Month: October 2023

2 October 2023

To Build A Fire

Most of you know I’m a crossword fanatic. I do the L.A. Times Crossword every day and often do the New York Times Crossword. What I don’t do of the NYTimes, I save for hurricane downtime. Anyway, today’s L.A. Times puzzle had the clue “North Carolina University.” Years ago, it was “North Carolina College.” It was four letters and I always knew the answer since my cousin Jimmie taught at said college/university – Elon.

For whatever reason, the other day I thought about the Jack London short story “To Build A Fire.” I mentioned in an earlier post how my Mother dragged me kicking and screaming down to the Morton Public Library one summer to give me something to do. I fell in love with the Hardy Boys mystery series and it was off to the races. By the time I reached 9th grade, I had already read Gone With the Wind and other large tomes. Somewhere about that time I discovered Jack London and probably first read Call of the Wild. As a Boy Scout, Jack spoke to me. I read his short story “To Build A Fire.” You can get it on Amazon for Kindle for $0.99.

If you are not familiar with the story, a man, against all advice, decides to hike through extremely cold conditions in the Yukon and breaks through the ice and soaks his lower body. Under the extreme conditions, he knows he has only minutes before he begins to freeze to death so he crawls under the branches of (probably a spruce) tree and uses the bark of the tree and the branches to begin to build a fire.

I think I remember he only has a few matches and must make the first attempt at starting the fire count. He carefully constructs the structure of the fire and gets it to ignite. Just as he thinks he’s saved himself, the heat of the fire melts snow on the spruce which falls onto the fire and extinguishes it. He freezes to death.

Sunday’s crossword puzzle had a clue of a Jack London short story about freezing to death. I got the answer!

That short story had an effect on me. There have been several times while on the trail that it became critical to build a fire quickly. In one case, my friend Charlie and I were hiking in the Smokies when it started to rain. We were on an exposed ridge fighting the wind and rain and falling temperatures to get to a shelter on the trail. When we reached the shelter, I realized Charlie was going into hypothermia. I made him strip and get in his sleeping bag while I went to find kindling for a fire. Everything was wet, wet, wet. I remembered how the man in the short story stripped back the bark of the spruce. The front of the bark was wet but the back was dry and once you started striping, most of what came off was dry. I didn’t have spruce but I did have eastern red cedar. I striped the bark and then found some dry twigs the same way and was able to build a roaring fire for Charlie with one match. I consider that one of my greatest accomplishments.

When I was a counselor at Camp Kickapoo, I often had to demonstrate how to make a fire by friction. It’s much harder than people think and you have to have exactly the right materials. You use a bow drill. You have a plank of wood with notches cut into the edge so you can fit a stick into the notch. You wrap the bow string around the stick and using a sawing motion, you create enough friction to start the wooden plank to smoldering and eventually, with some kindling, to ignite. The trick is to use yucca as a stick. I’ve tried everything and only yucca works. Fortunately, in the southern U.S., yucca is quite common. Of course, both the plank and stick have to be very, very dry.

I’ve even started fires using flint and steel. You can certainly make sparks but the trick is to get the sparks to ignite kindling. I found the best thing to strike the sparks into is steel wool. I can almost always get a flame going quickly that way.

If you are an outdoors person, probably the most fundamental thing you need to know how to do is to build a fire in any set of circumstances. Read Jack London and you’ll learn a lot.

It’s already started raining but at least I was able to get my walk in this morning (1.5 miles). I met an unknown neighbor as I walked out the door and we got to conversing and then I ran into my next door neighbor Mary Kay and Bubba and then Chris and Tucker. I admit to being out of shape and out of breath on the walk. Chris walked with me back to the house to make sure I was OK.

I then showered and boxed everything up I needed to take to UPS. The store I got to is on State Road 84 and I’ve had mixed success there. They seem to have a lot of turnover and are always training someone new. Usually there is a line that coils around the inside of the store but today I was the first one in. The guy behind the counter really knew what he was doing and I was in and out in record time. I sent the old iMac and Apple Watch to be recycled. I think the reason Apple pays for that is the rare earth metals in the electronics. China is the largest producer of rare earth metals and I’m sure the U.S. isn’t thrilled about that. It makes sense to extract them from recycled electronics.

I also managed to send the extra volume of Flora of North America back to Oxford University Press. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before they reimburse my credit card.

After the UPS store, I headed to Winn-Dixie to pick up a few items including Blue Bell’s Dutch chocolate and vanilla ice cream. As luck would have it, Tootsie Roll miniatures were on sale also. A win-win!

I made it back to the house just before the rain set in. Yesterday, we had a prolonged downpour to the point that my street resembled the movie A River Runs Through It. I kept expecting to see Brad Pitt fly fishing in my front yard. No such luck.

Fortunately, it didn’t creep up to my front door. Just what I don’t need is another flood in the house. It looks like an all day rain today.

My cousin Jimmie provided me the recipe for her Sweet Cream cake. It’s her son’s favorite and her granddaughter’s. A rainy Monday sounds like a good plan to bake a cake. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Stay tuned!

1 October 2023

You might know the one day I feel like my morning walk, it’s pouring down rain. Of course, it’s poured down rain every day this week, but at least I felt like getting out today. In any case, unlike yesterday, I had a great night’s sleep. I attribute that to Ole Miss beating LSU in Oxford.

I started out watching the game but got antsy. I can’t stand to watch Ole Miss play a full game. I get too frustrated when they fall behind. I crawled into bed and started reading but finally my curiosity got the better of me and I used the iPad to stream the last part of the game. Ole Miss scored to take the lead in the last 39 seconds and then I had to sit on pins and needles to see if LSU retook the lead. They didn’t.

If anyone were to ask, I would say LSU is Ole Miss’ greatest rival. It’s always an interesting contest with accusations of cheating (the longest 30 seconds of football took place on an LSU field – it took 4 seconds to run off 1 second on the clock so LSU could win the game) close games, and potential national championships.

I remember listening to the game on the radio with my Dad the night Billy Canon made his infamous punt return in 1959 to beat Ole Miss. Ole Miss lost the game but in a rematch in the 1960 Sugar Bowl, Ole Miss got its revenge by beating LSU 21-0. Ole Miss’ defense was so amazing, it limited LSU to 74 yards of total offense. In the second half, LSU never crossed the 50 yard line.

Back then, the games were either played on Halloween or very close to Halloween which added an extra spooky feeling to the game. Whenever they played, somewhere, sometime, over the PA system, someone played Brenda Lees’s version of “Jambalaya.”

While stationed at Coast Guard Communications Station in New Orleans in the 70’s I met and became good friends with Lester Theriot (great Cajun name – everyone called him Terry) and his wife Debbie. He was an avid LSU fan and he and I would rag each other unmercifully when the two teams played. We decided to put together a trophy of 100 years of Ole Miss/LSU football with all the scores (in 2011, it was the 100th meeting of the two teams). It was a huge plaque that we passed back and forth for years after we both left the Coast Guard. Terry died a few years ago but I still send Debbie holiday cards.

At Broward College my LSU connection was Natalie who did her graduate work at LSU. She’s a rabid fan as well and we still text each other back and forth during the game. By the way, the record stands at 63-41-4 in favor of LSU with Ole Miss vacating 1 victory and LSU vacating 2. At least I have bragging rights for the coming year!

Otherwise, everything is as usual. The numbness in toes and fingers hasn’t gotten worse, but then it hasn’t gotten any better, cryotherapy not withstanding. I’ve developed a tick of my left eyebrow. It is pretty much nonstop. At least it’s not the eyelid so everyone doesn’t think I’m winking at them. The two a pop anti-diarrhea medications have worked and I’m back to solid stools. Tuesday will be a 2-fer. I get both Taxol and Herceptin. It’ll be an extra long day because they have to administer them separately. Add the magnesium cocktail and I’m looking a 4 to 5 hours in the chair.

By the way, I highly recommend Chef Jean-Pierre’s chicken wing recipe. It turned out really well. I didn’t make the dip because I’ve never been one to really use dips with wings. I figure the leftovers will be my lunch today. I guess I should be grateful for the appetite however, even though I have lost weight, I seem to have developed a Buddha belly. I wonder if I rub it I’ll have good luck?

Stay tuned!