The sun was a few hours away from setting and I was enjoying my job of roof sweeping when a strange truck rolled up the driveway. Four eager people got out of the car as Marvin came to greet the newcomers. He vouched for at least two of them. While I was more focused on my task at hand, I did notice the bounty coming out of their vehicle in the form of food and drink. Cleaning off all the roofs did not take as long as I thought it would and, besides rousing a poor little sleeping bat and falling into piles of rusty metal, it wasn't a bad way to finish up a day. With my arms throbbing a little bit from wielding a large push broom for a while, I started heading for the kitchen to heat up some water for a shower. It felt like I had redwood needles in almost every nook of my body and gutter juice from my face to my elbows. A hot shower was badly in order. Alas, my plan was delayed as the new guests stopped me to ask some questions. About thirty minutes later I finally got to the house to start preparing a hot shower.
With the daily grime scrubbed off me and a few more gulps of my water bottle, it was time to go make a cocktail. As I descended the stairs, I could hear the campfire crackling out front. It was Saturday night and I was not going to bed before midnight tonight. In the kitchen I splashed, stirred, and sipped until I found something palatable. My apple cider cocktail was unique as well as tasty. Goblet in hand, I joined the party out front. The conversation was amusingly varied from antics of past ranch visits to sentiments on doomsday scenarios. Hotdogs on the grill, the moon peeking out from the tree tops, and the fire jacked up from 5 minutes of flame thrower action, this is how ranch nights should be.
Mushrooms preceded the make your own chili dog entree followed a few hours later with a bottle of absinthe for desert. Some of these faces matched names I had heard of in stories. Make sure you choose your tone of voice wisely when saying, "Oh, that was you! I've heard about this before." This was a hard crowd to rile-up, an oddly laid back pool of testosterone and liquid courage...at this point.
Art opted out of the outing by retiring to bed. Flashlights and a machete in hand, we mosey'd down the driveway towards the funhouse. I tried to suggest we try to do it without flashlights but nobody else was too keen. Once we found the open door the oddities awaited us. This makeshift structure was born out of necessity from salvaged scraps to serve as a home to an extreme pacifist-hoarder. There are rooms behind rooms for everything from extra bathtubs, to rotary phones, to a rat latter. The cute little wood burning stove sports a modern splatter paint motif and made me wonder where it came from. As the guys poked around trying to scare each other with outlandish 'what if' statements, I found a rusty oil drum to jump up on into the rafters. Not much up there but it made it nicer to lay in wait for the next unsuspecting victim to walk in. The plan was to jump down and yell when one of the guys found their way into the room below, but I was too relaxed to do it fast enough. Failed prank or no, I got credit for staying up there alone for quite a few minutes. It was actually peaceful.
After the funhouse we took a little night walk down the tracks to see what else we could find. The river is roaring still and combined with the chorus of frogs calling make for a serene auditory background to our exploration. Trying to use the darkness and white noise of the river to our advantage, another quick scare tactic plan was hatched. I will admit I am not good at being sneaky, which is why I messed that one up as well. But as we all laughed at my failure and rallied to head back home, we realized we were one short. Standing at the tracks all three other guys wanted to just leave him. I kind of couldn't believe they would do that. I told them they could go and I would stay and find him, my training and darn empathy couldn't let me just ditch somebody in the woods. As I strolled back into the darkness, sure enough but the fourth musketeer jumped out from the bushes right at me. He was lucky I didn't have the machete anymore, but he didn't know that. And at least I didn't jump. By this point some people wanted to go to bed and all of us were ready to get back to a warm fire.
Back at the house the red-haired visitor proceeded to get out left over hot dogs and two cinnamon buns, attempting to warms them over the fire. Charred wiener, dirty buns, and beer make a great late night snack, apparently. They were polite and offered to share. I politely declined. At some point in all this we discovered that the bottle of absinthe we were drinking was over 100 proof so naturally we asked what would happen if you spit it at the fire. Yup, big, awesome fire ball. By 2am the fire was kind of dying out and I would spit or splash a pony shot to the fading fire. Luckily it was a random gift and nobody particularly enjoyed the taste of this spirit. We really didn't need green fairy to have a good time, but it probably didn't hurt. Bigfoot made an encore as well.
Eventually the clock reached 3am and even I was ready to call it a night. I helped the guys in the tent get the proper woody material to heat their abode and pointed out the free futon in the living room to the lone straggler of bed-calling. Everybody had had enough grog and excitement to pass out practically anywhere but people are a lot more likely to work the next day if they don't have a bad back.
Its funny how the different characters that saunter through this place resonate their energy off the hills and hear something new every time. You could see how four unaccounted for dudes could pose a potential risk for harm and destruction. But not this anything but motley crew. Like my Mom sometimes says, "No expectations, no disappointments". This weekend was a great reminder of how true that really is.
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