unexpected guest after mudding
Posted by Zonie on April 28, 2024 at 03:17:48
A few days ago I read rather a gruesome story online. A South Carolina diver was mauled by an alligator. I thought immediately of Swimmerrat, but further reading indicated this took place near Charleston, not near the Georgia line.
Sunday was our first 100°F reading of the year, so I took last weekend off from mudding. I left the house Thursday morning for shopping and returned to find the sprinklers running on part of the front yard. My mother was standing there. I told her that I had watered the previous night. She said she and Norma (our neighbor) were just enjoying the spray. Well they've done that once before.
Last night a cold front moved through, and there was a thunderstorm in northern Phoenix. I figured I'd find out if there was any new mud on state trust land. It was a cool enough day for hiking. It only got up to 82°F. The mud was a disappointment. The shrinking mud holes of Coyote Central were all that remained. I enjoyed wallowing in those and then hiking further. The mud was thick enough that there was no point going back for any kind of cleanup. I would just have to let the mud dry on me.
When I got back home, I was astonished to see a Harley-Davidson in the driveway. It seemed we had company. Well, no point losing my composure. I hosed myself down and undressed in the back yard and presented myself in the house in my wet undershorts and holding my personal effects (keys and wallet in double Gladlock bags).
The guest was my brother. He had come to visit our mother on her 92nd birthday. I had telephoned him last Sunday and left a message on his voicemail specifically asking whether he wanted us to do something as a family for the occasion, but he never called me back. He said he was having difficulty with his phone.
He didn't mind the lack of ceremony, and we caught up on our lives as I stood there drying out. He asked where I had been hiking, and I said the state trust land in northeastern Phoenix. He showed us photos on his phone of my younger nephew, his girlfriend, and my brother's new truck. He recently retired as chief mechanic for Arizona of a shipping firm and bought a truck to go into business for himself. In childhood, he had enjoyed a television show called "BJ and the Bear," so I asked if he had selected a chimpanzee, but he hadn't. He intended to operate mainly within Arizona, not to travel the whole country.
I wouldn't have gone mudding if I knew he was coming, but it turned out for the best anyway.