Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #204)
Excerpted from a Letter from Josh as it appeared in the Altavista Journal.
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show! The mountain is ripping pieces of clouds. Mom’s chickens do this with a kale leaf, which boggles me (because kale), but I guess someone has to like it. The mountains around here do the same with clouds in the fall, snagging tatters of gray fluff as it brings the rain.
The Harvest Moon is rising now, but since I wrote about it last week, rain was all but a guarantee. It’s a good time to spin Leon Redbone’s version of the tune, on a night when “the moon refuses to shine.”
The rain keeps falling, and the mountain keeps ripping, and for the first time this year, I felt winter in the wind. Rumors of seasons travel like that.
Rainy evenings are good for the crops, bad for watching the Harvest Moon, and excellent for the new project. I’ve got a vintage telescope in the basement. Of course. It all started a few weeks ago.
“I think I’ve found it.” Myron called, one of those dependably interesting pals. “It was on the junk heap. We’ve gotta save it. But I don’t really have a place to put it.”
“I’ve got a brand new basement. Keep it here.” (Who wouldn’t want to host something like this?) The next week, the moving crew of Myron, Rich, and Randy drove up, the telescope in tow.
It’s massive: eight feet long, and twelve inches in diameter. The mounting system weighs several hundred pounds. What a beauty. It used to roam the skies, spying distant galaxies, tracking the rings of Saturn, skimming across the craters of the moon long before any astronauts touched down, keeping watch through the long nights. Then it was eclipsed by a shiner toy at the big observatory, and mothballed.
Now, after sixty years prison in a starless room, it’s got a second chance. It’s a tarnished pile of metal at the moment. But it’ll see starlight again.
There’s something special about reviving an old machine. The first car I had was in a constant state of breaking and repair. I blew it up so bad once, even the guy at the machine shop scolded me. “Don’t ever bring me a cylinder head that warped again.” I had to pay him in cash under the table to even take it on. But he was good, and fixed it. The tiny motor never sounded so sweet. Even the street, visible through a rust hole in the floor of the car, seemed to shine in triumph. Or maybe that was the leaking oil. Hey, a win’s a win.
Now there’s a telescope to bring to life. The brass is tarnished, and the wires are old, but all there. Some long-forgotten wizard at the lathe did a beautiful job with the gears. The mirror is in surprisingly good shape. Whoever built it loved it. I’ve got a brand new can of WD-40, and it’s go time.
The guys will be back to help. We’ll make it work. Then, we’ll build a little shed around it–a brand new observatory, a garage for the telescope after a drive across the light years. While the rain falls and the Harvest Moon still refuses to shine, I’m off to the basement to work. A clear night will be here soon enough.
Pass me a wrench, will you?
–Josh