THE HOLIDAY SEASON

This time of year living alone with no family nearby can be depressing.    Being alone one can lose track of what's happening during the holidays, especially living in a rural location.   Yesterday I drove into Roseburg to grocery shop and then to Lowe's to see if they had the grade of hydraulic oil needed for my new wood splitter.   I completely forgot this is the time of year people are out shopping for Christmas.   As I entered Lowe's there was Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus to greet me, an older couple dressed up in Santa clothes sitting on a sled.   I noticed the sales people were dressed up as elves.   Its been a while since I have been in Lowe's and where I thought hydraulic oil would be located was no longer the equipment section as they had changed everything in the store.   Standing nearby was a salesman dressed as an elf who took me out to the garden section where I  found the grade of hydraulic oil I needed.   I would have never of thought of looking in the garden section for oil of any kind.   On my return trip home I stopped to pickup three days worth of mail in my box.   I noticed a envelope from a woman in Texas.  My fist thought it might be a distant cousin to Celia, who did live in Texas as I remember.    It was not her cousin, but a woman living in San Antonia who had received a financial statement addressed to my address and somehow ended up in her mail.  She took it upon herself to directly mail it to me and avoid sending it back through the mail.   As I drove up Wildflower Lane and onto my driveway a pick up I did not recognize honked and stopped.   I thought they might be lost so I stopped to meet a FedEx man using his own vehicle to make deliveries.   It was a box of beans that Pamela and Mitchell sent me as they do every Christmas.   A man can never have enough beans.   

I must admit after yesterday this old scrooge feels the Christmas spirit and sees some goodness in this crazy world.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

LEWIS NEWTON - A GOOD NEIGHBOR

My neighbor Lew Newton passed away November 29, 2025 at the age of 94.   Lew and his wife Christine moved here in 1997 from Illinois to be closer to their older daughter, who lived on 10 acres with her husband at the end of the upper road on the top of the ridge.   Lew and Christine purchased a two story house at the end of the lower road that is above my place.   The older daughter and her husband sold their place and moved back east some time in 1999 or 2000.  The younger daughter lived in Eugene and would visit her parents on weekends.   Christine died 9 or 10 years ago leaving Lew by himself.   Lew had been a naval corpsman in the Korean War and made frequent trips to the Roseburg VA for his medical needs.   I suspect he had some PTSD from his experience in the war.    Lew was a helpful neighbor and any conversation with him he would end it by saying, "if you need help give me a call."   He was hard of hearing and rarely answered his phone due to his hearing loss.  Lew had a Kubota tractor that he would patch pot holes on the road with and at times helped me move down trees on our property.    I did help him out with falling some windthrown trees on his property and brushed his road once.   He had some near misses with his tractor, probably more than any us know about.   I remember hearing his tractor coming downhill onto an old tractor trail along the north boundary of our place.   As he drove down onto our driveway, I was puzzled by his appearance since there is no connecting road or trail on the property above us.   He told me he had run off the road on the 10 acres above that goes out to his house.   Knowing he could not get the tractor back up to the road he drove it down through the brush to the old tractor road that he knew was there.   He was a stubborn man hardly ever asking for help.   Seven or eight years ago he was using a ladder to clean the rain gutters on his two story house and fell.   He managed to call the ambulance for help.    His youngest daughter was staying with when she notice he was not doing good a day or two before he died.   She was going to take him to the hospital and he said NO, so she called the ambulance that took him to the VA hospital where he died the next day from a stoke.   Lew would have been 95 on December 9th.  Good neighbors like Lew are hard to come bye.  

NEW BED SHEETS

A few weeks ago while wandering aimlessly through the Sutherlin Bi Mart store, I noticed fleece sheets for a king size bed on sale for $45.   I thought to myself, those would be nice on these cold winter nights, since the old flannel sheets that I have are rotated as they wear out after developing holes in them over the last few years are in need of replacement.   Now that I think about those old sheets they must be 10 years old or more.  Maybe it was divine intervention from Celia telling me, " don't leave the store without them!"