Out of the Ether

                                                    Elmo and 1st Boo
 
I know what you're thinking - That one has receded into the ether again.  I disappear from this blog with some regularity.  I suppose the disappearing is less unexpected than the returning.  We've all visited abandoned blogs with a last entry of years ago, sometimes with a last entry also being the first entry.  I recall the first flush of excitement with blogging as a whole.  Some bloggers becoming famous, getting book deals and television gigs.  I don't think that I was ever pursuing fame because if I were, this space would've been about something.  Instead it's about everything, every single thing that crosses my path and my mind.  Maybe that's why I keep coming back.  Something strikes me that I want to share out into the wider world, beyond my tight inner circle of friends and family.  Plus I really fucking hate facebook, and there's a lot that I would never post on that hellscape of hell.  So, I return to this refuge of expression + anonymity.

Old Chaps

The Horseman, 1967, Fombell, Pennsylvania

I have been meaning to post something here before the end of the month.  It's a decent writing exercise to create a blog post.  But, I got caught up in selling an old pair of chaps, seen in the pic above, as worn by someone completely unrelated to me.  In 1996 my oldest brother bought some property off of our father that included an old horse barn, with the idea that the barn would be converted into a house.  And it was, but part of the old barn still exists.  It comes off the back of the house and links to a large garage/work space.  Lots of stuff was kept in there, but now he and his wife are thinking of downsizing, moving, and there's a ton of stuff to get rid of, including old chaps.  Old chaps are quite the collectible, I learned while researching them.  Even moreso if you know the least little thing about them, i.e., who did they belong to, what type of chaps are they, how beat up are they?  So, my brother found this old pic of someone not our father trotting around on an unfamiliar horse in the field above our great-grandparents' house, wearing the chaps.  Lucky for us, our mother knew the man, but not the horse.  Mom only knew which horses it wasn't. "Well, that's not Little Bo Bars, and certainly not 'Loot."
Today the chaps sold on ebay, and the buyer promptly paid.  I said that I would include a pic of the chaps being worn, and all the info I had on all of the parties concerned.  If anyone wants to know who the rider is, ask in the comments and I'll clue you in.  He's still alive, and quite well known in what my mother always called, Horsey Circles.