.Friday Firesmith

Friday Firesmith – The Little Girl and the Orange Cat

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I can’t remember the first time I saw her, or for that matter, the last time. She was a little girl, tiny, and stood beside the road waiting for the school bus with the other children, five or six of them, and she waved at me. I waved back. So, every morning, five days a week, she would see my truck, she would wave, and I would wave back. Some of the other kids did, too. But she never missed a day, if she saw me.

Of course, some days she was not there, playing sick, actually sick, skipping school, holidays I didn’t get, and some days I was playing sick, skipping work, and sometimes writing.

Late August I would look for her, and she would be there, and wave, and I would wave back.

Then went on for years. Literally, it went on for years. The first time I saw her I was still married, Bert was an only dog, and my future uncertain. As far as I could tell, the first time I saw her she was in the first grade, and that too is an uncertain time.

Years later, I noticed she was wearing a skirt that was, well, uh, too short. That’s when I realized she had grown up in front of me, one workday at a time. She started wearing her hair fixed up nice, she was growing upbut she still waved.

Maybe it was high school, or she went later in the day, or maybe her family moved. But she was gone after a summer. The next year she was still missing. I never saw her again.

About a mile from where she once lived, a cat appeared, many years after. It was a dark orange cat, deep richly orange, and the cat would haunt one yard and another across the road. It never waved at me, but I did blow my horn one day when it timed the run across the road too close.

Today I saw a flash of orange a mile from where he usually haunts, on the side of the road, and that was that. I went back, just to make sure, traffic buzzing by and people blowing their horns at me. But the orange cat was dead. Dead, dead, no possibility of life at all.

 I wonder if the little girl, full grown adult by many years, likely a mom with kids of her own, maybe a graduate of some school somewhere that handed her a piece of paper saying she was smart and could make good money. That’s what I hope. That’s what I want. I also want her to be out there somewhere and telling people she remembers an ancient man, likely dead of old age years ago, who used to wave at her in the mornings, before school.

There’s hope in every child. Every tiny human has in them the endless possibilities of life. I hope her parents never lost sight of that in her. I hope they did right by her.

Outside cats, however, especially near a road, are always living on borrowed time.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Troupville

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Troupville no longer exists as a town, but a Historical Marker, rarely read, will tell you it was once the County Seat of Lowndes County. The government of Troupville tried to pry concessions from the railroad company to allow them to come through Troupville and so the railroad went through Valdosta whose government was willing to sell their souls to get a railroad. Valdosta flourished and Troupville became a good place for a Historical Marker.

Troupville Road still connects Quitman with a major State Route going into Valdosta, and the once sleepy little backroad is getting crowded. The road is narrow, with even slimer shoulders, but more and more houses are popping up along the twelve miles of asphalt.

An Industrial Dairy has twenty-four hours a day bright lights going on so what once was deep night no longer exists. Their machines prowl the road during the day, rutting the sides of the paved road, and causing traffic problems. Industry cannot be stopped.

Spec houses have sprung up, with subdivisions and houses with small yards here and there, eating up farmland and the wild areas, and forcing deer to feed on the side of the road, when they aren’t crashing into cars.

The state built a bridge, a concrete bridge, over Millrace Creek back in the 50s, when a lot of construction was going on in America, and that was when the Interstate projects began. They just replaced that bridge a couple of years ago, and it won’t be long before they either widen the road or four lane it.

To me, it’s an alternative route from US84, which was four laned back in the 1980s. I remember it being one of those roads if you got behind a slow-moving tractor or something like that, you might be stuck for an hour or so. Now, it’s a highway I avoid and risk tractors and deer to keep away from cell phone distracted idiots traveling at speeds unheard of back when Troupville was trying to extort the railroad.

A woman friend of mine used to ride her bike the length of Troupville Road and back again, every Sunday morning but a man followed her home one day. This was back in ’92, right after I left the area for the first time, but she called me and told me about it. She moved away not long after, in search of someplace safe for women, but unless she left the country, I do not think she found it.

When I first moved to Hickory Head over twenty-five years ago, I met a moonshiner who told me would ride his horse down Troupville road, and he’d stop at a farm to water the horse. The owner of the farm had a daughter. Eventually, the two met, and he courted the woman, and they got married. He went off to fight in World War II, and when he returned, three years later, she had a one year old child.

He never quite got over it and never went down Troupville Road again.

Take Care,

Mike

friday Firesmith – Treed

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(Gremlins got hold of this, sorry for the delay ~ Mikeco)

Twenty years or so ago doesn’t seem like a long time anymore. I mean, the actual time is a chunk of years, but it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, even though I know for a fact it was. The Big Pine had dropped one of its lower limbs, still green, but just hanging there. Large and a protentional dog killer, I set about wondering what to do about the hanging limb.
I had a rope, three-fifths jute, and decided the thing to do would be to toss the rope up to the limb, pull the tossed end all the way over, and from there, pull one way then the other until the limb broke. Nothing says, “This will utterly fail,” more loudly than the plan going according to, well, plan.
Got the rope up first toss, pulled the end down, made a loop, pulled it tight, and spent two hours pulling one way then the other, and the limb did not break. I had no choice but to leave the rope connected, so I pulled and pulled and pulled, for weeks, nay, months, and the limb never broke, and it actually stayed green for the longest time. Finally, the limb fell.
Well, most of it, a three- or four-foot dead section was still up there so I tossed the rope again, made a loop, repeat, rinse, repeat. Even the dead part of the limb didn’t want to come down.
I had a plan.
My plan was to leave the dead section alone. But to get the rope down, I was going to clip the rope with a .22 and break it. I fired ten shots and got close two or three times. My neighbor came over to check out the shooting so I let him try. He got close with one out of ten shots.
My neighbor’s wife came over, carrying a small child. Her husband held the child and she brought the rope down one her first try.
That child is twenty-one years old these days. Her parents have long since divorced, but I don’t think the rope incident had anything to do with it.
Today I went out on the tree, which is still floating, to look at that limb. The part where the rope was attached is still there. It’s odd to see that limb up close. The lower part of that thing dangled for years it seemed, and blasting away at the rope to get it down is the most South Georgia thing I’ve ever done while sober. I haven’t seen the formerly married couple in years, and wouldn’t recognize the daughter if I saw her.
The tree dying is a great sadness for me. People have come and gone in my life, but large trees are supposed to outlive me. I had good times with my neighbors, but the husband was a hot mess and did things he should not have. It is not my place to judge a man in regard to what sort of father or husband he was, for no one knows but the husband and wife what has happened. It’s easy to hide hypocrisy and tell you only bad men lose good women, but I won’t. But I do think I have lost women who were good women, and like the tree dying, was at a loss as to what I could have done to save what I loved.
That makes me no better a man for losing the tree, or the woman.
Take Care,
Mike


Friday Firesmith – Transaction Canceled

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While it was interesting to write about Death Metal Cows and the minor crashing of bumpers, at the end of the day, my truck was still drivable. I got up super early Saturday morning with things to do, my truck loaded down with items to take to USA Rescue Team’s adopt event, and the day was set.

Except my headlights wouldn’t work. Now, I understand the busted-out light not shining but how did that affect the other light?

Ideas?

I dropped in on my insurance place Monday and they huddled. Yes, I could get a rental the next day, but I would have to take what I got on short notice. They called the other guy’s insurance, and the guy running point for them was dismayed, but told me to do what I had to do to get running again.

This is where the title of this piece comes in.

I called the Point Guy and asked him if he could help me get a rental truck and he said he had no pull with the local rental place, but he would try. I asked him if he would be interested in helping me find someplace that would repair my truck faster, and he quickly said yes. Legally, he cannot refer me to a repair shop, but he can guide me to someone who might be able to help.

I could have viewed this whole thing as a business deal and simply rode off with a rental for forty days.

But I put out a message on social media, it gets picked up and a few people say, yeah, I used that place, they were great.

Call the guy back. Let’s do it. He’s thrilled.

Go to pick up the truck I’m supposed to rent this morning from the car rental, and they don’t have the truck back. Okay, fine, what do you have? Minivan. Minivan? Minivan! So okay, let’s do it. It’s a nice minivan and they still have some paperwork to do with the person dropping it off.  The woman renting me the van is terribly sorry about all this, but I tell her it’s okay. We talk for a couple of minutes and one of the other employees there offers to drive me to drop off my truck and bring me back. In his personal car. In the meantime, the first truck that returns in mine.

The guy taking me to drop off my truck is young, and on the way back he tells me it’s rare anyone is nice to them when they don’t get what they want. I tell him I walked away from an accident at age 64. I feel good about the whole thing. He nods. He tells me about the Super Bowl halftime show, and why it matters.

I am driving a new minivan whose controls I have not yet mastered. But I didn’t treat anyone I dealt with transactional. I talked to them all, got to know them, and oddly, everyone responded well. I think people are hungry to be treated like human beings, and not some stranger doing something for a check.

I think this is the way I will live.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – The Udderly Ridiculous car accident

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There I was, yesterday, traveling down Troupville Road, Mahler’s First playing, nice warm February day, temperature in the mid 80’s, and what could be better. Cates Road, a little side road connecting Troupville to SR133, is an intersection where a tiny Farmer’s Market sits, and on the other side of the road are cows.

Why, Mike, are you telling us this?

The first car that makes a left in front of me, heading to Cates slows me down. The second vehicle is a truck, and the driver thinks he can make it. He can’t. I lock the brakes down and because there’s another car behind him, I have moved over as far as I can. I remember the scene in the movie Titanic, where the guy is saying “Turn bitch, turn,” and then. Yep. Crash.

I nail the guy’s back bumper andhear the sound of crunching glass. It’s not a hard impact. I pull over, my truck still mobile, and the other guy pulls over, too.

He’s young, nineteen, and chill about it. He calls his family. I call 911, and oh by the way.

On the same side of the road where I pulled off is a pasture with cows. As I am on the phone trying to get a deputy to come out and make an accident report, the cows, who think we’re there to feed them, start mooing.

911 Operator: “I’m sorry can you repeat that?

Me: “What?”

911: “Can you move way from the cows?”

I walk away from the cows.

So I call a friend just in case I need a ride. She’s different. Her sense of humor is out there. She’s with some friends as we’re trying to talk, she hears cows.

Friend: “Why do I hear cows?”

Me: “There are cows out here.”

Friend: “Get closer, I’ll put them on speaker.”

I walk towards the cows, so she and her friends can giggle over the sound of cows.

The deputy pulls in, and parks close to the fence. Now the cows are totally convinced it’s feeding time. They all crowd around and moo. Loudly moo. They are Death Metal Cows.

We have to move away from the cows.

So here we all are, backed away from the scene of the accident, and the cows are mooing like crazy, and anyone who comes up wonders what in the hell just happened.

Okay, here it is. I’m just got into a car accident where no one was hurt and I can drive away from it. The young man who pulled out in front of me is unharmed. I have insurance and so does he. No one is hurt.

The cows are funny because at the end of the day, I don’t care about anything that has happened, because no one is hurt.

It’s a win. It’s time to moooooooooooooooooooove on.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – For the Love of Bruce

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Back in 2014, Jonco emailed me, and he asked if he could crowdfund the bill for my dog, Lucas, who had cancer. I was in pretty bad financial shape to begin with, just bought a new truck, and the vet bill was going to be more than I could come up with. But Jonco’s plan worked, and the people who donated money to Lucas and me saved me from having to sell everything I owned.

One of the biggest donors was a guy I had never met or even heard of, who called himself XOXOXOBruce. I offered to pay Bruce back for the money he sent me and he scoffed at the idea. “You’ll pay it forward,” he told me, and since that point in time, I’ve pitched in where and to who I could, anyone with an ailing dog, or cat. Bruce was like that, I would learn, for his generosity was boundless. Bruce billed himself a curmudgeon, but the truth was found in his heart of gold.

Bruce and I began an email conversation, which led to him sending me his “Daily Dose” of funny things he found on the internet and shared with a small group of friends.

Bruce, and his real first name was Bruce, and I became friends. He lived in Pennsylvania. He liked World War Two stuff like I did, and we talked about a lot of weird stuff. He commented on nearly everything I wrote here for a while, but as time went on, Bruce apparently had some health problems, and I started hearing from him less. One day, the daily dose stopped. And on the 27th of January Mike emailed me to say Bruce had died on the 17th.

I didn’t know Bruce’s family. He had a girlfriend for a while, and she and I were friends for a while, but then they broke up.

Bruce liked cars and stuff like that. He knew a lot more than I about guns. He would send me random emails about odd things that somehow, he knew I would like.

One day he sent me this pin. No warning, no conversation about it, the thing just showed up, and Bruce was like that. He did things because he was thinking about his friends.

You will live one of two lives. You will die before the people you love, and never know the grief of loss. Or you will outlive the people you love, and you will know grief. Grief is made not of sorrow and loss, no, not at all. It is made of love and of life.

Or it would not exist.

And neither would you.

I miss you, Bruce,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – the search for the lost sundown

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Back in 1975 or so, I got my very own eight track tape player, which meant that I could, if I had the cash and a ride, buy my own music. The sound quality sucked, but to have my own music without interference from anyone was magical. Who are you, really, if you cannot pick out your own music?

When riding in a car with an adult, kids listened to whatever the adult was listening to, and no other option was possible, or thinkable. If it was good enough for your parents it was good enough for you. Rock and Roll was garbage, just like the rest of a child’s opinion if it wasn’t the parent’s.

It was Christmas when I got the tape player and my parents were divorced. My parents offered up milder music in hopes that I wouldn’t continue to get weirder than I already was showing, but a man named Johnny gave me Edgar Winter Group’s “Shock Treatment” album, and it was far and away the best music an adult had given me. Johnny would be my mom’s second husband one day, and he was the only adult who treated me with any respect at all. He didn’t act like I was in dire need of repair. He also was there when I tried to kill Jimmy Carter,in 1974, and I’m glad he stopped me.

I had never heard of Edgar Winter, but I liked the music, but eventually, the tape broke.

For some reason, I never replaced it, so after a while I forgot about it. I woke up this morning and sang, “Sundown, see the magical feelings of the day at sundown

Chase all my worries away at sundown.”

What, I asked myself, in the hell was all that about? I knew the song was from the deep past, and couldn’t remember who sang it. “Easy Street,” flowed into my mind next, and I sat and smiled. The door had opened with music. You were who you were with your own music. This was mine. Edgar Winter’s name popped into my head, and after that Google took over.

I found “Sundown,” then hit play.

            I chased the album down on Amazon Music. I sat there, eyes closed, remembering what it had felt like to taste freedom for the first time, to play music when I wanted, the music I wanted, and listen to music I never knew existed.

            After decades, the lyrics were still there, safely locked away in my mind, and it was like seeing an old friend.

            Johnny died years ago. Jimmy Carter died two days ago, and Edgar Winter is almost 80.

            Yet the music, even with its terrible recording, lives. I never was any better at being normal, and  my music has always reflected this. Or perhaps, my music is normal, for people who see the world as abnormal, and our music is freedom from that world, who sees sundown as the end of the day, not the beginning.

What piece of music will always mean Freedom to you?

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – in the room with mike

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There’s time to think during the forty minute drive, and time to prepare. I’m meeting with a young writer who has never written a word in his life, but wants to write a book. It happens like this, sometimes, and this time, I actually think he has a book to write. The death of his father, and the grief that followed calls to him to write. I’ve spoken with him twice about it, and I think he can do it.

The meeting room at the local coffee shop is occupied even though I have it reserved. The barista offers to ask the people to leave, but the young writer isn’t here yet, and neither is the other writer I invited to join us. She’s young, too, but her organizational skills and her knack for stories are needed here. I tell the barista the people can stay until my people arrive.

As I enter the room the two interlopers offer to leave, but I tell them they can keep working until my people show. I intend to write quietly but the man is a talker.

One of my favorite stories is me working in the garden when a man appears and wants to talk. I ask him if he’s a preacher or an insurance salesman, because those are the only two classes of people who will interrupt a man working in the yard. The guy stopping me in the garden was a preacher. He fled eventually.

This guy is both a preacher and an insurance salesman. His name is Mike. It’s too weird of a coincidence for me not to talk to him.

Mike has a ready stack of business cards that he fumbles and drops as he tries to hand them to me because I don’t reach for them.

“No thank you,” I tell him.

“They aren’t insurance card,” he assures me.

“No thank you,” I repeat.

“Oh. Okay.” And Mike is a little put off by my tone of voice.

His daughter is with him, and she never speaks a word. She’s young, high school maybe, but she doesn’t look at me, smile, or speak the entire time I’m there.

Mike doesn’t ask me what I’m writing but does ask what our group writes. This edges into AI because he knows preachers who use it. I tell him if you’re looking for an expected story from an audience who sees it coming, AI is perfect. But if originality is key, a writer, or a reader, can tell AI immediately.

“It has no soul,” I tell Mike, and he agrees but I can tell he’s a little unnerved by the idea AI is detectable.

Mike and his daughter are writing thank you notes to his insurance customers, and he does them all by hand, writing in cursive, and licking the stamps himself. “It’s a nice touch,” he says without a trace of irony.

My organized writer friend arrives, and Mike and his daughter pack their stuff. They were nearly through anyway.

We shake hands, but he’s not unhappy to get away from me. His daughter doesn’t speak. I tell my friend who they were and what they were doing, and she asks why I was in a small room with a preacher, and no one left pissed off.

I’m civil to anyone who will allow me to be. Neither Mike nor his daughter were pushy or rude, and most importantly, they didn’t waste my time, which I cannot tolerate. Mike had something to do in that room, I had no reason to interfere, and we were able to have a decent conversation about a subject that will trouble us both.

I think Mike has no time to waste, either, and likely he’s got to get ready for a sermon this weekend, and find something to write about. I hope I have helped him as much as he helped me.

Take Care,

Mike

Firesmith Fridays – Titanic Cold Water

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Quite enough water exists on my property without me adding a milliliter more, so the plan was to wait late in the day before I turned the outside faucets on, letting them drip a bit, so they wouldn’t freeze. From about late May until nearly October, we had temperatures in the mid to upper 90’s, when we weren’t having hurricanes, so I’m not bitching about the cold weather.

In April of 2023 we had a freak rainstorm that dropped eleven inches of rain in six hours, and then after that, hurricanes and tropical storms dumped more and more rain. One giant Live Oak fell in the back yard, the old dog kennel flooded, as well as an old shed that was hit by two trees and I just haven’t gotten around to removing it yet. Now, there’s over a foot of water in both places.

I forgot to get moving while there was still good daylight, so as the sun descended, and light faded, I realized I hadn’t gone out and turned the faucets on. I grabbed my wading boots, which are about a foot tall, and my flashlight, and out into the water I go.

Getting to one of the faucets was easy. The water barely got up on the boots at all, yay. The second was close to where the Live Oak once stood. It always had a serious lean to it, and I wondered how it could stand like that. Once water saturated the root system, it couldn’t, and down it came.

Two steps into the water, no problem and then blackness. The battery died. Okay, it’s dark, but not that dark, so I get to the faucet, turn it own, hear the water dripping, and onto the old kennel I go. The water there is just deeper than the boots are tall. Icy liquid pours over the tops and I’m looking for a floating door without a redhead on it.

Once inside the kennel, a random piece of barbwire snags my hoodie and I get stuck for a moment. I’ve only got one free hand and it takes a bit to get loose. Meanwhile, as long as Bill Paxton didn’t show up, I felt pretty good about the situation.

At 39 degrees, the water is cold. Outside, with cold water in rubber boots, it seems a lot colder. My breath comes out ragged and in gasps. But the mission is accomplished, it’s not that dark, and I take a short cut to get out of the water, heading more or less in a straighter path than I came in.

The problem here is one of the great environmental advantages of a tree falling over is the roots take a lot of dirt with them, creating a small yet deep pool for water to form. This is home to amphibians and other small water creatures, and because the root ball is nearby, it’s usually shaded for some part of the day.

One foot slips into this hole, and suddenly I care less about toads, frogs, and root balls than ever before. As my weight and Newtonian physics work against me, one leg sinks deep, the other follows lest I topple, and I’m in water up to the shrivel factor.

Both boots are full of water, both pants legs are soaked, but I manage to retain the flashlight if not my dignity. Away to the house, I shed the boots, dump the water out of them, then once inside I strip to get the jeans, socks, and shirt into the washing machine.

Moments later, having immersed myself in hot water, I emerge from the shower, warm, and ready to write.

The Winter of 2025 has won the first round.

Take Care,

Mike

friday Firesmith – Heat versus Cold

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Back during August of ’24, I cut a lot of firewood. Even before the two hurricanes that hit in September and October, I was still trying to clear the debris from last year, and the back of the property was still flooded. My neighbor helped me cut a large tree limb from a Live Oak that was leaning, and just moving it from the front yard to the back took a lot of doing. At one point, the middle of August, I started early in the morning, and by eleven the temperature rose to close to one hundred. I was splitting wood in the backyard. I wear a heartrate monitor that turns work into points and on a good day I can get 100-150 points but that day I was over 500 points when the device overheated and stopped working. So did I.The next day I moved some smaller stuff, but even without exertion my heartrate when up simply because of the heat. I drank a gallon of water every two hours, and still felt like I was dying of thirst. I ate a lot more than I usually do, and discovered snacking as a lifesaving ritual. I lost ten pounds in one week, and had to shut down for a while. When the final hurricane of this year, hit in October, there was simply no way to keep up with what needed to be done. The flooded part of the property expanded, and with that, more and more trees died, creating more and more work to do. I can stack wood up, and pile up branches, but there’s no safe place to burn anymore on this island. Worse, as if Summer needed any pepper, tick season now lasts from March until the first real cold spell, which is sometime in late December. Ticks are tiny, hard to see, impossible to prevent without a bath in some chemical, and they leave permanent scars as reminders they outlasted the dinosaurs, the comet that killed them, and likely they’ll survive the nuclear holocaust to come. At the time of this writing the water is still high, not seeping into the ground or evaporating, it rained last night, and the forecast is for rain this week. A giant pine has drowned and needs to be dropped before it decides to fall towards the shed or the house or on a dog. The cold isn’t keeping me from work as much as the water is. Yet when I can get out and work in the cold, my heartrate doesn’t go up as high, and I’m not as fatigued when I’m done. No mosquitoes, no ticks, no chiggers, and no stinging insects flying around. The undergrowth is less and not as grabby. Sweat arrives late, and sharpening the axe doesn’t seem to take as long. In my late thirties, I became more of an inside worker than outside. I never liked office work but the heat began to get to me. Now that I can pick and choose how much time I spend in the heat, and how much work I do, I find I enjoy the heat more than the cold. I have no idea why. It doesn’t make sense at all.

Take Care,Mike

(Many apologies to all, I’m not sure what happened when I set this up at 1am ~ Mikeco)