Emend by EclipseChapter 2
- 3 years ago
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December 2, 1978
For early December, the weather wasn’t that cold. At 10:00 am, it was in the sixties although the wind was blowing at 20 mph with gusts up to 26 mph. The wind made it a lousy day to move. It seemed like anything bulky tried to take off on its own during the short trip from the van to the house.
This was a major moving day for three of the four members of the group. Having made the decision to rent out her house, Cathy was moving into Sandra’s place. Tim, having finished his house with the help of his crew, was moving into his place.
There were two houses full of furniture and one house that was empty. Some of Cathy’s stuff was of very high quality and was going to be moved into Sandra’s house. Sandra’s place was much larger than Cathy’s and there was too much stuff for the smaller place. It was decided that the leftovers could go to Tim, who didn’t care all that much if his furnishings were new or older. What was getting replaced in Sandra’s home, also could get moved to Tim’s. The result was that there was quite a bit of furniture shuffling going on.
While the actual steps weren’t completely planned out, the basic idea was to first move the stuff Sandra didn’t want any more from her house to Tim’s house. This included the cheap dining room set she had bought at Target. A couple of lamps and other minor items also made their way across the street. This would free up space in her house for Cathy’s replacement items. Cathy wanted to keep a very nice place setting for eight so Tim received the place setting for eight from Sandra.
Once Sandra’s house had been emptied of the stuff she was giving to Tim, they would move the items the girls wanted to keep from Cathy’s house into Sandra’s house. This included the antique dining room furniture that Cathy had gotten from Gladys. It was large and heavy, but with Tim and Benny hauling the table top in the truck and the chairs in the van, it made its way to Sandra’s house. Cathy brought a couple of nice crystal lamps to replace the ones that Sandra had given to Tim.
They took a short break to get lunch at a chain pizza place. It was a plain cheese pizza which the girls enjoyed, never having tasted a New York style pizza made by a real New Yorker. Tim and Benny, having had real pizzas, were both disappointed. That was one of the things that they couldn’t wait to have again, real pizzas with the thick crusts, a rich tomato sauce, and smothered with cheese. Too many other foods had gotten worse with time.
The final step was to move stuff from Cathy’s house that she was giving to Tim. The older living room furniture, some artwork, and some lamps made their way from Cathy’s house to his house. It was a lot of furniture with the sofa, couch, chairs, coffee table, and end tables for the living room. The furniture required two trips in the pickup truck and the van. With the wind, it felt like the van was getting blown all over the place. The sky was overcast now and it looked like it might rain, later.
Tim was also taking the master bedroom set from Cathy’s place. The furniture, although old fashioned, was in good shape. It was a nice poster bed of solid wood with matching chest of drawers, dresser, and night stands. Cathy had a hard time deciding if she should take it with her or not, but the fact was that she liked the more modern furniture that Sandra had.
Tim was also the lucky recipient of the kitchen items from Cathy’s house. Together, the two girls had two of everything for a kitchen and in some cases three of them. Tim got all of the redundant items which filled his kitchen rather quickly. This included the pots and pans, silverware, glasses, and small appliances. Since this was actually the most expensive room to fill, Tim was extremely happy.
The kitchen items were brought over by Sandra and Cathy in their little cars. Everything was packed in boxes, more or less by where they had been stored in the kitchen. Drawers were emptied and cabinets were ransacked. There was a small, but heavy, box with the silverware. Another box held all of the junk from the junk drawer in the kitchen.
In their rush to pack, he ended up with cookie-cutters and other items that none of the others had thought to purchase. They were dealing with a life time collection of kitchen-ware items that Gladys had collected. Later, Cathy would realize that she had given away some useful items, but by then it would be too embarrassing to ask for them back. Tim ended up with a much better stocked kitchen than the other two houses.
Tim had offered to purchase the furniture, but Cathy had turned him down. In part, it was because she and Sandra felt guilty at not having helped him complete the restoration of his house. After all, he and Benny had redone her house and completely rebuilt Sandra’s house. They owed him for having done that.
She also felt like she owed them for the fact that she even owned the furniture. It was Benny’s idea and Tim’s talking that had gotten her the furniture along with the house. The furniture had been a small token amount added onto the price of the house. After having seen how much Benny spent on furnishing his house, she came to realize that she had gotten a really good deal.
Around 3:00 pm, they finished shuttling items from one place to another. Tim still had to unpack the boxes, but everything was moved. He could do that over the next few days, taking his time to find the right places to store everything.
They stopped transporting items in the truck, just in time. A patchy fog rolled in despite the gusty winds. The temperature had dropped to 42 from the 65 it had been just two hours earlier. The humidity was 99%. The wind hadn’t died down any, but that didn’t seem to affect the formation of the fog any. It was eerie watching the wisps of fog blow past at 20 mph. It seemed to leave a trace of moisture on everything it flowed past. Tim and Benny went outside to watch it.
“I didn’t know that fog could exist in this kind of wind. I’ve always thought of fog as being a still air kind of phenomenon.”
“It’s a cloud. There are a lot of clouds where the wind is even faster. Just look up in the sky some cloudy stormy night,” Benny said.
“I never thought about it that way.”
The wind cut through their coats. The wet air drew the warmth from their body, and the cold seemed to seep to the bone. It may not have been freezing cold, but it sure felt like it. They shivered from the cold despite their winter coats.
“Are we done moving?” Benny asked.
“I’ve still got to pick up my bed.”
“I suppose we ought to get over to your house and grab your stuff.”
“Benny, I’d like to stay at my parent’s house tonight.”
“Why?”
“My mom is acting all emotional about me moving. She wants to have dinner tonight with just her, dad, me, and Katy. She said it was to celebrate my moving into my own home, but she seems ... bothered. The other evening, Calvin told mom that he wasn’t coming home for Christmas. She wishes that I had waited until after Christmas to move out.”
Calvin now lived in Fort Worth, and worked for Bell Helicopter. He was talking about going to Iran to provide maintenance on helicopters purchased by the Iranian Air Force. Iran had ordered 287 Bell 214As. Calvin thought it would be pretty neat to visit a foreign country for a year or two. Tim tried to tell him that the political situation wasn’t good, but Calvin didn’t want to hear him and, frankly, thought Tim was too stupid to understand anything about the world.
“Why would she want you to wait until after Christmas to move?”
“Her family is leaving the nest and she’s feeling uncertain about things. Her life has revolved around us kids for twenty-five years. Christmas is a very big family holiday. There’s all of that decorating of the house, purchasing presents, specials on television, and then the whole Christmas day stuff.”
Benny just grunted. He didn’t understand it, but he accepted that Tim knew best. If he thought his mother was upset about him moving out, then it was a good chance that she was upset. Tim was the person who dealt with people.
“I’ll bring my clothes over tomorrow.”
“That’s fine with me, Tim. Just let me know when to come over to help load your stuff and bring it over. It shouldn’t take too long.”
It wasn’t going to be anything heavy, just a lot of things. There were all of his clothes and mementos from growing up. In terms of mementos, there really wasn’t that much. Too many of the things he had as a kid were hand-me-downs from Calvin, and were broken useless items by the time he was done with them. He hadn’t spent much money collecting things during his teenage years. There were no record collections or anything like that. He didn’t have posters of bikini clad women or fast cars hanging on his wall. In a very real way, his room reflected the tastes of a sixty year old man rather than a twenty year old kid.
The two of them went into Tim’s house and started unpacking the kitchen. The girls had really rushed through in packing the stuff so it was a mess trying to put things away. The old toaster, complete with crumbs, went on the counter along with the coffee maker, an electric can opener, and a crock pot.
Gladys had a set of ceramic canisters for storing things. It had four canisters, which were labeled, from largest to smallest, flour, sugar, coffee and tea. He peered in each one half expecting to find them filled with something. He just placed them haphazardly in a row on the counter. Benny went over and arranged them by size.
“You don’t drink tea. What are you going to put in it?”
“I don’t know. My second wife stored nuts in hers. I’m not really a ‘nut in my cooking’ type person, so I guess I’ll store something else.”
“My mom puts macaroni pasta in hers.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
Benny went back to unpacking a box filled with bake-ware. There were casserole dishes of varying sizes, several cookie trays, pie pans, and cake pans. He put them away in a cabinet.
“Gladys sure liked to bake.”
“In her day, that was the only way to have cookies, cake, or a pie. In our day, almost no one baked anymore. You could go to the store and purchase pies, cakes and cookies that were ‘homemade’ and cut into different sizes. When I was divorced, I used to buy little individual servings of chocolate cake and half pies. I quit buying those mass produced ‘brand name’ cookies and started buying the store made cookies.”
“I think my wife did the same thing after the kids moved out.”
“I have to say that real homemade cakes, pies, and cookies are the one thing that I really enjoy now.”
“I like all of the food. It tastes right.”
“That’s true.”
“I’m going to grow peaches, apples, pears, and plums on my future place. I’ll also have a garden for fresh vegetables.”
“Benny?”
“What?”
“I hate to remind you that you kind of forget about gardens when you get involved in some project. I don’t think you’ve ever harvested anything out of any garden you’ve ever grown.”
“I’ll hire a grumpy gardener to go with my grumpy housekeeper.”
Tim laughed. He knew that was exactly what Benny would do some day in the future. He would also have a prostitute who visited once a month. Benny had no intention of marrying. Of course, when Benny got rich there would be lots of women who would want to marry him, and would be overjoyed that he only paid attention to them one afternoon or evening a month. That was as much as Benny needed a woman in his life.
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February 8, 1978 Snow is a rarity in Oklahoma City. It doesn’t take much snow on the ground to bring ‘the world’ to a halt. It’s a result of not having salt trucks, or snow removal equipment. Unfortunately, it’s seldom just snow, alone. It’s often preceded by drizzle, rain, or sleet. If the ground is cold enough for the snow to stick, it’s cold enough for water to freeze. The result is ice covered by snow. The primary hazard of that kind of weather isn’t trip and fall accidents - although...
April 22, 1978 The prom is a special occasion, particularly for seniors. It’s the last hurrah of high school. This makes it the social event to cap off the entire education experience which — as everyone knows, or should know — is more social than intellectual. It is a big deal and no one wants to show up without a date. Those without a date are more likely going to stay home rather than suffer the social embarrassment of showing up alone. Young men worry and fret if the young woman they ask...
April 25, 1978 Reading the newspaper, Robert Kane sat behind the desk at the pawn shop in his high tech wheel chair. This one, the latest of many, had a motor that pushed it along and a little knob that he could use to steer it. He had lots of things that allowed him to overcome any difficulties posed by his lost legs. It wasn’t that he was lazy, but it did allow him to move around while holding things in his hands. He heard the jangle of the cowbells above the door and lowered the paper to...
June 2, 1978 The weather was nice, but a little cold. It had in been in high 40s and low 50s all night. The wind was blowing, but not too hard. Sunset was around 7:00. Tim and Benny could grab eight hours of work on Tim’s house easily, even making allowance for the fact that they had to clean the office buildings. They could do the same Thursday. Friday afternoon would be spent putting out envelopes for curb painting and Saturday would be spent painting curbs. They would get a full day of...
August 6, 1978 Tim and Benny were sitting in their office chatting. It was one of those few occasions when it was just the two of them. They had felt a need to sit back and assess what was happening. There was a tendency for everyone to gather at Benny’s house to discuss business, but Benny objected to that. It was his home, his refuge, and he didn’t really want business intruding into it. Tim understood. Tim said, “It appears that I’m now a general contractor.” “Don’t you need a license?”...
August 19. 1978 Sandra finally chose to buy a very plain set of furniture for the living room. She managed to find a middle ground between ‘middle aged stodgy,’ furniture and the trendy fashion furniture which was favored by people her age. She avoided the ugly browns, oranges, and greens that seemed to dominate the furniture world, and ended up with a cream colored living room set with matching end tables and a coffee table. She had picked up a cheap dining table from Target. Her father,...
September 2, 1978 Tim woke up and scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. The birds were making such a racket, that sleep was impossible. He glanced over to the other side of the tent, and noticed the empty sleeping bag. Benny was up already. Tim poked his head out of the tent. Outside the tent was a remarkable tableau. Benny was sitting on the bench of the picnic table, appreciating the view of the lake. Three does were standing within twenty feet of him. One was eating some grass at the edge of...
November 11, 1978 This year things were very different for Benny. In the past, he would have worked at the office building every evening from 5:00 until 7:30. It was as regular as clockwork, and brought the four of them together every workday. The four would often eat dinner together after work, but without exception Benny ate dinner with Tim. Since they had sold the business, Benny didn’t have that hanging over his head. Sandra and Cathy were still working there, but were now answering to...
January 9, 1979 It was a Tuesday and college was out for Christmas break for another week. This meant that Sandra, Cathy, and Benny were available all day. Tim and Benny had decided that it would be a good time for a business meeting. Everyone was getting antsy about the price of silver. It was oscillating around $6.00 and everyone, with the exception of Benny and Tim, was hoping that marked the beginning of the take off in silver. It was a dollar increase over the past year. Tim and Benny...
January 16, 1979 It was cold that day, but not horribly so for January. It was a Tuesday and Tim was inside the house with his crew working on drywall. It seemed to Tim that his life was settling into a rut. First he’d tear out the walls, fix the wiring, put up new walls, tape them, paint them, and then put on the fixtures. Once all of that was done, the carpet layer would come in and install the flooring. Then it would be on to the next interior. It wasn’t that simple. There was also the...
April 13, 1979 Ted Brooks peered over his half rim glasses to examine Tim and Benny. They had opened their books for him so that he could prepare their tax forms. Their records were first rate and he enjoyed working with them, although the quality of their books was due more to Cathy’s efforts than either of the two young men. It was hard to believe that two guys so young were worth so much. He had watched them slowly grow the net worth of their businesses. He looked over the page that...
June 10, 1979 Happy to be ready to leave, Benny slammed the trunk of his car shut. He had finished packing for his trip to the Chickasaw National Recreation Area where he was going to camp for the next seven days. He had been planning to start this trip back on June 1, but the weather forecast had predicted rain for the next day. He figured he’d put it off for a day or two until the weather cleared. It was a fortunate decision since the weather had been terrible since then and he would have...
June 16, 1979 Tim drove into the park and had to drive around the campground to find the spot where Benny was holed up. He drove around for thirty minutes before he noticed the tent tucked up out of the way. He parked his jeep and walked over to the tent. Benny was lying there, staring up at the sky. A golden eagle was circling above. Benny was watching the magnificent bird. Tim sat down, lay back, and looked up at the sky. The golden eagle was gone. A turkey neck buzzard had taken up in...
August 10, 1979 At 11:00 in the morning, the temperature was already 82 degrees but it felt like 92 and the forecast suggested that temperatures would be reaching the high 90s by the late afternoon. Tim was seated on the step before the front door, waiting for their university guest, Dr. Frank Hennequin, to arrive. The visiting professor was an historian specializing in studies of the French support of the American Revolutionary War. Tim wasn’t sure what to expect, but the professor was...
September 3, 1979 It was Labor Day weekend and, with the exception of Benny, the usual suspects were planning to participate in the annual Labor Day parade. Tim had missed last year since he had met up with Benny who was camping. This year Benny had taken off for lands to the south, for a change. He was heading towards Texas rather than the eastern end of Oklahoma. He didn’t have much experience traveling south like that, except to visit Tim once, in his first life, when Tim lived south of...
November 22, 1979 Benny walked into his parent’s house without knocking. After all, this was his family home and he had been invited for dinner. It was his first visit in nine months. He had begged off on other invitations using the excuse of school or working on houses. There just weren’t too many excuses one could use to escape Thanksgiving. He did manage to surprise the whole family by being early. Not everyone was happy to see him. Upon entering the house, Lana screamed at him, “You...
January 16, 1980 On Thanksgiving day the price of silver had been a respectable $16.19 and everyone in the business of investing was talking about the scarcity of silver. Your average person on the street was becoming aware that something quite unusual was happening in the silver market. The CBS, NBC, and ABC were now talking about the price of silver during the evening news. On Christmas, the price of silver was $24.60. If Thanksgiving dinners had quiet conversations about the price of...
February 22, 1980 The dust was starting to settle as far as silver was concerned. Silver had hit its peak at $49.45 an ounce on January 18, then started dropping precipitously. After thirty days, the price had dropped to $30 an ounce and was still falling although it wasn’t plummeting. People who had waited to sell their silver were upset they hadn’t sold it earlier. People who had bought silver at the high were cursing the drop. Today, Tim, Benny, Sandra, and Cathy were meeting to assess...
April 1, 1980 Tim and Lily drove up the road. Tim knew that he had gone too far when he saw the steel bridge. There was almost no traffic on the road, so he did a U-turn right there on the highway. Coming back they found the dirt driveway to Benny’s property. Tim slowed down and turned onto it. There was a cattle guard across the drive so he didn’t have to deal with a gate. The cattle guard was new. The posts of the barbed wire fence were wood tree limbs cut to size. The barbed wire was...
June 22, 1980 The male half of the wedding party was gathered in the back of the church. Tim was the groom. Benny was the best man. Robert was the groomsman. It wasn’t a very talkative group. Tim was thirsty, but afraid of drinking much of anything lest he needed to go the toilet in the middle of the ceremony. Benny was lost in his thoughts about his new house. It was finished, but the second one for the help wasn’t. Robert was just watching the two of them amused by it all. It was amazing...
September 11, 2001 The landscape around the house had changed significantly over the past 21 years. It was a lawn worthy of a golf course, front and rear. The lawn ended at a gravel path that led down to the river. To one side of the house was an orchard with apples, field pears, peaches, and pecans. There was also a little garden that was still producing vegetables, including tomatoes, bell peppers, beans, squash, and corn (despite the best efforts of the raccoons). Over 21 years, Benny...
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IncestEden main line of defense September 14, 2146 0445 hours The 17th, 9th, and 14th ACRs, the battered veterans of two Jutfield Gap battles, made their way into the rear areas, passing through the main line of defense and assembling in staging areas west of the city but east of the artillery positions. Eden defense doctrine dictated that these three regiments were to be resupplied and refueled and then utilized as tactical reserve units for the 2nd Infantry Division where their rapid mobility...
After her goodbye kiss to me she turned and walked away. I watched how her ass moved so seductively as she walked with the narrow thong running down between her sexy cheeks. I heard the erotic clicking of her high heels on the floor as she made her way directly back to him. Watching her hips sway and hearing the sound of her heels as my loving wife walked away from me was something I would not soon forget. It was gut wrenching but erotic as hell. She was being a seductress. The symbolic kiss...
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