Hurricane Dolly In Nebraska?

Yes, that's true. What's left of hurricane Dolly, which ripped through Texas and Northern Mexico, did a sharp right turn and headed north. Now downgraded to heavy thunderstorm status, its remnants have taken dead aim at Alma and will pass through here in the next twelve hours or so. I intend to be sound asleep, but with the windows open for the cool night air, it might wake me up, who knows.

This is my neighbor, Steve, who is usually my fishing partner, with a couple of largemouth bass he caught at the lake. Unfortunately, I didn't get any keepers that morning. Minimum size limit here is 15 inches for largemouth and 18 inches for walleye.

It is said that in the world of fishing, 10% of the fishermen catch 80% of the fish. Steve is in the 10%. I am not. Most people around here agree that he is the most knowledgeable shore fisherman in town. Since I don't have access to a boat (rental is $150.00 per day), learning where and how to fish from the lake shore is what I need, so I generally fish with Steve. My specialty seems to be centered on catching fish one half inch shorter than the limit.

Ah, well. Since I support the belief that every moment spent fishing adds an equal amount of time to the length of a person's life, I am not discouraged by my inability to drag in keepers like Steve does.
This, of course is the walkway where my daughter and I go walking next to the lake. That tree limb bridging the path doesn't belong there. It is the unfortunate victim of some really high winds that came roaring through here a couple of weeks ago. The city was inclined to simply leave it as is until a second windstorm zeroed in on Alma.

Yep, down came the limb even lower. When my daughter, Eva (who is 5' 1"), can't walk under it, it's too low. The next day the limb was gone and the trail was back to normal.

This is one of the little meadows along the trail. Notice how the lowest tree branches on the trees in the background all seem to be the same height from the ground? That's courtesy of the local deer population which keeps it trimmed as high as deer can reach as they feed off the new and tender green growth. Maybe we should look at the deer as mother nature's gardeners.

After a lifetime in Southern California where everything turns brown in the summer, the green here can seem overly intense. Even in so-called drought years, there is enough summer rain here to keep things bright green. It's a big, big change. When I explain to the local people that when the end of May rolls around in L.A., there will be no rain until late November or early December, they seem at a loss to fully digest that piece of information.

Eva is quite proud of the fence surrounding the vegetable garden at her house, which she and her fella put up to keep the deer out. Unfortunately, one night the determined deer knocked one side of the fence down and feasted on the tender new growth. An angry Eva, who is not a hunter, nonetheless said, "I don't care how many kiddies love him. If I catch Bambi, I'm serving him for dinner."

Such is life on the prairie.

Family Royalty?

It seems our extended family has expanded in the person of one puppy. Last Friday, while enjoying the festivities in the park after the Fourth of July Parade, my oldest, Eva Marie, saw a town resident sitting under a tree keeping watch over a large, topless cardboard box. As we walked by, Eva spotted a writhing mass of black furred puppies within the box, so, of course, she reached in picked one up. It was a fait accompli. There was no way a woman who loves animals the way she does was going to put that young canine back in the box and walk away. Asking her to think twice before taking it would be like asking a Saudi Sheik to consider not selling oil.

This is the culprit. According to the guy with the box, the mother is a Greyhound and the father is a "traveling man", but most probably a horny black Labrador Retriever that roams the local neighborhoods. My daughter and my 16 year old granddaughter have agreed that his name shall be "Prince Dude". We can guess as to which of the two girls came up that name. So far, I think his handle ought to be "Sir Piddlesalot".

It's hard to see any Greyhound in Prince Dude, and my suspicion so far is that this character's temperament will prove to all black Lab, which means my daughter's household is in for a wild ride.
Of course, not all members of my daughter's household are thrilled by Prince Dude's arrival. This is Abbie, who has pretty much ruled the house for several years. Cats, generally, allow people to feed and house them, and will often react with utter disdain toward unapproved changes in living conditions. So far she has not attacked "The Dudester", but she has shown off her most dramatic hiss when the puppy's curiosity has brought him too close. I think that, in time, the two will learn to get along. It's been my observation that once a cat and a dog hammer out a working relationship, it will be hard for the dog to stretch out and sleep without the cat deciding it needs the dog's body warmth for its own nap.

Many years ago, the family acquired a snow white Samoyed, appropriately named "Sam", whose biggest problem in life seemed to be that the standard twenty-four hour day did not offer enough time to get in all the naps that he needed. His response was to leave great lumps of white hair on the carpet when the nap ended and he walked elsewhere to take another nap. Now, we had a Siamese cat at the time, who for three days after Sam's arrival, refused to let her feet touch the floor. She traveled by jumping from one piece of furniture to another when Sam was around. But within a few weeks, it was a common sight to see Sam snoring on the living room floor and the cat curled up literally in the armpits of his two front legs getting all the body warmth possible for a serious feline snooze.

There is an animal that Eva is not sure she loves, and that is the deer. Every summer Eva keeps quite a garden in her backyard and canning its output is the reason for its existence. She was a little tardy in getting her fence put up around the garden this year and the deer came in at night and feasted on her cucumbers and a couple of other newly sprouted vegetables. It's too late in the season to re-plant the cucumbers from seed, so she's looking for starter plants at some of the local sources. These were pickling cucumbers, not the type you use for salads, but the type you turn into dill pickles or bread and butter pickles. The deer also got to one of the horseradish plants, but we're hoping enough of its greenery is left for it to bounce back. The row of broccoli was a total loss, though, and they had a pretty good time with some of the lettuce. I guess deer can be picky eaters because they absolutely ignored the carrots.

For the many, many people in rural areas who plant such gardens, deer, rabbits, moles and similar critters are an ongoing frustration.

It's The Library's fault.

Darn, I let this blog go a long time again without a post. It's not my fault, really. If the Alma Public Library wasn't so darned good, I would have all the time in the world for updating the blog. I've been doing a lot of fishing lately (and a lot of catching), and when I get home I am really tired, too tired to be creative with the blog. So, I grab one of my books from the library and read for awhile. Being a good obsessive compulsive person, once I start a book, nothing else in the world exists until it's finished. Once I've finished the book, it's time to go fishing again, and when I get home I am really tired, and the circle keeps going. So you can see that if the library didn't supply every book I want, I would be posting a lot more regularly. You certainly didn't expect me to take responsibility for the results of my own procrastinations did you?

The Alma Library really is remarkable. It has a terrific stock of the most popular mystery writers, and every Thursday, UPS delivers the latest new books for its shelves. I am a freak for books by Janet Evanovich, and her latest book in the Stephanie Plum series, "Fearless Fourteen" was delivered to the library on June 17. To my horror, I discovered I was number three on the list of Alma citizens waiting for its arrival. Reader number two turned the book in yesterday and I took possession (for a maximum of two weeks) today. Evanovich books are fast reads, so I'll probably finish it and turn it back to the library tomorrow, after I go fishing in the early morning. Do you detect a vicious cycle here?

The library (actually the Hoesch Memorial Library) doesn't carry much in the way of science fiction, and I am a lifelong sci-fi fan. I'm talking hard core science fiction here, not the "Sword and Sorcery" stuff that seems to be rage these days or some of the silly mutation creature flicks turned out by the sci-fi channel. However, the state of Nebraska has an inter-library loan system that is so efficient that it took me awhile to get used to it. I can come up with some pretty arcane sci-fi books that you think would be hard to find, but every time I hand in a request, giving them the author and title, the book is ready for me to pick up within 48 hours. The library charges 1.50 per book for the service, and it is cheap at many times that price. Going on-line I regularly prowl the selections available at the biggest sci-fi publishers (Baen Books, Tor and others) and have yet to find one they couldn't come up with. At the Baen website, I ran across an author I was not familiar with, Margaret Ball, whose latest sci-fi work was "Disappearing Act". The short synopsis on the website made it sound interesting, so I put in the request, and sure enough, 48 hours later I got the telephone call that the book was in Alma and waiting for me. And it turned out to be a very good story, so I'll look for more of her work. And so it goes.

The turnout for the Fourth Of July celebration in Alma was stupendous. With Harlan Lake being 108% of capacity, with a downtown parade in Alma followed by food concessions and arts and crafts displays in the park, with a huge fireworks display over the lake in the evening, with the new Super 8 Motel now open and running, and with many people looking to beat the high cost of travel by staying as local as possible, this place was jumping. Remember, Harlan County Lake is no small pond. It currently is approximately ten miles long and about a mile and a half to two miles wide. It has three major harbors and several smaller boat launch areas. Fishing boats and jet skis were everywhere. I believe the fishing people were ready to exterminate the jet skiers, who often showed an incredible lack of consideration of the rights of others, but mostly a good time was had by all.

The people who run the lake, the Army Corps Of Engineers, estimated the numbers of visitors to the lake this weekend at more than 52,000 people. Holey Moley, Captain Marvel, that's a lot of people to show up in a town with a permanent population of 1,242. The stores, including our only supermarket, were mostly crowded. Yes, they were all open on the holiday, anxious to let those visitors come in and leave some of their money in Alma. All the eating places were jammed all weekend, but Friday the Fourth was a nightmare if you wanted to sit down and buy a meal. Wow, what a crowd.

I was able to beat the crowds Friday night for the big fireworks show. At the corner just outside my front door, I set up my folding chair and I had an unobstructed view of the display. My apartment is less that one fourth of a mile from the lakeshore, so it was like being right there at the launch point. I watched the rocket trail as it lifted skyward, then oohed and aahhed at the brilliant showers of color and sound. All the festivites and the crowds made it a perfect way to celebrate our nation's birth.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about our newest family member, "Prince Dude".