Hi ya’ll! Sorry it has been so long, again. I have just been fighting off some of my own demons. Cabin fever I suppose it is, since winter keeps coming and going and seems interminably long this year. These little glimpses of spring just make it worse, like a false sense of hope. One saving grace is the water came up in the gully behind the house again, and Tuesday afternoon it warmed up outside to the point it was comfortable in my flannel shirt and insulated shirt jacket. I couldn’t stand it, so down the hill I went with my dry bag full of goodies, my lifejacket and my paddles. Then down again with the new yellow boat, The Alan Smithee, perched on my head. It was delightful. You have to dodge and maneuver between quite a lot of floating and stationary logs and such, but it is well worth the effort, and now I have paddled the gully on the creek floodwaters in February, early April, and last year’s infamous trip and log perching episode on May 2nd. Definitely all firsts. I guess if global warming continues it is possible I may get to do it again, not that I want global warming to continue to mess up our weather patterns just so I can launch behind the house. That would be somewhat selfish and lazy. I surely do wish we had gotten that house over on the creek bank. I sincerely hope the two gay gentlemen who beat us to it are very happy there, but boy do I wish we had gotten that creek access. If I hadn’t mentioned it before, Lisa had the lot reserved when I met her and was trying to sell the old house on Harmony Way. Unfortunately the housing market was not very strong the end of 2006 and in 2007, so her claim on the lot expired. By the time we moved here in 2012 the people who got that lot and built the house had put it up for sale, but the aforementioned couple had already made an offer. This house was the alternate, and the sunroom facing the wooded gully was what sold us: the room in which I am currently seated, while Tiny Terry sleeps in Lisa’s chair. My computer stays out here except in the coldest weather when the temperature in the sunroom drops into the fifties at night and takes hours to warm up in the morning, especially on cloudy days, of which we have more than our fair share here in the Ohio River Gulch (nee Valley) in the winter: gray, soggy and cold.
On another note, I was recently fingerprinted for the first time in my life. I had so far avoided that (WAHAHA!), but I filed my application for a lifetime concealed weapon carry permit last week. I have owned my .25 caliber stainless steel semi-automatic pocket pistol for quite some time, since the mid-seventies in fact. I purchased it shortly after a break-in at our house on Jefferson two blocks off of Haynie’s Corner. I kept it under my mattress by my head until Fran, my first wife, and Sean and I moved to Gentryville in 1980. Our friends Barry and Kim helped us move everything in one night, including three dogs and five cats. I don’t remember how many trips we made that night in the old ’77 Dodge 3/4 ton van. I just remember it was a bunch, and it was right around an hour trip to, and from. But I digress. I have never felt it necessary to carry a weapon, other than occasionally considering taking my .22 lever action Marlin rifle when we canoe. So far I had not taken it even though I held a current Indiana hunting license. Now, though, circumstances have changed. Clark and I like to canoe late in the afternoon and on into evening so we can watch the sun go down over the water, and quite often we stay until long after sundown: sometimes until after midnight if the moon is full. We are the last off of the water, and if no one is catfishing we are often the only ones there. Last year one of the rangers told us about a couple of incidents that occurred at Blue Grass late in the evening, and one in particular in which a suspected sex offender was held at gunpoint until the police arrived by a Good Samaritan who had offered a ride to a young lady who was walking down the road late at night. She said she had escaped the man’s vehicle after advances were made to which she had not consented, nor which were welcome on a “first date.” At that point the man arrived and confronted the Good Samaritan. Unfortunately for the man, the Good Samaritan had a carry permit, and requested that the man find a comfy seat on the ground while the young lady called 911. This disturbed me. If Clark and I should find unwelcome company in the parking lot some night when we pull off the lake, better safe than sorry I say.
So, there you go. All the news that’s fit to print: Two trips on the floodwaters this year, and I have become concerned enough about the current state of society that I have applied for my first carry permit. I think of all of those trips in the past when we went hiking, canoeing, camping, and we never worried about such things. A machete was enough. But now? I refuse to take the chance. I’m old. I’m not gonna put up with it.