It’s almost 5:00 AM, and Patchen is quiet – no street lights, no loud sirens, no angry car horns, only the dark and still of the night. It was exactly 85 years ago today, in Plymouth, North Carolina, that I was lucky enough to be born in the USA to two loving parents. Cherishing my good fortune, I plan to enjoy and appreciate today as all days gone before.
Today will be a day of putting the final touches on my annual woodshop cleanup to get ready to make a couple of hundred laser-engraved Christmas tree ornaments for the upcoming season, followed by a trip to Home Depot and lunch at my favorite Italian joint in Los Altos. If time allows, I might repot some tree seedlings or check on a bonsai in need of attention.
Book
Deck Martini
Flag
Redwoods
Christmas trees
Deer
Garden
Barn
By the time 4:00 o’clock rolls around, I will be sitting with a good book on the deck that I designed and built in 1980 with a lot of help from Skip Ricks, next to the hot tub deck that Todd and I built together decades ago. I’ll be sipping on a Martini with 3 olives, 2 giant caper berries, and some pickled garlic in the frozen glass I bought in Mexico many years ago.
I will enjoy watching the breeze unfurl the flag that Bill Clinton sent to Mom & Dad when Scott succumbed to cancer after the Agent Orange in Vietnam. The several giant redwoods that I planted in the early 1970s will be standing silently around me, along with thousands of Christmas trees, drinking in the late afternoon sun. The grassy meadow below, dating from the mid 1970s, will likely be teaming with does watching over their weeks-old white-spotted fawns racing around like jumping beans. That will be the time to lift my glass to the rock garden that I made from local sandstone and granite gathered from the Truckee countryside, and to the splashing sounds of the fountain in Lago de Salvador.
I think I will avoid thinking about reconstructing the Castor barn in the early 1980s with reclaimed redwood, hot-dipped 16-penny nails, and a very old McCullough chainsaw – remembering would only make my back hurt.
Next comes dinner by Marina, the evening news on TV, a couple of Gunsmoke or Mash reruns, then early-to-bed, early-to-rise.
By: Jim Written: June 1, 2026 Published: June 1, 2026
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