The Rock Wall

I still don’t know what to say about the shock of Jordan Cantell’s death. She was two months younger than Davis.

I can’t claim to have known her well. I know her parents and grandparents on both sides a lot better. Jordan was always a very pleasant young lady. Never heard a bad word about her from anyone.

At lunch Tuesday, we ran into the parents of Steven Dale Middleton Jr. and sat in the booth behind them. The Browns are nice people. We didn’t know their son, but feel for them in their grief.

Our prayers are with both families.

That just shows that whatever a person’s age or supposed good health, God may have other plans. It’s wise to be ready. I have been since June 23, 1961. Not in any hurry mind you, but worry free.

– I need to ask your advice on a Christmas present for our grandson, Van. Should I get him an electric razor or a safety razor with a hot lather machine? I figure he will be shaving before we get to see him. He was a month old on Nov. 28. And how does that work since he was due Nov. 28? Do we hit resume or start over?

– Tuesday morning, I looked out the north patio door and saw the glider I had refurbished for Kimball last spring. I called Darrell Eason to give him a report on my experiment since he works at the lumberyard and someone might ask him.

I replaced all of the old, rotted out boards with ones I had ripped from a 12 ft. 1” X 12” knot free pine board. Kimball thought she wanted it painted. I convinced her to let me try something first. I bought a gallon of kerosene and painted all sides of every board with that. I didn’t paint the four foot 1” X 12” I have left over.

I left the assembled glider sitting inside our outbuilding a few days, then painted it with kerosene again.

After about a week, I moved it to our north patio where it sits in the sun every day and once in a great while, gets wet.

I treated it again with kerosene a month or so ago. I’d guess that I still have 3⁄4 of the original gallon. The boards have bleached out little bit but do not show weather damage or spotting.

When I got Darrell on the phone I told him about my experiment. He said he had heard all his life, as I had from Dad, that the old “sawmillers” painted the lumber that made up their sawmills with kerosene and the boards practically lasted for ever. We were probably hearing about the same sawmills down on Horse Creek.

– My pickup must think I’m pretty slow to catch on. In the past week or so I’ve noticed that the clock on the dash would show the correct time when I killed the engine. Then when I started the engine, the clock would reset to 12 a.m.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, I had to go to the school to photo a check presentation. In mid-shoot, the batteries on my flash gave out so I pulled out and installed the spare four-pak that I carry. I went to the store to replace them. When I came out, I noticed that my pickup engine had the slightest hesitation when I started it. I went and had it checked and sure enough the battery was going bad. I’ve never in my life heard of the clock telling the operator the vehicle battery was going bad.

The battery was under warranty so all I had to do was change it out. My tools were at home so they loaned me theirs. The change went smoothly once I located the proper wrenches – even had to use a 10mm box ended wrench. I hate metric I can’t judge the sizes.

I just had to switch the batteries in a 49 ̊ stiff breeze without my jacket to keep the battery acid off it.

When I got the battery installed and hit the ignition, the engine started kickin’ and the clock kept tickin’. We happy. KL