I got a certified letter from the city today; seems they object to an old fridge that's up against a storage building. It was dumped in the middle of my alley a few years ago, and when the trash truck came, they didn't take it away but instead pushed it onto my property.
I called the sanitation dept. asking them to come get it, but when they came, they said I had to have a sticker on it attesting to the fact I had all of the freon properly removed. Of course, they didn't believe me when I told them how it came to be on my property.
So, I call a plumber friend of mine who also has an heating/ac license to come certify it. He told me he had to charge me for it, it's the law. No problem, I said, but when he got here we found out the compressor had already been removed.
Catch-22. I can't get it certified because the guts are gone (and the freon gone to the winds) and I can't take it to the dump because it's not been certified.
(Some wag in my political group told me to hook onto it and drag it downtown to City Hall, put it in the judge's parking spot. All I know is that if I did that, it'd be 30 days or longer until I posted here again and my name wouldn't be "Mike", it'd be Inmate #454308)
June 6, 2008
You Can't Fight City Hall
B for Baculum
They looked like something a witch doctor would wear around his neck; a dozen or more bones on a wire.
I was about seven years old and was out in the garage with my dad when I first noticed them.
"What are those, daddy?" I asked.
"What's that, son?" dad asked in turn, looking up from whatever it was he was doing.
"Those bones on the wall there." I replied, pointing to them.
I remember my dad smiling as he paused; I waited on him as he thought about his answer.
"That's the business end of a gentleman coon." he said after a few seconds, grinning as if there was some private joke in his answer.
I frowned as I thought about his answer. "Business end?" Hmmm.... I knew the barrel of a gun was the "business end", so maybe this too was something dangerous, maybe it was some sort of claw the raccoon had. Whatever it was, they certainly looked cool, almost like ivory.
"Can I have one?" I asked my pop.
"Sure." he said, and reached up and got the set off of the garage wall. "You can have 'em all." and handed them to me.
I was thrilled. I didn't know exactly what I had, but I didn't much care.
"What are they good for?" I asked.
"Well.." dad considered the question, with another small grin on his face. Snickering a little bit, he went on: "They're not much good for a coon now, but some guys make keychains, even whittle them down and make toothpicks out of 'em. "
"They polish up real good." he told me. "I'll get'cha a little steel wool and you'll see."
By now you've figured out just exactly what the thing is, I expect, and if you haven't, your mother and/or father should've explained the birds and the bees to you a little bit more, I think.
The baculum (also penis bone, penile bone or os penis) is a bone found in the penis of most mammals. It is absent in humans, equids, marsupials, lagomorphs, and hyenas, amongst others. It is used for copulation and varies in size and shape by species. Its characteristics are sometimes used to differentiate between similar species.
The oosik of Native Alaskan cultures is a polished and sometimes carved baculum of various large northern carnivores such as walruses. The raccoon baculum is sometimes worn as a luck or fertility charm.
The word baculum originally meant "stick" or "staff" in Latin. The homologue to the baculum in female mammals is known as the baubellum or os clitoridis or os clitoris.
It's too bad there wasn't the Internet when I was a kid; otherwise I wouldn't have taken it to Show and Tell the next week.
My teacher had a funny look on her face when I told her it was "the business end of a gentleman coon", but it wasn't anything like the one on my dad's face when he first "explained" what it was.
The look on my momma's face when the teacher called her and told her about it was an entirely different one altogether.
Calling All Cows
In case you've forgotten (or more likely, never knew), the National Cowcalling Contest in Miami, Texas is this weekend. (always the first weekend in June). The festivities will kick off tonight with the Frontier Follies ( a show put on by locals), with a barbeque and the cowcalling tomorrow.
Since I last attended, they've added more events, such as a Texas Hold'em tournament, a steak cook-off and several others. It's also when many class reunions are held and my big sister and I went to mine a few years back. (the good thing about reunions is that you get to see many people you haven't seen in years; conversely, the bad thing is you have to see many people you never wanted to see again)
You can read more about it at the official town website.
From the site:
Miami's main event, the National Cow Calling Championships, began in 1949 at the suggestion of "Old Tack" - otherwise known as humorist, columnist, publisher, and conservationist Gene Howe of Amarillo.
Let cow calling introduce you to the prettiest town in Texas. If you think the Panhandle is flat, you're in for a very pleasant surprise. Our canyons, mesas, and tree-lined roads are unforgettable!
My favorite part of the entire weekend was always the Follies; sometimes it was a chore sitting through certain portions of it, but it was always a pleasure to hear a classmate's mother sing; she had a voice like a combination of Patsy Cline and Peggy Lee.
My least favorite part was the Saturday night dance. Oh, I suppose if women with big hair-do's, drunken cowboys and fistfights are your thing.... I used to get a buzz just from all of the excess testosterone in the air, along with copious amounts of hairspray and perfume, never needed any beer.
(I blame country and western dances for depleting the ozone layer)
(To be honest, the first time I ever got drunk was at a Cowcalling, back when I was about 13. Long story, but I didn't drink anything else until I was 18 or so. It still makes me nauseous to think about that night. Did you know you can drink a pint of whiskey and a six pack of beer and then vomit five gallons? One gallon went down the gutter in front of my big sister's house and four gallons went onto her carpet)
The cowcalling part was always a little bit of an embarrassment to me, namely that I was embarrassed for some of the callers. All of the callers, actually. But, if it didn't bother them....
Anyone can call cows...if you can go "Whooooooooooo" as loud and as long as you can, then you too can call cows. (Back when I helped feed cattle, I always just used the truck horn to get them to come feed, but usually not even having to do that. Cows are dumb, but they ain't stupid. They're usually at the gate before you can get it open. I'm the same way when I'M hungry)
Did I ever get up there and participate? Well, no, I'm not that stupid brave. The event is held just after noon, and I never have drank anything before around six in the afternoon.
Actually, I'm fairly sure there's not enough booze in the world to make me get up there.
June 5, 2008
What it Was, Was Football - Andy Griffith
We had this .45 single when I was a kid and I used to listen to it all the time.
June 4, 2008
Arrington Ranch House
If you're a movie buff you've probably recognized it from Cast Away, the 2000 release starring Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. Hanks plays a FedEx globetrotting troubleshooter who, after a plane crash, is stranded on a small island.
The angel wing motif was the trademark of the artist character who lived at this ranch and who sent and received pkgs. from FedEx. She was a metal sculptor and her husband was in Russia, their relationship a very tiny but interesting detail of the plot.
This is another shot of the gate and the barn where she worked on her pieces.
The house was featured again near the end of the movie, in the scene where Tom Hanks stood on the porch and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he left the package--which had the angel wings on it, and which also was featured throughout another large part of the movie-- and a note saying the package had saved his life.
I don't think anyone was there; it's now a bed and breakfast but there were no cars or other vehicles other than the farm trucks and tractor in front of the barn.
I did take a photo of this new marker:
Why is it that Texas signs look like Texas belt buckles (or vice versa) and are as big, bright and shiny as our womenfolk's hair-dos? Just like the stars, deep in the heart, I guess. I took two shots of this new sign and both had the reflection of a big doofus in them, I haven't yet figured out just what causes that.
At the IMDB Cast Away listing, there are quite a few message threads about this movie; some, like far too many one sees on the 'net, are full of inane comments, but there are other posts that speak of how profoundly the movie affected them (as it did me) or asking questions about the movie such as "where was the island?" as well as "where is the farm house?"
One guy who posted on the IMDB site has a website with some very nice photos including many I did not get, such as the interior of the house, a close-up shot of the note Hanks' character leaves at the end and autographed later by the actor. The note is on Arrington Ranch stationery, by-the-way.
(the site loads slow, even for me with a fairly fast connection; it's also in a "turn the page" style slideshow, a little tricky at first. It's a great site, though, sure worth a look if you're interested in seeing more of this particular bit of movie trivia)
I didn't go on to the intersection where Hanks' character was standing at the end of the film, but I stood in the middle of the dirt road in front of the house and took a couple of shots. The next shot is looking North, back the way I had come from Hwy 60, the turn off being 12 miles or so east of Miami in Hemphill County, another dozen or so miles to the northeast lies the larger town of Canadian.
This is looking South, showing a bit of how the terrain is at that particular spot, gentle rolling hills, great pasture land. We've had twice the normal amount of rain and the fields are fairly green and lush but this day was so hot the moisture was being sucked out of every living thing, including myself.
I'm not for sure what the attraction would be to stay out there; the road is fairly busy, what with a fair amount of oil field activity and even though I'm "oil field trash" and know you have to break some eggs to make an omelet, the unsightly scars left on this beautiful landscape by the fresh caliche roads and well locations, tank batteries and other production equipment pretty much spoils the view and beauty. I could make out the tops of three drilling rigs from the next hill over, so at least this area is benefitting from a robust economy.
I'm not sure what there would be to DO out there, either. (I kept thinking that getting to sit on the front porch in the shade and snap green beans might have been the highlight of a day back then) I hadn't been out there in a long time, not since I was helping to drill wells back in the late 70's and early 80's, but even without the ugly signs of progress, there's not much to see out there, just those rolling hills broken by some gullies and wash-outs that collectively don't quite deserve the name "canyon". If you wanted to brave the rattlesnakes, you could probably find some wild plums to pick, but I can't think of any other recreation out there unless it would be stealing oil field equipment or rustling cattle.
(Edit to add: I shouldn't be so harsh about there being "nothing to do" out there. To be honest, there's all sorts of wildlife to see such as antelope, deer, raccoons, many species of birds, etc. You'd still need to keep the rattlesnakes in mind if you go traipsin' off down in those gullies )
What one did while staying there would depend upon whom one was staying there with, I suppose. That's probably also the reason, that being not much to do, that old ranch families had so many children.
(back when I was roughnecking around the area, I worked with some local boys named "Farrington" and they were always going around adding an "F" to all the Arrington signs. That's been years and years...and years and years ago, the statute of limitations has run out)
The sky was threatening some severe weather, so I headed back into Miami. Not too far out of town a van got right on my tail and wouldn't back off. The speed limits drop severely as you drive into Miami and I certainly wasn't going to get a ticket being the first one in a close convoy not of my making just to satisfy someone's impatience.
He stayed almost on my bumper right into town, right into the 35mph limit and first chance I got I grabbed my camera to take a photograph; I had to turn it around and look at the LCD window in my rear view mirror and still try to keep an eye on the road.
Seeing my camera, he eased off; guess he thought I was doing it to turn him in, and I would've if he'd been more aggressive and not backed off, but I took it because I couldn't believe what sort of truck it was...and you'll prob. have to click the pic. in order to make out the company logo on the front of the delivery van:
If you can't make it out, here's a cropped bit of the original photo above, at the highest resolution.
Yup, was a FedEx truck.
Wonder if that was Tom Hanks driving?
For those of you who have found this post via a Google search, you *may* be interested in a followup post on the intersection that leads to the ranch house. It was shown at the first of the movie, and a longer scene at the crossroads ended the film.
Cast Away Crossroads
1/12/09
Interesting article about the history of the house, plus some photos of it and the intersection
In PDF format
09/16/09
Added a new post about the locations
Cast Away Locations in Google Maps
