel, which was designed to survive decades of careless skycaps and passengers but not the onslaught of a tow bar.
Jack stopped abruptly and let the tow bar do its job. The results were spectacular. The tow bar pulverized the lower four feet of glass, causing the glass above to collapse and cascade down, the wide sheets shattering like ice, as they hit the floor. Just that quickly, they had a way out and took advantage of it. Now all they had to do was hope their truck was still there and prepare for becoming part of the lemming rush to nowhere they had seen from the air.
Briefly, Jack lives on a farm in the west side of NJ, which has been converted into an actual island by the surrounding states. In an effort to protect themselves from the onslaught of paniced NJ and NY citizens trying to get across the rivers that surround the entire state of NJ except the northern 30 miles or so , the states have blockaded or blown all the bridges.
No one can get out of NJ. It instantly degrades to science fiction grade, dog-eat-dog anarchy. In the meantime, Bo Black gets his thugs together, steal a ton of arms from a Nat Guard armory and occupy every Costco, Home Depot and major food Wood Carving Machine Home Depot 86 storage facility in the northern half of the state. It becomes a war zone with ex-Marine Jack Slattery and his rural friends on one side and Bo Black and his urban troops on the other.
This carries on for an extended period of time because, once the country descended to this level of anarchy, getting the truckers running and up to speed is much more complicated than it sounds.
And so it goes. This is hurting us all. There was an interesting map put together by a tech company that showed the travel patterns of cell phones that had been in Florida during Spring Break. It clearly showed that a few weeks after the kids returned home that there were Covid spikes where ever bunches of them went. One of the central themes to being young is that we think of ourselves as being invincible.
And we think the old folks, those over 30 or so, exaggerate everything. The vast majority of those pictured frolicking on the beaches or strolling drunkenly down the streets during Mardi Gras were in the 18 to year old bracket. The concept of them being carriers and bring it home to their parents, grandparents, and friends never occurs to them. Of instantly remembering where they were and what they were doing, when it happened. As if we were watching a sci-fi movie.
We remember how, when the realization that we were under attack, settled into our brains, we came together as a nation.
Same thing for when we first heard Kennedy was killed. Those are moments are frozen in time. They do so out of an overwhelming amount of self-importance and a total lack of understanding of the severe possibilities this pandemic embodies. Plus, a percentage of them may be hospitalized, as we speak. And they foster the spread of the demon.
Certainly, one of the scenes that drives the reality of the situation home is that of refrigerated trucks backed up to hospital loading docks. You know body bags are just stacked in there as gently as they can because they have no other choice. The morgues and coroners have to be as overwhelmed as all other systems are. The millennials are just now entering into the real world, courtesy of a bug none of us had ever heard of.
And some of them and those they love and know are going to pay the so-called ultimate price. BTW — Where were their parents during spring break?
I actually counted the number of sheets I used and came up with some worthwhile conclusions. Potty-thinking is sometimes productive. Proceed at your own risk. Shortly after that bit of fact-finding research, I wandered into our TP storage area also known as the back bedroom to evaluate the TP rolls, most of which have been in the house for a couple of years.
It turns out that there is a variation between the brands with from sheets per roll. That was Charmin. So, at 10 sheets per day that means each roll should last Budd-days. So, why are we seeing people coming out of Costco with five or six packs?
On the other hand, they may have five kids and a puppy. Nikki, our pup, decimated two months of TP in 24 hours making the room look like a TP blizzard had hit. Just for the record, I have a certain amount of prepper in me. Not likely but, I was ready for it. And this was long before the movie Red Dawn was produced. For that reason, some thought has to be given to the fact that, when the shelves are emptied, they have to be refilled and that brings us to the most important cog in civilization: Truckers.
The shelf-filling apparatus assumes two things: First, it assumes that the people who produce the products can keep producing.
This has to be difficult because shelter-in-place dictums, sickness and fear of The Virus all work against that. The truckers are the blood vessels that carry the blood from the heart to the extremities where the blood allows the muscles to do their jobs. Interrupt the flow of blood and everything else screeches to a halt. Hand saws. Hand saws as pictured. Please Contact. Router bits for sale. Kawartha Lakes. Most have never been used. Reciprocal saw.
Master craft electrical reciprocating saw, like new. In excellent shape. New chain. Comes with case. Located in Douro. Black and decker 20v drill. Like new only Used once bought before Christmas and then received new drills for Christmas pick up in bobcaygeon delivery depending on location. Paslode finishing Gun. Paslode 16 ha finishing gun, used twice, comes with a box of brad nails, Pu in havelock or will possibly meet. Hitachi cc 14SF chop saw.
New compressor air hose. Lincoln ACS Arc welder. Cart not included. Ridgid Cordless Construction Kit. This kit is for home owners, DIYers, contractors or anyone interested in buying great tools once. All you need is this kit,a desire to build or repair and elbow grease to get the job done.
At FirstStop we offer a 30 day in store exchange or store credit. When you call or drop in, be sure to ask us Miller Syncrowave Tig Welder. Milwaukee Cordless Construction Kit. This is a great kit for a home owner , a DIY'r or anyone interested in construction as a hobby or business. Milwaukee has long been accepted as on of the premier builders of corded and cordless tools. If you walk into a construction job with Milwaukee tools you definitely get a nod of approval from the old timers.
At FirstStop we offer a 30 day in store exchange or Ultra Pro 6" bench grinder. Wire wheel and grinder wheel.
In box with instructions and various parts.
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zaika
12.09.2020 at 21:25:27
KATANCHIK38
12.09.2020 at 13:39:56
Gunewlinec_CeKa
12.09.2020 at 18:39:35