Target Quip

Sorry, my private language. The Target of Evil is the woodshed roof, un-insulated galvy metal, and the acorns really do sound like gunshots. Not getting a lot of sleep. Up in time to wash my hair, shave, and still get to town early enough to slip over to Kentucky and buy some tobacco. On my ride down the creek, the first Pileated Woodpecker of the next season (I don't know where they go in summer, Aruba?) which actually hadn't started yet, but close. Half-way down the creek there's a several generational enclave, a couple of cabins, a couple of trailers, a big wood-pile because they sell firewood. They have a kitchen garden up on their high ground, but they also have a narrow strip of bottom land, down hard against the road. In places the bottom is non-existent, just a creek and hills, a winding road. They always plant the bottom in potatoes, a lot of potatoes, five or six 75 foot rows (that's hundreds of pounds of potatoes) and they had finished harvesting, but the weeds had grown like lightning, so they had to mow it (yesterday) and then, this morning when I drove by, I saw something I had never seen before. They were plowing the field, using an old usually mule drawn plow, a single-bottom turning plow; I've used one of these and they are not easy to operate. You've got a hand on each of the handles, and you're trying to furrow a straight row, the reigns are over your neck, and the mule actually understands Gee for left and Haw for right, or the other way around. With some practice you can actually get fairly good at this. These guys, there were two guys, were using an ancient four-wheel pick-up to pull the plow. In this case you've got your plower and your driver. I feel like I've seen something out of Dante. Someplace, in the circles of hell, you plow a furrow, breathing exhaust. But maybe that's no worse than water-buffalo farts. The image of these two guys getting the potato patch ready for next year, doesn't leave me all day. It's beautiful and very sad, though the 'very sad' is an intellectual construct. I was telling the story about how my 8N Ford tractor got painted purple to Sara, and about how manufactures guarded their colors closely: Rip, in Duck Hill, painted my tractor with mixed left-overs, it ended up purple. I didn't care, but people drove from miles around to see the purple 8N, which should have been gray and red. Fuck a bunch of preconceptions. If I had enough time, I'd paint a tractor pink. Leave it as a marker. You wouldn't have to know that construct was done by me, or even that it was done, merely that it existed. An outcrop.