To Texas, and Back

Some of you may know these proud new homeowners, but for those who don't: that's Mason's son Matt, Matt's wife, Joanna and their cutie of a son, Jack -- and in the background, their new house in Arlington, Texas.

We just got back from two weeks of "vacation" there, helping them with some of the chores that come with buying a home (mostly electrical work for Mason; yard work for me) and also visiting my family, which involved building a wooden deck/walkway in Mom's back yard. (Sorry, no photo of the deck, unless Mom e-mails me one. Hint, hint. Let's see how long it takes her to read this and send one!)

I use the term "vacation" loosely, because, No. 1: We haven't had jobs for at least two years now, and No. 2, there was no lounging in the sun with fruity umbrella drinks ... unless you count this mother-of-a-margarita that a grizzled Mason sucked down on the road trip West while in North Little Rock, Arkansas. (Mason, a Texan though he doesn't advertise it, apparently holds great distaste for all things Arkansan. Who knew?)

And No. 3 ... We worked more on this vacation than we do on a normal day on Flat Top!

But we did come home richer for the experience: Mom gifted us her 2003 Honda Element, which greatly improves our vehicular collection. I got to drive it home, chillin' in the air-conditioning and rocking to some horrendous Pop 40 radio, while Mason got wind-whipped in the Jeep Cherokee. Nick the Dog wasn't so excited about the air-conditioning, but was happy to ride shotgun.

And who wouldn't be happy to be home when this view awaits them? We may have missed peak color by a few days, but it's still beautiful ... except for the acre of leaves that need raking. So, back to work!

Building Bridges

While I've been mothering my new front lawn (which you can see in the distance above), I've also been working on what I call my "bridge project" -- building little wooden bridges that help guide rainwater runoff away from the cabin and also keep my mulch pathways from washing away.

So far I've built eight bridges, using leftover lumber that we pulled off the walls in the bathroom and guest room remodels.

For the latest portion of the project, above, I tried to build a little retaining wall and then dug a graded trench that hopefully will channel the rainwater down toward the front of the cabin and into the front garden, then onto the driveway.  If this doesn't work, I'll have to dig a French drain along this channel.

See? The projects are never-ending up here.

My Old Man's Old Truck

And we thought Minnesota was hard on our cars ...

If you've been here, you know how rough our road is. After the hard-top road ends, you crawl along better than two miles of dirt road before you reach our little oasis in the woods. In some places, you could call it a gravel road, but in others, it's more of a rocky outcropping. And when it rains here, like today (and it rains here a lot), there's even one rocky outcropping that turns into a lovely little waterfall, which we drive over on our way into town.

So it shouldn't surprise you that our two aging vehicles are in constant need of a little TLC. The other day, riding in our 1992 pickup (mileage in the neighborhood 230,000, a rough 'hood), we started to feel overwhelmed by gas fumes. Now, we knew the truck had an exhaust leak, but that only slightly smelled. (Yeah, it's on Mason's list, but the bolts involved are so rusted out that we've come to embrace the constant cough of exhaust as one of the truck's eccentricities.)

But the gas fumes, they kept getting stronger. So Mason found an afternoon to climb under the truck and it didn't take him long to find a cracked gas line. Who knew that gas traveled from the tank to the engine in this tiny little metal tube that's just exposed? OK, Mason knew, but I didn't.

So he removes the cracked portion of line and replaces it with some rubber tubing. But in all the jostling of removing the bad piece of line, it seems more of the tubing kept cracking farther down the line. Expletives followed, along with more cracking even farther down the line.

After several afternoons positioned on "asses and elbows" (see photo above), two trips to the auto parts store and a good soaking in gasoline, Mason was able to get it fixed.  Or so we hope. We'll find out for sure on our next trip into town.

All this brings you to the fabulous news that my generous mother has just donated her 2003 Honda Element (four years newer than our Jeep!) to the Great Flat Top Experience (she scored herself a fine new SUV in the deal). Get this: The Honda has heat and air-conditioning!! Woo-hoo! So soon we'll be two unemployed persons with three vehicles, living one hell of a life up here in the Tennessee backwoods.

We Love Company!

Now, don't get us wrong. Most days, we do really, really well having only each other and Nick the Dog to talk to up here on Flat Top. But we DO love having company, and this weekend, we had our first "outsiders" visit since June.

Former co-workers Kathleen (see photo below) and Chris (that's headless Chris, above, in full relaxation mode, which I've never really seen him in before) added their names to the list of brave souls who have ventured to see what the hell we've done with our lives. It was great to catch up with all of the latest in the Twin Cities news media world, and even better to enjoy Kathleen's laugh and Chris' great sense of humor. Hilarious, these two! And in a bonus for Nick, they love dogs. Even one that begs for food a whole lot.

It was a busy (and beautiful, see that sunshine?) Saturday, with more weekenders up here than we've ever seen in one non-holiday weekend, and we were pleased that Chris and Kathleen got the full exposure to the Flat Top gunfire experience, including 50-caliber ka-BOOMS! in the not-too-distant distance. (It seems we have new neighbors: a Florida couple with toddlers who bought the cabin at the end of the road so they could come up and "shoot guns." Friendly folk!)

Any more of you Northerners dare the wilds (and the dirt road into Flat Top)? Come on, show us your adventurist spirit!

And as a final note .... the night before the Clontses arrived, Mason thought it was a good time to clean the firearms.

Me? I polished the silverware (or at least four knives, spoons and forks). I found that kinda funny, in a Southern "Garden and Gun" kind of way. (OK, maybe it's just me.)

P.S. Notice that super green new front lawn behind Mason in that photo?? That's mine!!

Back to Our Usual Antics

Summer is about over, more or less, so our month of piddling is over and we're back to work here on Flat Top, cutting down trees so we can install a solar panel to augment our own little power grid.  (Minneapolis friends, please note that it's still low-80s and terribly gorgeous here.)

Our tree-taking-down technique calls for a steel cable tied as high up as our 16-foot extension ladder lets us (or should I say, lets Mason). The other end is looped around another tree for directional leverage, then tied to the trusty (and rusty) old pickup. Insert chainsaw. The end result? Big tree go BOOM. Right across the road:

You can also see there some of our stockpile of firewood for the coming winter. That's right, this year we won't be scavenging the property in January for dead scraps to burn. At least, we hope we won't.

We've also been busy re-seeding the front "lawn," if you can call it that. That involved lots of roto-tillering, raking, backbreaking rock clearing, and then even more raking. We're finally down to the watering phase, which should bring little green sprouts in a week or so:

With that, we'll leave you with photos of our greatest loves: Nick the Dog and my slowly growing garden:

Love You Always, Dad

I'm taking a timeout today from our usual Tennessee mountain adventures to say probably a few too many words about my sweet, loved, dear old dad, Nick B. Williams Jr.

He died a couple of weeks ago, at age 75, after more than 10 years of that rotten-godawful-dreadful-demeaning-I-hate-it disease Alzheimer's. Our family -- my mom, sister and me -- have been mourning Dad for years now, ever since we had to turn to a nursing home for his daily care. I'm not going to lie; it was a miserable end to a wonderful life.

Dad was a newspaperman, the old-school kind with rolled-up oxford sleeves, inky fingers and an inclination toward alcohol to take the edge off of deadline stress. The best years of his life were spent chasing stories in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, living in Bangkok and Cyprus with an exotic collection of other ex-patriots. Dad's dad was a newspaperman, too, and sure enough, I followed both of them, at least for awhile.

When Dad wasn't at work, or thinking about work, he was in the garden, on the tennis court, or on the couch watching the Dodgers or Bruins. I sometimes tried to be the son he didn't have, playing football in the street, listening to the Dodgers while I helped in the yard. In high school, I'd stay up "late" and watch "Cheers" with him. Got my first sip of beer -- Coors -- when I went to watch him and his old buddy Eric Malnic hit the yellow fuzzy ball around the court.

Last week when I was in Texas with Mom, I spent hours going through old photos of him, putting together a photo album for his wake. It was good to be reminded of those so many good years. There was Dad playing host to our annual Kentucky Derby Day parties; Dad looking lovingly at Mom through the years; on the burning oilfields of Kuwait; in a field of burning marijuana plants in Thailand (rough job); and shaking hands with the Dali Lama; and -- even once Alzheimer's took hold -- dutifully walking his dog Will, who now dutifully watches over Mom.

Dad was charming and sweet, yet rascally if not dirty. I like to think I have his sense of humor, though Mom has a pretty good one, too. The first day he met my college boyfriend Mike -- later my husband -- he took him to Bangkok's infamous red light district and watched Mike squirm as mostly naked, underage girls sat on his lap. Dad? He just sipped his drink and smiled with that smirk of his. Those who knew him, you know that smirk.

I know this was weird, but I named my dog after my dad. I called Dad dad, not Nick, but I always loved that name: Nick. Manly but sweet. That was Dad.

We told Dad that I now I lived in the Tennessee mountains -- not too close, but not too far, from where his family had roots back in the 1800s -- but I'm not sure he really ever knew. Those later years were just so hard; you wanted to think there was still a glimmer of the man he used to be. Days before he died, a nurse checked in on him, and he said, "Still here." Who knows, but it sure sounded just like the witty Dad we knew all along.

Dad had a Southern heart, and always loved the stories of his family's heritage. And living here on Flat Top Mountain often reminds me of those stories. Digging in the dirt also reminds me of him. Not to mention throwing back a beer or two.

So I'll be thinking a lot about Dad here on the mountain. And if you made it this far into this blog post, thanks for listening a lot about Dad.

Singing the Septic Blues

I can think of no better time than in the dripping humidity of high summer to face the inevitable: Our septic "system" is a piece of ... yeah, I'm gonna say it: crap. 

About four days ago during our evening showers, a loud gurgle coming from the toilet and the kitchen sink gave us the telltale sign that something was amiss. Two days later, the gurgle stopped, and so did the flow. 

Rut-roh.

To keep the story as pleasant as possible, let's just say it boiled down (and yes, we were boiling) to five hours of digging -- 3 feet down, for about 25 feet, in packed soil -- and $15 worth of gravel to get us back in the flow. 

I must add that digging dirt out of a 3-foot-deep ditch requires Squats From Hell.  And Squats From Hell requires heavy breathing. And heavy breathing is the LAST thing you want to do during a septic system rebuild.

But now we're fairly confident that the system is good to go for at least another 18 months (from what we saw of the original and given the "upgrade" we installed, more like five years, sez Mason), and "Installing a New Septic System" has moved up higher on our never-ending project list. 

Needless to mention, no photo with this blog. Trust me on this one.