04/03/02, 10:21 pm:

I happened to drop into a wonderful discovery tonight.

I had completed scraping the chipped paint from the fourth canvas corner of my old Branstrator. I'll get into that later. I rinsed my hands in the not-as-gray water bucket and threw some into my face, and that felt good. I got my bedding out of the tent and put it into the van so the mice wouldn't pee on it come dusk. I changed into my good jeans and the red shirt you see on my home page - same jeans I think too. I put Mo into the van, hopped into the driver's seat and turned the ignition. Gru-un-ump! Nada! Since Eileen left, the battery has been going dead. I'll get into that later. I got my trickle charger out of the rear, hooked it up, started up the generator hidden behind the newest rock wall and connected its 100 foot extension cord to the charger.

I waited about five minutes, gave it another try and it started right up. After putting every thing away and shutting down the generator, off we went. I stopped in town for the mail. It was my bank statement and what appeared to be an invitation from someone in Corona Del Mar, a nice place to be from, one of the original small towns on the Pacific Coast Highway, a few miles north of Laguna. Unfortunately it was addressed to someone else at my PO box. I thought of accepting and going anyhow, but I just X'd off the PO box and dropped it back in the mail slot.

We drove into Yucca Valley with the wind blowing in through the window, a real good feeling after a hot summer's day. At Kmart, I bought three more of the spray adhesives I've been using to repair the canvas on the trailer. I'll get into that later. I had decided to eat out tonight and more or less thought I would just settle into some chain restaurant where I could get a fair meal for a fair price. Money is tight at the moment.

For some reason I decided to head back into Joshua Tree and get one of those Crossroads cheeseburgers. I've been there a half dozen times with Eileen and probably should have tried somewhere else for a change but darn it I just like the place, it is convenient, the food is excellent and the prices right up my alley.

You stand in line and wait to put in your order. I've seen the line go out the door and down the street but tonight it was short. While waiting, I heard some music coming from the back mess hall like room around the corner. You give your order and your name, pay for it and go away. When it is ready, they carry it out and yell your name. I collected a fork and napkin from the condiments shelf, sat at a tall narrow table along the wall that two people would bump heads at, on a tall wood and rattan stool, and set my milk and utensils down.

The music was thumping and the people at the every-size-and-shape tables throughout the room were keeping the beat with it. This was phenomenal. What had I walked in on? I had come for a quiet meal and this place was hopping. I didn't know they did this. I loved it. There a few feet in front of me were three men and two women ripping up a storm on three guitars, a magnificent bass violin, spoons (yes the ones you stir your coffee with), and a gorgeous little stringed instrument - I don't know what it was.

I needed a picture of this so I went back out to the van and got my camera. The guy at the table next to me also had a digital camera so we looked at each other's shots in the little window on the back of each. His were sharper then mine so when I'm ready for my next camera, I'll be taking a look at the Olympus.

The music was bluegrass, which doesn't normally get me excited, but these people were so good that I got excited. I wished Eileen were there to discover this with me. She would have loved it. Apparently Crossroads does this every Tuesday night and I don't know why we never found this out. This was not an organized group you pay to see, though I would gladly pay. Tuesday night is when anybody that has something to say with music can get behind the mike and play. Nobody else was waiting in the wings so these guys just kept on playing. Anytime they tried to step down, the audience yelled at them to keep going. I love that feeling when my entire insides start churning to the feel of good music and that is what was going on here. I could not believe those spoons; she was keeping a rhythm and a tempo equal to any real instrument, though from time to time she played the guitar also.

Three of them were from 29 Palms and two from Joshua tree - two separate groups that were joining forces tonight. I didn't get to talk to the couple from JT, Erik and 'Little Tee', but I probably will one day. Of the three from 29 Palms, Bob was on a guitar, Michael on the bass and her husband Rick Chambers on that fascinating tiny guitar, banjo or whatever it was. He made that instrument, and Bob's guitar, and assembled Michael's bass from about 20 scrap pieces. They were magnificent works of love. This is what he does professionally.

We discussed the possibility of my setting up a web site for them. Perhaps I'll hear from them before I leave in May; if not then next fall or winter when I return.

I left there with the music still moving inside of me and returned to my land so I could sit down and type this, and it is done.

I'll get to those other things in the next newsletter.

April 04, 2002 10:38 AM
I do read as much as I can of your writings. Usually all. I do cheat and skim at times!
Bluegrass music is very exciting. Country is most boring to me. Did you know my background was as a Pro musician and arranger/composer? Taught Arranging, Theory and Composition at B.U. and Lowell University. Played with the "Big Bands" and wrote the arrangements for many. Now it's Timeshare and computers!!! This puter learning is awesome? All numbers ... just like music? Bernie

April 04, 2002 11:03 AM
So happy to hear more news from JT, both on your progress and the fun....that music must have been fantastic, and I know well that feeling of the music flowing through ones veins....love it. I have seen and talked with Eileen several times, and we are planning to try to walk one day next week. Spring is emerging and revealing its beautiful self here.

I noticed on your message header the names Bob and Cindy. Are they from Falmouth? My sister, Eleanor, is married to Steve (they live in Houston), the brother of Bob from Falmouth, and his wife is Cindy!! Small world. Marcia

04/23/02, 11:56 pm:

Okay, now I will get to those "other things" referenced in the previous newsletter.

The trailer is coming along great. Those canvas corners I mentioned were seriously deteriorated and torn, including having ripped away from the adjoining wood in a few places. I really had no idea how I was going to fix them. My neighbor, Ron, had contemplated a fiberglass coating. I had done this as a kid in school when an instructor decided it was time to refiberglass all the school canoes. I remembered it as being a very unpleasant, noxious and itchy endeavor. Also, the necessary resin that one saturates the fiberglass cloth with would turn the corners rigid & heavy, like glass, where they were designed to be flexible and light.

I had also considered sewing them, or taping them, or constructing a temporary cardboard or plastic mold against them and blowing foam in behind the canvas. The foam adheres very well to whatever it touches, but again, the corners would become semi-solid, and the process would be complicated.

Apparently Ron's idea did get something going in the back of my mind because as I wandered slowly through Walmart with my hands in my pockets, I saw a roll of fiberglass tape intended for joining wallboard seams. I'm not quick; things tend to come to me slowly. I set the roll back down and wandered on. Didn't really find what I didn't know I was looking for. The next night I was back in there and heading straight for that 180 foot roll of 2" fiberglass tape. I then went down another isle and grabbed a can of Duro Spray Adhesive, another thing I had turned in my hand the night before and set back down. Duro makes that glue I used to assemble balsawood airplanes with as an even younger kid.

On the following morning, I chose a hole, scrapped it carefully, sanded it carefully, cleaned it with paint thinner, let it dry, sprayed some adhesive across it, sprayed some precut lengths of fiberglass tape, gently laid them crisscross over the hole and smoothed them outward. Wow! It was a beautiful sight to see. It worked! The next day, I brushed some varnish over it just to make sure it wouldn't shrivel and fall apart due to some incompatibility. That just locked it in; I couldn't have been more pleased.

Over the next two or three weeks, refining my techniques, trying different adhesives (2 or 3 at a time, I bought every Duro and Elmer's adhesive that Walmart and Kmart had - except for one can that someone else bought!!), into a 2nd roll of 180 foot tape, I repaired every hole, rip, scratch, threadbare material, and pulled-out edges in those four canvas corners. They look real nice, they are flexible, and they are now as strong as the original material, or stronger. They are already nearly impervious to rain and after two coats of paint they will be. (I could cut them off and use them as canoes if need be.)

Fast forward: the exterior is nearly complete. Lots and lots of wood glue and wood filler. Glue-toothpicks-screw combinations have replaced all loose nails including those lining the full-sized flat tin roof. All metal has been primed. Much foam has expanded into cavities. The door that had laid busted in the soil for so many years has been rebuilt and operates better then ever - even the old iron latch mechanism works like a charm and the full-length steel piano hinge doesn't groan anymore. It even sports a shiny new dead bolt with a real key.

A brown shingled awning type roof now overhangs the rear and is solid enough for me to climb over when I need to get up there. It replaced the small inadequate flat roof that began a decade or two of leaking and rotting when somebody ripped off the Mexican wood eagle that was bolted to it.

Still to come: more wood filler, then a full varnish, then a full sanding, then the final paint job - and it will be done - on the outside - except the windows. Oh yeh, the tin roof has to be repainted silver to reflect the sun and the two roof vents have to be rebuilt.

I removed all 6 awning window & screen units, scraped and painted the screen halves, had those rescreened and bought six panes of quarter inch plate glass, plus a 7th glass pane for the door. So there is still some metal scraping, sanding and painting to do before I can reassemble the units and install them. I also picked up a very nice anodized sliding window at Home Depot for a good price. It will replace the one I bought at a garage sale and installed 30 something years ago which is now busted and graffitied like everything else (was).

Hey come on, people! This is exciting - quit skimming! A year ago January I was shocked at what we found here and my heart was broken. I almost hired a guy to tear it apart and take it away. Now instead, rejuvenation, and my heart is mended.

Somewhere between the final painting and installing the windows, I will move the trailer to its new site, which you've seen if you've clicked on the respective thumbnails online. I am hoping that the wheels on my utility trailer will fit the hubs on the house trailer. They look like they should. If not, then I'll roll the hubs along 4x6 beams or such. No problem; if I can move it 1 inch, I'm making progress, and lets see, that's maybe about 1200 inches - I can do that, one at a time.

I want to leave all the crud behind - the old paint dust, rat droppings and such, so that what I pull down into the new site will be pristine clean. So I'll probably sand and scrape the interior too before I move it. However, thus far, I've been pretty good about catching most of the fallout and throwing it out with the trash I take to town. I suspect that by the time I make the move and rake the old site down, you won't be able to tell that anything had been there, especially when the spring vegetation takes over.


Next item: I believe you know that I installed an inverter in the van and that I charge everything from that. Well, since Eileen left, the van's battery has gone dead a number of times. I also spend a heck of a lot less on gasoline, but that's beside the point. I don't go running into town every time I want something, unless for milk or ice. I allow my needs to accumulate into a list, and then I hit them all at once, including mail and my weekly shower. This does not keep the van's battery charged. So now I have gotten pretty good at running the van now and then to charge it back up. Even though that waste of gasoline and accumulation of carbon in the valves bothers me, I still do it. Got to keep the computer, cell phone, camera and power drill running, regardless. One day I'll get a few deep cycle batteries (don't start cars, but do hold a charge longer) and some major solar panels to charge them.

My 5000 watt generator would handle all that, plus a lot more, but to put it simply, I don't like the noise. However, I do run my power tools from it, and the vacuum, so all in all, that generator is probably one of the best investments that I have made. It would handle the microwave too (I brought one with me) if I decided to cook up a Hungry Man chicken TV dinner or two. That is darn good chicken - not like KFC's which leaves a slightly greasy nausea in my stomach.

Speaking of food, Eileen tells me she just watched "Never Cry Wolf" where the guy lived on mice in the Alaskan wilderness. I don't think I will do that - Alaska is cold. However, the author of the book, Farley Mowat, is one of my favorites. He also wrote "The Dog That Wouldn't Be" and "The Boat That Wouldn't Float", all true stories and a delight to read. If I could write like him, I would write.


New items:
Today the above mentioned solar panels would not have worked too well. It was overcast all morning, which was great because I had a lot of hand sanding to do around the roof border where I had filled the holes & cracks with wood filler. A hot direct sun tends to make such a task somewhat grueling. This sanding was to be one of the final tasks prior to a full varnish, meaning I could probably varnish tomorrow, and most of the sanding was done.

This was Wednesday, so I was talking to Eileen on the phone, around noon. I was telling her about this magnificent cactus flower I had just discovered in one of the areas I had landscaped (read that as 'protected' from my making the driveway wider). I could see why some beautiful cowgirl in an some old-time movie had been called "cactus flower". The flower in its natural setting is a beautiful red with a green pistle (sp?) that looks almost like a tiny hand reaching upward from a soft yellow bed of ganglia (?) deep within.

While talking, I began to notice hints of tiny water droplets hitting my dry skin. I was sitting on one of my "chairs" up in the rocks. I had my camera with me and I didn't really want to risk getting my electronics wet so I said goodbye, gathered everything together and moved down to the van. It gradually picked up to a low-wiper rain. This would certainly delay my final wood filler touch-up and varnish, but the rain was welcome. I no longer needed to worry about the rear of the trailer getting wet nor rain getting in through the door opening, which was a good feeling, but I did go around and block the window openings that were receiving rain. We needed a rain and this one lasted a good four or five hours. This would just make my varnish job a little nicer because the sanding dust that had been accumulating for over a month and the desert dust would be washed away. Yes, I had brushed and blown at all my work but that still does not get it all.

I took my nap in the van. After my coffee I gathered the boxes and bags of trash that I had filled over time with the residue of hard work and took them to a dumpster in Yucca Valley. Shortly after my return, the rain tapered off so I strolled around the trailer with another cup of coffee and looked things over. To my horror, I discovered that the bottom edge of the roof border had warped in many places. I had nailed and filled and glued many of these washboard warps over time and had gotten them all. These were brand new. This was discouraging.

I'm thinking: The dry wood had expanded on the outside like a dry sponge does when one side of it gets damp. They need to be glued and that means squirting it up into the warps and that means that most of it falls back down on my hands and face. I'm probably going to have to drill a small hole above each warp so that I can squirt the glue down into it. Each warp will then need to be clamped very tight, though there is no way to get a clamp around the warps.

24 hours later: This was a hot and sunny day. I wanted to give the warps time to dry and hopefully shrink (they didn't), so I spent the morning digging a new hole for the contents of my toilet and finding flat wide not-too-heavy rocks to cover the hole with. The old hole is full. (That biodegradable deodorant really works- there is hardly any smell coming from the old hole.) When the new hole is ready, I'll shovel some of Missy's litter (which I had saved) on top of the old hole's contents and then a layer of soil and a rock. I had covered that hole with old plywood and a rock but that looks tacky and unnatural. That is why I have selected flat rocks to cover the new one(s). Now all I have to do before it goes into service is make sure the sides are secure so they don't cave in after I begin using it.

Most of the warps have now been repaired. I drilled a hole at the top of each, slit the bigger ones down the middle and shaved off a sliver so the two flaps could meet without overlapping. Clamping didn't work - couldn't get a good grip. Instead I drove one or two small nails partly through the bottom of the warp and then squirted glue into the hole. When the glue appeared at the bottom of the warp, I hammered the nails the rest of the way in. Sometimes this took awhile as the glue apparently decided to travel in other directions now and then. I'll finish off the others in the morning and then go back over them with wood filler. When that is sanded, then I can varnish.

I've already done a fair amount of scraping inside so you could say I have already begun the interior. I began this in earnest yesterday afternoon since everything outside was too wet to work on. I have found that the scraping goes very nicely if I spray ahead of me with the "409" disinfectant. Much of what I am scraping on the floor needs disinfecting. The 409 softens and wets the stuff so I'm working with sludge rather then dust - it's the bacteria laden dust that I would not want to breath. In a way, for me this is something of a "Catch-22" since I suspect that such powerful cleaning chemicals can cause brain damage. Well, I have plenty of open window space around me and almost always a good breeze.

After I varnish the exterior and wood fill the holes in the siding, I'll go over it all lightly with the power belt sander as a final touch-up prior to painting. While I'm at it, I'll belt sand the interior also. For this I have a full face mask with filters, including biological filters I bought during the anthrax scare. (Eileen got a similar mask too.) So why don't I wear it for scraping? I don't know. Don't ask.

In case I didn't mention it, the purpose of the varnish, thinned about 50/50 with paint thinner, is to penetrate the very dry wood, seal it and give it some solidity. I had already done this to the roof border a month ago but because of all the subsequent sanding, much of the wood had become re-exposed which is why it warped in the rain.

That's about it, unless I think of something else before I send this off.

24 hours later: I have glued all of the warps. Finished that about noon and then spent the afternoon spreading wood filler over all the glue jobs and what I had not completed before the rain. It was cold and very windy but I need to get this varnished before we get another rain so I kept at it. Tomorrow I plan to get up early and start sanding what I wood filled, by hand because that is some delicate wood up there that I don't want to risk gouging with the fast moving belt while I'm perched on a step ladder with the sander getting heavy in my hands. When the sanding is done, I'll re-varnish the border.

I'm a bit concerned. The sky overhead is clear now and its easy to see with the full moon lighting it up nearly as clear as daylight, but there has been a fast moving dark cloud stream all afternoon rushing along behind the range that borders the far side of the valley. I don't know what is holding it back; probably this wind and cold. That's part of the Joshua Tree National Park so I feel bad for any campers that came up for the weekend. If it does break through and head this way, we could be in for a heavy rain. I have a folded tarp and rope prepared in the trailer so if I hear a pitter-patter on the roof of the van tonight, I'll be up and moving fast. I may sleep with my clothes on.

That's about it, unless I think of something else before I send this off. I'm going to work on the online version of this now.

24 hours later (and again): I have received word from one individual that she could not figure out who all those guys were in the " My Chairs" shots. They are all me, including the two guys in the bottom image.

One reason you haven't heard much from me in awhile is that quite often I don't get on this machine until quite late. For instance, I just turned it on and it says 11:02 pm. I generally work until dark. Then I cook and eat, rinse the dishes and brush my teeth. If I have any shopping to do, such as tonight, I run into Yucca Valley and do that. Then I turn on the machine and make my bed up while waiting for it to fire up. At midnight, regardless, I wind everything down and go to sleep. So you see why I haven't even replied to some of your emails yet. I will. Right now I'm just trying to get the online version of this and its pictures uploaded while I wait for the 34 emails it says I got to download.

It did not rain last night. That long dark cloud eventually turned white and dissipated. Thank God. I varnished the entire roof border this afternoon and that is done. Now the rain can't warp it, unless I start messing with more wood filler and consequently sanding away the varnish again. I'll try not to. Tomorrow I expect to varnish the sides and that should be interesting because I plan to tilt the trailer so that whatever side I'm varnishing will be tilted up about 30 degrees or so. That way the varnish will really be able to soak into the wood instead of just dribbling down a vertical side and into the soil.

Bye!

April 28, 2002 8:29 AM
Hi Van, You are amazing.....your dedication to this project gives me new zest for life everytime I read about your latest accomplishments, and the nicest part is your ability to also take time to enjoy the nature and its changes going on around you, as you pursue this dream. I loved hearing about the flowers. Marcia

April 28, 2002 9:30 AM
Hi Dad- Sounds like a lot of progress on the trailer. Also sounds like you're very resourceful- how's Mo doing? Be careful and good luck with the rest of it. Darby says hi. Sleep well! love bri

April 28, 2002 5:40 PM
After reading your email I think it is time that you return to OLD CAPE COD. Jerry

May 03, 2002 11:18 PM
"Miles to go before I sleep ... miles to go before I sleep."
 But then...
"My hands are shakin' and my knees are weak. Can't seem to stand on my own two feet."

I'll probably be outa here in a week or two. Van