Lucky Lager

About once a season I clean out the road shoulder and pick up trash that high water has left at creekside on the Divine Property. Here's today's take:

Lucky Lager Beer, while still purchasable in states that border on Canada, has been scarce in this area since 2005. It's a Canadian beer company bought out several times, and around 1978 during the "generic" craze, Lucky was said to be the generic beer in those cans that said simply "BEER." Lucky Lager bottles and especially their caps are collectibles, but this is a mere can. My haul is mostly cans and bottles, and sometimes a soccer ball or a patio chair, but the vibrator found today is a first. I wonder what story it would tell if it could. I believe someone used the Prestone bottle for target practice.

Mating Season Mystery

It was a red fox's tail. Just the tail. In the road.

I know December is fox mating season, so its attacker might have been another fox. They defend their territories, but aren't known to kill or maim each other. Chasing the intruder from the territory is enough.

Foxes have few wild predators: bobcats, bears, golden eagles. Foxes can outrun dogs, as every British hunting party knows. People do say bobcats live here, but I haven't seen proof. Human fox killers, who don't eat them, always want the tail as a trophy. They wouldn't remove it and leave it. Looked around for traces of a car killing. None. So it's a tail without a story.

The dime in the photo lets you see its length -- about 11 inches. That's short for a fox tail so it might have been a young one that got into trouble because it didn't know better. Maybe it sacrificed its tail.

A fox uses its tail for warmth (curling it around and burying its nose in it to sleep) and for balance and to communicate (the way a dog's tail does). Somewhere a red fox around here is minus its tail. It must hurt a lot.

Brown Eggs with Value Added, Part 3

There he was at the roadside, his red pickup atilt on the road shoulder: Farmer Bob the brown egg man! As you'll recall from a previous post, a month ago the health department told him he couldn't sell eggs on the roadside anymore, and all his customers who saw him Wednesdays and Saturdays and bought brown eggs for $3.50 a dozen were saddened--but now he's back! I jammed on the brakes and got out of my car.

"Hello," I said, holding out my hand (because gentlemen shake hands with ladies only if the ladies extend their hands first). Instead I got caught up in a hug.

"I thought the health department said---and what are you doing here on Sunday?"

Farmer Bob said, "I'm here today to tell all my customers that I'm movin'. Thought I'd do it today, when nobody, you know, would be out and around to report on me."

"But I thought they said--"

"I'll be movin' over there," said Farmer Bob, and pointed.

Flummoxed, I wanted to ask: Is that okay? Did you get a permit or something? Can you sell eggs now because summer's over and it's fall? Is this, like, under the radar? I had wondered how much he missed the income from this area; it must've been a good spot for egg sales. Instead I said, "You mean over there? You'll be there Wednesdays and Saturdays, like you used to?"

He said yes.

I figured he knew what he was doing, so I didn't have to know more. I said, "Do you have any eggs today?"

(I didn't need any, but I bought a dozen.)

Brown Eggs, Subtracted, Alas

Farmer Bob's "Brown Eggs" truck at its usual roadside spot at 11 on Wednesday had no canopy or patio chair and the cardboard sign saying "Brown Eggs" was stowed in the pickup, and as I approached Farmer Bob got out of the cab and I said, "You sold out all your eggs already?"

Farmer Bob said, "The health department says I can't sell eggs on the roadside any more." His eggs weren't refrigerated and they have to be. So he wasn't selling eggs, just telling every customer that skidded to a stop nearby, cheerfully expecting to purchase henfruit, that they could buy his eggs at his house on Highway B. By my reckoning that's 15 miles and out of the way of most of his regulars. Sad because seeing his one-man business on the roadside was a bright spot in my rural day and I daresay it was a bright spot for him too.

You needn't be French to know eggs come out of the chicken with a protective coating ("bloom"), and dont need refrigeration until they're washed, but I guess they don't know that here. Farmer Bob had zucchini to sell, though. I selected one, and he gave it to me free. I hugged him because I don't think we'll meet again. Joylessly I drove into town to the gas station, my next errand, and vacuumed out my eggless car.

Brown Eggs with Value Added

Saw this pickup today where Bald Pate Road meets the highway. Never saw it before. Turned around, pulled over and trotted up saying, “How much for brown eggs?”

The tall thin older man, wearing flannel and a farm cap (more squarish than a ball cap), extended a very dry, cold and toughened hand. “H'are you today?” he asked. (In the country you don’t run up and demand to do business right away. You greet the person. You look into their eyes and get to know them. And you give value-added. City habits still plague me.)

I said, “Your hens laying already?” (I know they start laying in earnest very early in the year.)

“Mine do year round,” he said. “These eggs yesterday morning and the day before. Three dollars for one dozen.” His egg cartons were a miscellany from all sorts of places and there weren’t many left. He opened a carton and showed me the eggs. I wanted only one carton. But I got my value-added. “What you do with these,” said the farmer, holding the carton and demonstrating, “is turn ‘em upside down and leave ‘em that way every seven days, if you remember to do it, and the eggs stay fresh for 30 days same as now.”

“I never heard that,” I said, appreciatively.

 “I grew up on a farm,” he said, “and my mother and me went to seminars, and if you listen,” he said, tapping an ear, “you learn somethin. Don’t hard-boil these. You’ll never get the shell off.” (That’s true when an egg is too fresh.)

He thanked me for my $3 and wished a Merry Christmas to me and my family, and I wished him a Happy New Year.

Everything's Good This Time of Year

Please stop in at your local farmer's market or fruit and vegetable stand because this time of year you cannot go wrong. If it grows in your locale, it's at its peak. So what if it's 100 degrees. I sorted through the Missouri tomatoes for the squat-looking Big Beefs and Brandywines, bought the sweetest local corn (had it for lunch along with my own baked steak fries; now that's divine) and local nectarines, a local eggplant with such lovely purple cheeks I want to kiss it, some zucchini and green beans, and I admired the plums, famously sweet Vidalia onions ("You only cry when they are gone"), brand-new baby potatoes both red and Yukon, and the avalanche of melons.

Andy's is in House Springs, also called House Sprangs, and operates 11 hours a day in summer, like many such businesses. I asked the beautiful lady who waited on me (pictured) if she was the owner. She said she was the Owner's Wof.

This is my idea of heaven.

Wildflower Week: May 11

For a long time I thought this spectacular floral firework was a "passion flower," but it's a Horsemint. Blooms briefly, dries out quickly. I love the purple freckles. In the same family is a quite similar flower, better known, called Bee Balm. Latin name of this one: Monarda bradburiana. Unforgettable.

My Road

Taking a walk all on my own on a weekday morning on a Midwestern two-lane highway, near the neighbor's horse farm, I have never felt so privileged. I have the world's best life. This is Highway F, which in a half a mile becomes Lynch Road.

Buckhorn, Mo.

Ask not what this bull is doing alongside I-44 West near Buckhorn, Mo. It may well be competing with the Worlds Largest Rocking Chair and the Vacuum Cleaner Museum along I-44; or it may be something political or commercial -- can't tell.

Floodplain in Autumn

This floodplain is in Allenton, Mo., a tiny ghost town between Pacific and Eureka. When I moved here eight years ago Allenton was still a town, but it's across the freeway from Six Flags, and development -- the enchanting idea of a retail paradise -- has threatened to flatten it ever since. The post office closed about three years ago. But people still live and farm down the back roads and on the Meramec River floodplain where nobody can develop. Oct. 1 was my eighth anniversary on the Divine property and I thank God. Of all the things I have ever done, I love living here the most. I love this land, hills and floodplain and whatnot. They will remove me from this property feet first, if at all.

On Your Honor

You are on your honor when you select, weigh, bag, and pay for your own tomatoes at this unattended (sometimes) tomato stand off Hwy FF. The sign points the way, and that's .75 per lb.

There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town

Taken in Bourbon, MO. There's another one, too, in case this one runs out.

The Plain Truth

This sign stands outside a business called Assured Automotive in Eureka, MO. The other side of the sign says, "I Survive on the Trust and Support of My Customers."

A Mind Like Wild Mint

Popping up in the roadside, this beautiful complicated bloom called either Bee Balm or Horsemint. To me it looks like an image of the human mind. For a while I confused it with the passionflower. Horsemint in Latin: Monarda bradburiana.

Has 101 uses. The leaves make a minty tea. Says Wikipedia: "Bee Balm is the natural source of the antiseptic Thymol, the primary active ingredient in modern commercial mouthwash formulas. The Winnebago used a tea made from Bee Balm as a general stimulant." Also says it's related to oregano, but I can't see any family resemblance.

Beautiful and Rare

Highways here in Ozark foothills used to be lined with native coneflowers, the flowers in the photo. Then somebody decided they were a commodity called echinacea, and lowlifes went around ripping up every single one by the roots, even on County Highway F where the road is perched on a steep and treacherous ridge. They even stole them from patrolled, private land -- coming up the river by boat and sneaking onto the property. Rip, rip. To them, Missouri is worth $6 a pound.

The word from the naturalists is that the bee population, nationwide, is way down. To my own eyes it's obvious only that the coneflower population is way down, so I planted my own, and they attract plenty of beautiful bees.

The Ungrateful Turtle

Route 66 State Park -- formerly a toxic dump once known as Times Beach, Missouri -- isn't far from here. The EPA incinerated the toxins, fixed it all up with bike and horse paths, and I figure it isn't any more toxic than anything else, so I went walking there this fine June morning. Several people were on the same road, jogging, biking, rollerblading.

A common sight in spring and summer here is turtles crossing the roads and highways. People (and me too) often stop to pick 'em up and put 'em in the roadside so they won't be killed. A few drivers like to run turtles over to hear 'em pop. That type will roast for eternity. But this lean white-haired bicyclist wearing a bike suit stopped and laid down his bike when he saw the big turtle in the road, just about the time I saw it.

The turtle was black and the size of a dinner plate. It immediately pulled in its head and legs as the kind man approached. Using both hands, he picked up the turtle -- and darned if it didn't shoot out two quarts of pee in a stream thick as a racehorse's, all over the poor Good Samaritan.

A mother and daughter out walking saw this too, and we all had a good laugh at the old guy's expense.

Moral: When you pick up a turtle, make sure it is facing you.

What Yer Litter Says About Yew

I have about 3/4 of a mile of road shoulder to clean. This is what I find, in order of volume:

Beer cans; soda cans; beer bottles; empty cigarette packs; pint bottles of Seagram's 7 (once I found an empty gallon bottle of vodka); scores of those plastic "Big Drink" "car cups," plus their tops and straws; paper and styrofoam trash from Mickey D's, Hardee's, BK, DQ, KFC, Jack's, White Castle; styrofoam coffee cups; tins from chewin'-tobacco (I thought everybody was too smart nowadays to take up that habit!); chip bags; candy wrappers.

And that's the stuff they aren't too ashamed to throw out of their cars. That's America, seen from the angle of those who clean your road shoulders. I hope you'll all have just as much fun at the CAT-scan center!