Another Dead Sea Scrawl

Never one to be hasty, today I scrubbed last summer's scum off our boat, Second Mate. The batteries have held their charge over an unheated Minnesota winter--thanks to their gel design--so after I make a couple of mechanical repairs I will rig up an artificial lake in a trash can--water for cooling--and try to start the motor. Maybe tomorrow. Today I have ribs to grill: from a small hog of no close acquaintance.

"You are retired, aren't you?", people politely ask. I know, as do they, that I look like I retired in 1949. I do not fault them for their lame attempts to treat the elderly with kindness. Beyond the courtesy, what they really want to know is whether I do anything, anymore, in my dotage. They do not understand what it means to have a house that is intent on wearing out before I do, nor a cabin in the woods in Iowa that must brace itself against the sea of grass and invasion of Chinese Elms, intent on reclaiming the earth before British Petroleum comes to claim them. They do not know that to build and maintain a small boat is a job description, nor that a wildflower garden 150 feet long is a beechhead for what other people call weeds. I must beat it back as if they were storming Normandy, and I succeed at stopping them with the same success the Germans found in World War II.

Retirement is a full-time job. I am looking forward to the rest that comes after retirement, but I am in no hurry. I assume it will be very quiet. Deathly quiet.

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