Grandpa’s Bus, Part 8

July 31:

My last report for a bit, Incorrigibles. I promise.

The end-of-month routines of my old life drew me back. Some things, even when we are living a fantasy life, are unavoidable. Some things simply have to be done still. Time-sensitive, you know. Getting them done had me tied to the computer for several hours. Joe, when I see him, doesn’t seem to be so encumbered. Too busy fishing. Reading lots of books, too. And, as previously mentioned, just doing all the little chores by hand that must be completed each day takes up lots of his time that might otherwise be spent in thinking and worrying and regretting… like I am still inclined to do. Joe is the happier of the two of us.

Maybe I am just slower to adopt a new attitude. Maybe I was more tired. What was it that Tennessee Ernie Ford sang, “Another day older and deeper in debt”? For me, that meant another day older and deeper in the mire of commitments and deadlines and self-imposed pressures to do my best without much gratification.

Without providing any details, Mac implies that Joe totally disengaged from his old life, limiting his connections and his commitments. Maybe he truly had lost everything. Remember when Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose”? Maybe it is because I associate those songs with more innocent days, days when I was young and healthy - bulletproof and teflon-coated - but the image I have of that era is so much more happy and simple.

Pardon me if I get too maudlin, Incorrigibles. But you spend a couple of hours filling out a spread sheet and see how simple your life feels. I realized that is not always the content of the report that is depressing; it is the excessive stimulation from all the inputs that is depressing. So, Joe goes fishing and reads good books, and I fret. Want to trade, Joe? I didn’t think so.

I converted to ebooks on a Kindle reader years ago and never looked back. But there are a few favorite books that are still not available in ebook form and I deeply regret that. Sadly, among the books that are not yet available as ebooks is the first - and in my opinion, the best - of the ODHA trilogy. Some of those stories contain phrasing gems about their outdoor activities that are why we look back on those days with nostalgia. “It’s exactly like it was before the atomic age” and “There’s always so much to do at places like this”. That feeling, friends, is what I look for when I ask Mac to take me back.

As those of you who are following these reports of my retreat from the hectic lifestyle I found myself living - a questionable description - know that I am occupying my grandfather’s bus, his permanent fishing cabin, for the summer. All fantasy, of course, but I desperately needed a retreat so I would have enough time to catch my breath and decide how to find a better, sustainable balance in my real life in the future.

I do have one objection with Mac’s depiction of the world. In Mac’s stories, he never mentioned equipment failure. A few flat tires are the worst mechanical disasters he put in his stories. (The most obvious exception, of course, was The Ultimate Automobile.) But those few exceptions go to prove my point. Flashback: When I was 18 and still back in my hometown, my summer job before I went off to college was working in a filling station. In addition to pumping gas and cleaning windshields, I spent most of my days fixing flat tires. They were so common those days that changing tires was almost a required skill. Getting 30,000 miles out of a set of tires in those days was pushing your luck. Some things really are better in modern times. (But I would like to see someone put a whole case of beer between the radiator and the grill of a modern car, like I could in my ‘56 Chevy.)

Getting back to my original complaint… you just cannot walk off and leave equipment unused for any length of time and expect it to be ready to fire up when you come back to it. I remember my dad summing up a neighbor with one sentence. “Well, he’s a pretty good farmer but he leaves his equipment out in the weather.” The stuff in Grandpa’s bus worked fine because this is all just a fantasy anyway. But I would be reluctant to bet very much money that his old Johnson outboard motor - What were they? 5 HP? - would start up and run trouble-free if it had been unused for a few months. Yet Mac’s outboards never failed him. Unreasonable? Unbelievable? Still, if Mac were here, he might argue that his stories were also fantasy retreats. No need to mention balky outboards or smelly outhouses with splinters.

Another of my favorite authors of that era is Harold Blaisdell. I alternate reading his book The Philosophical Fisherman with Mac’s stories. Harold mentioned how he would love to return to the rivers and lakes of his youth but ruefully admits that he would be horribly frustrated if he couldn’t take his sophisticated modern tackle with him. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but the sweet gear we have today makes the stuff from our youth look like trying to start a fire with flint and steel… in the rain.

All I can say is that I am glad that all Grandpa’s stuff worked okay for me in my summer retreat to his bus on the Little Dry Fork. But I am fully aware that this is only a fantasy. In real life, I might not be quite so happy. Al said, “Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m not old enough.” I tell my son, “I’m not as dumb as I look.” Maybe I should adopt Al’s line.

For inquiring minds, here is a last thought: I mentioned that Grandpa bought Champagne Velvet beer by the case for those long weekends down at the creek. Going online for a moment, I found this:

(https://uplandbeer.com/news/champagne-velvet-cans/)

Champagne Velvet is a German-inspired lager that was the flagship of the Terre Haute Brewing Company during its heyday, from the turn of the 20th century until the late 1950s. If you were living in Indiana during this time, it was the beer you and your friends would raise to celebrate the end of the work week, that you’d take with you on a weekend fishing trip, and that you’d serve at holiday get-togethers. Champagne Velvet defined beer in Indiana for over fifty years before the Terre Haute Brewing Company fell victim to the rampant practice of consolidation that characterized the brewing industry in the latter half of the 20th century. CV lost its home and identity, and eventually fell out of production altogether.

Upland purchased the rights to CV in 2013 to again revive the heralded brand. Brewers whipped up four pilot batches, mimicking the circa-1900 German-inspired taste as closely as possible by blending corn, malted barley, and both Cluster and Tettnang hops (the latter named for the region of Germany from which CV’s forefathers emigrated).

Good memories. However, if the dates in that article are correct, Champagne Velvet might not have been available to take down to the bus in the late 1960s. I am absolutely certain it was CV that Grandpa drank but I may be mixing up my memories of the bus weekends with much earlier memories. I was, after all, just a kid and those memories are a good many decades old.

I hope, however, that some of these ramblings have provoked some good memories in those of you who have read all the way to the end of this drivel. Tomorrow begins the month of August. Joe knows that he will break camp at the end of trout season. Probably me too. September will not only be the end of summer, it will be the end of my son’s school holiday.

In Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck wrote that there is a point in every journey when the emphasis changes from enjoying the experience as it unfolds, to anticipating arriving at the destination. Too early to start planning and preparing but there is already a subtle but noticeable shift in my perspective. When I start thinking about returning to my old work - albeit with better and more sustainable habits - I realize that I am not ready yet. I am still going down. Hope to start going up soon.

So, in conclusion, dear Incorrigibles, I will say that this has been a good month, down here at Grandpa’s bus on the LDF. I am calmer, more relaxed, and more fit than a few weeks ago. However, my stress and anxiety are not completely gone. I am still trying to rationalize how I can sneak in a little bit of my old work down here at the bus.

And if you find any of this drivel intriguing, please stop by my Buy Me A Coffee page and make a small intriguing gesture (maybe with a cryptic comment) that will allow me to buy more coffee, that universal writing lubricant, while I am staying down at the creek in Grandpa’s bus.

buymeacoffee.com/rgreenzzub