Decomp, don’t you just love the aroma? NOT

Maybe a better title for this post is “How to ruin your daughter’s engagement news”.

Friday morning we arrived at the Ritchie Brothers Auction site in Chehalis, Washington to get Joe’s trucks. Everything was fine as we got on the road and stopped in Portland, Oregon for the night. 75 miles plus Joe needed Oregon permits.

Leaving Portland the air was cool on Saturday morning. Just before noon it began to warm up. The 5 by 65 air conditioning was not working so well.

What is 5 by 65, you ask? Two wing windows wide open, two door windows wide open, and one bunk vent open while traveling 65 miles an hour.

Joe stopped at a rest area in Oregon over the hill from Pendleton – my last post was from down the hill at Pendleton. He put in two cans of R134 air conditioning fluid stuff in the A/C compressor floppy doo. We had cool air! Roll all the windows up, close the wings and vent, crank up the A/C and away we went.

After about 5 hours driving we stopped for fuel and something to eat. Getting back in the truck I noticed it was smelling like mildew. These trucks, older models, have a tendency to smell moldy. Especially the trucks from the southern part of the US from California to Florida.

Air conditioning is used almost continuously in the south. The air ducts don’t get much chance to dry out. The condensation pools in the lower parts of the vents and goes stagnant and moldy.

By the time we got to Boise, Idaho for the night we had gone back to having the windows down and the wing windows open. The truck was smelling like something died.

Leaving Boise this morning, again with the windows open, Joe and I determined the smell was coming from beneath my seat. In an International the air conditioning unit is housed under that seat.

Upon arrival at the hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah I began the task of unmounting the seat from the housing.

I had been working at getting the last bolt unscrewed when my phone went off. By the time I answered it I had the bolt out and Joe arrived after having got us checked in.

Our daughter, Heidi Jo, was calling me to let me know her boyfriend proposed to her.

Heidi Jo is excitedly telling me about their normal weekend trips into the mountainous areas of Arizona where they go four wheeling. The group stops near a lake and Will asks Heidi Jo to join him. She begins to walk over barefooted and Will tells her to bring her shoes.

The story gets interrupted here by Joe asking me if I had the bolts out. I tip the seat back fully exposing the air conditioning unit guts and find no dead animal hidden inside.

Joe then asks “Who are you talking to?” I respond with “Heidi Jo” and she says “What, mommy?”

I’ve got sweat dripping from my face, decomp infiltrating my nose, a husband asking me to look further under the seat using a flashlight, and a daughter excitedly telling me her news.

It has degenerated into a circus run amok.

The hissing noise on my cell phone goes dead quiet and I think I’ve lost my link to Heidi Jo. I think Heidi Jo said her engagement ring was in her shoe. Will needed it, the shoe, to properly propose on bended knee.

I’m trying to do as Joe is instructing me in looking deeper for the dead thing and I blurt out “I think I’ve lost Heidi Jo. That dead animal is not down here.”

At this Heidi Jo passes on the news to Will that we have a decomposing dead animal. Do I feel rotten or what?! Her wonderful news has been usurped by a dead mouse or some other creature.

Juggling the seat, Joe’s instructions, the continued phone conversation with our daughter, and wiping sweat out of my eyes we manage to get the seat put back together.

Are you as lost as I am in this whole thing?

There is evidence on the floor around my seat that something had, in fact, expired in the truck. The stink is still quite evident. My phone conversation has come to an end and I need to locate a drug store for a giant can of Lysol spray and some kind of odor absorbing powder.

I get my trucks at Magna, Utah tomorrow and take them to Henderson, Colorado. Joe will be all by himself in that decomp truck tomorrow and Tuesday. I’ll rejoin him in that stinky truck as he drives to Houston, Texas for his delivery.

Heidi Jo, I’m thrilled to bits about your engagement news. Will, you have been a master at pulling off the surprise proposal. Working with your friends and family the past couple weeks to keep the secret and make it happen. Joe was delighted by your call asking him if you could marry his daughter. You have sure delighted the both of us.

And the engagement ring is beautiful.

Congratulations Heidi Jo and Will. Dad and I are truly happy for you.

I-84 in Oregon and the town of Pendleton.

Oregon landscapes change from hilly scrub….

To breathtaking vistas like this at Farewell Bend recreation area…

Higher elevations have forested areas….

The valley below us cradling Pendleton is spectacular and immense…..

Once down the 6 mile steep downgrade we came to the town of Pendleton….

This town was settled in the mid 1800′s. Most of the downtown buildings are occupied with all manner of shops and restaurants. Maybe Walmart has a store here but I doubt it.

Joe and I were in search of food. It had been a long day of driving and Oregon is still ranching country. We went to the Hambley Steakhouse and Saloon. Hambley’s is, evidently, quite famous for their saddles that were handcrafted here. Most of the building is taken up by western style clothing for the ranchers and cowboys. The steakhouse is only six years old.

This place is AMAZING!

Upon entering the steakhouse – dinner begins at 5 pm before that food is available at the bar – you first see this old telephone booth.

Next by the door is this old wine cellar thing.

This portion of the ceiling is original. I don’t know if the lighting fixture is a Tiffany.

To the left is the host/maitre de area. Beautiful old pieces of furniture.

Dividing the “Saloon” from the dining room is an old bank teller cage. This came from a bank robbed by Butch Cassiday.

The bar is from Grantsville, Idaho which was an old mining town. The bar was built in 1883.

Hamley’s is worth the look around. The food is definitely NOT worth the prices. We didn’t stay for dinner. A rib eye steak is $54. The burger Joe and I split was nothing to write about. The salads were good, but what do you expect from rabbit food anyway.

I love old buildings. The craftsmanship is mind boggling. That was at a time when electricity was just introduced, no hand held power tools, unless you call elbow grease the power for the tools. No computer aided drafting, nor a calculator. Dimensions were figured using a pencil, paper or scrap of wood, and a brain.

Find an old building and get yourself lost in the beauty of it.

Leslie

Getting a trial run on the hard hat.

Our dispatch office gives me plenty to wonder about. Why things are done the way they are. And of course I think I could do things better. NOT!!

Essentially we are on a deadhead trip from Charlotte, North Carolina to Chehalis, Washington.

Were it not for the suit fitting, last Saturday for our daughter’s wedding this coming July, we would probably still be in the northeast or Midwest. All that traveling for TWO trucks. Joe wheedled and badgered until a second set of trucks was found near Salt Lake City, Utah.

We hooked up my trucks this morning at Magna, Utah.

This job site requires all the safety gear to be worn. A couple of the men at the site had big smiles on their faces as they met me. I think it was my hard hat and they want one like mine.

My trucks are going to Henderson, Colorado from Magna, Utah.

Joe’s route will be a little out of route when we drop down to get my trucks then head to the Houston, Texas area.

I have found one odd thing about strangers.

If I go into a restaurant in my grease stained and dirty scrubs I get looks ranging from disgust to stink eye. If, however, I wear my orange vest over my grease stained and dirty scrubs I don’t get the odd looks.

Go figure. A working stiff is a working stiff. Dirty homeless people don’t, as a rule, walk into a restaurant to eat a $30 lunch or dinner for two.

Perception. That’s what it is. The orange vest is the answer to the dirty scrub clue. I have a job and I get dirty.

So from now on….the orange vest will be my friend and it will get a lot of use.

This week is just about over. Where does the time go? I hear this Sunday is Father’s Day. Dad’s, practice your best smile. The neck ties are coming.

Hey! Any of you men that read my blog want to get a contest started? An “Ugly Tie” contest? Send me a link if anyone takes me up on it.

Leslie

My hard hat.

An optical illusion.

This post is about seeing what really isn’t there.

We pulled into the EconoLodge hotel driveway last night. The setting sun was in my face. While it was partially blocked by an adjacent building I looked out into the parking lot. This is what I saw.

What the heck is wrong with this box truck?!

The light post was acting as the magician’s assistant

Hope this was fun for you. I have to say, it doesn’t take much to entertain an idiot and I was highly entertained.

Not that I’m calling you an idiot, just a thing I say when I make fun of myself at things like this.

Leslie

So Joe won’t be wearin’ my hard hat.

Some of the places we go to pick up our trucks are really getting strict on safety gear. We’ve had orange reflective vests for several years. The shipping ports require we wear them.

Recently we had to buy steel toed shoes before we could come on a property to get trucks going to an auction. We were informed by our dispatch hard hats, along with the rest of the safety gear, will be required before we enter the shipping port in Houston, Texas – Galeena really.

Before leaving home we each bought one. As you can see, they are the same color and style. I HAVE to alter mine so I don’t get Joe’s and it falls around my ears. Joe can’t wear mine as it would sit atop his big head.

A trip to Michaels was warranted. A bit of alteration is necessary.

Glittered letter stickers are a component to identifying mine from Joe’s.

Of course, some bling is necessary. Rhinestone flourishes, paper flowers, paper leaves, and butterflies are terribly important in identification purposes. These are mostly Recollection, the store brand of Michaels.

There won’t be any question that I’m on the job

Joe wanted to try his hand at personalizing his hard hat.

Just call him “Ole Backward Joe” and I think he might answer

He wanted the American flag on his hard hat. So we found some glass bead sticker things.

I sure do miss my craft room :/. One day soon I will see it again….I hope.

Leslie

Childhood memories. The good ones that stick with me.

My sister, Pati, has been text bombing me with memories of our childhood in Colorado.

Around 1964 our parents moved us to the boonies. Erie, Colorado was a small town which was hard to get to from the highway. Now it is no longer the boonies and has easy access from Interstate 25.

The long dirt road that lead to the few acres our dad purchased for our trailer house holds many memories. Now those memories are buried beneath a blacktop road.

Our neighbors included a family with a teenage daughter and adolescent son, along with their parents. The girl’s father would have a conniption fit when Pati and I would visit the daughter. We, Pati and I, were filthy little mongrels.

Hygiene, personal or otherwise, was something we were not familiar with. Our hair got combed only when our mother was home from one of her frequent admissions to the mental hospital in Denver. Bathing was not something we did.

Two little girls with matted hair, dirt encrusted toes, dried mud on arms and legs. Me stinking of urine because I was a bed wetter, and the both of us seeking food from anyone that would talk to us.

I was a truant. With little to no adult supervision I would tell Pati I was not going to school. The bus stop was a long walk down several dirt roads. During the winter months that trek was akin to walking 100 miles. Ragged coats that were too small for either of us left us shivering in the cold morning air as we waited for the bus. Shoes too small for our growing feet had big holes in the soles that soon filled with wet slush, soaking our socks making my toes feel like they would freeze and pop off like toe-cicles.

Being in the warmth of our trailer was far more desirable to me than going to school.

Our dad was a brick layer. He would leave in the mornings long before the sun came up and be home long after the sun went down.

Bread was a tantalizing sight. Pati and I were under strict orders to not eat it because it was for his lunch. Tiny cans of “Deviled Meat” was slathered on the bread as he made his lunches. Pati and I watched as he packed his lunch bucket each night. He would make coffee in the mornings and fill his thermos after he had his morning cup with a couple of unfiltered cigarettes.

When we woke up in the mornings Pati and I would root through the trash can for the treasure of a nearly empty Deviled meat can. Each of us swiping a finger around the sides and bottom of the can then suck the goodness off. Some days the can held coffee grounds, cigarette butts and ashes, potato peelings, and other trash. We’d pick it out then fight over who got to get the first lick.

All the food in the house had to be cooked. Neither Pati nor I were brave enough to figure out how to use the stove. After the butt whippings we got for being close to the knobs and hollered at about burning down the house because of a careless or selfish act we steered clear of that device. Our dad, when he was home, would do the cooking.

Pati and I tried every combination we could think of to make raw potatoes taste good. Rolling them in sugar, sprinkling salt and pepper on them, slathering a coat of Miracle Whip over the top, even liberally smearing butter over the raw potato. Nothing made that potato taste good. It did, however, make the gnawing and noisy bellies quiet for a bit.

Saltine crackers were the next food item we would attack. Unlike the potatoes located within our reach, the crackers were put up high in the cupboard which called for a bit of climbing. Pati would push a chair up to the sink counter, climb atop the chair then step up on the counter. The crackers were above the fearsome stove. She would delicately place one foot between the burners. Touching the surface with a toe then quickly jerk it back just in case the stove was hot.

I’d get a heel in the mouth sometimes after one of her jerks. A split lip, blood dripping down on the dress I had worn for that entire month, or longer, and a fight would break out. Me slapping the back of the offending leg, her kicking out at me ever more energetically. She hanging onto the cupboard door knobs and trying to keep her balance as the doors swung open then hastily closed with a bang.

The fights were vicious. Name calling. Slapping, kicking, and then hurling objects at each other that were within reach and sure to land a stinging blow.

Things would degenerate from there. Pati would hop down on the chair while I was distracted by a growing goose egg on my head from a ceramic bowl she took out of the cupboard and fired at my head.

Pati would leap from the chair and wrap her scrawny legs around my waist and she would commence pounding her fists about my head and ears. Trying to pry her off if me was next to impossible to I’d slap her with an open hand anywhere I could leaving stinging red welts on her legs.

We’d end up rolling around the floor with clumps of dried mud brought in by our dad’s boots and left there. All the while slapping and punching each other. Calling each other names and vowing we hated one another, wishing the other dead.

Pati and I were locked in a battle of survival. For food to sustain us. We loved each other and hated each other. We were fierce and angry little girls.

Today, as grown women, we are learning to love each other for who we are now. We are amazed that we survived our childhood.

Being placed in foster homes didn’t change much for us. At least we had food. Later we would be taught personal hygiene.

Ghosts from the past still haunt us.

Nostalgia. A longing for things of the past.

I have been remembering my days of living in Colorado.

The cool morning air. The sweet sound of turtle doves cooing from a tree somewhere close. A cloudless sky of blue. The Rocky Mountains forming a border in the background.

The sight of a rabbit in the grass near the doorstep of my daughter’s house.

Gentle and fragrant breezes stirring the cool air. Even in the height of summer the evenings cool off to temper the days harsh heat.

In Oklahoma it is muggy. The spring is rife with destructive tornadoes. Another round of the nasty business has ripped through Oklahoma City, Moore, and Norman. Our home has sustained minimum damage this time from 100 mph straight winds that have torn the skirting of our mobile home and sent it under the house or to far flung destinations.

Windows and doors are opened in Colorado to allow the sweet smelling air to infiltrate each room of a house.

Leaving the windows and doors open in Oklahoma only makes the house feel muggy and sweltering as the day lengthens.

Colorado winters can be severe one day and mild the next. Nearer the Rocky Mountains the harsh winters can be compared to the northern states of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

My youth was spent in many different Colorado towns. I moved to Arizona in my early 20′s and was sure I had been taken directly to hell. Late spring, all of summer, and early fall in Arizona the heat is unmerciful. Air conditioning is a necessity, not a luxury. The smell of the earth after a soaking rain is not fragrant.

In my mid 20′s I spent a fall and winter in Gorem, New Hampshire. That was an experience I will never forget. The sulphur smell from the paper mill hung in the air and burned my nose. That winter was the coldest I had been in my life. The engine oil in cars froze to a molasses sludge. Cars and pickup trucks had to come equipped with an electric engine block heater. Those vehicles without this necessary “accessory” were dead until the minus temperatures warmed enough or the car owner heated charcoal briquettes in a pie tin then set it under the oil pan of the vehicle until it warmed the oil enough to start and run.

I’m not stalwart enough to live in the frozen north. Nor in the super heated southwest.

In my late 30′s I lived in Utah. A climate similar to Colorado with mountainous vistas and salt cedar trees everywhere.

A soaking rain in Oklahoma is almost as fragrant as Colorado but comes in third. Rain drenched Utah comes in second.

The wet earth of Colorado has a fragrance that is unmatched anywhere else that I have lived. I miss that smell. Cottonwood trees, pine and other evergreens fill the air.

The traffic…well that is another story all together.

What are the nostalgic thoughts running amok in your brain? Are they simply fond memories or a temptress goading you to make a drastic change in your life?

I think the tornadoes at home are in league with my nostalgia. Pushing me closer to packing up and moving far way.

Leslie