Neanderpundit

I’m a huge fan of simple science. There aren’t many people these days who rememebr the old ways, I keep notes and write down things like ropework, splicing, saw filing, things that have come and gone, skills that almost no longer exist. Dad knew a lot of this stuff, and he passed what he knew on to me, when he could. While I was a kid, I did things like dig wells, build barns, shoe horses, etc. etc. etc.

One year, we put a new well in our home. the old well had been giving us some occasional grief but had finally gone dry, so dad had a well drilled that was a bit further away from the front of the house, and sank a 6″ casing. it was a great well, and as we would eventually be expanding the house, the well pit was about 20 away from the garage. So, that winter, it was going to freeze, and there wasn’t any way around that.

I started dreaming up all manner of inventions to keep the pit warm, and I had a half a notebook full before it was all over.

Thew well pit itself was a concrete bunker six feet on a side and four feet tall. It had a concrete roof and an insulated wooden door. As long as it was above 32 degrees, it was fine- btu we get hard winters in the midwest.

So one day dad shows up after work with a pickuptruck load of horseshit. Not an unusual occurrence, we used it to fertilize, and it amended the clay soil almost perfectly.

Except he started shovelling it onto the well pit.

In short order, he had covered the back, sides, and roof of the pit in a huge mound of horseshit, piles of little road apples running off into the yard. I din’t understand.

See, that horseshit would decompose, and the heat of it’s decomposition would keep that pit warm and cozy all winter long, and in the spring,w e scraped it off and put it in the garden. We did this three years until we remodeled the house and incorporated the pit into the basement. Never froze. Simple science. Things our parents and grandparents did to get by before blackberries and fax machines.

Foxfire was started to try to save those old ways, but the founder, Elliot Wigginton, ended up being a doper and a kiddy diddler. Shame, too, because they did a pretty good job. Where will that knowledge go now?

Still I remain tied to the mast. Could it be that I have found my home at last?

Home at last. Driving back from Peoria through drifts and other nastiness was an experience. The ogwife and i have done many a trip up to the Great White North in fair weather and foul, for any number of reasons, at any number of times; this was no big deal. I was careful, and now I’m home.

Fun to watch the fools scream ahead of me on black ice and see them two miles down the road in the ditch. People still don’t understand that an expensive 4wd doesn’t grant them immunity from the laws of physics.

Good to sleep in my own bed.

Forty eight hours ago it was 68 degrees. I slept with the windows open.

This morning it’s snowing lke the end times and there is lightning and deep rolling thunder.

Fuck this, I’m going home.