Longview Methodist Protestant Church, Purdy, MO

I like country churches, and Missouri's are the best. And there really is a long view, of a field, to the left, and cows lounging beneath the trees out back.

Dear Diary (March 21)

Zion Oakfield United Church of Christ

I like country churches. This one dedicated in 1879. Note the outhouse at left. Quaint. Church located near what was once Glencoe, Missouri. Unincorporated Glencoe was absorbed by the town of Wildwood.

Blizzards of Birds

Yesterday on my walk up the road I got caught in a noisy blizzard of robins whipping round and round in an aerial whirlpool. They were flocking. Today a flock of hundreds of European starlings AND robins, a mixed group, whirled up and settled in the trees and shrubs right outside the house, bleating and eating dried-out serviceberries plus bird seed. This is the best photo I got, because when I set foot outside to get better photos the birds up and streamed away. Awesome.

Cut Hit Bit Shiver Sweat, Part 2

Don’t pee facing uphill.

If it’s Missouri, it’s poison ivy.

After a summer day outdoors, a long hot shower will only drive the ticks deeper into your groin.

Don’t park the car beneath a female Osage-Orange tree when it's dropping 7-ounce hard-shelled fruits.

If you sneak outside wearing only flip-flops, do it after delivery people are done for the day.

Never say, “Aw, it’s too warm for black ice. . .”

Don’t poke at a wasp’s nest with a broom handle.

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.

On Having No Bathtub

Among the few liabilities the Divine cabin has is no bathtub. A shower stall only. Been renting here since ‘01 and wouldn’t never bathe unless I called people up and say, “Can I take a bath in your bathtub?” or, once a year in winter, I reserve a motel off I-44, take a bath and watch their cable TV and use their high-speed Internet all night. It don’t get more decadent than that.

Haven’t yet found a old-fashioned zinc bathtub like in the picture, nor a modern galvanized washtub big enough to hold me. I’d heat the water on the stove. I'll do a lot for a bath, it does so much for me. It's a time-out. Softens the skin and hair. Softens up the spirit, too. And in winter it's one of two or three things that can get the chill out of your bones.

It’s only a very very close friend you can ask, “Uh – can I take a bath in your bathtub?” Two people I call for their bathtubs every couple of months are Demetrius and Hawkeye. They say they don't mind. I bring my own towels and stuff, and if I clean up my bathtub ring I am more than welcome.

Waterfall #3

This waterfall is just a few yards above Waterfall #1.

January Stars

So I'm looking upward at burning winter stars and the pale stripe of the Milky Way running from east to west, right at the zenith, and I think to myself: "That's infinite creative power."

Lately I've been thinkin that I'm not all I should be, that I lack that last ounce of creative power that would put my work over the top. Well, that can't be. Because there's infinite creative power. If it's infinite, I can take some, or channel some, or ask or pray, or somehow get at it. More and more (I'm gettin' philosophical because another birthday is coming up) I see that I set and can break my own limitations.

Good Fortune

Had to show you this photo I just took, although I hope you saw it "live" -- of tonight's conjunction of Jupiter, Venus, and the moon. In astrology this night is considered very lucky. Hope it is for you. I set the camera on "infinity" and went for it. And happy December -- the month with the prettiest name.

Look Who's Here to Cheer

In these dreary days counting down to the Solstice (not so far away) some vivid color is thrilling. Today I saw -- the bluebird pair! They often winter here, but not in the box. Maybe this year?

Deer Season

The grimmest story ever told on this 100 acres:

One Christmas Day I decided to walk in the snowy oak-and-hickory woods for an hour and think good things. The silence was the big winter kind that felt like deafness. Animal tracks led me along a known game trail. Barely out of sight of the road, a dead deer lay split open, red exploded all over the white snow. Without looking too closely, I saw it was the young buck from the family I'd watched strolling down the road every dusk for more than a year.

Clearly the coyotes had got it. I was rattled enough that I didn't go walking anymore that day.

Next day the landlord's handyman, who was new then, came by to work on Shelley's house. Then he knocked on my door and said, "Need anything?" - which he never did unless I called him. He's a busy man.

I told him about the dead deer in the woods. He said he'd taken a walk, seen it, and got a good look, and its antlers had been roped to a tree. He figured a trespasser wounded and left it, maybe thinking to return and finish it off. But the hunter never came back and the coyotes got the deer. Alive.

"Oh, how horrible!" I said.

Deer firearms season had been closed for a month. He said, "That was poaching. Why didn't you report it?"

It came out that, for God's sake -- he suspected that maybe I'd done it!

No hunting is ever allowed on this acreage. Just to make sure everybody knows, a month before this deer firearms season opened (Nov. 15-25), I sprayed purple paint -- signifying "no hunting" -- on tree trunks all around the property's edge. When I see a deer I deliberately shoo it toward the center of the woods, where supposedly nobody can hunt. And if they do they'd better be humane enough to kill.

Vitamin C and Propane

Eager to fill the Divine propane tank now that gasoline is so low -- $1.79/gallon in Eureka, and propane prices tend to parallel gas prices -- I phoned the propane company. And the driver came today. I hopped over and said hello, and "What's the price of propane today?" He said, "$2.83." I said "That's high." "But it don't look like your place uses a lot," he replied, nodding toward the Divine cabin.

So that was his comforting take on how my hard-scrabbled $400 got me 135 gallons and a tank up from 30 percent to 50 percent full. On the open market, propane trades at about $2.18. The delivery company tacks on 65 cents per gallon for the truck, its driver, office and whatall. Beats the cold, though, and beats getting bloated bills from the natural gas company, which city folk tell me is really puttin' the thumbscrews on its customers this year.

Oh, the Vitamin C? When the year's deteriorating like it is, and fuel bills depress you, take extra C!

Autumn Postcard

Dear Reader: I took this today, down the road a ways. Thought of you, and wished you were here. Love, Divinebunbun.

Too Tight!

Lawnmower was balky. Cleaned the air filter and bolted it back on. Mower would run for 2 minutes and quit. David poked at it and said, Definitely an air/fuel mixture problem. And he fixed it in one stroke by loosening the bolt that held the air filter. When I'd bolted it on I'd made it -- too tight!

In Jan. 2007 I was workin' my 50-year-old abs to the max, and had a beautiful six pack (in my case, a four-pack). Trouble is, one day I stretched and tore a big sheet of muscle -- my rectus abdominis muscle -- in two places -- rip! rip! near the groin. It got inflamed and I saw 6 doctors and had scans, tests, medicines, 4 misdiagnoses (diverticulitis, hernia, spine, psychosomatic), physical therapy, and chronic pain for 11 months until I went crying to a chiropractor, and she broke up the big lumps of scar tissue that were crippling me. I'd made my abdominal muscles -- too tight! (That's why they call it "ripped"!)

Branch loaded with tomatoes breaks off because when I staked it I tied it -- too tight!

I make and sell jewelry for fun and the #1 reason I have to redo necklaces, anklets, and bracelets is because I pull the "tiger tail" jewelry wire -- too tight!

The fishing line snaps because it's too tight! You get indigestion because your waistband is too tight! You get Morton's neuroma foot pain and calluses and corns because your shoes are too tight! I've learned from experience 100 times now -- don't pull anything or anybody too tight!

How You Get Born

The strange night sound from the meadow kept repeating itself. Sounded like a buck snorting -- but over and over, rhythmically. Never heard the like, and nervously I stepped out on the porch a few times over the evening hours to listen. It didn't go away. And with my wild, city-bred imagination that is full of ax-murderers, etc., I decided not to get a flashlight and venture out to seek the source. Locked the doors and went to bed.

A week passed and toward dusk I saw the local doe and she was nosing along a very small fawn -- "a football with legs," a friend had described it. Just one fawn. (She usually has two.) But just this one. And I added 2 plus 2 and realized what I had heard that evening was the doe in labor. I could have seen a fawn being born under a meadow of summer stars! I missed it because I made myself afraid!

Love in the Body Shops

His bald head showed scars, and I immediately knew how he got them. He owns the auto-body shop. The scars on his tanned scalp were pink and white, all shapes, some more vivid than others, so he'd collected them over time. He wore a short-sleeved, very clean, very creased, tucked-in blue shirt, with an oval over his heart with his name, embroidered in brown: Don.

Underneath cars most of his life, Don had cut his brow open on them at least six or seven times, badly enough to leave permanent scars. Another body-shop owner could have probably read them like a book. I saw in them his love of cars and loved him for loving anything that much, even when it hurt him.

"Adds up fast," he said, apologetically, handing me the estimate: $606. "That's 'cause in that one place it's scratched down to the metal. We take off the door handle so you won't have any tape marks on 'er when it's repainted. You'll have to leave her here two-three days, so the paint can dry. . . "

I would have to look for a lower estimate, and drove to another body shop with an office not 8 feet by 12 feet, lots of it taken up by four-drawer steel file cabinets. A neat rack of car keys hung from the door. The estimator, a stringbean with glasses, name Jim -- no other name was possible -- had color pictures of his 20ish daughter on his Steelcase desk, and all sorts of little certificates and state licenses and awards and thank-you plaques exactly lined up on the wall. I loved him for loving his daughter and for lining everything up just so. He typed up his estimate for me: $470.

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.

Top Ten Sitcom Supporting Actors

Local news is scarce these days while we wait for the government to buy out every house in the floodplain, so the newspaper here printed the local trivia expert's list of top 10 sitcom characters. Well, I dint agree with his choices, because mine are just plain better. There are lots of very good ones, but I picked the ones I thought just stole the show. If you've never seen the Kingfish, you have missed seeing a genius at work.

TOP TEN TV SITCOM SUPPORTING ACTORS*

1. The Kingfish (Amos ‘n’ Andy) played by Tim Moore
2. Eddie Haskell (Leave it to Beaver) played by Ken Osmond
3. Ed Norton (The Honeymooners) played by Art Carney
4. Maynard G. Krebs (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), played by Bob Denver
5. Barney Phyfe (The Andy Griffith Show), played by Don Knotts
6. Alice Kramden (The Honeymooners) played by Audrey Meadows
7. Ricky Ricardo (I Love Lucy), played by Desi Arnaz
8. Mr. Haney (Green Acres) played by Pat Buttram
9. Lurch (The Addams Family), played by Ted Cassidy
10. Zelda Gilroy (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) played by Sheila James

*I picked from U.S. programs only. Excluded are title characters such as Lucy or Gilligan; top-billed characters such as Al Bundy (of Married with Children); mass-media marketing darlings such as “The Fonz” or “A.J”; and characters who later got their own sitcoms, such as Maude or Rhoda.

Learning from Well Water

Before the electric pump draws it up into daylight, the well water here has had a long and mysterious career. Fabulously icy, and stony-sweet, it’s divine -- and as hard as nails. It's taught me this:

1. For calcification around fixtures, spray with 50 percent vinegar, let it sit, wipe like you mean it, and then – wearing eye protection -- use a kitchen knife to chip off what remains.
2. Rinse hair and face with bottled water or rainwater to stave off ratty “stonewashed” hair and ashy skin.
3. A “stonewashed” effect will suffuse all your fabrics eventually. Laundering them inside out will help them last a bit longer.
   
4. Drinking glasses will look like you just drank milk from them unless you use a dishwasher armed with Jet-Dry. Alternately, buy drinking glasses by the case, or explain to your company that the glasses aren’t really dirty, that you honestly did wash them, that the hard water clouds them up. Hard water also wears out glass so that it breaks more easily.
5. Use a filtration pitcher for most of your drinking and cooking. Your coffeepots and pans will last longer. Filter the water you give to pets.
6. In your sink or washtub, detergent will look not sudsy but like scum. The harder the water, the less suds you get. But the detergent is still working. The fact is that sudsing agents are added to detergents and shampoos merely for show. Hard water fights on the side of reality. I find that fantasizing about luxurious lather is almost as good as the real thing.