Hey, hey  – what the hell are you doing? I see you. Put that old tire down. Are you crazy? Who throws old tires down in the creek?

What? You think it’s going to melt? Biodegrade? Decompose? Are you nuts?

You throw an old tire in a creek and it’s gonna be there for a million years. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Let’s just say it’s going to be there a long, long time. You think it’s going to magically rot away. Some biological organisms are going to eat it and it will disappear?

Fuggeddaboutit! There are no organisms that feed on rubber. So after ten thousands of years, the heat, friction from movement, freezing and evaporation might break that tire down into smaller pieces, but it’s not going away.

You want to do the right thing, don’t you? Make a tire swing out of it. Or a planter. Or a chair. There’s a thousand ways to reuse tires and you can find them all on that Internet thingy. This country disposes of 300 million tires per year – almost one per person. If we put them in a landfill they trap water that attracts rodents and mosquitoes. Plus, the methane emissions get trapped and the whole pile ignites. It ain’t easy to put out a tire fire. Tire-fire may sound silly, but not if the smoke is pouring into your backyard.

Tires can be converted into TDF – that’s tire-derived fuel. It’s an alternative to fossil fuels and even better, it produces 25 percent more energy than coal. The tires are put through a shredder that uses powerful knives to tear the tires into small pieces. The steel can be sorted out for other recycled uses. Then the remaining pieces of rubber can be incinerated to produce energy, used as playground mulch or even material for new tires.

See what I’m saying? There’s a right way to save the planet and fight back against climate change, and there’s a wrong way. It just takes a little bit of consideration for your old Mother Nature. Trust me, you don’t want to be on my bad side.

All my love,

Mom

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

So, here’s me and my old (like really old) buddy, Sal, on the way back from Nebraska hauling a second-hand bulldozer to Michigan. Sal is driving. That’s a condition of his involvement—only he can drive his International Harvester truck. That leaves me with the task of navigating and keeping him awake during the long tedium of wheat fields waving.

“You know we’re down to half a tank of gas,” I thoughtfully remind him. “We might as well top her off at that gas station coming up.”

“It’s not a Shell station,” he replies.

What can I say? It’s his truck.

Half-hour later, I notice Sal starting to fidget and wiggle behind the wheel. Maybe it’s the caffeine I’ve been pouring down him for the last 150 miles. Or maybe it’s the coffee trying to get out. Once again, I suggest a stop—this time for emptying rather than filling.

“Naw, that’s all right. An aching bladder keeps me awake. That and your constant jabbering.”

I start in explaining my plans for the dozer. The road commission is going to run a freeway near my farm. So, with this dozer, I’ll scrape the topsoil from my back-40 bottom land and sell it to a nursery. Then I’ll get money from the road guys to dump their fill dirt on my land. Then I can sell it to a developer for condominiums. Slick, ha?”

“Big plans. Lots of money.”

“Well…yeah.” I glance at the fuel gauge—a quarter tank to empty.

Shouldn’t we be stopping for gas soon?”

“I know my truck. Don’t worry.”

Later. “C’mon, Sal, we’ve been riding on empty for the last five or ten miles. Why are you doing this? We just passed a perfectly good gas station.”

“To keep me awake.”

Finally, the truck wheezes, stutters and dies. I’m mad. “Damn, Sal. Now look. We’re stuck without a farm house in sight and nothing but a long road sloping down to the horizon.”

“The operative word, here, is down. If the road slopes, let’s put the truck in neutral and see what we find.”

So, we slowly trundle down the long, curving road until it rounds into a small town with a Shell gas station on the corner.

Sal is grinning so hard I’m afraid he can’t see the road.

“Now, what did that prove?” I scold over hamburgers and pie.

“That just enough is enough.”

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

Another in a continuing series of articles about what exactly animals and marine life are up to, that you always wanted to know.

We’ve all seen it. About an hour before sunset the cows come home. If we’re talking milk cows, they head for the barn because there’s food there and a place to get out of the wind. But what about cattle on open grazing land? Where are they heading? How do they spend their nights?

First of all, we’ve all heard the expression “herd mentality” and when it comes to cattle, there are always some dominant animals that decide where and when the herd moves. They are after all prey animals, so there’s safety in numbers. So after a hard day of grazing, cattle will seek out some lowland out of the wind and elements and find bedground for the night. You would be surprised at how much body heat an 1,800 pound cow can generate and they do have a whole lot of insulation, so I would not get too hung on whether or not they are cold. Ask a rancher in North Dakota how low the temperature has to get before a cow freezes.

There’s usually a lot of gossip about who saw what (Did you see that rusty old pick-up truck go by?), how much forage everyone had, and some of the goofy things the calves were up to that day. There is a lot of talk about the quality of the forage, so much like humans, cattle will drone on and on about where the best forage was, or complaining about the scarcity, or how long it took to chew cud.

Cattle are very social, so it’s not unusual for some of the better storytellers to break out a story that’s been handed down for generations for the listening pleasure of the rest of the herd. On some rare occasions, the herd will come across some Jimson weed and on those nights the cattle have a riproaring time getting high as kites (perhaps not the best comparison when you’re talking about an 1,800 pound animal) and having some really wicked hallucinations. If you’re wondering what kind of hallucination a cow might have, one of the most common ones is that a cow will think that the ear tag is some kind of radio controller that’s following every move the cow makes. Creepy yes, but not out of the realm of possibility.

So the next time you see cattle making their move around sunset, you’ll have a pretty good idea that the party is about to get started.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

How are you, Stranger?

No stranger than usual. How ‘bout you, Bud?

I’ll let you know when I’ve had a little more of this coffee. Honestly, I feel like I’ve aged a week since I saw you last.

Hey, it’s only been a week, but this is weird. Things have come to where you act like seeing my image on the laptop is the same as “seeing” me. Did you get a haircut?

I did. Jodi said I was looking more like a homeless person than an aging rock star. What are we doing today? Are we gonna play some tunes?

That’s the plan. First thing would be to check the gear and see what kind of readings we’re getting for latency. I’m showing you at five mili-seconds total for your audio interface.

Wow, that’s pretty good. You’re reading closer to ten, but still in the green. Are you having some weather over there in Santa Fe?

Snowed again last night. That might affect these crazy jitter readings. Should we both hit the “resync” button?

Good idea. Ahh, that’s better. Yeah, all your settings are in the green now. I was online yesterday jamming with a bass player in Michigan and we were getting about the same readings. He was probably a thousand miles from here, but we had a tight session. He’ll make somebody very happy in a cover band doing oldies. No real issues, but he’s not the one we want for this particular ensemble.

Okay, let’s play something together to warm up the guitars, and then I’d like to run over the new songs. Did you get my email with the revised lyrics?

Yeah, I printed them out last night. I think the lyrics are fine, but I do have some questions about where you want the harmony vocals.

I’m not sure about that yet. Let’s use the software to make a place holder recording this morning; we’ll be better able to decide about details of the arrangement after we hear what we did. Meanwhile, and I don’t know if you’d be up for this, but I thought it would be fun to get away from our material for a half hour play some Hank Williams tunes.

Yeah, like which ones?

Anything you’d like. Lost Highway, Lovesick Blues, Hey, Good Lookin’, I Saw The Light, Your Cheatin’ Heart. Any of those appeal to you?

Let’s do I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. In the People’s Key of E flat.

All right then. You want me to kick it off?

Harpeth Rivers is a New Mexico transplant from all over who has written songs about isosceles triangles, played bass guitar in a band, and declared himself “Retro-eclectic.” His novel-in-progress is entitled Last Year.

“We’ve hit rock bottom,” my wife Anna groaned. “Sitting on the couch watching other couch potatoes on television critiquing reality shows like we do, it’s proof positive we have no life.”

“When did we die?” I played along, but Anna frowned.

“Okay, we breathe, eat and do other things that mirror life but we’re just making a mockery of it. Pass the popcorn,” she groused.

I took a sour bite of reality chewing Anna’s words. I mulled over the touchstones we should’ve heeded as our world shrank: living vicariously through reality stars like the Kardashians, Saturday date nights becoming a toss-up between doing laundry or grocery shopping, the family barbecue three years ago when my father-in-law started making sense. Even the dog stopped chasing balls instead lolling on the couch with us barking at the canine stars of Pitbulls and Parolees.

“How did we fade away, Anna?” I sputtered but my wife, paying rapt attention to our new flat screen TV, silenced me with a finger that zipped both our lips.

Bookended by births and funerals, we first ran circles around our parents then our kids ran circles around us. We became chauffeurs and coaches. We spent Fourth of July on our front lawn gleefully watching our neighbor across the street light off illegal fireworks. Our aging parents sandwiched us as caregivers, and the death of the 9 to 5 job killed any free time and passion to live life on our terms. Ground to a powder, we burrow into the couch to escape reality by watching and parsing reality shows. And now we watch our proxies do it for us.

“Pass the popcorn, Anna,” I shrugged and slipped into my Snuggie.

Marc Litman is from Granada Hills, CA