Some People Have Faithful Dogs. . .

I test-drove some shiny new Toyotas--a new-car showroom feels like prom night--but with big ugly grilles instead of solid-metal front ends, and despite their backup cameras and  four-wheel drives I found I had to yank and redirect their transmission levers--just as hard in the Corolla as in the RAV4--like I was Speed Racer or something, and these were automatics. MPG stunk and that's just how it is with four-wheel drive: nice to have in the country, but less so if country living means driving a lot of miles.


The young salesman said he'd managed a restaurant for 10 years and it was a relief for him to sell cars. I asked him about the big ugly grilles and he called it  "more aggressive styling." Yeah, right, aggressive Toyotas. . . what were those people smoking. . .I hated to tell him no sale because I had been ready to deal. "Is pricing an issue for you?" he asked. I said if a vehicle was perfect for me I'd pay whatever, but these were nowhere near.

I drove home in my '07 Corolla with 150K miles ("she'll go double that, easy," my mechanic drawled) and was stunned and humbled by how quietly and well it handled by comparison. The first brand-new car I ever bought, I called her "The Bride," and we have been through camping, weeping, poverty and riches, driving over a boulder, skidding off the road, encased in ice, and many wonderful faraway places and carrying fascinating passengers, faithfully and reliably, and I apologized for even thinking of cheating on her. This is Divine Post #1000, by the way. I haven't changed a bit.

Cats Do Not Belong Outside

All I wanted was a short walk and I had to step over this and think about its life and death, its owners who must have loved, admired, fed, and held it and are probably now wondering when their pet will come back to its fine warm safe indoor home, just right for a domesticated animal. They let their cat out so it could walk on the wild side, chase a few mice, kill a few birds, get some exercise; or perhaps they weren't watching and it escaped, wanting adventure instead of lazing around the house looking elegant. Its cream-colored tail lay about 12 feet away. Please keep cats indoors; letting them roam is the same as killing them. A few feral cats live around here, and while they might survive for a season they all meet the same fate; I know that because I walk these roads. Letting your dogs run loose isn't a good idea either.

Dead Man's Curve

I'm usually lighthearted but a couple things about country living are serious and one is flash-flooding; another is road conditions. After two fatalities in one year people around here organized to petition Missouri Dept of Transportation to "straighten out" Highway FF, a road most of us drive every day.

FF, five miles long, parallels the curves in LaBarque Creek, resulting in three significant curves and a low spot where the creek empties into the Meramec (photo was taken while standing on that bridge), and then it curves again, away from the Meramec toward the bigger highway. For most of its length it doesn't have shoulders and can't be widened. Used to be okay when fewer people lived here and parents didn't hand out cars to their kids, and people weren't so harried as to wait until the last minute to drive anywhere. FF was probably once a footpath and then a horse-and-buggy road. I appreciate that it respects the creek and hated hearing about "straightening" it, even after I had my life's first-ever wreck, on FF during a snowstorm, sliding off into the road shoulder just after the third curve. $4000 in damage but not a scratch on me, thank God. Another gift was in it: a good excuse not to show up at work.

So after a 20-year-old and then a well-liked local merchant (who wasn't buckled) were killed on FF, both in broad daylight and at the same curve, the campaign began with a billboard and some publicity, and because MoDOT doesn't have funds to "straighten" the curves it's going to change the way they're paved to reduce the amount of "super elevation" (slope across roadway) that you can see here is significantly banked. Work begins in 2013. At that time all who use Highway FF will be taking that 18-mile detour I took in '02 during the widening of Highway F (which is different from FF).

Don't Make Me Kill Your Dog

Saw a dead calico housecat, run over, at the highway's edge. It hadn't been dead long. Its plumpness told me it'd been somebody's pet. Oh, when they find out; how terrible. Unless they are like some people and think the country is a place to dump their pets.

I'm seeing cats scattering into the field when I pull up into my road at night. They kill and eat mice but also bunnies and whippoorwills. Dogs chase everything. Six or seven times I've blasted the car horn at dogs trotting on Hwy F. They thought I was playin'. I fear that one day out walking or working I'll meet a pit bull the owner dumped because it was too expensive or loco to keep. When I see a dog barreling toward me I no longer assume it's a neighbor and friendly. I pick up a rock. Don't make me do that.

Let your pet out in the country and it won't be adopted. It won't become a barn cat, or go native and care for itself. It's used to your sofa. It'll get killed. Have mercy; please take it to a shelter. Better the needle than what I saw today with a crushed head and liver hanging out.

Cut Hit Bit Shiver Sweat

Stepped on a rake once. The handle up and hit me in the face. Thank God no one saw me. I was 48 years old.

Anyone moving to the country in mid-life has to take the motto "Live and learn." You're going to get cut, scraped, sweaty, bitten. Ants will float in your coffee. I found a wasp drowned and ambered in my jar of honey. You'll slip and fall and be stupid. Live and learn.

A couple days after a flood I stepped up on what seemed like solid-packed creekside debris and fell through it up to my hips.

Stepped in quicksand (silica makes top-notch quicksand). It was like cookie dough and I couldn’t fix it to get one leg out so I could pull out the other one.

On a slick riverbank, fell backward into a bed of stinging nettle. Didn’t know what it was. Eight seconds later I figured it out.

Make sure guests don't park beneath the tree when the hickory nuts are dropping.

Clapped a fat huge four-inch tomato hornworm between two bricks. Thought I was being clever. It squirted 360 degrees all over creation including onto my glasses and mouth.

Oh, it don’t matter if that machete is a little too weighty for me and has a dull blade. . . .

Live here and learn.

What Did I Run Over?

Doing 55 mph On Hwy 109 late on Thursday night, something shadowy entered my headlights. Definitely a quadruped, but not a deer; it looked like a cat, but a strangely large one -- was it a fox? A young fox? They're almost never run over. . . It panicked, and began to flee to the right, and I braked, but too late. Whatever it was went "whump" against the bumper on the passenger side.

Shocked, I realized that it was too late and dark, and the road too narrow, for me to back up and see what it was and if I had killed it, or if I could somehow save it, maybe getting it out of harm's way. The next day I checked the bumper for blood or damage. It was normal. I looked for bloodstains on 109 but couldn't remember the accident's exact location, and anyway did not see any -- and there was no road kill.

Maybe it lived.