Neighbors

You should'a seen our faces...

You should’a seen our faces after the rain a couple of Saturday evenings ago: We had dinner in town around 6:30. We realized at some point it was raining outside – hard! But that’s nothing new; we’ve had a very generous monsoon so far this summer. Finished our meal, left under sprinkles and started home. As we came out of downtown and out Little Walnut Rd, we realized this must have been a right heavy downpour because there were large ponds and minor lakes on the road. Got to Cottonwood and started up, after fording several still-water spots. Had the windows open. As we approached a cross street that we know has a very low point, we slowed down. The first thing we heard was a roar. Like a waterfall with a lot of water over a lot of rock or a long drop. We turned down the cross street to take a look and stopped dead. Not only because of the sight in front of us, but because we couldn’t go any further if we wanted. Flashflood! Nick remembered them from living in Tucson as a kid and I had seen one once in California near Barstow. We’d heard about them here. And here it was! The water covered an entire meadow that is normally otherwise just flat grassland with a dry arroyo running down the middle of it. Now, the meadow looked a little like the Potomac at flood: wide, fast-moving and muddy. Then the water hit the edge of the roadway and began to tumble over itself. It was, of course, the water roiling over the roadway that roared. (Don’t you just love alliteration?) After standing there for awhile watching the power of the flow, and waving at the neighbors who had walked down the other side, we got to wondering what our NEW road was like. It is, after all, called Rocky Creek. And you do have to cross over a dip down into and through the normally-dry creek bed which is strewn with boulders and rocks. We wondered if Rocky Creek was also channeling the flood. More, we wondered if we could actually get to our property, what OUR arroyo would look like. Don’t know if you remember my video of the gently coursing stream back in the winter from the snow melt? So we hopped in the car, turned around and went on over. Sure enough, Rocky Creek was flooding as well. Roaring. Churning. Depositing rocks and boulders into the middle of the road. Needless to say, we could not get out to our property. How our arroyo experiences a flashflood will remain unknown to us a little longer. The next morning in all the low spots – no roar, just ripples and flattened grass.


You should’a seen our faces at about 5 pm mountain standard time on Monday, 8/2/2010. That’s when our realtor called and confirmed that our house on Comus Rd, Clarksburg MD had officially transferred to the tenant/buyers. Contract for sale: April 29. 4 banks later and much paperwork, we finally settled. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez, proud new owners of 15305 Comus Rd. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Nick Sussillo, proud new holders of $$ to be put toward our new house at 52 Rocky Creek Rd. Let’s get started…


You should’a seen my face when, with house $$ in hand, I ordered and received the first purchases for the new house: 3 energy-star ceiling fans. I have spent hours online looking at various appointments for the house. Ceiling fans. Lights. Wood stoves. Tubs. And even toilets! My plan is to purchase in advance and online some products and store them in our garage. This is how I will get exactly what I want. I’ve become, in general, a proponent of “buy local, support local” but that doesn’t work as well for house appointments as it does for tomatoes. There’s only one lumber yard/materials store in town, plus an ACE hardware and a Wallmart. No Home Depot. No Lowes. Nearest are in Las Cruces, Tucson, El Paso, or Albuquerque. So I’ll let the builder go to Foxworth for lumber and nails and all that stuff. But I’ll go online for those things when generic won’t do. Besides, I save money. Lower prices usually. No taxes usually. No shipping if I’m careful. And no builder markup on materials – yep, it seems that at least some builders add a percentage markup on the materials they order for the project.


You should’a seen my face when I came back to my car in the grocery store lot on Sunday, to notice that things were lying on the drivers and passenger seat and on the passenger-side floor. To scratch my head. To realize that I couldn’t have missed seeing the prescription bottle on the driver’s seat and sat on it. To come to the slow and unhappy realization that the car had been rifled. More specifically, the little storage area that is in the center thing between the seats where stuff gets stored like change, small bucks and music. None of that here; just a prescription bottle, an empty glass case, a couple of wrappers and a leaky tube of lotion. A good hat still lay on the back seat. My unique and irreplaceable hand-painted walking stick still lay in the floor in back. Car was not only unlocked but the windows were open. Most of my life, I have resisted locking my car on philosophical reasons. Should I re-evaluate my philosophy?