Walnuts on My Windshield #36
Saturday, January 21, 2006

I am truly disgusted about our weather. The highs this past week have been in the 60s and low 70s. Even though it gets down to the upper 30s at night, we have had no snow, and that is pathetic for January.

On the other hand, we have heard that Colorado has had record snows in the past week – up to a foot and a half – so that should bode well for skiing, sledding, photography and general fun, starting next Saturday. I think all the major purchases for the trip have been made, so I am ready to start making detailed lists, and figuring out how and where to pack it all. I hate preparing for trips, but if I can get myself organized, I should be able to keep my sanity.

In other news, I got a call from Eva (owner of the store next door that was vandalized in August and which we helped clean in September) a few days ago. She is really funny. Actually, backing up a bit, last week I learned that that store has been leased to the father (and his wife) of some friends of ours. They plan to re-open it as a convenience store and Mexican restaurant. The restaurant part sounds all right, although I don’t think there will be enough business to make it succeed, but I can certainly live without the convenience store.

Convenience stores do a number of things. They stay open too late at night, shining lights into our bedroom window. They cause a lot of noise – people talking, engines revving, brakes squealing, doors slamming, etc. They increase the amount of litter tossed into our yard. They also attract a certain clientele that I wouldn’t mind avoiding – the smokers, the beer-drinkers, the drug addicts, the drug dealers, etc. So. . . all in all, I am not thrilled about having a convenience store next door again. However, this time it will at least be managed by people who know exactly what they are getting into and exactly what it will take to run it. Dwayne and his first wife made their fortune in the convenience store business in Branson, and one of my neighbors says he and his second wife have been (were?) running one up on East 76 for a while.

So, Eva called to ask what the police were doing at the store the other day. I told her I didn’t know, that I saw them and talked briefly with them, but that they were pretty tight-lipped. Andrew had gone to the bathroom (the window of which faces Coffee Road and the store) and told me there were two “polices” at the store. I got up and looked out our office window (same face) and sure enough, two brand new sheriff pick-ups were parked, side by side, backed up to Eva’s dumpster. They were just sitting there. It seemed strange to me, and anyway, why on earth would anyone park in such a weird, tight little place? It did occur to me that they could be watching ME, but that didn’t make any sense, either.

I watched them off and on for a few minutes, and then they pulled out, one behind the other. I figured they’d pull out onto the highway, but no. They backed up and parked side by side, in Coffee Road, right next to our yard. They completely blocked the road. This was really strange. Nobody had gotten the mail in yet, so I decided to do that and see if I could figure out what these guys’ deal was. I got the mail and walked around the side of the house to where they were sitting. Neither one of them looked very friendly. When I walked up to the closest one, he left his window rolled up and stared past me, as if I didn’t exist. I have gotten that look from one of my children in the past, and it really bugs me. I just stood there smiling, till he rolled down the window.

“Howdy.”
(no reply)
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmmm… OK. Well, it just seemed a little odd to have two sheriff cars sitting next to my house for so long, so I thought I’d come and see what the deal was.”
“We’re waiting for the state police.”
(window is rolled back up, indicating that the conversation has ended)

I went in, sorted the mail, and returned to whatever I had been doing. They sat there a while longer. I guess they were there a total of about 30 minutes. Being a busy mom, I didn’t see them leave, and since this is Taney County, I forgot all about it – until Eva called to ask me about the police.

She then proceeded to tell me that she didn’t know why they were there, but one of my neighbors had been arrested. I said, “Great! Who?” Evidently she had been told some stuff by someone, so I don’t know how true any of it is. See, I learned about Taney County hearsay some years ago, when the assistant postmistress called one morning to ask if I was okay. When I said I was fine, she was greatly relieved and told me to watch the kids, because it had been all over town about my next-door neighbor. What was all over town? That he had shot and killed his wife the night before. Didn’t I hear any shots? No, but then I didn’t hear my kids cry at night when they were infants, either. Well, a customer had come in that morning and told her this terrible news, including my neighbors’ names, and then two other customers had told her the same thing, and someone else had phoned the post office to make sure they were on the lookout for the guy. Well, I called the sheriff’s department and they didn’t know anything about it. That evening, I saw both the murdered woman and her husband come home from work in two separate cars, as they always do. We waved to each other, as we always do. I’ve always wondered if she knows she is dead. . .

Eva said that Gene Forrester - the long-haired heat and air guy at the top of the hill, the one whom I saw running out of the store with the beer signs last August during the vandalism event, the one with whom Eric and Denise and crew lived for a while, the one who stored all their stuff for a time - that Gene Forrester - had been arrested the day before (the day the law sat next to my house for so long). I asked what he was arrested for. She said they had a warrant for his arrest. That he had no driver’s license and they wanted to catch him driving so they could arrest him. That a private eye had called her the day before to ask if she had his address, and she told him, “well, just look at the police report from the day they broke into my store. His address is on that report.” The private eye said, “Oh, okay,” and hung up. So they found Gene and arrested him. Now that sounds fishy to me, because everybody and their dog has known exactly where Gene’s been living for almost two years. The cops drove up the hill to his house the evening of the break-in and came back down and told Eva exactly what all he/they had sitting out in the yard up there. Who knows? Maybe Gene was arrested. Maybe he wasn’t.

I asked Eva if she knew if Denise was still in the area and if she had ever been arrested. She claimed that Denise is in Colorado – but “they” think they will find her, and Eric (her husband? former husband?) had gone back to Kansas. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, either.

The house behind us is still for sale. It’s the berm house that had sold for something over $100,000, because the owner failed to tell the buyer the truth about its shortcomings (sharing a private well, designed to supply one family, with six other entities, for one thing). The lady from New Mexico who was suckered into buying it is now trying to sell it again, through the same real estate agent! Duh! I guess he’s a happy camper!

The house next to that just went up for sale. It’s a double wide mobile, on a foundation, on three acres. They are asking - are you ready? - $154,000!!! My goodness!!! Our house, which is MUCH nicer, appraised for that about 7 years ago, but we only have 2 ½ acres. I told Scott that the Montgomery’s extra ½ acre must have oil under it!

So life in the neighborhood continues to be interesting.

It’s also been a weird week here, because Katie is gone on a mission trip to Louisiana to help with the hurricane clean-up effort. Jessica’s been helping with pre-move cleaning out at Aim headquarters and has been gone for a couple of nights. Josiah had a Boy Scout “Bum-Out” last night. It is their one camping trip of the year where they spend a night indoors (at the gym of the troop’s sponsoring church), eat junk food, and play electronic games till all hours. The rest of the year, they camp out once a month, for two or more nights, rain, shine, snow, or heat, and do lots of Boy Scout-y things. It just so happens that with Josiah joining the troop when he did, this was his first outing with them. He had a blast, and looked like the walking dead today while trying to do his academics. He just work up from a two-hour nap, much-needed, because he was up till 3:00 AM, then got up at 7:00 AM for a breakfast of bacon, eggs, biscuits and gravy, and sausage. Makes me wish I could Bum-Out, too!

Last night, with only Andrew here, we got a taste of what it might feel like when the kids start leaving home. I don’t even want to think about that now, so I will close here.

Until Next Time,
Patty

From My Book Pile:

An American Cycling Odyssey, 1877 by Kevin Hayes, rank 7. Katie had seen this book at the library a while back and thought I might like it. It did look like my kind of book (history, medical, exploration and/or adventure books usually top my list), so I gave it a whirl. This is the day-by-day account of a 21 year old journalist, who set out from Herkimer, NY to ride one of those big wheel bikes to San Francisco, faster than anyone else had ever done so. He sent back reports to a couple of hometown papers and a cycling magazine as he went, and this book is derived from those writings. It was interesting, but the style became a little boring. How many chapters of “he covered 56 miles on Tuesday, passing through po-dunk towns A, B, C, D, and E, having a terrible lunch at C was terrible, spending 90 minutes of the afternoon in a barn during a rain storm, and arriving at F in time to see the local baseball team defeat its rival squad,” can one endure? The story of what the guy did deserves to be told, but I think it could have been made slightly more interesting.

Doc: Then and Now with a Montana Physician by R.E. Losee, M.D., rank 9. This was a totally fun book and a real eye-opener to what small town doctoring was all about in the 1950s and 1960s. This author has a super story to tell and tells it very well. It’s exciting, humorous, and heart-warming. We’d all like to have Dr. Losee as our primary care physician and/or orthopedist!

Quote of the Week:

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” ~ Albert Einstein

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