insearchofbud

Susie and Gunther playing.

Thanksgiving day:  Gunther’s veterinarian, Dr. Kate Kilzer, prescribed 5mg acepromazine to sedate Gunther for the plane ride to Duluth.  That’s where our oldest son lives and we spent four days with his family and our daughter’s.  Her husband couldn’t come from Rochester, Minnesota, because their furnace went out and he wanted to stay and prevent the pipes from freezing.  Anyway, back to the tranquilizer.  It worked well.  G. slept like a puppy in his crate and was easy to wake.  He played with our daughter’s male puppy.  They seemed to want to have intercourse with each other, much to everyone’s merriment.  We sat around the periphery and tried to converse, all the while stifling laughter.

Ahem.  Acepromazine, flower children, is a congener of chlorpromazine, or Thorazine, the antipsychotic used to bring people down from bad acid trips or psychoses. Acepromazine can cause constipation in dogs, not a bad thing on the plane.  G. is still constipated.

Since returning, I walked him around the block twice and he hasn’t pooped yet.  Unusual for G.  I used the plastic bag I had intended for G.’s to scoop three poops from the next door neighbor’s dog, Susie.

Remember?  Susie, a black lab, is G’s girlfriend, so I harbor no ill will and scooped up the shit with only the usual throat full of rising gorge.  The sight or smell doesn’t bother me.  It’s the coldness of the lumps.  I digressed, sorry.  And sorry, sister.  I know you threatened to unfriend me from Facebook if I mentioned dog poop more.

In Duluth, I spent some great time with two of my grandsons.  Oh, there were five grandkids in all, but they fly in and out of the room, presenting moving targets and I only really connected solidly with two of them:  Roland and George, the two youngest.

Roland responded well to some boring stories about my childhood and I knew I had him, when I told about playing cowboys.  George was a bit more difficult, if expensive.

Like a smart-alecky adult, I grabbed Geo.’s bare foot and thrust it into my pocket, telling him I wanted it.  I handed him a $50, and I’m not sure what I had been  thinking.  George liked the idea and said it was a deal.  I didn’t know how to get out of that.  P. gave Geo. $10 and asked him to give me back the $50 because I had been only kidding.  This made Geo. cry.  Then Geo. handed me the $10.  Long story short:  I ended up with the $10, Geo. got the $50.  I was happy because it’s easier for me to spend $10, the way my life is running these days.  Geo. wants to buy some Guinea pigs that his cousin Cyrus says cost about $25 each  All the while I thought what a great story this is becoming.  Only it didn’t turn out to be a great story at all, merely stupid.

However, George did give me an extra good hug when we said our goodbyes.

The score:  Todd and Susanna baked a turkey with dressing and lots of green beans.  He boiled 10 pounds of potatoes and I turned 3/4 into lefse.  He baked a couple of pumpkins that I turned into four pies.  We struggled through the woods for exercise and I had to hang onto a tree to keep from sliding down into a river.  Okay, to keep from sliding down some mud into some brush.

Friday, November 11, 2016

Therapeutic pie making for a big Church of the Fervently Religious banquet.  I purchase makings for 8.  Four cans packed pumpkin, plus cinnamon, ginger, cloves, eggs, pie pans, pie crusts.  Yes.  I bought pie crusts, the Pillsbury brand is union-made.

Eggs are cage free.  Is that a good thing for the chickens?  I use half canned milk and half cream for richness.  Nor do I forget to use a bit of salt.  Whoops.  Almost forgot the sugar again.  Have extra bag at home, so no need to buy.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

House is cold but Gunther is sitting on my neck and he is warm.  In fact, he is about 5 degrees warmer than I am.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Hillary Clinton lost the election!  What a terrible president Trump will be!  Worst luck.  It was a close race.  Hillary got the majority of votes, but not the votes of the electoral college.

Friday, November 4, 2016

Up at 6:40, walked dog.  Cuddled dog.  Argued with P. about music or some damn thing until 8:45.  Helped Randy H. get large, comfortable, theater seats from the old Cine 7, then delivered same to NOVA.  Helped remove six old seats, then install two new seats as a trial, one behind the other.  Looks pretty good to me.

A mourning dove, irritating symbol of peace and sadness.

“Oh boo hoo,” wept a mourning dove.  If I had as many nuts to eat as the squirrel I’d be a fatter, finer creature, able to nurse my young chicks at my breast. [Yes, doves produce milk for their young.  Can you imagine the price of a half-gallon of 2%?]

But in violation of one of the ten commandments, the dove coveted a squirrel’s nuts.  Oddly, none of the available trees produced any.  Yet, the squirrel was stashing something away.

[Here the fable sort of peters out.  I was out in the yard, watching the mourning doves and squirrels, and I have taken stock of the trees and other plants.  Our yard has one maple, one and a half box elders (one is on the property line), some chokecherries and six ash trees.  Also a thornless hawthorn.  Except for the hawthorn I don’t see any opportunities to squirrel away any fruits or nuts.  Do squirrels eat chokecherry pits?  They eat something because they are the size of kittens.  Big kittens.]

The dove was observing all of this too.  She flew to check out a hole in the big box elder where she saw a squirrel dart.  Sure enough, she saw some chokecherry pits inside and attempted to eat one.  It stuck in her throat.  [Here the narrative is lost.  I believe the greedy dove died of asphyxiation.]

The angry neighbor saw the dove in respiratory distress and almost smiled.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Yesterday evening at the Church of the Fervently Religious, after feeding the three families of Family Promise, the same tall dark stranger as yesterday strode into Fellowship Hall asking, “What time do you serve supper here?”

Vivian replied, “We serve the families at six.  What’s your name?”

“I’m Will,” he replied.  “May I have some supper here?  I’m really hungry and I’m homeless.”  Will sounded well-educated and spoke in a somewhat stilted manner.

Vivian looked at me and I nodded, then she offered to heat him up the leftovers from supper:  roast beef and green beans.  The potatoes were gone.  We still had some dessert: apple rum dum cake.  I microwaved his plate.

“Thank you so much,” Will said.

“How did you get into the church?” I asked.

“Through the front door upstairs.”

“You know —“  I began.

“Excuse me while I pray,” Will said, sitting down at a table, placing his fingers in his ears.  “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” he droned.

I ignored him.  I had informed him the previous evening that at the C of the Fervently Religious we pray principally upstairs.  Closer to God.  I began sweeping under the tables.

When he was quiet I informed him that we didn’t normally feed people who walk in from the street, although we were glad to help him out this time.

I thought he needed to know that we take care of people in the program:  parents with their young children and we have to guarantee their safety.

We differ from the Rescue Mission.  “Have you gone there?” I asked.

Will said he had been kicked out of the Rescue Mission and now he can’t go back.

Vivian added that our church is in rotation with many others who take turns feeding homeless families in the Family Promise program.

“Which is the next church?” he asked.

I ignored the question because I couldn’t think of the answer.  I think it’s one of the Catholic churches.

Will told Vivian that he had come to Billings from Mississippi by bus.  He aspired to sing in churches.

Once he had finished eating dessert, I took his plate and asked him to leave.  He said that would be fine.  I told him that I really need him to return to the Church of the F.R. Sunday at 11 for weekly service.  To Pray, of course.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

I got to the Church of the Fervently Religious at 4:30 pm, in time to receive the delivered food, pulled pork sandwiches and cole slaw.  The children were hungrier than many, especially a toddler, Paul.  I kept giving Paul handfuls of food and he ate until his lids looked heavy.  The adults and teens had attended a class until 7 and they acted typically shy and withdrawn while eating.  I attempted to engage a familiar looking woman, Linda, who grew up in Lame Deer, Northern Cheyenne.

Linda brightened when I told her that I’d worked as a pharmacist there.  In all my years there I never needed anyone’s help coping with angry or belligerent people.  Linda’s expression didn’t change.  I decided to tell her how I used to give out birth control pills to young women who eventually showed up at the pharmacy pregnant, needing prenatal vitamins.  I told Linda that my reaction was frequently, “Awwww.  What went wrong?”

Linda laughed.  Then I told how my attitude changed and I started saying, “Well, congratulations!”

“That’s funny,” she said.  Linda’s husband and I chatted and ate for some while, then the family dressed up to go on walk about before bed.

After they had gone I heard the sound of a door closing at the top of the stairs to the church basement.  I rushed over to meet a large man coming down.  “Hello,” I said.

“I have come to pray,” stated the man emphatically.

“Oh, you’ve come in the wrong door,” I said.  “Here.  I’ll take you up to the chapel so you can pray there.”

“I’ve come to get something to eat,” the man said, just like I did yesterday.

“This is the right place for that,” I said.  He seemed ultra polite, anxious not to put us out.  I asked if I might sit with him while he ate, but he said no.

After he had eaten his fill, I ushered him out.  He protested that he wanted to stay, and he told me he was angry with me for not caring about him enough.

True, I will not allow casual visitors to spend the night, especially angry ones who curse me after I feed them.  Well, I wouldn’t allow such visitors to stay even if they didn’t curse me.  I did ask him where he had spent the previous night and he replied he didn’t know.

About that time Louis and Linda returned from walkabout.  Louis told me he didn’t like the rude man who had been cursing me.  Said something wasn’t right “upstairs.”  I agreed the man acted like someone with a mental illness, but I didn’t think he was rude, just angry.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Spiderman (or excuse me, Ironman?) sits at the top of the stairs making explosions with his mouth.  He descends, holding onto the rail.  Now he whimpers.  “Did you hit your head on the rail?”  (No.)  “On the wall?” (No.  Right there.)  “On the thing that holds the rail?”  (Yes.)

Gunther is a Brussels Griffon or rat terrier.  Depends if he listens to me.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Now, when I take Gunther out for bowel duty, it’s dark enough to grab a flashlight.  Got to pick “it” all up.  Immense dark school bus pulls around the corner, its back end swings around, reminding me of a wasp that spews diesel exhaust.  Actually, it didn’t remind me of a wasp at all, but the diesel is a thing.  Also, for some reason the back end swings around.  Like a school bus.  I could see no students, just windows with vacant seats.

Gunther seemed apprehensive in the morning half light, so I tried training the flashlight on the ground ahead of him.  He acted like he wasn’t impressed.  He acts interested in the leaves, nosing his rat terrier face into them.

My sister said she will unfriend me if I write more about Gunther’s bathroom habits.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Carl had wanted to claim his manhood since high school and joining the army seemed to be just the ticket — only he was being drafted.  Drafted because in March, 1942, the country was at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy  What about Spain?  They were called the axis powers then.  The bad guys.  They wore bad guy uniforms and they looked different from us.

In those days you could ride the train from Kalispell to Missoula to Butte via Garrison Junction.  In studying a railroad map from 1927 it looks like someone would have to have taken a bus or car from Somers to Polson to catch the train to Dixon, then Missoula.

Butte had the Armed Forces Entrance Exam office, or AFEES Butte.  That’s what the orders read:  Report to AFEES Butte March 4, 1942.  All of us had to go there, even I had to, during the Vietnam war.

Only Carl had a foot deformity from an accident he sustained while firefighting in Glacier Park.  A broken first metatarsal, never reduced, healed badly and nearly disqualified him.  Would have disqualified him if he hadn’t destroyed the x-ray of his foot.  He removed it and the radiologist’s report from his medical folder en route to Butte.  Almost 30 years later in like fashion I removed a psychologist’s note with the clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia from my medical file.

Carl Bonde’s high school graduation picture, 1941.

Absent from the high school photographs on the wall in our dining room—the framed images of three teenage girls—is their brother, Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr.

When will I get tired of thinking about him.  Certainly long after you are tired of reading about him.  I guess I should write less about his absence and more about his presence in my mind, my imagination.  For one thing, he was really FUNNY.  You asked him where he was from and he was apt to tell you a minute-long soliloquy about the beautiful Flathead Valley and the Mission Mountains, the numerous lakes in the valley, such as Bitterroot Lake.

Carl was drafted into the Army in 1943, sent to England, then killed aboard a troopship by a U-Boat torpedo Christmas Eve, 1944.  He never had a chance.

Corinne was Carl’s oldest sister and also lived the longest of any of the girls, about 92 years altogether.  I didn’t start my quest to write about Carl until after Corinne died, unfortunately, because she would have been a great source about his early life.  Still, Corinne did tell some of her life, although to hear Corinne tell it, life started at high school and didn’t end until she retired as documents librarian from the Washington State Library in Olympia.  She lived about 25 years after she retired.

Also, Corinne clearly was a scamp and, although she couldn’t help telling some of her escapades, she tended to gloss over them, thus obliterating many fascinating stories.  For example, Corinne was married to a shady character named Gordon Smith, but the marriage was annulled.  I think her mother hit the ceiling when the two took off across Montana on a motorcycle.  This was back when motorcycles looked like souped up bicycles with motors and head lamps.

She was much older than Carl, so Carl may have observed his big sister with the wide-eyed fascination.  How much older?  Corinne was born in 1910, Carl was born in 1923.  Therefore, when Corinne was 18, Carl would have been five.  Old enough to know what was going on, but too young to know why.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

I can’t remember who, probably a nephew or one of my kids, suggested we make a potato gun.  Sounded like a good idea to me, although I didn’t have an idea in the world what they were talking about.

We drove to a hardware store with plumbing supplies, bought like, $50 worth of PVC pipes and a variety of fittings.  We purchased a butane charcoal fire igniter on the way home at a grocery.  Oh yes, and a can of hairspray.  Aqua Net.  Did I mention the 5 lb bag of potatoes?  No.  Well, that too.

I didn’t mention the glue and primer to fasten the fittings to the PVC.  Probably too complicated a contraption to describe.  More a cannon than a gun.

The whole thing was four feet long with a two-foot-long, two-inch diameter, muzzle sharpened so that one could pound a potato against it and shave off the excess so the remainder of the p. would slide into the barrel like a plug.  We used a golf club as a ramrod to push the potato plug into the barrel about a foot or so.

The butt end of the cannon was made of another two foot length of six-inch diameter pipe fastened with a reducer to the barrel and with a screw plug in the butt end.  Sometimes we would push the potato into the barrel too far and we’d need some way to remove it.  We lubricated the screw-in plug with oil to facilitate removing it.  Otherwise we’d need to carry a wrench.

Oh yes.  I nearly forgot to mention the hole we drilled, then enlarged with a file, in the fat part of the gun, to accommodate the charcoal igniter.  We used some duct tape and epoxy to fasten it into place so that we had a neat trigger for firing the cannon.

It was pretty easy.  With the butt of the cannon closed, you sprayed about 10 seconds worth of Aqua Net into the muzzle of the gun.  Then you hammered in a potato and ramrodded it into position.  You took careful aim at a tree in the backyard, then squeezed the trigger on the igniter, and, “CRACK.”  The potato shot right out with a loud report.

I don’t know how many of those guns we made, probably six or seven.  Turns out you could shoot a potato about 50 yards or so, maybe a bit more, and in order to shoot a second shot, you had to open the butt end and swing the gun around to blow out the spent gases and recharge with air.  Otherwise the second shot wouldn’t fire.

Of course the Holy Grail of potato gun shooting would have been making a hot air balloon out of a bunch of space blankets or even dry-cleaning bags, getting it to sail up and away, then shooting it down with a potato gun.