Redneck Studies

I've been studying my brother for some time now and I am beginning to get a handle on the concept of "Redneck" especially the southern variety. For one thing, it's an acquired trait. My brother was born and raised in New England and has lived everywhere from the northern plains to southern California without betraying any such tendencies previously.

One of the primary traits is the habit of trying to come up with original yet ad hoc solutions to common problems, attempting to bypass the ways of the world as it were, without, at the same time, covering all of the possible, and often obvious, consequences.

For example: My brother decided, a couple of years ago when gasoline prices were going through one of their regular and in no way manipulated spikes, to do a little hydrocarbon arbitrage. He bought a number of plastic jerry cans and filled them with regular unleaded in an attempt to lock in the price. The full cans he then stored in the shed out back.

Let's forget the opportunity cost of tying up cash in a volatile commodity.

The redneck point is: The shed is not watertight. Neither are the jerry cans. By the time the price of gas had risen enough for him to feel justified dipping into the strategic reserve, the cans contained probably 98% distilled petroleum and 2% H2O. I had to rescue him more than once before we figured out why his truck kept conking out on him (invariably in the middle of the night).

Although he no longer tops off the truck from the cans neither has he disposed of the contaminated fuel. (Note: Review the concept of sunk costs.) Apparently, a couple of weeks ago he filled the tank of the lawnmower from one of the cans. The lawn is now knee high and the grass is literally going to seed. (The length of time it has taken to fix the mower, this time, is not entirely his fault since Mom put the receiver of the phone in her room (Why does she even have a phone in her room?) down backwards which took the entire house off-line for the weekend (we don't use the land line much) causing the lawnmower repair guys to get a busy signal and delay returning the mower to us.)

The last time the mower needed repair (August) he bitched and moaned for a day and a half about the cost. This time, not a word. Which means he knows it's his fault. The repair guys didn't just find water in the tank. Spiders (more accurately, spider corpses) were clogging up the carburetor, too.

Eight-legged Sisyphus

Now that Rainy Season is over I have the tendency (unless my brother is going to turn on the sprinklers and water the lawn) to leave my car windows open at night. Keeps the interior from overheating once the sun is up again. Unfortunately, it also allows a very persistent, determined and ambitious spider to spin a web from the outside passenger mirror halfway across the dashboard.

We're talking maybe two feet from side to side and four or five inches high. And thick. I can feel the resistance when I sweep it away.

Every night. Every day.

The spider must be living in the car but I've never seen it. Or maybe it's in the mirror casing. I can't imagine what makes my dashboard such prime real estate but I know, whatever I do to that web today, it will be back tomorrow.

The Fog of "Now"

Yesterday as my brother went off to work Mom said goodbye to him and wished him well (as usual).

After a while I realized she had spent the last fifteen minutes or so staring at his room. (She sometimes gets into these OCD-like attention loops, usually when she's trying to read something she's written (or thinks she's written--she spent the better part of one evening trying to decipher the wrinkles in a used paper table napkin. She got upset when I couldn't read it to her.)).

I said, "What's the matter?" more to break the cycle than expecting a real answer.

She sighed and said, "I must have missed him. He went off without me seeing or saying anything."

"Mom, you talked to him before he left. He said goobye and you said goodbye to him and wished him good luck."

"I did?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Well, good for me," she said, and picked up her book.

Indeed.

The Mother Lode

This morning an ibis apparently hit the bug jackpot in neighbor Mike's backyard. It began dipping and pecking at his lawn in a frenzy, swallowing and dipping again and again. The ibis have been flocking together recently and it wasn't long before this one was joined by another and then another and then three more followed by five additional as the number of diners increased geometrically to around forty or so. They formed feeding rows ten or twelve abreast and worked one side to the other breaking only to move around the orange trees. The feeding was so good, when something startled them they flew only as far as the nearest trees and power lines, waited the minimum time to recognize the false alarm and returned to pick up right where they'd left off.

When ibis fly into trees they, of necessity go to the top branches since they are too tall to comfortably fit where another branch is above them. The exceptions are palm trees where they will fly directly to the vertical bole and cling tenuously for a few moments before their own weight, levered out almost horizontally at the end of their long legs, causes them to lose their grip.

Those long legs also give them a difficult time with power lines. All birds sway a little on the line since the wires are very thin and free to move but the arc of a balancing ibis can be as much as 30 degrees forward or back. A row of ibis, shoulder to shoulder, on a house feeder wire will cause it to sag noticeably. One bird will lean forward, catch its balance and lean back (often overcorrecting). This causes its neighbors on either side to compensate by leaning forward and then back themselves which requires the next ones in line to do the same and so on. If they get the timing right they can create a kind of sine wave and for a few seconds it is possible to watch the wave crests roll down the line and back. Usually, though, and inevitably, it gets chaotic pretty quick and the whole thing explodes off the wire in a flurry of white wings, skinny legs and long bills.

After the second false alarm, the original crew was joined by another twenty or so putting the total at the feeding frenzy over sixty. Then they all took off at once and kept going.

Followed by another neighbor's just-out-of-puppyhood black lab with a look of sheerest joy on its face chasing after them across neighbor Mike's yard and ours.

Followed by the neighbor's teenage son.

There is a large, low white cloud circling the neighborhood. Maybe they'll return for dessert.

Real Convenience Food

One of the major advantages to living in South Florida is that, when you discover Thanksgiving morning there is no orange juice in the refrigerator for your orange juice and brown sugar glazed sweet potato recipe, you can just go outside to the orange tree, pick a big ripe one and juice it on the spot (using a 3+ lb. solid steel 1940s era tabletop hand juicer).

Turned out perfect.

Too Late For This Year

I was just listening to my local NPR station. They're doing a program on local Thanksgiving recipes.

Apparently, it's necessary to capture your Thanksgiving 'possum at least a month in advance so you can cage it and feed it nothing but sweet potatoes as a way of improving the flavor. "Like feeding acorns to a wood duck," according to one of the show's hosts.

Seriously, who knew?

For Those Unclear on the Concept

Today, parked out front of the city's branch of the county library is an enormous tractor trailer rig with expandable side panels (like an RV that expands outward to create a cantilevered "dining room"). One large panel toward the front of the street side was open to reveal a mass of electronic equipment. On the sidewalk side was a "front porch" type of step-up platform under an awning beside which sat a woman with a folding table and paper work under her own canopy.

The signage painted on the side of the trailer read: "DIGITALBookmobile" and "Download Books & More From Your Library!"

I asked a very tall young man wearing a Digital Bookmobile polo shirt what the purpose of the truck was.  He said it was for downloading e-books. I explained that with a reader or a laptop or a phone the whole point was I could download a book virtually anywhere and did not need to go to a "Downloading Place" and that that was, in fact, one of the selling points of e-books (and the dread of brick and mortar bookstores). He admitted the truck was really an educational and publicity campaign for people who didn't understand.

Apparently, that population is sufficiently large to justify a national tour.