Author Archives: Mark P

No way up

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As both of my faithful readers know, we live on top of a mountain in northwest Georgia. We call it a mountain; it’s not very high, but the sides are steep and the road over the mountain is narrow and winding. Fouche Gap Road is only about a lane and a half wide. The road up what I call the front of the mountain, the side facing town, has a fairly sharp left turn near the bottom of the mountain. It then snakes about halfway up the mountain before making a hairpin left turn. On the right, the curve is up against the mountain. There is a small area at the edge, just big enough for a couple of pickup trucks to park. On the inside, which is the downhill side, there is a sharp drop down to a wet-weather stream.

There is a “no-trucks” sign at the bottom of the mountain. In fact, if a luckless truck driver happens to find him or herself on Huffaker Road at the turnoff to Fouche Gap Road, that driver will see “no-truck” signs on both Huffaker and Fouche Gap. What is not apparent is that Huffaker is narrow, but perfectly adequate for trucks of any size, while Fouche Gap Road is a trap from which there is almost no exit.

On Tuesday evening Leah and I went out for Chinese food and a quick trip to the grocery store — we always need cat food. On the way back we found two cars stopped just before the hairpin curve on Fouche Gap. Ahead there was a tractor-trailer truck stuck on the curve. The front of the truck was pushed right up against the slope of the bank at the right edge of the road, and on the left the rear wheels of the trailer were several feet off the pavement, very close to the drop-off. It was well and truly stuck.

We spoke to the drivers of the cars ahead of us. They didn’t know anything, so I went up to talk to the truck driver. He was a young fellow hauling a load of chickens to a little town named Menlo near the Georgia-Alabama border. He said he had been following his GPS, and it directed him to turn onto Fouche Gap Road. Now if you happen to know where Menlo is relative to our little town of Rome, you will know that there are several possible routes from the west side of Rome to Menlo, including going over Lavender Mountain by way of Fouche Gap Road. And you will also know that there are several reasonably good routes. Fouche Gap Road is not one of them. It wouldn’t even be a top pick if it didn’t have truck-trapping curves.

The driver and I walked back towards our car to see if he could get a cell signal and call for help. He eventually did so. It was probably going to take at least a half an hour for a really big tow truck to get there and pick up the back of his trailer to swing it onto the road. I suspect that the tow truck would have to back all the way up to that point because the road is too narrow for a big truck to turn around on.

The driver imagined that once he was around that curve, he would simply drive the rest of the way over the mountain. I told him it would probably be a better idea to turn around at the top of the mountain and go back down the way he came up, because there is an even sharper curve on the back side of the mountain. I told him he could turn around at the cross road at the top of the mountain.

This was the second time we have been blocked by a truck stuck at that same curve. The only choice we have in these cases is to turn around, drive back down to Huffaker Road, and go the long way around into Texas Valley. Then we drive along the north edge of Lavender Mountain to where Fouche Gap Road comes down the back side of the mountain. Then we take the road to the top of the mountain. The hairpin curve is about a half a mile from our house. The detour is a little over 11 miles.

We had been home for about a half an hour when we heard the roar of diesel engines. We couldn’t see the action, but apparently the chicken truck was rescued.

The odd thing is that just that morning one of our neighbors had posted on Facebook about a tractor-trailer truck trying to come up Fouche Gap Road the same way this truck came. Apparently that truck made it.

Back to work

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I almost never get up early enough to see this kind of sunrise.

On Friday, however, I had to get up early enough so that I could drive over to Huntsville, Al, to get my fingerprints made, and my appointment was at 9:30.

I have been doing a little work every so often for the company I used to work for. Till now, each job has amounted to less than a full day, and I could do it at home. A few days ago, my old boss called and asked if I would be interested in doing some more work. She said, “You can make a lot of money!” That got my attention.

The job, which I agreed to take, will be about half time for six months. The fingerprints, which were done electronically, were required since it had been so long since I had been printed. So, I drove over. It’s about a two hour and fifteen minute drive. The prints were made at a company that specializes in that. After I left there I went by my old office to see a former colleague, Kenneth.

We talked for a while, and then I said I had to leave for home. Kenneth said since it was almost lunch time, I should stay and go to Rosie’s, my favorite Mexican restaurant. I couldn’t resist that.

I took our new dog Zoe with me. She loves to ride, or maybe she’s just afraid she’ll be left behind if she doesn’t hop up into the truck. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take her with me to work. That means Leah will have to do all the dirty work with the dogs, and Zoe is still not leash trained.

Leah is not entirely onboard with my new job. She doesn’t like for me to be gone that much, and she is not looking forward to trying to walk Zoe. To be honest, I am ambivalent about going back to work, even half time for six months. There was, after all, a reason that I retired, and I have been enjoying having all my time free.

Except for doctors’ appointments, of course.

a fighter by his trade

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Now tell me again just how many lives a cat has. We aren’t sure how many Sylvester has used up, but surely he must be getting close to the limit.

He came home Saturday limping — was that morning or late evening? I can’t remember. Leah said he seemed sore all over. He complained when she touched him almost anywhere on his body. That is pretty much normal for him these days. Not the limping, but the overall sensitivity to being touched. Maybe it was a sprain, we thought. Maybe he would get better, we thought. He was still limping badly on Tuesday, so we took him to the vet. She dragged him out of the carrier and palpated his leg while her assistant held on firmly. I don’t know why he didn’t kill everyone in the room, because he certainly would have if we had tried that. She said she couldn’t feel anything except a swollen leg. No breaks, no obvious wounds. So he got an antibiotic shot and came home with us. Today, Thursday, he can still barely touch his left front foot to the ground.

His routine lately has been to come in, maybe in the morning or maybe late in the afternoon, eat, and spend several hours asleep in a living room chair. Then he might eat, and go to the door to go back outside. And he goes, no one knows where, but he stays out all night.

There are at least three new cats around, two all white and one black and white. We know who “owns” them, but no one keeps them inside. At least one of the new cats is a male. We know that because we have seen him spraying in our front yard. The other two are probably female. We don’t know whether Sylvester is fighting them. If so, he’s not doing well. We are wondering whether he makes the rounds, visiting each one on successive days, getting his butt kicked by each one in turn.

We were trying to think of how many times Sylvester has been to the vet for ailments or injuries. We believe that the number is countable, but for us it is unknown. He has one large, hairless scar on the back of his head that took weeks to heal. There is another scar lower on his neck. I can’t remember which that one is. He also recently recovered from something (someone?) apparently taking his head into its mouth, with one set of teeth on the top of his head and the opposing set on his face, which included his eye. That was the time he had an actual dent in the cornea.

And, of course, there was the time he disappeared for six weeks, apparently spending much of that time in a neighbor’s garage/storage shed. He came home thin and with ailments of his fundament, probably caused by lack of fluids.

Before that he has spent time in stir I mean boarding at the vet’s for urinary problems. Was that only once, or was it twice? Who knows?

When he goes outside, I think of old movies about boxers. Sylvester is the one that staggers to his corner with blood coming from his nose, one eye black and nearly swollen closed, dizzy and confused. And still he goes back out into the ring.

Snow and fog

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It started snowing Saturday morning about the time I got out of bed. It didn’t amount to much for a while. By the time I took the dogs for a walk, it was beginning to stick.

That was around 10 am. Even though it had been fairly warm earlier in the week, the snow was starting to stick on the roads. By the time we got back home, there was about two inches.

And then, by the afternoon, it was all gone.

The temperature dropped a little overnight, although not below freezing. When we got up Sunday morning, we had dense fog. This was up close to the top of the mountain, when I took the dogs for their walk.

The fog got thinner the lower we went. I think that means it was actually a cloud by that time.

Our weather has been wet and quite warm. It rained a lot before we got the snow, and it’s raining again now, as I write this Monday evening. We have had a fire most of the recent days, but, except for a couple of really cold nights, we could have done without. Now, the temperature is actually supposed to go up though the night. It’s 50F now and is supposed to be around 60F by morning. It looks like winter is almost over. At least that’s what this clematis thinks.

Clematis is deciduous; it’s not supposed to start leafing out until spring. We have some bulbs that are similarly early. In fact, some of our bulbs sprouted new foliage even before all the old leaves had turned brown and shriveled.

This weather. It’s all so confusing.

Lessons, learned and not learned

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I have been taking the dogs out into our front yard for a post-lunch play session for quite a while now. Ever since the great dog escape I have been putting Zoe on a long leash and letting Sam run free. That has worked pretty well. Sam can run around and escape from Zoe’s attacks, and then come back for more punishment.

A few days ago when I took them for their morning walk, Zoe was so full of energy that she could hardly contain herself. She desperately wanted to run. So Thursday afternoon, I decided to put Sam on a long leash and let Zoe run free. I expected her to run in big circles around the yard, but she didn’t. Instead, she ran about 30 feet away, and then turned to stalk Sam. That went on for a while. And then Zoe walked down to the bottom of the grassy part of the yard and into the woods.

I called her. I yelled for her. She ignored me and continued into the woods.

If this had happened 35 years ago, back when I had knees and could run on them, I would have chased her. These days, all I can do is walk at a determined pace, which is not enough to keep up. But I had Sam, I thought, and Sam could find her.

So I took Sam down through the narrow band of trees at the front of the yard to the street. Based on the direction Zoe had been walking, I planned to take Sam to Fouche Gap Road and head her off. But when I got there, Sam continued across the road towards the other end of Lavender Trail. I figured Sam knew what he was doing, and was following Zoe. So I let him go. We went up the steep grade towards the dead end, where I had found all the shotgun shells a few days earlier. I tried to jog a little, which demonstrated, if I needed it, that 30 minutes on the stepper is not an eight-mile run.

When we got to the top, my phone rang. A neighbor up the road in the opposite direction had caught Zoe. So, Sam was faking it.

When I managed to get back home, I drove up to our neighbor’s house and retrieved Zoe. She seemed glad to see me and hopped right into the car.

It’s clear that Zoe did not learn her lesson from when she disappeared for four days. However, I have learned my lesson: I cannot let Zoe off the leash. That’s a disappointment. I had hoped to have a normal dog, like all of my other dogs except Zeke, who could be trusted not to run away.