Southwest corner weather has been dreary and is projected to remain that way for at least a week more. For years, we would have a month of dreary weather somewhere between October and early April. Then it went away. It’s back. In spades.

The weather guessers were greatly disturbed by a relatively dry February. The word “drought” kept slipping back into their lexicon. Now, they are all estatic it’s raining damn near every day. Of course, next week, they will all be complaining how all of this rain will be increasing vegetation and making wildfires more likely and more volatile in the upcoming dry season. i shake my head in sadness. “It’s called weather,” i think. Of course, i watch as now most of the weather guessers are very pretty, voluptuous really, and weather watching has taken on a whole new meaning in the world of political correctness and women’s equality. As usual, i’m confused.

The weather fits my mood.

Today, after a very wise email from our daughter Blythe, we changed our travel plans for April from “maybe” if things get better to “nope.” i cannot adequately describe the depth of my sadness. It’s always “too long” between spending time with Blythe, Jason, and, of course, our grandson Sam, and this time has been even longer than most.

This included my extending the trip on the back end to visiting back home in Tennessee. The last significant time spent in Lebanon and Nashville has also been too long, way too long.

So the long and short of it is i ain’t going to Texas or Tennessee as planned. As i have noted to others: It’s not cancelled. It’s postponed.

This whole thing has me spinning. The medical experts seem to now be getting the platform they needed. Quite frankly, up until yesterday, i was wondering just how bad the corona stuff really is. i never have liked the beer (stories along the border can sway your opinion, but it is essentially because i don’t like the taste), but this, this is even worse. i was perplexed in the media, as it does with every thing that breathes took the news of COVID-19 with complete over reaction. In this case, it may have been the correct thing to do.

And then i thought, “big deal.” Viruses happen all the time. Don’t like ’em. But they’ve been sort of there for a long time.  And they kill people. Sad, but a fact. It sounds like this baby has a leg up on the killing stuff. Blythe forwarded two articles from NPR and the Washington Post, that put some perspective on the spread. She made me smarter. Maureen made me smarter too with her comment this morning when were considering dining out this evening. She doesn’t want to be a contributor to this being passed along to others.

That’s it. That’s the key for me. Although well beyond the classification of “elderly” (she is nowhere near as “elderly” as  i am), Maureen and i are in pretty good health and the only “precondition problem we have is i have always been pretty goofy.  BUT, we can be enablers of the spread if we don’t observe good health practice. To be blunt, i don’t wish to be responsible for someone else dying. i have many, many friends who are “elderly” with “pre-existing conditions.”

So we are hunkering down in the Southwest corner. Oh, we won’t raid the stores for toilet paper. We will go out for necessary things like groceries and health care, and we will attend medical checkups, etc. But we are pretty much hunkered down.

Of course, now i have to figure out how to play golf on Friday.

Well, there was this great weekend of college baseball with my scorekeeping fanatic friend, Alan Hicks. In LA. Vandy. So i’m writing this post, long post, which i can’t seem to finish. Plus, i really am working on my book again. And i installed some sunshades (it’s been cloudy and rainy, which fits my usual order of getting things done) . Also, i’m back to putting things in order (See, you are getting Murphy’s Law posts again). And i had to recover from driving: i’m old,  you know, and recovery time is one of the things where i recognize i really am old.

So i’ve been very, very quiet here. Perhaps it really has been a respite for you.

But the respite is over.

When i found the Murphy’s Law entries, one of which i posted earlier today, i also found a note i had in a pile of unfinished writing. i wonder what produced such a note?

Vituperative is “pissed off” in five syllables.

i woke up in the middle of the night like an old man does most nights, thinking about the book i continue and continue to work on and had this name come into my head: “Maurice Sudduth.” Don’t know where it came from. From there, i realized someone like him should be called “Mo.” My good neighbor Spud’s real name is Maurice Mumby. My wife is often called “Mo.” But i’m not sure they had anything to do with this name popping into my head in the middle of the night.

Then, i sat down and began writing one of those things that is almost a poem, certainly not in keeping with the rules for poetry, not any of those rules but mine.

As i was writing, i looked at a quote of Colette from Casual Chance, a 1964 work of hers  i had saved on a small piece of paper and placed near my laptop: “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”

So be it. i am a writer. Someday, in addition to my book of poetry, which did not fare well as far as being purchased, i may be published. But i’m not sure i will ever be an author, probably not using Colette’s definition. 

But for my friends, here is what this writer wrote one middle of the night this past week:

Mo Sudduth

Mo Sudduth,
they called him Mo
came out of the South,
huffing and steaming,
he ran away, running hard,
no stop, no governor,
running away from the people and things
he knew and loved
because
he dreamed
of far away places,
beautiful isles —
yes, it was Fiddler’s Green,
although he didn’t know the name then
but
he learned —
and
huffing and steaming,
he ran away, running hard
into a life at sea:
swells, spume, storms, doldrums,
cold bitter winds, soft warm breezes,
sultry heat, tempests in the night,
glowing sea urchins,
dolphins, giant sea turtles, whales, sharks,
gulls, albatross
and
the sea spoke to him,
captured his love
with tales of the deep
and
all things of the sea
she owned them all
and
she showed him her beauty
in all her fury,  her calm,
in the dark night sky with a blanket of stars
and
Mo Sudduth
huffed and steamed
until
the huff was more of a sigh
and
the steaming gave way to diesel and gas turbines and such
until
Mo Sudduth left the sea,
returned to the South
and
sold home-made trinkets he carved from hickory
at a roadside stand
out front of his one room cabin
out in the country
while he drank his coffee
like the brew he drank continuously at sea
with a cigarette, long ago when he still smoked:
coffee with no additions
to spoil the dark and strong aroma and taste
until
one evening deep and dark
like a cloudy sea night,
he took his nightly nip of Tennessee sour mash
and
gave one last huff,
no longer dreaming
of his far away places,
beautiful isles,
huffing and steaming
and
his sea.

My posts are likely to be a less frequent for a while.

Oh, i’m writing a long, long one just to sort of get myself straight with myself. And i think i remember where the rest of my “Murphy’s Law” calendar entries are and may make them a daily exercise again. And i’m sure i’ll hit on some other ideas i will want to express.

And i wonder why i put all of this stuff down on pap…er, this infernal machine. i mean i really enjoy getting complements on what i write. They energize me. i try to reply to all of them because they make me feel good, and i want you to know they make me feel good. And i would like to make a bit more money to cover all of the crazy things i do and keep this thirty-year old house operating. But i’m not asking for anyone to pay for this stuff. It would change things. This is sort of like when i became sports editor of the Watertown (NY) Daily Times in early 1972 and i announced i would not have a daily column  because i didn’t want to feel i had to write something no matter what every day as there would be days no comment would be better than some invention not worth writing.  Nope, this old goofy guy is writing because he likes to write.

But, after almost a year’s rest, i am back to working on my manuscript for Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings. For the first time, i really am putting it first in my writing efforts, and i am determined, this time, to finish it.

And since i have sworn off comments about politics again and again and again — yeh, there’s at least one more coming — there’s a whole lot less to write about.

And somehow this time of year induces travel. i spent the two weekends ago in Scottsdale. Baseball, the college kind, the feel good kind. Next weekend, i head to Los Angeles for another three days of baseball, the college kind, the feel good kind when Vandy comes out west again, this time to play UCLA, USC (the Southwest corner version) , and TCU.

Then we go to visit our daughter Blythe, our son-in-law Jason, and TA DA, our grandson Sam. i’m so excited my britches are bursting (or something like that). To add icing to the  cake, i’ll head east from Austin, not west and go home again (take that, the real Thomas Wolfe) for about ten days. Perfect weather to catch up with home folks.

But to be honest, there is another reason. You see, i played golf today. The high was seventy-seven. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. i actually, for a change played well. Riverwalk. Mission Valley, about the only thing left that’s green on what used to be about eight miles long and about two miles of farm land along the San Diego River, now pretty much taken over by the development men and concrete, lots and lots of concrete, and lots and lots of cars, more than required to make it a really crappy place to to.

But i braved it today. Good friends, good weather. Oh yeh, did i mention good weather?

So just so folks will understand why i choose to live here and why i ain’t gonna leave, the photo below was at home after the round.

It’s February 26.

i plan to do this a bit more frequently now.

And i ain’t leaving.

i am not a big fan of nearly all mandated holidays. Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. That’s about it for me. i do pay respects to deserving military folks on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

i loved Halloween when i was growing up when the only decorations on all the houses were carved pumpkins, one, and good-hearted pranks were treats as good as the candy. i enjoyed the holiday when i could share it with my two daughters and grandson, but it was their joy i enjoyed, not mine. Halloween has gone overboard (so has Christmas) with the decorations, and when i see them i think how much better it would be if half the money spent went to help someone, some cause, or the national debt.

i have the same problem with Valentine’s Day when the price of roses goes out of sight, candy and cutesy card ads are pitched as a necessity, and you are shamed if you fail to buy several hundred of each. But with this past holiday and all of the preceding ones, i have always felt pressure. How to show my affection for those i love appropriately, tastefully. What if they don’t like what i offer? And now, Maureen has beautiful roses around our yard. Why would i or should i give her red ones? And i want to tell the folks i love with words or gifts when i get the notion, and i get the notion quite often, but i don’t like someone mandating i express that on a certain day.

So this year, i left. i mean Vandy baseball in the desert with life long friends is a strong draw for me. Not Maureen. She ain’t into desert. Now i feel guilty…just a little, but still guilty.

But as i went through the weekend, i was distracted.

First there was the drive: i enjoy long, alone drives. Don’t know why. i think my father enjoyed them, but nearly all of his was with my mother. Since Maureen has sworn off riding with me on long rides (due to some differences of opinion about what a road trip is supposed to look like and the cleanliness of out of the way gas station bathrooms. But that’s another story), my long ones are nearly always alone. Just me, the car, and the road.

This one began, as usual, in a time judged appropriate to miss most of the morning commute. For some reason, i did not resort to my iPod tunes or the radio. The entire trip. Just me and the car. After escaping the web of freeways, i headed east on Interstate 8 with the long gradual drive turned steep and winding over the the mountains adjacent to Pine Valley and Mount Laguna and Boulder Oaks — someday, i’m going to take the time to head out on CA 94, not I-8, to experience road travel through the mountains in the Southwest corner the way it used to be; Maureen and i partially did that about a million years ago when dating someone was a proper description of a relationship (another story).

It is a beautiful drive and an engineering marvel. Bridges approaching a half-mile long hundreds of feet above the canyons below. Grandeurs amazing in their rocky vastness. Sometimes on this high, i feel like i could touch the heavens, even at seventy miles an hour.

Outposts, mostly on Indian Reservations (Sorry if someone takes offense at the terms), of homes designed for working the land, such as it is with rocks and almost no level place for planting, yards filled with equipment some operating, some obviously long silent, but who is going to get those mechanical, metal behemoths off the mountain. A lonely life? Hmm, i don’t know. Sometimes, sometimes i think they live a simple life and don’t concern themselves with everybody in the world trying to fix everybody and everything their way and opposing all who wish to change them or their views. No, they rise early, gather the eggs, milk the cows, slop the pigs, and don’t think too much about indoor pets. Everyone works. And then the breakfast, homemade, hearty. And then to work again, tending fields, at least what there is, clearing land, checking the herds, perhaps even rounding them up from the rocky crevasses; home for noontime dinner, another big one, probably tortillas rather than buttermilk biscuits; perhaps a nap; then back at it until the cows come home to milk and feed again, supper; rocking on the porch for a while, perhaps reading a bit; but likely the Farmer’s Gazette and not a novel; hitting the rack early after a shower.

There is some beauty in that. i know i would have problems with the remoteness, the aloneness, but i dream.

i contemplate as i coast down the switchbacks to the desert valley. Looking southward, mountains and hills remain cloudy from the mountain mists, gray and three dimensional in their ethereal aloofness from any country’s claim of their property; Zane Gray stuff but Mexican, not the vastness which also resides in Utah, the location of Riders of the Purple Sage, the first western novel to capture my heart, but beauty untouched, unlike at the peak of the mountains down to the valley floor of sand and dirt and scrub brush and not much more now disrupted by the giant fans, windmills of the now for electric power, not water from wells and aquifers as before and when whirling, slaying the unsuspecting fowl; followed by the miles, square miles of solar panels and the attendant machine-looking plants to harness the power of the wind things and the panels; and then fields of plants; not a farmer’s garden next to his small home, but fields, seas of plants, neatly planted in rows, and tended, plucked by many men bussed in with port-a-potties scattered across the landscape and irrigation that would blow the minds of my Tennessee farming brethren, and the men, perhaps with family, in row houses with no shade from the desert heat and dirt yards and worse, the barracks-like quarters for these laborers who are paid disproportionately low for their effort, which none of high and mighty folks who wish to include them in their eviction to even greater poverty because the truck farmer owners and the corporate men know “the Jolly Green Giant pees in the valley;” but we don’t think about that; sad; we condemn like we once did the Irish and Italians and Germans and anyone who came after us because we were high and mighty and disdainful of folks who are now part of our heritage; but we just can’t seem to learn from history.

And then there is El Centro, the town in the middle of the desert, housing a large number of the folks from Mexico who work so hard and the Mexican restaurants abound; and once when the winds forbade my western passage over the mountains, i stayed in the cheap, roadside hotel, and walked a block to a Thai restaurant to find the owners were the Mexican family gathered inside, and sat by myself and found the Thai cuisine really prepared well, tasty, and suspecting some jalapeño might have spiced it up a bit, and on through more fields until reaching the dunes. Miles and miles of rolling mounds of sand as far as the eye could see except where hundreds, literally hundreds of RV’s of every shape and size sat in the forlornness while the owners and their kin and friends rode dune buggies recklessly across those dunes up and down sometimes in caravans, leaping into the air and landing with humongous shock absorbers softening the landing while the drivers and riders swallowed the sand and have it encase them so they could use the precious desert water to shower off the sand and grit and grime so they could grill burgers and sit around in the evening and brag of their exploits while drinking light beer or perhaps tequila. And i am amazed and wonder why every time i see them while passing.

And then Yuma, continuation of the desert but the flora and fauna change but to be frank, there ain’t much change to Gila Bend, once home of the Astro Hotel, long gone to shabbier environs but replaced by the Best Western Space Age Lodge, a little bit cleaner version than the locally owned breed where we once stayed with the cold shower running about 95 degrees at ten in the evening (but that’s another story); but i cut through on Arizona 85 to Interstate 10, the promenade to and from LA and trucks and trucks and trucks to the outskirts of Phoenix and Peoria and Glendale and Surprise and Scottsdale and Goodyear and Mesa and i see…concrete.

It is a complex some fifty miles east west and the same north south. Concrete. A big city just like the other big cities with the same corporate shopping, the same strip malls, the same artsy fartsy shops, or at least in keeping with the idea of the other big cities and roads and cars, lots and lots of cars and continuing expansion of houses, people, road construction.

But then i am there: Scottsdale; Air BnB house; and my friends from almost sixty years ago and still laughing and still enjoying each other’s company and baseball. Yeah, baseball. Sitting in a ballpark with a hot dog, later peanuts, and a beer, watching the game, kibitzing, cheering good plays of either side. College kids playing ball, quite a bit different than the factory mindset of college football and basketball. Eleven and half scholarships maximum, even though some Mississippi State fans believe Vandy gets 35. Huh? And we lose two out of three. But you know what, that is not what is most important. It’s a game. We are friends.

We enjoy each other’s company and the game:

And the world was right. We also enjoy good eats and we did, and we enjoy exploring and we did. Our favorite this trip was the Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West with great and expansive art, surprisingly including some wonderful photography by Barry Goldwater, and relics of the old west, too many to mention and then there was Alan and i  becoming a part of western art:

And then it was over. The ride back was just fine except for all of those RV’s with dune buggy tows over the mountain.

And i learned my recovery time for long drives i love has extended into days.

But i’ll do it again at the next opportunity.

Go Vandy. i think they will do just fine this season. i know i will.