Our great grandson Domenic standing at parade rest during his dad's deployment ceremony.
When the troops stood at attention or saluted, he did too. His father David is on his way to Afghanistan for a year. He gets to come home for a short time after 6 months and then he goes back again for another 6.
Dominick is staying with Brad and Donna, his grandpa and grandma until David gets back.
(Click on Pic to enbiggen)Carol and I had a very quiet, peaceful and rainy Christmas. Don, Dianna and family came over to exchange gifts on Christmas eve, so we spent Christmas morning together with Taz and Squeak, keeping warm and dry around the fireplace.
Carol cooked a pork loin roast with mashed potatoes and gravy and we had an early Christmas dinner. Later we drove over to Brad and Donna's where we found that the grand kids and great grand kids hadn't arrived yet so we visited for a while, left the gifts under the tree and came home to more peace and quiet.
The rain just keeps coming down and there's no end in sight.
For the last few years Carol and I have been setting aside a few bucks here and there so we could buy another travel trailer. We can't afford a new one but we had hoped to find a “fixer upper” in halfway decent shape.
We looked at some real beat up trailers with busted out windows, leaky roofs, rotten walls and rusted frames. We had a thousand dollars set aside but no matter how hard we looked all we could find were junkers.
Last spring while we were sitting out on the patio talking, I watched as a crow landed on the roof of our shop building and I noticed how bad the shingles were. It was then that I realized that we were going to have to get a new roof put on it, and soon! I had known that it was getting pretty bad, but it definitely wouldn't last through another winter without leaking.
There went our trailer money, (and then some!)
After the new roof was finished and paid for, we just knew that now that the trailer stash was gone we'd see great deals everywhere. We pretty much gave up on ever getting another RV and quit looking.
Our local cable TV company has a feature in the mornings on channel 13 called “The Wheel.” It's a herky jerky revolving gizmo with typewritten, misspelled ads for everything from puppies to pickups. It's a free service and almost all of the locals use it.
A couple of days ago Carol was watching and saw an ad for a 24 foot travel trailer - $950.00 OBO. “Too bad!” she said, “ That might be just what we were looking for.”
“Why don't you call them and find out more about it. We've got a few bucks in the bank, maybe we could swing it.”
Well, Carol called, we met the owners friend who was selling it for him, and we wrote a check for $900.00, which pretty well cleaned out our bank account.
It took us several days to get it ready to tow home and we had a heck of a time backing it in to our driveway, but we finally breathed a sigh of relief. We had another travel trailer!
Now the work begins!
Repair toilet. Fix hot water heater. Fix propane tank hold down. Find new mattress. Fix bathroom light. And the list goes on.
It's our Christmas present to each other and we're already enjoying it!
Kelly and I drove JC to Corvallis Monday to see Dr. Lee, his Oncologist. She sent him to the lab for another blood test and prescribed two powerful injections, one of which costs $3,ooo.oo. He will get them every month.
The results of the blood test came in yesterday and he had to go to Newport for two more transfusions and the super shots, which have been approved by the insurance company.
The battle goes on.
A long time ago I swore that I'd never have a cell phone. Every time I saw someone talking on one in the grocery store, or worse yet driving, I'd think That's rude, stupid, a pain in the ass and dangerous!
As I've mentioned before, I have a bad history with telephones anyway, and the last thing in the world I want is one of the damn things following me around all day, ringing some cutesy tootsie ring tone in my pocket.
I don't even like the built in answering machines that allow people to leave a message. Dammit! If there's no answer, I'm not home! Call me later!
I've always asked Carol to handle the phone calls, because unlike me, she enjoys talking on the phone. Now that my voice is getting weak, just answering can be embarrassing. If I haven't used whats left of my voice recently my “Hello” comes out like a garbled frog's croak.
A couple of weeks ago when our niece Brandy drove JC and I over to Samaritan Hospital in Corvallis I finally realized that I should give up, join the rest of the world and get a cell phone. I was there to see our son Brad and when I asked the information lady where his room was, someone put their arm around me and said,”Never mind, I'll show him!” I turned around to see Nikki, Brad's daughter, who was there to visit her dad. I looked back and waved at Brandy and JC, wondering how we were ever going to get hooked up again.
Nikki couldn't stay long and left after a short visit. I didn't know where in the hell JC and Brandy were, in fact, I didn't even know for sure where I was, so I figured the best thing was for me to stay put. That was a good thing, because Brad and I had time for a nice long visit.
I knew that Brandy and JC both had cell phones and I realized that if I'd had one it would have been easy to keep in touch. Brandy showed up after a couple of hours, and we said goodbye to Brad and went down to pick up JC. On the way home I told JC that as much as I hated it, I was going to get a cell phone.
Monday Carol and I went shopping at WalMart, and after filling a shopping cart with the usual dog food, toilet paper, eggs, bacon and other junk we wheeled into the electronics department. It was fairly early and in spite of the Christmas shopping season, the store wasn't very busy. The lady in electronics asked if she could help and I told her we wanted a low priced, easy to use, cell phone with prepaid minutes. We told her that we only planned to use it for emergencies.
She sold us a Tracfone with five months service and a 60 minute card. She wasn't busy, so she did the activation process for us. I watched while she punched in serial numbers and answered questions, all the while talking to a machine voice somewhere, (probably India). After about 5 minutes, (which would have taken me hours, if I could have done it at all,) she said that if we would come back in a little while the activation would be finished. We checked out, loaded our purchases in the car and went back in to get our new phone.
“I wrote your new phone number on the box,” she said. “Do you remember what I showed you about operating it?”
“Uh yeah,” I lied, not wanting to take up any more of her time. With a doubtful look on her face she handed me our new cell phone.
Later at home I opened the small instruction book. “Well this doesn't look too bad! I think the sales lady did the hardest part, which was activating it!”
First I decided to program the cell phone number into the speed dial on our home phone, so I asked Carol where the instruction book was. Amazingly, she found it in a drawer right under the phone. I read the section on speed dialing, punched in the new number and named it. I hit the speed dial button, listened to it dial, and heard an operator say”You must dial “1” before you can dial this number!”
I went through the process again, entering “1” in front of the area code, tried it again and listened to a new message from the operator. “You do not need to dial “1” for this number! After several more unsuccessful attempts at trying it both ways, I was getting pissed. My tremors were getting bad and I found myself cussing out the operator, who couldn't care less because she was a recording.
I decided to give up on that for a while and work on setting up the cell phone. The instructions said that I needed to create my voice mail account. I really didn't want one, but the booklet said that was the next step, so I followed the instructions: Press and hold”1” for five seconds. I was already tired of “1”, but I did it and found myself listening to another female voiced recording rattling off instructions faster than I could think. “If you want to blah blah blah, press star. If you want to blah blah blah, press 3. Every time I'd lower the phone from my ear to push a button I could hear her tiny voice giving more options. After giving “her” a pin number for the second time, (the first didn't contain enough characters) I listened to more machine babble and hung up.
I decided to give it a try, and dialed the new number, one digit at a time, (the speed dial still hadn't decided if it wanted a “1” or not,) and instantly got voice mail. “Isn't the phone supposed to ring at least a couple of times before it sends you to voice mail?” I asked Carol.
“Try it again.” she said.
After 3 or 4 more attempts, and cussing out the voice mail operator recording, I gave up in disgust and decided to try and enter our “contacts” and their phone numbers. My tremors were so bad by then that every time I pushed a button the character repeated a half a dozen times across the screen.
“They ought to call these things 'Hell phones' instead of Cell phones!” I said, and poured myself a glass of wine. Carol called Brad and asked if he would help me set up our new phone and he laughingly agreed to help the old man out.
The next day we went to Brad and Donna's house. Brad turned the phone on and looked at the contacts I had set up, which wasn't much, just our land line number. “Lets see if we can fix the voice mail problem first,” he said. He dialed our cell number and the phone rang, surprising me. “It works! You fixed it!” I said.
With his steady fingers he entered the list of contacts that I gave him and when he finished he tried the voice mail again. “Yeah, that's working OK.” he said.
How can you tell,” I said, “the phone's not even turned on!”
“That's when voice mail is supposed to come on, when the phones not turned on, or after so many rings!”
I could feel my face getting red. “You mean it's supposed to be turned on all the time?”
The other morning while I was eating breakfast the dogs let me know in no uncertain terms that they wanted to go back out and play in the snow some more. I turned on the mercury light that illuminates at least part of the back yard, and let them out. A short time later, Taz the Pomeranian, Lhasa Apso mix, scratched to come in.
“Where's your partner?” I asked, but he just wagged his furry tail and grinned his overbite grin at me.
I waited for a while, and then put on my head lamp and went out to look for her. A Papillon, she's a tiny little thing and we worry about her having a run-in with a Bear or a Coyote or even a Raccoon, all of which, at one time or another, have visited our back yard. Like most small dogs she's way too fearless for her own good.
“C'mon Squeak!” I called, and tried my best to whistle. ( Since I got my partial denture I can't whistle for shit.)
I walked back into the darkness toward the fence that separates our yard from the large forested area behind it, the headlamp making a dim circle on the trampled snow.
“Here Squeak!”
I searched under the big Fir tree at the far end of the yard and worked my way back along the fence, shining the head lamp back and forth in front of me. Now I was starting to get worried, and bad thoughts of what might have happened started running through my mind.
“Squeak!” I yelled as loud as I could with my weak Parkinson's voice.
I searched everywhere, and finally stopped at the last place I could think of, under an overhanging Spruce tree beside the house. There was still no sign of her, so discouraged and heart sick, I turned to go back. When I turned I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye behind me. I spun around and saw something dart in back of me again. Finally when I bent over, she came out from behind me to be petted, her head cocked as if to say,”This is fun! Can we play some more?”
“Squeak! Dammit, this isn't a game!” I said, laughing despite how worried I'd been.
I don't know how long she'd been following behind me, but I think Squeak and Taz, who'd been watching the whole thing, both enjoyed every minute of it.
Yesterday morning the dogs and I woke up to a winter wonderland. We couldn't wait to go out and write our names in the snow!
Since it was Squeaks first experience with the weird white stuff, she had a blast running, jumping and sliding, while Taz half heartedly gave chase. I even ran ( slowly, to be sure) with them for a little bit, huffing and puffing clouds of steamy breath. It was still dark but I took some flash pictures when I could get Squeak to hold still long enough to focus the camera.
The house was chilly, so I got a good fire going in the fireplace, but before we could even get warmed up, Squeak wanted out again. Taz laid down in front of the fireplace, but Squeak sat by the back door doing her “I want out!” squeak. She sounded so pathetic we went back out and played some more.
Taz and I pooped out, but Squeak couldn't get enough of it. When her tiny little paws would get too cold she'd come in for a warm up and then cry to go out again.
When it got light I took some more pictures, and some video of the dogs playing. Squeak drove us crazy, wanting out every 15 minutes all day long.
After leaving Colorado, I didn't think that I'd ever like snow again, but now when it only happens once in a while, it's kind of fun.
With typical macho Cleland stubbornness my brother J.C. put off going to see a doctor until his pain got unbearable. At first the doctor thought that he just had a kidney infection and an enlarged prostate, but when treatment for that didn't help, J.C. went in for more tests. They catheterized him and when he began bleeding into the catheter they sent him to our local hospital.
The doctor at the hospital couldn't stop the bleeding so they decided to send him to the Corvallis hospital, a much larger facility. Carol arranged for him to be transported by our local Waldport ambulance (which she drove for many years.) They hastily put together a crew to transport him but unfortunately none of them were very experienced and he didn't have a very good ride. The driver got lost in Corvallis and the EMT attending to him got car sick.
After countless ultra sounds, x rays, and blood tests they found cancer in his prostate that had spread to his ribs and shoulder. They put drainage tubes in both kidneys and started him on chemotherapy. In the meantime his daughter Brandy drove up from Elko Nevada and stayed overnight at the hospital with him. A few days later, much to everyone's surprise, they sent him home.
The next morning Brandy and I went to Newport and after leaving the prescriptions at Walmart to be filled, she drove me to the hospital parking lot to retrieve J.C.'s Honda. We were worried that it might not start after sitting so long, but it started right up and I drove it back to J.C.'s house with no problems. It turned out that when Brandy went back to get the medicine she left her lights on and had to get a jump start in the Walmart parking lot.
That afternoon J.C. And I had our first visit since he was transported to Corvallis and he seemed to be in pretty good spirits, despite the kidney tubes and the medicine he was on. When he began to tire I asked him for his fancy cell phone so I could call Carol to come and pick me up.
My history with phones of any kind is that if any thing can go wrong it will, and it's especially true of cell phones. I once tried to call Carol on J.C.'s fancy cell phone and somehow ended up having a pleasant conversation with Cheri, his ex wife in Elko, Nevada. This time proved to be no different .
I listened for a dial tone, didn't hear anything and handed it back to J.C. “It's not working!” I said.
He looked at it and said, “Well, you just took a nice picture of your ear!”
I let him dial it for me.
The next day, Sunday, I put on my rain coat and walked up to J.C.'s. I found him in the living room watching football on his big screen (3 inches bigger than mine) HD TV. He was having problems with one of his kidney tubes not draining right, and he had a lot of swelling in his legs and feet from water retention, but he was feeling pretty good because the Broncos were beating the crap out of Kansas City. We watched football for a couple of hours until Brandy returned and I walked back home.
Forget the Barby Dolls! Forget the sugar and spice and everything nice!
Give our 7 year old granddaughter Shelby a tree to climb, a baseball bat to swing, or a “Transformer”to play with!
She dressed up in her Halloween costume, (“Optimus Prime” a transformer that turns into a semi truck) and made the rounds last night. If you didn't give her candy, she wreaked havoc and destruction!
Two nights ago at 2:30 am, Taz woke me up, growling and barking. (He was growling and barking, not me.) I realized that it was a different bark than his usual “Wake up, I need to go outside and pee!”bark, or his “Wake up it's time to get up!” bark, so I reluctantly got out of my warm bed and followed him into the living room. I noticed that the fire in the fireplace was burning, the Cedar kindling crackling and ...Wait a minute! Who lit the fire?
Lately, in the afternoon I've been bringing in logs and kindling and laying a fire for the next morning, to take the morning chill off the house. There must have been some coals buried in the ashes and the fire lit itself.
When it sunk in that Taz had woke me because he knew something was wrong, I sat down beside him and petted him until he rolled over and let me scratch his favorite belly spot. “You're a good doggy!” I said, “You're a real good dog!”
I told Carol about it later that morning and we agreed that Taz was turning into an ace watchdog.
Last night about midnight he woke me again, barking and growling in the dining room. I jumped out of bed and hurried in to see what our ace watchdog had spotted. There he was looking at his reflection in a glass pane of the french door, growling ferociously, his hair standing on end. I sighed and closed the curtain. Taz looked up at me with a “Am I still a good doggy?” look on his face. I petted him, told him that he was a good dog and we both went back to bed.
Along with millions of other people, we watched the rescue of the miners in Chile last week. As some of the details came out I couldn't help but remember my years working in a similar mine.
Instead of Gold and Copper, the Henderson mine was a Molybdenum mine. Located on the east side of Berthoud Pass in the mountains of Colorado the entrance was at 11,000 feet, and the hoist operator dropped us in a wire enclosed “cage” 2500 feet down a shaft to the working level. The half mile descent took a hair raising 3 minutes and when we stepped out to go to work, the temperature was over 90 degrees. In the winter on graveyard and swing shifts the temperature on the surface was sometimes 40 below and when we would emerge from the cage after the shift, wet and steaming, our clothing would freeze between the shaft and the dry room.
While I worked there the mine was still under development; we were digging drifts and shafts to the ore body in preparation for production. The similarity of depth and temperature with the Chilean mine is striking but there was one big difference; the mine in Chile was dry, the Henderson mine was wet...very wet. If we had been trapped underground for very long. the main danger would have been from drowning because the water, which was like a constant warm rain, had to be pumped from every heading to the main shaft where a series of huge pump stations at 6 different levels pumped it up to the surface. There were backups to these pumps and the mine had its own coal fired power plant in case of a power failure, but a serious cave-in would have shut things down and the mine would have quickly filled up with water.
I rode in a carpool with 5 other miners so I only had to drive once a week or so but it still took two hours out of every day just going to and from work.
Looking back, I suppose it was about as safe as a large mining company like AMAX could make it, but it still was dangerous work. Our crew had more than its share of accidents. One miner had a severe compound fracture from a rock fall, (his leg bone was sticking out of the side of his boot,) another had a punctured lung, (a one inch drill rod through his chest,) and I even got carried out in a stretcher one night with a slashed arm when I slipped and fell off of a drill boom onto a sharp edged rock.
After two years of helping to carry injured friends up out of the mine and riding with them in the mine ambulance sixty miles to a hospital in Denver, I decided to find another line of work.
I guess I'm a slow learner.
Proselytizing: The act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion.
In my opinion, sending email espousing one's religious or political views is just as objectionable as having a Jehovah’s Witness knock on the door and try to tell me what to believe in, or someone calling me on the phone telling me who to vote for.
Lately TV has been inundated with mud-slinging political ads, most of which are exaggerated, taken out of context or just plain lies, and most people will tell you that they don't like them, but then they'll go ahead and forward the most outrageous email as long as it supports their views.
I'm tired of getting emails demonizing President Obama, or any other political figure.
I'm tired of getting emails telling me that God has blessed me, but if I don't pass it on to ten others, fire and brimstone will rain down on me.
Carol and I have our own, sometimes differing, opinions and beliefs on politics and religion and we respect each others right to those opinions and beliefs. We try to stay informed by various news sources and we are both registered Independents, voting for the person, not the party..
Religious or political emails are deleted, unread.
We decided quite some time ago to update and replace Rick's memorial plaque in the Drift Creek Wilderness area.
After Rick died, a group of his friends and I, along with his brothers, and his son Chris, scattered his ashes at his favorite fishing hole on Drift Creek, and fastened a brass plaque to the huge old Cedar tree overhanging the stream there.
Over the years the tree grew enough to pull the fastening screws out and I had to replace them. The plaque was getting beat up from Elk rubbing the velvet from their antlers on the tree and the weather was taking its toll on the brass. The plaque almost always had a variety of fishing lures hanging from it,tributes from friends and fellow fishermen
Then when Chris died of Leukemia, we thought it would be fitting to include his name on a new memorial along with his dad's. We composed the wording and emailed it to Rick's daughter Roshelle, to see what she thought of it. She answered that she liked it and would like to go with us to put it up.
In August Carol and I went to Toledo, picked up the new plaque, and contacted our grandson David to find out if he would like to go along with Roshelle and me into Drift Creek.
FATHER AND SON
RICHARD EUGENE CLELAND
1965 to 1997
CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL CLELAND
1984 to 2006
THEY LOVED TO FISH HERE
AND WILL BE HERE FOREVER
With Love from Family and Friends
We agreed to go in on the morning of the 25th of September to replace the plaque.
Roshelle spent the night, David arrived around 7am and after arranging our packs with tools, sandwiches and water, we hit the road in David's pickup.
We arrived at the Harris Ranch trail head on Butler Peak at 8am and started down the trail. On the way, David and Roshelle talked about his Army career and her starting college at OSU. He talked about going to Afghanistan this fall and she told us about her dorm and room mate. It's hard for me to believe that they are both so grown up.
We stopped at the so-called halfway point for a rest and while we were talking, we were surprised to hear a motor running somewhere. “My drill!” I said, laughing. Sure enough, it had jostled around and turned itself on in David's pack. He pulled it out and removed the battery.
Nearing the bottom end of the trail my legs were getting weak and rubbery, and I was starting to get worried about how I was going to be able to make the 2 ½ mile and 1500 foot climb back to the truck.
When we got to the old Harris Ranch site we found that the meadow was so overgrown with blackberry bushes and ferns we couldn't find the trail. After several failed attempts we decided to try following the stream up to Rick's Cedar tree. It involved climbing along the steep bank, crawling through the underbrush and for me, falling in a hole with one leg bent double, my knee buried in mud and my other leg stuck out like a “Dancing with the Stars” move. David pulled me out and Roshelle sat with me while I tried to get some strength back into my wimpy legs. David went ahead while I rested and in a few minutes he yelled back, “It's right up here!”
Eventually I hobbled my way to the Cedar tree and took my backpack off, ( which felt like it was full of rocks) and dropped it on the ground. David was in good shape despite the hike and Roshelle wasn't even breathing hard. I was pretty shaky, as I found out later, looking at the pictures I took. Most of them were blurry because of my tremors.
David made short work of removing the old plaque and installing the new one, and soon we were eating sandwiches and drinking bottled water. Roshelle and David took pictures with their cameras while we rested for the trip back up the trail. I brought out a little clay ashtray that Chris had made in grade school and tucked it into a deep hole between the roots of the old tree.
Feeling better, I took the pruning shears I had brought along to cut the blackberry vines, and went to see if I could find the meadow trail. It was easy to find from that end, and I backtracked across the meadow, trimming overhanging brambles and opening the trail as I went.
When I got back to the tree, David and I noticed a small fish struggling in the shallow edge of the stream. It would almost run up on the gravel bank before it splashed its way back out to deeper water. The three of us followed it up and down the bank trying to catch it by hand.”Look, it's got a crawdad in its mouth!” David said, “Maybe it can't see where its going.” We finally lost it in a swirl of mud and returned to the job of loading up our packs. Roshelle insisted, (much to my relief) that she and David carry all of the tools and gear, leaving me with a small, empty pack. David had most of the weight in my old backpack which is heavy even when it's empty.
Somehow I got a second wind, and my legs felt almost normal. It was a long grind up the trail and the last half mile seemed to take forever, but we made it out in an hour and fifty minutes, not bad time really. I was bone tired and exhausted, but David and Roshelle looked as fresh as if they'd hardly left the truck.
Oh, to be young again!
A few weeks ago I blogged about seeing an Indian lady at Eckman Lake, chanting and shaking a beaded, feathered bag. Later I read something in the local paper about a group of indigenous ladies called “The International Council of Thirteen Grandmothers” who were here, blessing the local waters. At least I knew then that I wasn't imagining things.
Recently I found their web site: http://www.grandmotherscouncil.org/
The lady that I saw at the lake didn't quite look like the picture above, but I like it anyway.
For several years now, Carol and I have talked about how nice it would be to have a walking trail around our neighborhood lake. Recently she decided to make it her project.
Together we composed the following letter to the Port Of Alsea, the local government body in charge of Eckman Lake. (In the winter, during high tides and high runoff the lake actually becomes part of the bay, and so it comes under their jurisdiction.)
Eckman Lake as a Wildlife Viewing Area
Over the past 20 years my husband and I have been regular visitors to a small 50 acre lake a few miles east of Waldport on the central Oregon coast. We have fished, kayaked, photographed wildlife and just plain relaxed on the lake.
For several years we picked up trash around Eckman Lake while he was a member of the “Adopt a River” program, and although he's no longer a member we still do our part to keep the lake trash free.
Over the years we have watched families of Deer, Otters, Beavers and Nutria going about the daily business of feeding and raising their young.
Every spring a pair of Ospreys return to their power pole aerie and raise two or three chicks to maturity. One of our most rewarding sights has been watching the chicks mature, take their first hesitant flight from the nest and then gain confidence in their ability. Within a few days they are doing fantastic aerobatics, playing like puppies in the sky.
As amateur birdwatchers, we can only recognize a few of the many other bird species that live near or visit the lake, but we are familiar with the Blue Heron, White Egrets, Cormorants, Loons, Green Herons, Canadian Geese, Mallards, Wood Ducks, Kingfishers, Gulls, Red-Winged Blackbirds, and countless other birds and waterfowl.
On several occasions we have seen Western Pond Turtles sunning themselves on partially submerged logs. Bullfrogs inhabit the water plants along the shoreline where Salamanders lay their eggs in fist sized gelatinous globs.
One sunny day kayaking when the water was unusually clear, we watched a Large mouth Bass protecting her babies in a nest she had scooped out of the sandy bottom. Schools of tiny Sticklebacks provide food for the Bass and Trout that live in the lake. During the winter, high water and high tides provide access for the Coho Salmon and Steelhead to swim through the lake on their way to spawn in upper Eckman Creek.
We feel that if there was a trail around the perimeter of the lake, a prime wildlife viewing area and greater accessibility for fishing would be created. This would surely bring visitors to the Waldport area.
Since private property abuts the water line in many areas, possibly a boardwalk similar to the one at the Darlingtonia Wayside, north of Florence, could be built. It is approximately two miles around the lake and a wheelchair friendly, boardwalk – trail combination with interpretive signs and rest benches would be a great wildlife viewing attraction and provide much more access for fishing.
Hopefully there is a grant somewhere waiting to finance a project like this, possibly in President Obama's “Stimulus Program.”
The Clelands
Carol met with Maggie Rivers, the port commissioner and was happy to find that her lake improvement project was enthusiastically received. They agreed that circulating a petition would be a good way to see how much local interest there would be in improving the lake.
While she and our daughter-in-law Dianna were gathering signatures, they talked to many people who learned how to swim, fished, boated and even water skied on the lake when they were kids. Almost all of them were excited about an improvements project, and they made many useful suggestions. Dredging, to deepen the lake and remove the silt and overgrowth of water plants was number one, followed by a wheel chair friendly boardwalk along the highway side of the lake for fishing and wildlife viewing, and a kayak - small boat ramp at the park.
As of this writing, in a little over a week, they have collected well over 1,000 signatures.
Yesterday afternoon while Carol and I were sitting out on the patio sipping a glass of wine, (hers white, mine red,) I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea.
“Lets sleep out here tonight!” I said, “We can move the table and chairs out of the way, blow up the queen size air mattress and use the sleeping bags we bought for camping. It should be fun!”
Carol wasn't as excited about the idea as I was, but she reluctantly went along with it.
We tried to remember where we had stashed the camping gear and finally found the sleeping bags in the shop and the air mattress rolled up under my bed. I got the shop vac to inflate the mattress while Carol unrolled the sleeping bags. “Just lay one on top of the other,” I said, “we should be snug and cozy between them. It's too much of a hassle to zip them together.” The dogs were already showing interest in what to them, looked like a big comfy doggy bed.
As usual I retired first, and hardly got between the sleeping bags before Taz and Squeak hopped aboard, bouncing me up and down as they worked their way into a comfortable spot. I soon found the drawback to not zipping the sleeping bags together, when a cold draft of air hit my leg. I adjusted the bag to seal it off, which caused another cold spot on my arm, and on and on it went. I finally drifted off and slept until Carol came to bed, which caused some major bouncing up and down and a lot of laughing while we and the dogs tried to bounce our way into comfortable positions.
Naturally, all of my sealed off cold air drafts opened up again and I struggled to get them sealed back up. Carol was having trouble with the dogs claiming her side of the bed, (After all they were there first!) and by then the air mattress was starting to lose some of its bounciness because it was also loosing some of its air. Carol finally gave up around ten o’clock, surrendered to Taz and Squeak and moved back inside to the comfort of her bedroom.
When I started to feel the hardness of the patio bricks against my hip, as the leaking mattress deflated, I packed it in and traipsed into the house, the two dogs right behind me. Squeak jumped up on the bed and snuggled up against my back, Taz curled up in his doggy bed under the bedside table, and a collective sigh could be heard throughout the household as our world returned to normal.
Our good friend Tony Mooney and I went kayak crabbing yesterday.
The tide was starting to come in when we arrived at the north side of Alsea Bay near the old Bayshore Inn. Tony had gone out the previous day and caught a bunch of nice Dungeness Crabs, so he kindly called and asked if I'd like to go along for a repeat trip.
We unloaded our boats and gear and packed everything down the bank and over the exposed barnacle covered rocks to the water's edge. I was going to try using a fishing rod with a baited loop snare on the end of the line and Tony was using the two large sized crab traps that he easily handles from his 12 foot, ride on top kayak (ROTK). My little 9 foot sit inside kayak (SINK) however, is too tippy to pull that much weight out of the water, even with the pontoon outriggers I made for it.
The north wind and incoming tide proved to be more than I could handle, by the time I'd get set up with my dinky rig I'd be on my way out to the middle of the bay, have to pull it back in and paddle like crazy to get back to where I'd started. I finally gave up and decided to just take pictures of Tony as he worked his crab traps.
We paddled to the shoreline, Tony packed my ineffective crabbing gear back up to his truck and we headed back out. He has his own super-secret time to let his traps set, or “soak” as the old crabbers say, and the trip to his truck had extended it quite a bit. He strained and grunted as he hand over hand pulled the heavy trap up to his kayak, and with a great heave flopped it onto the deck between his legs. It was loaded with crabs.
I snapped pictures while he separated and threw back the usual females, and small males from the writhing, snapping, pinching mob, until he narrowed it down to two large male Dungeness Crabs.
“I don't even have to measure these!” he yelled. (To be legal they have to be male and 5 ¾ inches across.)
“That's a good start!” he yelled, as the wind commenced to blow me back out into the bay. Every time I'd quit paddling in order to take a picture I'd lose ground and have to paddle furiously to get back in position again. Tony had the same problem but he's in better shape and a lot younger!
My arms started to give out around noon and I headed for the shore. About that time Tony's mom drove up and he came in to show her the four crabs he'd kept so far. While we watched he went back out and pulled his traps several more times, ending up with six crabs total.
It was quite a workout for me, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Yesterday I downloaded “Google Earth” to our desktop computer. With our dial-up connection it's painfully slow, but if you're patient it works.
I started out by zooming from the earth view down to the west coast, then to Oregon and then on down to Waldport. After waiting for the blurry images to finish downloading and sharpen, I scrolled along the Alsea River and Highway towards our house. When I saw Eckman Lake sliding into view I realized that I'd gone too far, so after waiting for things to catch up I started backtracking.
When I thought that I recognized the empty, grassy lot across the street from our house I stopped and began zooming in. Sure enough, there was our house from above, I could even see our pickup parked in the driveway! I zoomed in even closer but things got pretty blurry and stayed that way.
I noticed an option called “Street View” so I put a check in the little check box and watched as the view morphed into ground level. The camera view was on the highway in front of our neighbor's house looking south.
I clicked on the arrows to rotate the scene and suddenly there was a picture of our neighbor, Fran walking up her driveway!
I went in to the kitchen and got Carol to show her what I'd found. “Go a Little further and see if you can see our house,” she said, leaning over my shoulder. I clicked my way down the highway a couple of notches and began rotating the camera view. “There's the driveway!” I said, “There's our mailbox! Holy crap! That looks like... it looks like...like you!”
As the fuzzy picture sharpened there was no doubt, and Carol pointed at her image. “Fran and I had been talking at the mailboxes, see, I've got the mail in my hand!.”
It's an amazing, wonderful technology, but more than a little bit spooky. Is Google the modern equivalent of Orwell's “Big Brother?”
Carol and I decided to get a canopy for our patio so we could spend more time outside on hot sunny, (Ha!) and the more likely, rainy days.
We found some 10' X 10” nylon canopies at Wal-Mart for $97.00, bought one and set it up over our patio furniture. Several weeks later they went on sale for $69.00. Oh well!
I saw a project on the Popular Mechanics web site for building a “Tiki Bar” and thought that it looked pretty cool, so I talked Carol into letting me partially enclose the canopy with roll-up blinds and make a bar for ice and drinks.
We found an old 78 RPM record cabinet at a yard sale that was the right height for the bar and I had salvaged a heat lamp table that I made for the restaurant years ago for the bar top.
We hung the blinds from the canopy frame and we now have a cozy enclosure that we can open or close when we want.
This morning I decided to go fishing.
I pulled my little 9 foot kayak on it's home built, lawnmower wheeled cart the short distance to our local lake.
The water was like glass when I stepped into the boat and tried to slide into the put-in spot. Usually I can slip right in, but unfortunately some idiot had rolled some big rocks in the groove I had cut through the water plants and I high centered. After a lot of struggling and cussing I got out and moved the kayak off of the rocks, getting my feet wet in the process.
It took fifteen minutes or so for me to paddle out to my favorite spot. The north wind had come up and was already starting to raise a little chop on the surface, but it wasn't too bad yet. I positioned the boat so the wind would blow me within casting distance of the sweet spot, which is an underground spring that I discovered several years ago.
The trout hang out there because it's the coolest spot in the lake, especially in the summer. I found it one day when I was checking the water temperature with a digital aquarium thermometer. One small area was about 10 degrees colder than the rest of the shallow lake, and not surprisingly it was the same spot where I have been catching fish for years.
While I was retrieving the 3rd or 4th cast of my little home made spinner, the lure just stopped dead in the water. Thinking it was hung up in some moss or water plants, I raised the rod tip and pulled harder. It was then that I noticed my line moving through the water. I set the hook, and a gigantic trout came blasting out of the lake right in front of the kayak. I got a good look at it before it snapped my 4 lb test line and it was huge. I've caught quite a few 2 and 3 pound Rainbows out of the lake and this fish was at least twice that size. As I sat there with my mouth hanging open, the fish started a series of acrobatic jumps trying to dislodge my tiny spinner, which was still hanging from it's jaw, like Gregory Peck hanging from the side of Moby Dick.
I retrieved my line, and with my hands shaking way more than usual, tried to tie on a new lure. The giant Rainbow made another jump, coming all the way out of the water and landing with a giant splash which caused me to drop the spinner into the bottom of the boat where I couldn't find it. Finally I just put my rod away and paddled back to the dock.
It was a fast and furious fishing trip.
About a month ago my brother's grand daughter Amanda, brought over her Gateway laptop computer for him to fix again. JC had repaired it before, but this time it was really dead, and at first it looked pretty hopeless. He went online and looked up all of the information he could find on that particular Gateway model and discovered that evidently a lot of other people were having similar problems.
There were some broken ones for sale on E bay, so taking a chance, JC bid on them. He ended up with some that worked, but had been dropped and had a broken display screen or case, and several that were just as dead as Amanda's was. Soon his workbench was covered with torn apart computers and he began to see a common problem - overheating. He swapped bad parts for good parts and after buying a rebuilt mother board on the Internet, and several setbacks, he finally got one working.
Later, sitting on his deck sipping some wine, we looked at the cooling system on one that he'd disassembled and we talked about the poor air circulation and how it could be fixed. He finally decided to try cutting a 1-3/4” intake hole in the bottom of the case right under the cooling fan. I thought I could do it with a hole saw on my drill press, and suggested covering the opening with fine mesh hardware screen. We also discussed trying to fabricate some higher legs, to allow more air to be sucked in through the bottom.
In the meantime JC had picked up a few more of the same model in various states of disrepair, and he thought that with a couple more rebuilt motherboards, and if we could fix the overheating problem, he could end up with four or maybe even five nice, working laptops. He also found some glue-on fold up legs online and ordered four sets.
We drilled the intake holes in all four cases and JC began assembling all of the tiny laptop parts with the tinier, itsy-bitsy screws. He got to be an expert at tearing one completely apart and reassembling it in about twenty minutes, and he could almost do it blindfolded, (or at least without his magnifiers.)
After running into more problems getting Windows Vista running, a weird problem with cordless mouse drivers, and updating the seemingly endless Windows updates, he started turning out cool running, working laptops. I was very happy when he gave me the first one.
Now we set at the table on his deck, each with a laptop in front of us, playing with our toys. We can even email each other. Actually, as hard of hearing as JC's getting and as weak as my voice is becoming, email's not that ridiculous.
In the evening when I relax on the couch to watch TV, I take my shoes off and set them on the floor by the coffee table. For some strange reason Taz thinks it's his job to watch over them. He lays down beside them, sometimes using them for a pillow, and goes on guard duty. If anyone reaches for them he growls and snarls at his fiercest, forcefully pushing their hand away with his head. The problem is, he won't even let me have them. Oh, I could take them away from him but after all, he's just doing what he thinks is his duty and I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings.
In the mornings after he growls me awake at four and we go outside to pee, he hurries back to my shoes and goes on guard duty again. I have to wear slippers until I can fool him or trick him away from the shoes long enough to grab them and put them on. One day he got back before I could put them both on, and I had to hobble around in one shoe until he finally relented.
I have no idea why he does it, or how he knows that it's four o'clock every morning and comes in to wake me up.
He's just being Taz and I wouldn't try to change him for the world.
On my walk a couple of days ago as I approached the lake, I could see someone walking back and forth along the highway guard rail. As I got closer I saw that it was a woman looking out on the water, singing and chanting, while she shook what looked like a beaded bag with large feathers attached to it. She was dressed in modern clothing and she had long black hair.
I couldn't help staring at her from across the highway, and when she suddenly turned and looked at me I realized that she was an American Indian. I waved and weakly said, ”Hi!” She smiled, shook the feathered thing at me a couple of times, turned back to the lake and resumed singing, shaking and pacing.
I tried to watch her, but after stumbling a couple of times trying to walk backwards, I went on my way. I could hear her sing-song chant long after I passed the lake.
Later while I told my brother about her, I wondered, did she bless me or curse me?
On Saturday we went to our grand daughter's graduation from Newport High School. When we saw her and her classmates enter the crowded gymnasium in their cap and gowns we were filled with pride. It seems like just a short time ago we were watching her graduate from the 8th grade, and all of a sudden she's getting ready to go to college.
Roshelle received eight scholarships to help pay for her college education, and she plans to go to OSU in Portland.
We know that her dad would be proud!
I saw the creature as plain as day, but later I became afraid that it was a hallucination. (Hallucinating is one of the Parkinson's disease symptoms that up until then, I hadn't had to deal with.)
I walk along the north shore of the lake every day, trying my best to get some of the only known thing to slow the progression of this disease – exercise. I usually walk to my brother's house, about a mile, with a steep trail through the trees for the last hundred yards. It gets my pulse rate up and I'm usually pretty winded when I climb up the steps to his deck.
The creature I saw that windy spring day, (I hesitate to call it a monster, because that conjures up images of Godzilla, or the Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,) surfaced about 50 feet out from the rocky shoreline, raised it's head on a slender neck, water plants trailing from it's mouth, and looked straight at me. It's tail poked out of the water at least ten feet back. I Looked frantically around for a fisherman, or someone who could confirm what I was seeing, but there was no one, and when I looked back there was nothing but a swirl on the wind tossed water.
I searched my brain for an explanation. Otters, Beavers, Nutria and diving birds, all came to mind and were quickly discarded. I had seen it too clearly. It's head was larger than a football and it had a neck, which meant it couldn't have been a Sturgeon, which is the usual explanation for some of the other Oregon “lake monsters.” That left me with two possibilities – either there was a creature of some kind in Eckman Lake, or my Parkinson's had progressed to the point where I was starting to get visual hallucinations.
Eckman Lake is a small, shallow, 50 acre lake created when the construction of highway 34 dammed up Eckman Creek. It's fed by the stream on the south end and empties into Alsea Bay at the north end, under the highway. It's a short two mile trip from the Pacific Ocean to the lake, and during the winter, high water and high tides flood it with bay water, allowing Salmon and Steelhead to swim through the lake to their spawning grounds upstream. Larger creatures could easily enter the lake at that time, but in the summer it's warm, mossy and full of water plants.
I stood there, rooted to the spot, hoping for another glimpse to prove to myself that I wasn't seeing things. The choppy surface of the lake revealed nothing. Eventually I turned and resumed my walk, shaking my head and wondering if I should tell anyone what I'd seen. By the time I reached JC's house I had decided to keep my sighting, or hallucination to myself, at least for a while.
As usual, my brother brought out a couple of glasses of wine for us, and we relaxed under the cool shade of the awning over his deck. We talked about the usual things; our computers, the news and the weather. While we talked my mind was racing with worries about my incurable disease that seemed to be progressing into another phase. I had almost convinced myself that what I'd seen had to be all in my mind. What next, I wondered, Pink Elephants?
On the way home in JC's car, as we passed the lake I turned in my seat and searched futilely for anything unusual, but there was nothing. A man and a little girl were fishing from the bank close to where I had seen, or thought I'd seen, a prehistoric creature, a plant eating dinosaur.
Later that evening I sat down at the computer and googled “aquatic dinosaurs.” I quickly found out that I should have searched for “aquatic reptiles,” as all dinosaurs were land dwelling. I found several that were fifteen to twenty feet in length and had long necks, but they were all fish eaters. “Ecky” as I fondly named it, seemed to be a plant eater. Whether it was a creation of my dopamine deprived brain or an actual survivor from an ancient era, thoughts of Ecky kept me awake most of the night.
The next morning was bright and sunny, so I put my fishing gear in my kayak, put the wheels on it and pulled it to the lake. Ten minutes later I was paddling out past the boat dock where a couple of old timers were sitting in lawn chairs and lazily fishing. I considered asking them if they'd seen any large green reptiles, but thought better of it, and just waved. One of them yelled, “Going out to get the big one, eh?” I sincerely hope not! I thought.
I paddled out to my favorite spot where a cold water spring attracts trout, especially when the lake warms up in the summer, and fished for a while. Every splash from a diving Kingfisher or a rising trout would startle me and I finally stowed my fishing rod, leaned back and let the gentle wind blow me slowly toward the south end of the lake, watching for any sign of Ecky.
The problem with believing that there really was a large beast of some kind living in the lake was that it was just too shallow. With polarized sunglasses I could see the water plants growing on the bottom in most places.
I shaded the reflection of the sun with my hand, and through the murky water I watched the bottom slowly glide by as I drifted. I caught glimpses of trails cleared of plants, like underwater highways, and some of them seemed too big to be made by otters or beavers.
As I neared the upper end of the lake I paddled my way through the winding inlet to a large culvert which allows the stream to pass under a gravel road. It was at least ten feet in diameter and mostly submerged in a deep hole. As I sat looking at it I realized it would be a perfect hiding place for my creature. The hair stood up on the back of my neck when the thought crossed my mind that it could be in there, looking up out of the darkness at me.
I carry my camera with me now on my walks, but I haven't seen any creature to take a picture of, on the other hand though, if it was a hallucination I haven't had any more of them.
Every day at the lake when I see someone fishing or kayaking, I wave and ask them how they're doing, hoping that one day someone will answer with, “You won't believe what I just saw!”
Don and Dianna had to go to the valley to trade for a new truck Sunday and they asked if we'd watch 7 year-old Shelby and 13 year-old Austin, while they were gone.
It took a little while to get grandpa and grandma going, but once we entered into their world we had a lot fun with them.
Shelby had some bubble blowing gear and we went outside to try it out. The bubbles were so colorful that I got my camera and took several pictures of her and grandma surrounded by tiny bubbles.
I remembered that I still had a “Pop Pop” boat that our grand son Christopher and I had built years ago. Austin and I set up a kiddy pool and launched the little steam powered boat. It runs on candle power, but the little “tea light” candle we had wasn't hot enough to make steam. We tried adding more candles but it got too heavy and sank. We finally used a fireplace lighter to generate enough steam to drive it slowly popping around the pool.
After lunch we all gathered around the computer and looked at the bubble pictures I had taken.
Austin's a reader, and he likes scary stories, so I showed him a werewolf story I had written about ten years ago, for a website I did called “Web Tales.” He read the first couple of paragraphs aloud while I watched, and I realized that he can read faster than I can. I left him to the first chapter and joined grandma and Shelby in the kitchen to do some coloring on plastic sheets that are supposed to end up looking like stained glass...kind of.
When we tired of coloring Shelby asked if we could play T-Ball. Don and Dianna had packed a bag with all of the equipment so Shelby and I went out to set it up. She had to show grandpa how to assemble the stand and then she pointed at the back fence and told me to “Go out there! No, farther!”
I walked part way and watched her tee up the ball, tap the ground with the bat and take a mighty swing. The stand must have been set too high because she knocked it about ten feet and we had to re-assemble it. We adjusted the height and started again. “Go out farther!” she yelled.
Not expecting much, I was surprised when she smacked a high fly ball almost to the back fence. “I got it!” I yelled as I ran, keeping my eyes on the ball. I should have kept one eye on the ground though, because I tripped over Taz and crashed onto the grass. “Home run!” Shelby yelled, running around imaginary bases and sliding into home plate.
Grandma joined us and we had a grand time running after each other around the bushes. The base line, being imaginary, was pretty flexible, which meant to tag a runner out you had to chase them all over the yard. Shelby hit several homers over the fence and we had to move the T-Ball stand farther back.
Austin came out after reading all seven chapters of my werewolf story and he gave me a compliment that meant more to me than if I'd won the Pulitzer Prize. “You're a good story teller, grandpa!”
Don and Dianna showed up a little while later and watched as I ran after Shelby, almost tagging her out until my pants started falling down.
After showing us their new truck, they packed the kids and their gear up and headed home.
Silence ensued, and grandpa and grandma were totally pooped.
There have almost always been a few bullfrogs hanging around our fish ponds. I don't know for sure where they come from, but I suspect that somehow at night they hop their way from the nearby lake, through the swampy, forested area behind our property and then when they hear the waterfalls and fountains in the ponds decide to make themselves a new home.
One that I'll always remember was “Bud” who we named for the Budweiser frogs commercials. When he showed up one spring Bud was already a full grown bullfrog, and after a summer diet of bugs, snakes and other unfortunate, smaller frogs he grew into truly gigantic proportions. He was king of the pond and on sunny days when he felt the need to soak up some rays he ruled his little kingdom from a rock that caught the morning sun.
Bud was not above eating the smaller goldfish, and once I took a picture of him with a fish in his mouth and I swear, a guilty look on his face. He and a couple of smaller frogs, were welcome residents of the pond for several years, hibernating in the leaves and gunk that accumulated on the bottom during the winter and coming forth like Lazarus in the spring.
Then for some reason the frogs disappeared and we really missed watching them. The first thing the grand kids would ask when they came to visit was, “Where's Bud? Where are the frogs?”
This spring a lone bullfrog bravely came to visit. Who knows what dangers he faced traveling on his perilous journey to our little pond.
We first became aware of him when we'd let the dogs out and they'd race to the edge of the pond, followed by a splash as the frog dove to safety. Then we began spotting him trying to get some sun on the edge of the pond before the dogs could chase him back into the water.
One day I noticed Taz busy doing something by the pond and I was amazed to see him nudging the frog with his nose. The stubborn frog wasn't about to give up his sunny spot and Taz turned, looked at me, and cocked his head as if to say” What's the matter with this frog? Isn't he supposed to be afraid of me?”
Lately Mr. Bullfrog spends his days on the stepping stones beside our fish pond and the dogs have to really startle him to get him to jump. When he does crawl back out of the water he has a royally pissed off look on his face.
