I Search, I Find

It is dark. The sun is shining bright, but it is dark. The warmth of the sun is joyous on this cool day, but the darkness has reached my soul.

I remember the times we spent on the river, the wind blowing in our faces as we raced to check our next “trotline.” Paul would be at the helm, his cap turned backwards, singing, “I’m the leader of the clan. I’m an alligator man.” Paul loves the river. He may love the river more than all other things.

We are at the river now but things are different.

Living in the middle of the woods with a good woman and no one else around was a dream he had. He could turn his dogs loose and listen to the sounds of the forest, at peace with the world.

The first marriage was not good for Paul. He had rushed into the partnership with dire results. Fussing, running around places they shouldn’t go, doing things that shouldn’t be done if a marriage is to last. He ran and ran. Alcohol, drugs, dealing, the law. He ran until there was no place to run. Divorce, probation, seeking, searching, never finding.

We are searching the river now. This is the third day of the search. Who knows what we will find.

Being together, riding the back roads, somewhere, sometime, some life, we were connected. Communication soul to soul, that is what it’s like, my being with him.

Divorced together, we chased women together. Who’s next? For me, getting a date was an effort. When we went to a joint, women tried to pick Paul up. One after the other, women were there for him. Finally he found a lady that seemed to fulfill him.

Marriage, work, rebuilding a life, time passed. The river was always there.

Fishing the river, a person needs a flat bottom john boat to jump logs in back water and a motor strong enough to move the boat against the current when the river is up. The fancy fiberglass bass boats won’t work. Bass boats cannot be maneuvered in flooded woods. When you hit a log with a fiberglass boat, it cracks. For Paul, the ultimate is 14-foot john boat with a 20-horsepower outboard motor.

Children growing up, work here, work there, needing money, Paul took positions of responsibility he refused in the past. He always wanted to be able to quit work and go fishing whenever he felt like it. But he enjoyed the things money could bring: long trips, special places, maybe even a bass boat.

Faithful Light

Faithful Light

As the road passes below my feet,

The light grows.

Growing brighter and brighter,

My burdens become easier and easier.

The fullness of time passes through grace,

And I feel the warmth upon my skin.

Float with the faith found in the Eternal,

And rest in the hands of soft security.

I am!

And it washes over me.

Washes through the aging tissue;

Into the bone.

I see!

The aura of being is before me,

And I rejoice.

As I surrender,

I am strengthened and fulfilled.

By: Kent Lambert

March 6, 2007

Mistake continued 12

The summers came and went. The economy grew. Every body had bigger, fancier possessions. It got harder and harder to find a car without air conditioning. The boys were growing. As sometimes happens, trouble came and there was a divorce. I moved away from the small town. Still not using air conditioning even in the cars I owned.

When I moved, I started working for myself. As I needed workers, I would hire people for that job and then move on. On one job I hired two men to help, and told them when and where to meet me. It was in the heat of summer and outside, so I put on my medium weight shirt and a hat to go to work. When they came up, they were wearing short pants and a tank 
top. As we went to work they pulled off their tops. After a few hours work we took a break. We went to a small store a few blocks away. They wanted to go in one of their trucks because mine did not have air conditioning and theirs did. I rode with them. I nearly froze to death with the wet shirt in air conditioning. After I got my snack, I had to wait for them outside because I was so cold.

The seasons kept changing. I was getting older. Then it happened! I made that drastic mistake. It was late July and I had been working hard for long hours. After all the great experiences in and because of the heat, I did it anyway. Oh (alas?), I turned on the air conditioning. The rationalization about not using air conditioning was because deep down inside of me; I knew what would happen. I don’t want to go outside! I want to be cool! Driving down the road on a nice day in the spring or fall, I have the windows up and the air conditioning on! I make sure everywhere I go is air conditioned! MY LIFE IS ORGANIZED AROUND AIR CONDITIONING! What have I done? What have I done?

Mistake continued 11

After my children got old enough, I took them camping every summer. Remembering my childhood, I tried to go to a place that was on a creek or river, preferably on a creek close to the mouth where it ran into the river. We would go swimming and fishing. I didn’t take a gun along. I thought it would be too dangerous with children around.

We would stay out three or four days with a piece of plastic instead of a tent. Using a 16 by 20 foot sheet of the heavy, flexible plastic that is used in construction, we would pull a length of rope between two trees as tight as we could. Then laying the plastic sheet across the rope we would use baling line tied around rocks wrapped in the edge of the plastic with 60 penny nails for stakes. Making sure the lines between the plastic and nails were long along the back, we would make a lean-to. We would also make sure that if it rained the water would drain in the right direction. With the ends open and one side of the plastic only one half way to the ground, we went through some very bad weather without getting wet or our shelter blowing away. The long peg lines on the side that went to the ground allowed that side to rise up and let the wind go under it.

When I first started taking the family on these trips, there were numerous places to go camping. As people started organizing into hunting clubs and leasing land it got harder and harder to find a place to camp until it was almost impossible.

Mistake continued 10

The next summer I got married. We had our first child, 18 months later our second child, then a year after that our third boy was born. Trying to start a family that fast. Having jobs that paid almost nothing and the third child’s birth not covered by insurance because of changing jobs, we were in a financial bind. My father-in-law had an old house on his land. He offered to let us stay there until we could get financially stable again. We accepted and moved in. The house was of the style that some people call a “dog trot house”. To enter a person had to walk up the wooden front steps to a large front porch that was about three feet off the ground. Then they would walk into the open hallway. On either side of the hallway was a door into a room that was sealed (an inner wall). To the back of each of these rooms was another room that was not sealed and had shutters instead of glass paned windows. If, instead, they walked on down the open hall they would come to a place where the hall had been extended without walls and a back porch added that had a well for “drawing” water. The hall extension connected the kitchen with the rest of the house. The hall and back porch had been added when the cook started using a gas instead of a wood stove. While using wood to cook it was not uncommon for the kitchen to catch on fire so it had been built separate from the rest of the house. Summing up, we had electricity, but no running water and only two rooms were sealed.

In the summertime the house was reasonably comfortable. The rooms had either 12 or 14 foot ceilings. The unsealed rooms and open hall way allowed air to circulate. It was cooler than most houses I had lived in. Then came winter; the house was cold and with the air circulating there was no warming it. The next spring we were financially okay, so I sealed the house, closed up the hall way and put a pump in the well so we could have running water. That meant that we could have an indoor toilet!

As long as we had a bucket in the well, several people in the area came to our home get their drinking water. We had the best water anywhere close. After the pump and the water running through pipes, it had an ugly taste. Also, when that summer arrived, the house was hot with the rooms sealed and the hallway closed. Then came winter and we couldn’t get the house warm still couldn't get the house warm. I built a new house as soon as possible.

Having three young boys the new house was built to withstand them. The boys had trouble withstanding the house. All the walls inside and out were made of block, so when the boys in their play abused the house, it did not give; the boys gave instead. Gashed scalps, bruised arms and legs were common.

In building the house I decided to have central heat, but no air conditioning. My rationale was that we had never had air conditioning before and by not using the energy we would not be polluting this earth as much or contributing as to our capitalist imperialism. Right or wrong that was my thinking about at it at the time. Today, I understand that hidden deep down inside of me I knew.

This house is considerably older than the one we lived in but it is an example the dog trot house:

http://www.grandgulfpark.state.ms.us/DogTrotHouse.html

Mistake continued 9

At work one day, I didn’t have enough money for a “coke” and a young black man offer me a swallow from the one he was drinking. In a split second a lot went through my mind. First the tale I was told by the new kid in class when I was in the seventh grade. It was about his older brother and he told it in a bragging sort of way. The new boy said that his brother had been riding in a friend’s car on the passenger side when he saw a “n-----“ standing close to the street. His brother had leaned out as they passed the “n-----“ and caught him with his fist on the jaw. The boy said that it had broken his jaw. He went on to say in a teaching sort of way that you had to be careful when you did something like that because it might be a blue gum “n-----“. “If a blue gum “n-----“‘s blood got mixed with yours, it will kill you.” he told me. For several months after that story I went around trying to tell the difference. Also, I wondered if I should take this offered drink? I remembered everything else I had learned at school about people different from us was wrong, so I took the drink.

Mistake continued 8

          My first summer after graduating from high school I got a job with a company that built road beds (subsoil) to be paved. The job was “running blue tops”. After the roadway had been cleared of brush and trees, clay would be brought in to help build the road. Then a surveyor would check the lay of the road bed and set stakes in the ground that we used as a guide to cut the road to the right level and angle with a motor grader. The top of the stakes were painted blue, so they were called blue tops. We ran when the clay that was cut from the subsoil was being pushed over the blue tops. Marking each blue topped stake was a piece of board stuck in the ground beside it. We had to pull the rough stake out of the ground so the dirt could be push over the top of the blue top. Then we had to find and uncover the surveyors stake; marking it again with the rough stake. After that, we would have to run ahead and be ready to do the same for the next blue top.

We started work at day break and worked until what the boss called “dark thirty.” When we got there in the mornings we ran until the day started to heat up. My shirt would get wet with sweat immediately and even when we quit running it would stay wet because the sun would be up and hot. Someone brought a thermometer one day and it reached 126 degrees working amid all the heavy equipment. As the day started to cool we went back to the work that was part running, so I was still wet. At the end of the day when it was turning dark and most of the crew had left, we would have to start shoveling sand. It would be dark before we left the job site; dark thirty.

The four of us that worked together had a three gallon water cooler. In the morning we put a block of ice into it and filled it with water. Crushed ice would not last until night. Through the day we would refill the cooler two more times. At the end of the day the block of ice would be melted and the water if not completely gone would be almost gone. Four of us would drink a three gallon cooler dry three times a day. Of course part of the time it had ice in it.

The first day of work on the road crew taught me why the old farmers at the country stores wore long sleeved khaki shirts. I had worn a short sleeved, light weight shirt. From my shirt sleeves down my arms were cooked. My upper arms and back had bad sun burn through the shirt. If I had worn a long sleeved, medium weight shirt, I would have been protected from the sun. Also, I would have stayed cooler because the heavier material would have held more sweat longer. I had worn a hat so my face and neck were protected somewhat.

Sleep? Four of us had rented a large upstairs room with a window fan. Upstairs, no air conditioning, the fan moving hot humid air, my skin running a fever from the bad burn; was I exceedingly uncomfortable. But I went to sleep immediately and slept soundly through the night because I was exhausted.

Mistake continued 7

As I mentioned when talking about racial integration, sometimes I would accompany my father on his job when I was out of school. He was a “meat salesman”. He wholesaled meat to country and small town stores. At a lot of these country stores there would be a gray haired old man, sometimes three or four, hanging around. I figured that they were retired farmers and were there to socialize. One thing seemed odd to me; they all wore long sleeve khaki shirts. As I stated earlier, I would wear short pants in the summer. If I could get away with it, I would not wear a shirt. Here were these old men wearing medium weight long sleeve shirts and it was very hot.

Sometime I would stay in the truck while father would go inside a store. Having no air conditioning I would have the windows down with my arm out the window. My elbow would be bent and my hand was back inside the truck. I always made sure that my upper arm was touching the truck so that my muscles would flatten and I hoped they would look bigger. One day the truck was parked in an area behind and between several stores. The streets were paved, but this area was not. It was hot and dusty. I had my arm out and someone walked by and looked at me. I thought they must have seen what looked like big muscles. Then a whole new reality came to me. It seemed that I was alive to be tested and everyone, including my mother and father, were observing me, seeing how I was acting and reacting. That lasted a few moments and then my rational mind took over. I was back in the reality I had lived in so far in my life. When I wasn't distracted by other things, I found I could go back into the mind frame of being tested. So I played with that off and on that summer. Then I realized where the idea of being watched had come from. At church I had been taught that God put us here and if we were good we would go to heaven. If we didn’t measure up then we went to hell. After that realization I never went back into that reality. Today it is my understanding that seeing things from that point of view is paranoia. I know nothing of psychology so I am not sure. This took place while I was in my early teens.

Mistake continued 6

Let me tell you something about loafing in the heat of summer. After playing with friends in the high temperatures and having only water to drink, one might say something about getting a “coke” because he was thirsty. Every carbonated drink was a coke to us. I would make sure I had a nickel so I could buy one and we would go to the store. Someone would say, “What kind are you getting?” Another was likely to reply, “An Orange Crush.” I would usually get a Mr. Cola or a Double Cola because I could get about twice as much drink. Sometimes I would get an RC or Coca Cola, because I really liked them best.

Always in August and sometimes starting in July, we would have afternoon thundershowers. It would come with the accumulation of the clouds and start with thunder. Sometimes when the thunder stopped I would get out in the rain and cool down. I especially liked riding my bicycle in the rain. If it came too early in the afternoon and stopped before time for the temperature to start dropping, it would be so muggy and uncomfortable. But if the rain continued the late afternoon and early night would be a lot cooler (afternoon and evening were the same for us).

I had one sibling; an older sister. She eloped when I was ten. They, her and her husband, stayed around town for about a year and then move to Beaumont, Texas. She became pregnant soon after the move and then I was an uncle. Once when we went to visit, she was telling about her doctor; he lived in an air conditioned house, drove an air conditioned car, and worked in an air conditioned office. He lived in an air conditioned world! It seemed as if it would be living in a dream to me. I had been in air conditioning in stores and offices, but to live in air conditioning, oh my gosh!

Mistake continued 5

When Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was racially integrated, I was twelve years old. The talk on our campus was that the black kids in our town had a newer school building that looked a lot better from the outside and offered a broader curriculum. Why did they want to go to school with us? The kids (including me) were ranting and raving. When I got a chance I asked a black lady why they wanted to go to school with us. She told me that they didn’t want to go to school with us anymore than we wanted to go to school with them.

At home, I was repeating the things I had heard at school. My father told me about a black school that he passed every week. When it rained, what little playground they had was a mud hole. In the winter when the children should be in class, some would be walking down the road gathering fire wood for the wood heater. They had no other way to heat the school and no one supplied the school with wood. That summer while helping my father with his job he showed me the school house. It was a small, run down clap board building with one or two rooms. I realized how wrong I had been. The kids at my school were right in one way; the school building that the black students used looked better and the curriculum may have been better, but the black children had to pay a price. The black kids were bused from all over the county to the one school while the white kids had four schools scattered over the county. I don’t know for sure, but the county must have spent about three times as much for the white kids as they did for the black kids.

Mistake continued 4

Thinking of those times, when it came to hard work in the hot Mississippi summers there was no racial segregation. There were blacks, whites and an occasional Native American or Latino. It was alright for us to work together, but the black kids couldn’t go to the same school that we did. Whoever was in the position to say, reluctantly said that it was okay for the Native Americans and Latinos to go to school with us. It was probably hard for any student that looked a little different.

A couple of my work friends played football for the black school. While in middle and high school, I played football for the white school. Both schools used the same field to play their games on. When my friends from work came to watch me play, they stayed behind the goal posts away form any contact with white people. When I went to see them play, I stayed behind the goal posts… same field. It seems funny, maybe pitiful now but back then everybody stayed in what was supposed to be their place; white people lived around the down town area and the black people lived in the “Quarters”. That was the way things were done and it was accepted.

( I let a friend read this. He told me the scene I described about standing behind the goal posts was in the book “My Dog Skip”. I don't know because I never read the book. What I stated about the ball games was probably true throughout Mississippi. ) 

Heat and sweat: the first day of football practice when I was fifteen years old we had a physical examination by a doctor. Part of the exam was getting weighed. I weighed in at exactly 165 pounds. We were issued our equipment and went to the field for our first practice of the year. July and August are usually the two hottest months of the year and it was August. The workout lasted approximately 2 hours. When we returned to the locker room, I decided to weigh again, because I knew I had sweated a lot. This time I weighed 154 pounds. I had lost 11 pounds. I suppose it was all water. I stayed at 154 the rest of the season. The games on Friday nights were fun, but it was barely worth it because of the practices.

We were not allowed any drinking water during practice. Over the school years I saw several guys fall out. I fell out when I was 14. As I stated earlier; I am rebellious. One time during practice to “get over” on the coach, I drank water from a mud hole while he was not looking. The water was clear, but it had “wigglers” in it. Wigglers are mosquito larva.

Mistake continued 3

During this time in my life my father had made arrangements with the owners of a small trucking line for me to start working for them part time. The family that owned the trucking line was friends with my family. They made sure that I would not be put in a position of work that I could not do. I was young, the work was hard and the sun was hot. I started with them by loading green cross ties. After I was grown I found out it was against the law for me at thirteen years old to be doing work of that sort. They took care of me. Later I loaded and unloaded other things for them; slag, lime, drilling mud, etc.

The saw mills, or at least the tie mills, were different in this area from what they are today. Compared with my youth the mills are large and the raw materials are trucked long distances. When I was young, the tie mills were small and the wood was trucked short distances until there was no longer wood close enough and then the mill would be taken down and moved. There were no fork lifts at these small mills, so when the trucks to haul away the cross ties came to pick up a load we were with them to do the loading. The ties had to be thrown up and onto the beds of the trailers. The weight of the ties depended on the size they were cut and the type of wood they were made from. The lightest ties took two people to throw onto the trailers and the heaviest took four people. No matter what size, there were two people on the trailer stacking the ties. Of course it was dangerous, but no one got hurt except for a mashed finger or two when caught between the ties while stacking them.

Of course, I did this work mainly in the summers because I was in school the rest of the year and boy, was it was hot when we worked. At one mill the trailer had to be placed close to a pile of tailings that were being burned. Besides the heat of summer we had the heat from the fire to work in. When we pulled out from the mill the tail light covers on the trailer were melted. After work that hard for an hour or so with the temperatures that high, there is nothing as good as a cool drink of water. We have all types of fancy drinks now, but when I am that hot; cool, cool water is the best. When we were older the boss would buy us a beer if the work day was over. We thought the beer was as good as the water, but we were just young men trying to be “grown up”. Water is the best.

I hope I don’t have to work that hard again, but we had fun then. It was just a group of friends out making a little spending money having a good time. Most the time was spent traveling to and from the mills. Sometimes we would ride on the trailers. Going they would be empty. Headed home they would be loaded. We had a lot of fun. Oh, by the way, we each were paid $2 a load.

Mistake continued 2

When I was about twelve years old, I was allowed to go to the swimming hole with my friends. During the mornings I would do the work assigned for me to do in and around the house. The afternoons I would go to the creek for some relief from the heat and there play with my friends. Actually, we tried to get to the road that went to the creek by noon to catch a ride with some one going that way. We had about a mile to walk to get to the road and if we got there after one pm we would usually would have to walk another two miles to the creek. Often if we missed a ride we wouldn’t go.

The water in this creek was colder than the other creeks around because it was narrower with large trees all along the banks keeping the sunshine from the water. As hot as the days were when we jumped into the water it was shock to our bodies. We adjusted to the cold water quickly by jumping. Wading in was tough.

Even though this creek was smaller than the other creeks, it had a small deep hole in which we could swim and play. The reason the hole was there was that sometime in what was for me was the distant past a small electric generating plant had been built there. That is what I was told. There were signs in the soap stone where heavy timbers had been anchored. The swimming hole was known as “The Light Plant”.

Having soap stone in the creek, there was a water fall. The water made a strait drop for three to four feet. In front of the falls there were always rocks that I would estimate being two to four feet in diameter. I would sit at the bottom and in front of the main water flow over the falls, put my feet on one of the large stones and lock my knees to brace myself against the current which was very strong. The water would be roiling all over and around my body. Because of the strong current I would be getting a complete body massage all at once with the addition of the tingling over all my skin caused by the air bubbles that had been taken into the water as it splashed over the falls. I have yet to find a whirl pool or Jacuzzi that would even begin to compare with that experience. Steamy hot Mississippi days, cold water and a massage, only through hindsight did I realize what a wonderful experience I was having.

The next summer I was allowed to stay the night at the creek if I was caught up with my work at home. One of my friends and I stayed two or three nights a week at the creek. We would take a couple of sandwiches for supper. If we took anything for breakfast it would be a couple of eggs, some bacon and bread. Cook the bacon. Use the bacon grease to cook the eggs. Put the eggs and bacon on the bread for a sandwich. It was a good breakfast and all that was needed was a skillet and a fork. An old sheet was all that I took for sleeping. Spread it on the ground and lay down. If I got a little chilled, I would pull the part of the sheet that I was not sleeping on over me. Lying on my back looking at all the stars, listening to the sounds of the night, it was joyful. Sleeping on the ground at my present age sound very uncomfortable. The water was cold when we got there in the afternoons, but it was extra cold at six in the morning. I don’t think I would enjoy getting in that cold water first thing in the morning now either.

It was not unusual for other friends to stay with us. There was one guy; I can’t remember his name that spent several summers in or around that small town. He was older. He had a driver’s license. One summer he showed up in an old Cadillac. It was six, seven, maybe eight years old. We were at the creek one night and it started raining. There were five or six of us there that night. We all ran for his Cadillac. That night we slept in his car. During another night he was telling us he wanted a convertible. We didn’t think much about it but the next time we saw him the top was gone. He had taken a hack saw and cold chisel and cut the top off his car. All things considered it looked pretty good, but there was no converting to it.

"Mistake" Continued

About April or May, I would start “going barefoot”. The weather was warm and sometimes hot by then and having no shoes on helped us to stay a little cooler and I have always enjoyed the feel of different textures on the soles of my feet. Once I started, I wore shoes only on special occasions. The bottoms of my feet would get so calloused that I could run on gravel and not get bruised.

Early one summer (I thought summer started around the end of April because of the heat) a friend and I decided to walk the railroad tracks to a small creek. At that time a creek that small we called a branch. We had already started “going barefoot” but our feet weren’t as tough as they would get later in the summer. In walking railroad tracks there are two surfaces that are reasonable to walk on. One surface is the cross ties that the rails are on. The other is the rock that is between the cross ties. Being barefoot and our feet not calloused, we walked on the creosoted cross ties. We had a nice walk to the creek and enjoyed our stay there, but by the time we made it back to the house the soles of our feet were burning. We had chemical burns the soles of our feet from walking on the creosote. I have had my skin burned by the sun many times in my life, but that is the only time the soles of my feet have been burned.

We didn’t start school until sometime in the middle of September and we got out sometime in April through the fourth or fifth grade. We went only eight months out of the year so the children could help their parents with the farm crops. For the first and last part of the school year we were allowed to attend school “barefoot”. It was nice feeling the dusty ground and grass with the soles of my feet as we ran around the play ground.

OH!!.... (MAYBE IT SHOULD BE ALAS), I MADE A MISTAKE

             Several years ago I made a mistake. Not that I don’t make mistakes, I make them every day. This one was different.

             Let me give a little back ground. I was reared in a small town in hot Mississippi. My father would leave for work every morning at six am. and return sometime from six to eight pm. With him leaving so early bed time was nine pm. Mother would wake my sister and myself when my father left. My bedroom and my sister’s were on the north side of the house.

            In the summers I would be outside most of the day playing, paying no attention to the heat. There were times I would lay down at night and a cool breeze would be blowing through the windows. It felt so nice after being in the hot sun all day. We didn’t have air conditioning. Only doctors offices and some stores had air conditioning. The school dealt with the heat by opening the windows. The auditorium had ceiling fans.

Our house was the third house down from the “quarters.” The “quarters” was the area of town where black folks lived. About 100 to 125 yards from house was a “black” church. Because of the high temperature the windows and doors would be open during services. On Sunday nights in the summer when I lay down, music from the church would waft through my window with the cool breeze. It was delightful! To this day I like gospel music.

On Sunday mornings we went to church. In the summer, because of the heat, I didn’t have to wear a jacket, but I did have to wear a tie with the starched collar scratching and itching. When I was very young I wore short pants to church, but men didn’t wear short pants. By the time I was eight or nine, I no longer wore them. It didn’t take but a few years after I quit wearing shorts to realize that in the heat of summer it was nice to wear them whether I was six or sixty. I started wearing them again. I wasn’t the only one. A friend of mine also started wearing them. Boy… did we take a ragging for it, but I’ve always been stubborn and rebellious. The more I was teased the more determined I was to wear them; “I’ll show them.”

After church we would go home and have dinner. At that time where we lived breakfast was the morning meal, dinner was in the middle of the day and supper was in the late afternoon or early night. In 1953 we got our first television set. I noticed that people said they were going to dinner when it was night time in the TV programs. I asked my father why they were talking about dinner at that time of day. He told me he didn’t know, but it might be a meal after supper because it was always later at night when they would be going to dinner. Remember 9 pm was late night for us. Today in the South dinner is at night.

So much has changed in the South because of a feeling of being “not as good as” and that is not a good reason. Some things that have changed have been for the better, most do not matter, but we lost some good things along the way.

Introduction

This blog is for family, friends and anyone who may become interested. The experiences are as I remember them. My idea is writing about little slices of my life then write some concepts that have formed over the years; in other words “from my life and mind.” Hopefully the form I use will make it interesting.

The plan is to post at least once a week. If the writing gets easier maybe I can post more often. The second post, "Mistake", will continue to grow, so if it interests you check occasionally where you left off to see if I have added anything. It will be great if you leave comments. Anything that is incorrect, please let me know.

The pictures are probably not of the actual location that I am writing about, but seem to me to be representative. All pictures are mine and some were taken by me. They all have watermarks. If you are interested in anything posted, please feel free to contact me.