The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

I just read: “Growing older is mandatory.”

It seems to me that someone who said or wrote something like that is still too young. At my age, there isn’t much time to spare for someone younger who says something about someone older.

Let’s instead of talking about old age instead get down to brass tacks: “Memory.” Growing older may or not be someway faintly connected to memory. I’d know more if I could remember more.

Here’s one of my typical days. After breakfast–(I cannot remember what I had.) I walked out the door, headed for the shed where the lawn mower is parked. (Wait. I have an interesting side story, which has nothing to do with “older” or “memory.” It’s just cute. We were over to the Amish neighbors. Driving up the long driveway, we saw a small somewhat cute horse tied in the ditch. It was chomping away at the grass. One could see where it had been tethered the day before, by the pile of horse poop and the chewed-down grass.

We drove up the long driveway, and in talking to Mr. Amish Guy, this small Shetland-ish grass chomper tied back there on the driveway came up. He said: “It’s a one-horspower mower, you know.”

Ah. More and more, as more and more of them move in around us, I’m finding that they have a good sense of humor.

So, as I’m walking out the door, I see some cardboard boxes on the step. I grab them, to cut them up, for recycle. To really really cut cardboard, one needs a very sharp box cutter. There’s one in the garage, on a work bench that was last cleaned in the past century. (Give me a break. That’s only 24 years. )

I head for the garage, and notice an empty detergent container that the wind has blown off the work table, which is a stainless steel table that serves as a wash-bench for this and that. I grab the plastic detergent container, notice that it’s a “6”, so it’s recycle-able, I grab it up. 

Then I see that there’s a nice save-able bit of carpet that I wanted to suds up and clean for a mat in the car, which is why the detergent bottle was, you know, there.

I put down the container, enter the garage looking for a heavy brush with which to scrub the stains out of the carpet. There’s one in there. Maybe camouflaged in the stuff on the work bench.

Oh. There’s the battery maintainer that I was going to put on the car, but the extension cord wasn’t long enough. There’s a bunch of extension cords up in here on a shelf somewhere. I can see them in my mind, and I know they’re right……over……there, in the corner.

I grab the stepladder, an older wooden one that I got last week at a garage sale for a couple of bucks, but then, you know, one cannot have too many stepladders. The second step falls out of the ladder, because I got it so cheap that way, and all it needs is a long reinforcing wire, which I can make out of some number-9 wire that is out in Shed 3,  behind door number 14. (Yes, to stay organized, I have painted numbers on all the shed doors. Everyone should, you know.)

That wire, in that other shed, is difficult to cut with a hand wire cutter. I need a big fencing pliers, which are in shed number 2. I head over there, past the pile of split firewood we’re working on. By the pile of firewood is the chainsaw that I left there, when I put the splitter away in Shed 1. Well, I think to myself, that’s not a good thing for me to have done, so I grab the saw.

Boy, the chain is really loose. Better tighten that up before I have to use it again. Shed 1 has my chainsaw stuff, I head over there. I scrape left and right on that work bench to make room to hoist the saw up there.

And there’s the lawnmower blade that I meant to sharpen and put back on the mower.

Oh. S. calls me. It’s lunch time.

You say you want to know how retirement is?

Better ask someone else.