“Bad Moon Risin'”

Psychedelic Tangerine Dreams

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

I’ve awoke with a start.  Another one of those dreams that I usually reserve for nights after too many Margaritas and seafood tacos.  I can’t tell you the last time I had a Margarita…or a seafood taco.  It wasn’t last night. 

This dream was too vivid, and it wasn’t the first one. Good news, it wasn’t a nightmare…maybe.

There was once an old man who walked the two-lane road in front of my house.  My dream included him.  His name was Bap.  My guess…Bap was a nickname.  Being young I referred to him as Mr. Wolfe.  After rubbing the sleep from my eyes I remembered what the old folks said about Bap, “He ain’t right in the head.” Maybe I’m not either.

Dressed in bib overalls and a dusty, sweat-stained fedora, he would walk until approached by a car.  As the car drew near, he would recoil, clearly fearing the car might suddenly lose control and run him down.  His eyes were dark and brooding, boring into the driver as if Bap could somehow create a visual barrier that might protect him from being squashed flat like an unlucky possum.  His head followed the movement of the car until it was well past. Thankfully there were few cars during those days but I don’t think Bap had much to do anyway.

There were stories told around campfires by preteen boys that claimed Bap had been kidnapped by nefarious teenagers up to no good, taken on a wild ride in someone’s jalopy and let out far from home.  Somehow this had translated into a fear of cars instead of a fear of nefarious teenagers.

When I asked my father about him my dad simply replied, “Ole Bab is just a quare bird.  Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”  I guess he was, I remember him only as a reluctant and fearful walker and no threat to society. 

I dreamt about him last night.  Bap, not my father.  I’ve had a series of dreams that, while none are exactly the same, my series follows the same theme.  I’m lost and as the dream progresses, I get more lost and quite anxious about it.

Last night was the sixth in the series since the beginning of this month, a variation on a theme once or twice a week. Having reoccurring dreams is not new to me but I feel something is amiss, I’m a bubble off plumb. More so than usual I should say.

Why am I dreaming in psychedelic tangerine and blue paisley?  Why am I having a dream that includes a man long dead, a man I haven’t thought about in decades? Why am I having dreams that include unicorns and oiled up body builders hitting a bell with sledge hammers.

In the dream I can see my destination clearly in the distance even though I don’t really know what my destination is.  I just know it is there. I’m on a high hill under a haze filled sky with a brightly lit city spread out below.  I see my destination but  somehow, I get lost.  I see it again and again from different vantage points. 

I see it over and over and over and over again its location changes and I’m further away.  Short cuts avail themselves, but they turn into lengthy long cuts as I find myself in mazes that include textile mills, construction sites, athletic complexes, even a cruise ship. 

I find myself in dimly lit corridors or brightly lit shopping malls.  In one I open a door to a disco lounge complete with shiny disco ball, swirling women in dresses made of ethereal fabrics, and John Travolta in his white suit.  At least the Bee Gees aren’t singing in the background, “Staying alive, staying alive, oh, oh, oh….” Instead I hear Jimmy Buffett singing, “My whole life lies waiting behind door number three.” Great, Monty Hall may be in my next dream.

I open doors and am led further from my destination or to rooms with no exits.  In one, Bap stands against the wall staring at me with the look he reserved for cars, no white suit just bib overalls, a dark stare above a mouth formed into an “O”. 

All along the way there are people, in many places there is a crush of bodies.  People from my far past like Bap or people from my near past.  Friends long dead, others quite alive.  Family members galore. Folks I haven’t spoken to in decades and others I talked to yesterday including the little blond runner with the bouncing ponytail.  No rhyme or reason in psychedelic colors.

If I were an electrical media device, I’d attempt a hard reset.  For some reason an engine seems more appropriate. I think my timing gear is off and I might be missing on a couple of cylinders. I’m in need of a tune up, BIGGLY!

Despite so much color in the dream I have awakened feeling like a threadbare cotton tee shirt, its logo faded from view.

I awake and remember the dreams vividly…and the colors I dream in.  The colors are psychedelic. Tangerine and pink acrylics in a swirling paisley and that’s just the unicorns walking around an azure blue lake in the middle of a football field.  Did someone sneak LSD into the corn salad I made for myself last night? The oiled up body builders beating the bell with sledge hammers? Turns out my alarm was going off. I don’t know why the resemble Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

I don’t know what the dreams mean…do they mean anything?  I’ve always believed dreams to be the discharge of random, unneeded data…a cleansing of unneeded (unwanted?) memories.  Freud and Jung would disagree, I guess.   

Most of my dreams fade over time. Not this one. The tangerine is still quite bright. 

I should be happy.  They are not nightmares…at least not yet.  My concern is probably much to do about nothing and I am actually looking forward to meeting up with people I haven’t seen in a while…even in a dream.  I should take the stance that you really can’t be lost if you don’t have any idea where you are going anyway. Maybe I should go ahead and have a spicy fish taco and a tequila drink…or three. Who knows how lost I might get or who I might meet up with.

Door Number Three sung by Jimmy Buffett on the album AIA.

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR02mav138M8WD5XAa0evj0FzgjRW4oesksttngRRqYeqHwSRc-6AoUmN4Q

A FLOOD OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

Excerpt fromThrough the Front Gate.  With the drowning we are receiving from Hurricane Florence, I thought about a flood and the weather “bullets” we have dodged here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge.  Enjoy.

We are fifteen feet or more above the closest water, a shallow stream, but we are drowning.  I had an idea how the victims of sinking ships felt as they fought their way to the upper decks, in the dark as a river of water hit them in the face.  According to legend, a ragtime band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as the Titanic went to her watery grave taking some fifteen hundred passengers and crew with her.  The good news is that there were only two of us drowning.  The bad?  Linda Gail was singing hymns and one could have been “Nearer My God to Thee.”  (Actually, the band probably played “Autumn” but that doesn’t fit my story does it?)

Over our thirty years living at “Hemlock Hills” we’ve lived through bad weather and managed to dodge a few bullets…or tornadoes.  Not long after we moved in a twister took down a huge pecan tree which in turn took down several black walnuts along with the power to the house.  I had noted how green the clouds were and how calm, yet oppressive the air felt right before Linda Gail and I, along with three terrified puppies, made for the “perceived” safety of our hallway.

The pecan landed close enough to the house that we just stood outside shaking our heads in disbelief.  A few days later an ancient black walnut weakened by the storm fell into Highway 11 taking our power again before blocking the highway for several hours.  We sold the downed trees for the cost of removal to a self-employed contractor friend who, a couple of years later, sold them back to us in the form of flooring, cabinets, and countertops when he was hired to renovate.  Funny, I remember paying a lot more for the wood we got back than he paid for the trees originally.

Speaking of renovations, the day before ours was to begin we had a particularly violent thunderstorm that seemed to send lightning bolts bouncing off of our metal roof but never knocked off our power.  After a power outage, I always had to go prime our old pump.  I couldn’t understand why we had no water and remember repeating a silent prayer, “Lord please don’t let it be a lightning strike” over and over again as I made my way into the woods.  Sometimes you get exactly what you ask for.  The stream that fed our cistern came out of the ground from under a huge oak tree before being captured in a brick cistern.  A tornado twisted the old oak into kindling but not before landing it on top of our pump house and cistern, crushing them both.  Renovations were delayed for two weeks as we drilled a new well…one a bit closer to the house that never needs priming.

A third tornado hit us in 2012 and again we sorta dodged a bullet.  I went out to get my bike off of my car and noticed how still and tropical the air was along with the green-tinted clouds, “Deja vu” again.  I heard the sound of a freight train coming over the mountain behind us and ran for cover.  The wind portion of the storm was over in about thirty seconds although it rained for several hours.  We had dozens of trees down in the ravine behind us but only two were in the yard and only one had hit anything important, an outer building opened up like a tin can.  Luckily most of the contents were unhurt but Linda Gail was again singing hymns.  We didn’t even know we had been hit until the next morning when our puppies began to bring trash in from a flattened trash can.  My neighbor and nearby Lookup Lodge were hit much harder.

As scary as those tornadoes were, they were not as scary as the Great Flood of 2001.  This summer day was like any other summer day; hot, humid with air so heavy it seemed to envelop you like a wet, wool blanket.  In the nineties, both the temperature and humidity, it was the day that we were having our roof replaced.  The old metal shingles were in bad shape and we were replacing them to match the green metal sheets on the newer addition.  Big mistake.

The “good old boy” crew hired to do the job did not get finished…probably too many water breaks but that is unfair.  Before leaving for the day, they covered the open part of the roof with tarps assuring us they would be back first thing in the morning not knowing that first thing in the morning would be about one A.M. and also not knowing we were about to get six inches of thunderstorm driven rain in FIFTEEN MINUTES!  I hope it was the storm of the century because if it was not….

We learned the difference between “water proof” and “water resistant” that night but in all fairness to “water resistant,” I don’t think “water proof” could have withstood enough water to fill a swimming pool dumped on top of your house all at once.  I was also reminded how cool “under fire” Linda Gail is…despite singing “Shall We Gather at the River” or “Showers of Blessing.”  I remember dropping the “ladder” that leads to the attic and getting a face full of wind-driven rainwater for my trouble.  Over the course of the next “lifetime”, we yelled at each other angrily, cried, and alternately cursed then prayed.  Somehow we got the attic contents moved to the dry side of the attic and tarps down over the floor.  All the while Linda Gail sang hymns while looking like a drowned rat.

Her hymn singing and praying must have worked because as I look back into the fog of time, the damage was minimal.  Insulation gets really yucky when it gets wet and has to be removed, the wall paper in Ashley’s upstairs bedroom had to be redone in places and there are still water stains on the old parlor walls underneath.  We call it character.

I’m sure the old blown insulation washed to the bottom of the exterior walls.  The “good old” boys from Pickens rushed back and by two AM had “waterproof” tarps in place that they had purchased from an all-night Walmart.  I smile at the memory of my wife, mad as a “wet hen” at the “boys” one moment, full of concern and fear the next, as they battled high winds, lightning, and thunder, in the dark and on a metal roof while getting the new tarps into place.  I also smile at the “hang dog” looks and repeated apologies from the “good old” boys from Pickens.

I am experiencing this “flood” of memories because we are having a heavy late afternoon thunderstorm.  The last time I went outside I knew we were primed to get one.  Hot and humid with the air full of mosquitos, the only question was when not if.

Our “weather dog,” Tilly, is letting us know a storm is eminent.  Lightning is crackling, thunder booming and a puppy dog shivering as Linda Gail sings to her.  No hymn this time, it’s more along the lines of “Hush Little Puppy Don’t You Cry.”  We have dodged a bullet again.  No high winds or hail, just copious amounts of rain.  I see I have to clean out a gutter tomorrow morning.  I am happy not to be embracing Linda Gail while saying “You know It could have been much worse.”

For more musings please go to Don Miller’s author’s page  https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Through the Front Gate

The image came from http://www.mdpparish.com/2014/09/stem-cell-issue-throws-cold-water-on-ice-bucket-challenge/ who probably got it from somewhere else.