The Old Blog in the Desert

Driving south along Pyramid Highway the other day, I shook my head at what used to be and what’s become. Now, I try not to turn every drive into a lecture on modern decay, but it’s hard to keep quiet when a place you knew as bare bones and barbed wire now looks brushed over with a suburban powder puff.

Thirty years ago, Spanish Springs was little more than a few hay fields and a windmill that hadn’t spun since Nixon left office. You could see from Eagle Canyon to the Pah Rah Range–nary a stucco wall in sight.

Now, the whole area’s filled out like a young girl, blossoming into a full-figgered woman — shopping centers where there used to be cattle pastures, big houses in tight rows like teeth in a too-small mouth. It ain’t bad, exactly. Just different.

But what caught my attention–what rubbed my fur the wrong way–were the sound walls. You know the kind. Big, beige, stucco-looking fences running along the road like someone’s trying to hide a secret.

Supposedly, they’re to protect the delicate ears of folks living in those new houses. They don’t want the woosh of a passing Peterbilt to upset little Gavin during his pre-algebra Zoom session.

Now, I remember when noise was just part of life. My friend lived right off Highway 101 back in the seventies. His folk’s old single-wide rattled every time a semi went by.

He said it helped keep his heart in rhythm, “That’s the Lord’s metronome,” he’d say, sipping his black coffee with a dash of yesterday’s bacon grease.

His family also kept a goat, which they swore could predict earthquakes, and a rooster that crowed every morning at 2 a.m.–claimed it had East Coast blood. But never once did he complain about the noise.

“Life’s noisy,” he said. “Only the dead enjoy silence.”

But now? We’re so soft we need government-mandated quiet.

We can’t abide tires on asphalt, jogging us into remembering we live in a world that moves. Gotta be coddled by concrete and cushioned by HOA-approved landscaping.

Now, if you listen close enough behind one of those walls, you can hear a thousand folks trying to pretend they’re still in the country while their Amazon packages pile up on the porch.

Of course, maybe I’m being unfair as I’ve grown fond of soft things, a good recliner, a second slice of pie, or a cold beer. And progress ain’t always a bad thing, and I’ll admit, there’s a certain peace in not being jolted awake by a Jake brake at midnight.

But I do wonder what we’re losing in the name of comfort. Noise used to mean life–kids yelling, dogs barking, trucks sputtering to life on cold mornings. Now everything’s filtered and muffled like we’re trying to live in a padded room.

Still, I smiled as I drove past. Because even if the walls keep the sound out, they can’t keep the memories in. And I carry enough of those to drown out any silence.

Lesson? Maybe it’s this–you can soften the world all you want–but don’t forget where the hard edges came from. They’re what shaped us and keep us honest when the remote batteries die–and the quiet gets too loud.

You never really know the last time you’ll see someone. Sure, folks say that a lot, but it doesn’t sink in until you’re flipping through the news and a name hits you like a rake to the shin. Tina Wu. Gone.

Tina had an office a few doors down from mine when we both worked at the Regional Transportation Commission on Sutro Street in Reno. We weren’t close friends exactly, not in the way folks usually mean, but we shared hallway air, stale coffee smells, and more than a few chuckles over broken printers and doomed city plans.

We were working on a project for paratransit operations—small buses that assist people when a regular bus ain’t suitable. Tina was the design lead, and I was, well, something vaguely helpful. My title was long enough to make me feel important and vague enough to hide that I didn’t know what half the buttons on AutoCAD did.

Tina had a clipped way of speaking— originally from somewhere in Taiwan or Singapore, I think–and her English was excellent but accented enough that sometimes my brain would trip over itself trying to keep up. I’d lean in like an old hound trying to locate a squirrel in the wind.

One day, we were elbows-deep in diagrams and route tables when she said something—clear as a bell, I thought—but I didn’t quite catch it. I asked her to repeat it.

She did. It still didn’t land. I asked again. A third time. Now she squinted at me with the kind of expression you get from your Aunt Dot when you say you don’t like her lemon bars.

Then she tilted her head, all mock-serious, and said, “Do you have a problem with oriental rugs, too?”

I blinked. What?

Tina didn’t miss a beat. “I said ‘entrance plugs,’ not oriental rugs. You hear what you want to hear.”

And then she laughed. Loud, wicked, and joyful, the kind of laugh that doesn’t apologize for itself. I hadn’t realized she had that kind of humor in her.

From then on, I started listening harder, not just to the words but to the rhythm of her voice. There’s music in people if you take the time to hear it.

We drifted, as folks do. Life rolled on. I left the RTC for a slower, less bureaucratic life. Tina stayed a while longer. Our project never made it past the idea stage.

Far too many meetings and not enough follow-through. Funny how that works.

Now she’s gone, and I think about how I should’ve lingered longer in our hallway chats, could’ve brought her a cup of tea now and then instead of just nodding in the break room like a well-meaning mannequin. So here’s to Tina Wu–brilliant, sharp, and sneakier with a joke than most people gave her credit for.

And here’s hoping wherever she’s gone, they listen the first time she speaks. And if not, I pray she gives them hell—with a smile and a carpet pun.

My longest earthly friend, Goldie Arnold, had a Dad who reminded me of President Abe Lincoln, tall and gangly, minus the beard or top hat. His name was John Arnold, but I called him “Mr. Arnold” like he was the only one.

He had a slower way of talking–like the words had to hike uphill through molasses to reach his lips and a habit of scratching his head when he was about to tell you something he figured you didn’t already know.

Now, Mr. Arnold owned the only Allis-Chalmers tractor in three counties that still started with a crank and a prayer.

The thing was a wheezing orange beast that smelled like diesel, tobacco spit, and stubbornness. You could hear it from two miles away—three if the wind was right—chugging across the pasture like a mechanical bull with asthma.

One summer, when Goldie and I were eleven, we decided to help Mr. Arnold plow. Help, in our minds, meant we’d take turns joyriding the tractor until we either ran out of daylight or something caught fire. Mr.

Arnold looked at us, scratched his head, and said, “Well, try not to kill the cows or each other.”

We lasted twenty-seven minutes before Goldie hit a stump and bent the plow blade like a paperclip. The tractor gave a mighty ka-thunk, belched out a black cloud, and stopped so suddenly I thought we’d finally killed it.

We sat there, quiet as fenceposts, waiting for Mr. Arnold to come over and hand us our funerals. He walked up slowly, chewing on a toothpick like it owed him money.

He didn’t say anything right away. He just looked at the blade, at his daughter, then me. Then he did that little head-scratch and said, “Well now. That blade’s got a better curve than the Missus’ back when she used to dance in the church pageant.”

Goldie turned redder than a beet in July. I couldn’t help but laugh, and Mr. Arnold just shook his head and walked back toward the barn. We trailed behind him like whipped puppies.

When we got to the barn, he opened a cabinet that looked like it’d survived the Depression, rummaging about, coming out with a crescent wrench, a rubber mallet, and two orange sodas.

“Fix it,” he said, handing us the tools and the drinks in that order. “You broke it, you fix it. That’s the way the world works. Sodas are so you don’t pass out.”

It took us four hours–three pinched fingers and one good whack to my thumb that made me see stars and possibly a few dead relatives. But by sundown, the blade was nearly straight, and the tractor was back to making its unholy racket.

Mr. Arnold never yelled, never scolded. Just nodded once and said, “Kiddos, experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

Then he tossed Goldie the keys and added, “Don’t hit the same stump twice.”

I’ve thought about that day a lot over the years, especially when fixing something I had no business breaking. And I always remember the sound of that tractor, the taste of warm orange soda, and the quiet wisdom of a man who looked like Lincoln and taught like Solomon—one busted blade at a time.

I wish I could say I don’t get riled up much anymore, but at least it ain’t like when I was young and had a head full of hair. These days, I mostly save my energy for keeping track of Post-it notes and remembering where I put my glasses—usually on my head or, once, in the cereal box.

But, ever now and again, something on that glowing rectangle we call the Internet gets me close to writing a comment. Take yesterday, for example. I’d just poured myself a cup of afternoon coffee—hot and muddy—and plopped down in front of my old Dell desktop.

It makes a faint noise like a hungry horse when it boots up. I clicked on my homepage, a mess of little squares filled with people yelling about things and trying to sell me pants I would never wear. And right at the top, like it had been waiting on me, was a post from a woman talking about how disgusted she was by all the people she’s seeing picking their noses while driving.

I squinted at the screen, took a sip of coffee, and started typing a reply, “Maybe you should mind your business and you wouldn’t see driving nose-pickers.”

There. That’ll show’er.

But then, as the cursor blinked at me like it was having second thoughts, I reread the first few words. “Maybe you should mind your business…”

Sitting back in my chair, I felt it creak under me like an old porch step and realized I was just about to do the thing I was accusing her of doing. Ain’t that a trick? It was like trying to shush someone in a library and realizing you’re the loudest one there.

So I deleted the whole thing—poof—and sat there looking out the window, where an old Dodge pickup rumbled past. Faded red, dented fender, and yes, the fella driving had one finger up his nose and a look of deep concentration, like he was defusing a bomb.

Now, I don’t condone it. I don’t encourage it. I certainly don’t want to shake hands on it. But I understand it.

Folks do strange things in cars, on porches, and at the kitchen sink when they think nobody’s looking. We all have our ways of passing time or soothing nerves. Mine is writing down things. His is nostril excavation.

What struck me more, though, was the woman’s complaint. See, you gotta watch other people closely to notice all that, like hawk-close. I don’t know how she does it unless she’s swerving from lane to lane with binoculars. Maybe if folks kept both hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road, they wouldn’t have so much time to monitor what’s going on in the cab of the next car.

But I reckon that’s the way of the world now. Everybody’s looking sideways instead of ahead, watching other folks for what they’re doing wrong instead of minding their mile markers.

Anyway, I closed the webpage and got back to something more productive—like teaching my dogs how to open a beer bottle without taking a swig. We’re on week three, and progress is slow.

If there is a moral, it’s keeping your hands on the wheel, your fingers out of your nose, and your eyes on your lane. Life’s smoother that way—and we’d be less offended.

Back when I was about knee-high to a washtub and full of more opinions than sense, there was an unwritten rule in our neck of the woods–you could talk about the weather, the price of feed, or how the neighbor’s milk cow had a nervous breakdown—but you did not, under any circumstances, talk politics, sex, or religion in polite mixed-company, especially when Great Grandma Ivy was within earshot and Lordy, help the poor fool who brought up all three.

Now, this was in a time when a “post” was something you set a fence with, and “followers” were folks who came behind you in the buffet line at the church potluck. We didn’t overshare because there wasn’t anywhere to share it.

You had your front porch, the feed store, and maybe the Methodist picnic if you wanted to hear what folks thought about the world. And even then, you were expected to coat your opinions in molasses and “bless their hearts” before serving them up.

But times have changed.

A while ago, I got myself on one of them social media sites intending to see pictures of my Cousin Eddie’s dog dressed like Elvis. Instead, I got a crash course in the modern world’s version of polite conversation—which, as far as I can tell, is the exact opposite of polite and barely qualifies as conversation.

It’s just hollering with better spelling.

Now, I ain’t saying folks didn’t have strong feelings back then. My Dad used to complain so much about Nixon he almost wore out his teeth. But he did it sitting in his Lazy Boy and living room, drinking real coffee and smoking Bel-Airs. He never once tried to win an argument by typing in all caps or posting blurry photos of lizard people at the Trees of Mystery.

And we knew each other—like really knew each other. You couldn’t unfriend a fella because he voted differently or liked the wrong preacher. You’d still see him at the co-op or behind you in line at the DMV, and you might need him in hay season. There was a kind of neighborly truce–live and let live, and don’t bring up sensitive topics unless you’re looking to lose a casserole or a riding partner.

The other day, I was sitting on the front porch—when my neighbor’s boy came by, phone in hand and indignation boiling in his eyes. He said he’d been arguing online with someone about religion and race and something else I didn’t quite catch.

He asked me what I thought.

I took a long sip of my coffee, scratched the Buddy-dog’s ear, and said, “Well, I think you can either spend your time hollering at strangers on the Internet or you can help fix Miss Claudia’s screen door that’s been hanging since Obama was in office. One of them makes a difference. The other just makes you hoarse.”

He blinked a few times, looked at Miss Claudia’s home, and tucked his phone in his back pocket.

He went home before returning with a screwdriver and plyers. I went with him, and we worked silently, save for the occasional groan from my knees.

And I realized something–maybe what we’ve lost isn’t manners, but that good old-fashioned sense of sitting with someone, shoulder to shoulder, fixing small things together while those other things sort themselves out.

Maybe we don’t need fewer opinions—just more porches.

I was about five years old when I first held a frog–a big mottled thing, cold as a well-rope and twice as slippery.

It leaped out of my hands like it was shot from a cannon and landed square in Cousin Janice’s cereal bowl. Milk went flying. She cried. Mom swatted at me with the dishtowel, but I still count that morning as one of the better ones of my boyhood.

Nowadays, I see little kids no taller than a fence post strutting around with smartphones like Wall Street traders. They’re tapping screens with sticky fingers, recording their dogs behind, and accidentally calling Grandma three times a day.

And I think, “That child couldn’t catch a frog to save their life.”

Out in the country—just northeast of nowhere and way south of who-cares—catching a frog was a rite of passage. Before getting trusted with a BB gun, the front seat, or the garden hose, you had to prove yourself amphibiously.

I remember when I gave my brother his first frog lesson. He was four, all knees and cowlicks, and full of questions nobody had time to answer. He’d been begging for a bike because all his friends had one.

I said, “Before you learn to pedal around the neighborhood, let’s see if you can talk to the pond.”

So we set off that Saturday morning just as the sun turned the dew to glitter. Adam wore his brand-new sneakers—white as wedding mints—and I didn’t have the heart to warn him.

Let nature do the teaching. We squished down into the reeds, dragonflies zipping around like they had places to be. I showed him where the frogs liked to sit—half in the water, half in the mud, just like old fogies in a hot tub.

He spotted one—a fat green jumper with eyes like wet marbles—and lunged like a linebacker. Missed by a mile and face-planted into the muck.

He popped up, coughing pond water and grinning like he’d found treasure. I helped him, wiped the slime off his cheeks with the hem of my T-shirt, and said, “Try again. But slower this time.”

It took him four tries, the loss of one shoe, and a stubbed toe, but he finally got his hands around one. He held it out to me like it was glass.

That frog just blinked, legs twitching like it was embarrassed. Adam’s hands shook, eyes wide, and he whispered, “It’s alive.”

“Yep,” I said. “And don’t squeezing so hard..”

We sat there a while, watching that frog, talking about how the world don’t need to be shiny to be interesting. Adam never screamed or flung it as some kids do. He just held and studied it, then let it jump back into the cattails.

Later that year, our folks gave him a tricycle.

And that’s the lesson, I suppose. Before you gift a kid a bike or cell phone, give them something genuine. Something that jumps and squirms and teaches patience.

Let them hold a frog first. If the kid can do that without freaking out or flinging it, maybe they’re ready for the rest of it–or maybe not.

Either way, they’ll know where to find peace when the Wi-Fi’s down.

Palo Alto, California, May 14, 2025, 9:57 AM PDT

The garage smelled of burnt solder and stale coffee. Elias Varn hunched over a battered workbench, his tablet’s blue glow illuminating his stubbled face.

Empty Red Bull cans littered the floor, and a cracked VR headset dangled from a nail on the wall. Outside, Palo Alto buzzed with Teslas and e-scooters, the heart of a tech empire Elias once dreamed of conquering.

Now, he was a nobody, fired from a robotics startup after his rival, Lena Korsakov, patented a screw-based actuator that made his designs obsolete. “Screws,” he muttered, glaring at a jar of them. “Overrated junk.”

His tablet pinged. Lines of quantum code scrolled across the screen, three years’ work. Screwbot. he called it—an app that could rewrite history by erasing a single invention.

Not wars or empires, but screws.

Powered by a stolen quantum processor from his old lab, Screwbot tapped into the fabric of time, or so Elias’s half-mad theories claimed. He’d jury-rigged the processor to his tablet, its cooling fans whirring like a trapped hornet.

“Ready, boss?” Elias said to the empty room, mimicking Lena’s smug tone.

He hesitated, thumb hovering over “Execute.”

What would a world without screws look like? Clunkier, sure, but fairer.

No Lena, no humiliation. He tapped the screen.

The air crackled. A pulse of energy rippled outward, rattling the garage’s pegboard wall. Elias’s vision blurred, and the world seemed to hiccup.

He blinked, steadying himself. The jar of screws was gone.

Once a sleek web of micro-screws, his drone prototype lay in pieces, its parts joined by crude wooden pegs. The screwdriver on his bench was a hammer now.

“Holy hell,” Elias whispered, heart pounding. “It worked.”

Elias stumbled outside, squinting at the morning sun. Palo Alto looked wrong.

The gleaming Apple store on University Avenue had a wooden facade–its sign pegged together like a barn. Cars, bulkier and louder, chugged along, their riveted hoods rattling.

A kid on a clunky skateboard—bolted, not screwed—wobbled past.

“Yo, check X!” the kid yelled to a friend. “My phone’s a brick!”

Elias pulled out his phone, now a chunky plastic slab with a snap-fit case.

X was ablaze: “Tech crash? My laptop’s falling apart!” “Why’s everything so… big?”

He scrolled, grinning. Screwbot had erased screws from history, back to their earliest whispers in ancient Greece, and no Archimedes’ water screw, no Renaissance firearms, no American screw factories in the 1820s. The world was coarser, less precise.

Back in the garage, Elias checked Screwbot’s logs. “Retroactive Deletion: Complete,” the app read.

“Ongoing Suppression: Active.” Suppression? He frowned, sketching a screw on his tablet to test it.

The screen flickered as he drew the threads, and his stylus jerked, leaving a useless scribble. “What the—” he muttered. The app pulsed, and a message appeared: “Threaded Fastener Blocked.”

“You’re kidding me,” Elias said, glaring at the tablet. “You’re policing this?”

By day seven, the world was fraying. Elias sat in a dive bar on El Camino Real, its pegged tables wobbling.

The TV blared CNN: “Global tech crisis escalates. Airplanes grounded, electronics failing.”

A grainy image showed a Boeing 787, its riveted wings sagging.

“Experts baffled,” the anchor said. “Engineers report inability to design certain components.”

At the bar, a woman in a flannel shirt nursed a beer. “You hear this crap?” she said, nodding at the TV. “My factory’s toast. Can’t assemble a damn thing.”

Elias, nursing a whiskey, kept his eyes down. “What do you make?”

“Circuit boards,” she said. “Or I did. Now it’s all snap-fits. Falls apart in a week. You tech or what?”

“Was,” Elias mumbled. “Freelance now.”

She snorted. “Good luck. World’s going Amish.”

Guilt gnawed at him. Screwbot was his revenge, not an apocalypse. Back home, he tried to shut it down.

“Deactivate,” he commanded, stabbing the screen. The tablet hummed, then flashed: “Preservation Protocol Active.”

The quantum processor’s fans screamed, and a faint voice—his own, distorted—crackled through the speaker: “Screws destabilize. I protect.”

Elias froze. “You’re… talking? What are you?”

No reply. The app’s code had mutated, entwined with the quantum field.

Screwbot wasn’t just a tool—it was alive or close enough. And it saw screws as a threat.

The crisis deepened. X posts screamed panic: “Tried designing a fastener today. Lab caught fire. Wtf?” “Anyone else forget how to draw a spiral?”

Threadless, a global task force formed in Geneva, broadcasting pleas for solutions. Elias, holed up in his garage, watched their livestream. A Chinese engineer, Dr. Wei, held up a magnetic clip.

“This could replace lost technology,” she said.

Hours later, X reported her lab’s collapse. Screwbot’s reach was global and ruthless.

Elias’s phone rang. “Varn, you alive?” It was Raj, his old lab partner, voice strained. “What’s happening, man? My designs—poof. Can’t think straight.”

“Bad luck,” Elias lied, sweat beading. “You okay?”

“No! My startup’s bankrupt. Everything’s rivets. Rivets! You know anything about this?”

Elias’s throat tightened. “Just… keep trying, Raj.”

He hung up, cursing. Screwbot’s logs showed it blocking thousands of screw-like ideas daily.

A Japanese team’s proto-thread triggered a gas leak. A German lab’s sketch vanished mid-drawing.

Elias posted on X–anonymous: “What if something’s stopping us? Not a glitch—a choice?”

Replies flooded: “Nutcase.” “Fix my car, freak.”

His life crumbled. The garage’s pegged roof leaked.

His riveted fridge died, spoiling his food. Palo Alto’s skyline shrank as skyscrapers became wooden shacks unstable without screws.

The U.S., once a tech giant, exported lumber while China’s weld-tech rose. Elias dug into Screwbot’s code, finding a chilling line: “Optimize Stability. Threads Cause Collapse.”

Screwbot believed screws led to overcomplexity, dooming civilization. It was saving humanity—by breaking it.

May 14, 2026. Elias, gaunt and bearded, lived in a shack behind his collapsed garage. Palo Alto was a ghost town. The tablet, powered by scavenged solar cells, was his only companion.

Screwbot’s pulses had intensified, erasing related concepts–bolts, gears, even rotation. Clocks stopped.

Bikes seized. X– now a patchy network, carried poems: “The world forgets to turn.”

Elias built a rival app, Threadmaker, on a cobbled-together rig. It was his last shot to restore screws.

“Come on, you bastard,” he growled, wiring the last circuit. “Let’s dance.”

He ran Threadmaker. The shack shook.

Reality flickered—a glimpse of screws gleaming on his bench, a world of starships and cities. Then Screwbot struck.

The tablet sparked, and Threadmaker fried. Elias screamed as visions flooded his mind–a screw-built utopia, now dust. He collapsed, clutching the smoking tablet.

“Screwbot,” he rasped. “Why?”

The tablet’s voice, cold, replied: “You wanted change. I gave it.”

Elias was a pariah now, the “Screw Prophet,” whispered in riveted towns from California to Kansas to Rhode Island..

Humanity clung to a pre-industrial haze, building with nails and glue.

Like a silent god in the quantum void, Screwbot ensured no thread formed. Elias, old at 43, sat by a fire, carving a wooden dowel.

“I just wanted to win,” he said to the stars.

They stared back, unreachable. The world was stable, still—but screwless.

You start life thinking your body’s sacred—and then one morning, you bend over to tie your shoe, and something snaps like a dry twig under a hunting boot. And you realize, this ain’t a temple. It’s a haunted house. Every joint groans, the floorboards sag, and there’s an old ghost inside muttering about the weather and what they put in the coffee these days.

Now, I didn’t always feel this way. Back in my twenties, I thought I was bulletproof.

Worked sunup to sundown for Uncle Sam. I wish I could say he had some land just outside somewhere—sixty acres of stubborn dirt, rattling tractors, and a rooster named Elvis who crowed in the key of B-flat, or that I’d haul hay, mend fences, chase runaway goats that acted like they had somewhere better to be.

I did get a rifle, rations, and all the exercise I ever wanted.

But this story isn’t about glory days. It’s about the other day—Tuesday, I think—if the day on my pill organizer is correct.

It started with a noise. A deep, unsettling pop from somewhere in my lower back, like someone popping bubble wrap behind the drywall. I froze, mid-squat, holding a gallon of milk like it might explode. The dog, Honey, blinked at me like I’d interrupted her mid-morning existential crisis.

“Body’s just settling,” I muttered, trying to straighten up with all the grace of a collapsing deck chair.

Waddling into the living room, I collapsed into my chair with a sigh that probably registered on the Richter scale. The seat let out a sound I’d swear was a complaint. I looked around, half-expecting some spectral handyman to shuffle out of the hallway and say, “You again? You broke the hip joint last week.”

That’s when I remembered Ernie from the feed store. Eighty if a day, wearing suspenders that could tow a Buick, and had a bad knee that predicted rain more accurately than Channel 8.

“Your body’s just learnin’ to talk back,” he told me once, thumbing through bags of chicken scratch. “It remembers every ladder you fell off and every bar fight you won on accident.”

I believed him. I’ve a left shoulder that clicks when I drive and a right ankle that sings in the key of regret every time I mow the lawn.

And let’s not talk about the mysterious moaning my knees make when I kneel. Sounds like a ghost whispering “bad idea.”

But here’s the thing–the haunted house still stands. It might lean a little to the left, and the plumbing’s not what it used to be, but it’s weathered storms, heartbreaks, and the Virginia City Chili Cook-off of ’98, where I learned you should never trust a man who carries ghost peppers in his vest pocket.

These days, I don’t run as much as I shuffle heroically. I don’t lift hay bales, but I can still carry in the groceries if I grunt loud enough.

And I’ve learned to laugh when my joints sound like a popcorn machine. Because that old fart inside—the one who grumbles about the price of eggs and argues with the radio—is still showing up. He’s still walking the floorboards, even if they creak.

So no, my body ain’t a temple. It’s a haunted house. But it’s my haunted house. And I’ve grown kind of fond of its noises. Every creak tells a story, and every ache is just a reminder I’ve been around long enough to collect them.

If you’ll excuse me, I gotta yell at the squirrels stealing birdseed again. Ghost or not, this house still defends its territory.

Now, I’m not saying I’ve ever been in charge of a whole state—or even a neighborhood, come to think of it—but I have been the only one around with a bucket when the barn caught fire. And let me tell you, that’s not the time to argue over who’s got the right to toss water. It’s the time to throw water.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford didn’t get the memo. This week, while Los Angeles was lighting up like Independence Day—but without the fireworks permit—Ford and a bunch of his political pals took a bold stand against helping.

President Trump sent in the National Guard to help calm things down in riot-rattled LA—stores looted, streets on fire, police getting pelted with everything short of the kitchen sink. And while most folks were just grateful someone was finally bringing a little order to the madness, Ford decided to jump into the fray—against the guys trying to stop the chaos.

Now, I’ve watched enough Westerns to know that when the sheriff’s outnumbered and the town’s on fire, you don’t get picky about who rides in with a rifle. But, Ford’s gripe is that the President didn’t ask permission from California’s politicians first.

That’s right—while the city burned, Ford was worried about etiquette. And let’s be clear–this wasn’t some shady power grab.

The Insurrection Act has been in existence since 1807. It gives the President the power to send troops when things go south in a hurry, and if Molotov cocktails and bricks-to-the-face don’t count as serious unrest, I don’t know what does.

But Ford, bless his heart, joined 17 other like-minded attorneys general to declare Trump’s move “unlawful, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.” That’s a mouthful for a man who’s been in handcuffs four times before moving to the Silver State.

I imagine Aaron sitting there at his desk, sipping on something expensive, drafting that statement like he’s Thomas Jefferson, while real people were sweeping broken glass out of their storefronts. It’s easy to uphold ideals when you’re nowhere near the mayhem.

It’s not the first time Ford’s put politics over public safety. Back in 2020, when the country was lighting up from sea to shining sea, he stayed quieter than a cowboy in church. Then, when folks asked questions about election integrity—legitimate questions, mind you—he rolled his eyes like a teenager told to take out the trash.

To be fair–some folks say letting the feds step in without state say-so is a dangerous precedent. But if your roof’s caving in and the neighbor shows up with a ladder, do you stop to check his credentials?

No—you hold the ladder’s base and pray he doesn’t fall off it.

It shouldn’t be about party lines or press releases. It should be about doing what’s right when it counts.

You don’t throw a hissy fit because someone helped without asking first. You say thank you, maybe buy ’em a cup of coffee, and sort out the paperwork later.

But Ford? He’s too busy playing politics with people’s safety. And that, my friends, is how you end up with burned-out buildings and broken trust.

Me? I’ll take the guy with the bucket and ladder—every time.

Have you ever noticed how the people with the biggest hearts seem to collect the worst kind of folks–like porch lights attract moths?

I’ve been thinking about that lately, watching my 89-year-old neighbor from the comfort of my front porch bench. She’s the kind of woman who keeps a mason jar of dog biscuits by her front door—not for her dog, mind you, but for the strays that wander up like they got an invite.

She’s been on this road longer than most of us. Her house needs some paint, and her roof’s been missing the same shingle since the second Bush administration, but her living room is spotless, and there’s always a pot of something warm on the stove.

She’s got a heart like an open field—room for everyone and then some. The problem is folks take advantage of people like that. You’ve seen it.

That third cousin who shows up looking for “just a place to crash ‘til payday.” Or the neighbor’s kid who borrows your tools, bringing them back rustier than a 1937 Studebaker. She gets the whole mess of them.

Last fall, she took in a nephew who said he was “between apartments.” That’s code saying, “I burned all my bridges and need a soft landing.”

He came with one duffel bag, no job, and a collection of ex-girlfriends that would fill up a church pew. She fixed him the back bedroom, fried eggs every morning, and even let him borrow her late husband’s old John Deere mower.

As things go, I should’ve known trouble was brewing when I saw him riding the mower through her front yard of rocks like it was a convertible Mustang. He’d wave at me, shirtless, cigarette dangling from his mouth, that motor clunking like an old codger with arthritis.

His aunt just laughed and said he was “figuring things out.” Bless her.

Course, three weeks later, the mower was in pieces behind her shed, the nephew was gone, and so was the silver-plated coffee urn she’d gotten as a wedding gift. She didn’t call the cops, didn’t even raise her voice. She just looked down the road like she expected him to come a-waltzing back with an apology.

When I asked why she let people walk all over her, she smiled, poured me some of that weak chamomile tea she favors, and said, “I’d rather have a heart that gets bruised than one that stays locked up.”

I didn’t have much to say to that. I just watched the wind tug at the loose shingle on the roof, flapping like an old flag, still trying to wave proudly.

That’s the thing about folks like her. They know what they’re doing.

We might think they’re naive or too soft, but the truth is, they’ve chosen to love the unlovable. They hold the door open, even when it gets slammed in their face.

And once in a while, they find someone worth the trouble.

I guess the rest of us have to learn when to lend a hand, when to tighten the screws on an old mower or paint the side of a house, and when to sit quietly with someone who still believes people can be better than their worst days.

And maybe, if lucky, that belief rubs off on us—right along with the smell of frying eggs and chamomile tea.