Friday, July 7, 2017

Snake Redux

Morning protocol is to make a cup of coffee and put away a few books. Then I needed to go out to the Jeep and get the ingredients for the sauce I'd left there, what with the snake. Put on some jeans, one must wear pants outdoors, and open the door, and that pesky rattlesnake is back, coiled exactly centered in my sight, three feet away. Shut the door and go roll a cigaret, a wee dram to deal with the shock. I had to be shed of it, but I had time and I watched it for a while, pulled up a stool and watched out the panes in the back door. Watching a snake is a very slow event. She moves, after a while, to the opposite end of the porch, coils up, and apparently goes to sleep. Six feet away now, the first drops of rain fall and she slides over to the edge of the porch, drops down to the ground and goes under the house. I don't like her being under the house, the fact that she likes the back porch. Following B's lead, I'll try and relocate her down in the wilderness area. If you know where a snake is, in the morning (before they achieve escape velocity) you can often just shovel them up and put them in a five-gallon bucket. They give new meaning to 'slow-starting'. Still, that dry rattle is not something you want to hear very often. I went out to the Jeep just as a fucking sheet of rain swept across the ridge and I was drenched in seconds, bad timing, but I got what I needed out of the car and made it back inside. Resurrect the sauce. B calls, to remind me it's Friday. Waiting for a call from my sister about my mother's condition, I'm in no shape to be social. Military brats are raised in a matriarchal society, 50% of the time Dad was gone, so Mom was the only given, and I think about her struggles with that. Arguably better that her Holiness Pentecostal upbringing. Never snakes, but often speaking in tongues and rolling in the aisles, which is only slightly removed from hearing Beverly Sills singing "Traviata". My parents were products of the depression, tenant farmer families scratching a bare living. The options were limited, the military or prison, or working in the produce section of the supermarket for your entire life, shining apples. I can make a strong case for digging clams and eating wild greens.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, Thomas, Your posts have been quiet now for some months. It seems they are forever silenced. D called me and we chatted about it. It was tough for him. B found you. I hate to think of you, alone. That was how you wanted to be. That is how you lived, how you flourished. You do not get off that easy friend. You will live on, for many of us, in the memory of your words. The conversations. The philosophizing. I know I will miss your perspectives in the months and years to come, as I have in the months that have passed in your silence. We spoke only weeks ago. It was brief. We spoke of your daughters. Your writing. My new family with your congratulations and happiness. I wish you could have met her. My dear friend, you will be missed, I will miss you.

JOEL S. KAHN said...

There are really no words to express my sorrow over Tom’s passing. My friend for nearly fifty years, a unique individual with an unbounded curiosity, a wealth of both practical and esoteric knowledge, no subject was beyond his grasp.(Are the commas correct, Tom?). Among many other things we shared a love of food and cooking, an appreciation for proper construction techniques and a warped sense of humor. It pains me that we will never speak again. I truly thought that he would live forever. In some respects he will. My deepest sympathy to Samara and Rhea and to all who knew and appreciated him.

Joel

TJ said...

I was heart broken to hear of Tom's passing. I last spoke with him during the summer and wrote him when I could not get through on his phone line in September.
I have been reading, How We Talk: the Inner Workings of Conversation, a book I had intended to send to him. Conversation was one of his great loves and we spent many hours in free form exchanges.
Tom was one of the most erudite and well read individuals I have met in this life. I will so miss him.
My heartfelt condolences go out to his daughters.

MMWQ said...

We are so sorry to hear of Tom's passing. We loved his Ridge Posts and just talking with him. He was 'one of a kind', the kind you meet only once in a lifetime. Our condolences to his daughters whom he spoke of often.
Bill & Mary Martha Questel