Tom Waits singing Waltzing Matilda .

The day my father died I wasn’t in K-Mart. I could have been. The last two years I’ve wandered the aisles buying short sleeved madras style shirts and denim jeans, and just like the madras shirts I bought in 1968, my new shirts are not wrinkle free. Though I bought so many, I don’t felt guilty or stupid because I never paid much more than four dollars.

That was then. Now, I look in my closet and I see a long rack of boring shirts that take years to iron.

This past month, and aching for a wardrobe change, I’ve been eyeing a shirt with a tropical theme. K-Mart has many varieties of these faux Hawaiian looking things, but only one I think I can live with. Not the one with the blue background and the splashy white petals, or the cow dung brown shirt with pink Nash Ramblers behind split rail fences, but the black one with smallish white orchids scattered about. This shirt would be a big change for my static-since-high-school wardrobe and it would reflect my new laid back attitude.

So, as usual, like a guy with absolutely no reason to buy yet another shirt , I stalk the rack and watch the price drop. The shirt started at a lofty fifteen dollars, but a week ago it was reduced to six and I almost pounced. I’m glad I didn’t because Friday night, there it was, scrunched up on the rack with the other summer clearance items. A buck forty-nine. Mine.

I remove it from its hanger and drape it over the side of my cart and continue my aimless stroll. I pace up and down the auto aisle, I walk back to the fizzy water section, I look for birdseed, I pass the halloween display and think what I always think – maybe I should buy a mask for this year’s camping trip – and eventually I add a couple gallons of Clorox to my cart and move to checkout. But, I’m not really ready to go home, so I leave my cart and head to headache remedies. There I pick up a travel size bottle of aspirin and return to my cart. Except, of course, like always, the goddamn thing has disappeared.

Except, of course,  I don’t really know where I left it. Rat-like, I retrace my steps through the aisles but still no cart. Then I see a guy in a red K-Mart jacket standing next to a shopping basket putting two gallons of Chlorox back on the shelf. I run up to him, ” I think you took my stuff.” He looks up, startled, as if I were going to punch him. I peer down and see all manner of assorted junk in his cart but no shirt. I reach down and flip through women’s underwear, bags of candy corn, magazines and plastic toys, but I don’t see my white orchids.

“I’m looking for my Hawaiian shirt. Have you seen it?” The burly guy with the mustache and the posture of a wind-tormented palm mumbles, “I don’t see no shirt.”

No, he don’t see no shirt and neither do I. I run back to the discount rack fearing hordes have lined up to steal my bargain, and it ain’t there. I return the next day and realize it’s gone for good, but I do spy some heavily discounted plaid shirts.

One more more stone skipping video. This guy claims to throw harder than most, but it sure doesn’t look like it.

Tungurahua

This weekend we spent with Richard and Jacquie on the Vineyard. We left sunny Acton and arrived in Falmouth at the ferry in otherworldly thick fog. The boat carefully inched its way out of the harbor, sped across the water, and then slowed to a crawl as the captain dodged pleasure craft and fishing boats near Edgartown. Saturday was overcast – we speculated we inhabited the only cloudy patch of land in all of New England – but that was fine because it forced Diane to abandon her water-walking, and instead we toured the art district.

I eavesdropped as Alison Shaw, an artist whose love of color may exceed my own, talked with a visitor to her gallery about horizons. Adam long ago noted my inattention to that simple rule of thumb, but I’ve since then noticed many photographers, and painters for that matter, with cocked horizons. I pointed to one of Alison’s photos and asked her under what circumstances she decides not to level hers. “If you do it,” she said, “you have to mean it.”

The heron’s legs remind me of my own.

Yes, I may be obsessed with this bird, but I take great joy stalking him as he patiently waits for some unsuspecting fish to swim by.

Six Rainbows at once.

— rakkity

rakkity, you might be interested in Goose’s last adventure.  Someday you two might climb  rocks together.

Diane’s Subaru suffered from a rain of bird droppings without quick washings, and I knew the same would happen to Matt’s now seldom-used Lexus. I searched online for car covers and settled on a mid-priced wrap at about $150.00. It’s important that the cover breathes, but keeps water off the car, and resists ice and snow. Or so my research told me. You can buy sloppy fits, custom fits and custom made for your car, and you can buy covers that defend against falling tree branches , but not backing up Nissan Frontiers. You can spend $500.00 on these things.

I clicked send to shopping cart, then buy, but it registered as a duplicate purchase and failed to go through. That was all the momentum stopper I needed. Two weeks later, while wandering about K-Mart, I found a cover on sale for $22.00. That’s seven of the one I was about to buy, and knowing the car only needed protection for about six weeks at a time until summer arrives, I said why not.

Naturally, I washed and waxed the Lexus before sealing it from the weather.

 

 

Matt, your car’s been asking for you. Says it misses tailgating slow drivers, and the rush of you looking in the rear view and seeing flashing blue lights three feet off the rear bumper, but mostly it longs for the freedom of the open road. I guess I drive it too slowly.