First Car Revisited

Back in April of this year of 2012 I wrote a blog about owning my first car.  I loved it, and have found since that many others can recall their first car with vivid details.  Several have either written comments on this blog site, or emails describing that same attachment I had.

Now here’s the deal.  Maybe 20 years ago I purchased an MG Midget convertible from a friend of mine here in Northern New York.  I recall that he bought it a few years prior, maybe 25 years ago, in the Boston, Massachusetts area.  The automobile has not had the engine started in at least ten years, but it is complete and restorable.

Details are fuzzy now, but in some manner I learned that it had once belonged to a college girl that drove it from the Boston area to her college in another state.  It was probably her first car, but I don’t know that.  I do not know her name.  I do not know her address.  I do not know her phone number.  I know no way to contact her, and if I did she would probably think I had a screw loose.

However if she were to contact me with proof that she once owned this car, and wished to own it again, I would consider a reasonable offer.  Other than that the car is not for sale.  I have it stored in an old barn on my property, and that is where it will remain for the few years I have left.

Shelter

Shelter from the elements is ordinarily what I would think of when I hear the one word spoken.  That includes, but is not limited to, rain, snow, hail, sleet, overheating, sunburn, lightning strikes, hurricanes, and many other conditions hazardous to the health of humans.  Again, I usually think of shelter from these conditions as some sort of a building which takes in a lot of grey area.

Therein becomes the question just what is a proper shelter from the elements?  Some would venture to say a human needs a proper castle, or he doesn’t have anything.  Others might concede that a nice mansion could suffice.  Then there are those who can do with a nice home built to standards that will protect an owner from all but the most violent of Mother Nature’s quirks.  The standards can be lessened due to abode building ability, or necessary environmental conditions.  You won’t likely need some forms of protection in some areas.

Following up on necessary shelter for the existing conditions it can be determined that while traveling the travel vehicle is often your shelter, versus your home.  As you drive down a country road in a rainstorm your car keeps you warm and dry under most circumstances.  Thus all you have done is downsized the amount of area you are protecting from the elements, vehicle space rather than home interior.

I came to some of these conclusions while riding a motorcycle in a rainstorm.  My first thought was that I wished I was in my nice warm home, rather than riding in a cold rain in the middle of the night a thousand miles from home.  I then decided I should have had the forethought to pack a tent for such occasions.  As I continued to contemplate my possibilities it came to me that I was wearing a proper rain suit, and was remaining warm and dry.  It was just that my protection limits had moved in to within hundredths of an inch, rather than several feet away.  I was yet being sheltered from the elements as much as was necessary.

Shelter then can take many forms, and need be no more than is necessary to meet the present conditions.  The next time you’re out and about on your motorcycle make sure you have good rain gear in your saddle bags.

Fall Foliage

Driving down the graveled Sand Road of Lisbon in St Lawrence County, New York this afternoon I was admiring the fall colors as I ambled along.  As I approached the driveway to the local sportsman’s club shooting range this scene unfolded so I stopped and took a photo just for your enjoyment.  The top color has not arrived yet, but it’s still impressive as it is.

A little further down the road I came upon this scene which I took a photo of.  I called it cattails and colors thinking that covered it quite well.

As I progressed along I came upon this older hippie abode.  I recall it being built in the earlier half of the 1980s, by a fellow who wanted to live alone.  This being a couple of miles from the nearest residence, it’s about as close to living alone as you can get in this part of the country.  It is about ¼ mile back from the dirt road.

Some thirty years later it stands yet alone, rather rundown and derelict.  The gentleman only lived in it two summers and one winter, abandoning it prior to the second winter.

Continuing along the road I chanced upon this pond just in time to see a beaver drop below the surface near that floating log.  Note the area directly behind the pond has no large tree growth as the beaver population has used them in their daily life over the years.

This is the same pond but showcasing a bit of color not seen in the preceding photo.  With that my afternoon jaunt came to an end.

Muddy Corn Chopping

In Lisbon, New York there is a large dairy operation.  Although I live somewhat near the center of operations I know little about it.  However today I happened to be driving past a large field where corn had been growing all summer, and noticed it was being harvested.  Having little else to do I decided to watch for a while.  When I stopped, the corn chopper was driving down the field blowing a stream of the chopped crop into a wagon being pulled by a common John Deere farm tractor.

In the second photo it can easily be noted the wagon is filled to overflowing, and while the chopper sits idle the load is headed back up the field toward a large truck parked on a slight hill.

The third photo shows that the entire wagon box has been hydraulically lifted and is being dumped into the truck box.  The truck driver, having little to do but wait, is standing on the side of the tractor undoubtedly receiving instructions of what to do next.  Meanwhile that chopper, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, remains idle.

In this photo the unloaded wagon box is settling back to its retracted position ready for another load while a second truck pulls into the field.  The chopper is nearly concealed by the red and white truck as it returns to the point in the field where it finished the preceding load.

In this photo the machine has chopped across the back of the field and up the left side about 2/3 of the way.  This has once more filled the wagon which has made its way nearly around the front of the field heading toward the truck for a second time.  Oops, it encounters a mud hole, and spends a couple of minutes pawing its way through the mire.  The chopper awaits action.

Once more the wagon delivers its load into the yet awaiting truck box as a third truck enters from stage right.  With three truck drivers and the chopper driver all accomplishing little much of the time, this is not a smooth operation.

As the chopper and tractor/wagon combo move across the front of the field a third load is nearly full.  Over the top of the wagon another load appears to either be mired in mud, or broken down.  At any rate it is not moving, nor has it moved since I’ve been watching.

Again the chopper sits idle, while the unmoving load in the background does likewise, as the loaded wagon once more plods over to dump its load in the truck.  The loaded wagon again stops moving forward in the apparent mud hole, but once more works its way free in a couple of minutes and continues on its way.

Normally the trucks drive alongside the chopper and are directly filled which is much faster than this operation.  When one truck fills, another takes its place, and an almost continuous stream of corn erupts from the spout for endless hours.  Mother Nature’s recent rains cut the speed of chopping by many times, costing the dairy operations thousands of dollars.

 

The School Bus Doesn't Stop Here Any More

I attended a one-room school for my first six grades.  For my remaining six I rode a big yellow bus to school each morning, and returned on it to my home each afternoon.  When I was 24, in 1962, a son was born to my wife and I.  He began his studies in a Baptist Church school in Mississippi.  It was located right across the street from our home in Marion so he walked back and forth each day.  The church minister, whose wife was the school teacher, raised, kept, and hunted bird dogs, so I figured this church thing couldn’t be all that bad.

In January 1970 I moved to California, along with my wife, two sons, and a daughter.  The older son and the daughter, both being of school age, learned to ride a big yellow bus back and forth to school on a daily basis.

In May of that year our family once more moved, this time to New York State.  The son and daughter were each passed on to their next grade in California, and did not return to school until that September as New York State children do.  On the first day of school the big yellow bus stopped out front of our home, picked up the two of them, and off to school they went, not to return home until mid-afternoon.

As the years passed the second son joined the first two children, and still later our newest child, our baby girl, also joined them for the daily to and fro on the big yellow bus.

It was now approaching the early fall of 1979.  I was now 41, while the eldest son was 16, and the baby-girl was now 8 years of age.  With nothing better to do one morning, I awoke in the midst of a heart attack, or a myocardial infarction, as the good MDs like to put it.  For about a year I wondered about my mortality.  In the fall of 1980 I had a little arterial bypass surgery, and back to work I returned, good as new.  All that year the old yellow bus kept up its daily trip, never lagging, nearly always on perfect time, as regular as clockwork.

The elder son graduated high school and stopped riding the bus as he joined the Marine Corp, but the big yellow bus kept up its daily stop to pick up the other three.  The eldest daughter graduated high school a couple of years later, and then the second son three years after that.  Still the big yellow bus stopped on a twice daily basis for baby girl.  Then it came the summer of ’87 and baby girl turned 16 years of age.  I bought her, of all things, a pickup truck.  She loved her Toyota and drove it back and forth to school each day.  All of a sudden one day the big yellow bus stopped stopping.  How could it do that after all of these years?

Several years passed.  I had some more arterial bypass surgery in ’91.  Baby girl married, and lo and behold, a beautiful girl child was born in 1992, and later, in ’94, a boy sprung from this union.  It was only a few years until the big yellow bus began stopping at our driveway again as baby girl and her family built a modest home next door to her mother and me.  This continued until the fall of 2011 at which time grandbaby girl had graduated from high school, and her younger brother had finished also.  Once more the big yellow bus stopped no more.  Now it is a year later and on a daily basis I watch the big yellow bus pass my home with nary a hesitation.  It has come to a time in my life I realize I must be getting on in years ‘cause the school bus doesn’t stop here any more.

Fall Field Trip

I like to wander about the woods and fields merely to see what I can see.  I don’t much care what people have named things though so this is not science, merely sightseeing.  Today I saw this brave little mushroom sprouting from the undergrowth.  It looks like a mouse or something, may have been nibbling at its stem.  Mice have got to eat too.

Nearby was another, but probably in a slightly later stage of growth.  It seems to have split open, and flattened somewhat.

Further along my path was yet another in what I would guess to be yet a later stage of development.  All of the brown surface has gone wherever brown surfaces go, leaving a white remnant, turning yellowish, and apparently dying.

Along my day’s path were these little blue flowers with the delicate thin petals.  I thought them rather pretty with their more violet tint than plain blue.  Some of them have a darker center button indicating they are past their prime I suspect.

This is a closer view of the above, showing some of the different shades of color all on the same blossom.  This is one of the darker centers that seem to have lost the yellow parts.

As I moseyed on my way I discovered these white flowers.  They are very close in looks to the preceding blue ones, and are possibly the same thing.  I don’t know.

Here are more white flowers, but these are much daintier.  You can see by the size of the clover leaves in the background that they are tiny.

As I went on my way again I noted this slender birch dancing in the slight breeze of the beautiful afternoon.  Note that in this photo it is more or less straight up.

This is quite obviously the same sapling, but now gracefully nodding to the unseen audience over to our right somewhere, as it continues on its ever so graceful ballet.

We’ve seen some blues, and whites, now how about a splash of yellow?  These small flowers were trying to do things in their own way, like Frank Sinatra.  They’re almost more spring like, but here among the fall flowers is where they are.  They seem delicate, but are a nice present.

After looking those over, what should I spot, but another group of yellow blooms.  These also are a warm spot for a fall day’s viewing.

Only a minute later I spied yet some different yellow things.  These longer petals reminded me of tiny bananas.  Okay, so I have a vivid imagination.

As my day’s journey was wrapping up I spotted these clover blossoms that are refusing to die this early.  It seems they may linger on awaiting their final demise in the first snowfall of winter.  Winter, that’s a whole different season, and possibly I’ll find something worthy of photography then.

Lawton Coat Of Arms

During the twelfth century what is known as a coat of arms was first used.  At first they were used as a family symbol only by royalty, but later the practice expanded to the point where nearly every English family had developed their own.

Due to their considerable investment in fisheries the first known coat of arms of the Lawton family was a golden shield crossed by a red chevron with three red dolphins on its surface.  There was a closed helmet indicating this was a gentleman, rather than a knight.

Later a female Lawton wed a male Davenport.  As was the custom of the time Davenport assumed the name Lawton, as that was the location of the estate Agnes brought to the marriage.  With the marriage of the two names the coat of arms was changed reflecting the Davenport connection.  The newer coat of arms had a straight bar, known as a fess replacing the chevron.  Above this were two crosslets while below yet was a dolphin, but now blue.

Still later as times changed and the fisheries became history the coat of arms was yet changed again.  This time it became what it is yet today.  It became a silver shield versus its original gold.  The fess, or straight bar, was retained across the middle.  The bottom dolphin was omitted in favor of a third crosslet.  It also now sprouted mantling on its perimeter.  Much more could be written about this coat of arms, but not within the space of this article.