Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  While the title might sound like a category for the game of Jeopardy, it's not. It's just a reflection of some of what I find when I'm out picking up trash on the side of the road.   When we returned from church today, I was driving up a road close to home and noticed a Mike's Hard Lemonade bottle off to the side. I was afraid that if a car was coming in the opposite direction, it would be easy to run over. Of course I wasn't thinking about someone else running over it as much as I was thinking how mad I would be if I ran over it. Years ago, I would have just hoped that such a thing didn't happen, and I'd go home and forget about it. However, either because I've matured, or I've had enough experience to know that Murphy's law would certainly come into play and I'd be the unfortunate clown who destroyed his tires, I decided to come back with my grabber and a large plastic trash bag and pick it up.   Picking up trash is like eating Lays Potat...

About a month ago, I broke down and bought myself a new mattress. The last one I bought was shortly after we  moved in to Hoonah from the farm. I guess the one I had was roughly forty years old. I know, I know, who has a mattress for that long? Well, obviously, I did. About ten years ago I had bought a topper for it at Costco, and it made it fairly comfortable until just recently. I was waking up every day with back pain, and I tossed and turned all night trying to find a comfortable spot. Obviously, it was time to buy another one.  I had seen advertisements for the Purple mattress, and they were quite clever. One ad showed an egg on the mattress and over six hundred pounds of sheet glass being lowered onto it, without the egg breaking. That was impressive, but I'm not an egg, and I'm fairly certain I'll never have six hundred pounds forcing me down into the mattress. I had visions of trying to get myself out of bed in the morning and sinking into the waffle design. It migh...

  My wife and I invited my friend Matt over for dinner last Sunday. He's been undergoing a number of medical procedures, and she had told him that after he returned from his stint at the hospital down in Seattle, she would invite him over for steak and cake. As it turned out, he didn't need to return to Seattle for further surgery, the gaping wound in his chest was healing nicely and at the rate he is going, he'll be in a position to qualify for a kidney in six months or so.    I believe I had mentioned in an earlier post about him, that he had lost his second leg, was on dialysis, and had surgery to replace a valve in his heart. He'd had to go to the hospital in Seattle at least once to correct an infection in the mesh  that was used to repair his heart. He was anticipating having to return to the hospital  and have his bottom rib removed to replace one of  his clavicles  which was broken and not mending, and they were going to try to fix the hole in ...

  Some years back, when I was living in Hoonah, I became the manager of the L. Kane Store. I always thought that it was a stupid name for a store, until a lady who was a friend of the family who owned the store mentioned that when it was established, back in 1893, women owning businesses was frowned upon. Her name was Louise Kane, and in order to do business with suppliers in Seattle, she shortened the name to L. Kane's. It was one of three stores in Hoonah at the time, and unfortunately was the one that a local fisherman named Frank preferred to shop at. He lived on his small wooden fishing boat with his Black Lab, appropriately named Blackie, in Spasski Bay. It was a protected harbor, regardless of which way the wind blew or how hard, and provided shelter year round, even during the fierce winter weather that blew in from Icy Strait. When I first met him he must have been in his seventies. He always seemed to have a few days' growth of beard and wore a dirty felt fedora, a kn...

  When I lived in Hoonah, I used to watch the news at night and listen as the announcer spoke of the various cities around Alaska. It wasn't until we moved north to Wasilla and could drive to many of the places that I'd only heard of that we finally visited. This past September Jan and I and our two daughters, Autumn and Liz and their husbands took a trip down to Valdez. The trip down was breathtaking, with the fall colors becoming more evident as we traveled closer to the coast. I was shocked at how much renting a room in a bed and breakfast was. Between the three families we dropped over $1200. 00 for two nights. There was nothing fancy about the place, and the breakfast was a kind of help yourself thing, no fancy pancakes or breakfast rolls. Cereal, juice and boiled eggs and of course coffee. They kind of had us by the short hairs though, so we paid up and kept quiet. Even though it was at the end of the salmon season, Dayville Road, where the public has access to the beach ...

  I was looking through the various contests at Fan Story, the writing site that I belong to, when I came across a writing prompt about what it would be like if the residents at a nursing home went off their meds and there was no one around to assist them. This is the story I came up with. It garnered my third place in the contest. I hope you enjoy it. I was about to enter the front door to the Morning Glory nursing facility when I saw Mrs. Culpepper sitting on the bench in the foyer with her Depends around her ankles. Thank God she had on her nightgown and was covered  from her shoulders to the top of her knees. I couldn't see if the floor underneath her was wet, or worse, but I was hoping she hadn't relieved herself yet or I'd be dealing with the mess once I got inside.   I tried the front door, but it wouldn't budge. I could see the red lights on a panel on the wall of the foyer, indicating the door was locked, but I didn't see any nurse or assistant around to un...