The horse show

Today we loaded up the kids and horses and went to a horse show. It was a little horse show, a casual affair, a bunch of common horses, most all were haired up for winter and pretty shaggy. Participants were mostly po-dunk riders- hayseeds, also fitting nicely in the fairly shaggy category. These were not your slick, hip, and cool quarter horse type people with thirty thousand dollar horses and silver adorned saddles and pressed, starched jeans. We fit right in.

It was for all practical purposes Gracie and Charlie?s first crack out of the box in their show careers. We chose the show because it is low pressure, low stress, relaxed and mostly because it featured a costume class in due to Halloween season. We are not Halloween people but costumes are a great way for the kids to be excited about riding their horses and keeping the emphasis off winning and losing, or so we thought. Early in the week, when Gracie got wind of the costume class she started planning right away. She chose her Indian maiden outfit, which is a fake buckskin Indian dress with a headband. She would paint a white circle around her little mare?s eye. She can?t take all the credit for her outfit because I'm the one who came up with the suggestion that she should also paint a white hand print on the horse?s bottom. She looked cute as a button in her little outfit with her blond pig tails. (8 inchers) She rode the little mare that her mom and I bought as a two year old, trained and sold to friends for their little girl. We recently bought her back and she is as gentle and quiet as a fawn. She is a bombproof babysitter for our kids. Her name is Misty. The kids sometimes call her Pony Gal because of her small size.

Charlie had to ride old Henry for the costume class. Henry is older than God, about 27 to be exact, and he is bit of a handful. The kids can handle him if they wear spurs and show him who is boss. ?Leadership? is the term now used my natural horsemen because ?show him who is boss? went out the window because of political correctness and also because many people thought ?show him who is boss? meant to hit him in the head with a two by four. Mostly, it is Henry who provides the leadership and they do pretty much whatever he wants which is mostly the right thing. So he?s a good old boy who doesn?t owe us anything. He knocked around Grant County in eastern Oregon for twenty four years before we bought him. He?s drug calves to the branding fire and packed elk. Been hunted off and cowboyed off so now whatever Charlie throws at him is easy money.

When we arrived at the show grounds we tied the horses to the trailer and the kids proceeded to spray their horses tails with this stuff that untangles mains and tails. Then they rip their brushes through the tails like they are killing snakes. When they are finished the horses are missing a few tail hairs. This would just not do at the thirty thousand dollar horse type horse shows. But I think it?s neat that the kids mimic what they have seen their mom do, which is brush out tail, only she can do the thirty thousand dollar thing if need be. Soon they are picking out the feet, being all conscientious and thorough and I'm glad they are not sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons.

Gracie rides Misty around the pasture/ parking lot and Henry stands next to the trailer and whinnies and farts, those crackly farts that make me wonder if they don?t sound like dynamite fuses burning down to an explosion. Henry has never bucked hard with the kids. He bogs his head a little and his lope gets kind of hoppy, like he's plowing through ocean swells, but that?s the most he ever does. He really is a trustworthy old guy but he's a little work for the kids to ride. I've roped colts -big, old colts off his back and snubbed them up and drug them around and Henry has no trouble dragging a big colt around the pen despite his age. But it kind of takes a man or strong riding women to get much out of Henry. So it?s not all joy when Charlie somehow gets the short straw and opts to ride old Henry.

When Charlie was four he had way less fear of Henry. That first fall we had him we'd put the saddle on him. While I rode and gave lessons down at the arena Charlie would ride with me, loping right behind me and hang out with me . The other kids were at school and Linda substituted often so it was just Charlie and me and it was a neat, neat fall. As long as there was someone around for which Charlie could show he had no qualms at all about riding Henry and no trouble galloping around the huge arena with his feet stuck out to the sides like he was doing the splits because Henry was so round. It was cute but I think the time I got after Charlie for following me too close on my horse kind of hurt his feelings and he wasn?t so interested in riding after that and he gradually lost some of his nerve. Charlie's seven now and still rides Henry but mostly at a jog and mostly when he can?t ride Misty.

Charlie climbed on the old horse and rode him around but Henry was a little snorty and spooky so I made the command decision that Linda should warm him up for Charlie. Linda is in her tight jeans and tennis shoes and she bends her knee all Lady-like for me to give her a leg up. I take her tenny in my hand and soon discover its going to take both hands and soon she's squirming and struggling to get on this teeny saddle on this big old fuzzy gelding who, for all his supposed faults, stands still as a statue while the old hick couple gets ma mounted.

We took the horses down to the warm up arena and Linda decides to go for the warm up lope and goes to kicking with her white tennis shoes and finally gets the old boy into a hand gallop. He makes it a lap or two and nearing the top of the arena stumbles and almost falls down. Literally stuck his nose in the dirt. The saddle flipped up and the misses almost went over the top. So Henry was warmed up but Linda almost needs surgery to get that little teen kid saddle horn our of her belly button. The children and I are entertain with accounts of the incident throughout the morning.

Charlie climbs on wearing his complete Seattle Seahawks uniform, sans the helmet which he would wait to put on for the actual competition. The kids traded horses back and forth and they rode fairly aggressive, Gracie because her confidence was up and she is becoming a good little hand with the horses. Charlie is too, but he was in show off mode, which he thrives on. He?s chewing gum acting all cocky because he knew people were watching him and were impressed with him and his sister, these two tiny people, a professional quarterback and a mini-squaw who rode with abandon. Charlie dismounted once to stretch his legs and chew his gum and pull his uniform pants out of his bottom.

Gracie tied for first in this huge costume class with six other people. Unless you?ve seen it you probably wouldn?t believe the amount of people who would dress themselves and their horses in costumes. Charlie and about 20otheres didn?t make the cut but they were complimented on their outfits by the announcer. I'm talking grownups and teenagers and grandmas and all manner of frightened children here. Charlie was probably the littlest in the class. But Gracie came away with the blue ribbon.

I warned the kids, sternly on the way to the show about not getting caught up in winning and losing and ribbons. I stressed the importance of having a good attitude. They agreed they would just have fun. Of course all that went out the window during the first class when Charlie didn?t get a ribbon. Charlie?s horse also got attacked by a horse that was being ridden by a masked eleven year old girl in a Zoro disguise. Apparently he didn't like the way Henry looked at him and lashed out biting him on the butt. I thought Linda was going to jump over the fence and slug the horse in the face but she just commented about some people and the horses they put their kids on. Some of the horses our parents put us on would have eaten any horse out there for lunch and won a bucking contest afterwards.

So Gracie, in her little pink cowboy hat, showed Misty in the walk, trot class, navigating gingerly in a sea of horse-back humanity. I'm talking kids and grannies and teenagers and grown men here, some aboard ill mannered knot heads in need of a little ?leadership.?
Then there?s little Gracie trotting around on her tame fawn, who keeps her out of trouble. Gracie placed fifth in a class of about thirty.

Charlie told Gracie to make sure she stuck around for his class in case he came in "first place" he said, while performing a little cocky pre-victory dance. Finally, or so he thought, he would get his turn on Misty. His Class was a little smaller. But it was an equitation class and since he doesn?t know a thing about what the judge looks for in such a class, the rider is judged, not the horse; Charlie didn?t know what was really going on because we haven?t gotten that far yet. So even though Misty jogged around cute and behaved well, Charlie didn?t get a ribbon, so when he left the arena there were tears and the lower lip stuck out and we felt bad for our kid because he didn?t understand. Charlie stuck his lip out also.

Linda decided to let them both take a turn on Misty and enter the trail class. They each had their chance, riding through a little obstacle course and over a tarp that was supposed to be all scary. Misty didn?t bat an eye although the tarp got hooked around her leg once which is not supposed to happen because it is supposed to be fastened down. Neither she nor Charlie seemed to notice they were dragging this floppy loud thing around. A tarp around a hoof would cause many a bug eyed Cayuse to leave the planet passing through fences and barns and trees, but Misty was unfazed. Charlie and pony gal cruised through the course so quick he caught up with the horse ahead of him who was so freighted by the obstacle he locked his brakes and required fervent coaxing the entire way.

I saw both the kids? runs. Charlie by far had the better ride in the trail class. So I figured he would win the class and get a ribbon and it would take his mind off the fact that Gracie had won several. We waited until the very end of the show because the trail class was the last class for which the all important standings were to be announced. By the time they announced the results Charlie had long forgotten about any ribbon issues and was enjoying the game of tickle Charlie?s armpits I was playing with him. The kids wanted to go home but I told them just to be patient. I thought Charlie had won the class and I wanted him to get a ribbon- he didn?t care anymore but I made a big deal out of it: Mr. just have fun and don?t worry about the ribbons. Sure enough the last announcement for the day was for the trail class (ages ten and under) And Charlie came in about fourth and finally received his long awaited ribbon. The announcer made a big deal about it. I got the monkey off my back. Charlie was satisfied and I was satisfied for a split second until the announcer lady declared that Gracie Rawlins won first place.

What you need

What you need is someone who constantly reminds you of your strong points. You need to be around someone like that. At least that's what I need. Maybe your the type of person who is not constantly fighting your head, but I am. I think I'm being honest with myself but close scrutiny of my thoughts combined with occasionally feedback from friends and acquaintances who have witnessed my actions and heard my words have caused me to realize that I have a tendency to naturally default into a glass half empty kind of guy. I'm too hard on myself. They say that I always accentuate the negative and disregard the positive. Alright already.

Ray Hunt, an old horseman who made his livelihood helping people understand their horses said, "Don’t find fault with your horse. Try to find the good things he does and then the bad will get less and less." It's so true and not only with horses but wives and kids and people in general, including my own, personal self. So if your one of us guys who is constantly critical of yourself you need to be around someone who will continually remind you of your good points.

If your conscientious you'll find an irresistible urge to take inventory of your good and bad faults and you'll most likely error on the side of being too critical. Maybe everyone does that, I don't know. Its like when you hear your voice on the answering machine. Your own voice always sounds stupid when you hear it played back. But nobody else thinks that about you. They don't think about your voice much at all. Because they are thinking of their own voice, which to you sounds normal, Besides even if their voice is a little weird sounding to you, it doesn't matter, its just THEM after all.

My friend and I video ourselves announcing our church announcements prior to the actual service so during service we are shown on a quick video segment to save time. Also, I look, and sound exactly like an idiot. On camera I've even got this huge space between my teeth. I always pretend I have to go to the bathroom when they play the video before the congregation. Then I watch from the hall which I refer to as the "foyer" in the announcements and I sound like a hillbilly when I say it. Anyway I'm so embarrassed that I watch from the hall. Because I am self conscious of the fact that I sound like Barney Phife on helium and look somewhat Chinese.

But the reality is that the pastors chose me because they saw something they liked. That's the theory I'm going with. So I choose to dwell on that positive idea when I do think of the announcements and try to imagine how they might see it from a pastors point of view as opposed to my point of view; the gaped toothed, Oriental, Barney Phife point of view. That's another thing that gets me in trouble. Self Deprecation. It really is the best kind of humor but sometimes people dont understand it and they think your hard on yourself. Which may be true although my favorite people have always been able to laugh at themselves and tell funny stories on themselves. But you have to be care full when you go this route because if all you do is self deprecate, you could be too full of yourself. In which case you become self centered, full of pride, and negetive. If you don't watch it you'll get bitter and cynical and crabby. Not that I would know.

So you need this cool person nearby to blow some smoke up your trousers. Its a good smoke, like cherry scented pipe smoke. Its a sweet smelling savor and it reminds you of what you do good. So you take in a compliment and savor the compliment and roll in the compliment like a dog rolls in something that stinks for whatever reason then runs around like his butts on fire. Like the dog you are infused with life because you are concentrating on what you do good and your chest sticks out a little further and you step a little lighter and the happy thoughts come and you imagine yourself doing great things. Sometimes you allow cool music to play in the background while you are doing these cool things and through some cosmic Dallas Cowboy stadium of the universe, people watch.

I had a friend do just such a thing for me. I wrote to him asking if I could get a quote about my abilities for a business website I am building. He wrote back with a wonderful account about this great person he knows who is vested with all types of talents and wisdom. I almost had to write back and make sure he wasn't talking about someone else. It was so encouraging. It was a "Hey, honey, come look at this" moment. I wanted wallpaper my room with it and read it every day and inscribe it on my toilet paper. I wanted to rub up against it like a cat rubs on catnip. I wanted to mail it out, to memorize it, memorialize it. I wanted to eat it. It inspirited me. It was true, even truer than the writer meant it to be, I know this in my own heart. I never really say this but it was one of those times when you want to say, "Damn Strait" and walk out and conquer the world (after a short pause to google "Damn Strait")

But anyway, it encouraged me, it made me want to be accountable to it. I wanted to live up to such lofty ideals and knew I could if someone besides my own doubting self believed in me and thought highly of my skills and talents. On one hand I am so confident and on the other I'm so critical and nit picky and set goals that are ridiculously high or low. I get so focused on what I do wrong and what needs to be fixed and what could be better. Soon, I'm frustrated; pounding on the negative, focused on driving it out, attacking it. But the more I chew on it the bigger it gets like a big piece of gristly bull moose jerky.

So when this angel shows up and breaths life into the atrophied part of your brain that sometimes thinks positive things but mostly suffocates, when this event happens everything takes on fresh meaning and you wonder how you got so messed up.

This new life will lead you to find someone and encourage them. You'll want to tell them how they really are because you can see it plainly while they have probably lost sight of it. If they'd just believe you for a few minutes they could see the future for them that you do. They would see themselves setting higher goals, or allowing lesser goals. That little part in them that wants to do more and better but is overshadowed by that little fearful bug that tells them, Nah, your ok like you are, you probably couldn't do it anyway, that's for lucky, better people, you might make a mistake in front of everyone and that could be catastrophic and possibly embarrassing- a fate worse than death!

But I would tell you, you know that thing? That thing you've dreamed about, or thought about, That thing that wouldn't require much more energy than your using now, wouldn't take much time, would just take a little more focus, a little more risk, a little more life. Yeah, that thing. You can do it.

Dougy

I cut my firewood this week and remembered Dougy,



Dougy



Last winter, for the first time in my life, I had too much firewood. I cut it in the fall and now it’s split and stacked in the utility room and the back yard and by the gate and by the driveway. I even gave some away. I drove my little pick up to a place in the mountains called Keeney meadows which is the best, closest place around here to get firewood and I tourtured the timber.




My pickup is a little under powered and has a messed up front door on the drivers side from the time I left it open and fell a tree on it. Luckily the tip of the tree was all that hit the door so it didn’t tear it off the hinge. It sags really bad, kind of like a bird with a dislocated wing. I fixed it the best I could but it still has a big dent in it. My wife hates it because she thinks it makes us look poor, but I think it looks macho. I finally took the drivers side rear view mirror off because the bolts came loose and wallered out the holes so it remained quite wobbly no matter how much wire I used to help secure it. There is also the place on the front mud guard under the chrome bumper where I hooked a choker cable around when I pulled it out of the woods with a D4 Cat. By the time I was home free the choker had sucked down tight and ripped a long, jagged, horizontal gash in the mud guard. Now, it looks like my little pick up has a shark mouth. A junior high kid I know described my pick up as, and I quote, “gross.” It is the perfect wood getting truck. It’s small so you don’t have to work your tail off to fill it up with a good load of wood. You spend the better part of your time drinking coffee and eating chocolate snacks on the way up and back which is nice, especially if it happens to be snowing sideways. Although small, if you really try you can grossly overload the pick up and come back with a pretty impressive jag of wood. It’s downhill all the way home. The citizens of Mt Vernon never really let on that they were impressed but some of them did remark about the size of my woodpile, which caused me to swell with pride although I always blamed it on the chocolate.




I pretty much disliked wood cutting until last fall when I was forced to get my entire supply before they shut the woods down in November. When I lived on the ranch I got my wood as I needed it because it was right out the back door and easy picking. But now, living in Mt Vernon I have to get my wood from the national forest, which required permits. But the wood is of much better quality and I would learn to love good firewood, although getting wood was, as near as I could tell, work and I am not particularly fond of working when I could be out trapping chasing coyotes, or fishing or hunting or writing about it. But my friend and back yard neighbor Dougy offered to go with me and show me the best places to get firewood, and he brought most of the victuals. Although he is somewhat of a health food nut I ate just about all his food and drank most of his distilled water because I wanted him to feel welcome as a guest.




Our first load was somewhat of a half-hearted attempt on my part. To save work I cut the wood a little long not wanting to run the saw any more than necessary and forgetting that the length of my wood stove is about sixteen inches. Dougy made the comment that he thought perhaps I was cutting fence posts which I thought was pretty funny coming from a man who’s neighbor had just eaten all of his organic cheese puffs. Also, somewhat in denial I had elected to wear my Romeo’s to get the first load because throughout the course of the summer I had chosen to forget how much work getting firewood is and how steep the ground can be and also how quick slippers fill up with sawdust. And somehow the head fell off of Doug’s splitting mall when I was using it. It thought it was a weird coincidence because I had just broken the handle too.




On the way back we were only able to travel at a top speed of thirty five miles an hour because I had neglected to fill my tires with air. Under the weight of a fairly good load we swayed back and forth like an over loaded barge in rough seas. I could tell by the nervous look in Dougy’s eyes that I had made quite an impression on him. Fortunately, my wife fed him a big dinner that night. He happily joined me for more loads throughout the course of the fall.




As autumn wore on I began to enjoy our wood gathering expeditions into the mountains and even became obsessed with the idea that there was wood up there for the taking and if we didn’t get it some other Mt Vernonite would. I made trip after trip, sometimes with my family, sometimes with Dougy or another friend and sometimes by myself and I am happy to report I only lost my chainsaw once. I had been king around looking for the perfect tree and having picked a so-so candidate I stopped to sharpen, oil and gas up my saw. Afterwards I decided that the tree I had chosen was marginal and I began hearing voices. Actually it was one voice, the voice of a tree. A Tamarack “Oh Yooohooo.” The tree whispered. Did you forget about me?” The voice groaned lasciviously. “I’m straight and I'm tall and I’m…”




“Yes, gulp,” I said, What, what?




“I’m standing, dead!” Suddenly I remembered the straight grained, dead-standing-beauty that was calling me. She was just up the road a couple miles. Such was my passion, I threw in my saw and chose not to take the time to close the tailgate. As I roared up to the tree I jumped out and went to grab my saw but it was gone. It was then I knew exactly what I must do, so without hesitation, I panicked. Leaping into my pickup I fishtailed wildly up and down the road searching desperately, franticly, and at one point, not noticing a particularly high bump, airborne. The dread of replacing a seven hundred-dollar saw was only enhanced by the thought of reporting my folly to my wife Linda, who would most likely cost more than seven hundred dollars to replace. When I returned home, I was clinically depressed. “How was wood cutting honey?” She said. “I’m thinking about committing suicide.” I wimpered.




“That’s nice,” she said. “Don’t track mud in the house.” She calmly put an ad on the local radio while I slumped into the corner, sucking my thumb in the fetal position. The next day a kind fellow who had been grouse hunting in the area returned my saw.




Challenges like this only strengthened my resolve to cut more wood. I became a fanatic. Early in the morning I would rise, sharpen, oil and gas up my saw, clean her air filter, clean my pickup, air the tires and shut the tailgate. The Blue angels take less care in pre-flighting their fighter jets than I did in preparation for a day of wood gathering. Once prepared, I called Doug.


Me: “Good morning ol’ boy. Ain’t it a beauty? Listen, I’ve got gas and my tailgate’s shut!”

Dougy: “Is this some kind of an obscene phone call?”

Me: “Saw’s sharp, tires aired and I’ll be by to pick you up in five. Any questions?”

Dougy: “Just one. Who is this?”

Me: “Don’t be funny, you know exactly who this is!”

Dougy, “No speaky de spanglish.”

Me: “Nice try Dougy, but it’s too beautiful of a day to waste laying around in bed.”

Dougy: “It’s three o’clcok in the morning for Pete sake!

Me: “I’ll take you out for breakfast!”

Dougy: “The restaurant won’t be open for two hours.”

Me: “I’ll come over and we’ll eat your food. Got any more of those organic cheese puffs?”




Dougy had a certain flair and style all his own. He was a sweet, ragamuffin like fellow. His dark brown, long hair was a little messy and he usually kept the top button of his jeans unbuttoned although I don’t really know why because he was slender. Sometimes he wore suspenders and left the tails of his flannel shirt un-tucked causing them to get kind of bunched up but he never seemed to notice. In contrast, he operated a chain saw with meticulous precision; the tip of the bar never touched the dirt when Doug was running it. Dougy was an unusually and wildly hard worker. He was slim and not tall, but he was solid muscle, and very strong. He was never really at home in Mt Vernon, not because he didn’t belong but because just two years earlier he had lost his sweet little wife to cancer. He had struggled since Lisa died. She was the love of his life. All he ever really wanted was to be with her again. But he kept himself busy helping people, and driving a log truck for Kenny Speakman, a logger who we both had worked for on different occasions. Slowly but surely Doug was coming back to life. He had even packed up some of Lisa’s stuff in boxes. He hadn’t touched it in two years since her death.




Nowdays a gentle smile gleamed underneath Dougy’s mustache and he usually had a twinkle in his eyes, especially when I was doing something humorous such as breaking his splitting maul. He was a nice guy and trustworthy. We had a hole in the fence between our yards through which I would send my four-year-old son Wade whenever I needed to borrow something. Dougy was not only trustworthy in that I could entrust him with my young son, but also in that he only tried to fix the fence once, and he didn’t try very hard. We made a fine team, united by our covetous lust for firewood, which we suitably entitled “Wood Greed.” It was our own private, insider joke. Most men lust for money and power and women but we lusted after firewood.




What were once half-hearted attempts at gathering wood became well prepared forays into the woodlands to extract the straight grained tamarack and red fir bounty. No longer did we hack up a haphazard load and toss it indiscriminately in the back of my pickup. We became hagridden with an insatiable urge to find dead standing firewood logs, cut them with fastidiousness and even take precious time to hand hew the rounds in order to make a tight stack with no voids. I have seen fancy ski lodges that were slapped together with less care than the loads we hauled out of the woods. The wood was stacked as high as possible with ultimate care, then tied down hard and fast with a lariat rope. Once, when we ran out of saw gas, we broke off the last twenty feet of a tamarack snag by means of hacking it with a little hand axe and jumping madly up and down on it until it snapped, because, although there was no room left in the pickup, I wasn’t about to let the tip of a perfectly good wood log go to waste or worse yet, be found by the competition. By the time it was lashed on the pickup the knarly snag stuck far out over the cab of the truck. It looked like the mast of a log laden pirate ship. Luckily it was downhill all the way home. Log trucks pulled off the road in awe and reverence as the tiny king cab swayed and swaggered out of the woods under the gargantuan load of seasoned wood rounds, the gnarly snag on top valiantly pointing the way home. Local folks referred to the scene as an ant carrying a hummingbird. Children playing in their yards ran for cover as the straining, grimacing Datson thundered by, causing loose berries to rattle off Juniper trees. She squatted down hard in the back and rose high in the front as if popping a permanent wheelie while hauling the glorious load out of the woods, the shark mouth mud guard wide and vicious and impressive as the tiny pick up creaked and groaned under it’s mammoth burden into my yard already buried in firewood.




One time during a particularly blizzardy day we went up for our second load and became engrossed in an Oregon Ducks football game that was on the radio. Previously Dougy had shown no inclination towards being a football fan. The Ducks were down by two touchdowns when we finally found a good tree. We were both hollering and cheering as we sat in the clear-cut and watched the blizzard go by the windshield. By the time the second overtime was over, the blizzard had subsided, Dougy had nearly cut a load of wood, I polished off a thermos of hot chocolate and the Ducks had won by one point. I had stayed by the cab to oversee the hearing of the game and to offer Dougy technical advice such as, “Hurry up, it’s starting to snow again!” It was a most memorable day. We were in our glory.




I will always remember the fall that Dougy helped me get my wood. But my memories will be bittersweet.




Three days before the fall equinox and one day before his fortieth birthday Dougy was killed in an accident while unhitching the trailer from his log truck. I was down at the church and the secretary told me she had got a call that Doug had been killed in an accident. I jumped in my pickup and tore up to Kenny’s shop as fast as I could, hoping that there had been some kind of mistake and praying that Dougy would come back. But when I got there and saw him I knew that he would never come back. So I held his hand and Said “Oh Dougy.” I couldn’t think of much to say. I asked him why. Then I told him goodbye.




Later, Kenny told me Doug wasn’t even supposed to work that day but he had offered to come up for a few minutes, just to help out. Dougy deserved to die a more noble death but it does not surprise me that he died helping somebody out. He was always helping somebody out.




Besides giving me a hand he spent his spare time getting little ol’ ladies free loads of firewood for the winter. I had accompanied him to unload some firewood at the little ladies homes, so now that I have this insatiable lust for firewood and I know where the little old ladies live, the job belongs to me alone.




Mt Vernon has lost one of her very finest. When I peer over the back fence and see his little home, dark and deserted and lonely, I feel very empty. I see his wood stack (that he had brought in last year) and the splitting maul that I had broke. (He fixed it) There is no smoke coming from his chimney. I try to understand. I stare at this paper. I try to understand. I grab an armload of firewood for the stove and I flat just don’t understand.




But life goes on.




Next fall while I am gathering firewood, alone, for myself and the little old ladies of Mt Vernon, I will invariably find myself with a hand axe beating on a snag and madly jumping up and down on the stupid thing in an effort to break it. Dougy will be in the presence of Jesus, laughing, and dancing in the arms of his sweet little wife. Some things in life are just not fair.