Ivy with her pumpkin from Grandpa and Grandma Sargie

October 30, 2017 - Monday

33 degrees/snow flurries/rain/breezy

Pentoga Road

It just occurred to me that I'm developing a strange little early morning habit and I think it's genetic. After my first cup of coffee, on my way back to the living room with a second, I stop by the freezer and grab a cookie to have with my coffee.

I take a few pills in the morning, one for high blood pressure, an aspirin, and a high charged vitamin to slow any progress of the macular degeneration.

An empty stomach, coupled with the acids from a couple of cups of coffee and mixed with a few pills can cause an unhappy tummy. The cookie helps to make the early morning tummy a happy one. One of the raisin/oatmeal variety makes it downright gleeful.

Why is it genetic? 

Grandma and Grandpa Pennington lived along a small, remote, lake, deep in the woods of northern Minnesota during my more impressionable growing up years. It was from the moonshine-making patriarch of Dad's side of the family that I learned how to work up firewood, cuss, spit, whittle, and roll a decent homemade cigarette. 

I remember pulling into Grandma and Grandpa's during the winter months in my early marriage years, stepping out the car, and smelling something that resembled homemade, fresh-baked, bread. Grandpa was making moonshine in the nearby woods.

He also taught me how to fish using an old telephone generator, two metal stakes and some wire, and that if a bottle of moonshine was tucked in the basement woodpile, near where one fed the wood stove, it made having the occasional nip more convenient, especially when pretending to hide it from Grandma who was pretty much a tea totaler.

After Grandpa pulled a tug of swill, he'd say, "We don't need to tell Grandma, Tbuster," what Grandpa called me until the day he died. (T Buster Fillius from the Howdy Doody years.)

Anyway, back to genetics:

I used to get up early so I could sit with Grandpa at the dining room table in the early morning hours. The old man relished his time, eating a bowl of instant oatmeal with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Playing on the radio was WCCO AM broadcast out of Minneapolis, several hundred miles away. 

I can see him now like it was yesterday, a spoon in one hand, homemade cigarette in the other. With the news playing softly in the background, I'd sit and watch a man whom I deeply loved, though he wasn't slow to shush me as I attempted to socialize through the morning news. 

Half a century later, Grandpa's long gone. I gave up smoking and drinking long ago and I don't use a generator to catch fish.

Ah, but I relish the early morning, before sunup hours, often while listening to the news and enjoying a fresh cup of coffee and a cookie.

An eighth of me is comprised of pure lineage from the old man and I'm proud of that. 

I sure miss Grandpa. 

Like I said, it's genetic. 

Sunday was another day that saw us working outside in final preparation for winter. I'm not holding my breath, but I think we might be about finished. I still have to mount the plow to the red ATV and after that... well, let 'er snow. Not much we can do about it anyway.

Yesterday began by emptying out the large pots, six of them, of any flowers and plants that we wanted to save for next summer. Mostly they were spikes, vinca vines, geraniums, and a few Dusty Millers. 

In the past, we moved the pots, plants and all,  to the basement to live under grow lights. We found they took up too much room and were much too heavy.

The majority of Sunday was spent separating the plants and shaking dirt from the roots. After, everything was taken downstairs and placed in two totes with damp sand covering the roots.



Five grow lights are hanging overhead. Hopefully, the plants will thrive throughout the coming winter. 



I noticed a small drip running down the block chimney and into the attached garage during the last rainstorm. 

I was lucky. After climbing up onto the roof and sweeping away any debris from the area, I found a place where the old roofing tar had cracked and separated. 



With any luck, the leak is fixed and I won't have to worry about that anymore.

It was well into the afternoon before Sargie and I made our way into town. We stopped at the deli and purchased fried chicken, grabbed a couple of Cokes from McDonalds, and came back home. We were both tired and neither of us felt like taking a drive.

I did a few last minute chores, carried in wood, and of course, we ate fried chicken like the piggies we know how to be.

Sargie opens the Vision Center today. If the rain and snow hold off, I plan to take my usual walk then work on Christmas presents. The forecast for this coming week is filled with the promise of rain and snow so there should be ample opportunity to spend time in the shop.

Meanwhile, it's time to get Sargie up and the day started.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...