Out of nowhere, onto the page...

A copy of The Concho River Review turned up in my mailbox yesterday. My short story, “Dead Ringer” appears on page 17. The idea for that piece seeded itself in my head when I was leaving Wyoming, four or five summers ago. I still remember the easy way that boy stuck his girl in the cab of my Jeep and closed the door after her. Waving us off as if he somehow expected never to see us again.

The tire got patched in Waltman. Three long-haul truckers who’d pulled off the road to stretch their legs fixed it with one of those cheap, portable kits you get in the automotive department in WalMart. I paid them with a six of Heineken I’d had on ice in the cooler. I was sad to lose the beer, but happy to get the girl (and the tire) back to her stranded boyfriend. To the best of my knowledge, they never did make it to the Hole in the Wall.

 

A view to the future...

Had three old silver maples removed from the front yard last week. The forester said they were fifty or sixty years old, though they could’ve passed for a hundred to the unschooled eye. They’d died of old age. (A bad pruning job some decades back hadn’t done them any favors either.) Squirrels had stripped away the bark. The limbs had lost leaves. The roots were shallow, failing in every way. 

 I didn’t have the heart to watch them cut down, as they were good friends who’d brought much pleasure to my life. But when the stump grinder guy came along a couple of days later with his big yellow machine, I couldn’t help myself. I was all eyes. Man, that was some kind of rig! It had a whirling saw blade that must have been three feet in diameter, and it swung back and forth like the gate on a picket fence, shredding those ancient stumps into mulch.

 Planted a couple of young ash where the silver maples used to stand. They can’t ever replace those quaint old trees—nothing could do that—but it’s a comforting feeling looking out the window again. Especially when you’re glancing up from the keyboard. Or the pages of a good book.

To blog or not to blog...

Just got this contraption up and running, and figured maybe I should kick the tires and check the oil before I take it out on the road. So let's call it a journal for now. If it aspires to bloghood, we'll send it back to the shop and have it refitted.