Unearthing a life.....

And thank Gawd for that! Another post-chemo week survived. This one wasn't quite as hard as the first. I give Bookworm most of the credit for that. She made sure I got a prescription of Xanex to help me sleep through the nights. That made the days a tad easier.

Again, my thanks to all those who drove me, fed me, called me, entertained me, and sent me gifts of poetry on CD.

I do wish NoApology's parents would break away from the Oregon wine country and get back up here where they belong. I am missing them. And I know they are having a lot more fun than we are. El Gripo!

I got a call from a teen friend a couple days ago. I hadn't heard from him for about fifty-four years. We were cumshaw cowboys together (with my brother Neil) back 'tween 1948 and 1952. It must have taken three whole minutes before we were roaring with laughter over our two versions of our most indelible memory.

We were riding double (me behind the saddle) on Dick's spooky horse (a totally agitated beast). Four miles from home. Dick is seized with the need to pee and dismounts and proceeds to relieve himself with his back to the horse and me. I figure this is a good opportunity to sidle back away from the rear of the saddle and get some blood coursing through my legs again. But I still have a couple wraps of the saddle strings around my hands. I scootch back anyway.

Then Dick takes it into his head to flash an arc of urine over towards the horse. The horse went straight up and I went even upper. Also attached to my flight path by the saddle strings which I was madly shaking off. In my version of the tale, I then (from the heights) did a quarter-roll forward caught a fistful of gravity and landed on my face in a small greasewood bush ... with thorns.

Dick's version has me scootched back on the horse's butt and sitting crosslegged. According to him, I reached a height of roughly twelve feet in that crosslegged position and then came down into a three-point landing on forehead and knees.

Dick picked the greasewood spines out of my face and we walked the four miles back to Smyrna before we got his ignoble steed trapped in a fence corner.

There were other tales recalled and laughter rolled and agreements made to meet later this summer. Hell, he's been living just up the road at Sequim for the past ten years.