Idle musings

After traveling eleventeen bazillion miles across interstellar space, why do all these UFOs, UAPs, flying saucers, foo fighters...whatever...once they finally reach planet Earth crash?  Maybe the LGMs and BEMs need to take a refresher course in how to lower the landing gear before they bid a fond farewell to Planet X-9.

Of all the pilots in my family over the generations, not one has ever seen a flying saucer. Of course, none has ever seen a coelacanth, either.  As far as I know.

Several of them have had experiences with ghosts, though.  My grandmother had a stock of ghost stories involving relatives going back generations.  When I was nine or ten, spending the summer with my grandparents, one night for some reason I woke up, got out of bed and went to the window and looked out.  I don't know why I did this.  But when I did, I saw a ghost.  As God is my witness, I did.  It was not a friendly ghost.  It terrified me. I ran out of my bedroom.  Not sure where to go, I finally went into the living room and turned on the TV, keeping the volume low. 

There was an old war movie on, Run Silent, Run Deep, starring Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable.   I watched it intently, afraid to look away from the screen. One line of dialog stuck in my head.  I remember it to this day: the sonar man saying to the captain, "What is it, sir?  I can't make it out."  "What is it sir? I can't make it out" repeated in my head until I fell asleep.  I never slept in that bedroom again.

I thought last winter was terrible, cold and miserable with storm after storm, but when I mention how bad it was to locals they just shrug.  To them it was just a normal winter.  It gets cold and snows in winter.  Didn't I know that? In my defense, I was incapacitated for most of the season so I couldn't enjoy the normal things I like to do in winter, ice-skating in particular, which at one time was a passion of mine.  I was thinking that this winter I could get back into ice skating but now that I am in a family way that is definitely out. I'm not about to risk a fall.

The old shacks are being replaced by minihomes like this.

 Talking to the ranch foreman about our on-going program to replace the old line shacks with up-to-date pre-fabs with solar power for electricity, TV and internet, he remarked that when that's done even way out here in the last best place there will be no escaping the reach and influence of globalism.  Okay, he didn't say "globalism" but I understood what he meant. Nonetheless, this has to be done if you want to get and keep good men.  They just won't put up with drafty old shacks, smelly kerosene appliances, hand-pump wells and outhouses.  So we are installing pre-fab mini-homes ranging in size from 10x16 feet to 16x52 feet, furnished comfortably and fully equipped with solar power, septic tanks, heat and indoor plumbing.

 

A double-wide mobile home.

 In a few places we are putting up double- and triple-wide full-size mobile homes for foremen, caretakers and other full-time live-in employees and their families. By the way, I often read people sneering at those who live in mobile homes, even double wides. They must never have been in one.  They are really very nice.  I'd certainly rather live in

Double-wide mobile home interior.

a mobile home on my own lot than in an apartment.  I guess people have to express their snob at something. But I wonder how many of these superior types live themselves in cramped, crummy apartments the rent of which is more than the mortgage payment on a mobile home.  And in a mobile home on your own property you don't have to hear the neighbors quarreling or listen to their lousy taste in music or TV shows when you are trying to sleep.

I overheard a couple of ranch hands chatting the other day.  One said to the other, "Do you want to go deer hunting with me Saturday night?" I thought, oh, no, they are talking about spotlighting deer, which is illegal.  But on listening to their further conversation, it became clear that they were talking about going to a local  roadhouse to try to pick up chicks.  I thought about asking them to take along my smart, handsome, hardworking but terminally shy second cousin so they could help him get a girlfriend but I didn't because they are just not the type he hangs out with.  He's more of a dreamer and idealist.  The idea of going to a beer joint with some rowdies to hit on the sort of woman who infests such a place would make him nauseous.  But it's such a waste that this great guy can't bring himself to go up to a girl he likes and say, "Hey, good-lookin', what's cookin'?"  That's how they did it in olden times, and it worked just fine for both parties.  

He was planning to join the Navy right out of high school, but I talked him out of it. At least for now.  I told him there was no hurry, and the way things are these days, he really should just wait.  So he is learning multiple skills on the ranch, working in the machine, vehicle repair and welding shops, operating heavy equipment, handling livestock, learning horsemanship and so forth.  And he is getting paid $26 and hour plus found.  With the hours he works,  he's making around $65,000 on an annualized basis -- with no grocery or restaurant bills or rent to pay out of it.  He can even use a ranch vehicle to drive around on his free time, so no car payments, registration fees or insurance premiums.  He's sitting in the catbird seat and is one lucky 19-year-old. 

I am giving him dancing lessons and he's getting pretty good. I suggested he find a dance studio and learn there -- I was hoping he might meet a nice girl -- but he said if he did that everyone would think he was gay.  I told him the World War II generation of men sure didn't think dancing was gay.  He asked what that had to do with anything. I had to concede the point. I suppose a young guy dancing today would be like him wearing a zoot suit.  So why is he taking dancing lessons from me?  I told him dancing is a useful social skill to have, just in case. It's like being able to dive gracefully into a swimming pool, play tennis and golf, sail or know how to dine properly at a five-star restaurant. If it should occur in your life that you need to do these things, you don't want to embarrass yourself by making a botch of it.

While rummaging around in some old suitcases, I came across this photo.  No one I've asked knows anything about it.  My dad said it looked like something from the 1960s at the oldest, judging by the Huey helicopters.  You can just make out Mt. Fuji in the background to the upper left, so it was probably taken at the Japan Self-Defense Force training grounds near Hakone.  Nobody knows what kind of tanks those are, but then we are not tank people.  The menfolk just consider them targets.

An anticipated future world that didn't happen.

The way we imagine the future is always wrong, usually in ways we can't imagine. So I wonder what is going to happen to the United States, to western Europe, to Western civilization.  Is it really dying before our eyes, going out not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with the twerking of a transsexual 12-year-old? I would like to hope there's enough resiliency remaining that it can shake off this current cultural corruption and recover. I would like to hope that. I'm sure that's what the late Romans thought, too.  But then, the West is nothing like the Roman Empire. So...fingers crossed!

Do you believe in witches? How about infatuation? How about manipulation?

I Warned You Three Times. 

 First broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on January 12, 1974.