Hello to All:
It has been a quiet week out here. Except for the noise the plague of grasshoppers make gnawing every thing green. They drive me nuts when I go to walk out back of the carport. They fly up in my face. Need to wear a facemask. They will go away in a few weeks. I am not sure if they all die, migrate or what. But you don’t see a field of dead grasshoppers when you notice they have stopped jumping at your mouth.
My fig trees (bushes) are loaded up and some are getting ripe. I picked a good bucket full and Judy will made us some fig newtons. There is a ton of small ones that will be ready later in July. The pear tree did not do well this year. Think the lack of rain had a lot to do with it.
I did some serious mowing one day. I was using neighbor John’s little Kubota tractor that has a powerful mower that it pulls. After about 3 or 4 hours I finished his yard and mine all the way back to the railroad tracks. I had been stopping and starting all morning and up to about 1:00 pm. I drove it over to the cargo container where it lives and killed the engine because I needed the key on the ring to unlock the container. Got the lock off, opened the doors wide and …nothing. Not even a click click. That usually means that one of the levers is still in gear. Pulled and pushed everything I could find. Called John and he was of the same opinion that something was still engaged, which prevents it from starting. I went and got Rudy and Oswald to come over and give it a try. They have more of a mechanical mind set where I have the desk clerk experience which doesn’t help in cases like this. In the end, we got some jumper cables and it started the first turn of the key. So, a dead battery? Rudy said let’s try this. Pull the negative cable off the battery and it should still run if the alternator is good. It died. Rudy had an old hand held volt meter and did his best to check a few things. In the end , he took the battery and the alternator to town to use some other equipment to check them out. Yes sir, we checked all the fuses we could find. Hope to have good news on Monday that Rudy and Oswald have nailed the problem down.
Talpa has a new fulltime postmaster, Libby Manis, from Ballinger. So, everyone go by during office hours and say hello. She is a nice lady and I think that she will be a great addition to our little community. Also thanks to Sarah and Genevive and several of the other “fill in” ladies that came for a day or two to help Libby get acquainted with the local office routine.
So it goes in our quiet little corner of Coleman County.
Talpa Bob
