Story Break
Good Conditions
Now I want you to know right off the bat I never went out there and did any of that packbacking stuff. Nor any hiking, neither. Where I’m from they worked on the farm, and they worked hard and that was it. When they wasn’t working they went to church, or sat on the porch and watched the sun go down, and every now and then there would be a funeral or something, or a wedding, at the church, and that would be it.
It don’t make no sense that I can see to go anywhere all alone and act like an animal. I keep saying this but nobody listens to me anymore. I mean it.
Now here we’re talking about going packbacking and how to use a stove to make a little grubby wad of something and try to eat it, on a good day. Most of the time you should be working. You shouldn’t have time to go out somewhere and stumble around and try to sleep under a little piece of cloth and all that.
Who cares how one of those stoves works on a good day. On a good day you’re out plowing, or planting, or harrowing, or you’re cutting hay, or you’re harvesting. On a bad day when you can’t work in the fields then you’re in out of the rain fixing things that got broke, but you never have time to just lay around and think well laa-dee-dah I wonder what I should do today, maybe I should go wander around in the hills for a while and see if I can bump into myself out there or something.
When you’re retired is when you got time to sit around and do nothing, and that’s exactly how much you want to do then, after a good life full of hard work, nothing, because you’re wore out.
You talk about which of those little toy stoves is the best, and how to use them, and which one to take with you, and special things you should remember to do when the weather is nice and other things when it isn’t, and it’s all a waste of time.
If you had to work for a living you would know better. If you were lucky and you even had a day off, and it was a good day, good weather and nothing going on, your responsibilities were all looked after already, then you’d be a real dumbhead if you didn’t just go and have a nice picnic in the park.
Everybody who knows anything at all would do that. If you have friends you could play a little softball, but mostly you relax and eat. That’s about it. Get your family together and your next door neighbors and make up a picnic lunch, and go to the park and sit around all day. No hiking, no sleeping in the dirt, no wearing filthy clothes or any of that, only acting like a normal responsible grown up person.
That’s all I got to say.