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 With "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday"
behind us , I am joining the Christmas Sale fray with a limited time
offer. It is the Last Frontier, Last Chance Christmas Sale which begins
today and continues until Friday, December 21st. During this time, any
and all orders over $250 will receive a 20% discount and orders over
$500 will include free shipping as well. Now no pushing.
After my last RoadNotes and some of the comments I made about Indiana,
I have been lambasted in person and from afar from Hoosiers both
current and transplanted... In my defense, I explained that the one
needed to read RoadNotes from their inception to fully understand my
tongue-in-cheek “running battle” with the state...some seem satisfied,
others did not...in closing that chapter, I can only say that I will
return to the state and happily....and that has nothing to do with the
fact that a couple from Indy bought a very large picture of the Montana
ghost town church currently found under the New
Additions.
  And now for something completely
different:
With the holidays upon us, for those of you looking for something very
different from what I do, I’d like to introduce you to a very talented
carver/artist by the name of of Shawna Bennett. Shawna resides in
Wyoming and you’ll find her work on a variety of surfaces, but I
especially like her moose paddle imagery.
  You can find several examples of her work
here, but if you contact her
I’m sure she’ll show you more great work and she might even send you a
copy of her Possum Stew recipe in time for your Christmas dinner
table...then again, she probably won’t.
Remind me to avoid making prophetic predictions in any future RoadNotes
and in this instance I refer to the thought in the last that Diesel
would meet an untimely demise... In a canyon just north of Cordes
Lakes, AZ...the dogs and I were on one of our seemingly endless
(frequency, not distance) hikes, when we approached a rare sight in
these parts, a flowing creek at the base of the canyon.
As I’ve mentioned before, after a mile or three, this is an impossible
temptation for them and as we descended a very steep hillside, it was
clear they were intent on getting wet before my legs would get us
there. With self preservation in mind, I let go of the leashes and they
raced to the creek. Chief and Willow were more than content to drink,
splash and bound through the water, but the delinquent (Diesel for
newcomers) looked at this as an opportunity to make yet another foray
into the wilds.
Now even at that I would not have been all that worried, but with his
leash in tow and with a heavy underbrush everywhere, this was all but
certain doom....and without a look back at his pack, Diesel was gone.
I began the search on my own as I tied Willow and Chief to a tree, but
they were both aware that all was not as it should be and began to get
frantic...their cries were probably a good beacon for Diesel where ever
he was, but they were making me crazy so I hoped to put their noses
rather than their noises to work in finding “him”.
And so we began our search...it took us to the top of the canyon and
back down the length of the creek... I saw no sign and heard no noise,
but I just couldn’t imagine that he had made it far without getting
hung up in the thicket.
What I could imagine was that he had become hung up to the extent that
he had been hanged, which would account for the lack of any sounds of
distress.
As we circumvented the canyon floor, it was hard to tell whether the
dogs were on his scent or the last Jack-Rabbit whose path we
crossed...it didn’t matter though...he was gone until he wasn’t.
My mind began to think past our finding him today and jumped forward to
tonight and the next day which was Thanksgiving, not that that mattered
as I had nowhere to go, but I was torn as to whether to keep looking
and waiting, or to head back to the trailer for gear for tonight.
I didn’t want him to return to the area where we lost him and have us
gone, but I also didn’t want him tangled in a mesquite bush at
nightfall for a moment...if the coyotes came in, I wanted to be close
enough to get to him before they could finish him off.
WIth that in mind, I decided for the three of us to keep looking until
the last possible moment... after almost three hours, we had covered
the western most section of the canyon...it was bordered on that end by
a barbed wire fence which lead to a 100 foot rock face...I felt
comfortable that he would had to have been VERY lucky to make it
through the fence without being hung up and scaling the canyon wall was
an impossibility even for the delinquent.
With that, we proceeded toward the East end of the creek...now Diesel’s
original direction took him in an entirely opposite direction and very
early on I checked the stream a few hundred feet in this direction and
saw the water which pools in this area was undisturbed.
Regardless, we continued until we rounded a bend in the stream and
almost immediately, Chief and Willow “hit” on something...by now I was
certain it was rabbit as their actions had all the earmarkings and as
far as I could tell, their mourning period was now officially over for
their pack-mate...
But as I began to pull hard on their leashes, from out of a grouping of
boulders, spilled Diesel. Looking like he had been through hell and
with the fur around his neck looked more like a turtle neck, he tumbled
into the creek minus his collar and leash and began to inhale water.
Willow and Chief leapt through the water and greeted him like he’d been
gone for, well ever...which in our little corner of the world, he had...
Things I've Learned
There is a 2-story outhouse in Colorado...I must go.
A moth can kill a good Merlot and even a bad Merlot can kill a
moth...and on this night, I drank both.
There's a basket on the bar at the Wild Horse Pass; half is filled with
matches and half with wet naps...the matches disappear much faster.
A penny sized hole in sock + 5 mile hike ÷ 3 dogs = baseball size
blister on my heel...I’ve always been very bad at math and never even
attempted physics, but if someone could explain that equasion I’d be
grateful.
The offers to buy my hat keep rolling in.
No matter how colorful, I find sunrises and sunsets to be boring...On
the contrary, no matter how colorless, I find dusks and dawns to be
magical...
 When ever I get a bit down over the ups
and downs of the road, I just recall the woman of about 65 who walked
by my booth in Fountain Hills and explained to her friend that her
husband was very EXCITED about work these days.. seems she had just
purchased some Hawaiian shirts for him as his company had instituted
“Hawaiian Fridays”.
Random thought #1: To any and all
RoadNotes readers...should I be lucky
enough to make it to the age of 65 and any of you should stumble upon
me, in an excitable
mood while wearing a Hawaiian shirt, you have my permission to end my
life (after you
buy me a beer) as I know it.... and now that I think about it, even if
I am not thrilled (in fact especially) to be dressed as such, do the
same...and i’ll put that it writing...although I guess I just did.
There is a British composer who has recorded a Native American flute CD
entitled "Buffalo Sky" which will feature one of my bison images as its
cover art.
 Art show promoters make better livings
than art show artists.
I recently did a show at the Desert Diamond casino south of Tucson, Az
with a promoter by the name of Sharon Good. On Saturday morning she
issued an apology letter to all artists stating that the advertising
for the show had been overlooked...that weekend she made $21,000 and I
made $600...I was robbed, but such is the life of a promoter and a
photographer.
That same weekend a very nice woman knocked on my door who together
with her husband was selling their Koyote Grandma’s
barbecue sauce at the show...seems her husband had suffered a heart
attack at the show the day before (I’m surprised there were not more
that weekend) and she wondered if I could ready their trailer for the
load out and hitch it.
My immediate thought was that she was obviously not a reader of
RoadNotes or she wouldn’t let me near her truck or trailer and
certainly not hitch it...but to make a long story short, I did, it went
flawlessly (I respond well to good deeds and pressure) and and I was
rewarded with a gallon of her barbecue sauce...
It was a nice gesture, but once opened, barbecue sauce needs to be
refridgerated and in all honesty, mine won’t hold a gallon of anything,
so I gave it away in exchange for an upload of my credit card machine
at a laundromat.
Oh well, as I said, in the end it was a nice gesture and her husband
pulled through...that said, I am still a little unnerved that a woman
undergoing all of that in one weekend would introduce herself as
“Grandma Koyote”...guess for some people the SHOW must truly go on.
 Outhouse Yarn of the
Month
An elderly (at least 90) gentlemen recently purchased a small Diesel
& the Outhouse photo from me as it reminded him of “that day”. The
“day” in question was apparently a Halloween when in his teens, he and
a few buddies rounded up all of the houses in a square block area and
hauled them down to the local railroad tracks where in the morning,
they sat and watched as a West bound train pulled away with about 15 of
the town folks “back houses”.
Speaking of which another very nice recent visitor
to my booth forwarded on an ode to the outhouse
called, “The Passing of the Backhouse” which can
be found here.
As they say, the devil truly is in the details...and the morning after
my Litchfiled Park show reminded me in a very expensive way that I am a
big picture person.
I admittedly conduct much of my day-to-day chores on auto-pilot and
this time I got bit in the hind end when I quickly pulled into a local
Mobile station to put some diesel in the truck and a gas can I use for
the generator in the trailer.
With coffee foremost in my mind I pulled up to the green pump and put
15 gallons of fuel in the truck and then grabbed the can and searched
for the 87 octane unleaded...the next words out of my mouth would no
doubt lead to more unsubscribers so I’ll leave it at what I saw...
Seems Mobile unlike every other gas station across the country colors
their diesel fuel pumps yellow and the green is reserved for the 87
unleaded! As I awaited the tow truck to take my truck to the Dodge
dealer so they could remove the now tainted fuel, I enjoyed several
conversations with other diesel drivers who had done the same thing but
what was less enjoyable was the $579.67 bill the dodge dealer charged
for me for my carelessness.
Even when they told me the East Coast rep for Dodge had done the same
thing a month earlier, I couldn’t help but feel the gods were again
angry with me. When I pull up to a pump nowadays, I stop and actually
spell out d-i-e-s-e-l before I pump.
How the West was Lost 
A young mother was in my booth buying a steam train photo for her young
son who she said loved “Choo-Choos”.
A moment later he arrived with his dad and began to cry as she
approached him with the picture...I offered that maybe he didn’t like
trains after all, she said actually it was the other way around and
that he was afraid of me.
Now this in itself is not unique, but in this case it was nothing I had
done...seems they had recently taken the Grand Canyon railroad where
part of the fun for a small child is a band of outlaws who take over
the train, guns blazing and robbing their parents.
Hard to imagine why he now loves trains and equates anyone wearing a
cowboy hat with the monster under the bed.
And Finally
 I finally did the legendary Fountain Hills
show and while everyone told me “it’s not usually like this”... it’s
not quite what I expected... Some artists said it looked like they had
bussed in the entire city of Yuma, AZ but for me it was probably best
described by the feeling I got the first time I saw the amazing
sculptures of Duane
Hanson.
Until next time....be well and as always, please excuse
any typos (and you know who you are) and most importantly, "Save a
Horse, Ride a Mustang."
Jim
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