Wilma submitted poems to Dry Crik Review on her typical scraps of paper most of which I published. One, however, I did not publish because I could not decipher one word in the poem from her handwriting. I scanned it to Betty Blanks, who has recently authored a book “Pick Up Your Pen And Write: The Life of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel” http://wilmaelizabethmcdaniel.com, to help me out. The word was ‘ping’. Til now, this amusing poem has never seen the light of day.
FAKE FORTY-NINER
We knew Ardell had been acting crazy for weeks he grew a beard stalked around muttering to himself
I gotta go now to Jackass Hill to Poker Flat and Angels Camp
I gotta pan some gold race me some frogs kiss me some CanCan girls I really gotta go
He drove away in his Pinto with the ping towards the motherlode on Golden Chain Highway 49
We didn’t hear from him until his bonanza petered out he phoned collect the Pinto gave up in Jamestown
With 5 different Edison meters for house and pumps, our mailbox has been full of these notices , one for each, for the past three weeks, usually two daily outages per week. Edison has noticed us for two more outages within the next week as they replace power poles and wire on this five mile stretch of Dry Creek Road. No power, no AC, no pumps and no water for man or beast during this “Heat Advisory” forecast near 110 degrees.
We grin and bear it and try to get along, which means pulling the refrigerator out of its cabinet, unplugging it, then after a few minutes, plugging it back in. We’ve lost about $800 worth of food thus far, but the freezers have come back on without assistance. I’ve learned to anticipate the timing of the outage to shut the water off to the house, which would be drained otherwise and filing with air to be compressed when the juice comes back on with pressures high enough to jeopardize our plumbing.
The contractors (ParWest) have been great, with the exception of an underground services employee who was driving our firebreaks after he left the gate open to the road for 46 first-calf heifers. He did get an earful.
Of course, all this concern comes after PG&E’s bankruptcy when its transmission lines ignited numerous fires in Northern California after which nearly half of the state became a high fire risk area. Fire insurance doubled or tripled or left homes uninsurable. Edison will probably lobby the PUC to raise its rates to pay for all this maintenance it should have doing all along. C’est la vie.
WordPress keeps trying to expand and improve their blogging template. I think I’ve got it figured out now, but not after sending half-dozen email copies to followers that was not in the form I intended.
drycrikjournal 