Raylee started up a conversation with me at the cafe. She has to get rid of thirteen horses in two weeks because that's when the hay runs out and Brian, her mean uncle who won't let her go to Phoenix to see her grandmother who had a stroke and who has Alzheimer's and dementia and who might die any day says she has to move them horses out so she will, but she's going to get them back when her dad gets out of prison in three weeks cause he'll straighten things out and it's a shame about the timing because of the horses and because he won't get to see his mother before she dies but what can you do and do I know anyone who wants some chihuaha-Jack Russell terrier mix puppies because she has four more and maybe they'll have to have dad come home on the bus because the car probably won't make it to the prison...
Raylee's eighteen, homeschooled, and has three brothers and two sisters. She gets by selling horses and by winning money as a barrel rider; she's the Arizona state junior champion! Some of the horses have pedigrees and go for quite a bit but it's hard to feed them and summer is rough on them. She misses her dad, who's been away for two years, and her grandmother, who was the only one who would barrel race with her and who took her as far as Utah to race. Raylee is trying her best to stand upright but she doesn't have a plan for the future and you can tell the accumulating sadness is starting to weigh on her.
My neighbor at the RV campsite is Phil. Phil has been camp host for two years--he gets a free site and free utilities, but no pay. He has a 38 foot Monaco, a car, and a Harley Softail. Phil invented the automobile dashboard cover; he had 185 employees and a controller who embezzled, in cahoots with the banker. When they went to prison it seemed like things would get better, but his brother (his partner) was using too much meth so Phil got out. He invented the quick connect hose connection, patented brake light/turnsignals for bicycles and he doesn't work any more, but since he's 63 and on disability for Agent Orange and PTSD he doesn't have to. He put all the money in trust for his kids and grandkids ("when they become mature they git it") and takes pride on living within his means. He's been divorced twice and now; "ain't gonna let myself git tied down no more."
Phil grew up in Whittier, California, and had the same 8th grade teacher as Richard Nixon (Mrs. Kilborne). He's been bitten by a sidewinder and knocked over by a coyote fleeing a puma in the last couple months, both times when stepping outside to have a stogy in the evening. That smoking'll kill ya.
I met Bob because I parked in the wrong spot at the Laundromat in Big Pine. He came tippety-tap out of the back room with fire in his eyes; nobody gonna park THERE by God! After I moved the RV we got to talking. Bob is a WWII vet whose dad was the top Marine marksman in WWI. "At a thousand yards, over open sights, didn't miss a bulls-eye for three hours." Neither did his opponent, so they tied. Still...good shooting. Bob was wounded twice in the Pacific and now, at 88 years old, lives in one room at the Laundromat and keeps people from parking in the wrong spot. He proudly showed me his room, with a laptop and a flat screen TV purchased by friends so he can download and watch movies. Nothing else in the room but a bed and a dresser. Bob gave me a blow by blow rundown of the landing and fighting at Okinawa, where he was wounded by a Japanese 155 mortar. "Shells as big as trash barrels!" I love talking to WWII vets. Aren't many left, now.
NEXT: SOLAR! (I SWEAR!)
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