The Quack, issue 383
The clevis pin edition
Hey friendo. It’s very nice to see you. I hope you had a great week.
Bit of a slow one over here, as I took a couple days off to take care of some family biz and work on some writing projects. I’ve got a whole lot to tell you about some upcoming things, but I’m afraid I’ll have to wait until the timing is right.
In the meantime, I’ve steeped us a pot of tea. Let me take it out to the deck—it’s going to be a lovely morning. You grab a couple mugs from the cupboard.
Let’s catch up.
Beach night
Friday evening, we took all our troubles to the beach for a while, and wouldn’t you know it, all our troubles vanished for a while.
It really is funny how you get out of the habit of going to the beach when it’s not 25 degrees and sunny, but it’s always worth going to the beach for what it does for my mental health.
It’s not very often one finds a full sea urchin shell on these shores, so this was an exciting find for us.
Less than a minute after I found the first sand dollar I’ve picked up in years, I found a second one. Two whole dollars! Double the buying power.
Alice found this almost cartoonishly perfect oyster shell. It was only after we got home and were looking at our photos that we discovered there’s a mystery in this photo. What happened to Alice’s ring finger? I assume the oyster ate it.
It had rained earlier in the day, so the surface of the sand had a dappled texture that was very crunchy and pleasing.
Anyway, it was a lovely walk at the beach. I watched an osprey for a while and spent a whole lot of time with my binoculars trying to identify far-away sea birds. I wasn’t terribly successful in my mission, but I didn’t enjoy the experience any less for the failure.
This is your reminder to go to the beach. You won’t regret it.
Pick up every… spike?
I stooped to pick up this item before I’d fully identified it. I thought maybe it was a screw or threaded bolt that might go through someone’s tire, but it’s mysteriously un-threaded. Best I can tell, it’s some kind of clevis pin for securing a load.
No matter what it is, it shan’t end up in anyone’s tire any time soon. Not on my watch.
The truck
Some of my earliest memories from the farm growing up were sitting in our old yellow pickup and pretending to drive while it was parked in its spot in front of the boiler room.
I still can picture the green interior, dusty in a way that only old farm pickup trucks can be. At some point in the truck’s history, a dog had gnawed at the dashboard. There were bite marks all along the upper ridge, and a spot where the dog had successfully bitten off a chunk. It left a perfectly shaped bite in the dash, like a cartoon shark that had bitten the end off a surfboard.
I thought of the old truck this week when I saw an early 80s Chevy truck parked near our place. The owner had done a wonderful job restoring it.
I am not a truck guy, by any means. But in the last few years, I’ve developed some nostalgia for old farm trucks from the era before every truck had an extended cab and could seat more people than my minivan. Give me a bench seat every time.
I texted back and forth with my dad about that truck. He has less memory of it than I did, as it turns out he never picked it out itself. It came with the farm when he bought it in 1977. With a bit of internet sleuthing, I’ve decided it was likely a 1970 Ford, or within a year or two. It was also yellow.
I found your tent
“I think we have visitors,” said Erin, peering out out back window one evening this week before supper.
I looked outside and saw someone had set up a little tent in our yard.
“Oh my,” I said, not without empathy. There are loads of people out there who don’t have a dry place to sleep on any given night. I was just a little surprised they’d chosen our yard to set up in.
The funny thing was, I had been working in the yard less than a half hour earlier. If someone had been scouting for a quiet location, they couldn’t have been terribly careful about it.
“I’ll go say hello,” I said, pulling on my coat.
I wasn’t going to be unkind. I just wanted to introduce myself and ask if there was anything we might do to help.
I was a little nervous as I approached the tent. How does one knock on the door of a tent?
“Hello?” I said, standing next to the tent. “Hello inside the tent. I don’t want so scare you off, just want to say hello.”
There was no answer. It was suspiciously quiet.
I gave the tent a little nudge. The whole thing moved easily.
It was empty.
It was a pretty windy day, so I suspect someone in the neighbourhood got their tent out for the season and it blew away from them. And now it’s in our yard.
If you live near Summer Street in Charlottetown and are missing a little tent, pop on by the back yard of 21 and pick it up.
Dunnock Bay
Muriel the octogenarian chess prodigy has gone awol from the Dunnock Bay Free Public Library. Catch up on today’s dispatch and see what lengths librarian Mindy will go to sleuth out where Muriel went.
That’s all he wrote for today. Thanks for hanging out with me this morning. You’re cool, and I like you.
Have a great week.
The tent was blown there from Dunnock Bay.