As we were laying out the edition of this newspaper you are now holding in your hands — or perhaps reading online — I dropped Sibyl Gordy’s column onto the page and began proofing it and paused for a second. “Never thought I would be wanting it to rain this quick...,” she wrote toward the end. That was almost the exact same thing I said to wife Danny Monday morning when I was helping her get to the car with the only umbrella we had in the house.
“Never thought I would be glad to see the rain again,” I said. But I was, I am. We had been sniffing and snorting and trying to paint a fireplace mantle and molding for the bedroom on some sawhorses outside all weekend. The paint color is white and, well, pollen is not!
So about 6:30 a.m. on Monday when I said to my wife, “either a chicken truck just went rolling by, or it was thunder,” and she replied, “thunder, it is raining already,” I was pleased. These never-ceasing March winds have really dried everything out and enough is enough with the swirling pollen.
Still, though, never thought I’d be happy to see it, especially since I have really been longing for a dry, wind-free weekend. But not necessarily for painting.
Back in December Santa Claus left a little drone under the tree for me and I’ve yet to get to play with the thing. It is very light weight and doesn’t do well in windy conditions. We’ve had some windy conditions.
Christmas morning we were at the Reservoir house and I took the thing outside, punched the go button and it took off down the driveway like a bat out of....you know where! When that happened I decided it would be best if we waited until we got back to Sebastopol and some wide open space for practice.
That didn’t go so well either.
It was misting rain — this was still December mind you — but that inner child had hold of my old man body and I just had to take a picture of something with my drone camera in the sky. I took it out into the middle of the field in front of the house, sat it on the ground, backed up and punched the go button, and that dang bat took over again. Moments later I had an extension pole trying to slap the darn thing out of the top of a Bradford Pear tree way over in the neighbor’s front yard.
“Good thing it’s red,” the wife said. Hmmmmmm!
By then it was getting later in the afternoon and misting a bit harder, but I was determined to get at least one picture just to see what it would look like. Back to the middle of the field I marched with drone in hand and commenced to crank it up again. Those little black propellers started spinning and that thing jumped off the ground and headed immediately toward the woods behind our fallen down old barn, just like a bat out of...well, you know what I mean by now. I did, however, have time to punch the photo shutter button on the remote control panel once before we lost sight of it.
“I think it went down inside the barn,” the wife said. Hmmmmmmm!
I climbed through and over and around that old barn, got filthy, stuck a nail deep into the palm of my hand and bled all over the place, but no drone, red or any other color, could be found. Plus it was getting real late in the day at that point.
After about 45 minutes of searching the wife again spoke up. “Here it is,” she proclaimed. “Good thing I got a red one.” “Hmmmm,” I muttered, “I thought Santa brought this!”
Sure enough, up in the tip top branches of the tallest privet hedge, up above the top of the barn even, hung my little red drone. The extension pole was swapped for an extension ladder and a bunch of cussin’ was done as I drug that ladder through that thicket to get to that darn toy.
The thing has been sitting in a chair in the living room ever since waiting on a dry day with no wind. Hasn’t happened yet. Maybe soon!
Right now I do have one arial photograph of a field — my field — and I still have to get the ladder out of the woods. I do admit that it is a good thing that whomever got it, got a red drone. We’d never have found it if it were green, or, Lord help us, even black — like a bat!
