[lit-ideas] Re: Vegetable Plot

  • From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:48:15 -0800

I leave for a moment or two--"where," the cry goes round, "have our Sunday poems gone"?-- and return to find the list threatened by an invasive species of vegetable eaters. How aptly Darwinian.


For I have been visiting Picchus--there are two, Machu and the younger one, "machu" being Quechan for "old" and "Picchu" the same language's term for "peak"--and Galapagos, of which there are as you know, several, "galapago" meaning "saddle." So I have toured los Saddles and enjoyed the giddy heights of Cusco, Peru, described by our guide as the "navel" of the Inca empire, a town that offers all "good prices" and "best prices," but never it seems "better prices." Perhaps I'm just not the better kind of person?

And now? Having become accustomed to a six a.m. stroll along volcanic cinder paths, with boobies to the left and warblers to the fore, I bethought myself (if indeed a self can be bethought) to rise betimes on our first day back in northern climes (you'll forgive the assonance I hope) and stroll along the local freeway to where daughter number two was stranded with a flat tire. "Why," you ask, knowing that I have raised them in self sufficiency, was such a rescue attempt necessary? Why was she not swiftly doing the change herself? Because without a tow truck's flashing lights behind, there was no way even I, "the dad," wanted to attempt the switch. Altogether too dangerous.

What caused this bit of fun? That will be revealed when I hie me down to the tire shop later this morn and get their diagnosis. Julia thinks she hit a curb, but what I saw was more like a chisel or other sharp implement's puncture. It could be that someone, in the spirit of holiday fun, decided to puncture the tire and Julia was too sleepy this morning to notice, at the slow speeds of our neighborhood, that the car wasn't moving correctly.

Emily came to collect me at the tire shop and we parked at a friend's house, close to the freeway, she staying with the car while I hiked along the verge, hunting for the hubcap which, in the way of things, I found very nearby where Julia had finally stopped, the best part of a mile along the way. You really haven't fully enjoyed a northern morning until, in sleety flurries, you have squelched along a sodden verge with vehicles close by, zipping at sixty or more mph. The flora and fauna weren't quite up to Galapagos standards, but that's just a quibble.

Arriving back at the car, I hopped in, happy to be warm. Emily turned the key. Nothing. Flat battery. And this after I carefully went round all the cars yesterday, checking that they would start. There must have been just enough juice for one cold start. Fortunately our friend was home and it was a comparatively simple matter to jump the SAAB. The other vehicles are currently being charged.

The Galapagos and all the rest I'll have to describe slowly, as anecdotes occur. Generally the vacation was great fun, everything my wife expected and plenty for your sometime curmudgeonly correspondent to think about and enjoy.

Repeat after me: one Galapago, dos Galapagos.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon


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