Random thoughts while under the eaves.

Today I was under the eaves, painting. A boisterous fighter jet from Holloman AFB just outside Alamogordo, NM, 82 miles up the road, roared by low overhead. The sound from his jet engine/s was deafeningly thunderous.

I'm envious. With afterburners on, he can make the 75 minute time it takes me to drive up to that base from here in 3 or 4 minutes. With a better view. And he doesn't have to pay for the gas either! As with all the Air Force jets and Army helicopters flying past too low in violation of my airspace, I flip him off. But he doesn't see. They never do, but it makes me feel better.

Before, Holloman AFB was home to the F-117 Stealths which have just recently been mothballed. But to maintain the local economy of Alamogordo, a contingent of F-22 Raptors, the Air Force's latest, have been stationed there. Designed to fight and defeat the Russians if the cold war should ever rekindle and then turn hot, we can only hope our purchase of them wasn't a waste of money, right, because I don't see much use for them against al Qaeda and Taliban.

And their new agility and speed saddens me. That's because there's even less chance now than before with the F-117 Stealths of them seeing my extended middle finger waving as they fly by.

I take a break for some water. While in the house I check the local temperature outside. Excite.com says it's 103 degrees! I scoff. The area of roof I'm working on in 103 is the same part of the roof I worked on in 107! But that was over 20 years ago. So while my good sense is still missing, I'm wondering how much of my old endurance may have joined it?

Undeterred, I resume my place outside on my ladder. Suddenly, I hear the following melody for the first time this season. Some of my older readers may recognize it. It went like this:

"Ba ba bah ba bah, da da da dah da da da dut
da da dah da da da da dah dut!" *

And I muse at what I'm hearing. Could the composer of this wonderful little movement 280 years ago ever imagined at the time it would be playing as a signal to children the ice cream truck approaches? How exciting!

My mind wanders to how careful one must be when being creative. How one's creative powers may end up hawking Eskimo Pies to children sweltering in heat with sweet tooths 280 years from now.

Then my mind drifts to the Voyager disks sent into space in 1977. If the neighborhood ice cream truck preserves music from a quarter millennium ago, I wonder if Chuck Berry had any idea when he composed and performed his classic "Johnny B. Goode," that it might one day be heard by someone on a planet in the neighborhood of Alpha Centauri, our sun's nearest fellow star.

And who knows? Maybe excited alien kids may eventually rush to secure sweet frozen refreshments for relief from their warming planet/dying sun/in an aging solar system singing,

"Go go,
Go Johnny go?"

These are the things that occupy my mind while painting under the eaves in 103 degrees.

While my upper torso is shielded from the blazing sun by the eaves, my legs are being toasted a golden tan.

I imagine how great they'll look when, next month after summer has begun, I flag down the approaching ice cream truck playing,

"Ba ba bah ba bah, da da da dah da da da dut
da da dah da da da da dah dut!"

******

NOTE: For those of you old enough to remember the above melody, congratulations! It's from Jean-Joseph Mouret's (1682-1738) first movement of his "First Suite in D," from his second book of Fanfares for Trumpets, Kettledrums, Violins and Oboes (published in Paris, ca. 1729). The movement is in rondeau form; it is also known as Mouret's "Rondeau," the "Theme from Masterpiece Theatre," and the sound this summer's approaching ice cream truck makes.