18 Jun 08 22:56, Cindy Haglund wrote to Roy Witt:

 CH>> which is 35 cents a gallon, same as a pack of smokes -- and we'd be
 CH>> able to head west in our Winnebagos for a nice summer vacation.

 RW>> Faceteous statement noted.

 CH>  Hi Roy. Good. I did a Gooogle recenlty. One hit was " ARE there any
 CH> cities without subburbs? I think only thoe very old ones.

Where I grew up, there are no suburbs. City of 28,000. There are many more
like it in that area.

 CH>  Vancouver BC is like the city described where you can just walk out
 CH> your door and a few blocks away there's a coffee shop, a bakery, a
 CH> farmer's market... ah.news stand... and in the other direction , the
 CH> beach. :)

The Vancouver beach isn't as nice a place to sun bathe as the several
beaches in So. California.

 CH>> indeed, folks who might rather buy a beach house in Costa Rica than
 CH>> go cruising the Interstate.

 RW>> The beach house sounds like a good idea we can all appreciate.

 CH>  Most definitly!

I get two weekend days off the first of August. we're gonna check out
Corpus Chrisi on those two days.

 CH>> again. A holy Christian pilgrim among the piggish heathen.

 RW>> He should travel the 13 miles of the Guadalupe River here in Texas.
 RW>> I service those 13 miles and see the mix of tents among RVs on a
 RW>> daily basis during the summer. It seems that the pending $5/gallon
 RW>> of gas doesn't

 CH>  Ah Texas. You can drive 12 hours in almost any direction from DFW or
 CH> the center and still be in Texas.

8 hours from San Antonio to El Paso...the longest stretch of road I've
ever been on.

 CH> ((PS: I'm speaking figuratively so don't go getting precise on me
 CH> just now.))

Ok.

 CH>  You know now that I am back in Florida I actually appreciate Texas.
 CH> Right now I can say gee it's really warm no hot, today but it's
 CH> hotter in Texas. And this coming winter I can say, gee its nippy
 CH> today but it's COLDER in Texas. There.

If I could, I would have brought San Diego's weather with me. But, one
can't have everything in San Diego as cheaply as one can get it here. The
cold of the one month winter here is bearable, the heat of summer is too,
as long as you take a 'time out in the AC' between 4pm and 7pm.

 RW>> impede their camping one bit. The river campgrounds are crowded
 RW>> early in the year with reservations being made last October when the
 RW>> campgrounds closed for the winter.

 CH>  How was that in August of 06 btw.

Not as bad a it was in 07. Last year there was so much rain, people were
being flooded out of their campsites along the river.

 CH> I have a picture of a sign near a dried riverbed that says, "NO
 CH> Swimming". Seriously the lakes in the DFW area went down quite a bit!
 CH> Bad for the tourism trade.

Last Monday, the powers that be put a ban on watering the lawn, except for
certain times of day and only on certain days. Those lawns without a
sprinkler system are brown. Mine is spotty.

 CH>> The fantasy of comfortable vagabondage lies deep within each one of
 CH>> us, though, and once, 30 years ago, driving a GMC motor home around
 CH>> western Minnesota, I fell under the spell. To have the freedom of
 CH>> the road and the comforts of home -- your own books on the shelf,
 CH>> your clothes in a drawer, your brand of beer in the fridge -- is an
 CH>> aristocratic privilege and I was happy to give up moral grandeur for
 CH>> a couple weeks and enjoy it.

 RW>> Hmmmm. Did he rent or own?

 CH>  No idea. I bet he rented though. Just a hunch.

Probably so.

 CH>> Five-dollar gasoline is pushing that fantasy to the wall, and it's
 CH>> also showing most of us that we live in communities whose design is
 CH>> based on the assumption of cheap gasoline -- big lots with backyard
 CH>> privacy make for a long drive to the grocery store.

 RW>> There are only two grocery stores in this town. Both are across town
 RW>> where the lots and the backyards are big. On those lots are big
 RW>> houses where the richer than I am live. Mine isn't a small lot
 RW>> either.

 CH>  WOW! I like that. If we move to one of satilites of Orlando that is
 CH> how it is there too. Small town. Big yards. Mature landscape.

I lived in the big city for 38 years. It's nice to have a small town
atmosphere and the big city and all of it's conveniences twenty miles
away.

 CH>> In the big old-fashioned city neighborhood, if you're bored in the
 CH>> evening you just stroll out the door and there, within five or 10
 CH>> minutes, are a newsstand, a diner, a movie theater, a palm reader, a
 CH>> tavern with a bartender named Joe, whatever you're looking for.

 RW>> All that's right across the freeway from here. Unfortunately, you
 RW>> can't get there from here.

 CH>  A boat? Would you like them in a boat? Sam I am.

You have to drive there, you can't walk there. If you try to walk there,
it's a long journey that will take you way out of the area. You're
familiar with Texas 'turn arounds' - I live between two of them.

 CH>  Vancovuer, BC is like that...  beautiful city...
 CH> .....

 CH>> But in the sort of neighborhood most Americans prefer, there are
 CH>> only a lot of houses like yours and residents who give evening
 CH>> pedestrians the hairy eyeball. The mall is a long hike away and it's
 CH>> an amalgam of chain outlets, with a vast parking lot around it. To a
 CH>> person approaching on foot, it feels like an enemy fortress.

 RW>> That's the one on the other side of town.

 CH>  I love to walk. It is odd though how some people find walking odd.
 CH> Excpet at the mall of course.

I took our Golden Retriever to the vet yesterday for his yearly shots and
then some play time at the river. He and I walked up and downt he river
bank, him wading in to his chest and I keeping my feet dry.

 CH>> So we will need to amuse ourselves in new ways. I predict that banjo
 CH>> sales will pick up. The screened porch will come back in style. And
 CH>> the art of storytelling will burgeon along with it. Stories are
 CH>> common currency in life but only to people on foot. Nobody ever told
 CH>> a story to a clerk at a drive-up window, but you can walk up to the
 CH>> lady at the check-out counter and make small talk and she might tell
 CH>> you, as a woman told me the other day as she rang up my groceries,
 CH>> that she had gotten a puppy that day to replace the old dog who had
 CH>> to be put down a month ago, and right there was a little exchange of
 CH>> humanity. Her willingness to tell me that made her real to me.
 CH>> People who aren't real to each other are dangerous to each other.
 CH>> Stories give us the simple empathy that is the basis of the Golden
 CH>> Rule, which is the basis of civilized society.

 RW>> I get those stories everyday. Idle conversation as I fill out the
 RW>> paperwork before unlocking someone's car or pickup. Do you know how
 RW>> long it takes to put 2 gallons of gas into a car from a gas can?
 RW>> That's a two story job.

 CH>  Aww.. I'd love to hear those stories Roy.

They're usually stories of how the customer got into such a predicament.
'I was putting my groceries in the back seat and had left the driver's
door open with my keys (either in the ignition or on the seat) and the
wind blew the door shut.'

 CH>  What are you doing unlocking someones car.

I retired in 05 and after restoring a 56 Chevy, I found myself with
nothing else to do. So, I found a job where I could meet the public,
rather than ply my real trade for less money than I was making before I
retired. I work for a company based in Temple, TX called Centex-a-lock.
They own a franchise called 'Pop-a-Lock'...I'm the manager in this small
tourist town.

 CH> They idle like that out of embarassment for having left their keys in
 CH> the car?

Yeup. I always hear the story and it always sounds the same. Different
timing, different etc.. We also do 'jump starts', tire changes and fuel
delivery. I don't ever feel sorry for those who run out of gas because
they're usually scammers who are out to get free gas at the expense of
their insurance company. I've even had a few customers who cry foul when I
don't bring them the 2 gallons their insurance company allows them to
have. There's usually a gas station within the mileage their car can get
on 1 gallon of gas. My very first fuel delivery was a guy who was driving
a brand new Chevy Suburban from Austin to San Antinio (70+miles) on his
insurance company. He asked me how far he could go on that gallon of gas
and I told him, to the next gas station, a mile down the road.

 CH>> So when gas passes $5 and heads for $8 and $10, we will learn to sit
 CH>> in dim light with our loved ones and talk about hunting and fishing
 CH>> adventures, about war and romance and times of consummate
 CH>> foolishness when we threw caution to the wind and flung ourselves
 CH>> over the Cliffs of Desire and did not land on the Sharp Rocks of
 CH>> Regret.

 RW>> He's probably never stumbled over the dirty diaper pail in the
 RW>> night.

 CH>  LOL! Probally not! Did you?

Yeup.

                R\%/itt



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