Our Hero of the Week

Current News:

The photo is of our friend Slim aboard Crazy Alice.

It's been a rough week for both of us out here in the boonies. Mark's condition went from bad to worse, the roads were less than pleasant from here to the main canyon and both of us were too ill, too depleted, to make the long trek into town for medical help for either of us.

This time, it was our cowboy neighbor Slim's turn to rescue the Pilgrim and clear any score card and then some that he might have been tallying. When he heard of Mark's condition, he endured the rough roads down here last Thursday and left us with his personal emergency supply of meds. While it was clear that I could not take them, Mark could and I was very thankful for that. I gave him the starter round when he retired very early that night. He was shivering so badly that his jaws clattered and I was deeply disturbed by his ashen cyanotic pallor since I had already suspected that he might be slipping quickly into pneumonia, heralded by his painfully tight coughs. Our supply of cough syrups with expectorants were nearly depleted in hopes that he would keep his lungs from clouding up. I had been riding herd on him constantly to do breathing and deliberate rib cage contraction exercises to ward off further breathing deterioration but we had still been losing ground gradually. I just had to hope that Slim's help had come in time.

Mark made it through the night although his tortured moans, ramblings and coughs had me bolt awake many times that night. He remained a zombie for the next couple of days, sleeping almost 20 hours of each day but finally agreed to eat something by Sunday. It wasn't until Wednesday that he ventured outside to "accomplish something, anything". The week of down time had been weighing on him and he was anxious to get back at it. This Thursday, he even made his ritual run to town although he had justifiably run out of steam very early this evening.

So, Slim, wherever you are the next time you get into trouble, know that you have racked up some serious "Get out of trouble FREE cards". Thanks for loving and caring about a couple of eccentric "Pilgrim" neighbors. You are the official hero of the week up the creek. We love ya!

Sundries: Temperature is a couple of degrees above freezing but a light snow has started to come down. Hopefully it won't be too messy out there when I shut down the generator. Brou has accomplished his last outey for the night and is now engrossed in a brand new rawhide bone. He got in two good runs today when he and I jumped in the truck to check out the road grader's new work.