It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.Mr. Dickens could have named this episode of the Ozark Hilton saga "A Tale of Two Timmies" although there was only one of me. And it was more worse than best although neither is strictly true so I shouldn't have brought it up in therfirst place, I suppose.

I've had a lot of worst; attacked by Yellow Jackets, by wasps, caught the cabin on fire, been beset by floods and violent storms, fell and broke five ribs once. So this hardly qualified as worst. And best? I've seen some amazing sights. One of the most beautiful in my life happened when I had to answer the call of nature at three a.m. and saw the hollows filled with mist and the sky was clear and lit brilliantly, truly a glorious sight (and I use that word sparingly.) This trip featured neither so this whole soliloquy is just pointless.

Anyway I went to the cabin and lived to tell the tale (never a wholly sure thing).

As anyone outside of Australia or New Zealand knows, we have had a rather unpleasant heat wave (and no, it's not unusual for this time of year). The "peach" of the week was Sunday, where temperatures were expected to rise only to 94* fondly fahrenheit. (For those who do not know, "Fondly Fahrenheit" was a short story by Alfred Bester about a crazy robot that went on a killing spree in heat waves.) I HAD to get down to the Ozark Hilton; my absence was not good for the old wreck of a place. I needed to fix problems before they turned into catastrophes. I woke up feeling pretty good Sunday morning and had a decent bit of philosophizing in the philosopher's room, so had no excuse not to take to the open road. Away I went.

It was an uneventful drive, although traffic was beastly. Now sure why. (I had gotten a late start as it was Sunday and I had to observe my religious obligations, plus I just plain didn't want to go early as I knew it would be hot and didn't plan to do much - fate had the last laugh on that.) I knew something was amiss when I passed the Timothy Birdnow Memorial Outhouse with nary a stirring. My body was just fattening me for the slaughter; I would have to stop at gas stations TWICE before reaching the junkyard palace in the pines!

Still I was in a good mood. I listened to some classic rock on the CD player and my air conditioner was working great.

When I arrived I had trouble finding the drive to turn off the road. It was so overgrown as to be nearly invisible and I had to take it on faith when I turned; if I was wrong I could get stuck in the ditch or blow a tire running over the bent mile market sign as I did once before. I guessed right and made it into the deep woods.

About two thirds of the way in I reached the roadblock. A tree about seven or eight inches in diameter had fallen and blocked the road.

I didn't bring a chainsaw but I did have a cross-cut saw and a hatchet. I used to have axes as well as a wedge and sledgehammer at the cabin but thieves stole them, so now I have to lug everything of value down with me. No worries though; I wasn't sure what kind of tree had fallen but it melted away to my saw and hatchet. i was through it in fifteen minutes and on my way!

Or so I thought. i came around a bend and wouldn't you know it - there was ANOTHER fallen tree. This was no sapling but a full blown tree, possibly as old as I (although probably younger but certainly decades old). Worse it was OAK, and had been healthy. Why it fell and died I can't say. But it did and it was about 14 inches in diameter and when I used the hatchet it felt hard as diamond.

Now my hatchet was new and the saw almost, but I began working on the tree with little to show for my troubles. I thought to just unload and ignore the roadblock until next time but I was in a bad spot and getting turned around wasn't an option. I was in trouble actually. You don't back up on my logging trail road! There was only one way and that was through.

I walked to the cabin and got a plastic chair I leave outside; this was going to take some time.

So I started chopping and sawing, sawing and chopping. The heat was just brutal as was the humidity and I seemed to be in some sort of facsimile of Hell, heat and sweat and wood chips and bugs biting my legs. I couldn't get a good position for the chair either and it kept wanting to fall over when it swayed from the motion of my body as I used the tools.

I stopped frequently to cool off in the car. The lying temperature gauge in the car read 89* and never changed all day. Liar. It was over 95, probably nearly a hundred. I drank most of my water as I labored. I bring two quarts, almost always more than enough. I had to restrict myself near the end lest I run out and be in trouble. I didn't relish drinking water from the cooler, which was less than pristinely clean.

Saw, chop, saw, chop...

It took about four hours to cut through that accursed tree. By the end my hands were a mass of blisters, my body ached, and I was at the very end of my strength.

But suddenly I realized one side of the cut was moving and the other wasn't! I had won!

It was a real bear to get the tree pulled out of the road. I dragged it with much difficulty. Of course my body was exhausted and that made it worse. But I got it clear and drove down to the cabin.

That was, rather, after I felt the onset of a low blood sugar. I am diabetic and take insulin and have to watch my sugar levels closely. I felt it coming on and my vision bgan going out - a bad sign. I use a continuous glucose monitor and went to check it but I had sweated so much the sensor fell off. DRAT! I had just started that one; thirty bucks down the drain! I felt better after taking some glucose tablets and drinking some water (saving about ten ounces in case of even greater need; I had some beer I could drink and a couple of sodas.) I drove on to the fabled Ozark Hilton.

Which looked pretty bad. I had started building a screened porch which I never got finished and THAT was collapsing, the framework had fallen. What's more the porch I built a year or two ago was starting to rot out. I never did get the roof over it thanks to wasps who didn't like me hammering on it. (The thieves didn't steal the plastic roof I planed to put on but the stole the hammers I needed and the nails.) I still hadn't cleaned up from the heist fully either. Also, my health has made it, uh, problematic to do any major construction work. Building the porch was easy; just a matter of stacking boards at knee level. But anything beyond that becomes tricky. I fell and broke my ribs trying to put on a roof over my planned screen porch, for instance. I pretty much broke all of them.

I went in the cabin to find another mess. Not thieves but something that may be worse; plenty of droppings to indicate rats. A lot of stuff was knocked over and chewed up and a new nest was under construction.

Now rats are generally peaceable critters who hide from humans, but that isn't the problem. They carry diseases - lots of 'em. In fact I suspect it was exposure to such a disease that caused my catastrophic heart condition. You don't want to share a cabin with rats.

By now it was getting late and I was out of gas so I settled for sweeping up the rat poop into a pile in a corner and just getting set up for the night. I knew the rats would make themselves scarce (unlike mice who are too stupid and arrogant to avoid poking the bear, which in this case is me.)

I once had a black ratsnake in the cabin. I had NO rodent problems for some time after that. He was a good roommate but he didn't like me nailing on the cabin. Used to beat his tail to show his displeasure. But he earned his keep.

Anyway I went out and sat in my chair on the porch. A wasp buzzed me, sounding like a WWII B29 bomber. That was bad; when they fly around your head that way they usually want you to leave. It is unwise to not take their hint. But I wasn't going anywhere.

So I sat and waited for stage II, which is where the wasp flies into you. That is your final warning and you'd better step lively after that. Most wasps give you very little time after the bump before they sting. But it never progressed past stage I. I guess it was too hot and too late in the day for him. I watched him fly over to one of the eaves and back to some hidden nest and he troubled me no more.

I wish I knew how to get rid of wasps. I sure have no idea. I don't begrudge them for taking advantage of a natural shelter but they need to get the point that this is MY shelter and they need to show proper courtesy.

Indoor wasps aren't like that. I have had many settle inside the cabin over the years and they don't bother me. In fact, one time I had a "pet wasp". The fellow was buzzing around me and I had thought to whack it with a newspaper, but I didn't and eventually the was settled down on my futon next to me. Just hung out all evening, buzzing occasionally. Me and my wasp! I suppose it was there just to keep an eye on me and the occasional buzzing was it communicating with the others "all quiet with the big white thing". But I prefer to think of it as a case of puppy love, or in this case waspy love.

But the outside wasps are different and I've been stung multiple times by such, usually the red wasps but the black wasps can get nasty too.

At any rate the wasp troubled me no more, which is good because I was too tired to tangle with him and too hot to sit inside.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. I sat on my chair as the light died away and enjoyed the modest cooling of the thick, sultry evening air. It was dark as the inside of a stomach, and my lights (a combination of kerosene lamps and battery-operated gadgets) created an island of light in a sea of total darkness. I could have been at sea, or on top of a mountain, or anywhere as far as I could tell. Just the trees near the cabin were visible.

No critters to mention this trip. I miss them. They are good company for a man alone in the wild. Plenty of bugs though; I was overrun by bugs on the porch, the worst I ever remember. Moths and gnats and what I suppose are Junebugs. They bugged me, they really bugged me! And no cicada sounds but plenty of crickets chirping. I didn't hear any owls, which I usually do.

I went in around 11 O'Clock and put in a movie "Quest for Fire". I also had 'Armageddon" starring Bruce Willis and Steven Tyler's foxy daughter Liv. I fell asleep about halfway through the second feature but I've seen it before so no biggie.

The morning was uneventful. I put out my lights (which I leave burning all night; it's WAY too dark otherwise and you hear THINGS in the night) and loaded up the truck for home. Stopped at the McDonalds in Piedmont for breakfast. By the time I got home I was a massive cramp and the chiggers had my legs itching like mad. I checked for ticks and found none I could fully identify, but I did scrape some suspicious bumps off my grizzled old hide. I slept about three hours during the heat of the day (and the cool of the air-conditioning.)

I really need to get down to the OH more often; it requires better attention than it is getting. I really wish I hadn't gotten sick in 2011; it would be so much better now than it is. I had big plans that got derailed. But it is what it is. I take some comfort in knowing that it will be a local legend among the youths of the area, who will talk about the crazy old shack that some dude from the city built. Maybe horror stories will be told about it. At least it will not be forgotten when I am no longer able to go there. Heaven knows few people I know have visited the place. It's been strictly for me, even though that was never my intention.

Some day it wil become a dim memory, and eventually forgotten as are all things. But not yet

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 2318 words, total size 12 kb.