Brown County II

I think this is funny ... or not ... what do you think? Besides the fact it's too long.

So, I live in the middle of the National Forest, 3 miles down a dirt road from the blacktop, with an un-marked driveway that goes up about 100 feet. And hardly anyone ever comes up my driveway even during the day because since my wolf died I don’t have any friends. And it was 10:00 at night on Saturday, a very dark night at the end of November with the less-than-half moon not yet up, and I’m inside sitting in my bathrobe with a candle lit, and a car that I don’t recognize drives up my driveway.

That’s cool.

And then it drives across my front lawn stopping less than 10 feet in front of my door with its bright lights shining into my house though all the windows.

That’s weird.

I called my neighbor, and keeping my neighbor on speaker phone, then got my gun. And then with my neighbor on the phone, did the most important thing and put on my good leather hat¹, and then walked out onto the porch in my bathrobe with the car lights blinding me. And then a fellow got out of this car holding a package. So, I put my gun away, took the package from him, thanked him very much and tried to help him back up off of my lawn. He dug up it up pretty good spinning his wheels. The poor guy only knew how to drive on pavement, not up-hill on slippery grass.

If I could offer some advice:

• Hey, most folks just leave my packages out on the road in a plastic bag … that would have saved you a whole shit-load of time. No one has ever stolen one of my packages. Not Ever. Not in 35 years. Not until recently anyway.

• And next time, please be courteous². Sure, you can come up my drive at night, but please don’t shine your lights into my doorway after driving across my lawn and stopping a few feet from my stairs — rather, stay on the driveway, shine your lights away from my door, get out of your car with the package and stand in front of your lights where I can see you. That would be more courteous.

• And, most importantly, getting to the physics, when on grass, be cognizant of the fact that there is a very low static, and even lower kinetic, coefficient of friction between your rubber tires and the wet grass (don’t you remember your physics labs?) — you can’t pop the clutch as you can on asphalt. You rather have to very very gently let out the clutch so as not to spin your tires and dig yourself into ditch and another and another and keep getting stuck. It’s actually quite simple: while you can’t dig ditches in asphalt, you can in a lawn, and it’s not like there’s a bit a snow and you can dig down into to get to the asphalt. Get it? Very easy on the clutch when you’re on someone’s front lawn with your car.

And, hey, it wasn’t like this was an emergency middle of the night delivery of some life-saving drug (I don’t take any drugs, neglecting Kentucky Bourbon, and unfortunately-too-rarely, VSOP Cognac). It wasn’t even a pizza. It was rather 3 books that I had ordered, I hate to admit this but I will (yes I broke my New Year’s Resolution), from Amazon.

It kind of freaked me out a bit. Think about that poor guy driving out in the complete dark (no street lights and no moon and pretty poor headlights on his old car with poor tires) delivering books that could wait a week or so for all I care, at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night when he should have been at home with his family. Admit it, that’s weird. Oh, but Amazon promised that speedy-free-delivery and so it had to be made on the day promised I guess. I mean, what’s really important here.

And that delivery person probably got paid by the delivery, not by how much time it took him to make this delivery. And he would have probably gotten “dinged” if that package weren’t delivered on Saturday.

Who says there’s any problem with our supply chains?

Yep, things are getting pretty weird if you ask me. I’m beginning to think “what’s normal around here” isn’t so normal anymore.

Now my Postman (it used to be a woman, so what are you going to do, sue me?) of course knows where I live. But lately, every delivery from Fed Ex or Amazon is a new person in a private car that’s never been here before and didn’t learn the route from the last guy who maybe lasted one day (in contrast to the Postal Service where they have an pension) — and they get out here and Google Maps puts them in the middle of the forest where there is no home to be found and their mobile phone doesn’t work because there is no coverage so they can’t call me and their GPS shows a road on my land that I let go back to being forest over 35 years ago. They should have just sent those books through the Great Brown County Postal Service, whom I love.

Oh, and think of all the moles that live in the ground in my front yard … think of how freaked-out they were!

Getting up this morning I thought, maybe I dreamt all this so I could write a phun physics phriction posting, and just had to look out the window, and saw this:

I guess I didn’t dream it.

And so what did I learn from all this?

• My windows are dirty and need cleaning, I’m so lazy; and

• I think I’ll buy a holster for my gun — I’d look a lot less scary walking out in my bathrobe and leather hat with a holstered-gun rather than with one in my hand … there’s a good leather shop in town where I got my good hat.

• Oh, and if you ask me, maybe just a little too much work, effort and drama for 3 hardbound copies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (Children’s Health Defense). I haven’t even read it yet, it could be all bullshit.

And I’ll bet you thought (at least hoped) that this posting wouldn’t have anything to do with CoVid-1984 because I was done with that. Hey, I don’t make this shit up … it’s just what happened and I wrote it down.

Oh, and so I got an E-Mail from Amazon asking me about my delivery; two options:

• “It was Great” or

• “Not so Great”.

I’m going to hit the “It was Great” button, and much regret not tipping that fellow.

I put a rolled-up 5$ bill and put it into the finger guard of my pistol. Next time I won’t forget.

1. Brown County is a pretty rough county, plain and simple. You get absolutely no respect if you don’t have a good hat. I learned that from Sergie who has a pretty good hat, but not as good as mine, though he in his ignorance mistakenly believes otherwise. One must excuse ignorance.

2. I think it is common courtesy to let people know where you are at night in the forest.

I recall the time I and some friends went down to that lake in the State Forest at night to go swimming. And some DNR guy was stalking us in the forest without turning on his flashlight, trying to catch us swimming so he could give us a ticket. That was not courteous. We didn’t go swimming that one night, but I got his license number and called the sheriff reporting a stalker. I hope the sheriff and his deputies kept that DNR guy up pretty late and gave him a whole shitload of paperwork to fill out.

My wolves have always told me when there is a stalker about, well, except for that one very-well camouflaged hunter that me and Wolfie, and again years later, me and Nashoba walked to within 10 feet of where he was standing completely still and silent just off that deer trail, and then he said something to let us know he was there. I think my wolves jumped as much as I did, but I didn’t show it! He told us we were trespassing, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t shoot us.

Which reminds me of another story where two security guards tried to sneak up on me in the forest at night (I had parked, in the National Forest, close to an expensive alarmed home before heading into the forest to listen to frogs at a pond). Nashoba had told me, without making a sound that anyone but me could hear, that they were coming at least 10 minutes before they “snuck up on me”. I had a friend on speaker phone who knew exactly where I was (I was on top a ridge where the phones work) and I was giving her updates on where exactly they were when they finally turned on their flashlights, “surprised me”, and interrogated me.

And then there was that time when again Nashoba gave me at least 10 minutes notice that a hunter returning to his car was coming our way. When the hunter got close, Nashoba let him know where we were. If I had a flashlight, I would have turned it on to let the hunter know where we were sitting enjoying the night, as a courtesy. I may have lit a cigarette if I had one, I don’t remember. I’ve learned to walk in the forest at night with no need for a flashlight, even without a moon, but I always had a wolf with me, but I’ve also learned to carry a small flashlight in my pocket just in case for such courtesies.

Oh, so what was I talking about? Oh, I remember! It’s nice to let others know where you are when you’re out in the forest at night. In the case last night, however, the Fed Ex/Amazon delivery driver just maybe went a just a little to far with this courtesy, driving across my lawn to the bottom of my stairs and shining his car lights on Bright into my windows. But, I guess, he was on a life-saving mission to deliver some books so that I wouldn’t die, of boredom I suppose.

That package had to be delivered Saturday. Or else.