Miller Time

Tua's lazy afternoons.....measured out with coffee spoons...




Tua's smiles have developed significantly over the last week or so. She's holding them long enough now so that we can actually get a good exposure. These smiles tend to have a calm, warming effect upon the observer. They can turn your afternoon from partly cloudy to mostly sunny. Such was the case this evening. Upon arriving home, I immediately took the dogs for their daily hike up into the fields and forests above the house. We live on a road that dwindles into a class five goatpath just beyond our house and it is here that most afternoons between 5 and seven are spent hiking the mile or so up this path to the abandoned farms in the hills above.
This afternoon, as we were returning home in the cooling air, a non-descript pickup made its way up the path about 200 feet below us. The dogs began to bark loudly and I rushed to leash them. A truck in this neck of the woods is not too uncommon...Vermont is rife with folk who partake of the certain form of recreation that it is to drive out into the middle of nowhere for the sake of isolated inebriation. Whoever it was in this particular vehicle was alarmed enough by my presence to beat a hasty retreat. As they clumsily manuvered the truck back down the path, a dozen or so empty beer cans flew from its cab. Aside from flagging the obvious flippant regard for the drunk driving laws in this state, there's not a whole lot you can do whan that happens. Or is there?.... As I picked up the trash, I was thinking of ways to curb the problem of errant trash disposal in general and of wayward emptied aluminum cans in particular. Life must be good if your truck and a couple of beers are enough to bring happiness into your life. So this is what I came up with..... I shall purchase a rusted-out domestic pick-up that still has all its glass intact. I will weld six metal drums in the back of the bed and shall tow it out into the middle of the woods above our house and park it. This shall be the requisite 'responsible drunk lounge on wheels' complete with a bottle and can collection facility in the bed. Anyone interested in drinking beer alone or with one or two other souls in the shelter of the cab of a pickup surrounded by the great outdoors can hike themselves and their provisions to this spot, drink themselves into the state they were hoping for, throw their cans into any one of the metal containers in the back and then leave........
By the time I reached the house, I was well over this madcapped idea and well into mulling through the legalities of the liquor laws in Vermont. I entered the house and Bug was holding Tua on the couch. They were both smiling brightly. My minds mulling process immediatly stopped. Tua's smile flashed brightly in my direction and I felt the bitter memories of the previous hour flee my mind like wind from a tunnel. Or like a drunk from the limelight.