Rancho Año Nuevo

Here's a couple of pix for the expats out there. This is the new building on the NE corner of Main and Olive where the old Porterville Hotel stood for a hundred years. This new one will hold the new DA's offices on the top two floors while the first floor will be for (whatever) businesses. The scaffolding has been removed since this shot was taken.








This is a shot of the remodeling that's going on for the new "Fugazi's" Italian restaurant. You will immediately recognize it as the former "Palace" restaurant. The place has been vacant for quite some time.

 

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Reckon I couldn't pass up a shot of my bestest and onlyest coon dog ever. When not being an absolute snotty princess and a royal pain in the wazoo, she's the sweetest and sharpest doggie in our whole area code. Love my goofy pooch.

It's just another day at the rancho for Roo (real name, Strutarooski),  our gorgeous big ol' red rooster. He's definitely the cock o' the walk! In the background is the Ranch Rino. I needed it to pull the van out of the muck and wanted to do some minor maintenance on it so didn't put it back in the pole barn.

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Here's one of the Barred Rocks parked on the #4 garden box. There's hardly a square inch of our rancho that hasn't had a chicken foot in it. We love our two-legged fertilizer spreaders! The box is pretty much barren and has yet to be readied for spring. There seems to be no hurry which is probably why all of my veggie harvests are so late in the year.













To the right is a shot of our "back 40 minus 38.5" taken from the neighbor's yard. We were coming back from a nice visit with our new neighbors who, I am most pleased to report, are GOOD neighbors! Looking west. I hate palm trees. You can't see the mess in my pole barn.












Well! Can you believe it?! It’s January 2020! I could have sworn that 2019 had just gotten here and now it’s 2020! Doesn’t that just burn your hoe cakes?! It seems like this New Year got here faster than Granny Clampett could track, shoot, clean, and cook a coon! Oh, well. Moving along…..

Hip hop: things are hopping here at the ranch (like…that’s big news). The two old not-so-hipsters (and sometimes with aching hips) are hopping into the van going here then hopping into the Camry and going there. I’m not sure the engines on either car actually cool down much (the tires sure don’t). I would complain if the gas prices were as high as they were a couple of years ago. But, thanks to the lower prices (not as low as Texas, though. They are almost a dollar less!), going places doesn’t leave as big a hole in the pocket book as then.

All of that travelling is local. The only time we've been out of town was a few weeks ago when we went to Tulare and Visalia (Tulare is directly on the way to Visalia. Visalia rhymes with “Vidalia” which is an onion. Visalia doesn’t grow onions but does have a growing population of criminals).

Phoney me: it looks like the old Luddite has finally come up to speed. Last month, I got a new iPhone so that I could properly fly my drone (no one likes to fly a blind drone, eh). I’m still being made a fool of by this fool thing! I’m hoping that I don’t run out of teeth and hair before I learn how to use it. It’s almost like trying to learn to work with the Microsoft “VISTA” operating system. It took a long time to grow my hair back. Looks like the ol’ rancho has gone global…*SIGH*.

What’s cookin’?: the other day (when lots of things happen around here), the Ol’ Rancher was suddenly and deliberately pounced upon by an irresistible time-related age-enforcement dynamic (bet you didn’t see that one coming). But, the ol’ guy but didn’t have time to celebrate the matter in a timely matter so a different day had to be designated as “birthday celebration lunch day”. That’s not problem for the rather adaptable dude that he is (though he surely misses being a much younger “dapper dude” that he used to be….but will somehow manage). This past Sunday was chosen as the special feast day for newly-older local yokel.

Since the place first open three years ago, the Yo-Yo twins (well..at least Yo did) have wanted to knock over “Nanlangka’s” Japanese teppanyaki and sushi restaurant (on N. Main where the old “Carmen’s” used to be [is Danny Figuero still around?]) but just never got around to it (probably because they require reservations at the teppan tables). So, at my mother’s suggestion, we made reservations and went there.  

We sat there quite a while awaiting the seats to be filled (I think they try to play to a full house) before the talented chef arrived on scene. That gave as some time to chat and sip green tea. When he did arrive, the show started.

The kid was pretty good. He twirled and juggled his tools of the trade around like an Olympian and put on a nice show. There was a couple of (purposed for show) flash fires including a “volcano” made of sliced onions (they do that at “Yoshino’s” in Fresno, too). And, there was a nice egg-to-the-chef’s-hat and pocket toss that was entertaining, too. The guests all had a lot of questions which initiated a humorous banter between he and them. It was a nice time.

After banging and clanging a bit, he chopped and flipped veggies, egg, rice, meat and such on the hot grill then customized each plate order. Each scoop held a generous portion and all were happy. Connie had the teriyaki chicken (her favorite) while my mother and I had the shrimp and scallops. After allowing the meal to settle, we un-hurriedly made our way to the car.

Ah, but my mother had another brilliant idea. She said, “Wouldn’t it be great to get some ice cream for desert?”. Well…we knew what that meant: Thrifty ice cream! The great news was that the “Rite-Aid” store was only about four blocks away! How about that!

Since it was a special time, we all got the double-dip cones and cups of our favorites. The tab on that was 9 bucks…for ice cream….for… ice cream (anyone else remember 25 cents per scoop at a “Thrifty Drug Store”?). When I added it up in my head, our outing had run over 85 dollars for a modest lunch and a desert! It wasn’t something to load a Huggie over but it sure go my attention (I’m still in sticker shock over the price of a movie!...you know you’re old when….).  Let’s just say that it’s amazing how much it costs to exist but there aren’t any words when you add a celebration to the matter!  Aw, well. My momma thinks I’m worth it.   

After the revelry, it was time to go home and take a nap (naps are our friends).

3-2-1-lift-off!: after getting all of the requisite parts, pieces, rules, regs, instruction manual, and courage together, it was time to test fly the drone. When you familiarize yourself with the features of a drone, you see that most are fairly tame beasts. This one has an “auto-altitude” control and an “auto-return-to-take-off-point” feature that really takes a load off. If you get bumfuzzled (I’m too lazy to type discombobulated) for any reason, you hit the magic button and the bird comes home to roost.

After arming the motors and listening to the four small blades anxiously whipping the air, the altitude hold (hover) was initiated. The little buzzer obediently lifted off  to an altitude of about 8’ or so. A glance at the iPhone monitor showed an over-weight, middle-aged, white guy staring stupidly at a drone camera. 

At that point, the control levers were twiddled and the thing quickly wafted off in another direction. Whoooooaaa…”Easy, Ran”! Hover mode….twiddle….hover mode….twiddle. Turn left…turn right. Fiddle here, twiddle there. Finally, it was time to see if this ham-handed pilot could actually land the four-fanned new-fangled contraption.

The thing has an idiosyncrasy (I think it’s an idiot-syncrasy myself) of stopping then back-hovering a bit. So, that has to be accounted for or your landing zone may end up being way too hazardous. But, after a couple of tries, the little bird sat down easily and comfortably on top of “Toyo”, the Camry. It's fans stopped then it was time to take off and do it again. 

The above practice routine was rehearsed a couple of times until the lights started blinking because the battery was getting low. That was about enough for me, anyway. I had another battery but old people can have just so much fun at one time. Back in the case it went, the battery was placed on the charger, and the Ol’ Rancher went back to work.

Ye Ol’ Stick in the Mud: it was time to hook up the Wooley Pulley (again) so Ol’ Rancho Ran fired up the Coop de Ville and headed out back to fetch it. There was a bunch of stuff (we’re pretty much “Stuffsville” around here) to the hangar and get it out of our way for awhile. Ah, but somebody forgot that it had rained the day before and that our back 40 (minus 38.5) acres is rather messy when it does. So, without thinking, Ol’ Skid pulled off the concrete drive way to position the van for the hookup.

Quicker than you can kick an armadillo across the room, the van sank into the mud. The driver felt like his IQ just slid below that of Sponge Bob Squarepants. *SIGH*.

Oh, well. Not to worry. That’s what the Rancho Rino is for. The trusty little tractor was fired up and a cable was attached to the scraper then to the van’s bumper hitch. I asked Connie to man the wheel while I slowly pulled the van backwards. 

This is where things got…interesting. I was trying to ease the car out and Connie was trying to drive the car out with the throttle (obviously, someone forgot to send her to the “pulling cars from the mud” class). The tractor did its job but so did the van’s tires. The van got traction and rapidly lurched back which caught her plumb off guard. She threw the wheel in one direction while the car careened in the other (she’s backward) all the while the van is excavating mud high in to the air and distributing in our and the neighbors yards (or so it seemed). She finally got out of the throttle and the van tamed down and the mud rain ceased. 

When I walked up to the van, I found her hiding behind two huge eyeballs. My lightning-fast mind asked her, “Are you having fun yet?”. She shyly advised that it wasn’t fun and began saying something about what happened. I couldn’t really hear her because of the laughter. The trailer load had to wait until the next day. C’est la vie.  

 There you have it: another short episode of the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died) and Connie the Canner, the world's greatest side-cook (a Freudian slip as she stumbled trying to say "side-kick"): where the air smells like fresh baked banana cake and sun-dried wash: where things can get...interesting and where...you just never know. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.