Monthly Archives: November 2017

Lock the Door

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It was the end of the season, and The Man and I were the last camp hosts standing. While we started out working at the mercantile, by the beginning of October, the two of us were covering the parking lot and the three campgrounds on our side of the mountain.

It was Saturday, and The Man was working on a special sign assignment twelve miles down the road, so I was back in the saddle at the busy parking lot.

I took this photo of a giant sequoia in Deer Creek Grove, the southernmost grove of giant sequoias.

Before I was fully out of the campground, I was waylaid in the driveway by some people from Florida  who wanted to know if it was really worth stopping to see giant sequoias.

Um, yes, I said as politely as possible while selling them a day pass. I guarantee they’d never seen anything like a giant sequoia in Florida.

When I got to the parking lot, I started right in on the restrooms, as I always do.

I knocked on the door on the left. No response. I opened the door, pulled over one of the big metal trashcans to hold it open, and assessed the toilet paper situation. So far so good.

As I moved to the restroom on the right, I noticed a kid milling around. He was about eight and appeared to be alone, but I didn’t think much of it. I was on a restroom-cleaning mission.

I took this photo of the restrooms in the parking lot.

I knocked on the door on the right. No response. I opened the door and when I looked inside, I saw a person. I assume the person was male even though the person’s back was to me. I assume the person was male beause the person was in the distinctive taking a piss stance male people get into when they pee.

I was surprised and a little embarrassed, although I’d done nothing wrong. I knocked and no one responded. I opened an unlocked door. Why hadn’t the occupant locked the door? Why hadn’t the kid standing outside warned me about the guy in the restroom? The kid must have known the guy was in there.

I turned away and let go of the door immediatley, letting it slam shut. I didn’t hear the pisser apologize or say anything at all.

My parting words?

Lock the door!

Honesty

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mail by arnelsxThe Man and I needed to pick up our mail one last time before the camping season ended and we left the forest. The post office where we got our mail via general delivery was in a community about 15 miles from our campsite and was only open on weekday mornings. We’d missed it on our days off that week, so we made a special trip on Thursday before starting work.

Johnny's Cup of Coffee Coloured by GrumpyDad

As we wound our way down the mountain, The Man said he’d like a cup of coffee. The little market near the post office sold coffee, so I pulled in there first. The Man made it almost to the store’s front door, then turned around and came back to the van.

What’s the matter? I asked when he opened the door.

His wallet wasn’t in his pocket.

The Man loses things on a regualr basis, but he typicaly finds his possessions eventually. In fact, the night before he’d been unable to find his headlamp, but it had turned up in the morning in his gym bag. I was confident the wallet was in the van and would be found.

The Man looked through his things, but the wallet wasn’t there. I even got in the back of the van to check the back pocket of a pair of work pants where I was sure I’d recently seen the wallet. Nothing. After five minutes of looking, I offered to loan him a couple of bucks so he could get coffee and we could head to the post office. I knew he’d have to tear the van apart later, but the small parking lot in front of the market was probably not the right place for such an activity.

Could it be in the tent? I asked. Maybe in the red bag?

The Man seemed skeptical on both counts.

He was in the post office before I could get out of the van. He came bounding down the stairs as I was about to go up. The labradorite cabochons he’d ordered from India had arrived! However, the postal worker needed to see The Man’s ID before he would release the package. The Man was going  back to the van to look for his wallet again.

While I was completing a change of address form, The Man came back into the post office holding his work badge. He explained to the postal worker that his wallet was missing, so he didn’t have his driver’s license, but he did have the photo ID from his job. Would that be acceptable?

I didn’t think it was going to work. I didn’t think a representative of a federal institution would recognize an ID issued by a private corporation instead of a governmental agency, but I was wrong. The postal worker turned over the package.

I have to find that wallet as soon as possible, The Man said as I drove us back to the campground. He knew he was going to worry until it was back in his hands.

It’s got to be in here, I reassured him, or maybe in the tent.  We’ll pull everything out of the van if we have to.

When we arrived at the campground, the old guys dismantlilng the mercantile yurt were already at work. The three of them stood looking at us, which made me surly because I don’t enjoy having an audience while trying to park. I guess the men were waving because The Man said, They want to talk to you.

I don’t want to talk to them, I muttered, so The Man went over to find out what was up. Turns out he was the one they wanted to talk to.Hands and Money by j4p4n

Is this your wallet? the goofy one asked The Man while showing him the nylon trifold. I found it behind the outhouse.

It was The Man’s wallet. His driver’s license was in it, along with his debit card and the cash he’d gotten at the ATM before we left civilization earlier in the week. How and when it ended up behind the restroom, we have no idea, but we’re very grateful an honest man was back there looking for a tool he’s left behind weeks before.

Images courtesy of https://openclipart.org/detail/180093/mail,  https://openclipart.org/detail, and /188782/johnnys-cup-of-coffee-coloured.

Accent

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It was late in the afternoon when the family came into the mercantile.

Mom was maybe out of her 20s. She wore her dark hair straightened and had on obvious makeup. She looked more like she was on a date at the mall than out having a nature experience.

Dad had the look of a jock whose mid-30s metabolism was slowing down. He wasn’t fat, but his middle was getting soft. He talked loud and fast and seemed accustomed to being the center of his family’s world.

The oldest kid, a son about seven or eight years old, had dark hair like his mother. He spent his entire time in the store trying to convince his parents to buy him a walking stick.

The second child was an adorable little girl, a toddler who was probably not yet three. Her hair was long and straight and blond like her father’s. She had plump, rosy cheeks and was obviously the apple of her father’s eye.

While the woman had a lot of questions about the nearby national park (How far away was it? How did they get there? How late was it open? How much did it cost to get in?), she and the man let the kids roam freely through the store. The little girl was drawn to the breakable bear figurines. Her parents never once discouraged her while she moved them around on the shelves where they were displayed. They allowed her to pick them up one after another and bring them up to the cash register. She could hardly reach to set them on the counter in front of me, but no one in her family tried to help her or take them out of her hands. For one glorious moment, I actually thought the dad was going to buy every bear the child set before me, but I quickly realized he was only letting her play with the merchandise.

All the while the mom was talking—to me, to her son, to her man, to the girl child. Something about her accent was familiar, but I wasn’t sure my guess was correct…

Where are y’all from? I asked.

Texas! the dad boomed. Near Houston.

I supposed it was a Texas accent I recognized. However, the more the woman talked, the more I was convinced it wasn’t Texas I was hearing.

She was standing near the counter when I looked at her and asked, Did you grow up in Texas?

No, she said. I grew up in Louisiana.

I knew it!

You’re Cajun! I exclaimed.

The woman seemed surprised, but confirmed her Cajunness.

Me too! I said. I told her my last name and the town where I grew up.

[amazon template=image&asin=0374515573]She told me her last name and the town where she grew up. Although I didn’t recognize her family name as one of the pillars of Cajun culture, I remember a book I once read that said there’s three ways to become Cajun: birth, marriage, or through the back door. Maybe she’d had a non-Cajun male ancestor who’d married a Cajun gal and assimilated. No matter what this customer’s family name was or how many years she’d lived in Texas, her accent gave her away to anyone in the know.

To his credit, the man of the family returned to their shelves all the bears his daughter had set on the checkout counter. Of course, he plunked them down any old way, and I had to arrange them artfully after the family left.

When they were gone, The Man asked me how in the world I’d known the woman was Cajun. I shrugged and told him it was all in her accent.

In Praise of a Pen

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My hands go numb when I write or type or make a hat or do macramé. Seems everything I do eventually causes a feeling of pins and needles in my hands, followed by pain, followed by numbness.

The problem started in the mid 1990s, and I blame it on alcohol, my friend The Computer Guy, and his friend Dan, on whom I had a crush. We were out drinking and The Computer Guy got an idea for a cool photo. The woman he was in love with was with us, and she was—conveniently—a photographer who, as always, had her camera.

Dig! The Computer Guy said with excitement in his voice. Dan can put Blaize on his shoulders and I’ll put Dan on my shoulders. We’ll stand under the Dragon’s Lair sign, and Gretchen can take our picture.

My beer addled brain thought it sounded like a fun idea. I certainly liked the prospect of having my legs around Dan’s head. The problem was—although I was at the thinnest of my entire life—I was still heavier than Dan. The photo Gretchen took shows The Computer Guy—strong as an ox—easily holding us both up while Dan seems to be crumpling under my weight.

Still, everything went fine until the photo was taken and we tried to disengage.

The Computer Guy lowered Dan to the ground gently, but Dan didn’t do so well with me. He must have bent over, as he tried to put me down, and I felt myself sprawling, falling. I put my arms out in front of me and caught myself with my hands.

My arms hurt for weeks. At the time I worked in a souvenir shop and the pain made even folding t-shirts impossible. When I told my dad how much I hurt, he asked if I’d seen a doctor. I just laughed. My minimum wage job didn’t offer insurance. I asked where I was going to get money to pay a doctor, hoping he might kick some down to me. He offered nothing.

The pain eventually subsided, but my hands have never been the same. There have been times when I couldn’t hold a pen long enough to sign my name. Whenever I bring my thumb and pointer finger together for more than the briefest period of time, my fingers tingle, then I feel pain, then they go numb until I can’t feel them at all, which means I can barely control them. Shaking my hands helps, as does stretching them and taking a break from the activity that’s causing the problem, but after 25 years, I think my hands will be this way for the rest of my life.

The situation has improved since riding a bicycle is no longer my main source of transportation and my job doesn’t require the use of power tools. I can hold a pen now, but I do better using a fat pen instead of a regular skinny pen if I’m going to handwrite more than a few sentences.

For months and years, I’ve been using whatever pens I’ve come across as free promotional items or paid for by the pound at a Goodwill Clearance Center. Of course, most of the free and cheap pens were skinny and numbed out my hand quickly. I was so happy when I found free fat pens, but they always ran out of ink too fast.

A few months ago, I’d had enough. I was tired of trying to write with pens that were too skinny for my comfort. I was tired of finding fat pens I liked only to have them run out of ink. I went into Wal-Mart determined to find a comfortable pen I could get refills for. I found just what I wanted in the Pilot Dr. Grip gel.

My Pilot Dr. Grip gel pen. Photo by me!

The pen cost around $6, and a two-pack of refills cost under two bucks.

If I don’t lose the pen, I’ll use it for years.

The pen fits nicely in my hand; its fatness minimizes the numbness my fingers experience. I really appreciate the rubber cushion on the area where my thumb and fingers rest while I’m writing.

The gel ink flows smoothly, which means I don’t have to hold the pen with a death grip and press into the paper so my words will show. As an added bonus, I was able to dismantle some of the darker color gel pens I bought from The Man when they no longer served his needs and use those cartridges as refills in my Dr. Grip.

I like the clip on the pen which lets me attach it to my notebook or my shirt. I also like being able to put the tip away by pushing the button on the top so I don’t have to worry about losing the cap.

I’m totally happy with my Dr. Grip, and I plan on using it for a long, long time.

 

Bold and Germ-Free

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There were several customers in the mercantile. I stood next to the cash register, angled so I could see the people near the back door. The manager of the mercantile stood behind the back counter, facing the front of the store.

I noticed an older woman standing almost directly across from me, looking into the glass display case. She was definitely older than I am, in her 50s for sure, maybe in her 60s. She caught my attention by rubbing her hands together over and over, as if she were rubbing in lotion or carefully spreading hand sanitizer over her skin. I figured she had her own lotion or sanitizer or that maybe this hand rubbing was a nervous tick. It was a little strange, and our pump bottles of Purell were between her and the manager, but I tried to keep my thoughts about the woman positive. After all, I hadn’t seen her do anything wrong. I’d only witnessed her rubbing her hands together.

[amazon template=image&asin=B01BXYP4DE]When the store cleared out, the manager took a step toward the Purell display and reached down. The hand that came back up was holding a pump bottle with the pump in a fully upright position. Someone had twisted the top so sanitizer could be pumped out of the bottle.

The manager said she smelled the sanitizer when the woman helped herself to a squirt. I hadn’t smelled anything, but said I’d seen the woman rubbing her hands.

Is it possible the woman had brought her own sanitizer into the mercantile and a squirt of her own sanitizer is what the manager smelled and I saw her rubbing on her skin? Sure, that’s possible, but the time frame is mighty suspicious.

Is it possible someone else turned the spout so sanitizer could be pumped out and the woman only helped herself to a product that was already open? Yes, that scenario is also a possibility, but using something open but not marked “tester” is still wrong. Nothing about the setup of the hand sanitizer made it seem free and available for public consumption. The woman had to know the Purell was for sale and she was using it without paying.

The manager hid all but three bottles of sanitizer. The three on display were placed close to the register, on top of the glass display case where we were able to keep an eye on them.

Before this event, I’d never imagined sanitizer theft could be an issue.

How You Can Help the Rubber Tramp Artist

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Before I get into all the ways folks can help the Rubber Tramp Artist, I want to say thanks to everyone who’s already helped. Thanks to everyone who’s bought a hat or a necklace or a collage. Thanks to everyone who’s purchased my book Confessions of a Work Camper: Tales from the Woods either through  Amazon or directly from me.  Thanks to everyone who’s made a donation through my blog, handed me a giftcard, or helped me out of a financial pickle. Thanks for every comment, every “like,” every word of encouragment and support. I get by with the help of my friends and fans.

All that said, I can still use help, financial and otherwise. There are lots of ways you can support me and my writing. Perhaps yo can take one or more of the following actions?

#1 Do some holiday shopping through my blog. My creations make great presents, and wouldn’t it be cool to support a struggling artist?. You can give friends and family warm winter hats, hemp jewelry, and colorful collages I made with my heart and hands. (If you don’t see exactly what you want, just ask. I have many many more necklaces than what’s shown on the jewelry page, and I may be able to make a custom piece for you.)[amazon template=image&asin=1539332233] If you order copies of my book Confessions of a Work Camper: Tales from the Woods from me, I’ll sign them and write something super nice to your recipient.

#2 If you do need to buy from a big business (and I know my wares may not please everyone on every holiday shopping list), you can go through my affiliate link when you shop at Amazon.

Say a reader wants to buy something from Amazon. The reader can go to my blog first and click through my site to get to Amazon. A reder can do this in a couple of ways.

The first way is to find the Amazon.com link in the column to the right of the main body of the post. The words “Just click here!” are in orange; that’s my link to Amazon. That link will take readers to Amazon and get me credit for items placed in their carts within 24 hours and purchased (usually) within 90 days.

If that link is too hard to find or too small on a cell phone, there’s another way to do it. On the top of every page of this blog, there’s a link for the page about my book Confessions of a Work Camper: Tales from the Woods. Go to that page. The image of the cover of my book is a link to Amazon. Click on the image of the cover of my book, and you’ll go to Amazon.com. Once a reader has gone to Amazon via either of these methods, s/he can shop for any item. Any item s/he puts in her/his cart in the next 24 hours and purchases within 90 days (usually) will earn me an advertising fee.

Going through the Rubber Tramp Artist blog to shop on Amazon costs the reader/shopper nothing extra. Amazon pays the advertising fee, not the reader/shopper.

Every month, I receive a list of items folks who clicked through my blog purchased from Amazon, but there’s absolutely no names linked to these purchases. I’ll never know who bought what items.

Of course, I’m not encouraging folks to buy things they don’t want or need. However, by going through my blog to make Amazon purchases they’d be making anyway, readers can help me earn a little money to keep me on the road.

#3 If you read Confessions of a Work Camper, review it. Whether on Amazon, Goodreads, or your Facebook page (or all three!) reviews of my book help get the word out. Reviews help people find the book, which hopefully will lead to people buying the book.

#4 If you read one of my blog posts and you like it, click the “like” button with the blue star at the bottom of the post. (You will be asked to sign in. You can either sign in with Word Press or with a Google account.)

#5 If you like a post, please please please share it. Everything on the Rubber Tramp Artist blog and the Rubber Tramp Artist Facebook page is public. If you think your friend(s) would like something I wrote, share it with them.

#6 If you see one of my posts in your Facebook feed and you like it, click “like” (or any of those other emotion icons). The more likes a post gets, the more likely it will get more attention. It’s a snowball effect, my friend The Poet says.

According to a 2014 article in Time,

If your posts keep people engaged, as measured by likes, comments, shares and time on screen, the social network will reward you with further reach.

Enough “likes” could help expand my audience.

#7 Invite your friends to like the Rubber Tramp Artist Facebook page. It’s easy! On the right side of the Rubber Tramp Artist Facebook page, under the blue “Send Message” button and rating stars, you’ll see “Community” and “Invite your friends to like this Page.” Click on the “Invite your friends” link, and you’ll be taken to a page where you can click to invite people.

#8 Leave a comment on either Facebook or at the end of a blog post. To leave a comment on blog posts, click on the “Leave a Comment” link above my bio. (The first time you leave a comment, I have to moderate it, so don’t worry if your first comment doesn’t pop up immediately.)

If you’re on Facebook, I trust you already know how to leave a comment.

I really do want to know what you think! Also, comments encourage me by letting me know folks are reading my posts.

#9 Subscribe to my blog. Subscribers get an email whenever a post pops up, so subscribers don’t have to worry about missing something new.

#10 Hit the yellow “Donate” button to the right of each post, right above “Subscribe.” I don’t charge anything for my blog posts because “free” is my favorite price. However, if you like something you read and you have a few bucks to kick down, I promise to put your dollars to good use.

Thanks to everyone who has helped and will help. I couldn’t do what I do without my fans and friends.

Photo of the Rubber Tramp Artist and Jerico by The Man.