How We Carpool or, How I Got Runover in the Back of the Pickup/ Part 1

Very well then!  At roundtable yesterday morning, Pokey says, “I think we should get it together & go to town today — I watched the weather & they are predicting possible rain every day this week.  So if we wanna do laundry & get the books to the library sale, I say let’s grab today.”   So Badger Pokey & Kitey scatter to their various get-ready-for-town-chores.

Kitey goes up to the Coop & uses boards to make a trestletable of the rainbuckets, & stacks boxes of books on it so that when Badger brings the wheelbarrow, they will be at the head of the path instead of inside the breezeway into which it is a bitch to wrestle the wheelbarrow.  Then Badger brings the wheelbarrow the back way because it is more level, however the back path hasnt been used much lately & is kinda jungley so she has already decided by the time she arrives that she’s takin the books down the front path.  Kitey & Badger wrestle the wheelbarrow all the way through the breezeway (which’s basically a drainageditch haphazardly bridged by planks & pallets), and Badger starts wheelin the books down to the pickup.  There’s maybe a couple-3 hundred books, so it takes a few trips.

The plan is to load the books in the very back of the pickup bed to stablize the bounce, because Kitey has had a brainstorm since the drears of winter, & is conjurin to ride to town in FridaKahlo style — except no fourposter or band, boohoo.   So we’re gonna stash Kitey across the bed behind the cab, & fit laundry, librarysale books, recycling, sparetire, & giant tupperware-for-in-case-of-rain-at-least-some-of-the-laundry-wont-get-sopped, all the somewherelses we can find.  Well hoo-hah we succeed.

When everyone’s sufficiently spiffed for town, Kitey goes down to stand at the end of the turnaround, because the battery’s dead so Pokey hasta jumpstart it in reverse which’s kinda too jolty of an operation for Kitey’s pickiness.  Pokey & Badger come roarin up, & Badger leaps outta passenger seat, gives Kitey a leg up as though they do it every day, & off we go to town.

A nervous dog lives across the road from our mailbox, so we dont crank up BobMarley until after we pick up the mail.  Then we sing GetupStandup & Badger blams out the verse we sing instead of MrMarley’s third just like that, woo-hah.  Then acourse we do it again.  Then Pokey remembers the name of the one Kitey calls the “other one” & we do OneLove a bit, & then we’re onto the paved road so the cab girls can talk amongst themselves cause it’s too windy-loud for Kitey to converse through the back window.

This whole first part of the trip to town is a leisurely drive along dirt roads borderin fields of Chicory, Echinachea, QA’s Lace, Fleabane, BlackeyedSusans, Ironweed — well many the manies — interspersed with woods.  Oh yeah & then homeplaces of people — 6 altogether, on that stretch.  When we turn onto the pavement the gearup begins — it is not just higherspeed travel, it is a whole gearup of the person-person interface, cause in town people interface faster.  So Badger & Pokey listen to the rest of the cd & talk & rev in the cab, & Kitey lies on her pallet & smiles upon FridaKahlo & watches the treetops spin by.