Ernie's Travelogue.

I've been working on an old manuscript that I found, about a living history of a local person who's identity will be revealed later. I just want to try to do this one right.

The manuscript that I found was scanned by Microsoft to convert it into computer text. It is almost complete gibberish. It even turns the flyspecks into some kind of text. So, I've been correcting spelling, and most numbers have been coming up wrong, and it is two-hundred and fifty pages long. I will have to post it on my web-site, (branscombcenter.com) then make a link to it so it will be easily accessible.

Meanwhile, my wife convinced me that I've been working too hard this week, and we should go for a drive. I've cut a couple of cord of pepperwood, so it wasn't hard to convince me to take a break.

We went to Ukiah. We drove past her aunt Ida Middleton's old house. It was well kept and beautiful, so that seemed to please her. Then we looked at camp trailers that we can pull behind her G.T.O. I'm not big on trailers, so this was just to patronize her... Is there any such word as “matronize”? I wonder why not? This is such a sexist world... Anyway, we saw some real cute trailers that gave a whole new meaning to the term “pain in the rear”.

Then we went to look at roofing for the house, with no intention whatsoever to buy. People do that kind of thing to us all the time, so it was almost like getting even. It's like when a wait-person goes to dinner. They get out their stopwatches and score cards and grade the whole nights service, then leave a two cent tip if something is overlooked by the poor service person. It's a dog-eat-dog world. But, you don't have to be the biggest dog, just the Biggest bitch. Then you win.

Then we thought, what the hell, lets look at that new plastic deck board stuff. We saved a lot of money on that stuff. We didn't buy that either. From there we decided to look at T-Bar ceiling for the store. I think that they must have gotten wise to us, because they said that their T-Bar ceiling salesperson was only in the store on normal days. I didn't ask the person what a “Normal Day” was. I think that I was afraid of the answer.

We headed home, taking what ever highway and by-way that we could find. We turned east at the top of the hill in Willits, just across from the old tire shop. We went around the hill, and just like a miracle, a fire station appeared. They have a large training tower, and large tonnage concrete blocks to stack and play “Lets pretend that there is a person under this that needs to be rescued.” then they move the blocks, while trying not hurting to hurt the “Victim”. I secretly wondered how many rescue dummies that they had killed. Then the road came back out to 101 north of the Safeway Store.

The next road that we took was the next right turn to the east. I was looking for “Reynolds Road”, that goes along the east side of Little Lake Valley. We went past the rail yard. We saw a carnival and a rodeo. We kept jiggy-jogging east and north across the valley and saw many ranches, farms, and homes. We were impressed by how green everything is. We talked about Ben's trip around the Valley while the Camus Flowers were in bloom. We saw no flowers, other than in peoples yards. It's pretty late in the season for that. We came back onto 101 at the north end of the valley, and came on home.

We did the whole trip while never going over 65 MPH, but just as we came onto the freeway south of Benbow I had an insane urge to “Punch it”and pass a bunch of cars, my excuse was that there was a really cool ski boat in the slow lane a head of me. As I caught up to it, I was doing about 85. As I passed it I saw a C.H.P. whip onto the road from a blind-spot. All of his lights were already flashing. I didn't see him because my speed was hiding him behind the ski boat and he was out of sight from me. He whipped a u-turn and headed after someone in the southbound lanes. It occurred to me that he didn't see me behind the ski boat. Blind-spots work both ways!!!

I congratulated myself for being such a good person, and I knew that it was Karma paying off for me.

Home at last. Home at last. Thank God almighty, I'm home at Last