The Blues

Missed the name of the show on the radio, three in the morning, early blues. A good selection. Ten years in Mississippi, a show, Sunday night, a couple of hours, from The University Of Mississippi. BB King had given his collection of blues records to The Center For The Study Of Southern Culture. A wee dram in a dark house, John Lee Hooker, one of the great voices of all time. I have to take some paperwork into Child And Family Services, get my vouchers for firewood. Rodney said he'd be back from Tennessee by next weekend and clear brush, so they could take the wood to the back of the woodshed. Progress. Waste paper bothers me, and I've kept all of my cash register receipts from Kroger, for the past year, all of my butter wrappers, and those waxed boxes. Enough to start maybe fifty fires. The London Review doesn't burn well, and the time has come, so as not to be labeled a 'hoarder' I need to get rid of stacks of New Yorkers and various book review journals. Recycle. Buy some twine and tie them into manageable piles. There's a bin behind the library. I need some batteries, my headlamp (I've been on the same battery for two years) and the little flashlight I carry when it gets dark early. And candles. The best candles are sold as Utility Candles, five to a box, either one or two dollars for a box, an inch in diameter and five inches long. These burn for four hours, at least, and I can read with two of them, with a couple of well-placed mirrors. A trick I learned from Harlan Hubbard. Survival is a succession of tricks. I'd better go take a nap. Got back up, wrote for a couple of hours, read until dawn, the cleaned up for a run to town. Lunch with TR at the pub, then I ran my usual medley of stops. The hardware store (Chuck, who has gained 150 pounds since I've known him there) suggested I start drinking a milkshake every day. I sat in a heat-induced coma, with a fan blowing right on me through the afternoon, reading Donald Ray Pollack's The Devil All The Time. A good read. I met him, a few years ago, and he's a nice guy. As a writer he's quite good, he's colloquial, and accurate. Driving down the driveway, creeping along, I was looking at the ground on the bank side and slammed on the brakes. Two lovely ginseng plants. The season is open, it's my own property and I don't even need a permit. I dug them out carefully (I carry a modified trowel) and replanted several seeds. They're both at least seven years old. Lovely. It's my year's supply, but I might dig enough extra (now that I can see them) to buy a case of wine for the winter. You can know what something looks like in illustration: ginseng, ground hugging, red seeds; but until you actually find one in the wild, you never really see them. Like finding arrowheads. Shark teeth on the beaches south of Jacksonville. Stopped on the way home, at the Diary Bar, and had a chocolate shake with some jalapeno poppers. It's amazing how long molten cheese holds heat. I drove all the way home, 11 miles, and put away groceries, before I finished the shake and ate the poppers, and they were still hot. A heat-sink of fat. They were very good.