UP ON Friday, back here Sunday. Just a two-man crew this time, Jonny and me. Adam the human bulldozer stayed home because Sunday was Father’s Day. His three little guys expected him to be around. Not to mention their mom. Every good dad knows when to acquiesce to the wishes of others. It’s not only sound policy but often the right thing.
Both nights were rainy, low 40s, daytime highs in the mid 50s, gusty at all hours. The wind set the beech leaves trembling, one edge down and the undersides up; a forest of beech leaves all pointed sideways like arrowheads quivering downrange.
It made for the kind of cold, wind-driven damp that gets into your bones.
We got the steel roof on the camp lean-to we built last fall.
Felled a few trees… bucked a fair supply of firewood…
We blazed a new line through the woods to mark the leach field approved for the lot.
Also sited the water well. Or the first place the well guy will go looking for water. The site plan dictates that location. We found it by measuring 513 feet up on the north property line, 90 feet in from there. X marks the spot.
Oh, we ate like slobs, as always. You burn it off working outdoors in chilly weather. Lots of animal protein: eggs, bison burgers, hotdogs, bacon, soppressata…
Supplemented that with bug protein. Eduardo, the lead carpenter on Jonny’s crew, gave us a mason jar full of ants roasted in garlic and lime juice. Tasty!
And oddly addictive. We tried not to eat the whole jarful.
Mark, the site engineer, showed up Saturday with another wheeler of crushed rock, this for the garage foundation.
I camped up the hill in the lean-to. Jonny bunked in the travel van.
We saw no wildlife sign whatsoever. No tracks, no scat. But at night, even in a heavy rain, I heard coyotes yipping, barred owls hooting.
Nice thing about a fire pit as opposed to a ring of rocks: you can drag it closer to where you’re sitting or farther off, as circumstances require.
You can tell it was cold: we both had our feet twisted together to keep the wind from going up our pants.
Me on the roof…
Probably climbed up there just in time to realize I couldn’t remember why.
Jonny’s putting the last few fasteners down through the ridge cap.
The metal work went well, this time without bloodshed.
In closing, a quick update on the Phantom strip: The news is out that my friend Mike Manley is on the DL. Mike’s the artist on the Monday-through-Saturday narrative.
Two long-time artist friends of his have stepped in to pick up the work while Mike’s on the mend. They’re doing a great job with unfamiliar material, under the tightest deadlines ever, and not only getting the work out the door but gaining time as they go. That’ll give Mike a comfortable buffer to work with once he’s back at the drawing board.
Without these guys available to take time out from their own work, who knows? Maybe King Features would have put the Phantom strip into reprints two weeks ago; as it did once upon a time with Lee Falk’s Mandrake.
Once a strip’s in reprints, forget it, it’s over. That production money is now in the corporate “savings” column; it’s not ever going back into the “let’s spend this” column.
So, many thanks to Bret Blevins, and a colleague whose name I won’t mention until he or someone else makes it public.
We’re still in business! For now. Maybe in five minutes we won’t be.
As in all things, enjoy the present while it lasts.
Tony DePaul, June 22, 2022, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
I don’t think KFS would ever dare to terminate Phantom strip over unavailability of the current artist! They will surely find a replacement if required. It’s their biggest money-making strip at present, still reprinting in so many countries in the comic-book format.
With Mandrake, however, late Fredericks was doing everything by himself after Falk and even though I am a bigger fan of this legendary magician and Fred did a tremendous job from the ’60s to the early 2000s, he wasn’t doing too well in the last few years(due to age, health and the extra pressure of writing). Also hardly any reprint was happening(of those ongoing strips), so after his retirement KFS took a safer route to re-use the strips from an older period of 1996, when Falk was still writing.
Tony, I like your lean to camp. You guys are doin’ a fine job.
I’m on my way across Canada now…….Bob
Hey! Great news, Bob. Glad to hear you’re on the road.
Robert Freeman, an American two-wheeler I crossed paths with in the Yukon in 2019, is out there, too. Heard from him this evening. He sent photos of the place where we camped on Teslin Lake. Record high water this year. The campsites out behind that store where everybody passing through buys gas, all that land’s underwater now.
Where are you headed?
My hat’s off to you for braving the weather for 2 days and also for eating the roasted ants. I’m trying to imagine what they taste like, you make them sound delicious. Glad you were rescued from reprints.
Thanks, Ellie. The weather wasn’t bad. The elevation there is only about 2,000 feet. There were actual winter conditions higher up this weekend in northern New England. I read about a hiker from Massachusetts who froze to death in New Hampshire up around 4,000 feet.
We were fine, kept a fire going all day, took warm-up breaks. And as long as you can stay dry on rainy nights, it’s not a problem. I slept like the dead.
The wind never let up, that’s what drives the dampness into the bones, brrr.. Just have to keep moving! Which we did.
Well wishes and speedy recovery to Mike Manley.
He is missed. But, Blevins and I believe it is Scott Cohn, who are doing a GREAT job filling in for him.
Well now the cat’s officially out of the bag… 🙂 Yes, it’s Scott Cohn.
Tony, can see when you decide to hang up your helmet, that spot in Vermont will be your creative writing hideaway. Nothing but bliss there for you.
There is something with the ebb and flow in nature’s energy that gets your juices flowing. That bodes us well for many, many more stories to emerge from your keyboard. Am looking forward to reading them.
Thanks, amigo. I’ve been enjoying your photography tutorials at Riding the Horizon. Keep them coming!
https://www.ridingthehorizon.com/2022/06/week-1-better-black-white-photography.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
Sorry to hear about Mike; may he be granted a refuah shlema.
Thanks, Stephen. He’s got challenging days ahead but we texted back & forth a bit this morning, his spirits seem good.
You might want to have your friend ask the well-driller if he ever uses a dowsing rod…
When the local well-driller, who has been doing that for 40 years, arrived here, one of his tools for finding a good drilling spot was a metal dowsing rod. This was ten years ago, and I forget if it was a bent welding rod, or a bent coat hanger, shaped like a Y. He lightly held the two tops so that it would be able to swivel, slowly walked around, and the foot of the Y did dip over a certain spot. He said he could estimate the depth of the water table with it. He let me try it, and it did the same. My water pump installer is also familiar with that technique, though he is skeptical. All I know is an electric current produces a magnetic field. Electrons spinning around a moving atomic nucleus will also produce a magnetic field, and when they are lined up in iron, it becomes a magnet. I’m just guessing, but water moving might have a bit of a magnetic field?
I once saw a utility worker marking suburban water lines with two metal rods. He told me he had no idea how it works, only that it does.
What fun to sit back and read about your hard work up in beautiful Vermont… more fun than actually working. You write so well. I plan to sign up my son in Vermont, so he can read it too. He & family are in Spain for a few weeks.
Donna
Thanks so much, Donna. It’s a lovely little spot they have, and it’s not a bad drive from here, three hours. The kids are up there all winter anyway, skiing the local mountains. That was the germ of the idea for building a house in the area. Their three favorite mountains are all with 20 minutes of the land they bought.