Probably one of the first signs, I know.  Start writing about the food you’re cooking.  I’ve been in this house for waaaay too long, unemployed and staring at two dogs and four walls.  And an internet screen, like the Great Eye of Sauron freezing my great hobbit feet in place.

But yes, pinto beans!

Dumped in a pot with some chopped up ham and onion and suchlike.  I gotta admit, much as I love the country and have lived that sort of life now and before, I’ve never had ‘em.  Never once.  Folks go on and on about how good they are and I just had to try them out.  They’re part of my larder by recommendation only - which is senseless.  Don’t store what ye won’t eat, right?

By gaw they smell wonderful.  If I can get Ally to eat some when she gets home I’ll consider today a mild success.

If I wash the dishes and clean up this roost a bit I imagine she’ll consider it a success too.  Course, that comes after getting the wood fire going good and walking the dogs and laying in a couple days firewood in the shed outside.  Minding the slow, wet backwater drizzle outside, yes I tend to that.

I think I’ve contracted Elmer Fudd Syndrome.  Y’all really don’t want me to write everyday, do ye?

Now to give a bit of self-betterment that is directly about-faced from the previous wailing rant (and sorry, it was the end of the year and I had to let it loose, and no I ain’t gonna retract it), let’s look at a Backwater Box.

If you haven’t heard of a Bug Out Bag just go ahead now and Goog it, wade through the half million hits and learn.  I’ve ramped it up a bit from Bag to Box, since its application is a bit different.  Maybe you live in an off-grid fortified mountain retreat with a fresh water supply and 3 years of food on hand and have no need of such a thing but chances are, ye don’t.

Maybe you live in or near a city, commute to work every day and have a dwelling to come home to.  Is that you?  Yeah?  Time to feel good, you’ve got millions of folks just like yourself.  Safety in numbers and all.

Until:  You’re on the way home in a snowstorm and get stuck on the interstate for a few hours.  You’re facing a hurricane scenario and it’s time to head inland for a couple of days.  You’re sitting in your house and the smoke alarms go off and you’ve got ten minutes to haul ass before they find your charred corpse in what’s left of your bed.

Never happened to you?  Hell I’ve had all three happen to me.  And I don’t count myself all that unlucky.  It’s a fact of life.  There’s a dozen other inconveniences I could list that might interrupt your little daily suwaree.  Power turned off, or water.  Just plain running out of funds.

The Backwater Box.  Trust me, you really need something like this.  And I’m not going to get into all the explaining about why you do, or what each piece of it means.  You’re intelligent folks, you’re using a computer, use the web and your own common sense.  You know most of this stuff already.  I’m just the old buzzard harping at you.

Here’s the start of it all.  Take that $100 Christmas gift card from Aunt Mildred, head out to Wally World and get a cooler.  There’s only a couple of things that really matter about this – that it has a drain, a latch, wheels and can fit somewhere in your vehicle without too much strain.  The trunk of the car, for most of you.  This one’s $57 and holds 60 quarts.  That’s biggish.  Already got one?  Use it instead.  See, we’re gonna keep this real simple.

While you’re in the World, pick this up for $26.  Add two propane canisters for $5 (they’re 16.4 oz).  It’s an indoor heater that claims to last 14 hours per canister.

Still at the World?  Good thing, ’cause directly behind the heater, same aisle, is this bag.  Rated for 0 degrees and $23.  Yeah, I’m not sure I believe it either but it has a whole lot of good reviews.  Again, got your own already?  Or a damn fine set of wool blankets?  Use ‘em.  Save the dollars.

No picture, but check around for a flashlight as long as you’re in the camping section anyway.  Ideally, one of those emergency flashlight/radio combo’s with both battery and wind-up power.

Now go pickup that case of Shiner Bock and get out of Wally World while you can.  You’ve spent your $100, of course.  Nobody goes to the Wally and gets out for less, so make yourself feel good by doing something everybody else does anyway.  Toss all that gear in the trunk.  It does fit, right?

Now go home.  Open up your kitchen and take a look.  Pull out that extra 2 quart cooking pot with the burnt hande you’ve been saving.  A hand held can opener.  The best knife you can spare that you know how to sharpen.  A coffee cup and a fork.  Dig that spare Bic lighter out that you never use anyway.  See what we’re doing?  We’re recycling some basic living utensils.  Put the little stuff in a seal-up plastic bag.  Put the pot in a garbage bag.  Take all that stuff out to the car and put it in the cooler.  You now have the start of a Backwater Box.

Take your empty half gallon Gatorade, Diet Pepsi or moonshine jugs and fill with water.  I guess you could buy the water, the kind with the preppy name and the art deco bottle, but you ain’t that kind of person now, are ye?  Hope not.  Stuff as much of it in the cooler as possible, then fill up the rest of the trunk with more.  Cannot, cannot have enough water.  Screw on lids are important.

Every time you go to the grocery store for the next two months, buy one or two (or fifty, who’s counting?) extra FOOD items for your Box.  Semi-nonperishable.  Cans are good.  Tuna fish in oil.  Ritz crackers.  Spam (yeah I know, right?).  Energy bars, pop tarts, can of peaches.  You can obviously avoid lunch meat and mayo and bread.  We’re gonna rotate this stuff once in a while, but nobody wants to deal with moving your basic Sliced Danish Ham Sandwich Meat in and out of the cooler every day, right?

Don’t cheat.  Every trip to the grocery.  Get a little something.  Be creative.  Buy a cheap paperback novel.  Buy spare batteries for the flashlight.  Another 16.4 propane canister.  Box of kitchen matches.  Heavy duty garbage bags.  Bottle of hand soap.  How about a pack of Sterno fuel?  There’s no end of it, and as always if you already have it, stick it in there.

There are, of course, other things.  Things that ultimately wouldn’t fit.  Tools.  An extra jacket.  A rain suit (or just take an extra garbage bag and cut out some holes, but you’d look so darn foolish, right?  Maybe not.).  Cheap rubber boots from Goodwill.  Sandbags and a chainsaw.  Ugh, there’s really no end to this catagory.  I’ve got a really big truck and I don’t have half the stuff in there that I’d like, and I’ve got two coolers and a helluva lot of tools.

So, to what end, this Backwater Box and all this stuff you just packed in and around it?

You’re stuck on the interstate coming home in a snowstorm.  Stuck for a couple/three hours, in fact, because you’re out of gas and the plows are running behind.  Nab that Box outta the trunk and make yourself a Spam and cracker sammich.  Fire up the little propane indoor heater.  Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t.  Bet you will though, and it sure beats hoofing to the next exit in your open toed mules to find out the 7-11 is closed.

Hurricane coming?  Everybody else is going to be looking for a Backwater Box, and everything in it, and running in a panic while you’re halfway to safety 200 miles up the road.

Displaced from the house for a few days?  No money?  Perhaps you were prophetic enough to stash some money in your . . . yes of course you were.  Open up a can of tuna and enjoy yourself in your cheap motel room.

Think.  Reason.  I can tell you for a fact that standing in the rain watching your house burn down is nothing I’d wish on anyone.  But when I realized that my wife was barefoot and wearing only what she had laying next to the bed, I fetched boots and raincoat and a flashlight from the truck I was standing next to.  From the Backwater Box.  We ate a little food from there, too.  We didn’t have to sleep in the car but we could have.

Shit hits the fan in many, many different ways.  Do something for yourself.  Make yourself forget the Armaggedon nature of what you’re doing and prepare for the inevitable.  Because it happens every blessed day we live, my children.

This one small thing you do, it matters.  Build the Box.  Start right now.  Keep yourself close to it.  Consider it the spare tire of your daily life.

Because that’s exactly what it is.

Who was it, Tom Petty?  Sang the song about Livin’ like a Refugee?  Yeah.

I’ll have to physically reach into my brain and hit the kill switch on the whine generator to keep this from getting too sixth grade and all, but lawdy.  What times we have here.

I’m sitting in the midst of an urban industrial park of sorts, with a quasi-ghetto just down the street.  One of those pack-em-in but call it “Townhouse Clustering” things that rest on the fringes of shopping squalor.  And trust me, so far as shopping goes, I can drive a two mile radius and buy anything that western civilization has to offer.  Huge new car dealers and several used ones.  Furniture.  Food.  Lottery tickets and Payday Cash.  Kenneling services.  Hell, Sears and Best Buy are small players on this landscape.

10 lane boulevards.  I live a large block from one in this rented coop.  There is more traffic on the street where this house sits, in one hour, than there is in one year in the backwater, and I only wish I was exaggerating.

The house is owned by my wife’s employer, whose warehouse and office is directly across the street.  They were gonna bulldoze this place and put up a new structure, a vast monolith and shrine to the availability of automotive accessory bling but the deal fell through and the vacant house was spared for the moment.  And after evicting a few straggling vagrants and tossing a pail of Pine-Sol on the floor, they offered it to us as a sort of halfway house.  With a yard.  Which is urban code for “Undeveloped Commercial Land.”

My wife has been re-clothed and re-shod largely by way of donated clothes (I say largely, but hardly entirely) and has emerged from the aftermath of losing her entire wardrobe with enough apparel for any three members of, say, the Romanov clan back when the Czar was doing well.  She has a circle of friends that include many hip young women, and given that Ally is well within the clothing size of single digits she was heard to exclaim yesterday about “Fifteen . . . no wait, sixteen pair of jeans!”  And we ain’t talking about Wrangler relaxed fit here either, folks.  Who the hell needs sixteen pair of designer jeans anyway?

For my part, old Corporate Partner Stu dug up a pair of his barely worn Carhardt bibs to replace the scorched ones I stubbornly dug out from beneath a charred rafter. ”There y’are son.  Don’t mind the dried caulk streaks on the pockets, figgered you wouldn’t want to show up on a jobsite in new ones in any event.”  And he was right, I wouldn’t.  Pride trumping vanity and all that.  I am blessed, and in possession of great treasure indeed.

In the year and a half we had in the little backwater house there were likely no more than a dozen opportunities to go out and sit in a tony restuarant for a meal.  Such places just don’t exist down there, you have to drive a long ways to get to them, and once arrived home in that green and quiet place there just didn’t seem to be the need, you know?

I believe we’ve already exceeded our restuarant quota in the past three weeks.  Once I’ve arrived “home” to the rental, about all I want to do is get away from it.

Makes it easier to work the ten hour days with the two hour commute.  Makes overtime more palatable.  Makes the drive to the homestead more of a pilgrimage instead of just a trip to pick up the mail.

Yesterday, the boy with the excavator and the grappling bucket had the homestead scraped down to the top of the foundation, swinging square yards of debris into a waiting truck.  I stood and watched him for a time, noted the fact that as noisy as the machine seemed to be it was still quiet there in the pines.  His was the only motion to be seen.  I took mail from the mailbox and drove as slowly as I could up the little road barely wide enough for one large truck to squeeze through on.

And streamed north toward the city, refugee that I am, and wondered about supper.

The Demolition Man allowed as to how he could save the deck lumber, if we wanted.  “Just take a chainsaw to them posts there, lift the whole shebang up and set ‘er down in the yard over yonder.  Yep.”

Now that’s all fine and good.  Lumber’s expensive, particularly the kind of lumber that I prefer to buy.  The clear stuff that’s hard to find, purchased from the old boys in the run down mill over in P-Town.  But it presents me with a project, for as soon as he “Sets ‘er down” in the yard I’m gonna have to attack it with crowbar and sledge, nail-pullers and saw.  There’s a not so gentle art for you, making useful lumber out of an already put together thing.  And you can rest assured that I don’t put ‘em together with the idea that they’re to be taken apart.  Not in the slightest.

Curiously, the deck survived in much better fashion than the house itself.  Oh it had a fair sized hole burnt through it, right in the heart of the main fire area, but structurally it sailed right along.

When I was finished building it some 2 years ago, the county inspector came by to take a look and render his officious opinion thereto.  This being one Bubba, a waddling youth of squinted eye who had never had an original thought in his entire life, and spent his day frustrating builders hither and yon with obscure references to “The Code”.  Meaning the building code of course, which often as not was some interpretation of his own, and had nothing to do with any actual regulations produced by officials down at the state capital.

Bubba took a dislike to me for some reason, something to do with an error on the building permit, and delighted in that error with a series of suggestions for “improving” the deck.  Metal ties, increased tread overhang, another rim joist and so on.  Actually insisted on seeing the plastic tag that comes stapled to every board and quizzing me on what it meant (that being pure nirvana for me.  I can hold forth on lumber specifications for hours, knew that tag like my own name, and it’s entirely possible that he learned something that day following my lengthy sermon).

It frustrated me a little bit.  Bubba refused to sign off on the deck until his whims had been satisfied, which meant the house couldn’t be occupied, and that of course was a major problem.  “Not structurally correct according to Code”, I believe was his comment on the inspection report.

I showed that report to one of the neighbors who, of course, was following all this with huge interest.  Entertainment is hard to come by in the backwater and a feud betwixt builder and inspector is always a lively way to pass the time.  I supposed I whined more than a little bit as Tim read the report, standing out in the yard with a Marlboro in his hand and a straw hat atop his head.

“Lawd, fella.  That boy sure does make life miserable, don’t he?  Structurally incorrect?  My land, you could park a battleship on that sumbitch.”

“I ’spect you could, Tim.  But he ain’t never seen a 2 x 12 rim around a 2 x 8 joist system before and it’s not in his picture book, either.  So he’s giving me the business, I reckon.”

“Yuh.  He’s good at that, he is.  Funny, ’cause he ain’t never swung a hammer in his life, far as I know.  Got that job from his daddy, ol’ Cletus from down Weeksville way, and his daddy wasn’t much more useful than a busted shovel either.  Likes that county paycheck though, and that county Jeep he hoofs around in.  Sure does that”, and he shaded his eyes for another look at the majestic deck running across the rear of my house.

“Reckon I could call his boss and get a second opinion, Tim?”

“Spence, you mean, the old man?  Oh you could.  Hell we’ve all tried that from time to time.  Won’t do ye no good though.  Spence, he’s even worse than Bubba is, from what I’ve been able to tell.  Regular beaurocrat, that one.”

We paused, and Tim fished another cigarette from a pocket and lit up.  “Tell ye what to do next time, though”, he offered.

“What’s that?”

“Why, just build a set ‘o steps up to the door.  Tack a handrail on there and call it good.  Then after he passes it, tear the sumbitch down and get to work on the real thing.  Soon as he’s off the property, I mean.  He ain’t gonna be comin’ back, right?  And ain’t nobody from the county makin’ a special trip way out here, anyhoo.”

I laughed.  “That’s the way it’s done, eh?”

“Sure ’nuff.  ‘Course, it’s bit late for that now.  Shame.  Why, you could park a battleship . . .”

And so it went, and eventually Bubba won his victory.  I scurried and sweated and performed all the little tasks he desired, until he was tired of the game and reluctantly signed off on the house.  A few weeks later he chuckled to a lad down the street about how he “Ran that new fella ragged with his big deck”, and I saw the true nature of his Bubba ways, and the feud didn’t die.

Now I never anticipated having to rebuild much of anything on the homestead, so Tims advice about sidestepping the building department just kinda laid there in the back of my mind.

Of course, it popped back up very quickly when the insurance man and I talked a few days ago.  “Huh.  Got a lotta deck there, bud.  Way more than the new builder’s gonna have in his bid, so I’m gonna have to get you to do it, and we’ll compensate you for the time and materials of course, and . . .”

I had to stifle a groan, when talking with the insurance man.  Not sure he’d understand it all, and it didn’t much matter, any road.  Didn’t keep me from ranting about it to Ally, of course, but she’s used to such things, and listened impassively as I muttered dark and evil things concerning fat inspectors and something about settling this feud thing, Backwater style.  I got the feeling she was pretty much unimpressed with the seriousness of it all.

But not me.  Bubba done questioned my quality of work, the fat little creep.

And the feud?  Oh my.  Just gettin’ warmed up, you betcha. 

~I’d say that I really hate hotels, but we checked out of the one we were staying in and managed to leave the power cord for the laptop in the room.  So I’ll be saying nice things about them until I get it back.  Karma and all that, you know.

~We’re lodged in a rental house that was last massaged by a carpenters hands sometime before the boys landed in Normandy.  And it’s urban.  Middle of the city.  There’s creaks and knocks and the neighborhood isn’t very secure.  As in – the Ruger strays not so far from my hand – secure.  On the plus side, Ally can walk across the street to go to work.  and the dogs have a veritable football field to romp in, just out the back door.

~No email at the moment.  Changing addresses for an existing account does that, I guess.  Hint to my kids – leave comments here or call, okay?

~The lads working in the shop for my employer, the ones who produce the goodies that I spend my day installing, took up a collection for us.  $67, and most of it in one dollar bills.  I have to say, that one moved me closer to tears than anything.  Most of these guys are minimum wage and struggling.  Working in a sweatbox for 10 hours a day in June heat.  Just . . . damn.

~I took a detour on my way to the jobsite yesterday so I could see a bit of countryside.  It wasn’t the backwater by any means, more of a gentrified slice of brick homes set out in a nice way and nestled back among manicured pines and “rustic” barns.  But it was something, a little something.  A little piece of the woods.

~They’ll be pulling up to the husk of my (real) house with a D-8 shortly, and put big ruts in the lawn while the diesel engine powers a large blade through my living room.  I might go down and watch the show but I don’t think Ally wants any part of that.

~Today we go sign some papers which will set in motion the building of a new house.  There was a moment when we viewed the model house, something about the large bathtub, and Ally broke and there were tears.  I guess I saw it too, giving the grandson a bath so many nights, and the giggles and the splashing, the shimmying of a small boy set in water.  And later, wrapped in a towel and warm.  The contentment of such things, my word . . . and what my good wife sees in a bathroom, in a model house.

~I dug Ally’s earrings out of a pile of filthy insulation the other day and remembered.  It was the two of us out on the town . . . what, twenty years ago?  Kids at the sitters, she and I strolling a waterfront on a brisk fall evening and there was a jewelry store set in there somewhere, and just an impulse.  Dropping something north of a paycheck on a simple set of opals, and Ally protesting in that way women have, a smile and a frown all at the same time.  But the look boy, the look.  The dancing in the eyes, and the crook of a finger, and I was as lost as I was the first time I saw her.  Little baubles and large dreams, they are.

~Battery’s getting low.  Mustn’t let the precious go completely dead, here.  We survive.

~Finding hotels that allow dogs to stay, legally or with that sort of wink and a nod thing, is a task best reserved for treasure hunters. Knobby kneed old timers in bermuda shorts and black socks, waving an instrument over a sandy beach.

~Finding one with internet access beyond that of a tin can and a bit of string? Oh please.

~Owning but two pair of pants and a sack of T-shirts is strangely liberating. ‘Cause they’re new! And new work boots, too!

~My wife, on the other hand, has filled the hotel clothes rack and is searching for more hangers. Those dresser drawers are filling up as well.

~Telling a tale to 3 people at the Watering Hole will result in an entire city dialing your phone. I tell ye, it’s just like the internet.

~My pal Pam at the Sixweasels site (over there, to the lefty side) wrote a thing yesterday and it was . . . darlin’ I have no words. And I’m sorry about your mascara, but the tears lubricated your typing fingers just beautifully.

~The prayers and notes left by good people mean everything to us. Thank you so much.

~Sifting through a burn out house is like playing in a bag of charcoal briquettes.

~Come tomorrow, we’ll get to inventory everything in the house. Ally sez her diamond earrings were on the nightstand, in a glass dish, where they always were. It’s about a foot deep in wet ceiling insulation and drywall right now. Boy, that might take some time.

More to come. Sincere thanks to all of you.

I don’t know where I got it from.  Probably a genetic thing, gifted from farming grandfathers who heeded lowing bovines to rise from their slumbers on any given day.  But I’ve always been one who spent the best hours of the day before 6.  That’s 6 am.  As in pre-sunrise, with no demands save for a coffeepot and a sleeping dog stretched at my feet.

Yesterday was a 3 am sort of morning.  Stillness in the backwater, a flash of heat lightning from the front window as I sat in reclined surf mode, the laptop carrying me hither and yon as it often does.  The stories, the ranting.  Checking the local weather radar.  “Hmmm. . . big slice of rain blowing in.  Need it.  Ought to be here any time now.”

And indeed, the lightning turned frequent, and a trickle of rain became a heavy downpour and the light show was spotlighting the front yard beautifully for me, long seconds at a time.  “Good rain, be cutting grass this weekend for sure, now.”

There came a pittering sound, a sputtering from somewhere in the kitchen, and the big Laborador shifted with a grunt in his sleep, even as I shifted in my chair and silently blessed my sleeping wife.  “Made the coffee last night, just kicked on out there.  Nice of her”, because she does not always do this for me.

Dark, and quiet.  The glow of a laptop and a single table lamp.

For whatever reason, and I guess I’ll be forever wondering, I happened to look at the cable modem which all of a sudden had gone dark.  A bugger it is, to live in storm country where modems go dark and the morning internet is stilled.  I heaved up out of the chair and stumbled to the kitchen, the sputtering sound, and flicked the light switch.  Nothing.  Still had a table lamp on, but no overhead.  Huh?

And the laundry room.

Filling with smoke.

There’s minutes that turn your brain to absolute mush.  I yanked to back door open to find flames curling up the outside wall of the house and my feet were flying toward the hose – the HOSE! – hanging in blackness at the other end of the house.  Drag the hose, hit the nozzle and . . . nothing.

“No pressure . . . Jesus the well pump’s out too!”

There was thumping feet and slick wood deck and a battle cry coming from my very soul out there in the dark, and an eerie glow from the ventilated soffit that finally tripped my carpenter brain – fire in the roof trusses!  Move goddam it!

The sputtering sound.  Racing into the bedroom where my wife lay dreaming, and the hellish noise of a bass voice gone tenor on me, and a look to the dogs, and Ally coming up flying and grabbing for clothes.

A very long moment with a flashilight that appeared in my hand, and breaking it on the foot of the laptop table as I yanked cords and pushed wife and Lab to the front door, and raced down the driveway to the rig and Ally to her car, and throwing stuff in the rig, and back to the house for, what?  What to save, what to gather?  Ally blowing her horn and screaming “Get out Jim, get out!”

But for a small dog, almost forgotten, cowering by the coffee table, and unmoving in fear, and me scooping him up and getting out, Jim.  Getting the hell out.  To move cars to the yard next door.  911ing the hell out of cell phones that were somehow in pockets.

And standing, in rain, to watch the backwater burn.

There’s a slowness about it all.  Hearing fire trucks race across roads miles from you, and know that they are lost trying to find this little place, and seeing the roof slowly succomb to flames, and a wife in tears seeing a horror.  There’s a slowness to backwater living even as there’s a slowness to its dieing.

I sit here in this little motel room, with the two dogs and Ally, and the smoke is still thick on my clothes from yesterday.  Likely ruined, so far as clothes go.  But I might wear them today, trudging through the sodden mess that 30 firemen make when going about their business.  A business that wafts great sheets of spray on dreams afire, and you see it in their eyes, and they look at you and grip a shoulder for a moment, and you know sorrow.

Yet we live, and haven’t made any promise beyond the next hour or day.  The dogs look at me and remember the shouting and feel as if they’ve done something wrong, and I soothe them and say “It’s all fine boys”, and they aren’t convinced.

I tried to tell Ally not to go with me this morning, to meet the insurance man, and sift through that rubble, but she is Ally.  She looked at me.  The very deep part of her looked at me and murmured, “I’m going.”

And she will.  Because it is ever and always her and I.

God willing, it always will be.

On a completely unrelated note, blogging may be light for a while.

That’s a joke son. . .

When we went out a few weeks ago and plucked a gangly dog from a place that rescues dogs as a matter of course, I had no idea.

Really, no idea at all.  See, I’ve nearly always been around dogs of the muttly sort.  A little bit cross bred.  A splash of white on the chest of a large black dog, a slightly pointed snout on what otherwise might be called a Lab.  Oh they were all fine in their own way, relatively obedient souls with little in the way of independent thought.

Maggie and her clown Boxer dog, of pure lineage and perfect markings marked an insight into the world of having a thoroughbred around, one with brains and the oft-heard comment that “He’s too smart for his own good”, or something more profane when he thoughtfully chewed slippers after being left in confinement for longer than he liked.

But this dog here.  This Laborador called Sam.

I drive the Backwater with a large Lab, front feet planted atop the small cooler to my right and a steady gaze ahead.  When the drive turns longish, as it always does, he whirls and stretches long for a nap on the floor, the tunnel between two rows of large tools that run the length of a ten foot long box attached to a very dirty van chassis.  I spend hours in the Shop, with the door rolled high and Sam on a long lead patrolling the yard.  But always he is near and he steps into the truck and looks to me.  “I’m ready, we’re going aren’t we?  I’ll work for you, come along with you, but ever and always I want to BE with you, tall man in bib overalls.  I want to lay before tall fires on cool evenings and stare with half open eyes at this life, and know that you are in the room without looking.  I want the thrill of you letting me off this lead so that I can race across the half-acre and show you that your trust is warranted, that I’ll come back in a trice at a word.  To shove a block shaped head under your arm and hold it there to feel the closeness and warmth, and stare.  Soaking up every motion of the hands, hearing every inflection of the voice that compels.”

I’ve not been around this level of ability in a dog.  The notion that one of his catagory was found wandering in the woods is astonishing.  He travels with me, and is let out on leash to parade before people who invariably exclaim, “He’s gorgeous!  My god, what a beautiful boy!”, and his master is proud and not a little silly with that pride.

He is an alpha, and is creating his role every day.

Now in the manner that such a life cannot help but be tinkered with, enter my Eldest Daughter, the lover of all-things-dog.  She called me the other evening as I drove from city to woods, a hand on the silky black head beside me, his huge feet webbed and steady on the cooler.

“Daddy, promise me you won’t be mad at me . . .”

“Huh?  What kind of way is that to start a conversation?”

“Well, cause . . . Mom’s bringing something home with her.”

“My dinner?”

“Uh . . . no.”

“Hmmm.  Cash money?”

“No.  Promise you won’t be . . .”

“What is it, for heavens sake?”

“Well I was down in Carolina today and there was this dog, see, and . . .”  She was suddenly in a rush to explain, and I know this girl grown to be a woman, know her well.  And she spun the story and my mind drifted as it always does, for I might live in 2008 but the mind is always and forever drifting to times when she was six, or ten or sixteen, and I feel and smell the day when a little smaller but equally determined Beth was gunning to talk the old man into something, and it makes me smile of a moment.  She might live apart now, in a place not too far away, but I still tangle blonde hair in my calloused paw and draw her near and buss her forehead to me, the little lass with a tale to tell.

“. . . and I took the dog up to Mom’s work and she kinda looked at me funny, and . . .”

The tractors, in the field and me flying by with a grinning Lab, eyes dancing at life springing black from soil turned over, soon for the seed, and a cloud of dust in the rearview.  The tinkling sound of a collar with tags as a head swivels to follow every movement.

“. . . but I couldn’t just leave him there, right?  I mean he was helpless, he was . . .”

And Beth was relentless, and I watched miles ticking by as she talked in my ear and Sam panted happy next to me.  She allowed that Mom would explain it all to me, and Mom generally does, although it’s not an explanation at all but a curious mix of “Here it all is Honey, and did Beth call you?”, which sort of blends into a “You already know about this of course” and leaves me flummoxed as to what to do with the wimmen in my life.  Again.

The alpha, being what he is, probably took it with a lot more aplomb than his master did.  It is another role for him.

I have no doubt he will play it well.

But for gosh sakes.

Three weeks ago we had no dog at all!

When we first moved down to the woods and the house and land were being assembled, the issue of a driveway reared its head.  The builder/realtor had included the makings of a concrete driveway in the price.  “Yup, run you a nice driveway from the road to the house”, he said.

The backwater being what it is, it so happened that he put it off until the very end of the project when the monsoon season was gettin’ up.  Rained for days it did, and concrete and rain do not make happy driveways at all.

It had the unfortunate consequence of stalling the closing on the house.  Couldn’t close the loan without a driveway, and moving trucks would sink to their axles in the bog of Carolina clay in any case.

I finally called the guy.  “Look, let’s just do a gravel drive.  Screw the concrete, get me forty yards of crusher-run out here and spread it out so we can get this thing done, okay?”

The realtor was delighted.  I just saved him large money, see?  He jumped all over it and the deed was done the very next day.  House closed, problem solved.

Well, sorta.

In the way of doing things down here, I had a guy out to spread more gravel just weeks after moving in.  Make it bigger and longer, you see.  That driveway became a living thing.  Something to be nurtured and tended much like a garden.  It helped not at all that I put up a 40 foot shop in the backyard and the last 30 feet of driveway leading up to it was . . . sand.

Truck eating, soft and maleable sand.  After six months, the sand turned to mud and I had my own mud bog for a parking spot.  And as attractive as that might sound for a house in the swamp I was getting fearful that one night the big rig might sink out of sight and never be seen again.

This is what 20 yards of crusher-run looks like after a rookie driveway maker (that would be me) spends 3 hours on it.  With a tractor and rear mounted blade.  Shovel, rake.  And more than a few longnecks.  I took this photo while standing on the concrete apron of the shop.

Another few hours and the deed was done.  Flat, serviceable parking had once again been established.

One of the neighbors happened by, a tough worker of the land who always takes an interest in the improvements of homes in the neighborhood.  “Looks nice son, right good job ye done there.  Graded it all by eye, did ye?” and yes, I had.

He squinted, coughed.  “Kinda glad y’all went with t’ gravel.  I was thinkin’ when you moved in y’all might be pourin’ concrete for a drive.  We all was.  Gravel just works better ’round here.”

It might have been unspoken, but the implication was clear.  Concrete was for rich folks.  Crusher-run and tractors were in order, down here.

Shucks, I’m glad.  I’d hate to be thought of as the snob with the concrete driveway.

That just wouldn’t do at all.  Naw, not at all.