.Friday Firesmith

Friday Firesmith – William, White and Blue

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Amazon’s recent meltdown of services was not without its bright moments. Usually, I can go into my favorite coffee place, put on my headphones, and jam while fueling up and listening to Maggie Rogers. Yesterday I was going with naked ears and it paid off.

Two guys were talking, both of them trying not to say too much, and both of them clearly not getting anywhere with the other. My table is near the window, inside, and I’m back to back with the guy with the blue shirt.

“It was five hundred dollars,” the man in the nice blue shirt said. “That sounds like a lot of money but in the context of our budget it’s not really that much.”

“The board never approved it. He can’t just hand out money without explaining why he did what he did.” The man in the white shirts replies.

Blue shirt is trying to get white shirt to do something both know is wrong.

“William is a leader. The board hired him to lead the congregation. He’s made a decision, and he expects your support. He deserves your support,” Blue Shirt says this with the tone of voice that suggests anyone disagreeing with him is the problem.

“I agree,” White Shirt replies but his tone of voice suggests he does not agree at all. “But he can’t hand out money to young women without approval. You understand the optics here, Greg. And the board isn’t going to approve the transfer of funds.”

“If the board doesn’t approve it are you going to follow protocol?” Blue Shirt spits the words out as if someone is suggesting an innocent man is being framed. He’s daring White Shirt to make an accusation openly.

“I recommend he pay the money back and not do this sort of thing again.” White Shirt sounds reasonable and calm now. This is the out. Both men fall silent for a couple of minutes. I think it’s over. It is not.

“The board doesn’t have to approve funds used to emergency assistance,” Blue Shirt says and I can feel the tension.

“She had an emergency at the beach?” White Shirt says and there’s anger now.

“That photo was taken at the beach. It’s not recent.” Blue shirt says and it sounds contrived, even from where I’m sitting.

“She posts on social media that she’s having a great time at the beach and it’s an old photo? And William tells the congregation he went to a retreat near the sea to pray? The timing is problematic. Are we going to go back through her social media and his and find out they were at the same place at the same time more than once, Ethan?” White Shirt’s cards are now on the table.

“You’re going to investigate the Pastor of your church? Do you realize how that looks? How many of the congregation will walk away? You’re hurting the whole church on nothing more than supposition? What’s this about? You want someone else in the pulpit? You want Willaim to resign? He’s done more for this church than anyone else has and you know it.” Blue Shirt sounds close to tears.

A third man joins them and the three of them sit without speaking now. My phone rings and all three stare at me as if they just notice I’m there. I have to go.

But I wonder how many churches in this area have a William as a preacher and if there will be one less by Sunday.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – the continuing adventures of Aqaba

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(Dateline Saturday, May 17th, 1914hrs)

Yesterday, for the first time since he’s been here, I let Aqaba’s food bowl get empty. He proceeded to bat it around loudly and I instantly realized the message. When Aqaba was first brought in, I said to hell with it, and got a large bowl and filled it, and kept it filled. He would eat straight down in a cone shaped pattern. He got up to thirteen pounds up from seven, and then stabilized around eleven. I haven’t weighed Aqaba in a while, but he’s a thin kitty. I do not think he’s ever had food available when he was hungry, and I think he was used to being hungry.

Jessica has a sore shoulder from trying to get to an armadillo under the shed, and Aqaba has been staying close to her, much like he did with Lilith Anne in her last days. Aqaba seems to know when someone needs someone.

For a young cat, only three years old, there isn’t much kitten left in him, but I don’t know if there ever was. I suspect he’s spent most of his life in survival mode, and hungry.

A house close to the road as I am going to Valdosta has lost three cats in the last year to traffic. I hit one of them, a black cat with a reflective collar. I’ve seen two dead cats in front of that house since then. Aqaba’s feet will never touch the ground again.

I know people who cannot have potted plants, or fresh cut flowers in vases around their cats but Aqaba isn’t prone to batting things off edges. He doesn’t tear stuff up or eat food on the counter tops. It took three months for Aqaba to decide to come in, and honestly, he wasn’t going to make it out in the wild. I think he saw me as his last best hope, and he made up his mind to make the most of it. This might be a lot of anthropomorphism on my part, but Aqaba hasn’t done bad cat stuff like Abbigale The Cat from Hell.

Giving Abbi meds was like injecting a great white shark with a toothpick at 100 meters of ocean during a hurricane. Aqaba scarfed down his meds without hesitation.

Taking Abbi to the vet was an adventure. Aqaba didn’t so much as meow.

I’ve always wanted a cat, but never thought I would have one, and never dreamed of having a cat like Aqaba Thomas, truly, The Cat Unexpected.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – Hell of a fire. Best in a long time.

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On the 12th of April, 2023, the rain began around midnight. The sound was amazingly loud. Sleep had to be abandoned, so I got up, checked the radar, and a deep red splotch of clouds hovered directly over my area and nowhere else. The rain came down in a roar.

The next morning the pond had overflowed, and the Live Oak in the backyard that had a serious lean was creaking. It fell before I could get my phone, and in the next couple of months, I was able to get most of the larger limbs cut.

The next two years brought hurricanes, more rain, more flooding, and eventually, trees died from their roots being submerged for too long.

About six months ago, the water began to recede. I was able to get the fence back up, my compost pile has emerged from the ocean, and I’ve been able to assess how bad things are.

I also had two dead trees close to the house taken down. One very close to the house, a gum tree, was still alive, but it had a growth near the top that caused the top to break off. Considering the size of the tree and its proximity to the house, I had it taken down, too.

I have spent the last couple of days moving logs over to the Live Oak that fell, and setting things on fire. I’m usually a let nature take Her course, but I’ve got a lot, and I do mean a lot, of dead trees. Dozens of them have died, some have fallen, but at the time of this writing I’ve got four piles of dead stuff that if they catch on fire, it’s going to get weird. Two are so close together their blaze will be visible from the moon.

The Live Oak blocks the path from the house to the woods, and it is large. I would like to leave some of it to return to the earth as all thing should, but I have to reduce it. I have made good progress in this endeavor.

I began the process of moving parts of the Gum Tree to help burn the Live Oak. I used rollers, levers, and manual labor to get this done. If you know Physics, you can take an eight foot long log that is two feet in diameter, and move it one hundred yards without breaking a sweat. Push, move a roller, push, move a roller, push, move a roller, push, use a roller as a pivot, reset rollers, push, pivot, burn.

All the wonders of the ancient world were built by people who knew how to apply force in a manner consistent with the laws of physics. It’s not difficult once you understand how. Aliens were not needed and are not needed to build, to move, to create an environment where humans can get things done without machines.

I’m alone in the woods and can move logs some machines might struggle with. I used pieces of trees to move trees.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – The War of Fog

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I leave the house before five in the morning, to get to the Y for the Pilates class. At five, Great Truths appear in the thinking for nothing else is going on in the world. Traffic isn’t worrisome, but deer are a problem. I know the hot zones, those places where deer like to be, and so I slow down.

Fog is beginning to form as I drive, but even the fog isn’t up yet.About the time I get to Valdosta, the fog is settling in, and I’m hoping it’s gone by the time the sun starts to show in the east. Pilates comes and goes, I feel great, but when I leave, the fog is thick and the sun is sleeping in.

The time is zero seven in the morning. I have about thirty minutes before work traffic starts getting weird, but I have to go grocery shopping. Zero Seven Twenty sees me on the road, ahead of most of the traffic that is going to crank up, but the fog is thicker now. The sun isn’t going to help.

And here we go…

The first person to totally ignore the fact conditions have changed and everyone ought to behave is a guy that pulls up right beside me on US84 heading west. He’s in this great big black SUV and I deal with him swiftly.

I hit the brakes. Hard.

He’s not ready for this, and he zooms on ahead, and now I know. He was using me to block the car behind him and now, the two play bumper tag. In the fog. With cars.

I nearly call 911 but wait to see if they’re going to kill one another first. They speed off into the distance, and I lose them in the mist. But I have to keep an eye out for a wreck in front of me, now.

As I approach the Withlacoochee River, the fogs thickens and I slow down. A car passes me, and nearly cuts me off as he changes lanes to get ahead of me.

What the Actual?

Then I notice this car is being pursued by another, and the second car passes the first and cuts in front of him.

I brake gently to ease away from the drama.

Another car joins the first two, with the car in the lead slowing down, and the car behind him riding his bumper. Or at least that’s what it looks like. I’m backing away.

The third car in this party decides to back away, and so now there’s a buffer between me and the loonies. More cars are arriving, and the two who are playing tag now have to stop or risk other people’s lives. They keep passing one another, and one of them nearly hits a semi.

They both decide that’s enough as we’re all heading into Quitman.

I pull into the parking lot of a store and drink water. I need water and I need a break from this sort of madness. This is why I do not like people. This is why I live in the woods. This is why I suspect we’re all going to hell in a handbasket.

The rest of the drive is uneventful, and I get to write when I get home.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Two Gummies (Tee Aych zzzee!)

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Somewhere out there in the vastness of the internet is a short video of me blowing smoke directly at the camera. How this, and little else survived my youth, is no mystery. I was not supposed to survive it. Voted “Most Likely to Die Before Age 21” in high school, no one expected me to live long enough to look back at some of the things I did, and some of the things that happened.

Weirdness did follow me. People would tell me they wanted me to go on a road trip with a group because something would happen. We found an empty tomb in an old cemetery in Macon Georgia and I went inside and took photos with a flash. A blue splattered drawing on the back of the tomb, along with an odd looking shadow that looked like something behind me showed up in the photos.

But I was point man. I would go first. If something spooky or supernatural was there I was going in. If there was a new drink or a new drug, I was there for the game. I was going to die young yet I was immortal.

Then, one day, without me realizing it had happened, I lived. And I aged.

Like the tottering veteran climbing over a fence to see the plane he once flew in battle, I am here now to report I am old. Not just old, but ancient.

Saturday, someone gave me a small jar of THC gummies. Over the counter light weight no real buzz help you get some sleep because you are old and cranky gummies. At the appointed hour, I chewed two of them, and went to bed. I slept peacefully.

At one in the morning I arose, having to pee, and couldn’t walk. I could barely crawl. I made it to the toilet but had issues standing, walking, and oddly, talking. It was a stroke. I was certain I was dying. I called an ambulance and was taken to the hospital.

“Two Gummies Dude,” is the way one of the guys working at the hospital described me. He didn’t make fun of me, but I could tell he thought I was some old geezer who got into some gummies and thought he was dying.

I held up pretty good until I started puking and that was when dignity left me.

In a few hours, I was okay-ish again. And had to find a ride back home. They told me I had not had a stroke, no heart attack, not so much as an ingrown toenail. I had a bad reaction to two gummies.

At high school graduation I swallowed a Quaalude and chased it with Jack Daniels.

I went to my regular doctor today. So now I’m wearing a heart monitor. I also had a brain scan today, and had some blood-work done, just to make sure. Three days after the event, I still don’t feel quite right. People are treating me like I’m fragile now.

As mundane as it sounds, I had a bad reaction to sleep gummies.

I should have died in an ancient crypt with a mysterious photo that was all left to explain what happened to me.

Instead, I got old.

Take Geritol,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – three months to the day

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Three months to the day, 23 September, my little sister died of cancer. In her will, she left me her car, which used to be Mom’s car, and now it’s back. We pulled into her driveway about two thirty and the car was there, keys in it, so we looked it over and left.

My sister was a smoker and she had an ashtray in the car full of butts, so I rode with the windows down until we reached Bainbridge, forty miles away, put some gas in the car and threw the ashtray away. I found two Taylor Swift CDs in the car, but everything else was twangy as hell.

I drive a stick shift so finding someone to ride with me then drive back in my truck required finding someone who likes me enough to spend two and a half hours in a truck with me then back alone. I have a writer friend I can count on and she drives a stick.

We talk about writing, her project, mine, writing in general, and my sister was an artist who never really committed to the idea she had talent, and she did.

In a prefect world, I would have spent the day driving around Early County, remembering the places my sister and I would drive around while drinking, and yeah, that was once socially acceptable. We would creep slowly down the red clay road and toss the bottles out of the windows and no one ever got pulled over for drinking and driving unless they were causing a problem. Fewer cars, fewer people, fewer paved roads, and fewer problems.

I never knew it until she died, but my sister was a unifying force in the family, a peace maker, and she was always the little one, the youngest, and that was part of an issue I never realized existed until she was older. We never treated her like a full formed adult sometimes.

She had been with the same boyfriend for eight years, and he died five years ago, but I don’t think she ever got past that. She never dated again. Never wanted to, and for the first time in her life, my sister lived alone. I never thought she would survive that, but she discovered comfort in isolation, which I grok. She told me she knew why I lived alone for so long, and she stopped being so afraid of the dark. She lived with cats and a large black lab type dog, and was handy with a shotgun.

This might be my last trip back to Early County ever. My best friend died in 2013, of cancer, my sister has died of cancer now, and to go back is to haunt my own life, even though I am still alive. I no longer have any old friends to visit there, no one from high school to pal around with, and honestly, I have always hated Blakely Georgia.

As I drove back, windows down, Taylor Swift on a CD, and feeling emotionally drained, I remember the last time I spoke with my sister, knowing it would likely be the last time. In the car was her music, her detritus of life, change in a small cup, a few ones tucked away, paid bills on the floor, unopened mail, and now, she is no more. Three months to the day.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Bringing down the trees

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The last two trees I brought down were a bit goofy and that made me a bit skittish. The first one did something not totally unexpected, because when you cut a tree that is both dead and hollow, it might, or it might not, do what you plan it will.

Hear me, My Dudes. When you’re felling a tree and that thing starts moving, you do, too. Get the hell away from it. This one hit, then the trunk end backed up over ten feet and it fell over due east another five feet. Standing to one side or right behind it, I would have gotten hit.

Another I cut two weeks ago broke as it was falling and it was more of an explosion than a cut. Part of the top fell backwards. I ran, twisted my ankle, and decided to shop around for a tree cutting service.

So here we are. The guy told me he would take the two smaller dead trees, with twisted limbs going off in all directions, and the dying tree next to The Mom’s She Shed for four-fifty. I think he was in a good mood, for that is a great price, and yesterday, the bucket truck and the saw guy arrived on time and ready to go.

The dead pine is lopped into pieces and dropped without a hitch. The dead water oak is dispatched quite easily, and all is well.

The tree beside the Shed of the She, is a mystery tree. I have been told it’s a water gum, a swamp myrtle, and a copperhead. (Everything is a copperhead to some people.)

So the guy buckets up, limbs fall like rain, he gets a lot of it down, and decides to fell the rest. I warn him about the water faucet in the backyard. He tells me no problem.

He ties the a rope to a tree, uses another rope to fasten a pulley to a tree in the woods, backs the truck up to create tension, and cuts. The tree falls. It does not fall perfect.

It misses my yard wagon by a foot. But the rope pushes another dead tree over and it hits the faucet perfectly. Water springs out like a sprinkler on meth. The guy has no plumbing supplies with him.

Normally, I might be pissed, but this guy has taken down three trees and no one is hurt. I have some spare parts and some glue, so the two of us get the pipe fixed, he cuts some of the larger pieces down to size for me, and we call it a day.

I could have folded my arms, told him the broke pipe was his problem, and simply waited to see what would happen next. But it was a freak accident, unrelated to the actual cutting, and I have three trees down and no one is hurt.

I’ve said that before. No one is hurt.

I think that’s more important that some glue and spare pipe parts and fifteen minutes of work.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – work related illness

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The longer I am retired, the more I realize how unhappy my job made me. I know a guy that spent five years in prison. He said there were milestones while he was in, one year, two years, and he could count the days he had left before he was eligible for parole.

But the day-to-day grind wore him down. Each day was identical to the last, and nothing ever changed. He stayed away from trouble, never spoke to anyone but his cellmate, and worked hard to be invisible. He rarely left his cell and when he came up for parole, sitting in a room that wasn’t a cell in front of people who were not prisoners was more than a little frightening.

After all, it had been five years since he had seen daylight for more than a few minutes at a time, and it had been five years since he was able to do anything at all without walls around him.

Released into a halfway house, he got a job, worked hard, then returned to the halfway house and hung around with his fellow ex-convicts. When he was finally released from this part of the journey, he moved in with his parents, moved into his old room he had when he was a kid, and started life over again.

That’s what being retired is like. You’re accustomed to living your life a certain way, and then one day it’s gone. Of course, it feels like a vacation at first, but you start to drift away from that life you lived, and you lose track of people you knew at work. It’s coming up on six years for me now. Suddenly, it seems, six years.

My friend who did time, it’s been five years for him. He says it’s like he wasn’t there at all now. None of the people who knew him before talk about it, and no one in his new job knows, or at least they pretend they don’t.

Odd thing, the one thing we share is we both went through a lot of physical health problems right after. Both were digestive issues. Both of us found freedom, but at the same time, the fact we both were in a very restrictive relationship with our time, having time suddenly was overwhelming.

Physically and emotionally, any sort of dramatic change in lifestyle takes a toll, even if that change is positive. For twenty-seven years I rose and went to bed guided mostly by the idea I had to, had to, go to work. It’s what I had been trained to do by my parents, by school, by the bills that needed to be paid, and by the fact everyone else was doing it, too.

Work devoured my life and became a prison. I put off family functions, girlfriend’s lives, my own life, and countless other events and occasions because of work. Work became a mental illness of sorts, a vast blanket under which I hid from living.

And suddenly, I am alive.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Summer and September

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As a teenager, I worked in the fields during the summer, and heat was never an issue. After working under the sun for a month, all heat feels the same, all humidity is normal, sweat is the uniform of the day, and sundown is quitting time.

This prepared me for working on the road, in triple digit heat, with asphalt that’stwo hundred fifty degrees as it comes out of the spreader. Get close enough to the asphalt and even the gnats will leave you alone.

Working on bridges usually meant there was water, but those structures that spanned overflows or just large holes that sometimes heldwater, it was like being in the bottom of a well with a heat lamp positioned over it.

Heat in South Georgia, for the better part of my life, simply was.

September is here, and last year it didn’t cool off for most of the month. This year, the first days of September have gifted us with temperatures in the mid to upper sixties, and it is heaven.

I did some limb cutting to get debris away from the fence the Big Pine fell on. And then I had to replace the fence. I started early in the morning and worked until noon. The heat nearly got me. The first part of August is unkind, to say the least, and at sixty-five, I feel my age more and more the higher the temperature rises.

Through the years, the new hires got younger and younger, and softer and softer. The generations raised on the inside of houses, nestled comfortably with their screens and air conditioning, were not accustomed to working outside in the heat, and some could not. Some would not. Management began allowing employees to sit in their truck with AC and cell phones, while work went unobserved. Being out there in the heat with the work was the only way to learn how its done, but the younger generation wanted only to stay out of the heat.

In good truth, theywere never trained to endure. I’ve watched grown men in their early twenties panic when they’ve been in the heat for too long. I’ve had employees quit rather than sweat. I’ve seen men who claimed they’ve played football in high school go home from work because they were too hot.

I went a few months without a work truck at one point. I had someone drop me off at the asphalt plant with my lunch cooler, I would catch the first truck out at six in the morning, then catch the last truck back in at seven in the evening. Someone would pick me up and take me back to the office, and by the time I got home I had time to eat supper, take a shower, and go to bed.

They forgot me one night, and I had to walk to a payphone and call for a ride to come get me. The guy that forgot me had gone out drinking so when he finally arrived he was almost too drunk to drive. After that incident, they got me a truck. It had a hole in the floorboard and didn’t have air conditioning. But it was a ride.

September. Cool breezes and nice sunrises. And the memories of summer, easing into the past again.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Storm Damage and stuff

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The back of the property is finally dry enough for me to reclaim my Compost Pile Complex, yet only the original pile is going to be used for a while. I’ve got some work to do back there. Let’s so a quick recap of why this conversation is taking place.

12 April 2023. A freak rain event drops eleven inches of rain in six hours on top of a small part of Brooks County Georgia, resulting in the pond overflowing, my backyard flooding, and the compost pile being submerged. I lose a giant Live Oak in the backyard due to its roots being submerged and it falling over. A wet summer follows.

20 August 2023. Hurricane Idalia comes ashore and brings us some wind and rain. Some smaller trees are knocked over, limbs fall in the flooded area and that’s where they will stay for a while.

26 September 2024. Hurricane Helene comes ashore and we take a direct hit with maximum winds of 128 mph recorded in Brooks County. More rain, more downed trees in the back, and one big Water Oak on the west side of my two acres is broken near the ground and pushed due west. It had been leaning due east. The flood water in my backyard nearly reaches the deck. My shed, which is three feet off the ground, is six inches away from being flooded.

20 January 2025. A foot of snow falls in South Georgia. It’s pretty. But it’s also made of water and it does not help at all. The giant Pine Tree in the backyard dies from its root system being submerged. It’s seventy-five feet tall. I take it down with a chainsaw and more than a few tears.

The water hangs around until we start having drier weather in the first part of 2025. April and May see only a few inches of water, and as the water recedes, I start moving stuff out of the yard.

By June of 2025, the water is almost all gone and by July, I’m back into the Compost Pile.

The hibernaculum started before the flooding and got bigger once the Live Oak fell. I set fire to it one time, when the water was high and got some cool photos of it. I also took the kayak out and paddled around, even over the compost pile.

But now, it’s a wasteland out there for trees. Many, many, many have died, from being pushed over or for being drowned. Quite a few are leaning on other trees and will eventually fall. I can either let nature takes it course and hope they fall well and not on a dog, or I can take them down.

One thing is for certain is I won’t live long enough to see the trees return. The First Tree, the tree that caught my attention by being the first free to grow in the Fire Pit Area is dead. For years, the back part of the property was overgrown with vines, and when I cleared them out, the trees returned. That was twenty-five years ago. A lot of my work in growing trees has been erased now, and I will not get another chance.

Take Care,

Mike