I didn’t like going places long before I couldn’t. My situation seems
ordained. I made walking sticks years before the accident. . . well, I was actually intending to make hiking sticks, but if I ended up having to shorten certain sticks because of defects in the wood, I finished them anyway, calling them walking sticks and saying, 'who knows. One day they may come in handy.' My
orthopedic surgeon was impressed with them. He spent more time looking at
my sticks than at my knee.
I was looking forward to the
weather clearing so I could take the dogs hiking, but it still hasn’t cleared
and now it’s moot. I wonder how the homeless people living on the river are dealing with
covid-19.
And, ever since I was a
little boy I liked the idea of having a “fort,” and built several. We
lived alongside a huge vacant lot and in those days forts had to be dug into
the ground, which I enjoyed doing. Neighborhood boys used to pelt us with
grass clods and we would pelt them back. After we moved, I built a fort
up in a tree out front. It was fairly well built. A friend and I used to go up there and make Japanese money. We’d cut up
blank paper into the size of money and then make Japanese-like scribbles on
it -- can't remember why, but I was probably 12 at the time. There was an oil-well next door and something attached to the top of
the oil-truck collided with my fort – which was stronger. The oil company
made me tear it down.
It was from inside another
fort, one I built out beside the garage to wait for the end of the world which
Dr. Clem Davies on the radio convinced my mother was going to happen on one
Saturday when I was 13. It was a good sturdy fort. It withstood
that particular Saturday quite well. After I went into the Marine Corps,
my stepfather tore it down. He said it was a lot harder to tear down than he
imagined.