Highway 21 Revisited

 

            It was July 1 of 2016. My daughter and I were out driving in eastern Washington. East and West don't really resemble each other in Washington. You could think you were in Montana, or any other wheat country. 

            Here is a Wiki on highway 21, just in case you'd like the details.

            I wouldn't mind being out there today, flying those big open spaces in some over-powered big rental car!

            I wish you a very good day!

            💮

Higher Level Cautiousness™

 

 

            “Psst, Toots,” said Suzie very early one morning, via KittyComm™.

            “Shhh!” Toots answered very quietly. “What’s up?”

            “I’m hiding from Them,” said Suzie. "They're acting weird again."

            “I’m hiding from Him! I’m not sure he’s Him. He looks changed!” said Toots, in a psychic whisper. “He might be able to hear me!”

            “She gave me a bowl of disgusting food. I think She might have been trying to transform me into a dog or something! And, that’s not all,” said Suzie. “Where are you hiding?”

            “I can’t say,” said Toots.

            “In the Bug engine compartment?” asked Suzie.

            “No! Too easy! He'd find me there,” said Toots.

            “But if he’s not Him, he wouldn’t know that,” said Suzie. “Unless, he’s an amalgam of some kind, and the new one knows what the old one knows!”

            “Ew! Stop talking like that, or I’ll never come out!” whispered Toots. “Say, where are you hiding? Behind the piano?”

            “Here she comes! She’ll never find me!” said Suzie. “I’m way back in a tiny cave behind stuff! She’s talking, but I’m not answering. She doesn’t even know I’m within three feet of her!”

            “That sounds like a closet! Is it the one in the bathroom?” guessed Toots.

            “Nope! They always look in closets when I’m in Higher Cautiousness™” said Suzie. “I’m in a place they never think of!”

            “Oh! I want to be in Higher Cautiousness™ too!” said Toots, eagerly.

            “Toots, honey, you are the queen of Higher Cautiousness™! You haven’t even told me where you’re hiding!” said Suzie. “I’m not likely to, pardon the expression, rat you out, am I?”

            “Not on purpose, but if your lady has been highjacked by 'aliens' she might be able to read your mind, then she might rat me out!” said Toots.

            “Nah, don’t worry about that. She’d probably highjack any ET silly enough to try her. Can you imagine? They’d be zapping around between dimensions, and she’d be going along for the ride. She put flea collars on us. That’s about it,” admitted Suzie.

            “Ew,” Toots shuddered delicately. “How can you bear it?”

            “Consider the alternative,” said Suzie. “That’s how I bear it. Besides, I’m getting very hungry. I think I’ll run out when she has her back turned. She’ll never know where I was!” said Suzie.

            “Oh, I don’t think any alien could get inside Him either,” said Toots. “Real ETs don’t do that, and fake ones would probably regret the attempt, and I’m hungry too!”

            “How do you know real ETs don’t do that?” said Suzie.

            “Come on, Suzie! We’ve been Out There! Did any ET grab us and bend our minds?” said Toots.

            “No. I didn’t even see any ET’s Out There,” said Suzie.

            “I bet they saw us! Maybe one day we’ll meet some of them! But right now, I want breakfast! Talk to you later, Suzie!” said Toots, ending the KittyComm™ conversation.

            Suzie was left with more questions than answers, but she decided to just go have some kitty soup, and then have a nice nap with P, and think about it all later!

 

Das Ende!

💙

Just Some Pink Roses for Suzday

 

            Suzday greetings! 
            Whether it's hot or not, wishing you a lovely summer day.

            Suzie is very proud of  her day, and she hopes it lives up to its reputation!

            Love, p

💮💚💮

In Celebration of Catfurday, Open Thread

 The sense memory never goes.

The love never dies away.

This is Henry having a nap in my arms.

Oh, he was a glamorous beast!

All of them were.

Bless  their fur and whiskers, and their tails too!

For they are love embodied.

💙

1954, The Backwoods of Washington

 

Grubby backwoods children.

 

            They were living in rentals in Seattle. I think he was still driving for the Metro. He was 26 years old. She was 23. There were four children ranging in age from 5 to 1 year. I don’t remember, of course, why they decided to move out of town. Maybe it was a sort of leftover farmer urge to own a little land.
            What they found and purchased was a ¾ acre plot of land, partially cleared of the second growth forest, with a shell of an unfinished two bedroom house, built by an actual Eskimo guy who was building these things and selling them unfinished. No power. No water. No plumbing.
            The price was $4000.00, $40.00 payments. I remember some tension surrounding getting those payments in. It sounds like a fairytale now.
            It sat in what would eventually become the suburbs north and east of Seattle, maybe 20 miles from where they had lived before.
            My clearest memory of those days involves the oddness of living among unfinished walls, merely framed in. It was like a forest of 2x4s! It was dark at night except for the kerosene lantern, and the bit of light from the also kerosene heater. It was almost like camping, but in a building. Mom hung up blankets to divide the space up a little. I remember bathing in a zinc watering tub!
            At that time, I kid you not, they were driving a Model T Ford. I don’t know the year.
            That first summer, before the waterline was put in out on the road, they fetched drinking water in milk cans from a free to anyone artesian well on 164^th, which means nothing to anyone but people who live here. There is now a major I-5 exit there. That was about a ten mile drive for two ten gallon milk cans of water.
            Of course, there was no bathroom. So, he had to dig a hole and build the dreaded outhouse. Thankfully, living with the “wee housie” didn’t last long.
            My father, at 26 years, wired the house. He plumbed it. He finished the inside too. It was never fancy. It was plain and adequate.
            Since he was incurably of that farmer mindset, the next thing was to clear the lot. I remember that we were sent inside when trees were falling, or he was blasting stumps. We burned all of those trees in the stove in the house. I remember a cheap sheet metal oval shaped thing in the living room. I still have the smell of alder smoke in my nose. It’s distinctive.
            He left a few trees, but cleared enough for a large garden. We children spent a fair amount of time "picking rocks." The ground was full of rather large round pebbles. Maybe a glacier left them there before wandering off.
            He cut that old Ford down and made a tractor of it. I learned to drive by helping him plow with it. I was about ten then.
            In a few years, he built three more bedrooms.
            They planted a row of fruit trees and two rows of raspberries.
            In those years, my mother had her hands full just wrangling the four of us. I remember having quite a bit of responsibility for the younger ones.
            Every bite of food we ate came from her hands. There were no trips to McDonald’s. No snacks. It was good. She did a good job.
            Our grocery shopping was done out on old 99, in Lynnwood and Alderwood Manor, some distance from home. There were long drives down gravel roads between stands of trees, just to get anything.
            I was sent to school that fall, by bus, to first grade in Bothell, WA. Strangely, I was taught to speed-read. I remember sentences projected on a screen. My next youngest sister would have been in Kindergarten.
            Ah, so it goes, or so it went.
            Now it seems that they were some kind of special beings, to do so much while so young. But, you know, I think that’s how it often was in the ‘50s, and before. Things are different now.
            It wasn’t all fun. There was a lot of real scraping by, and not much in the way of Christmas or birthdays. There is a reason I took up sewing my own clothing on my great grandmother’s treadle Singer! (I still have it and it works fine.)
            But, hey, the first time I heard the Beatles, I was sitting on the grass in that back yard listening to a cheesy little transistor radio. The tune was “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”  It’s all one very long story, and here I am in 2026, trying to let you sense a little of it.

🌳🏠🌳

Oh My Goodness, It's Warm! June 25th, 2026

 

Cats don't take gravity too seriously.

This youngster is Sweetie, in a real pose in the old closet.

It seems to be his favorite place to sleep.

Anyhow,

A fine day to you!

Ralph sends his love. He is very sleepy too.

"Evermore!" says Maeve.

💗

Any Cabin In A Storm

 

            It was raining in the foothills of the Cascade Range. The further he hiked up the trail the heavier the rain came down. He thought that maybe if he kept going he would emerge above the rainstorm. But it was not to be.
            It was windy too. Bursts of wind blew rain in his face. Water ran down to the tips of fir branches, dumping it right in the middle of the trail. It was getting cold, and what passed for daylight in these conditions was rapidly fading.
            This whole exercise began to feel extremely foolhardy. He began working on plan B, or plan C. Plan B involved finding a nice place to shelter. Plan C amounted to finding any kind of shelter. Both plans finisheded with hiking back down the trail and going home in the morning.
            He didn’t carry a tent. It wasn’t that kind of hike. He carried water, which seemed ironic at this point, and four Fuji apples, a jar of natural peanut butter, and crackers. He had two big bars of dark chocolate too. That was it, besides a flashlight, and a large folding knife. He had his phone of course. Oh, and a lighter.
            Joe was near the Great Forest, but not actually within its confines. Its location is a little hard to pin  down anyhow. He continued walking uphill. Water ran eagerly down the trail, heading ultimately for Puget Sound. It had a long way to go, and it wanted to get started, evidently. His socks inside his boots were getting wet. His jacket was soaked, his wool beanie did its best, but it was wet too.
            In the last bit of gray daylight, Joe saw something promising off to his right, somewhat below the trail. It appeared to be a manmade structure of some kind. He saw ragged tarpaper covering what appeared to be walls, and maybe a roof. It had to be a cabin left to rot away in the forest.
            “Well, shelter is shelter,” thought Joe. He turned off the trail, walking carefully over the thick layer of forest duff and leaves, hoping not slide to the cabin on his butt. He made it without falling.
            It didn’t look like much. The roof seemed intact. A rusty stovepipe poked crookedly out of the roof. The tarpaper curled in shreds. “When did they even do that?” thought Joe. The single window was mostly broken out. The door hung open. There was a large granite boulder on each side of the single step.
            Joe didn’t see the very large Raven sitting in one of the firs, with rain running down her feathers, watching him. Her black eyes blinked, and then she rose into the stormy wind and rain.
            He stepped inside, hoping that the floor wouldn’t collapse under his feet. If it had he might have fallen all of a foot, but it held.
            Looking around inside, Joe saw two wooden chairs, one intact, one having only three legs. There was a very rusty stove attached to that stovepipe. The door to the stove was missing. Joe laughed. “How does that happen?" But maybe he could make a fire and wait out the storm. He might even be able to dry his socks!
            He couldn’t hope to start a fire with anything outside, so with his knife, he began shaving some bits off of mostly dry broken chair. Using his lighter and a crumpled paper towel from his pocket he got a small fire going. When it looked pretty steady, he broke up the rest of the chair up and added it to the fire.
            He knew he was going to have to go outside and find a big branch or something. The chair fire wouldn’t last very long.
            Leaving his pack inside the cabin, he took his flashlight out to look for fuel. There is always deadfall in a forest, so he was successful in bringing in two large dead branches. He was able to break the smaller ends of the branches into pieces. He had no way to cut the heavier ends. He thought maybe when the time came he would just stick the ends in the fire and inch them forward as they burned. It would be smokey, he knew that.
            So, the storm blew, the rain fells, and Joe, sitting in the one chair, barefoot, with his socks arranged on his backpack before the fire and steaming, got very drowsy. Then he remembered he had food and water. He drank some water, ate a chocolate bar, and basically went to sleep sitting upright.
            An hour later, something woke him. After the shock of seeing where he was wore off, he noticed a horrible smell. It had not been there before. This was new. It smelled like rotten blood, and dog, along with a strong hormonal pong.
            “What the hell?” said Joe.
            “Hell, indeed,” said the dark figure crouched further into the cabin, maybe where a bed had once stood. The stench seemed to be stronger in that direction.
            “You’re kidding me,” said Joe, with a very sick feeling in his stomach. “You don’t exist.”
            “Wanna try me and see?” said the dark smelly thing. Its eyes glowed a dull yellow over there in the dark, and it snickered.
            “I was here first,” said Joe. “Why don’t you pack up and leave?”
            “I’m here to eat your liver, stupid, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
            “My liver? Are you nuts? Do you know you stink?” said Joe, putting his socks and boots back on, just in case he got a chance to make a break for it.
            Several things happened in quick succession. The shaggy dog raised itself to its full height, heading for the man in the chair.
            The man in the chair grabbed his pack and sprinted back out into the rain.
            The burning ends of the big branches fell out of the stove, still burning.
            The talking canine nightmare stepped on the burning branch and commenced screaming.
           Joe ran one way, and the injured dogthing ran the other, further downhill, howling like a jilted Banshee the whole way.
            When Joe got back up to the path, someone was already there.
            “The Raven said you needed help,” he said. “But you seem to have done alright on your own.”
            “Did I?” said Joe. “I hadn’t gotten that far yet. Who are you? Are you real too? Or have I entirely lost my mind,” said Joe.
            “I’m as real as this mountain. People call me Ralph, I’m sort of in charge around here, more or less, depending,” said Ralph, with rain sheeting off of his deep brown hair and dripping off of his nose and beard.
            “I don’t like those darn dogs,” said Ralph. “He’s darn lucky he ran off so quickly.”
            Behind them, downhill, the cabin burst into flame, totally involved. It lit up the whole area, so that Joe could finally see Ralph, all nine feet tall of Ralph.
            Joe laughed a little hysterically, but hung in there OK. “Hey! You are real! I heard you guys really like apples. I happen to have some. Could I offer you an apple, Sir?”
            “Why, yes! I would like an apple, say what’s your name?” said Ralph.
            “Joe. Humans call me Joe,” said Joe, a little breathlessly, pulling the apples out of his bag and handing them up the Ralph’s enormous hand. “How about some peanut butter?”
            “Sure, I’ll take your peanut butter,” said Ralph.
            “I guess I’ll head on downhill, Ralph,” said Joe.
            “Nice to meet you,” said Ralph.
            “You too, Brother,” said Joe.
            As Joe headed on down the trail, Ralph couldn’t help but notice that Joe had a long tail hanging out of his jacket, and pointy ears popping out of his beanie.
            “Well, I’ll be! I’ve never seen one of those,” said Ralph. “I can’t wait to tell Ramona!”

            Subsequent to all of that, though it didn’t happen instantly, the cabin burnt to the ground, leaving only the two boulders and the rusty doorless stove to prove that anyone had ever been there.

🌲🧝🏼‍♂️🌲