Monthly Archives: August 2015

Watching paint dry, Winnemucca, 1985…

P1130305Thirty years ago, in the early days of Radar Ranch [http://radarranch.com/], the Winnemucca radio would give the weather three times a day by calling up the airport and having their meteorologist recite it over the phone in his jiminy Cricket voice.  At noon it was right before the Farm and Ranch Report, which I still remember fondly.  Anyone could call up the airport and get the weather; “What do ya want to use it for?” jiminy Cricket would ask, and I’d tell him I was 4000′ above him, looking down into a cloud needing to know what was going on underneath it or some such.  One summer noon he announced the weather would be “about as inneresting as watchin’ paint dry”, first time I ever heard that expression, which coincided exactly with what I was doing, 4000′ above him under hot blue cloudless skies.

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I still wait for paint to dry but now, instead of watching, I’m patching…

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…while outside life goes on, in sunshine, shadows, and wet, and sometimes all that’s on offer are rainbows.  It’s a bitch; you shoulda been here an hour ago, etc…

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Meanwhile Linda takes Baby Time in payment for use of the laundry, never enough; laundry longa, baby brevis.

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…the nights grow longer, well, slowly;

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Some blue day later we even got around to the annual Running of the Truck, though putting Trigger brakelessly in gear seemed too sketchy with that new vehicle vulnerable down the hill…

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A visit was paid to Christine in the dome to see her summer efforts, diagrammatic visions of subdivisions burnt in those Colorado Springs fires a few years back to complement her contemporaneous video of the ravaged forests surrounding them;

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Soon the time of departures was upon us, the New Yorkers and their exotic drinks disappearing;  John gone before dawn just ahead of the airless air blowing in from the Burning West;

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In anticipation of summer’s end we set to measuring and sorting the work which will move to Wall Spring as the Burners recede after Labor Day…

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This was all accomplished Friday on a trip into Walsenburg [views, above as well as below], looping back via La Veta where deer also lurked, lunch in the reanimated Ryus Avenue Bakery was grand and Linda picked up a long-lost little sculpture prior to moving on to last days of Izel…

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Sunday morning found us all in the dome acting like grandparents as Luz and Christine [pictured on the wall in the pictures below] overloaded their New York car with possessions, pitbull and multi-toed feline:

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…only to disappear into the apocalyptic murk towards Topeka.

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Things beginning to quiet down around here we fear…

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