Timothy Birdnow

You've waited long enough. Time for another installment of the Tales of the Ozark Hilton.

This episode could be titled The Trash Thieves.

Our story begins with our hero (he's so charming and good looking!) making a late start.

I have congestive heart failure and struggle with fluid retention. It's worse than it sounds as in my case I often retain the fluid not in my feet or legs but in my lungs, leading to asthma-like breathing issues. I usually feel it coming on for a few days. But you cannot just not drink; you can be both dehydrated and retaining fluid at the same time.

So coffee presents a dilemma. I want to drink it but have to eliminate some other, more beneficial fluid (like water). The end result of drinking coffee is often going over my allotted intake. A few days of this, or eating too much food with salt, leads to trouble.

I had had fluid retention earlier in the week and so went on a campaign to dry out before my Ozark Hilton visit. But there is a price to pay for that.

That price is constipation. I was seriously constipated and thought to stay home yet again. I hated to miss it; the window of opportunity doesn't stay open long - I have to get there while there is still adequate sun and it's reasonably warm outside but not scalding hot.

At any rate, Thursday morning I woke up and planned on staying home. In fact, I brewed a pot of coffee and indulged. But then...

HAPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!

So I reevaluated my plan to stay home. I loaded up the truck and got a late start to the OH.

I made pretty good time except for my stop at the Timothy Birdnow Memorial Outhouse in St. Joe State Park. They really need to put a plaque up recognizing my ownership of that place; I am it's #1 customer by far! And it's a true outhouse, a big hole in the ground that seems to draw my bowels. I rarely pass it without a visit. And, given I had had four days of none-movement, I was quite happy to stop and leave my regards.

(I strongly recommend to those of you younger than I to avoid getting older; it's not a very worthwhile experience.)

At any rate I made good time and arrived at the wonderful trash yard in the deep Ozarks by later afternoon.

Now, I had trepidations; last time I was there I fell afoul of a sentry wasp guarding a nest, and that wasp was between me and the front door of the cabin. I was worried he (or she?) may still be there and protective of it's territory.

But I noticed something else. I had built an Indian-style wigwam, a dome shaped from made from saplings tied together then covered with tarps. I used it to store some stuff. It had long ago collapsed and just lay in a pile, But it was clear someone - or something - had been rooting around in it.

My musing ended rather quickly as something buzzed past the back of my head.

Now that is a sign of wasps. They often warn you before stinging you. I never saw what it was but I hot-footed it out of there in short order.

Which meant I had to schlepp all my gear around the pile of building material and come in from the opposite side of the cabin, a risky proposition as there were lots of holes in the ground hidden with leaves. And I had to carry a lot of somewhat heavy stuff.

And that included firewood. I have been down to the OH so seldomly this year I hadn't had a chance to build up my wood pile, so had stopped at a gas station in Cherokee Pass to buy the good wood (much better than what is available in gas stations here in St. Louis). I had three bundles - more than enough. The weather man had said the low would be in the sixties but on the way down I caught a station out of Poplar Bluff which said low fifties to high forties - I was going to need a fire for sure.

So I started the laborious task of moving all that into the cabin and avoiding the wasps.

Upon opening the door it was clear I had been robbed.

All sorts of stuff was turned over and moved around. My battery-operated electric lights were gone. A couple of my better kerosene lanterns were gone. My spare batteries were gone.

Oddly enough, the liquor I leave as bribe goods was not taken. Nor was the pack of cigars I had left down there.

In fact, they really take much. Of course I don't leave anything of value there. I do have a very nice aluminum ladder which they left (probably too big and cumbersome to make it worth stealing.)

So here it was late in the day and my lighting situation was hampered by the theft. It was probably kids screwing around, but it still is annoying and those batteries weren't cheap. I had D cell, AA, and AAA.

Now I'll have to bring new lights down and take them home with me.

Fortunately I still had about five working lights to play with. It would be dark but manageable.

So I got to work. My fireplace consistes of an old oil drum with a hole cut in the top for a stove pipe. Amateur work. The pipe goes out through a gap in the eaves, supported by a piece of rebar so it doesn't touch the wood. It barely sticks out of the cabin, and does not clear the roof, so the fire tends to smoke in the cabin. There is a gap in the wall where the pipe comes out, and a smaller one at the very peak of the roof, so the smoke goes quickly, but it's still there. I sometimes cover the fire with a Weber Kettle Grill lid, which stops the smoke but reduces the warmth.

Anyway, the piping had fallen down and I had to try to put it together. But it was getting late and I had to worry about wasps outside and I had inadequate light. It's a real bear to get that stovepipe put together, I might add. I spent about an hour trying, then had to go to plan B.

I had some aluminum dryer vent laying about outside. Aluminum is poor material for stovepipe; it burns up, starting with little pinholes. But it's better than nothing. I could do nothing and let the smoke just escape from the cabin, and have done so in the past, but I do like to breathe once in a while. I'm terrified of getting COPD from inhaling all that smoke. So I used the dryer vent.

It didn't get very smoky in there, and it was very warm, too hot actually, but I prefer to be hot to cold any day.

I spent the last of the light working on the lamps. These were the ones in poor shape. (The cheap Chinese lamps work but they are a pain in teh neck and only last for a season or two at most.)

It was pitch black outside by the time I got my lamps all lit.

I went outside before it got too cold and enjoyed the night. Heard a pack of coyotes howling in the distance. No sign of my armadillo friends; I hope they are o.k. but fear the worst. I saw only one of them on my last visit. It may be they have passed away. I don't know how long armadillos live but suspect not very. It's a sad thing; they've been there for years. I remember seeing them when tehy first hooked up - if you have ever encountered mating armadillos you won't forget it! Very noisy with the clinking of their shells and the like! Sounds like King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with his horse galluping...

Anyway, no mice, no rats, and few critters other than the coyotes. It was a quiet and dark night.

I didn't sit out long; it quickly grew cold and so I went inside and parked myself on the futon. I hadn't had time to tidy up so the place was a mess, but such is life.

Now, I can't see to read books any longer so bring down a portable DVD player and a spare battery. Something told me to bring the old DVD player down too; it had been giving me problems and so I bought the "new" one, which is a number of years old. I started a movie, which ran for about a half hour and then locked up. I switched to the '90's T.V. show "American Gothic" which was quite good. Done by Shawn Cassidy, it was the story about a town overshadowed by a demonic presence that inhabited the town sheriff and was about the battle for the soul of a young boy. My wife and I loved it when it was on. It only lasted for a couple of seasons.

Anyway, I watched no fewer than five of the hour episodes, but every time something happened late in the episode and I couldn't see well enough to get back to that point. I kept switching to new episodes.

At one point the player stopped accepting any discs "no disc" it said. I switched to the other player, which then ran out of battery power. I had to jiggle the batter feed from my spare battery, and it eventually came back on (it usually requires some time to get a minimum charge). But the disc locked up again.

So, I watched a movie and five episodes of a t.v. program and never once saw anything in it's entirety!

I finally stuck in the movie Gravity and it played all the way through - but I fell asleep midway and awoke at the very end!

Sheesh!

Come the morning I was really tired and had to get all my gear to the truck without waking the wasps. Wasps aren't active at night or in the mornings, so it wasn't so hard and I was able to take my stuff straight out.

I hope this is the last burglary I suffer. There is no way to protect your property down there and that's why I have no locks on the doors. I never leave anything of value there either.

It's too bad; I would love to leave a generator down there for power, or even a bank of batteries and a wind mill (not enough sun for solar cells). But they wouldn't be there when I returned, I fear.

So the place is always going to be just a creepy old cabin in the woods. Especially since I just don't have it in me anymore to do the labor necessary to fix it all up. I have a LOT of trash that has piled up and needs hauling away, too. Bottles and cans and stuff that can't be burned.

The trip home was uneventful. I stopped at McDonalds for breakfast, which is always good but especially so this last trip; I didn't eat any supper, because I was still pretty backed up.

I wound up sleeping for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon. Today I'm sore and feel drained, but in the good way that you get from honest labor.

At any rate, I'm not sure when next I'll visit the OH. It's a pretty major event when I do these days, and as I age it seems harder on me all the time. I'm going to be very, very busy this next month too.

It may not be until November. At least the wasps will be gone by then.

So until next time adios!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:31 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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