Peach Festival

      “Be there at 7:30,” the message said.

     But the race doesn’t start until 8 a.m.  Then we recalled last year.  The 5K run started at 8 a.m. last year, too.  Our quartet was supposed to kick the race off by singing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

     We had met at “our” church before 7:30 to warm up.  We took off before 7:45 in three cars, because two of the guys are Rotarians who had to work after we sang.  (The Rotarians of Fort Collins run the Peach Festival as a fund-raiser.)  Normally, we would have taken one car.  And got lost together.

     The first Peach Festival we participated in was held at the now-defunct Hughes Stadium.  It was a perfect place with plenty of parking.  Last year, and this year, the festival was held in downtown Fort Collins.  With difficulty parking.  Plenty of difficulty.

     We had given ourselves enough time to get to the general area where were to sing, but not enough time to deal with parking problems.  Rex found his way into a parking garage where the lady wearing a Rotary vest let us park free when we told her our mission.  We took off at a brisk walk for the race starting line.

     When we got there, Ted and Dick were there, too—on the other side of a six-foot chain link fence that enclosed about four city blocks.  It was 7:55.  The race manager said he would not delay the race for any reason.

     We tried valiantly to find a way over around or through the fence.  By the time we all four were standing near the microphones,  on the same side of the fence, the Master of Ceremonies was getting ready to do his ten-second countdown that started the race.

      “Five, four, three, two, one, go!”  A hundred or so runners passed through the archway that doubled as the finish line.  There we stood, dressed in our white pants, white shirts, red suspenders, white shoes, red bow ties, red-and-white striped vests, and our tin-pan-alley straw hats.  All dressed up and nowhere to sing.  At least two people rolled out of bed to get there at 8 a.m. to hear us sing.  We even had a fair-sized audience of runner-relatives besides the runners themselves.  How embarrassing! 

     The race manager apologized, saying he had promised not to delay the race for any reason, but we told him we should be the ones apologizing.  We were the ones who couldn’t tell time.

     All this came flooding back as we ruminated over the “7:30” message.  I guess we earned that early notice.  The race managers figured if they told us 7:30, we would be there by 7:45.

     This year had a little excitement, too.  I was just a little tardy for my 6:45 pickup of Rex.  We pulled into Fort Collins before seven.  There just happened to be a convenient parking spot right next to the chain link fence on the southern border of the festival area.

     I pulled in and parked.  We got out in time to hear the security man by the fence explaining to a couple of ladies wanting to enter the race that they would have to follow the fence around until they could find the opening to get inside.  Déjà vu all over again.

      We set off walking.  The security guard took three or four quick steps towards us and said, “Sir, if you park there, you’ll get towed.  They are towing everything in this block.”  Not until then had we seen the No-Parking sign.

      We thanked the guard profusely.  I could just imagine coming back after walking around and singing all morning to find my pickup gone.  Rex took off to find the other two and I turned the pickup around and began searching for another place to park.  This time, I checked out the signs carefully. 

    Three of us were there before 7:25, the fourth arrived right at 7:30.  We gave the Anthem a quiet run-through while standing behind the speakers that belted out some recorded rock of some kind.  Then we waited.

     The race manager, the same guy from last year, asked what we were singing, and how long would it last.  Ted estimated 2 minutes.  The manager said we would be on at 7:56.

      With about fifteen minutes to go, the MC started lining up runners, fastest (most serious runners) to the front, with the slower folks farther back, on back to the parents with children in strollers and the wheelchair pushers last.  

     We stepped up to the table with the microphone at five ‘till.  At 7:56, the MC introduced us and handed Rex the mic.  We belted out “The Star Spangled Banner” at decibels matching the rock music that had preceded us.

       Rex surrendered the mic.   The MC asked the front tier of runners to move up a few steps to the starting line.  “One minute to race start!”  A pregnant pause.  The countdown.  Go!

       A whole herd of runners passed through the start-finish archway.  We were in the clear.  Progress is important.  We had done ourselves one better than last year, anyway.

     As in the past two Peach Festivals, we wandered around the area, stopping here and there to sing a song or two, sometimes to a person we knew, or one who had requested a song.  We avoided the stage in the park area where there were musicians performing.  They were amplified and we were no match for that.

      This year was different in one respect:  It was partly cloudy and cool.  No need to hunt a shady place to sing.       

     We stood right in the middle of an intersection and sang two songs. We sang to some people running various booths.  We nearly always attracted a few onlookers.

       Everything was near-perfect until about 12:30 when it began to rain, catching many a festival-goer standing in line in front of one of the many food vendors.  The rain passed on, the sun came out, and altogether, it was a pleasant day.

          

     

Mouse Invasion

     I stood there on the basement floor, in my sandals and shorts.  The animal headed straight for me.  I sidestepped.  It corrected course to come right at me.  I stepped over it.

      The mouse stopped, confused.  Its jaunt across the basement floor was more of a meander than a scamper or scurry you associate with a mouse in full out speed.  I surmised that it had too much of the wrong stuff to eat.

      It was a little after six a.m., but it was the second close encounter of the mouse kind that morning.  About half an hour earlier, the Goodwife and I were awakened by a rustling we agreed was probably a mouse in our bedroom.

      I couldn’t get back to sleep, worrying about how I would find the breech in our seawall holding back the rodent flood.  So I got up.  I tried to be quiet, hoping not to spook the mouse, knowing there was a trap in the vicinity where he was scratching.

      Instead, I went to the basement to check some traps I had set there the night before.  I hadn’t been down there long before the mouse came across the floor towards me.  I looked for a bucket or something to cover him until I could figure out what to do with him.

      An old-fashioned plunger stood nearby.  I grabbed it and plopped it down over him.  I shoved a dustpan under the plunger and proceeded up the steps, holding plunger and dustpan together securely.  Safely outdoors, I pulled the plunger and gave the dustpan a good flip, sending the mouse on probably his last journey.

      This wasn’t the first time mice have invaded.  Probably the worst invasion happened the winter of 1985-86.

     Dad had been in the nursing home for a while.  He hated it.  He referred to it as “the house of neglect.”  Mom told him if he could get well enough to walk from bed to bath to kitchen, he could leave the nursing home and come home, but she couldn’t get him out of bed and move him in a wheel chair. 

      He worked at it, and finally the day came when he was ready to come home.  It took an act of congress to get the nursing home to release him.  Documents and waivers and releases had to be signed.  All in the name of health and safety, they said.  Probably more to do with losing a paying customer.

        Uncle Ricky and I were both unemployed that winter.  As part of the deal, we would take turns staying with the folks and helping out with Dad’s care.  That didn’t last but a couple of weeks before Mom decided it was easier to take care of Dad than having to feed us boys.  But it was during that time that the great invasion occurred.

     Every morning, part of the routine was emptying the many traps set about the house.  Ricky referred to it as “checking the trap line.”  One of the places the mice frequented was the attic of the west wing that had been added in the 1970’s.

      Mom could smell the beasts.  Even after that invasion was stifled, she would occasionally tell me I had better check the attic traps.  Her bedroom shared the attic with the entryway and the piano room.  Usually, when she told me to check, there were mice caught in the traps.

       The attic traps were the most unpleasant to service.  You had to step up two or three steps on a ladder, push up the attic access door, set it to one side, step up another step on the ladder and peer into the dark attic.  Your face was about a foot away from the traps and their content.

      At first, there were individual traps set out.  But a few of those disappeared when a wounded mouse would crawl off, taking the trap with him.  Mom took a small sheet of 3/8” plywood, about 10” X 16”, and ran a wire across three traps .  She secured the wire at both ends of the plywood with staples.  The wire kept the traps from going anywhere after they had been sprung.  With your head (and your nose) about a foot away from the trap-laden plywood, you reached into the attic and removed it.  Then you could take it all outdoors and clean out the traps.

     Mom also got tired of having to bait the traps.  She took thread and secured a small chunk of cheese to the bait arm of each trap.  The thread went over the cheese chunk and around the bait platform.  Somehow, she tied a knot in that thread.  When the cheese dried, it was pretty secure.

       Set the traps and return them to their place went the routine.  It wasn’t much fun.  Eventually, I discovered where the mice were entering.  It was across the house on the east side where the back porch joined the main house.  Fixing that gap was complicated by a basement window-well abutting both foundations, the house and the porch.  And, there were two upright propane bottles by the window-well and the porch north wall. 

      I tried many ways to plug the hole:  masonry cement--hard to get it to defy gravity long enough to cure and cling in place.  The mice enjoyed chewing through various types of caulk.  They could push aside the steel wool enough to slip by.  Finally, what worked was a combination of steel wool and caulk.  That stopped the inflow into the attic.

     How did they get across the house from ground level to the attic?  I figure they must be going up house or porch wall, going between second story floor and main floor ceiling, perhaps following an electric wire route, using the holes through walls, to make their journey.  Ever after, whenever the mice got into the west wing attic, I would check out the triple witching joint of house and porch foundation and the basement window well.  Fixing it required my hanging down into the window well, turning to my left to look up to see where the portal was.

      The other grand entrance for the rodents was the cellar door.  The cellar door is the old-fashioned exterior set of steps, the one with the low sloping door that swings open to reveal a set of concrete steps leading to another door in the basement wall.  Mice that came in through gaps in that doorway would find traps on the shelf that runs the perimeter of the basement.  They would also find their way to the upstairs.

     The Goodwife always scolds me when she sees a trap in a bedroom or office. “ How do you want to discover that mice are in the house, by finding a dead one in a trap, or find live ones in your pantry or closet?” I ask.

    In the most recent invasion, I caught two in upstairs bedrooms.  I patched two places in the cellar door assembly.  For a week or two, there were no more incidents.  Then the week the Goodwife went with me to the farm, a wave hit.  It peaked Sunday morning.

     After disposing with the loco dustpan mouse in the basement, I checked upstairs.  Sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap in our bedroom.  What we interpreted as the mouse scuffling around was probably the mouse in the trap in  his death throes.  Time to return to the cellar door.

       A corner had pretty well rotted out.  The wood no longer held the screws that secured aluminum wrapping designed to keep the buggers out.  Steel wool and screen filled the gap.  I was fairly certain I had found the breech.

     I did crawl around the perimeter of the house craning my neck to see if any other gaps suitable for admitting mice had developed over the years.  I found two or three other likely places and plugged them as well. 

      We were packed and ready to leave Sunday afternoon.  I was about to lock up when I heard another scuffling, this time in the kitchen cabinet where we keep the pots and pans.  I threw open the cupboard door.  Nothing.

     I pulled out the “cracker” drawer.  There was a bugger staring right at me.  I jerked the drawer out of the cabinet.  He tried to get out of the drawer.  I grabbed a box of crackers and slapped at him to keep him in the drawer.

       Somehow, I opened two doors,  all the while carrying the drawer and whacking at the mouse to keep him in the drawer.  Once outside, I ceased the cracker box artillery and allowed the invader to jump out of the drawer and run for dear life, away from the house.

      Maybe that was the last one, I thought.  Vainly.  When I returned on Wednesday, I had four mice in traps, and one more deceased from an unsavory diet.  All the mice were in the basement, except for one in a trap upstairs, again.

       Time to revisit conventional wisdom.  Rechecking the cellar door, I saw no way a mouse could enter there.  I reset the traps and turned to other pursuits.

      The next morning, I had one mouse in the basement.  He was caught near the water heater.  But the bait was missing in three other traps.  Once again, I was crawling around the house, trying to check the joint  between concrete foundation and wood sill plate.  I put screen on some places they might be able to penetrate.

      The following morning, I had one mouse in a trap near the electrical breaker box on the east wall of the basement.  Two other traps had missing bait.  How can they get the bait out of those traps without triggering the thing?  I can barely set them down without springing them.

      One more search.  This time, I found a very likely leak hole where the cement steps  have pulled away from the house foundation.  Screen and steel wool to the rescue, maybe. 

      But no.  I found one more dead mouse in a trap this morning, again near the electrical box in the basement.  They must be getting in through the east wall.  Back to my hands and knees, shoving steel wool and window screen into gaps.  I shoved caulk into the screen and steel wool plugs to help hold them in place. 

      For tomorrow (and all my morrows) may all my traps be empty traps.  Having finished that job, I turned to the garden.  Two rabbits inside the fenced garden headed for the southeast corner as I entered the gate.  Through the fence they went, encouraged by my shouted epithets.

     “Fence-crawling stinkers,” Dad would have called them.  I used old window screen and lath to try to close that breech.

     I guess I have been called to plug gaps in the fortress walls.  I’ve always imagined something nobler.