We have already had snow here in central Kansas yesterday. Most is gone now and I hope this isn’t an indication of what we are in for the rest of the year. As many of you know, I am not an enthusiast of winter and what accompanies it.

I have had no spontaneous urges to pullover and smell the roses this week. I have seen three skunks, two armadillos, one cat and two box turtles on the roadway. Sadly, all in various stages of flatness and truly non-photoworthy. I will skip the details, but I caused none of their demise.  So no pullover tales today.

Spent another few nights in Stillwater, OK. Most of the fellows I work with were too far from home to justify the plane ticket for the weekend, they had to change motels, not only motels but cities. The OSU homecoming is this weekend and all motel rooms in town were booked in advance for this. So my Canadian friends moved out to Tulsa, hopefully they got rooms there. They asked me what “Homecoming” was. I explained it to the best of my ability and knowledge but one nerd to another, I’m afraid I may have failed miserably. ( How would you explain it? ) They have no such occasions in connection with hockey or Lacrosse  in Alberta or Saskatchewan. Homecoming is definitely an American football tradition.

I think my Congressman has stopped accepting my E-mails. My name is spam to his congressional mailbox evidently. I am very proud of this. I hope I haven’t been put on a airline watch list but I do see many lost luggage claims in the future. All of my correspondence have been respectful but I may have gone too far in my last letter calling his party affiliation ”your ignorant Tea Party”.

Such is the life of John

Well, I know that to be called official, a spontaneous “pullover” can not be planned. But I have been waiting to see just one roadside “Fruit Stand” since I decided to pullover more on my travels. Fruit stands are an essential of life anywhere in the world. We have to have them, not only for the availability of fresh produce, but what would James Bond, Smokey and The Bandit or Hawaii Five-0 chase scenes be without them. So I’ve been waiting for just one to open someplace that I travel this fall. I assumed the Pumpkin season would spark a few rural entrepreneurs to the roadside or busier intersection. Finally at a crossroads in the Fox and Sac Nation of Oklahoma, just where I expected, a family team settled in as locally grown and open for business. The man, wife and young 6 or 7 year old, (the parents said 6, the boy said about 7, so he is 7), were extremely camera shy and vacated the shot of the cellphone camera each scene. Never the less, I did get a few shots of their various pumpkin produce.

Notice the empty chairs. They modestly asked not to be photographed.  (Oh, in the back ground you may see another vendor. A knife dealer, he had very large knives for sale which I was uninterested but understandably very respectful).

Many of the pumpkins were of an interesting French variety.

I was attracted to the flat, greenish orange ones, unsuitable for my taste in jack-o-lantern but I think great for a fall or Thanksgiving center piece.

I liked these little fellows also.

Stackable flat ones and some white minis. Very reasonable prices I think.

You may be wondering my sudden burst of spontaneous pullovers. But you must first understand just what kind of motivation it takes for me to take even just a few minutes from travel time between work site, motel or home to stop, look, take a picture and talk. 15 minutes means 15 minutes late, 15 more pounds of cargo to find space for in the front seat and most importantly 15 miles less close to home.  My overwhelming case of  ”get-home-itis” is very hard to overcome. I am trying to learn to just slow down a bit and appreciate so many things that in the past I have passed up and traded for what I liked to think or judged to be important business. I think that at this time in my life the important business is perhaps just in the traveling there and what you do on the way.

My produce safely home.

Such is the life of John.