I'm back. Seventy-seven hours, five states, and one province.

ND to MN to ND to MT to ID to WA to BC to WA to ID to MT to ND.

Mercy me.

Now I drive to SD. It's family reunion time in Spearfish.

Brandon is fishing at Lake Ilo. I'm working on music stuff. Trying to get my new CD, Rough Notes from Otter Cove, shipped off to the manufacturer as soon as possible.

Yesterday, Brandon and I brushed paint on my parents' mountain house. As per Grandpa's recommendation, we used red paint. Then we hiked to the dams and watched beavers at play. Then pie.

The trim is painted. It's done. The house looks new!

"There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming."
-Soren Kierkegaard

This goes for women, too, I'm purdy sure.

Ah, sweet summer cometh. Sublime weather. No bugs, long days, a slight breeze, 80 degrees.

Here is the quote of the day:

"It is not the active revolutionary who impresses people but the man powerful enough to sleep in the daytime. . . . A man who sleeps during the day (and you have to imagine him in a bedroom with no more than a bed and a naked lightbulb) is unquestionably a hero."--Jean Giono

I found it in M. Earl Craig's book, Yes, Master.

Juneberry and I have not been heroic in that sense, however. We are working. It's good having help.

We put the second, and final, paint coat on today. It's more or less the color of tomato soup (the trim will be the color of soda crackers, I think).

The second coat will go on tomorrow.

Pictured is Brandon "Juneberry" Wachholz.

My house is now red. Pictures soon.

Happy Father's Day, Pops.

I love you more than food.

Thanks for always being t/here for me.

Home again.

Time to paint my house.

As Gramps sez: "Anything worth painting, is worth painting red."

Speaking of Grandpa, he turned 89 last week. This picture is from last summer. Also pictured are Owen (cousin) and Dude (horse). You'll notice the color of both the picnic table and his cabin.

My stay in Indianapolis was rockin'. Christy has a fun family, and they live on a beautiful lake. We paddle-boated, played croquet, bicycled, surveyed flood damage, visited her friends Brook and Aaron, watched Evan Almighty, and ate tons of top-notch food. On Sunday, Christy's parents threw a party. I got to meet aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Brandon, my hoboing friend from Minnesota, has been in Dunn Center since Friday. I'm living vicariously through his stories of hardcore train adventures. Right now he's poring over a ragged road atlas, memorizing "crew-change cities" and train arrival-departure times. We'll work on my house this weekend, when I get back from the next trucking run.

Indianapolis got hit by some serious flooding this weekend. We've seen many cars under water.

Christy and I are off to Indiana, in an hour, to meet the parents. Mrs. Miller emailed me yesterday to ask what kinds of foods I like to eat. I replied, "Spaghetti, pineapple, cake, and salad." (It was all I could think of.) She emailed back, "Spaghetti, pineapple, cake, and salad it is!"

I wonder what kind of cake.

By the way, someone wanted to see what the truck I drive looks like. This is "Pearl":


That's Bull Goodall, to the left, fueling.

My friends, Elija and Nancy, graciously picked me up in Dunn Center this afternoon and drove me back to their Mandan apartment, so that I can catch a flight to Denver tomorrow.

Unfortunately, one of their cats is ejecting a most putrid smell into the atmosphere.

i, too, have
a red

wheelbarrow glazed
with rain

outside my
window--

nothing depends
on it.

If anyone is wondering about the status of the Roll Out, Cowboy film, here's the gist:

Ladies Lawrence and Vine have decided to turn it into a three-year character study. They'll return to North Dakota this autumn and next.

Coincidentally, another New York filmmaker recently approached me about doing a Sandman documentary. When I told her about Roll Out, Cowboy, she bowed out.

On a side note, I'd like to become a filmmaker myself someday, to document my Sand grandparents. They are original back-to-the-landers with a lot to share.

Today begins seven months of half-time work. Shawn and I will only deliver tilapia to Vancouver, BC, twice a month now. Adanac Seafood Inc. is trying to save money by sending their own trucks to Renville twice a month. Once the icy months resume, though, they'll let us run full-time again. Sounds fishy.

On the bright side, I now have more time to goof off.

Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman . . . and rest in peace, Utah Phillips (photo).

At the Medora poetry gathering, I sang "The Goodnight-Loving Trail," Utah's ode to an aging cowboy. I didn't know that he had passed away just hours before.

Although I never met Utah, I wrote him a letter once and sent him two of my CDs. I've been a big fan since 1975, when Dad brought home a vinyl record called El Capitan. To hear a sample of Utah's story-telling and song, listen here.

Courtesy of Christy's cell phone:

Grandpa and me at the Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

The very beginning and end get chopped off, but you'll get the flavor.

Blogger has not allowed me to post anything new to this journal since last week. It has been disconcerting.

The Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora was great. Christy, my peachy girlfriend, was with me all weekend. Good friends "V" from Wyoming and Susan from Montana were there, too. Grandpa joined me on stage for the "Summer of the Government Roundup" poem, which was well received. I got interviewed for North Dakota Public Radio by Merrill Piepkorn.

Today Christy helped paint my kitchen. Tonight we enjoyed a rich juneberry and rhubarb pie that Grandma made. Christy leaves tomorrow morning at 5 a.m.

I'll be trucking for the next three or four days. I am a fish hauler, fish hauler am I.

The weekend went by in a flash. Scraped old lead paint off much of my house. Salvaging a building takes more effort than building new.

I've decided to hire my friend Brandon, from Minnesota, to come here in June to help me with various projects (roofing, sanding the floor, replacing the porch, and so on). He's a 20-year-old tramp, and he plans to arrive the old-fashioned way--via boxcar!

###

For humor, see cowboy/cop video here.

This coming weekend I'll be spinning a couple of rhymes at the Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora. I'll include a poem that my late granduncle Chris Sand wrote, "Summer of the Government Roundup." In a sense, it's a collaboration between him and me, because I altered it a bit to make it flow better aloud.

The poem takes place in 1929, when Uncle Chris was working along Wolf Creek on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. He meets two Indian cowboys who teach him a trick for taming a wild horse:

O, they roped 'im, threw 'im, and tied 'im
Put a pinch of black dust in each eye
And when they released him, he'd lost all his starch
And to drive him was easy as pie

Mostly the poem is a poignant reminiscence of Uncle Chris' (and Grandpa's) younger days, as in the final verse:

I'll always remember that summer
I think of it still in my dreams
I'll never get over my days as a drover
Or the flavor of Shorty's baked beans

I'm hoping that Grandpa will join me on stage to share a couple of his government roundup memories. He balks at the idea, but I think Dad and Grandma will talk him into it.

Check out my new slammin' Willie Wisely-produced jam: Go Bama Go! (It's not finished, though. Check back in a couple weeks for the final version.)

The songs on the unreleased CD I recorded earlier this year with Froseph--Rough Notes from Otter Cove--sound nothing like this. "Go Bama Go!" is as much advertisement as it is a pop/rap song. Pop-aganda?

The Froseph songs are more mystic and rustic.

Truck drivers come in every size, color, religion, and gender. There are philosopher truckers, skinhead truckers, grandpa and grandma truckers, fresh-off-the-farm-never-seen-a-city-before truckers, Hindu/Muslim/Buddhist truckers, punk rock truckers, lesbian truckers, and more. Tuesday night I ran into a Willie Nelson look-alike trucker, clip-on braids and all. Claimed to have gone to school in Hibbing, MN, with Bob Dylan.

I've seen a lot in the last six months: sunsets, sunrises, night skies, wildlife, waitresses. I've seen avalanches, aliens, gnarly road-kills, and over 20 wrecked semis. I've made good money, paid off debts, developed an addiction to taurine, listened to satellite radio, and watched over 50 dvds in the sleeper cab. I've run over 16 curbs. I've been blown off the road by 60-mph winds. I've jackknifed. I've survived.

Trucking has been kind to me.

Tonight Bull Goodall and I head to Philip, SD, to fill up with tilapia fingerlings. We'll haul them to Minnesota, then make our usual run to British Columbia. Back Friday.

For Mother's Day I made a huckleberry pie for Mom and Farmor. I wish I could've delivered a piece out to Grandma Vi in Montana, and to my Godmom Bryher, too.

It's gently raining right now. Everyone is grateful, especially me. My lady, Christy, is flying up here for Memorial Day weekend. I want to impress her with the greenery of the scenery.

Last week I received an email from a Kansas bicyclist named April, who was looking for places to stay on her way through North Dakota. She had been given my number by a Fargo friend. Her timing conflicted with my trucking schedule, so I told her how to get into my house.

Yesterday morning, driving home, I saw a bicyclist pedaling west from Dunn Center. It was April, who'd spent the previous night at my place. I let her know that we were expecting 4" of snow, so she hunkered down at my parents' house in Killdeer for a couple days. The snow has melted now, and she heads out tomorrow morning, destination Seattle.

Happy trails, April! You've proven that not every long-distance vehicle requires a bathtub full of dinosaur juice.

Farewell, Eddy Arnold. Your days' work is done and done well.

My 100% Norwegian Grandma Edna turns 88 years old today. She thinks this means she's getting old.

I see it more like: 8 + 8 = 16.

Happy Sweet Sixteen, Farmor*!

(*Norwegian for father's mother.)