Mack Hall, HSG
Spring in the Air,
Springs in the Air, and a Brick
There will be no firewood shortage this coming winter. A tree-shaded
lawn is a homeowner’s dream, a tree in repose across the lawn less so, along
with trees across the roads, trees taking down power lines, trees fallen across
the children’s swing sets, trees crushing the lawn chairs where the old people
sit on pleasant mornings, trees, trees, trees, and shoals of hail that did not
thaw until evening, all set picturesquely among a landscape litter and debris.
Along the highway I saw a trampoline upside down, blown
through the air at least hundreds of yards because there are no houses nearby.
It was an occasion not only of spring in the air but springs in the air.
Among all the debris at my country estate was a brick on
the lawn. A brick. It had been blown about thirty feet from a pile of brick and
concrete bits.
A heavy steel chair of the sort one used to see in barber
shops (along with those delightful pictures of poker-playing dogs) was blown
about forty yards into the field, although small, light objects on a patio
table at the chair’s point of departure had not been disturbed at all.
And there was the loss of two of my apple trees. Well,
more firewood.
The song of the chainsaw is heard again in our land,
following nature’s rhythms of winter ice storms, spring hailstorms, and summer
tornados. It’s how we live; it’s what we do. These rhythms keep us humble, and remind
us how aesthetically pleasing are the words “JASPER-NEWTON ELECTRIC
COOPERATIVE” spelled out in a festive green or “PRECINCT 3” in subdued black on
the sides of bucket trucks and pole trucks and crew trucks and truck-trucks.
Their dignified progress along our mucky roads is as joyful as a religious
procession.
Here along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension the
power was out for about seventeen hours because the winds and trees took down
at least one pole and transformer and any number of lengths of power line. And
that was just one or two miles of the hundreds of miles of lines in our service
area.
As in February’s ice storm, Mr. Bialetti served our
morning coffee.
The Bialetti coffee maker is a work of Italian genius in
function and art, and still made in Italy. Designed almost a hundred years ago,
the Bialetti is elegant in thick aluminum, and consists of only three parts. The
base is the water chamber, and when the water is just the right heat the
physics of the matter bubble it up through the aluminum coffee filter and into
the upper chamber, which is the coffee pot proper.
The Bialetti is not decorated with “PRECINCT 3” OR “JASPER-NEWTON
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE”, although those would be nice too, but with a picture of natty
little man with a natty little moustache, Signor Bialetti himself.
The Bialetti is designed for a stove top, of course, and
it works fine on a camp stove (OUTSIDE; OPEN FLAMES INSIDE ARE NEVER A GOOD
IDEA).
Before you start cleaning up the windfall, you need a cup
of coffee served by Mr. Bialetti.
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