No journey to Look For America can begin without a start...
For many of you, those who have faithfully followed this Blog, as well as my wife's: The Fabulous Feathermaye is just here for the awesome, here comes the unexpected. All of you who have just recently joined the fun, please bear with me as I expose a little 'personal information' about how this all started...
A Long Story Short
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| Yours Truly (She thinks my tractor's sexy) |
The Fabulous Feathermaye and Yours Truly were puttering away with our dreams, locked away snugly in a comfortable little job, managing storage properties for a large Texas Corporation. If you're a jobber, as both of us have been throughout our lives, it was pretty sweet. Free housing, such as it was, decent enough anyway.
We took full advantage, we developed ourselves over the many hours of free time (I wrote four novels, even did some painting) paid for our personal needs and little else and got rid of all the old major debts. We also trimmed down our household items to those things we value, and use on a constant basis. Mostly, you know how these things go these days, we invested in electronics and something comfortable to sit and play work-steadily-on-toward-our-dream-future from. You know, where we would live simply, and freely, from the fruit of work our fingertips can produce.
We started calling our new lifestyle, 'Pod-life'(completely portable comfort zone, functional almost anywhere). Ah...yes, we had an idea of the perfect future, just hadn't figured out how to get ourselves jump-started in that direction, beyond buying and trying out gadgets we like. After all, we did have a pretty cush job, bad location or not.
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| Perfect for Pod-life, the portable hot tub, made like a Kodiak boat/raft, comes with pump and filter, requires two adventurous souls to man it, and pack it when time to move on. Umbrella optional. |
I guess it goes without saying, there is always the possibility that everything can turn to shit in a moment. The company, and everyone who works for them understands this, even though no one wants to think of possible bad luck, not constantly anyhow. But, as we watched out the windows, America was falling apart around us, people were loosing their jobs, and the cold wind of change always chills working folks first.
According to the company, we'd done a fine job. We were placed in a difficult location, one they feared would suffer from upcoming road construction thus would seriously slow traffic in and around the property. We had already been placed as sort-of a 'fixer' couple: strong on phones and people skills that could overcome such obstacles. Hell, we were good, they knew it, we did too, and they paid us handsomely for it, handsome enough for Feathermaye and the ole kid here. Regardless, it was enough to keep us there, getting fat and complacent, with two paid vacs a year to run-amok with the grandbaby keep us from going stir-crazy--not that we ever did, or would for that matter (we are a couple of Bohemians, after all).
As most of you who've looked in and followed us for years know: we kept busy, constantly on facebook and other social media, flashing little bits and pieces of our artistic endeavors. "Tormenta" was published and Feathermaye's jewelry and photography skills flourished as the refinement of her unique writing style emerged, right along with my own.
After a few years of this, even we realized that we were not going to be able to take it any further without getting out from behind our sweet little, tightly fenced and enclosed fortress. But, we sat there, waking up coughing from the dust of road construction, and perhaps a few too many years of living beside a major freeway.
And, we knew the reading public was not going to come to us... Not while we were behind those gates, anyhow. We seldom ever even attracted that many visits from family--the place was too small. Our little granddaughter, who many of you have watched grow up on line, loved it there, riding around on the golf cart with Big Daddy and Nana is fun, and as far as our little wonder dog 'Starbuck' was concerned, there was no world outside of those fences, just a lot of noisy stuff that she could run out and bark at in utter futility. Something, we knew not what, was going to have to change.
Just after Momma K passed, I began to notice tightness in my shoulders and hips. As battered as I allowed myself to be over years of football addiction, I chalked up the discomfort, at first anyhow, as nothing more than the life-long aggravations that the docs all told me I would have to deal with in my "Old Age". I ignored the darkening depression the pain was forcing to build over my normally calm, easy-going nature. Feathermaye could not. "This is getting serious, Herndon, you need to see the sawbones!"
I found myself looking in the mirror, telling myself that the guy I see is actually 'over' fifty! Yikes, dude, you better get with it, you are falling apart.
In February, Feathermaye's dad passed, up in Michigan. We had been expecting it, sort of... At least it was a subject we did not allow ourselves to stop talking about, as a possibility.
Poly-Mialgia Rheumatica was diagnosed and life began doing its thing for us... John Lennon said it best: "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans..."
We told our supervisor about the disease, assuring him that it would not present any real difficulty for me to do my job--although swinging a mop with these damn knots in my shoulders is a first class bitch.
It's all past tense now... Four days after the 'OWNER' of the company stopped by to tell us--said this right to Feathermaye's face!--what a great job we were doing, to keep on trucking along as we were, don't change a thing, last month was a record month!... Our supervisor came in, just before we closed up, and let us know that the company had decided to make a move, they were bringing in another couple, we'd done a fine job, but they want to go in another direction and no, sorry, we don't have another property that would be a fit for you...and so on ad nausium.
Amazingly, Feathermaye and I walked out, turned for what would be our home for another five days, and exhaled a big sigh of relief.
"Shouldn't I be terrified?" I looked at my little wife and saw her smiling, glowing even. Whatever was making her do it already had me too, my grin opened wide as I let her go on. "Shouldn't I be crying, or gnashing my teeth?"
"Cover our heads with ash, rip... or no, I think it's rent open our garments..." I added--my brain making a quick retreval of a oft-noted biblical passage, but she mostly likely did not hear it.
"So then, why am I not freaking the frak out right now?"
"We're still in shock?" I took a stab.
"It's strange..." She said, very thoughtfully, as I opened the door for her and we stepped into the Free AC that we kept blasting and frosty at a temperature noted as perfect for the Peri-menopausal woman... (huh? Oh, yeah, that's not an actual temperature setting, it's a cold as it can get without turning your windows to ice or killing the dog, all the way to the left is good, honey, setting.)
Feathermaye finished her thought as she sighed in the coolness, "...but, I feel happy, free even."We both looked at each other and understood something that we'd been telling each other throughout our lives together: "It was meant to be."
Okay, so it was a longer story than I figured but...
It took about four weeks for all the rigamarole to get sorted: Neither of us had ever applied for unemployment, but we'd sure as hell paid it in for a collective fifty plus years. Of course, we both imagined long lines in some badly painted Government office, kids screaming and running around unsupervised and mostly uttering screams of some variety in a language I've yet to master, or care to for that matter. Imagine our surprise, and the smiles of contentment, when we discovered that it can all be done on line! Pod-life, gotta love it!
All of our good friends and family, of course, offered places for us to stay until we got it all figured out. 'Carol P.', our 'other mother' insisted we get over to stay with her on The Bayou. So we did, after we used several of the 'Free Night Stays' up in Houston and down on the Island that Feathermaye had collected through all of her various on line freebee sights. What a woman!
We swam in pools, walked the beach and let Starbuck see that the world had more to offer than traffic to bark at. We even found ourselves in a Hotel situated two blocks from reliant stadium in the midst of this season's American Idol try-outs. And, Starbuck even saw things that she was amazed to note: Other dogs. Naturally, Starbuck, perhaps even yet still, has no idea that she is one of them! She's one of us, although, (I know, we're working on it here, and 'no', we do not want to appear on the Dog Whisperer...yet) she treats us as a pack, that she is somehow going to protect, come hell or high water.
By the way, if you have been hiding under a rock, you may not know that Texas has been in it's "Hell" season this summer. Record drought scorched the earth out here and "High Water" which is the normal summer condition in the Bayou City (Houston) is but a fond, distant memory that has forced the lay-offs of many a bar-ditch digger.
Hell on the Bayou is weird. The normal chirps and gator croaks one hears on most warm summer evenings was quiet, subdued by the vicious heat, crusted over by the kiln-like temps we kept on having. No rain in sight. We spent ten days over at Carol's, ate all of her 'Grandma down home' style cooking, added an incredible amount of cholesterol to my slack ass and just enjoyed visiting, and talking. Carol is one of the humans on this planet I can really get a good conversation out of. It's become a rare thing, unfortunately.
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| Oh, yes, Laurie Zieber is one of the spotlight visionaries on THE MOUNTAIN |
A very talented friend of Heather's responded with an offer that comes along rarely in the life of a writer. Our profession is filled with stories about writers who are offered a place to 'go finish their big work' or just do what they do, so to speak.
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| The Mardi Gras B&B, our new temp POD, thank you Laurie Z!! |
The Amazing Mrs. Z got on line with Feathermaye--they were fellow bloggers for years--and started selling her, then me, on coming to this place... This Mountain--I needed very little arm twisting. By now, Feathermaye and I had come to fully believe, throughout this upheaval, that we are very much in an Everything is Everything situation. "It's all happening", the Band-aids might say. LZ gave us a few clues as to what we would find when we got here, but mostly she would only say it was a special place, for special people to come and find what they are looking for--and help keep it all alive with their talent... "Besides, y'all, it sits empty all but four days a month--c'mon!"
Of course, that we'd have access to AC, WiFi and the NFL channel was all we really needed to know; our newly developed POD-life was ready to go where ever we set our sites. So... Now you know the story; at least the story so far.
Ah, but this place, this magical place that bursts back to life--reminds me of Brigadoon, a little even--every month for four days. I'm going to have to fill you in on all of this, folks. The people, the artists themselves, will be our features in upcoming Blogs. People Like Laurie Z and Todd the Chef of The Gods, Pappy and Flo, who have been part of this dream from the beginning, not to mention the Buffalo Girls, who we've only begun to get to know--Calamity and Annie O. Lots of others we have yet to meet, but whose shacks and buildings spark our curiosity none-the-less.
Next time... "On The Mountain"
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