Dreams, Moments, Travels
It may be nearing the end of summer, and school is back in for most of America’s youth, but for these kids, there’s still time for some playing in the surf late in the day. Funny how the older I get, the colder these coastal California waters become. When I was growing up, we would dip into the water at Huntington Beach on any day the water was warmer than 57 degrees. Today, it had better be close to 75 before I’m gonna stick a toe in or sacrifice parts more sensitive.
My uncle Woody in Santa Barbara opted for surgery to alleviate back pain. Leaving the operating table, this morphine pump was waiting for him in his room. I guess it was anticipated he would be in severe pain; the morphine was soon dripping into my uncle’s vein, no questions asked. As the anesthesia began to wear off, the pain started to wear on my uncle and by the next morning, this rather large bottle of industrial-strength pain killer called Morphine was nearly empty. Vicodin did nothing, Percocet in pairs came to the rescue, putting my uncle in a strangely bemused state. The pain remained so strong that I left Santa Barbara on Sunday with him still in the hospital.
It must be broken, permanently stuck at 130 degrees, or baked into a state of solidified parts, rendering it inoperative, because who is gonna believe it was really that hot in the middle of the desert? Anyone who gets out of their air-conditioned car at this gas station in Quartzsite, Arizona, would believe it. The heat is overwhelming; it radiates off the ground and burns your eyes. The car runs hotter than normal, and, going up hills, the needle lurches closer to the red line. Never so close as to panic me, but I am aware this is one hot day to be driving to California.
Rarer and more difficult to find, the once-ubiquitous payphone is headed for extinction. Obviously, the proliferation of the cell phone is the leading cause of this relic’s demise. It will be a sad day when the last payphone accepts its final coin, and that nostalgic sound of the coins dropping through the slot and into the pile of coins is never to be heard again. Goodbye to these rough and tough phones, so many have used to connect with a loved one or seek assistance when stranded out on America’s roads.
I swear, by now you must think I live my life staring at the sky, or that I am finding it hard to be diligent and inspired to capture a unique image every day for this photo of the day blog, which I have maintained now for almost 600 consecutive days. So without further ado, here’s another sunset picture for my visitors.
Up against the wall, almost out of view, seldom considered and often taken for granted – the electricity meters. As a kid, I could watch the little sliver of a wheel turn inside the box and when someone turned on a high voltage power-sucking something-or-other another, the wheel would race around and around, making me wonder if it could ever spin too fast. Today I am denied that childhood pleasure as meters are going digital. With an intrusive prong, the invisible meter reader whom I swear I have never seen even once in 43 years, is able to jab the meter to download the undecipherable codes blinking on the LED display. I want the silver disk back where it belongs.