[ Post a Response | THE TEPIC AND NAYARIT, MEXICO JOURNAL ]
Posted by Cliff on 6/1/2009, 7:16 am
Message modified by board administrator 6/1/2009, 6:53 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I-790dGx-o
Hola all you lovers of the good life SOTB,
I hope that this first day of June finds you all as happy as I was when I was a kid going to school...June, July and August were the best of times...Three months without readin', writin' and 'rithmetic...Three months with my Jack London type goldmining grandfather up in our little one room cabin in the High Sierras (7000ft) that was built in 1850...I actually can tell you what heaven is like as I was there...From 4 to 14, nothing but fishing, hunting (don't do that anymore), mending barbed wire fences for summer's cattle and generally just goofin' off like lassoing porcupine and chasin' rattlesnakes and listening to the daily howling of the transient lobo wolves...160 acres in an area that required a jeep to get to and where hardly anyone ever dropped by...Isolation and wilderness are the words that comes to mind...We had huge meadows on our property and the deer came out at dusk to use the artificial 'salt-licks' that were placed here and there for the cattle...Suffice it to say that, after the food stuffs we brought initially that were fresh and had to be eaten first were gone, we lived out of the many cans of food that circled the cabin on a 2"x12" as well as freshly caught trout and flapjacks and biscuits and other flour based goodies...Of course we ate beans as well...The canned goods included canned hams, soups, vegetables, milk, and just about anything else that fit into a tin can...We had a spring that put out forth freezing cold artesian well water continously and we had what we called 'safes' hangin' from trees to keep fresh meat and things that you didn't want the bears, lions, varmints or wolves to get into...We built a shed around the spring and keep our cokes and stuff on ledges under the water so that they were always headache cold...We installed a pipe that brought water from the spring to the edge of the cabin and we keep our daily haul of trout in a large porcelain bowl with cold water running in one end and spilling out of the other so that the trout were kept just a fresh as if they has just been caught...This was my life that I looked forward to each year right up until my mom decided that I needed to work for a paycheck to get the idea of what that was all about...Summation: I was one lucky kid!!! I was taught to appreciate the wilderness by a man who lived in Alaska from 1895 (he was 17) to about the 20's and knew what being a pioneer gold miner was all about by livin' it instead of from a book...Did I tell you that my first 'show and tell' at El Dorado Grammer school's kindergarten class in Stockton included a bottle of rattlesnake rattles that I had removed after sending the serpents to the big beyond??? I still am truly a mountain man thanks to gramp...
Meanwhile, back at the ranchita, Alice is up, the Monday chores are done, ChaChi and little Luke are hangin' out and it can't get any better than this!!! I am sittin' in the computer room without pants and shoes and socks but I can rectify that in just seconds so, like the cub scout that I was, I'm prepared...
Yesterday was declared a 'special day', culinarily speaking, and Alice and I went to Chili's and blew the wad on such goodies as boneless chicken wings and a garlic lover's delight rib steak and a fire grilled spicy garlic & lime shrimp and chicken combo plus 'top-shelf' margaritas...Absolutely delicious...The best of the west by actual test...We used our accumulated points and this festive spread really only cost us 90 pesos, 70 of which was propina, or a tip as they say up north...
The clock says I gotta keep movin' along so have a good one and I'll talk to ya later...
Cheerio and adios,
Cliffardo
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