#307 Hawthorne

This will be my umpteenth time going by Hawthorne but I enjoy seeing dick Curtis who operates the local fix it up kind of repair service for people who can't afford it and the food pantry and all that. I enjoy helping out but I'm also kind of like the fact that it's a free place to stay sponsored by the Methodist Church of Hawthorne.

If anybody has not been to Hawthorne it's a very tiny little place the actual downtown is probably only two blocks and some of those are boarded up but the actual town itself is sprawling maybe 10 miles by 10 miles. There is a lot of freight train traffic going by and I asked and it's potentially Citrus and other things but all kinds of products going north. Some coming back but it's a pretty busy rail area and I was excited because I believe the railroad is the way to go for moving lots of freight t instead of a million tractor-trailers.

When I came by Hawthorne the town before, I was told that dick Curtis was in kind of bad shape and he had been unable to eat because of some sort of weird ulcer type cancer problem and he has become a bit of a shell of what it used to be.

He's like the Energizer Bunny though he keeps on ticking and I was also warned again that he wasn't looking that great but still yet he had always found something for me to do.

This time I was removing the ballasts out of existing fluorescent lights and rewiring them to operate LED tubes for a complete replacement for the normal fluorescent thing. Of course, they do not require any ballasting so you would just remove all of the guts and put 120 volts directly to the tube. They put out good light and pretty cool little project but I did that for about maybe 20 fixtures.

Out of the blue, Dick said you don't know anything about trimming trees to you.

I said I guess I know about enough to trim a tree

He asked if I would come by his house and I did and we started by meeting about 9 a.m. I'm sure a bit off more than I really wanted to. I started trimming he had this battery-powered long pole saw and it was a cool tool but you know when all the work is done but then there's sort of the hauling it all up to the road and trimming it up into pieces.

Trimming the trees was actually easy but then I took my truck and backed up to the big pile of debris and started trying to weave a rope to it so I can pull it up to the road with my truck and I did and then I guess I got it all up there within an hour or so.

Again, you would think trimming would be the hard part but then it was a matter of cutting it up into 3ft pieces so the city would haul it off. Now it was between 90 and 100 degrees about noon and I thought I was going to die.

I could have said Dick you’re on your own but he’s about 70 and weak with some stomach cancer or something so I felt I had to stay nice and finish up.

I did all this work and then it was about enough volunteering because now I was really worn out and went on back to the house and took take a shower. We left that day or the next day can't quite remember.