A Hitch In The Gitalong

For those faithful friends who keep up with this blog and send me emails, Pls be patient. My Internet connection at home has been down for a few days and shows no promise of coming back up soon. The phone company (Frontier) says my computer is the problem. My computer, however, says that the DSL modem supplied by Frontier is defective. Frontier will not replace the modem, and I cannot get on the internet. I am writing this from the library in beautiful downtown Alma while having a conversation with the Librarian, LaDonna, about the vagaries of local telephone, cable and satellite TV services. I'm going to borrow my daughter Valerie's laptop and plug it into the DSL connection. If it goes on line, then my computer is the problem. If it can't get on line, then the modem is obviously the culprit. Stay tuned for further details.

Here, There and Everywhere

The fishing from shore is slowing down as the water warms up and the fish move to cooler water in the bottom center of the lake, which is the old Republican River Channel. Even though it has been a moderate summer, the fish want cooler water, which means those fishing from boats will do much better than those (like me) who fish from the shore. My buddy, Steve, did hook up with a six pounds or so gar the other day, which we left on the bank as raccoon food. The gar is a prehistoric fish that, like alligators and crocodiles, have changed little over the past several million years. They are essentially inedible, although I've heard of a couple of hardy souls who do find some good meat on the gar. It is really an ugly fish and is generally not found in the western United States. Below is a picture of an Alligator Gar caught in Florida. While Nebraska has the Long Nosed Gar, they also have a formidable set of teeth, and you do not want to stick your fingers in its mouth to dislodge the hook. Cut the line. That thing looks like something prehistoric, that's for sure.
I read recently that a small Alligator Gar was caught in a lake in California, which has a lot of the fish and game people sweating. They hope someone put it in the lake because it got too big for their aquarium. Like the Northern Pike, if there are lots of them out there, it will turn fishing upside down in the Golden State because they feed voraciously on trout, bass, crappie and you name it.

Remember the puppy, "Prince Dude"? Well, he's growing and coming along nicely. When my daughter got him on July 4, he had just been weaned. Now is a high energy bundle of black fur that is into everything and has chewed up a couple of towels, a cell phone charger cord, and uncounted pieces of paper. This week he has been accompanying Eva and I on our morning walks and has turned the walking into an exercise in amazement at his energy level.
















The first picture shows how much he has grown in a few short weeks. In the second, I can only say that on the end of that leash is an overly exuberant black puppy. He loves to go bounding into the high growth and thrash around. He's too young to realize that there are other creatures who also like tall grass and will not appreciate his energy level. I keep expecting to see him come running from one of his tall grass forays with a badger in hot pursuit. Badgers are everywhere out here and they are nothing to mess with. Even a bear will run from a badger.
I have come to the conclusion that the way to solve this nation's energy crisis is to corral every black Labrador Retriever puppy in the country and hold them in one massive pen. The collected energy would power America for a year.

My doves have flown away. Both the little guys have reached flying age and off they went. It didn't seem long enough to me, but when I looked it up on the net I found that doves go from hatched to airborne and on their own in just two weeks. If only teenagers could grow so quick.

It appears that my walking discomfort has nothing to do with my hip. The MRI exam shows that I have a perfectly normal left hip with minimal arthritis considering my age. The same cannot be said, however, for my lower back, where the doctors believe considerable arthritis has affected a couple of nerves. I have an appointment with a neurologist on September third. Stay tuned for further results.

Birds, Cheese And Other Trivia

The two little doves are coming along just fine. Got two pretty good pictures of them today. Please understand that I do not shoo or frighten mama off the nest to get these shots. I can hear her leave the nest (probably to go food shopping) because dove wings are really noisy and whistle when they take off.














They obviously have feathers, now, and in about a month or less will be flying away to take up their own lives. Hard to believe how fast it all goes. Shouldn't be hard for them to find food around here; I see big, juicy night crawlers struggling on the ground every morning after the sprinklers have been on. It looks like paradise for the early bird. (I have grabbed a few of those worms myself on occasion so that I can bait them up on a hook and look for catfish in the river or in the lake).

One of the minor league frustrations I have encountered as a result of my move to Nebraska is the lack of availability of Monterey Jack cheese, especially for sandwich slices. In L.A. every market carries Monterey Jack sliced for sandwiches on its deli racks. No such luck here. A person might find Pepper Jack or Monterey Jack mixed with Colby, but no plain Monterey Jack sandwich slices. The local grocery store carries a small, narrow block of Jack which can be sliced at home. It takes two slices side by side to fill a slice of bread. Occasionally, at a major store in Kearney, I find fairly large blocks that can make wonderful sandwich slices. The price, however, usually makes me put it down and walk away. I usually wind up putting ordinary "American" cheese slices on my sandwiches, which is somewhat less than thrilling and has all the flavor of grade school paste.

In my life, a sandwich is a small meal. I know some who are quite happy simply slapping a slice of bologna or whatever between two slices of bread. That might do in an emergency, but on a given day when I want to make a sandwich for lunch, it involves two slices of potato bread, mustard (or mayo) on one slice, and horseradish on the other. I then stack lettuce, a slice of meat, tomato, a slice of meat, onion, a slice of meat, and then the cheese. It's not really a "Dagwood" sandwich, but it gets close to that. It's delicious, filling, and easily holds me til dinnertime. Currently the lettuce, tomato and onion come from my daughter's garden. After the second frost, she will harvest the horseradish.

The weather here has not been ugly this summer. I know it has been brutally hot in L.A., but we have only had eight or nine days total of truly broiling weather. Last week we had three days of +100 degrees and 40% humidity. Those days make Nebraska the world's largest outdoor sauna. McCook, Nebraska, which is directly east and very close to the Colorado border, recorded 110 degrees last week. Ugh. But that's what air conditioners are for. It's interesting to note that most of the newer pieces of farm equipment (tractors, combines, and other man driven machinery) have enclosed cabs with air conditioning. What would the pioneers have thought?

My MRI examination scheduled for last Saturday morning didn't take place. The best laid plans....... In 2002 I had angioplasty on the major arteries leading into my legs, and the doctor inserted a stent in each artery. A stent is a small coil which forces the artery to stay wide open. Some are made of metal, some are not. If my stents are metal, I cannot have an MRI. The tremendous amount of magnetic energy used by the machine could cause problems with the stents that could kill me. So, this morning I called the office of the doctor in Pasadena who performed the vascular surgery to get information as to the material involved with the stents. Apparently it is in my file which is now in their archives. I should have the info I am looking for tomorrow or Wednesday. If they are metal, then some diagnostic tool other than MRI will have
to be used.

So life goes on. At least the fishing is still good. You betcha!

Well, my efforts to keep mama dove on her nest have played a part in a happy result. There are two little "squabs" (as baby doves are called) in the nest. While doing something on my computer, I heard the characteristic whistling of doves wings, which told me that mama had left her nest. I grabbed my camera and got the picture. First is the picture I couldn't load the other day, which shows the two eggs in the nest. Next is today's picture of the little guys.























It may take some careful study to differentiate the two young birds, their feathers aren't in yet so they kinda look like hairy blobs. I would guess that they were born just before noon today. It is now 2:00 PM Central Time. Later, I'll get a picture of mommy on the nest. I am not feeding them or anything other than just observing. Mother Nature has done a good job of keeping the species healthy and thriving for millennia - she doesn't need my help.

Zounds! I have discovered that this is "National Simplify Your Life Week". I really don't know if there is a whole lot I could do to make things simpler for me. Let's see now- I don't work any more; that's pretty good. I try to stay out of my kids lives unless they ask me in; that has worked very well. I have zero debts to pay off; that's incredible. I go fishing whenever the mood strikes me; I have died and gone to Heaven. I hope all my friends are simplifying their lives.

Every morning I read CNN, the L.A.Times and the Omaha World Herald, all on line. I am learning the sports situations here in this plains state, but had to sit back and take stock when I realized the the Omaha Royals, a triple A baseball club (that's one step down from the major leagues) is in the Pacific Coast League. Huh? Let me look outside again just to be sure, but I don't think Nebraska is anywhere close to the Pacific Coast. If it has to reach to Omaha for a team, the league is not nearly what it used to be. Of course, most of the cities that fielded teams for the PCL in the old days, now are home to major league teams.

The San Francisco Seals, the old Los Angeles Angels, and the Hollywood Stars disappeared when the Giants and the Dodgers came west in 1958. The old Triple A San Diego Padres, Oakland Oaks, and Seattle Raniers were replaced with major league teams in the 1960s. Do the Sacrament Solons and the Portland Beavers exist anymore? I'll have to look that up.

As a young teenager, I used to travel with my buds by streetcar (remember them?) to L.A.'s Wrigley Field to watch the PCL Angels play. I remember names like Cecil Garriot, Rube Novotney, Bob Muncrief, Gene Baker and of course, Steve Bilko, who could hit a fastball fifty miles but just couldn't deal with the curve ball. The Dodgers' Jim Gilliam used to call the curve ball, "Public Enemy Number One". It separated minor league hitters from the big time. Chuck Connors, of "Rifleman" fame, was a first baseman for the minor league Angels for a couple of years and at one time I had a picture of me with him taken on a "Picture Day" before the game at Wrigley Field. Over time the picture has disappeared and I sure miss it when I have moments like these.

Holy Mackerel. I just took time out to do a quick Google on Today's Pacific Coast League and it bears absolutely no resemblance to the old. Not only is Omaha in the league, but so is Memphis, New Orleans and Houston, not to mention Oklahoma City, Nashville and Albuquerque. The Albuquerque team is called the "Isotopes", probably to take advantage of its proximity to the Los Alamos atomic proving grounds. Question: After playing there for a while, do the players glow in the dark?

I don't think I want to find out.

A Couple Of Things

We all continue to grow older and consistently get messages from our body to let us know that we are not nineteen any more. My message comes loud and clear from my left hip. The morning walks by the lake with my daughter are becoming ordeals, and even the renowned "Vicodin" isn't able to do much to make things easier. As the pain from the hip has gotten worse over the past two or three years, I have become resigned to the fact that a new hip is probably somewhere in my near future. Accordingly, today I went to the see the doctor, who is conveniently located, of course, right next to Harlan County Hospital. He sent me over to the hospital for X-Rays (Long live the Curies), which took about half an hour. I then returned to his office for the diagnosis. Lo and behold! My hip does not appear to be damaged or badly arthritic. He suspects the culprit might be sciatica and that my lower back may be the cause of the pain in the hip (That's OK with me just as long as it isn't the dreaded "heartbreak of psoriasis"). In any event, I am scheduled for an MRI scan this Saturday morning. I'll get more news then. Film at eleven.

There is a bush about five feet high right by the back door to my apartment and a dove has built a nest and is doing what doves to do hatch the two little eggs in the nest. I took a picture with my digital camera of the nest, but for some reason the blog software keeps giving me error messages when I try to put it right "here" for all to see. I normally use my back door to come and go because it is closer to my car than the front door, and every time I walked out or returned and walked up to the door, the dove took off in panic. Being a little dense, it took me a while to figure that I should look and see why that dove was always there in the bush. When I saw the nest and the two little eggs, I resolved that I will use the front door (despite the outrageous inconvenience of being ten whole steps farther from my car) until the little ones are hatched, fledged and all three have moved on.

It surprises me that the nest is only about four feet from the ground. I have a window that allows me to look directly at the nest when I am sitting at my kitchen table. Every time I gently pull the curtain aside to look, mama dove stares directly at me and gets ready to take off. She is very skittish. Folks, this nest is less than three feet from the window and I am still curious as to what made her select that spot. Any house cat or raccoon would have no trouble getting to her or the eggs and with all the much, much taller trees around I just can't figure out why she chose that place.

It's tough to get a clear picture through the window since there is a second storm window and screen, both of which are pretty dirty. If I see her take off for any reason, I'm going to quickly step outside and try to clean them a bit so that I can get better pictures. The problem with a dirty window and most digital cameras is that the camera wants to focus on the window pane and its dirt and won't look beyond to the nest. I took a few shots with my good 35mm film camera which allows me to adjust the focus, but I haven't taken the film to Joe Camera to be developed yet. I sort of feel like an expectant father.

Now for a little news involving negativity and perhaps a bit of a rant.

We have lots of veterans in the area who served in the military during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the first gulf war and now Iraq. Many independent farmers, veterans or not, cannot afford individual or family health insurance policies. Consequently, many, many veterans in rural areas such as this have for decades depended on the Veterans Administration for their medical care.

The problem is that the VA, due to never ending budget cuts, keeps closing hospitals, which creates incredible hardships for the veterans. There is a VA clinic in Holdrege, 24 miles north. There is a VA hospital in Grand Island, Nebraska, which is 100 miles to the east, but it has been downgraded to a convalescent center and clinic. There is a VA hospital in Lincoln, a three hour drive, but it has been downgraded to a clinic, which amazes me since it is a city of 300,000. Even minor surgery for a veteran in this area requires a four hour drive to Omaha or a six hour drive to Denver. Heart surgery may require a nine hour drive to Minneapolis. Local veterans returning from Iraq with major injuries requiring significant follow-up care are in for a world of frustration in the rural areas of America.

When a man or woman goes into the service, he or she gives the government a blank check on life and limb. In my case, I served three years in the army during the Korean conflict but I did not go into combat, and I don't use the VA, thanks to Medicare and Medicare Advantage insurance plans. But I am hearing more and more anger and bitterness from young and old veterans in this area about the sad state of VA medical care availability and the government that now seems to no longer place a priority on the promises that helped to make veterans proud to serve their country.