Monday, 22 to Sunday, 28 June 2020
Week 12. Incredible. Later this week it'll be 3 calendar months since I came back to Texas to wait out the virus. I was so sure it'd take only one month - 2 at the most. Now it's been 3 and I can't see any signs that this situation will change any time soon - certainly not before August, but I am still holding out hope for being able to head out in September.
Scientists are saying this week that it's not unreasonable to think we'll have a vaccine by early next year, which is good news. Certainly there are still many people who aren't taking the virus seriously, which is bad news. But public perceptions can change almost overnight so that perception can change too. If we had extensive public buy-in for wearing masks and social distancing and even staying home most of the time, the experience of other countries shows we could have this thing under some semblance of control.
So I think that's what I'm hoping for now - increased awareness among the 18 - 30 year olds that, while they may not get a bad case of the virus, they can still be asymptomatic carriers and be spreading it throughout society. I see that as being more likely than folks in politically conservative areas acknowledging the virus isn't a hoax or overblown to damage the president; those views seem to be pretty entrenched.
Meanwhile, though I prefer to stay home as much as possible, I spent the week out and about a lot more than I wanted to. But with mask and gloves, of course.
Cedar Hill State Park
Last Sunday I transferred myself from the Sanger/Denton North KOA back down to Cedar Hill, with my spot reserved until Wednesday. These dates were based on the weather forecasts I was seeing then.
On Monday, we got some very heavy rain and the temperature went down to an almost comfortable level, making AC unnecessary for much of the day. When we were out for our first walk of the day, we saw a coyote. From a pretty close position. It crossed the campground road not far ahead of where we were and disappeared into the campsite there. When we got up to that point, I looked to see if it was still there, and it was. In fact, after we passed by, it came back to cross the road, and stopped in the middle of the road to stare at us. Meanwhile, Dexter was carrying on like crazy and I was so extremely glad that Gracie wasn't joining him because I'm not sure I could have held them. It was intimidating for me to get stared at by a coyote, though to be fair, it was almost certainly ignoring me and staring at the dogs.
By Tuesday, that lower temperature level was still in play, and the forecast for the next few days had gone way down, enough so I couldn't see the need for AC. That plus being uneasy being in the campground where there was a coyote readily available and I decided to leave. I'd asked a park employee I saw when we were out for another walk if they had many coyotes there and he said they "don't keep no count of wild animals" in the park. I figured the coyote might be eating deer but the employee said they had no deer there at all. Sure seems odd when there're deer almost everywhere else in Texas, including at Cleburne State Park not too many miles down the road, but that's what he said.
The drive back to Richardson
When I first came to Cedar Hill State Park more than a week ago, I came entirely along Belt Line Road, so I decided to go back by following Belt Line for the rest of the way around the county. I didn't expect to see anything worth talking about, but I got a surprise.
(And I'll say now that I was surprised at how large some of these towns were so checked the population for the county. Dallas County is estimated to have 2.64 million now, with the city of Dallas contributing 1.2 million to that. Meaning more than half the county's population is in the surrounding towns. That surprised me.)
After I passed through Cedar Hill, I drove through DeSoto (pop. about 53,000 now), then on to Lancaster. I expected Lancaster to be a small town, but it turns out to have about 40,000 folks. And I passed a road sign for the Lancaster Airport and Flight Museum. I was curious what a small Texas town would be doing with a flight museum, but they say it's a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Cold War era aircraft. Lancaster was also an All America City in 2019 (they say).
I passed some houses, one with a front yard sign that said, "A Healthcare Hero Lives Here." I haven't seen one of those before. Then I suddenly came to a long stretch of very poorly maintained roadway - I had to slow down to 30 mph to keep us from being too shaken up. It was after I passed a sign directing me to the "historic town square" that I started wondering how old this town is. I learned it was incorporated in 1853, quite old for Texas which only became a state in 1845. It was laid out (and named, apparently) by a man who was born in Lancaster, KY. I didn't go see the town square, but I can report the area is full of corn fields. In fact, when I got to the neighborhood of the airport, I saw that the runway was surrounded by cornfields.
The next town along Belt Line was Wilmer, which I don't remember having heard of, though it was settled in 1850 and now has a population of just under 4,000. (Wilmer's downtown was destroyed by fire on July 4, 1929, because the wells were too shallow to provide enough water to put it out.) Along the road in this area I saw occasional horses in the fields and less corn.
On the radio I heard an interview with Ron Finley, who calls himself a Gangsta Gardener. He lives in Southcentral LA and says he's working to turn food deserts into food forests. His TED talk is inspiring, only 10 minutes long, and worth at least 20 minutes. https://www.ted.com/guerrilla-gardener In the interview he said, "Get loyal to the soil" and "If you grow it, you own it." to explain why kids are willing to eat vegetables if they grow them themselves.
I passed a business named Junka Lunka in Seagoville, and it took me ages to realize that was an auto salvage place. I guess I was too busy thinking of Oompa-Loompas to realize a lunk is a junked car.
So yeah, I was passing through Seagoville, population about 15,000; it's on the list of 50 safest cities in Texas. Fifty seems like a large number so I don't know how much that assurance is worth, but the city's put it on its webpage. This time when I saw a field with horses, I also saw a herd of goats grazing right alongside them. And I passed a yard full of chickens. Seemed bucolic.
Next town was Balch Springs, settled in the 1840s, with a current population about 25,000. Then came Mesquite, which was substantial even when I was growing up here and now has about 140,000 residents. The Mesquite High School looks exactly like all the schools that were built for us Baby Boomers and it took me right back 50 or 60 years. It was a weird feeling to be whoosh sent straight back to high school while I was driving down the street. I had fun then but am very grateful I don't have to relive those years.
Next came Sunnyvale, which I don't remember hearing about before, and that may be because they like to keep a low profile. Today they have about 5,100 residents and their population is somewhat more diverse than it used to be, but it was once known as the whitest town in North Texas, per D Magazine. https://www.dmagazine.com/the-whitest-town-in-north-texas
Next came Garland, with a current population of about 240,000. All these towns, you understand, flowed into each other as far as I could tell, and it was only the road signs that told me I was in one or another. I think it was in Garland that I almost had a wreck. I think my right-side tires caught some water in the gutter and I suddenly found myself skidding into the gutter with no way to stop it. While I was having visions of skidding up onto the curb and turning over, I was also automatically steering the right way to get us out of it. It happened so fast and was over so fast I had to deal with my nerves afterwards, not during. Just as well.
I bought gasoline in Cedar Hill at $1.69, because that was the lowest price I'd seen in ages. And for the rest of the drive I saw gas mostly $1.79 but the farther north I got the higher the price got, and by Richardson I saw one place charging $2.09. That's a big difference.
The next steps
When I got back to David and Anna's house, I learned that David had gotten the 30 amp plug installed in his garage and connected to the breaker box. All I needed was the extension cord I'd ordered and I was set. Except it didn't come.
A day or so after it was supposed to arrive, David asked me to look up the confirming email from Amazon, which is when we discovered that not only did Amazon not acknowledge having received my order, its website had also eaten the email that David had sent me with the link to the product which I'd used to place my order. David's email had evaporated, along with any indication that I'd ordered anything. Plenty of sign that Amazon thought it had signed up a new customer (me) but nothing else. Which means to me that I won't be trying to order anything else from them either.
David, being made of sterner stuff, got back online and found a product neither of us had noticed before. What I'd tried to order was a 100' 50 amp cord, and we had 30 amp adapters for both ends. Instead, David found 2 30 amp cords, one that's 75' and another that's 25'. We got out his very long measuring tape and figured out that combination would probably work fine, so David ordered them for me. Sadly, the 75' one won't be delivered until July 1st, next Wednesday. There's a lot of hot weather predicted between now and then, so I'll just have to play it by ear.
Travel on Thursday, too
I'd intended to make several stops on my way back into town on Tuesday, but driving the Belt Line route took long enough that I decided the errands could wait. But by Thursday, I'd run out of milk, an essential item for my morning coffee, so I went back out.
I only intended to go to 3 stores, and that's what I did, but it took longer than I'd expected. Things always seem to. One of the main things I was looking for (besides milk) was new dog leashes.
At some point last week while I was walking the dogs, Gracie's leash broke. Actually, it wasn't Gracie's because they have identical leashes and I never keep track of who's wearing which one. But Gracie was wearing it this time, and the latch is what broke, not the leash itself. Fortunately, we were on our way back to the campsite and I tied the leash onto her collar and we made it back without meeting anything exciting (like coyotes or other dogs). I pulled out one of the old ones I was saving for an emergency and that's what we've been using. But I worried that if one could break, so could the other, and so could the old one, and what if it broke when Dexter was wearing it while lunging to get at something.
I wanted one with a padded handle, being much easier to grip when I'm hanging on for dear life, but those are surprisingly hard to find. There were some online, but I really like buying something I can see and hold in my hand, and I saw that Petco carries one of them, so that's where we went. I almost never shop there because I don't feed my critters "premium" food, which is about all Petco carries. I really resent being made to feel like a bad pet parent for feeding Purina One, which seems to be good enough to keep all my pets healthy and happy so why should I second-guess it? But I wanted those leashes - of course I got 2 of them - and I've been very happy with them since.
While we were out, it was lunchtime and the dogs wanted a walk, so I pulled into the almost-empty parking lot of what looked like a convention center in Garland, called the Curtis Culwell Center. The dogs and I were walking along when 2 security guards drove up to us and said we needed to leave. I said all I'd wanted to do is walk them and maybe give them some lunch, but the guards said we needed to get out. So of course we did. But I thought it was weird. There were only about 5 cars in this huge empty parking lot. I'm just not used to thinking of myself as someone who presents a threat, but they didn't want me there. Not even remotely what so many Black people have to live with all the time, but I can testify to just my mild treatment as being unsettling.
Back at the ranch, I found 2 ticks inside the RV, both of them climbing on me (at different times, of course). I can't for the life of me figure out where they came from - I mean, if they were from the state park, why was I only just now seeing them. The dogs are protected, thank goodness, though Lily isn't. Maybe I should check with the vet about that. I've been thinking it didn't matter because surely the dogs wouldn't be bringing them inside so they wouldn't be able to get to her. But they got in somehow.
And more travel, on Friday
I found out that the CVS had managed to get in touch with the clinic I went to in Alabama, and the doctor had agreed to an additional 3-month extension on my blood pressure pills. Because of not knowing how long the refills had been sitting there waiting for me to pick them up, I figured I'd better go do it before they decided I'd changed my mind. So off I went.
To the CVS, then to the recycle center, and then over to Mesquite to find a business called Mesquite Graphics, aka MG Custom Tees. I can't remember if I've ever said before, but the souvenir I've collected from my month in each state is a t-shirt. They're all different, and each one reminds me of something about that state. Well, I spent an entire month in New York state finding many places I liked but no t-shirts I wanted to buy. Finally, a few days before the month was up, when I was at Elinor Roosevelt's house I bought a poster with a lot of her quotes on it. I figured I'd get that transferred to a t-shirt and that'd take care of it.
Of course since then I've been moving pretty constantly, never in one place long enough to see about getting it done. But I happen to have time now and found these folks online and thought I'd give them a try. I ran up against the problem of them needing to have an image small enough for their scanner, which the poster definitely isn't, or one that could be transferred to an email program or something online. I was ready to go see if Office Depot could put my poster onto a disk when one of the young women found my poster online (I can't find it but she sure did). So they said they'd have to check with their graphics person who was out, to see if the words would show up with the transfer. They didn't call back Friday, but I figure I'll get back to them on Monday afternoon if they haven't called by then.
While I was driving around, I heard something on the radio about a recording of people with a group called Empower Texas making ugly comments about Gov. Abbott being confined to a wheelchair. As I understand it, Empower Texas is a very conservative group that's been using campaign contributions, especially in primary elections, to swing the Texas GOP to the hard right, and has been fairly effective at it. The group's vice president and its general counsel were caught on tape using excessive profanity to disparage the governor, who is apparently not conservative enough for them, but at the same time to joke about his disability, the result of an accident. The group has done a lot of groveling and says these 2 folks are "suspended from all public activities with the organization immediately." What I'm wondering is why only the public activities? Does that mean they're not getting fired? And if they're not, does that mean their only crime was getting caught? Oddly enough, they weren't set up (something they've done to others) but instead sent out an unedited version of their podcast by accident. I think Shakespeare called it "hoist with their own petard," which sounds ugly enough to fit.
Also while I was driving around, I passed the Create Church, which says online that it seeks to "help people find and fulfill their created purpose in Christ" and wants to provide "a place where everyone can discover Christ and His plan for their life." All of which sounds a lot like predestination to me, no matter how you dress it up. I've never been a big fan of predestination, though I know that idea works fine for some people.
I also passed a business called Concentrix, which they say provides services to 10 widely varied industries, everything from automotive to banking to healthcare. I'm not sure but I think it's employees they're providing. The job market must be really odd these days.
I also heard how to find a virus testing site anywhere in the state. You go to TX.gov, click on the Covid-19 tab, and then go to the "I Want Information About" section for the label that says testing sites. They've got them shown on a map to make it easy to find the ones in each area. I'm glad I heard this announcement and am including it here in case others have missed it like me. This link might get you there. https://www.texas.gov/covid19
Finally ...
The daily temps haven't been too bad, but the high humidity has pushed the heat index up to some pretty uncomfortable levels. I wait to go to bed until the inside temp drops below 90° - usually around 9 PM - and we have 6 fans that go all night, and by about 5 AM it's gone down to the low to mid-80s. I'd really like to be able to stick it out until Wednesday, when the long extension cord is supposed to be delivered, but I'll just have to see how it goes. And hope Amazon really will deliver the cord by Wednesday.
I very much hope all of you are staying safe and staying cool.
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