RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,350
(most things are better left unsaid)
That 'thaw' period, however long it
may have been, was meaningful. It
was the first time I got to see 'my' land
as grass and boundaries. That in and
of itself, is a mean and nasty concept,
for whatever it means it all hinges on
money. Try and tell any Native American
that I'd bought his land and now claimed
ownership of it for myself. In the old days,
I'd probably have gotten tomahawked -
in today's world, a mere shrug. The spiked
fence of down-payment, taxes, title and
possession make it somehow all OK. Of
course, by such an artificial system is our
world kept. To the local Susquehannian
native, all along these rivers and by-ways,
it all meant nothing at all.
-
Most things like that are better left unsaid.
You can get your head handed to you - for
squatting, usurping, and slowly seeping over
onto the next guy's land where there are few
boundaries. Iron poles and red flags? They
can be moved at will. My property 'lines'
were mostly ridges and dead trees. Shrubbery
barriers. Tree stumps. I didn't much care.
One of those days I took my new hatchet
and - just to see what it was like to do this -
chopped down a dead sapling, maybe 7 or
10 years old. Now you may say 'How did
you know it was dead, in the middle of Winter?'
That's easy - trees have definitive series of
growth patterns, year to year, small branches
that then erupt with twigs, etc. The longer a
small tree is 'dead' the more bare and plain
the dead remaining branches appear. So this
one was obvious. I didn't like doing it, but I
did it. I had to answer to no one. Right near
to that tree - big surprise - was an old
cultivator, probably left right there in the
1940's and well-settled in. I opened one of
the flip-top compartments where, usually,
a farmer would put the seed, and to my
surprise it was nothing but shredded paper,
and probably a hundred field mice, all
scurrying around. Surprised the Hell out
of me at that moment, especially that it was
otherwise the middle of Winter. The mice
seemed healthy, content and busy, if such
can reasonably be said of field mice. They
were also very small. I dragged that cut
tree over to the field line, and dropped it
into place.
-
I wondered how long any of this would
last as - after a few days - I was getting
used to the happiness and openness of a
world not covered in snow. But, alas, I
figured (and rightly), that within another
4 or 5 days we'd be back to the more
normal attributes. I was right, and it was
not until April that things really started to
spin around. Winter was a cruel master
out in those parts, and it was better never
to take anything for granted; not even
one good day.
-
Before long, another round of long snow
came bounding in. I got re-used to driving
white roads and in slippery conditions, morning
after morning. The trip to Elmira was no picnic,
but mostly I'd gotten it down to a steady science.
As Winter ever-so-slowly began easing and
turning towards Spring, I noticed a few new
things - the guys I worked with, 3 or 4 country
guys - in Elmira, all got new trucks. Mostly
all Chevy or GMC, but big ones, with side
graphics and names like 'Colorado' emblazoned
on them. That stuff was big in the mid '70's.
So, in the parking lot was a whole new flock
of trucks, I still drove my VW at that point.
One guy used to drop his wife off in an older
GTO. That too was cool. He was an art
teacher in the local high school. I figured all
these guys had simple-signature car loans and
lines of credit. So I asked. They told me to
go around the corner, not so far off, to the
Marine Midland Bank, and apply for stuff.
So I did; went in one day and sat down
with a bank officer. He reviewed my whole
thing, went over my mortgage and liquid
assets (I think that just meant regular
money), and - lo and behold - the guy
came up with some idea for a line of
credit, yes, and a credit card too! (That
stuff was all new to me at the time, and
credit cards for regular people hadn't really
taken off yet. It usually involved minimum
purchase levels. Now, everything is credit and,
apparently, people just whip out their phones
and scan to pay for things, but back then
it involved weird paperwork, special card
strikers, and a signature - and often enough
it elicited an annoying grimace from the
proprietor, who seemed never keen on
taking a credit payment. It was real tedious.
-
Anyway, I got through that one, and it all
seemed to work OK. I guess Marine Midland
disappeared as a bank a long time ago. They had
an ad campaign and a slogan, 'Tell it, To the Marine!'
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