Another Anniversary

Big news. Pam and I have made it another year and we are still together taking on life’s problems and the world around us. It stared 57 years ago with two young scared teenagers running away from home. Running away to be together forever. Our life has not always been an adventure every day but a lot of it has. Running away was our only way out we could see back then. Pam’s parents laid down there rules we were not to “ever” see each other again. We were too young to be spending this much time together. She was 15 and I was 17.

Tim 17, Pam 15 This picture was made about two months after we got married.

I had quit school, lied about my age and went to work in a cotton mill at age16. Used a paper they got me in school with called a Certification of Birth. I was now guilty of forgery I guess because I changed the date on the paper to make myself eighteen so I could go to work running a man’s job. I had a car now and was working steady. Never missed a day and was never late for work before the big blow up came trying to be a stand up guy. After it happen two weeks went by without seeing her. Then I got a break. She was at a restaurant with another girl and we spent maybe “no more than ten minutes together before she had to go home. Within that ten minutes came the biggest event of my life. “She ask me to marry her.” She was crying as she left saying please make it happen. Her parents were to work on different shifts for just one week and she was to set up at night when her mother left for work and stay up until her daddy came home. She could call me then with her younger brothers asleep and no one would know. We made a plan. I picked her up at school at lunch to go get a blood test. No school calls home when a girl skips lunch. The blood test was something they stared after World War Two to check for diseases. There forgery was necessary again to get marred. We went across the state line to Georgia and with a forged blood test saying we were 21 we got married. We spent Friday, Saturday and most of Sunday together before we came back and they were not having it. They even had their preacher there saying this marriage could not stand with out God’s blessing. They were treating us with all they could think of when Pam told her mother we were going home and we would be back the next day to check on them. She was sorry they were so upset but we are married now. We left and sad as it is, it was never truly over with them. I was always an outcast. Working hard so we could go on another adventure never measured up to being a good husband I guess. And this brings us today. Planning our next adventure. This Chinese virus has made a mess in our lives so far. We bought this little house out here on the Kansas prairie hopping to spend our summers out here with the dry heat where it so hot in the Caribbean with the humidity it makes it hard to deal with. Hoping this little house would advance the adventure of life. Spending our summers out here and winters on our boat. It’s late to be going back to our boat in the Caribbean but maybe we can get it ready to go back to sea. We are leaving in April to go back to see how bad a shape our boat is in after leaving it 9 months. Timing is everything in life and our timing is way off but our boat is still a big part of our life. We need to go see if we can go to sea before hurricane season or just do what we can to leave soon after hurricane season is over. I could say I’m old now and weak but the real reason I’m not going out there in life treating weather is. I’m chicken. Been in hurricanes. We are safe here and our boat we hope is safe where it’s at. Maybe we can some how make an adventure in getting the timing right.

Sunday we went motorcycle riding with our son and a friend. It was great.

 

Still Enjoying Kansas

In our last blog I said this week I would tell what we have been doing with the Chinese Virus changing how people live out here. Can’t go to a local rodeo, car shows or parades of any kind. The trade off, if there is one of being here is the food. This is farm country and there is good food every where. On TV the other day they stated what I have been saying for a long time, Rural Kansas is one of the cheapest places in the US to live. I have been saying that for years. It’s cheaper to live in Kansas than the Caribbean. What people don’t know is what it’s like to live in a place like Guatemala where people make 12 to 15 US dollars a day if they can find a “good” job. These people have very little. Going down there with money won’t buy you what is not for sell there so we are living good here but needing more each day the adventure of being back on our sail boat.

Pamela Ann

We are waiting on our next virus shot before we go back to Guatemala to see what condition our boat is in after we have left it this long. We are going back to see if we can get it ready to sail back to the US. Hopefully to New Orleans. In the mean time there is no work for us out here doing boat work. They even canceled our art shows we were to have a few pieces in when we came out here this time. Now all this is changing as people out here are finding ways to cope with this “Chinese Virus mess.” We have been “invited” to be in a contest for an art show in Hays. A contest for who will be allowed to be in the art showing will be judged by a collage art professor that teaches collage art. I was once watching an collage trained art teacher teaching kids and she stared by having the kids feel the paper to see if they could feel what they wanted to paint. Saying art is all about the feeling. I’m old school and it’s not what I’m feeling that I paint. I like my art to tell a story not how I’m feeling that minute of the day. I have been ask a lot, “When dose a boat become a boat?” What exact minute does it cross a line and change from what you’re working with and become a boat? I think being an artist is the same. I drew the plans for our boat. The schooner Pamela Ann. Designed and built everything. I have sold some art but does that make me an artist. My name at least is starting to be out there just a little. We were ask to bring some of our art to a gallery in Russel Kanasa and there we were ask to do an art show. If we do this art show and the whole show is just Pennington art does this make me an artist? The show is to run for several weeks in September. I need thirty plus paintings. If I sell something will this mean I’m and artist. I believe you need to sell enough to support yourself to be called and artist. Maybe I can just fake it till I make it. On the other side of trying to make money we have written three books and have no idea how to get them published. One is a little small book about growing up with every one lying to you. My mother told me all the time when I was little I was smart. Mothers should not be the first person to lie to there kids. They will find out soon enough when they start to school “as in my case anyway” they have been lied to. It never stops all through life. If a women ask you if the skin tight pants she is wearing make her look fat. What are you going to say? Like I said every ones lies. The second book is to set the record strait about how I have lived most of my life. Gathering up thing that are broke changing it as I fix it to suit us more or buying something new and redesigning it before we even uses it. Its like going to Walmart and buying new boots. Taking them home and using a band saw trimming the sole off around the out sides of the new boots to get rid of all that extra tread. I’m not carrying all that around when I walk. Can’t find what you want modifie it to make it better. I have always carry a pocket watch all my life. If I have my pants on I have a Swiss army knife with lot of gadgets in my pocket. May need to work on something. Only have had one hair cut after we got married in 57 years that Pam didn’t cut it. The lest may go on about how I live and maybe it is in who you talk to. As I said the book we want to publish now. The title of the book is. “I’m Not Eccentric.” It’s true I’m not eccentric no mater what some say.

Below are some of the art I have been working on.

A pencil drawing.

A Vintage farm truck. Oil on burlap.

Farm Girls: Oil on canvas

Boat Yard: Oil on canvas

Staying Busy

Last week I said I was reworking a circa Civil War wooden rocker. I delivered it this week. Most of my life it has been reworking boats, building boats or doing something on boats. Very little on a boat I work on is as old as that rocker.

Working on this rocker was very interesting. We even put the original goose down cushion back in the seat. The owners we very happy with the way it turned out.

I have reworked some old wood steering wheels. Climbed and scarfed wooden mast. Made new booms and cut a lot of teak. Cut fiberglass boats up to redesign decks and put them back together. Taken out the whole interior in boats and built it back. But I did rework an old boat one time. Pam and I were working in her sail loft when a man came in saying he wanted a set of sails for a pond boat and he needed someone to restore it. He said he could bring it in if we thought we could help. He said it was a small boat. He was back about an hour later. When he came back in her shop I stood up and said “Damn, That is a Real pond yacht. I didn’t know what you were saying with pond boat.” He said, “I told you it was a pond boat.” I told him that he may consider having a professional rework this boat it was so old. Working on it may hurt it’s value. He said I thought you were a professional. He said I’m not taking all this back to New Jersey. You rework this or I will find someone around here who will. I went to work on it. I even kept the trash that had accumulated inside. The nails were sheared and the screws were hand made. The lead keel had bubbles in the cast and the sails were so old if you touched them they would turn to powder. He said it had been in the attic of his grandmothers house he knew for 60 years. Just to ugly to be keep down stairs and she said it had been pasted down for several generations. After it was finished we delivered it. I had made a stand for it to set in. He had bought a mirror to set it on in his living room. I told him he needed to have it put on his insurance policy. A few days later he came in the shop saying the insurance put a value of ten thousand dollars on a thirty eight inch long pond boat he was calling it. With a forty eight inch mast and new linen sails. What is a pond yacht not a pond boat . The very rich had these little model built to sail in small ponds in city parks and they raced them. Some times chasing along side them in small rowing dinghies changing their course by poking them with a long stick. I have seen this done today on cruising boats with kids. Of course these boats were crude and looked home built. Not the same with pond yacht. As it has always been the rich always want every thing better than anyone else. This is why pond yachts are so salt after today. We had another experience in Louisiana above New Orleans in Mandeville in the bayou there. We were laying against the wall. There was a group there racing remote control small model sailboats three feet long. You have to make an important to get the bridge to open. I walk over and explained we needed to leave to make the bridge and didn’t want to stop their race with us leaving. The woman in control of the race said, “Just sail through them. We will call it a moving obstacle. It will be good. We left with people cheering us on and everyone making pictures of our old top mast schooner slowly moving through all those little sail boats. Out here we don’t have boats to work on and we don’t know what to really do about our boat down in Guatemala. So much to deal with trying to just get back there. What we may find has happen to our boat left there and what to do with our boat when we get there. Can we leave and sail back to the US by passing all the countries along the way? After our boat has been setting there this long what will we have to repair. What will supplies cost with us not being able to work with this Chinese virus going on? In less than a month Pam and I will be married 57 years. We have road out many of life’s storms. In our next blog I will explain a little of what we have been doing to get through the last year. One of my life’s heroes owned a newspaper and said he only wanted to here the truth. That seems impossible today and he only wanted to hear what you had done and not so much what you were talking about doing. I may break that rule next week and tell what we have been doing and what we are trying to do.

The snow has all melted now. We had -18F  to +62F today.