Granddad Digs a Hole.

     “Oh no,” said Granddad.  “That pipe is plugged again.  I will fix it.”

     Granddad went to get a shovel.

 Then he looked.  He saw gas bottles.

       First, I will have to move those gas bottles.  I may have to dig there.  He moved the gas bottles.

     He had to move the stones the gas bottles sat on.

      Granddad looked again.  He had to take the downspout off.

      Then he began to dig.  The ground was dry and hard.  Granddad is an old guy.  He has to stop and rest.  A lot.

 

      “I have to throw the dirt a long way,” Granddad said to himself.  “The pile will be big.  I do not want to shovel the dirt twice.”

      Granddad did not get very far on that first day.  He wore out.  He had to quit.

     On day 2, Granddad was stiff and sore.  He did not dig much.  He wished his grandson could be there to help.  Or Bella.  She could dig.

      Then it got too cold to dig.

     Granddad moved away for the winter.  Many days passed.   

     Finally, it got warmer.  Granddad went back to work.

     He dug a little each day.  Then one day, his shovel hit something hard.  “Ding!” sang the shovel.  It was the pipe!

     It was a happy time for Granddad.  But it was sad, too.  The pipe went under the porch.

     Granddad would have to dig a tunnel under the porch.

To be continued.

Splitting Wood (Not Hairs)

     Oh, what to do during Covid-19 isolation?

     Keep warm, for one thing.  Mother Nature decided to treat us to a little February in mid-April.  Here at the farm, we received less than a tenth of inch of moisture from the day-long squall.  We received the full blast of cold air, fog, and ice.

     I kept two fires going, one in the shop, where I was working on the old Briggs & Stratton auger engine’s fuel tank and strainer, and one in the farm kitchen.  First, Briggs and Stratton:  over the years, the gas cap deteriorated, first by losing the gasket that helped keep the cap tight on the gas tank, then losing the chain that kept it attached to the tank even when it was not in place. 

     A severe blast from the north somehow blew the cap off and it has been MIA since. I had to clean the tank and the fuel bowl before using.  A heavy piece of plastic held in place by a bearing race worked for a year or two to cover the tank opening.  Somehow, that jerry-rig disappeared this winter, and the tank took on some dirt and rust.

     With spare time spent in the shop, I came up with another jerry-rig.  (I would gladly buy a new cap if I could find one to buy.) 

      Maybe the hose clamps will defy the wind. 

        Two pistons from the old John Deere R occupied the rest of my time between stove-tendings.  More on that someday.  Promptly at 5 p.m. I checked to see the fire in the shop could die safely without spreading like Covid-19, and I returned to tending the kitchen fire and watching television.

     The morrow brought clear skies and brilliant sunshine.  The skiff of snow dressed terra firma in virgin white.  The old elm branches glistened with their glaze of ice.  No day to stay indoors, even though the temperature wouldn’t get much above 50.

     Four or five years ago, I began watching the price of wood splitters at Lowes and Bomgaars.  My interest stemmed from the felling of the poor old spruce tree in the front corner of the yard.  https://50farm.blogspot.com/search?q=spruce  That left me with some huge logs, logs cut to correct lengths, but much too big to lift, let alone get into a stove.

     The thought of attacking those logs with maul and wedge didn’t appeal to me.  Nor did moving them to mow where they protected rabid weed and grass growth.  Thus, the observation of wood splitters at the box stores. 

      The price of the splitters rose in the fall at the beginning of wood-burning season.  It was spring of 2017, I think, the price went down by a hundred dollars.  Many of the same splitters were sitting there from the previous Fall..  Time to get rid of them, I guess.

 The splitter has its own wheels, but I didn’t think those small wheels and bearings were up to a 150-mile trip at any kind of speed.  I told the salesman that I would take one of the splitters only if it would go into the back of my little pickup.  Out came his tape measure.  It would go into the back of the pickup.  With the help of his forklift, it did go into the back of my pickup.

       The pickup was heavier by 3 or 400 pounds.  My wallet was lighter by $900 + tax.  The huge logs at the farm got lighter.

     “Making firewood warms you twice,” goes the old saying.  The recent felling of a fifty-year-old elm left me with several huge logs.  On the icy sunny morning, I drug out the splitter and went to work.  The rare windless day made for a very pleasant day, Mother Nature’s gift for inflicting the previous day on us.  Between sun and labor, I stayed pleasantly warm.

     

      What would I be doing if we weren't restricted by Covid-19?

     

Plague Year

      Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, and me?  Lo, plagues will be with us always.

The one I remember best and worst, 1968, Hong Kong Flu.  It killed nearly a million people worldwide.  I think it came close to killing me. I don’t think there was ever a thought of shutting the world down to halt the spread of the virus.  “Hong Kong Flu” is probably a politically incorrect name nowadays. 

     I indulged in two ill-advised activities prior to the disease’s onset.  I went to North High School in Denver sometime in November.  It was a class requirement—Methods and Observation, the class.  It was a crowded place, North High.  The Hong Kong flu must have been having a picnic.

      Having survived the trip to and from Denver and the observation of some of the English classes at North High, I stopped at Club Leto, or whatever it was called, somewhere in the dive called Garden City south of Greeley.  That was a mistake.  A little too much to drink caused me to wake up the next day with what turned out to be much more than a normal hangover.

     I know I missed more than a week of classes.  Friends had to bring me groceries.  I was too weak to leave the house.  I lived on Coke and canned soup, I think.  I couldn’t keep up with wiping my nose with tissue.  When the waste basket got full of discarded tissues, I put the basket on the floor between my knees and let my head hang over and drip into the basket.

      I think I lost at least fifteen pounds.  I was not back to normal for at least two months.  It was a struggle to finish the quarter and begin my student teaching in January.   I survived, and I have never had a serious case of respiratory-type flu since then. 

     The next memorable flu pandemic was the swine flu of 1976.  This time, pigs bore the brunt of the blame, although the truth is, the swine flu came from China as well.  Again, there was no thought of disrupting the world’s economy to save lives.

     I remember a speaker presenting a “Lyceum”, what we used to call an assembly program, at our Kansas school, on the swine flu.  He said the virus developed in China where pigs shared the home with the family and managed to adapt from swine to humans.  Thus, the swine flu.  He offered the now-ubiquitous advice to frequently wash your hands, capture your coughs and sneezes with tissue or handkerchief (using elbows hadn’t been invented yet), and stay home if you don’t feel well. 

       Nobody followed the advice much.  I remember one poor kid who was on a severe diet so he could make weight on the wrestling team.  He caught the flu.  No question he could make weight.  But he barely had the strength to walk up the stairs at the high school, let alone take on a wrestling opponent.  He looked like he had drunk a bottle of bleach, he was that white.

     Gerald Ford was our president, our only unelected one, in 1976.  He kicked off a campaign to vaccinate America so the flu would not become pandemic.  Companies rushed into production to produce enough vaccine to do the job.

      On a warm October afternoon, the Goodwife and I stood in a line nearly a block long in our small town, waiting our turn to get vaccinated against the swine flu.  In front of us was a farmer named Earle who was the father of four girls and who had recently lost his wife to cancer. 

     That accidental shuffling of us human cards would have a lasting effect on my life.  Earle and I would go on to own airplanes together.  When I quit teaching in 1980, Earle hired me to drive his tractor and help him remodel his house.  We would remain friends for the rest of his life.

     Gerry Ford’s mass vaccination backfired a little bit.  The pandemic didn’t really develop in 1976-77.  Many people suffered from Guillain-Barre syndrome after being vaccinated, and the vaccine was blamed.  Some folks say the reaction to the 1976 mass vaccination was the beginning of the anti-vaxxer movement still alive today.

     Gerry Ford ran for election in 1976, and some pundits blame the flu vaccine fiasco for his loss, but in reality, Gerry had other problems, namely the pardoning of his former boss, Richard Nixon.  His “WIN” campaign (Whip Inflation Now) probably didn’t help.  History has proved him to be an honest, down-to-earth man (“I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln”, he used to say), something sadly lacking in today’s political arena.

       Here in March of 2020, our leaders have shut the world economy down in order to protect human life.  Everywhere we hear the time-honored advice, “Wash your hands, Roger, wash your hands”.  Cover your coughs and sneezes.  Stay home if you don’t feel well.

      Panic has driven folks to hoard toilet paper and sanitizers of all kinds.  Old people are particularly vulnerable to the disease. 

      Our three-year-old granddaughter fell ill a couple of weeks ago.  She had a high fever that eventually led her mother to take her to urgent care as advised by the family doctor.  The doctor also said to keep her away from her grandparents, for months.

      The urgent care folks tested granddaughter for flu, found her flu free, and eventually sent her on to the emergency room because she had lung congestion.  At the ER, they tested her again for the flu, even though Mom told them she had already been tested.  They prescribed an inhaler to keep her breathing going and sent them home.

      In a day or two, the fever subsided and granddaughter seemed back to normal.  Then, the fever came back.  This time, the doctor visit consisted of the patient staring into a smart phone while the health care professional observed on her screen from a very safe distance.  (No coming into the doctor’s office if you are sick.  If you aren’t sick, no chance of getting into the doctor’s office either.  Hmmmm.) 

     When granddaughter thought she was going to have to return to the urgent care facility, she began to cry and importune her mother.  It took a few tries, but she finally made her mother understand, she didn’t have any boogers, her nose was clean, don’t let them stick that stick in her nose again.

      The poor little girl was spared another flu test, and even a trip out of the kitchen.  The health care professional prescribed something, which she was to take if things didn’t clear up in the next day or two.  All of this done by phone.  Again, she rallied and then suffered a relapse.  Maybe it will end soon.  Does she have CoViD-19?  No way of knowing because there is no test unless you have a doctor’s prescription.

      Anyway, we have stayed clear.  I have no desire to see if my viral immunity from 1968 is effective with what’s going on now.  I haven’t taken a flu vaccine many times since 1976.  If they develop one for CoViD-19, I will go stand in line again.  

      We have never taken such steps in reaction to a health crisis.  When I was a kid, I feared polio.  I saw pictures in My Weekly Reader of kids in iron lungs.  I think I would have rather died than be confined in that contraption.  We all took our March of Dimes cards home and filled the slots with dimes.  We never thought to cancel school or confine folks to their homes.  Eventually there would be a vaccine to insure no one had to ever suffer from polio again.

     We will get through this one, too.  Eventually, there will be a vaccine.          

      But I have to ask, will the cure for CoViD-19 be worse than the disease.  Will poverty result from draconian shut downs?  Will folks emerge in better or worse shape as a result of our attempts to dodge the virus?

       

     

Tree Cutting

     An aspen tree in the backyard died last summer.  It wouldn’t have been too hard to knock down except that it was about two feet from the fence / property line, and about eight feet from the house.  And about a foot from its bigger neighbor aspen.  Add about two feet to all those dimensions and it will be about right.

      I enlisted Neighbor Brian and in two sessions, we took it down.  I regret that I neglected to take any pictures of the event.  The tree had two main trunks, forking about four feet above the ground.  We took out the first one in an hour or two.

     I crawled up as high as a sixteen-foot ladder would take me and tied a rope to a sturdy branch.  Brian pulled on the rope when the cut was completed and the top fell fairly close to where we wanted it.  It missed the house, but it whacked the fence enough to break off six inches of one slat.

     I tied the rope in two places on the next section, at the top, and right above where I cut next.  When there was only an half inch or so left to cut through, I crawled down the ladder and together we pulled the looped rope.  The thing fell harmlessly in the yard. 

     The rest of the trunk was easily cut into short lengths suitable for the old stove in the farm kitchen.  That was in January, the days were short, and the temperature fell with the sun. 

     It would be nearly a month before we would have another go at it.  This trunk proved to be a bit more of a challenge.  We decided to try to bring it down from the bottom rather than the top.  To control it, we had the rope and about a half dozen come-alongs strapped to it.  One held it to the neighbor tree.  Two tied the tree to posts on the screen porch to keep it out of the neighbor’s yard.   

     The process worked, but it took about three hours to get it down.  After the initial cut, we shoved the trunk over next to the bigger tree beside it.  Every time I cut off a chunk of the bottom, we had to loosen come-alongs and let it down a few feet.  Then we would repeat the process until there was only the smaller chunk from the treetop.

     That was in February.  I hauled the smaller branches to the recycler.  The burnable pieces went to the farm in two small loads.  Aspen doesn’t prove to be much better firewood than Chinese elm.

The "stump" is cut down to ground level, the one closest to the fence.

      

      The second tree stood on the farm.  It once was part of a row of Chinese elms demarking the old board fence separating the corral from the human farmyard.  Corral and fence are long gone.  All but three or four elms have departed as well.  This old feller was the largest of the survivors.  It towered over its brothers and even over shadowed the shop, chimney and all.

     This was also a two-day job.  The chainsaw still had fuel in it from the aspen job.  I had a bit of a struggle to get the chainsaw to run when I was contemplating the aspen job.  I finally put a carburetor kit in it.  I did it reluctantly, because most carburetor jobs I perform result in performance worse than before the overhaul.

    This one worked and after a bit of tuning of jets, the saw ran well.  Conventional wisdom has it that leaving fuel in the carburetor and the lines lead to carburetor failure.  Thus, I needed to get rid of the gas in the tank after the aspen job.  The dead elm was there.  Kill two birds with one stone:  drop a big branch threatening the red barn and get rid of some fuel.

      So I did just that.  It took some moving of junk, mostly old wheels, some with tires still attached.  I also had to trim some smaller elm shoots in order to reach the tree.  A stepladder put me high enough to make the cut.   

      I had misjudged the reach of the branch.  I thought it would miss the red barn.  Most of it did, but some of the upper most branches struck the eaves trough and resulted in a bit of a dent, but the branches were brittle and broke off with contact.  No real damage.

      I used up the rest of the fuel on some old fence posts that make great firewood.  I took great care to locate nails and staples left in the old posts.  I was using a newly sharpened chain.  The fuel ran out and I put the saw away for another week. 

      I was fairly sure I could drop the tree to the west, but I wasn’t in any mood to take a chance.  So I cut off one more east leaning branch.  The difficulty was the direction of the wind.  It blew sawdust into my face as I cut.  No help for it.  To get upwind, I had to be right under the branch I was amputating. 

      With the last east leaning branch gone, I tied the “well” rope to a branch as high as I could reach.  I tied the other end to the old Dodge pickup and took up the slack. 

  Two down, two to go.

      I went to work on the trunk, cutting a “grin” in the direction I wished the thing to fall.  Then from the side opposite the grin, I began the final cut.

    When less than an inch remained to complete the cut, I started the Dodge and put it into low gear.  My plan was to let it idle in gear and tug while I finished the cut.

      But when I eased the Dodge into the load, I heard a crack and the tree fell.  The Dodge edged forward, and the tree fell just where I had directed it.

     Nothing left but to cut the timber into stove lengths and clean up the mess.  The northeast wind blew cooler and cooler.

Firewood sorted and stacked, I wore a sweatshirt and a jacket to unload the smaller branches on the trash pile.

      I will have to split the bigger chunks.  That will be another day’s work.       

 

           

Snow Blower--Again

   Oh no, not again, thought I.   I thought I had the snow blower working a year ago. (http://50farm.blogspot.com/2018/02/snow-blower.html)  It ran last spring when I moved it to the back yard.  When I tried to start it this winter, when the weather forecasters all predicted a coming storm, nary a snort would it utter no matter how many times I pulled the starter rope.

     I shoveled a lot of snow this winter.  During sunny times, I pulled the cowling off the flywheel, removed the flywheel, checked the points, everything I could think of.  I lost count of how many times I disassembled, reassembled, and tugged fruitlessly on that starter rope.

     Finally one fine day, I went to the local small engine dealer and got a new coil, points and condenser. I got a new flywheel key, too.  Sometimes a jimmied key can set the flywheel off enough to interfere with the timing.

     There were trials and tribulations, but eventually I got everything right, the correct gap on the points, the correct gap between the coil arms and the flywheel, the flywheel key in correctly (that key isn’t square, I found after several unsuccessful tries one sunny day).  Filled with hope and confidence, I pulled the starter rope.  And again and again, I pulled.  Nothing.

      I tried priming the cylinder by removing the spark plug and dropping  a couple of drops of gas into the cylinder..  I tried a little starting fluid sprayed directly into the carburetor.  Nothing worked.

      Then the thought came, I have fixed the wrong problem.  But how could I be wrong?  It obviously had fuel.  It had to be spark.  During those short days, I didn’t have much time to work on it.  When it go too cold, I picked up my tools, put things away and retreated to the heated space.

     I never quit thinking about the problem.  How could that system work when everything is grounded except the coil and the core of the spark plug?  The condenser is grounded, even the business nipple because it is tied to the grounded part of the coil.  The points remain open except for a quick dip as the piston rises.

      I brought the old coil and condenser into the warmth and went after it with my ohmmeter.  That was the way it worked.

      A new idea entered my head.  Maybe I needed a few more rpms than I could get with the pull rope.  I made a farm trip one cool day.  One of the things I brought back from the farm was an electric motor out of a washing machine.  I threw in a short v-belt, too.

      On another warmish day, I pulled the shield off the drive end of the Briggs & Stratton to find two v-belts, one driving the blower part of the machine, the other providing the ground drive.  It didn’t take much to get one of the belts off, my short belt on the engine shaft, the other end on the electric motor pulley.  It should work.

     But first, I had to wire a pig tail into the electric motor.  I used a couple of alligator clips to hold bare wires to the contact points on the engine.  When I plugged it in, I couldn’t hold the motor still.  When it jumped with the torque, the clips made contact with each other.

      There were sparks.  And a kicked breaker.  At first, I thought it was the ground-fault interrupter that had kicked.  After a few minutes of terminal work, I had correct clips on the pig tail and the clips attached to the spades in the engine.

      I thought I reset the GFI buttons, but when I plugged it in, nothing.  It took quite a while to trace the correct breaker.  I found it, finally, in the breaker box in the basement laundry room.  I reset the breaker, then the GFI outlet.  This time, when I plugged it in, the motor took off.

      Soon I had an extension cord strung out, the electric motor resting on the snow blower housing, the belt on both the electric and the gas motor pulleys.  It took a few tries, but with good timing, I managed to get the electric motor to spin the gas motor a few revolutions. 

     I had to get enough tension on the belt by pulling the electric motor into the belt.  The electric motor didn’t particularly care for this activity.  It would stop until I let off some of the tension, but eventually I got everything going.  The electric motor had the Briggs & Stratton turning quite a few rpms.  Nothing.  Not a pop, not a snort, or cough.  Nothing.

       It was dark this time when I put everything away, both externally and internally.  I must have fixed the wrong problem, but what could be the real problem?

      Eventually, I turned to the internet.  I had been there before with not much success.  I stumbled upon a guy who had essentially the same problem I did—all new parts, all carefully installed.  I followed the year-old conversation.  The expert said if he had everything in there, it either had to be a faulty coil or condenser or spark plug wire.  The victim insisted that he had checked everything with his ohmmeter.  They were all good.

      The expert came back with, maybe you installed the coil upside down.  The next response, the victim was ecstatic.  Yes, you are a genius!  I removed the coil, turned it over, remounted, regapped, and voila! The thing started on the first pull.

     Well, on the snow blower, it couldn’t be upside down, because the coil is mounted vertically.  But it could be inside out.  I had nothing to lose.  I pulled the coil off to see if it would fit going on the other way.     

      Yes it would.  What do you know?  Could this be it?  I reinstalled and regapped the coil.  With everything in place, I jerked the starting rope.  It didn’t start, but there was more than a nothing.  It kicked back and tried to rotate backwards.

      I checked the throttle, pulled out the choke, and gave the rope another pull.  Vroom!  It was running!  Yay, I did it, folksies!

     It’s March.  There could be another snowstorm bad enough to require a snow blower.  I think I might have jinxed that, maybe.  I didn’t pull the machine around to the front.  If we do get another heavy snow, even then will be some scooping.  I will have to dig out the back gate to get it open enough to get the snow blower through.

      Now I have second thoughts about my second thoughts. The original problem must have been a faulty coil, because the old coil wasn’t on there wrong-side-out and it wasn't working.

     I didn’t fix the wrong problem.  I fixed the problem wrong.

Health Insurance

         Sometime in late November or early December, I got a couple of unpaid doctor bills.  When the third one arrived, I began to believe something had gone amiss.  Then I got notice that I had a new Medicare statement, so I decided I had better look at it.  When I did, the claims were all denied.  The footnotes told me that Medicare was not my primary insurer, that I needed to submit these claims to my primary insurer.

      A vague memory began to stir in my brain, a rather strange incident I had shrugged off.  In late September or early October, I got a call from the secretary of the grade school in the district where I used to work.  She asked me where she should send my health insurance cards. 

     What?  I haven’t been on Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield for six or seven years, ever since I signed up for Medicare.  “Oh,” she said.  “I’ll check it out with the superintendent’s

 office.”

      I never gave the incident another thought.  Until I started getting doctor bills.  I called Medicare.  They had a wait list.  Would I like them to call me back?  I left my number.  I hadn’t taken ten steps down the hallway before my phone rang and it was Medicare on the line.

     The young man asked for my particulars to prove to himself that I was who I said I was.  He looked into my account and informed me that my primary insurer was Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  “Since when?” asked I.

       “Since October 22,” said he.  That insurer informed Medicare that I was on their policy since that date.

      I put in a call to the superintendent’s office in Kansas to try to begin solving my problem.  It was between Christmas and New Year’s.  I doubted anyone would be in the office, but it didn’t cost anything to try.

     The superintendent himself answered the phone.  Before I could get two sentences into telling him my problem, he put me on hold.  There I stayed for three or four minutes.  I hung up and tried the number again.  No answer.

     I fumed and fussed a brief while.  I consoled myself by assuring myself he wouldn’t know anything anyway.  He was a former superintendent who had been on the school board.  He gave up that position to become superintendent again, this time as interim,  when the district could not find a suitable candidate for the office.

     Some things never change.  Enough said.

     I called a third time and left a message for the secretary who wouldn’t get it until into January when school started again.  She wouldn’t know anything either, because she replaced the former secretary who had resigned in September.  I can guess why she resigned.

     I went next to Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  Amazing enough, I only talked to two people, the first one turning me over to someone who could help me with my problem.  The second lady said I was on the policy but I wasn’t on the policy.  The school district was not paying my premium.  Obviously, neither was I.  But somehow I was on the list.

     She said she would check it out further and notify Medicare that it was a mistake.  I should not have Blue Cross/Blue Shield as my primary insurer.

      A few days later, I called Medicare back, a different number this time, the one the first Medicare guy gave me for problem resolution.  This lady grilled me for my personal information, then opened my account.  It showed that Blued Cross had notified them of the mistake and they were taking steps to rectify it.  It could take up to 45 days to happen.  What do I do about my unpaid bill.  “You will have to resubmit it.”

       Next, I called CU Med where I had the unpaid bill.  I told the lady there what happened.  She asked me when the problem would be resolved.  “If” it will be resolved, I amended her question.  She laughed and I told her about the 45 days.  She said okay.  Should I pay the bill?  No, we will resubmit it.  OK.

      About the second week in January, Secretary Emily, a former student, called me from the superintendent's office.  After chatting a bit, she asked me why I called.  I told her the whole story.  She didn’t know anything about it.  She hadn’t handled the insurance business.  I told her not to worry about it, that I had contacted Blue Cross and I thought we were on the way to solving the problem.  I refrained from saying anything about her boss.

        February arrives.  I get a notice from Medicare a new statement is available.  I jump through the hoops and get access to my statement.  Two claims, one paid (“yea!”), one denied (“boo!”).  One more call to Medicare.  Some serious hold time on the phone in this case.  The answer, when I finally get it:  the blood lab has to resubmit the claim.  Head slap:  “I should have known.”

     I don’t have a bill for the lab work yet.  I am waiting for my March claim statement.  

      Mark Twain defined an innocent bystander as someone who doesn’t have sense enough to get out of the way.  I wonder if I qualify.      

Carlsbad Caverns

      Vast.

     That may be the best word for Carlsbad.  To get there from here, you cover a vast amount of territory.  You will be about 170 miles from El Paso, Texas.

      Passing through the town of Carlsbad to get to the caverns, after crossing about 20 miles more of the endless flatlands, you pass through some pretty good-sized hills, though nothing near the Rocky Mountains we know.

     The entrance to the cavern sits on top of a hill.  The view to the south is vast.  (Not unlike the view to the south from the Genoa Tower, to use a universal reference that everyone will understand!)

      From the visitor center, you make a choice of walking down the pathway to the caverns, or you can opt for an elevator ride of some 750 feet.  Forty years ago, I took the walk.  I find I didn’t remember much of the caverns from that first visit, excepting their vastness, of course.  I do remember that my knees complained from the downhill trip.

      This time, we chose the elevator.  Before entering the elevator, a ranger goes over the rules of the cavern:  get rid of your gum, don’t leave any trash, don’t touch anything, bring a flashlight (for sale at the gift shop), whisper if you must talk because sound carries all over the caverns, etc.

     For $5, you can rent a telephone that comments on things all the way through the caverns.  When you come upon a sign with a number on it, you push that number into your rented phone and listen to the commentary.  It’s probably worth the money. If you walk down, there are 50 talking points.  If you ride the elevator down, you do numbers 20 through 50.

       Getting off the elevator, you can visit the restrooms for the last time, buy a snack or drink, which you cannot take with you as you enter the touring area, or sit a spell before taking the tour—especially helpful to those who have make the trip afoot.  You can buy a flashlight, too.

     Another thing I did not remember from my first visit was a way to walk back to the surface--estimated time, 45 minutes to an hour.  About ten minutes into the cavern, you can choose to short circuit the main route and head back to the elevators if you have had enough.  We took the long way.  After all, we had to get our money’s worth.  (Actually, our admission was free via our national parks pass.) 

      The voice on the telephone tried to give the listener an idea of how big the caverns are by comparing the number of football fields that could be fitted into the space.  It is huge.  The roof or ceiling in places is several feet high.    

     It would be difficult to fit one football field in there, practically speaking, because there isn’t much flat space.  Stalactites and stalagmites appear everywhere along with crevices and fissures and small pools of water.  Words can’t do the place justice.  Neither can my pictures.  I couldn’t see well enough to turn on the camera’s flash.

   Without the telephone guide, we would have missed a lot, including the history of the discovery and development of the place.  One thing we would certainly have missed was a rope dangling from a dome several feet above us. 

     The story is that some intrepid spelunkers wanted to climb up into the dome, so they floated a helium balloon up with a rope and some sort of anchor.  They managed to get the rope hooked to something up there, not sure how, and one brave guy then proceeded to climb the rope and hook it firmly so other explorers could climb up and take a look.

     Another marvel is the lighting.  The telephone voice said a Hollywood lighting specialist designed the lighting.  When you look at where the lights are stationed, you have to wonder how they ever manage to change a burned out bulb.

      In the olden days, there was a point on the guided tour where the Ranger could shut off the lights and the visitors got to experience total darkness for a few moments.  They don’t do that anymore.  If a power failure occurs, an emergency generator takes over.  If it fails, some lights have their own battery and can take over for a long enough time to get everybody out of the cave.

      The caverns were formed by water.  Water still infiltrates, allowing the formations to continue growing, and pools of water to remain.  It takes eight months for surface water to percolate down into the caves. 

      Now, the biggest changes to the caverns are caused by people.  The visitor center and its paved parking lot cover up a lot of territory where water once could soak in and down, for example.  A surprising thing, lint from people’s clothes, has to be removed occasionally.  I shouldn’t be surprised.  Melvin, our deceased school janitor friend, once said that judging from the lint and hair he swept up at the end of the day, he wondered that the students weren’t all naked and bald.

      A couple of things occurred to me during our visit: what would an earthquake do to the caverns?  The Ranger lady said the caves would be the safest place to be in an earthquake.  The shock waves get transmitted through solids, like earth and rock.  When the waves hit the caves filled with air, they dissipate rapidly, air being more flexible than rock or earth.  I would still prefer to be on the surface if a quake comes.

     The second thing I thought about was a sinkhole somewhere (Florida?) that swallowed up several Corvettes on display some years ago.  If a fissure developed on the surface above the caverns, several cars dropping through the gap wouldn't amount to a morsel in the cavern's maw.  Maybe I should quit thinking.

     Our trip took us the better part of two hours, stopping to listen to thirty-some explanations. Not once did the caverns stimulate my claustrophobia, they are that vast.  We rode the elevators back up and headed for the cafeteria.   

     Having refreshed ourselves, we headed home.  North we went through Roswell (sorry, I couldn’t revisit the UFO museum) and onto Fort Sumner where we overnighted.  We rejoined the rat race (also known as I-25) near Las Vegas, NM and on home.