Actually, when you have to have a 4-year-licensed driver sitting beside you ... and can't drive on the freeway ... and not between midnight and 5 a.m. either ... ... somehow, one gets the feeling that one has arrived at one's second childhood! ole joyful

Ed posted a couple of nights ago in the wee hours. Anne

As I offer an occasional newsletter on personal financial management issues to clients and others interested, I was checking back through some old threads for matters that I might work on for a future message. When I got to page 8, I was quite surprised to find 5 of my threads in sequence. I have the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that I do not originate a lot of threads, so when, later on the same page, I found four more, I thought that very unusual. The first one on page 9 was one of mine, as well, so that made 2 sequences of five - most originally written at different times. There might be some egotism mixed in there somewhere - who knows? Maybe I just like the look of my name in print. And, as I often deal with rather serious issues, maybe I was just being frivolous. Is that allowed? Don't you get the feeling that life is just too darned serious, at times?? I hope that you have a happy and interesting start on your New Year. ole joyful

Someone asked about my carrying water from the city for drinking and some of the cooking. There are two wells on the farm. The one that feeds the house is about a hundred feet away, just this side of a lower level of ground, sometimes a watercourse after a rain, and the barn is a couple of hundred feet on the other side, with a barnyard, partly concrete, on this side of it, about upwards of a hundred feet from the well. Old uncle, in his mid-80s, had had three hip replacements, all the left one, I think, and he had bad back, bad hip and bad leg, using a cane most of the time. He'd raised beef cattle, and had several in the barn, and we suggested that he get rid of the cattle, as he had no offspring from two marriages and was well off. He said that he'd got rid of most of them, but we said that one still had to go to the barn for feeding, watering, and occasional dealing with the residue, whether one had 2 or 35 animals there. When his wife was there, if he didn't show up after an hour or so of choring ... things'd happen. After her death in February about 14 years ago, some of us were worried that if he fell into a snowbank, with no one aware, he might not be able to get out. While we felt that rather improbable, I went back to spend quite a lot of most days with him for a couple of months, till his cattle went to pasture ... and I drank the water, as he did. One day, when we went to the town for groceries, I picked up a bag of milk and put it on the checkout counter. On the way home, he wondered whether I'd like to pay him for the milk. He had rather a dry sense of humour ... and when dealing with such people, if he's serious ... and the listener treats it as a joke and replies accordingly ... it can lead to serious consequences. Actually, I laughed and said to him to not forget ... that when about a dozen or so neighbours came to help with threshing grain, filling silo or repairing a barn, etc. ... the farmer wouldn't dream of sending them home hungry. That was the last that I heard of maybe paying for the milk. A couple of years later, following his death, when the farm was to be sold, they tested the water and fond it bad for e-Coli and coliform. There's another well, on the same side of the low ground as the barnyard, but a couple of hundred feet farther down, that fed the barn, that was O.K. for e-Coli, but bad for coliform, and later the landlord ran a pipe into his shop. I drove out there, some over 10 miles, pretty well daily, for almost a year, sleeping there and making the place look lived in, until it was sold. I don't remember whether I drank the water then, but doubt it, due to the results of the testing. My landlord said several years ago that he'd drunk from it, on occasion, without bad results, and I said that I had, as well, when watering the garden with a long plastic pipe from the barn, without deleterious effect. There haven't been any cattle around for twelve years, so it'd likely be a good idea to test the water again ... but pollution in the ground has a tendency to persist for long periods. Thunderstorm this morning ... so garden's just to be looked at, for a couple of days till dry. Hope you all had a lovely, even memorable, day. ole joyfuelled