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Friday, June 26, 2020
9:00PM
A productive day here in Fjord and out at the farm.
A friend of Dad’s helped him remove a reluctant oil filter on the summer lawn tractor and helped tune the engine (the winter lawn tractor is in storage, snowblower still mounted).
Cousin Barry brought some probable buyers out to the farm to look at Uncle Art’s 1956 Dodge sedan, last licensed in 2010. Amazingly, they splashed some gasoline down the carburetor, put jumper cables on the battery, and, Dad told me, the engine started right up!
The people—an old guy, seventy-three, Dad thought he said, and maybe the old guy’s son—showed an interest in Dad’s long-idle motorhome and Grampa Fischer’s ancient wreck of a pickup truck, too, the truck with a foot-thick locust tree growing up through the bed.
Here in town I hacked away at some sod that I had set down in several low spots in the yard last fall but never smoothed out before. I broke into a ground hornets’ nest and didn’t get stung, which was nice. Gave the hornets a blast of Raid and continued to hack with a heavy-bladed tool that I can’t right now remember the name of. Not an adze. Might be a mighty mattock.
A fierce thunderstorm in the afternoon briefly dumped rain on the lawn and, I am hoping, leveled my dirt a bit.
I did not visit Dad today but spoke with him on the phone three or four times.
Sleep well.
Love, Dave
Saturday, June 27, 2020
8:45AM
Good morning. And, Whoa! Hold the phone! Stop the presses! I misinformed you, and I am so sorry!
Dad was probably a little distracted yesterday when he told me Barry had invited some people out to the farm to look at an old “vehicle” they might buy. “Art and Jeannette’s vehicle” I think Dad said.
I remember I asked him, “What? The ’56 Dodge sedan? That’s amazing!”
And Dad said, “Yes, I think so. I’ll call you back. They’re out there now, talking with Barry.”
Dad did call back, at suppertime, to let me and Celeste know he was taking his pills on schedule, but he didn’t have anything new to say about selling vehicles. He said Barry was handling the transaction, and Dad didn’t know if anyone had started talking price on any of several items that had caught the visitors’ interest.
Late last night, after I sent my big Friday Report to you, I was trying to remember what-all vehicles are resting in the weeds south of the pole building. There’s Rick’s Contour, all by itself, beyond the others, and Dad mows around it. There’s the pickup I mentioned to you, with the tree growing through it. There’s Grampa’s green Gremlin and a dark Matador. There’s like maybe a 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger, bright blue, and an Oldsmobile that came, part of the package, when Dad and Mom bought their second-hand Southwind.
But is the Burkely’s ’56 Dodge still on the farm? Seemed like it must be. When was it I took that picture of my brother Gary slouched against the hood?
Well, I looked up the Kodachrome and found the slide mount was dated 1977. That was a surprise. And no way in hell that Dodge was licensed through 2010, no way it started up now with a jump and a gulp of gasoline.
Then, this morning Dad clarified things. He had not heard me, he said, say anything about a Dodge. It was a Chevy S-10, stored inside the pole building since 2009, about, that Uncle Art had given him, and which Barry had brought the men to look at. A Chevy S-10 pickup. Nothing but the names on the title in common with Burkelys’ old Dodge. I thought that was Barry’s, don’t think I ever heard it called “Art and Jeannette’s vehicle” before.
I asked Dad is it still on the farm, that old Dodge? He did not know, could not recall. In my mind it is crisp as a Kodachrome.
I do expect to see Dad this afternoon. Have to take him his meds for the coming week. If the sun is shining and the mosquitoes aren’t too hungry under the walnut and locust trees, I’ll make an inventory of the junkers rusting into the sandy soil south of the steel pole building.
I wish you a pleasant Saturday.
Love, Dave
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