Wild and Wet in Tucson, AZ

We had a pretty good thunderstorm this afternoon.  We are about two houses off of Mann Street on Mary Drive and Mann Street always becomes a raging river as it passes by our street.  We get a fair flow of water on Mary Drive that runs off into Mann Street.  It all goes down one more street to the north of Mary Drive where there is a dip in the road and the water makes a sharp left turn and ambles on to who knows where.  Now, that all made sense, right? 

I messed around all day, not getting much done and waited until the thunderstorm started... to start driving to the Costco Warehouse.  It was about a one half hour drive in fantastically heavy traffic and with the windows closed and the windshield wipers going full blast the windows started fogging up real bad.  I turned the heater/defroster on and breathed a lot of hot air for a period of time.  I tried cracking my driver side window open a few inches to offset the temperature on the front window to clear the fog but then a car would zip by on that side and splash a couple of gallons of water through the opening and all over me!  By the time that I arrived at Costco, just a little bit wet, the rain had slowed some.  Getting out of the vehicle and looking around with my wide brimmed sombrero on my head, I wished that I had worn high topped work shoes instead of a dress shoe type.  I swear, I waded through running water 6 inches deep to get into the store.  I was using one of those fold up window shades from my vehicle to use as an umbrella.  As strange as I looked, when I showed my Costco Card----they let me in.  Thank goodness, it was fairly dry on the return trip to home about an hour later.  Have a good day....The Can Man

Over The Hill

I have always wondered what was "over the hill" --- now at my age, I think I am beginning to find out.  So many problems and so few solutions.  Family, city, state, nation and world problems.  You look for solutions but you find only a few.

This July has about 4 and 1/2 weeks and there is about a week and a half left.  We are having nearly daily thunderstorms which help to keep the temperature down a little bit.  I don't know what this has to do with the price of tea in China. (yeh, I get a little rattled sometimes!)

It is a Monday afternoon close to 2 o'clock.  I have dressed after laying down for a period of time and am planning to go outside to the back yard, check on the five dogs well being and pick up all the Poop.  Also, I need to carry the household garbage bags from the carport area out back to the dumpster in the alley.  Then I need to drive down to the corner drugstore (Kolb & Golf Links) where there is a water vending machine and get about 10 gallons of water for the dog's.  Yes, I buy machine water for myself and the dogs.  They don't like the taste of the tap water and neither do I!!  I also need to go to Costco and get two bags of dog food ($60).

Will this all get accomplished?  We will see!!!  Have a good day. The Can Man.

Summer Monsoons 2013

On my last post there was snow in Tucson.  Not now!!  We had over a month of 100 plus degree weather and to cool it off just a little--the monsoon season started.  The grand-kids here have been going to Karate classes a lot along with their parents.  (No, I am a little too stiff and sore to be doing that!)  The kids also spend a lot of time at the YMCA activities.  Keeps them out of trouble.  I don't know what kept me out of trouble when I was that age.  I never spent many daytime hours at home during the summers.  That was in Young, Arizona where there were a lot of options of what to do but none of them included electronics.  I used to go out hiking a lot, sometimes with my brothers and sometimes alone.  I always liked to find out what was "over the hill".  I had to drink water out of mud tanks that were designed for livestock to drink from.  This was only occasionally but I don't ever remember getting sick from it.  I have hiked up to, on and over most of the small mountains surrounding Young (Pleasant Valley) Arizona.  I would guess it is about 6 to 10 miles across Pleasant Valley, from one end to the other.  I walked that a number of times back and forth from my home to visit friends who lived on the other end of the valley.

Looking Back.......

Better late than never....(who said that?)  Betty Gilbert got out of the hospital after they finished a couple of days of test.  I'm not sure what the final diagnosis was but she seems to be a lot better now (after she got over a minor touch of the flu that she probably contracted at the hospital).  I don't know when or if she will have to go into hospice care.

Moving on, we had quite a snowstorm yesterday and last night in the Tucson area. That was a rarity.  I got some good video but I don't seem to have much luck trying to get video posted up here.  I do have some pictures (see above) of the leftover snow at around 10 this morning.

 Sunday, 17 February 2013, my daughter and I and the my two grandchildren (Stefan James and Emmett Van) journeyed to the Tucson Rodeo Grounds to attend La Fiesta De Los Vaqueros Rodeo.  This is an annual event here in Tucson and this year it runs for 6 days plus a Rodeo Parade downtown on one of those days.  Have a good day.  The Can Man

LIFE GOES ON!!!

I was just talking on the phone to Betty Gilbert, a very close friend of mine who lives in Globe, AZ in a trailer court.  She lost her brother two or three weeks ago. He lived in Apache Junction, AZ.  Today she told me that she has to be admitted into the hospital on Monday the 21st of January to spend 3 days (one thing that she said they were going to do was put her on a machine to "clean" the blood supply in her entire body).  She indicated to me that she will probably be put in "long term" care after the hospital visit.  She was packing some things in preparation.  She has 3 dogs that she has had for many years and that she is very close to.  They will be taken to the dog pound and probably put to sleep.  It tears me up that this is happening to her.  Her life has never been that good as she had a husband that mis-treated her most of her adult life.  I am going to try to drive up to Globe tomorrow (about a two and one half hour drive one way) and visit with her for a couple of hours.

Living in Miami, AZ and Making Extra Income

I worked for Ana, a Filipino lady at the Miami Recycling Center for a few years (until she sold out to someone else).  I had previously been a buyer at San Carlos Indian Reservation while working for Ana and I had learned a lot about the business so I decided to start my own little business.  Little did I know that it would keep me busy for several years and provide an extra income for me and the people close to me.  A usual routine was that I would go to San Carlos on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week with my Toyota pick up and a trailer. The loads that we bought were always transported to my home in Miami for safekeeping overnight.  Also, we bought a lot of scrap that had to be "cleaned" so that it was salable at the best price.  I almost always had a hired Indian helper at San Carlos, usually the same person all of the time.  The helpers, over time, learned to pack and tie down the loads plus other things necessary to get the job done.  It was a two man job, so we always worked together.  Most of the time we would buy enough in one day to warrant hauling the load the next day to Tucson to sell.  I generally hauled to Tucson on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  And since on Saturday, the recycling closed at 1 p.m., I had to get down there early.  Some of the tools that we had and made use of in my yard in Miami:  Air compressor with accessories, air chisel, several weighing scales of various types, bench grinder with a wire brush wheel, chop saw, electric drills, electric screwdrivers, a big vise, a hand truck (dolly), etc.  The chop saw was really a time saver and I became very proficient with it.  It is amazing to me that I was never seriously hurt while working in the yard over the years.  The good Lord was watching over me..(to be continued)

Below is a picture of my two story apartment on Kent Street in Miami, AZ.  You cannot see the bottom apartment because of the fence.  All of the processing (cleaning, which generally means getting any foreign materials such as wood, iron, nails, screws separated from the non-ferrous metals, also stripping insulation from copper wire) was done in this enclosure between the fence and the apartment structure. It was pretty noisy at times, especially the chop saw, but we never had any complaints from the neighbors.

The two pictures below will give you some idea of the size of the yard I or we (sometimes I had help) had to work in

I probably have over 1,000 pictures of can and scrap loads that I have hauled over the years.  Below are just a few.

 In the photo below, you can see some of the variety of non-ferrous metals that I worked with. On the tongue of the trailer, in the tub, you can see heavy copper wire, the tub itself would be MLC grade aluminum, also painted aluminum and some stainless steel items. On top  is a lot of painted aluminum, some extrusion, aluminum rims,  two plastic barrels full of aluminum or copper.  Then, covered up inside the trailer may be more copper, cast aluminum, etc.

 Below is a nice Van that I had for a short time. I ruined it by letting it overheat when the thermostat stuck shut right after I bought it.

 Below is one of my smaller loads..."I'm just so proud to be here!!"

Below: I think this was one of the loads that I hauled in from San Carlos while still working for Miami Recycling before I learned to use ratchet tie downs!!

Delving back in Time....way back

I left Glasgow, Montana in March of 1961 headed for Torrejon Air Base, close to Madrid, Spain.  (Courtesy of The United States Air Force)  I did not have enough rank to get travel for my new wife so I had to leave her behind with 3 small children (one of them mine).  I was not very long in Spain before I received a letter stating that she had petitioned for a divorce.  She only asked for $35 a month for child support.  I had already been testing the waters in Madrid for female companionship and it was there that I found Carmen Martos (my third wife to be).  We had to leave Spain to get married as she was not allowed to marry a non-catholic person in Spain.  Gibraltar was the alternative.  So we were married in the city of Gibraltar (Rock of Gibraltar) on 22 November 1963.  Our first child, Maria Teresa was born April 14, 1964 at the base hospital (Torrejon Air Base) just outside of Madrid, Spain.  I had to take an elementary course in Spanish (Air Force requirement) shortly after arrival in Spain and I subsequently learned the language fairly rapidly through necessity.  After being in Spain for almost four years, the Air Force decided to send me to Walker Air Force Base at Roswell, New Mexico.  Our second child (Antonio Ramon Ricardo) was born at the base hospital at Walker AFB in Roswell, New Mexico on 11 March 1966.  (I always heard that you were supposed to keep your wife barefoot and pregnant!) One year later (March 67), I received orders to go to Vietnam and I wound up at an Air Base just outside of Saigon. (Tan Son Knut).  I used to know how to spell the name, now after so many years, I am not sure.  I had an interesting experience during the so called Tet Offensive.  The enemy landed (I think it was called a 100 millimeter) a couple of rockets very close to where I had parked my bicycle about 30 minutes previously.  One detonated and the other one did not.  We slept in two story Quonset Huts and we had some protection of sandbags around the outside area.  My bunk was on a lower floor and I was on the bottom bunk of a double bunk setup.  One guy in a Quonset Hut next to ours (second floor level) was killed by the blast.  Another day there was rifle and or pistol fire in an area where I was trying to return to my sleeping quarters and that was a bit exciting.  One night when I got off work (12 hour shifts the whole year) they would not let us leave the building where we worked because of infiltrators on the base.  I climbed the outside stairwell of the building and watched a helicopter gunship firing tracer bullets down towards a compound area where the infiltrators were.  They were flying around in circles and firing a long time.  It was a beautiful sight from a distance but I would not want to have been on the ground under that barrage!
I left Vietnam in March of 68, reassigned to Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, AZ.  Carmen and the children had stayed at Roswell, New Mexico during my years absence.  We rented an apartment close to the base in Tucson and stayed there for two years.  They then sent me (us) to MacDill AFB, Tampa, Florida.  (the military paid for moving my family from Spain and throughout the rest of my 20 years)  After approximately 2 years at Tampa (I drove taxi as a part time job for one year in Tampa) we were reassigned to Sondrestrom Air Base, close to Kaiserslaughtern, Germany.  From Germany, we were able to spend some vacations in Spain during our four year stay there.  Leaving Germany I was assigned to Luke AFB, Arizona for retirement processing.  We tried finding work at Bagdad Copper Mines (over close to Prescott) and stayed there for a few weeks.  Giving up on job hunting there, we moved to Tucson where we bought a home.  Our household goods from Germany arrived a few weeks later and I caught a military plane going out of Davis-Monthan AFB to (I think it was Travis AFB, CA) and from there I hitched a ride in a military vehicle going to San Francisco where I had to go to pick up our car...  After jump starting the car (the battery on the vehicles does not stay charged on the long boat trip from Germany), I drove it back to Tucson.  I had previously worked part time for the NCO Clubs in Germany (dishwasher, barback, and bartender) and Base Bowling Alley (night-weekend manager) so I found a job at the bowling alley on Davis Monthan.  I finally gave that up and started working as an attendant at self serve gas stations.  I finally got hired on by Kaman Bearing and Supply Corporation and was with them for 7 years until the mines started slowing down and they did not need me any more.  Carmen divorced me right after I lost that job.  Our former home was sold and I packed up and moved to the Rock House Trailer park on Salt River on the Globe-Young highway.  My Dad was living there at the time.  A short time after moving up there, I met Martha Fesler who offered to share her mobile home with me if I would move it from Globe to the Rock House Trailer Park.  Since I was renting, I thought it would be a good idea since I was renting a trailer and the only thing I had for company was a black cat that I had brought from Tucson.  We finally got married and I spent a couple of years there until my Dad died in 1990.  Shortly after that I found a job with Miami Recycling in Miami, AZ and I contracted to buy a home in Miami.  (to be continued) Have a good day, Virgil Baker (the can man)