Tumbleweed Talk in Mayer, AZ Big Bug Station

Today Robin from Chino strolled into Big Bug Station. She drives a medical van and had some time to kill before a pickup. With her cup of coffee in hand we introduced ourselves all round. This morning was a pretty full house. I brought up something I’d heard about Chino,AZ yesterday. I’d heard there were hundreds of tumbleweeds that blow back and forth and pile up along the fences in Chino area. Robin agreed and shared that horses absolutely love to eat tumbleweeds! You wouldn’t think that cause they are sooo dry and prickly but it’s a fact. They will gallop across a field to get to a stray tumbleweed first.

I spend a lot of time in Australia and there they call a tumbleweed “a roly poly.” Course here a roly poly is a potato bug or someone with a bit weight around their middle. Today’s picture is of me with an Aussie roly poly.

Robin went on to say that it seems no matter how old you are if you review your day you will find that you found out something new. And today “roly poly” is new. For me, horses loving to eat tumbleweeds was new.

In the 1930s Bob Nolan, songwriter and cofounder of the singing group Sons of the Pioneers, wrote Tumbling Tumbleweeds.

Lyrics to Tumbling Tumbleweeds

I'm a roaming cowboy riding all day long,

Tumbleweeds around me sing their lonely song.

Nights underneath the prairie moon,

I ride along and sing this tune.

See them tumbling down

Pledging their love to the ground

Lonely but free I'll be found

Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

Cares of the past are behind

Nowhere to go but I'll find

Just where the trail will wind

Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

I know when night has gone

That a new world's born at dawn.

I'll keep rolling alongDeep in my heart is a song

Here on the range I belong

Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

Anything Can Happen at Big Bug Station In Mayer, AZ

Busy Morning at Big Bug Station.

Sam brought in a Cherokee Nation Newspaper from Oklahoma and a discussion on the Cherokee written alphabet (the only Native American alphabet created so Native Americans could have “talking leaves’ the written word on paper) caught our interest. It is a syllabary…symbols for syllables rather than a true alphabet with symbols for consonants and vowels.

Carol snagged a three wheel electric scooter at Hope’s Attic (our in town second hand shop) I tried to talk her into turning it into a Rat Rod Scooter a sorta Rat Scooter until I saw it was already a hot candy apple red and to paint it with grey black primer would be a crime. Adding perhaps an antique auto grill would be cool though. You shoulda seen the look she gave me…I think the Rat Rod Scooter idea is out.

Mike was pawing through a box of World War I and II army helmets. We all wondered about the several tiny holes in the World War II one. Ventilation perhaps?

Tim mentioned flying saucers and Don painted a word picture of he and Deb’s encounter with a beaver and its den or lodge in Kansas. So I googled and found this interesting theory on why beavers build dams or rather why SOME beavers build dams. Be surprised and check it out
http://www.naturealmanac.com/archive/beaver_dams/beaver_dams.html

I flew the coop early to play catch up on my writing but shared time later in the cool of late afternoon in front of my apartment on the veranda swing while Mike’s daughter Claire, Carol, and I each savored a root beer float in glasses I had chilled in the freezer. A nice small town cocktail hour sans booze. Tame but soul satisfying.