tales from my misspent youth

[elSicomoro]

Why? Is crime becoming a serious problem down there?

[novice]

Homelessness, unemployment, whatever it's called when an ethnic group huddle in an area, asian drug gangs, xenophobia, indigenous folk all mixed up with laws that see recidivists constantly released. I guess those are the major players. Kindof experiencing the multicultural growing pains NY went through already.
Oversimplified, I know, but the long answer is, well ...looong and far too complex for this shallow water wader.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by novice
whatever it's called when an ethnic group huddle in an area

Depends on how you're referring to it...either enclave or ghetto. Ghetto means "a section of a city occupied by a minority group who live there especially because of social, economic, or legal pressure." (dictionary.com) I sense that this is the word you are looking for.

[novice]

Well they're both gooders but not the one i'm after. The word i'm thinking of is more pc and, if I recall correctly, almost serves to create the impression the people choose this way of life.

[novice]

This one time, whilst unemployed in sunny Queensland, I answer the phone. It's my long lost pal John who, at the age of 26, has had some kind of epiphany. He's quit his job, bought a bus ticket and is coming to stay with me for a bit, "if that's okay".
Sure.
After two weeks we're both scheming. He's had an offer to go coal mining, i've had a similar offer for gold. We compromise and set off for the sapphire mining town of Sapphire in the heart of Queensland. The alluvial gemstones are, at most, 50 or less feet underground as opposed to the others which are often kilometers deep. Discretion is the better...etc
5 days of hitch-hiking later and we're standing outside the general store. (it says this on the sign and they weren't trying to be quaint.) Youse may refer to this as redneck country.

We ask about camping and fire rules. The nice lady tells us we can camp next to the dry creek bed and fires are okay as long as we get a permit. "where do we get a permit?" "From the fire warden" "Where is the fire warden"' I'm the fire warden"
This is to become a recurrent theme.
We set up camp next to the creek and light a fire. I dash to the local bottleshop for a box of red wine ($10).
A local, drawn by the firelight, wanders down to say g'day.
He happily guzzles our proffered wine and spills the good oil on the area, the who's who so to speak. The wine runs out and he makes to leave then offhandedly says" keen to sleep here lads. I seen a 17 foot wall o' water run through here and it weren't even rainin'. We laugh and glance at each other rolling our eyes. Crazy old fool.
After moving our tent to higher ground we slept like logs.
Following his mud-map we found a place to set up a semi-permanent camp. Prior to leaving we had sewn together a bunch of cheap tarpaulins making a dwelling 20 feet long, 15 feet wide and 6 feet high. John is 6 foot 3 so there was much bitching but we soon learned it only rained there in one particular month per year. We cut longer poles and raised the height a foot. The side walls were rarely lowered as we had a two man tent erected under the main canopy. This, thank christ, was bug proof.
The critter crisis was so extreme we had to dig a moat, line it with plastic and keep it surfaced with a thin film of petrol.
Occasionally border checks would reveal opportunistic ants using fallen leaves and twigs to construct bridges, such was the allure of our pantry.
Our nearest neighbour had a small but efficient mining operation, offering rough and cut gems for sale, equipment hire, free advice and general good cheer and helpfullness. http://sapphires.bizhosting.com/
They held our hands through the start up of our International Sapphire Cartel then consoled us through the reality period.
We did, after much digging, arguing, swearing, equipment sharpening, water fetching and changing of venue, finally discover gem quality sapphires.
Having proven our many detractors wrong and established that a couple of enterprising lads could, through blood, sweat and abject hardship, turn a profit, we congratulated ourselves incessantly during the 5 hour bus ride back to Townsville

[wolf]

Originally posted by novice
Homelessness, unemployment, whatever it's called when an ethnic group huddle in an area, asian drug gangs, xenophobia, indigenous folk all mixed up with laws that see recidivists constantly released. I guess those are the major players. Kindof experiencing the multicultural growing pains NY went through already.
Oversimplified, I know, but the long answer is, well ...looong and far too complex for this shallow water wader.

Don't forget involuntary disarming of the populace ... crime rate has gone up dramatically (4-5X for certain categories of crime, including rape, assault, robbery, and home invasion) since then.

[novice]

There's no doubt in my mind you know more about this than I do Wolf.
I wasn't kidding about being a shallow water wader.

I learn fast if i'm interested and i'm slowly refining my google skills so I can keep up with you folks but at the end of the day I prefer to keep my ig'rant mouth shut about things I know little about.

This topic is one of those things. Also include politics, relationships, religion, finance, geography and, of course, computers.

[wolf]

You fit right in, mate ... we don't know anything about any of those things either, we just talk and talk and talk and talk ....

:-D

[xoxoxoBruce]

Sounds like hard work, Novice. I've done some gold panning and fossicking sounds very similar. The joys of living under the stars, communing with nature, getting down with mother earth, are highly tempered by things that creep, crawl, slither, fly, bite, sting, gnaw and bore.

[novice]

Cheers Wolf, I'm a verbal as anyone I guess but for the sake of others I make an effort to confine my yak (here we go) to things I have a little knowledge of.
That is not to suggest anyone here doesn't
Yeah Bruce, the bugs were shitty but it just meant we had to be smarter. You'd think that would be easy huh. Right.
I really condensed that yarn as it spanned 8 months but for a while there we were just prospecting. (specking, as the locals call it)
This was simply walking about bent over looking for shiny stuff. Most often it would be sapphire.
If we stuck at it we generally found enough to trade for a carton of beer. The search time averaged out at about three hours. At one stage it was a daily regime. Life became pretty simple but good. The search would sweat out the previous days beer and give us a mean thirst for those to come.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Come to think of it, that sounds like the panhandlers in the city. Work (panhandle) until you have enough to buy a bottle of wine and when you wake up, do it again.

[novice]

I could argue that we're all panhandlers. Only the wine bottle metaphor varies and the complexity involved in obtaining it.
But I won't. I have to sleep off my bottle of wwwine before the cycle starts again in the morning.

[BrianR]

Last night, Dagney and I are snuggling and watching The Sopranos. Dog wants out, with a litle urging from Dagney "I hate cold noses there" so out he goes. We go back to snuggling and generally being teenagers.

Thirty minutes later, he barks to be let back in. Dagney repairs to the bedroom to read a new book. I approach the back door and encounter the odour of rotten garlic. Those of you who "commune" with nature know where THIS is going. Yes, Junior has encountered the first skunk of the year (his first, and hopefully, last). So he gets a (traumatic) bath. Dagney and I make a late-night trip to Wal-Mart to discover that despite the area, they do not stock skunk shampoo. Side trip to the grocery aisle for three big cans of tomato juice. Back home and give Junior another (traumatic) bath. Now, he looks and smells more like a tomato than a woebegone, skunked dog.

Next, my house, which DOES smell like a woebegone, skunked dog. I liberally apply carpet deodorizer/freshener/flea killer (allegedly, not proven yet). Also, spray a LOT of Febreze on the bed, blanket, pillows (he ran onto the bed when he got in the door) and sofa. A little more on the sofa. One more squirt for good measure. Banish dog to living room (only place we have for him other than the bedroom which was OURS)

We slept fairly well, knocked boots a few times despite the lingering smell and awoke this morning to a house that didn't smell as bad as it did last night. I guess the odour settles overnight. Junior doesn't look or smell quite as bad now, but he's still going to get one more bath after I wash his towel.
The blankets and sheets are in the wash now, and pillows will follow. The sofa slipcover is with the sheets, as is Junior's collar and harness.

This is NOT how I envisioned the weekend going, believe you me. I can only hope that Junior has learned to avoid the black cats with a white stripe and funny smell. But I doubt it...he's the dumbest dog I've ever had.


I'm thinking of renaming him Sir Stinksalot, what do you think?

Brian

[Elspode]

The Backstop

I've reached an age where the word "perspective" has taken on a whole new meaning. When I
look back in my life, spanning periods of time that not so very long ago would have seemed
unimaginable, I become severely contemplative. "Nostalgia" has also achieved new stature in my
vocabulary, by dint of the same aging process that redefined perspective.

With a few years of exception, I now live in the same house in which I grew up, at least, for my
junior high and high school years. Therefore, it follows logically that my glory days played out
against the backdrop of this same neighborhood, the site of the family home which I inherited
when my mother passed some 14 years ago. Being in the same place for 33 years makes for some
interesting memories, and some rather startling comparisons when I hold up those memories
against the views I see day to day in my familiar old stomping grounds.

Of late, I have taken to walking the dog past what was the nexus of my mannish youth, the local
neighborhood ball diamond. No bat has met horsehide there for at least 15 years, and even then
it was a shadow of its former self. But in my youth...oh my. In my youth, it was hallowed
ground, the place where boyhood fantasies and conflicts were played out, the place where we spat
on our hands, rubbed them in the dirt, and got down to seeing who was who and what was what.
Ask any mature male, and he's probably got a similar site in his past. Our local pickup ballyard
was the first piece of ground for which I learned to care on a personal level; more than the family
yard, more than any other hunk of real estate I had ever known. This was no planned, contracted,
constructed recreational site. This was a carved-from-the-land,
we're-gonna-play-ball-here-or-else baseball field. I have mowed its grass, filled its holes, carried
its rocks away. I have sat atop railroad ties with spikes embedded in them as they were towed
around and around, a sheet of chain link fabric bringing up the rear, grinding the dirt into smooth
perfection. I have mended the backstop itself, weaving muffler wire back and forth, patching the
damage lest an errant foul tip pass through. I kissed my first girlfriend on the benches, and
dreamed of hitting a long one over the distant fence demarcating the backyards of the nearby
houses. I have known this place...I have loved this place.

For those who are unfamiliar with my neck of the woods, the scene is set thus: My house backs
up on a large vacant field. Our neighborhood is surrounded on two sides by large parks, and so
the field is rife with nocturnal deer, flocks of birds, opportunistic squirrels, timid rabbits, tiny voles
and all manner of creeping, flying beasties. In the early days of Grandview suburbia, signs stood
in this modest expanse, proudly proclaiming "New Shopping Center Coming Soon!" In fact, the
signs stood so long that they rotted, were replaced, and rotted again. Alas, the only thing that
ever got built there was a Quik Trip. That operation long ago pulled up stakes for more
prosperous highway siting, leaving the building to be reopened as a generic convenience store
operated by an Iranian family. Convenience shopping excepted, the field has stood blessedly
empty, 30 or so acres of blessed rolling pasture, dotted by a few trees, some piles of dumped dirt,
a couple of kid-dug trenches...and the backstop.

It is the only easily visible vestige of our former field of dreams. The backstop rises some nine
feet above the mud hole that was once home plate, a three-faced, overgrown, cheesy fence fabric
construct, standing as rusting testament to better days. If you stand and look very closely, you
can still see the depressions in the ground that were the base paths, although they are now faint
indeed. Behind the backstop are hunks of old telephone pole still buried deep in the earth, across
which boards were once placed; one row on each side - home team side, and visitor's side, of
course. I remember when those poles were sunk, courtesy of the neighborhood middle-aged
health freak who determined that he was going to organize our ragtag pickup games, and install
himself as shortstop, despite the fact that he was fully 20 years older than the rest of us. It was he
who refurbished the dragging equipment which had lain there in the high grass for longer than any
of us kids could remember; it was his old Dodge sedan which towed it in dirt-churning circles
with three of us punks atop it for weight.

I have lately found myself standing at the backstop, leaning up against its oxidizing upright, falling
back in my mind across the years, and watching the images of another day play out against the
screen of brown, dormant grasses. There are erstwhile, shirtless youths driving metal fence post
foul-poles into the ground in preparation for the mounting of our homemade distance signs;
distances which are hopelessly optimistic, meant to indicate the distance required for a home run.
My aged yellow German shepherd trots carelessly across the game in progress to lie at my feet at
second base, eliciting catcalls and complaints from the other competitors. There's Ronnie
Aldridge, standing on the pitching board, catching a smartly-struck comebacker with his testicles,
freezing in a hunched-over, grimacing posture, then falling, sideways, stiff as a board to the
ground. He clutches his groin, unable to speak, making only tiny wheezing noises. We carry him
home, and his mom makes us help him hold the ice pack on his crotch, all the while lecturing us
on how someone was going to get really hurt up there some day. I see clearly the time I turned
the perfect double play, taking the feed from the shortstop and pegging to the first baseman. I
hear the 'thwap' of the ball hit his gloved palm, and watch him shaking his reddening hand as he
trots back in to take his next ups.

There were countless games, endless hours; a litany so full that it exceeds the capacity of my
memory. The guys from the neighborhood across the way coming in, challenging us...and
whipping our asses. A few weeks later, we had skimmed off the best of their number, becoming
supreme amongst the other ragtags that drifted in during the long summer, and got assigned to team
up with the loser kids. They played the Generals to our Globetrotters, and victory was no less
sweet for all the shady team assignments. No day was too hot, no wind was too gusty, no sunset
too dark for a game to be completed. We would play until our faces were burned, our fingers
blistered, our bodies sore.

It was a temple of ritual; rites of passage from boy to youth; a stopover on the way to manhood.
Some of us drank our first beers there under cover of darkness. Rumor even had it that, if you
found yourself there of a dark evening with Sally Jean, you might even get more than you'd
bargained for. It was meeting place and social hall, grapevine and joke resource, all wrapped
up in a comforting blanket of baseball. Through it all, there was, and is, the backstop,
unintentional monument, silent sentinel, guardian of my youth.

Instead of stopping baseballs, it now keeps my cherished memories from rolling too far away.

[slang]

Originally posted by lumberjim
I have been boring many of you with my tales......

Some have been a bit long but they have pics with the stories and they are interesting.

Great thread topic.