Thanks guys. Of course the power came on much sooner than I had ever expected.
Yeah Neji. We wish they would bury our lines too. It is terrible the things they do, the expenses they go to and the general stupidity of the idea of having stuff strung above ground. I will spare you the rant on how it ticks me off about the cutting of trees like a flat top to accommodate the wires.
Smiles at Kirk. "Ah you are not so far removed from myself in that aspect. But I got tired of living that way. It is just too hard on me these days to deal with so we moved closer to town.
The winter the cedar trees all came down, back when we used to still live on the creek, We were a week cutting up trees just so we could get to town and stay up with some friends. There was a butt load of snow. We were storing our food out in the snow banks, shoveling tunnels through waist high snow to get to the neighbor's and check on them as well as paths for the dog to go out upon. Some friends of ours were able to make it out to the end of the road and we drug sleds along through the woods to bring in supplies. Vodka, Cigarettes and batteries. We had everything else in the world. Tons of firewood for the stoves, refrigeration provided by nature for the food and companionship.
I recall driving over the hills to town once we got the trees cleared. State Road didn' t do that; they couldn't get to us. Later that season when it all melted it flooded bad and carried off my wood pile. The water rose up in the night and we had to keep an eye on it. The guys all went to bed but we stayed up and the neighbors had the creek right up under their front door when we beat on the doors to wake them up. Their propane tank was floating away and we had to wade out into the water to chain it up and I was just thinking the whole time that we got a huge torpedo here and its gonna crack into the side of their trailer and that will be all she wrote! lol. I was picking up firewood and hauling back to the house for a week! We were without power for a month and it was hard living but we cooked and lived and worked hard the whole time.
Later the flood waters froze up and we had huge slabs of ice blocking the road as the creek went back into its bed. They had to come and plow with huge shovel blades and the ice laid up along the road. It was a real challenge climbing over all of that to walk out to the road and get to work. WE would park out at the end of the road and walk through the woods toting things back and forth so we wouldn't have to miss work. That's fun to do with kids...in the dark.
I got a couple of scars in my chin from where the wedge sheared off pieces of metal and hit me when I struck it with the sledge hammer while trying to cut up this knotted up piece of firewood. I felt like a real greenhorn that day, let me tell you! lol
WE always had to haul in our drinking water cause our well was just loaded with mineral deposits and tasted like hell. Sulfur. blech! Oh it was potable but palatable? hardly. If you made tea with it, it would turn black like Coca-Cola cause all the tanic acid in the tea would cause the iron to precipitate. I would catch rain water to wash my hair cause it would turn it orange-red and make it brittle. After we moved? my hair grew nearly a foot in length clear down my back.
Anyway, the creek came back in the spring and claimed those huge slabs of ice with the next flood. We were locked in for I don' t know how long when one day the sheriff comes trolling by in a flat boat wondering if we need rescued. hell, we were having a BBQ and having a high time fishing in the front yard. We just told him to go on and check up the creek a bit on the neighbors. Shoot. By the time they got there the waters had already started to recede anyway.
It was like that several times a year. I miss living on the creek but it is just too much work for me now. I am getting old.
We sure had some good times out there though. Especially when the cousins and the gang of us would get together. *smiles and shakes her head* Oh but I was a different person in those days. Now I am just a stick in the mud!
The house burned down one night when I had gone to to town to do laundry and my brother-in-law came over to my house to stoke the fire up for me so the kids and I would not come back to a cold house. It was January 4th. He was basically drunk off his behind and coming over to escape his idiot wife and didn't shut the door on the wood stove and the house burned down. It is not pretty seeing a 6 foot 247 pound man cry cause he just made you homeless.
WE rented for two years. I was pregnant at the time and with my baby daughter and all; I had to have reliable shelter. Later we moved back. There was an old shack on the place that I fixed up and we lived out of that while I was rebuilding my house. Did the landscaping with a maddock and a rake. Laid up the block piers and framed out my house. Put up T1-11 siding and moved in. My buddie came out and wired the place for me and for Valentine's day he built me an outhouse! I don't do roofing though. I hate that cause I am scared of heights. I can put in a nice hardwood floor though. And I love to tile.
*dies laughing because reality is just something too funny to be made up sometimes.*
WE did that for a long time and I just got weary. So weary. Used the wringer washer in the yard during the summer and hung the clothed on the line. Carried water from the spring which run out of the hollow into this claw foot bathtub With a metal pipe that fed into it from out of the hillside. Man but that was nice to climb into during the middle of a hot summer night! C-c-c-cold though.
And of course we always did the garden thing and canning and hunting a deer now and then when the freezer got low on meat. But I think the best thing I liked about living on the creek was running a trot line with my buddie Richard. He was a neat old guy who had gotten three of his fingers cut off working at the marble factory in town when he was 18. Oh that placed closed down long long ago before I can even remember it being there. But you can still find marbles all over the place in the county. He and I would go out in the canoe and set the bait and then sit up for hours round a fire telling lies and night fishing on the banks. He was always gonna take me frog giggin' but he never got the chance.
train ran over him one night as he was walking up the tracks going home from the bar. But he would bring me fresh frog legs and we would grill them out and that was very fine eatin.
One time he borrowed my 4-10 cause he saw a turkey up on the hillside behind the house. So he shoots it and brings it back and we are looking it over. He has just creased the top of its head. Said it was not dead when he got it, just knocked it out and he had to wring its neck before bringing it in. We roasted that out in a fire and I swear nothing has tasted so good or since.
Richard always said it was just as easy to laugh about something as to cry and I like to think that is true.
