Termites = Vacation

It was Saturday morning.  I still have sleep in my eyes.  Waiting for coffee to brew.  Our plans are a quiet morning with NPR's Morning Edition on low in the background.  Potatoes have been started and the garlic purmeates the house.  This is not the time when you want to hear, "Hey honey . . ." 

My wife goes up into the loft to grab a gardening book and walks into a swarm of termites.  They are clearly termites.  However, in a desparate attempt to dodge all of the work that comes with termites, we google termites to be sure.  Crap.

Turns out, the termites with wings lay the eggs.  When they are out and about, it means they have eaten up their current food source and are looking for another.  The swarm was mostly termites with wings.  Crap.

So, the house has to be tented ASAP.  It's scheduled to happen during the week, so we've got to stay near by.  I ask my wife if she has any ideas.  She says even more dreaded words, "How about my mom's house?"  Desparation kicks in again.

By the grace of God, we were able to get two nights at Doheny Beach on the water.  We opened the camper door to the beach.  Because summer was over, days were quiet - just the waves crashing and a train once in a while.  At night, the waves, a fog horn off in the distance and the train, but without the train horn.  Heaven.

My wife went to work during the day, but I got three days off.  The first day off this year - that's what happens when you are the boss and there is absolutely no incentive to hire anyone. 

Check in to the campsites isn't until 2pm.  However, you can sit and drink in day use, which is included with fee for camping, until then.  The beach patrol leaves campers alone and turns the other way to cocktails.  I'm sure that changes if you are being a jerk. 

Your neighbors are close but are neat people.  Our neighbors was a guy who worked at In-N-Out for close to 40 years.  No matter what the topic of conversation was, it always seemed to divert back to the history of In-N-Out.  Our other neighbor was a former one percenter.  He had been coming out to camp at Doheny for decades and only once has he had punk kids as neighbors.  Otherwise, everyone is old and tells stories and lies all day.

My Princess

I love my wife like there is no other.  She is the light of my life.  She makes me laugh, keeps me in check and keeps me doing charitable work.  She is the real deal, but this post isn't about her.

My princess.

Five years ago I meet my future wife.  She has two dogs, one trained and one wild.  Very wild.  She barks at full steam in the house, she bites, she runs.... she is a mess.  She had mange as a puppy and was in quarantine for months as a pup after being found on the streets, but she was three wheeled.  She walked with a limp.  When I came into the picture we found a GREAT vet who understood the dog and amputated the bad toe that caused the limp.  I carried the 60lb dog.

She had never bonded with a human, but on a boondocking trip to Panamint Valley, I had to chase her miles down Remi Nadu Road.  She realized she was loved.

She is now my princess.  Scabs, bald spots and all, she is the most proud dog you'd ever see.  She will chase rabbits miles across lake beds and still come on command.  Man's best friend, indeed.

This dog has taught me more about grace than anything I could ever experience.

The Magical Fruit

I've always loved beans.

I grew up in La Puente, a gritty suburb of Los Angeles where some of the white flight from the dust bowl in Oklahoma ended up.  We were them.  My grandfather died on the farm and my dad became the man of the house.

At fourteen.

 After untold years of drought, they came west with the rest of the Okies (I can call them that, I am one) and set roots.  Most ended up in towns like La Puente, El Monte, West Covina and Baldwin Park... any place you could have a chicken or two, the roads may or may not be dirt and the rest of the town Latino.  You stuck out like sore thumb.

Our first house was on Los Angeles Avenue in Baldwin Park, just East of Main St, a quarter mile from the drive through dairy.  We would walk there on hot nights to get ice cream made from the fresh milk.  It was always the best ice cream in the world on a 90 degree night.  The neighborhood was different than us and my Hesian uncles parked bikes on our culdasac to make a point, our neighbors all spoke Spanish.  We would Spanglish a bit but the universal language of the neighborhood was, when the goat went missing, there were great tacos to be had the next night.  Oh so true.  Oh so good.

In my teenage years I always heard, "Ah, Mijo, you are too skinny..." and someone's mom would shove a homemade tortilla with butter in your hand, or a potato and chorizo burrito, menudo, or a plate of refried beans.  I loved those beans and studied method after method, all individual to each family.

Here is my version.

Saute onions, garlic and hot peppers in oil, add beans (use any beans you've canned, they all work - recipe to follow) with liquid and simmer until soft.  Salt and pepper to taste and mash with a potato masher.  Simmer until they hit the desired thickness.  You don't even need to add fat to come up with a great product, simply cook down your onions, garlic and peppers in a bit of hot water, add your beans and off you go.

It brings me back every time.  Weewee's mom used to serve the best beans, but don't tell that to Mrs. Rodriguez...

Pressure Canned Beans:

1 C Beans of choice
Water to within an inch of the top of the jar
Clove of garlic
Teaspoon of salt

Process at 10 lbs for 90 minutes.

All basic canning rules apply.

Eat, eat!!!!  You are too skinny!!!!

Little Pot, Big Flower

My mother loved Georgia O'Keeffe paintings and had prints all over her office that we shared.  I felt like I had entered into an OBGyn office; I couldn't stand it.  I wear my manhood proudly... I weld, I scratch things, I like old rusty metal, I like smoked meat, fire is good, I climb mountains, wounds are to be fixed with duct tape, Georgia O'Keeffee made me vomit.

Fast forward twenty years and a stick that my wife's grandma gave us turned into this.

Pictorial says everything.

Maddux for $1

Somehow, there is a compound in North Tustin in which a group of hippies live.  They were nice hippies who happened to have a garage sale.  Besides selling their own art that they made clearly after smoking hippy lettuce and tied-dyed clothing, there was this porcelain cockatoo figurine.

 My sister is a rock-a-billy hipster who collects vintage porcelain and happens to own many birds.  That is why no one sleeps at her house.  One of the birds is an African Gray that mimics the fire alarm and some classless guest taught him how to say, "Hail Satan."  So you wake up at 5 am to the sound of a fire alarm and "Hail Satan."  Pleasant awakening.

My sister is a 5-feet tall, red-headed, Irish and an artist - needless to say, she is always angry.  This figurine would be a great peace offering.

I ask a hippy how much they want for the figurine, to which the hippy (not sure if it was a man or a woman), "that thing?  A buck." 

Turns out, it was a figurine made by Harry William Maddux, a local Southern California artist.  He made figurines from the 1940s until the 1980s.  The year in which a figurine was made depends on the signature.  The one I found was signed "WM Maddux," so it appears it was from the 1940s.

For more information on Maddux, his art and inspiring life story, visit: http://madduxpottery.com

Free Camping Freedom!

I don't like to pay for camping.  I don't think I should have to and rarely do.  I don't need a picnic table, toilets, nature centers, chubby rangers with Smokey the Bear hats and signed trails with more and more intrusive Globberment regulation.

I used to backpack, Jeep camp and now have a slide in camper for the truck.  I come equipped for six or seven days, self contained and happy.  We camp for free on public land all throughout the desert in California.  We have a love affair with the desert, the freedom and sheer loudness of complete silence.

Where we go we have no neighbors to speak of and are a few miles from the nearest paved road.  It allows time to decompress, to explore military ruins (it was part of Patton's desert base for WWII) and search for Indian villages (we've found two).  Everyday is rewarding, even if sitting in the shade of the RV reading a book or listening to Miles Davis... or doing nothing but staring off into the distance.

The nights are inky unless you have a great big moon, then the desert becomes this amazing silvery-blue that glows for miles and miles.  The coyotes howling in the distance, it makes quite a remarkable scene and soundtrack.

Go find yourself a spot, far away from others and slow down.  Make it your spot.  Build a sundial out of rocks and a stick.  Play some no-out-of-bounds bocce ball.  Listen to the breeze.  Take photos of things that seem ordinary but really are extraordinary.

Camp for free.

Be free.

Operation Succulents

Whether you bought it at a garage sale, someone regifted it or your wife won't let you throw it away, you always end up with something that makes you scratch your head and say, "What the heck I am supposed to do with this thing?"  It could also go the other way - your husband finds an old beer can out in the desert or used up all of the oil and thinks the oil can is art.

My default is just to stick some succulents in it.  Whenever guests are over, they comment on how cool one of the succulent-holding contraptions are.  I (usually after a few cocktails) say, "You like it, its yours!"  So, here is what has survived my drunken giveaways.

Tip: best way to water is to put ice cubes in once a week.  That way you don't have to worry about over-watering or excess water staining your furniture.

In my kitchen, I tend to use kitchen-related items.  All of these copper colanders came from garage sales in Villa Park.  They are the only people who hate money so much that they buy copper colanders.

 

Add battery-operated lights into the insulators for awesome reflections in the succulent colanders.

 

Old meat grinder (note: we are not vegetarians.  The only reason this was made into a succulent pot was because we own a commercial-grade grinder.  Who do you think we are?):

 

 

Old frame:

 

 

Vase you bought at the Sky Village Swapmeet from a desert rat who had no teeth:

 

 

Cracked coffee cup:



A hanging pot that nothing else will survive in because moss doesn't retain water: