Monthly Archives: June 2018

Schrödinger’s Cabin: A Reason to Panic?

This week a mean streak of violent storms pounded us in Western Kentucky. Storms happen, the Cabin is built halfway up a ridge so shouldn’t flood, up here in town I didn’t hear any sirens. I even worked late to get stuff done and didn’t leave the factory until after 7 pm.

I stay up in town during the week to be close to work, but could still barely get home. The buckets of rain falling were hippo-sized! 20 mph all the way. That put me in a state of agitation by the time I got to the house.

I turned on the radio to get the alerts. Severe thunderstorms, yeah, yeah. I opened a can of beans for supper. Then I heard this:

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I have NEVER EVER heard Flint Springs called out in an alert of any kind! It is not a town, it has no traffic light or post office, it is a gravel road! Every hamlet called out in the warning at least had a store or something, and they all surround the cabin, my precious, beloved home place as if they were the red circles around the big red cabin-shaped bullseye!

My heart thumped like mad. I turned the radio up to hear a repeat, maybe I was mistaken. The rock and roll station abruptly came back blaring Jimi Hendrix ominously whispering, “…and the wind cried MARY…”

Rural areas don’t have eager reporters nearby. I don’t have any close neighbors. Nobody would know. Schrödinger’s Cabin!

I panicked and emailed my boss that first thing in the morning I absolutely had to go to the cabin over an hour away and ease my mind OR face the carnage. I even told him about Jimi. I wavered…I could go now…no stupid, the weather was still too way too rough and the way there was probably flooding. Have faith. Have common sense – what could I do there at midnight? I forced myself to wait.

At dawn (so I could see the debris on the road) I headed south. I measured my breathing carefully until I got to the gravel and had to get out  to move big limbs off the road. A very tall tree had fallen across the road but was held up enough by the trees on the other side for me to get through. I craned my neck to get the first glimpse of the cabin as I powered up the steep driveway.Cabin June 2015 003

Pristine, even the flags. Halleluiah!

 

 

 

Kids and Cars

“Wait a minute! You’re going too fast!” Kate followed Darlene down a path she had not seen before. She stretched her neck and stubby legs as far as she could. Concentrating on speed, the descent into the ditch surprised her. She slowed on the wet rocks when she Turtle 007saw where they were headed.

She’d avoided this edge of the woods because of the awful whooshing noises. Her Uncle Harold had been smashed flat, an ugly, gruesome mess his shell could not prevent. Her neck retracted some with that awful remembrance. “Darlene, Mama said to stay away from the road. Terrible things happen here.”

Her friend kept on walking around a curve in the ditch. “It’s okay, silly. Look! The great big super-noisy machines that were here just before the last big rainstorm did this.”

The ditch now went under the road! They walked through the smooth-rock tube and came out the other side as safe as could be. Climbing up the ditch, she looked around at this side of the woods. Then she looked at the dreaded road. Oh no!

“Darlene, over there! That’s Daddy at the side of the road!” Her Dad was going to cross the road to find her! The path back was too long, how could she show him a safe way across?

Her Dad started across the road, his neck stretched out very far.

Kate went to her side of the road and a big noisy car rushed by. She panicked, then withdrew her head to see her Dad was okay, his head slowly emerging from his own shell. He resumed trudging deliberately across the road.

Another big noisy came, very loud Turtle 008and slow. Kate trembled as it crept toward her Dad. The big green noisy stopped very close to him. A two-legged animal, a human, got out and picked up her Dad. The human set her Dad down on Kate’s side and went away.

His head raised very high when he saw her. “Kate, I told you not to cross the road!”

“Dad! Let me show you the safe way across!”