March 19, 2012

• Up On the Roof....

  I have blogged about the Kansas wind on a few occasions and I think yesterday warrants another plug from this windy godforsaken place. A picture will help spare me the words.

  

  I was cleaning my eave troughs yesterday. As I also have said before, my front yard globe willow tree necessitates this very often. The tree sheds everything, leaves, buds, live twigs and dead branches. They all eventually end up in my eave troughs it seems. This is a constant that I have grown to become accustomed to due to the constant winds we have here.

  The natives honestly don't notice it. They've lived with it all their lives and they think it's normal, the constant, unrelenting blow. I know better, I've lived elsewhere. Places where you can have a conversation while outdoors without speaking directly into another's ear. Places where you can go outdoors on the patio and actually read a newspaper without folding it into a small multilayered square. Where you can play frisbee with the kids. There are places in the world where the wind is calm, at least a few hours each day. Calm is the exception here, not the rule.

  Now back to the picture. That black dot on the roof is my Budweiser cap. I have had it for years. I don't drink Budweiser and normally I don't keep my hat on the roof. I wear it on my head at least part of the time when I work in the yard. Here you really need a hat. Otherwise your hair hurts at the end of the days you must work outdoors. Yes, your roots hurt after your hair has been blown constantly in the wind all day. A hat is a necessity here if you work outdoors. I hate hats as much as I hate the wind. But I have to wear one. I'm growing older, my hair is thinning and I can't afford to senselessly lose it to the sun and wind.
  
  Because I don't wear a hat always, I don't have hat finesse. The natives wear them always, outdoors, indoors, at the dinner table, they may even sleep in them. I have known men for many years here in Kansas and I've never seen them with their hat off. They may screw the damn things on, I don't know. I think maybe that they have worn their hat so much, ever since childhood, that they have a permanent groove around their head that the cap or hat sits comfortably into, secured, unmoveable. This is possible, there are native tribes in Africa that form their heads into all sorts of shapes. I think Kansans unknowingly have done this too. Their hats don't blow off their heads. I've never seen it!  

  Being a native Iowan for my formative years, I didn't have this advantage of head shape forming. I was cursed to simply grow my skull sort of rounded like, with no grooves. Not conducive to cap or hat wearing. My hat blows off regardless of how I screw it on. The only hat I can wear without it blowing off is a stocking cap, and then only if I pull the attached ski mask over my face. They are very uncomfortable for me to wear.
  

  Well to finish my point here, my hat blew off yesterday and ended up on my roof. It evidently landed on the roof in the only place in Kansas where the wind doesn't blow. It has been up there for almost 24 hours now. I could get out my longer ladder and retrieve it but now I'm curious. How long can it possibly stay up there? The wind is blowing 29 mph already this morning. Surely it will blow down soon. 

  Such is the life of John.

  E.

  • 8:26 am
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