Waltzing Right Out

'And Furthermore' Wallowa County Chieftain, January 2013

 My New Year’s resolution last year was to not make any New Year’s resolutions this year. I’ve broken most of my resolutions in the past, so it seemed best to break the cycle. But I’m going to break my resolution to not make resolutions because I came up with an even better approach. The weak link responsible for breaking previous resolutions was always me, so I realized I should just make New Year’s resolutions for other people. This is a much better system.

I’ll start with the important stuff. Road construction traffic flaggers, this resolution is for you. This year I don’t want you motioning toward the only possible route to take more than once per car. I know you’ve got a job to do. But believe me, we all know which way to go. We can see the bright orange cones. Not only can we can see the other line of cars that just went by, we’ve been praying for them to get here. The flashing light on the pilot car with a gigantic FOLLOW ME sign does a fantastic job of getting the message across. We get it.

Tom Farnam practicing tai chi with a road sign.

Yet you insist on pointing and waving and pointing and waving as if you’re going to avert some kind of disaster. The only people who would need that much instruction are screened by the DMV because they don’t issue drivers licenses to infants. So, please. Just stop with the constant arm waving. Every time you do that I feel obliged to act confused and pretend I’m going to drive over the cones like I don’t understand and I say we just call a truce. You can make your one arm motion per vehicle and stop at that. Just turning the sign around to SLOW is more than enough. But I’ll give you the one arm motion as a compromise. Thank you. That’s been bothering me for quite a while.

Now, pedestrians crossing our Main Streets out here, I’ve got a resolution for you. This may be unpopular with the Tourism Board because it’s directed at visitors. It’s pretty common practice out here for rigs to stop and let people walk across the street. It’s one of those quaint country living things. Courtesy. I’m all for it. But it’s a two-way street, this courtesy. According to a survey I did this past tourism season, everybody eating an ice cream cone on Main Steet in Joseph just waltzed right out in front of my truck paying no never mind. I know that’s not how it works in the city because there wouldn’t be anyone left in the city if that’s how you operated.

So my resolution for people about to walk out in front of me this year is that you look up first and wait half a second. I will slow down and wave you across – not more than once because that’s the new limit  – then you will say, Gosh, people sure are nice out here and that will be it. Otherwise I’m going to park, get out and start following you around, walking slowly across your path as you try to go about your business.

That’s about as far as I got on making resolutions for other people. Let’s see . . . world peace, I guess . . . no, I take that back. Most everybody’s been calling for world peace off and on since way back and it doesn’t seem to do any good. So I’m sticking with courtesy. Everybody, your New Year’s resolution for this year is just courtesy. It’s a nice one-word shorthand for “Do unto others” and “Walk a mile in someone’s shoes” and all those other fine guidelines that seem to lose traction at the first sign of friction.

You don’t even have to be especially nice. You can not like someone or something and still be courteous. It will look like sarcasm maybe, but that’s just a risk you’re going to have to take.

So Happy New Year to everyone in Wallowa County, also the fine folks at the Mayan calendar factory and everyone else out there. Now go be courteous.

Jon Rombach is a local columnist for the Chieftain. His mom taught him to look both ways before crossing the street. And to be courteous. She’s a nice lady. You’d like her.

Free Neutering for Brass Monkeys

Cold out there. Colder'n a gut-shot bitch wolf dog with nine suckin' pups pullin' a number four trap up a hill in the dead of winter in the middle of a snowstorm with a mouth full of porcupine quills.

That, I should mention, is some Tom Waits that I neither googled nor listened to again to be sure, so I could be off, but pretty sure them lines are engraved in my grey matter. Can't remember my pin number to the new debit card, but I've got Tommy Waits lines firmly committed to memory.

Notice the zero. And notice the red thing under it. That's the thermo at 8 this morn.

 And this is a horsey in the cold.

Heated doghouse floor

Miss Bula got an upgrade to her log home with radiant heat flooring, aka a heating pad from the hardware store under a new poofy foam mattress and upholstery.

Actually, it's wall-to-wall poofiness. I figured what the hell, pad the sides too. The arms and back on my couch have padding and she seems to like crawling up there, so let's give this house the full treatment.

Teaching her to use the controls wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. For an old dog she picked right up on it.

Caught walking down the street near Baby Beach

Here's a family portrait shot by the Google Earth car when the Rombach clan took a stroll to Prince Kuhio Park in Kauai.

Orwell, you were so, so right. So right.

Axe to grind

Attention People Who Make Axe Handles These Days: You Are Not Good At What You Do.

You can see by the faded pink on this fiberglass handle here that the axe has clearly been out in the elements, got UVed, brittle and broke. That chunk missing from the middle is where I got pissed and swung the thing into the wood pile, visualizing heads of people in the fiberglass handle industry. It was cathartic.

As far as me letting this get UVed, an axe isn't something I will ever bring inside out of the weather, swaddle in velvet and prop it's feet up next to the fire. It's an axe. It's supposed to be tough. It belongs outside.

I probably shouldn't get worked up about handles on tools. But new axe and maul handles break at a discouraging rate and I've gone through a passel of them and it pierces me off. You bust a handle, go to get a replacement and the new wood replacement handles I've tried also break, then it's just a couple bucks more for a whole new axe with another crappy handle and there you are again later, swirling around in a predicament nobody cares about but me and it's lonely, so lonely.

In contrast, here's the double-bit axe I got from my grandfather that's, what, probably at least 30 years old at least and still cranking out what it's supposed to do with the original handle.

I burn wood in the house, my office, my hot tub and my shop. Lots of chopping. I like it when people bitch about the cost of heating oil or propane because that's a problem I don't share.

On the bright side, I bought a new handle to have laying around and went and tapped on old head on there after breaking that fiberglass piece of shit -- though I see now I should have kept tapping, as this thing isn't quite seated down right . . . but I like this Norlund head. Cuts so good I just have to hold it up to a piece of firewood and the pieces are intimidated into splitting themselves.

Also check out the closeup on the guy in a canoe. I like it.

Foggy app for iPhone

Never thought I'd get into engineering apps, but then I stumbled upon an exciting technique for taking shitty photos without the hassle of dowloading Instagram or whatever.

To achieve the look and feel of the following steelhead picture, simply carry your cameraphone in the pocket of your waders until moisture fogs up the lens, then voila'.

It's so vintage and classy and stuff. As opposed to this next one, taken by my pal Mike whose camera was not equipped with my patented foggy lens.

Boooooooring.

Waiting for the train

And Furthermore column, Wallowa County Chieftain. December 5, 2012

Santa Claus sent me a letter this year, via his attorneys, and I’m trying not to panic. The upshot of this letter, or “injunction,” as they call it, is that my requests for future gifts are being put on hold until I can demonstrate appropriate use of gifts already received, namely a train set I was all excited about but haven’t been using.

I’m in a bind here, because the train isn’t really mine. It belongs to Wallowa and Union counties. They bought it and played with it some at first, then let other kids park their train cars on the tracks. Then last year I got all excited because there was talk of the train carrying rafters and fishermen again between Rondowa and Minam, about nine miles along the Wallowa River down to the Grande Ronde through a roadless section. It’s a beautiful stretch for day trips and steelheading. I work as a rafting guide so having that train service again was splendid news.

That’s when I wrote Santa asking to pretty please make it true that the train would start running again. And it did, sort of. I live by the tracks and waved at it a few times. But I should have been more specific and asked for the train to keep running. Especially the 48 fishing trips and 48 rafting trips that were talked about, but didn’t materialize.

Wallowa-Union Railroad Authority, or WURA (pronounced “wooh-ruh,” I think), contracted with Sierra Nevada and Pacific Railroad, or SNAP (pronounced, “where are you guys?”) to take over managing the trains. SNAP crackled and popped with all sorts of fun ideas, including the notion of bringing in an old fancy choo choo train called the Blue Goose that runs on steam. But then it appeared all their steam got used up talking about neato ideas.

But let’s back up. Wouldn’t Sierra Nevada and Pacific Railroad be SNaPR, instead of SNAP? You can’t just promote “and” to a capital letter and leave out the “Railroad” part, can you? That might give the impression you’re good at snappy presentations but aren’t too concerned with the actual railroad part. Coincidentally, that’s the impression I’ve been getting.   

But on the front page of the Chieftain last week (Rail line’s operator hopes to renegotiate pact with counties), Rob Ruth reports that the head of SNaPR, Court Hammond, is gathering steam to get things back on track. That was two train references in one sentence. I hope you enjoyed that.

Let me know if I can help, Mr. Hammond. I’ll run that Minam to Rondowa stretch myself if it will help. Set me up with a handcar and I’ll hire some local football players to crank the handles up and down and we’ll get rail service going through that gem of a river canyon. We’ll call it Old Fashioned Way Railways, or SNaZZY, for short.

I caught six steelhead one day on a steelhead train excursion back when it used to run. That’s a great day for any steelheader and if you’ve seen me fish, you know it’s mind boggling. I met other people on the train with similar experiences. 

I truly believe that river train will be good for Wallowa County. People were coming out here from all over to fish from the steelhead train, spending their money at Wallowa County hotels, restaurants, stores, speakeasies, gas stations, spreading out dollars. And steelhead seasons are outside normal tourism months. It was cold and gray, but folks were still enjoying Wallowa County and talking about bringing their families back during the summer. You could just feel the economy being stimulated.

Tom Farnam losing his train of thought.

 So let’s get that train rolling. Otherwise, as Santa’s North Pole legal team pointed out in their nasty letter to me, if we’re not going to play with our train set there are thousands of bicycles delivered each year to Wallowa County residents and visitors who would be tickled to peddle down the path if it were converted to a trail. Bike paths also stimulate the economy. We could call it the Wallowa-Union Scenic Bikeway, or SHAZAM, for short.

Jon Rombach is a local columnist for the Chieftain. He wrote to Santa this year asking for the forest roads to stay open so he can cut firewood. Also a pony. And a Red Ryder BB gun.