Offensive fences and concrete plans

Specifically, we had committed an act detrimental to the entire community by allowing graffiti to remain on our back fence. Graffiti that we hadn’t invited or encouraged in any way, but nevertheless had the misfortune of being associated with since it happened on the railroad right-of-way that butts up to our property. And because our town, like most, requires property owners to remove graffiti at their expense, and because it’s easier to go after mom and pop homeowner than multibillionaire Warren Buffett and the BNSF Railway, the task of cleanup fell to us.

The violation letter included a photograph of our fence taken from the south side of the tracks, clearly showing the streaks of blue and yellow spray paint that had appeared sometime in the night back in early May. To call it “graffiti art” would be a disservice to urban artists, who often go out of their way to create beautiful murals that adorn the sides of buildings and boxcars. Not the sort of imagery you’d frame in a gallery or wear on a T-shirt in a statement of shabby chic. No, this was just the random scribblings of roving hooligans who hit our fence along with several other places they had tagged that night. 

The letter cited the relevant section of municipal code of which we had run afoul, gave a feeble excuse as to why the city wouldn’t clean it up themselves and why our tax dollars don’t cover graffiti removal, and informed us that we had 72 hours from the letter’s receipt to make amends or face fines of $100 daily plus a $500 penalty and the city’s cost to hire a cleaning crew and do the work for us. And since the clock began ticking on Aug. 23, the day the letter was sent, we were required to be in compliance by the end of business on… Aug. 26. The very day we’d opened the letter.

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S

O LET'S GET this straight, you urgently want us to remove graffiti that has been there for nearly four months and we have to do it today lest the full weight of the fence police be brought to bear on us? What if we had been on vacation? What if we were physically incapable of doing the job and needed to make arrangements to hire somebody? What if… The list of excuses began to grow along with our sense of outrage. But moreover we were concerned that unless we got in touch with the code enforcers that very day we might awake Saturday morning to the sound of workers painting our fence — which would not be unheard of to have city crews at work on the weekend.

But just try to get hold of anyone in an official governmental capacity at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. During the recession of 2009 they closed up shop at City Hall for “furlough Fridays” in order to save money rather than lay off staff. When they realized no one seemed to miss not having city services one day every week but furloughs fell out of vogue, they changed the name to “family Fridays” and continued the practice for several years. That was until the pandemic, when pretty much every day became family Friday and no one kept office hours — except the code enforcement officers, evidently. 

So Roni phoned the city, stated our case to the friendly recording on the other end of the line, and hung up to wait for the promised call back. Meanwhile, we were on our own as to how to proceed. Since it was up to us to remove the offending paint scribbles and we had no idea what color to use for the job, we’d have to use our best guess. 

Roni headed over to ACE Hardware and had the 90-year-old part-timer in the paint department who looks like Clint Eastwood mix up a gallon of “Van Buren Brown” that seemed like a close match for the ugly shade of brown some city-sponsored group of volunteers had painted our fence a few years back. (Hmmm, so the city does get involved with painting fences when it chooses to…) We don’t know if Van Buren Brown was named for our former U.S. president, but it cost us a few other dead presidents to purchase a can of — $42, not including the brush, roller and paint pan Roni also bought. 

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W

E HAD TALKED about going out first thing on Saturday morning to do the deed of graffiti removal, but it hadn’t been how we wanted to spend our weekend. There were other beautification projects on our agenda that had nothing to do with the fence and everything to do with landscaping the backyard. So with the waning daylight we decided we’d do the job after dinner. With the two of us working together, it couldn’t take much more than an hour, tops.

At 7:30 p.m., with paint rollers and can of Van Buren Brown in hand, we slipped through our back gate and onto the sandy soil that runs along our back fence. Technically this is railroad property and we aren’t allowed to be on it, or so says the sign attached to the phone pole a few feet from our gate. And technically because it is railroad property, this was akin to us hopping the fence into our neighbor’s backyard and then going hog wild with paint rollers — which a true neighbor probably wouldn’t have appreciated and called the police on us, so why would the city assume that BNSF would want anyone there painting? 

Truth of the matter is that the railroad discourages trespassers for no other reason than someone might get whacked by a wayward piece of equipment being dragged along by a train, or a derailment, or some other unspeakable twist of fate. So yes, we were taking our lives into our hands being out there, but we’ll ignore for a moment that we used to do this frequently in our railfan days so safety and legality of our presence there were both specious arguments. Probably. 

Glenn glopped about half a can of the paint into our two plastic pans and we attacked the aging fence boards, hitting the graffiti part first just to be sure we hid it immediately in case our painting effort was interrupted and we got no further. Originally we’d thought to paint the two affected fence sections entirely from top to bottom, just to have a uniform appearance to the finished product. After Glenn had scoured away the yellow tag on the second section and stepped back to observe the result, he decided that a big patch of brown — even Van Buren Brown — didn’t look much better than what it was replacing, so he chose to continue painting all of the boards that had been hit. 

Roni, meanwhile, had discovered that her 12-inch paint roller wasn’t ideal for the 6-inch space created between where the boards overlapped one another. Board-on-board design looks lovely when it’s new, but it is difficult to maintain if it needs to be painted by anything other than a spray gun. So because Glenn was using a 4-inch roller, it was decided that she would paint the outer boards while he tackled the inner ones. The result was a zebra-stripe effect of fresh brown and aging tan — about the best way we can describe the color that someone applied (not us and maybe not the city???) the last time the fence got tagged. 

About an hour into the job the sky had sufficiently darkened that it was getting difficult to see our progress. Roni used her cell phone LED to light the work area as Glenn tidied up the gaps in her paint job. It wasn’t perfect, but at least we’d wiped out the offending scrawls. And we had one beautifully painted brown panel and a partially painted section of a second panel — all ready for the next cretin who dares to tag us. 

And as for the city, we did receive a call back — after hours — to let us know they were sorry they had missed our call and that they would note we’d called them so as to avoid the prospect of getting fined for missing their 72-hour deadline. As to what color of paint to use, we didn’t get an answer for that, so we hope they like Van Buren Brown. As far as Clint Eastwood’s doppelganger had informed Roni, he’d never received a complaint from others who had chosen their own fence colors, and if we’d wanted to paint it pink then that probably would have been fine too. It is our fence, after all, as the city code enforcers have made perfectly clear. So if it’s our property (we actually paid the full cost to replace it 17 years ago, with zero help from the railroad) then we’d hope this will be good enough and they’ll leave us be.

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A

T LEAST PART of the reason that we weren’t thrilled about the prospect of spending a Saturday abating graffiti that wasn’t ours was because we’ve been in full-on yardwork mode in the backyard. If there was painting to be done, we would have preferred doing it on some of our broken yard ornaments that Roni has been restoring, or on the concrete objects Glenn has recently produced.

One of those objects, the so-called “ugly pot” that was cast from a couple of plastic planters we picked up cheap from Home Depot, finally received a coat of red, blue and gold paint and was added to our redwood planter box where it awaits a permanent planting of succulents. The paint job itself is rather handsome, even if the pot isn’t. We tried to attach some concrete feet to it, but the cement we used was too dry and the feet snapped off while we were still painting it. Ah well, you learn from your mistakes. 

Meanwhile, Glenn is trying to create a large sculpture after being inspired by something we saw on our recent travels, and while it isn’t anywhere near completion yet, it has given him some practice creating a mold out of Styrofoam sheets and handmaking an arch from concrete mix poured over a supporting bed of sand. We’ll hope to show you the completed object in a future newsletter. 

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A

LL OF THIS creative concrete activity has led us to realize that working on the front porch has its limitations, both for space and convenience. We’ve been tripping over electrical cords, tools and bags of sand every time we walk out the front door. And although Glenn has moved most of his production work to the back patio, there is still limited space to spread out because of tables, chairs and planter boxes that are already there. Clearly we need more space.

So when it came time to move our yard cleanup operation to the side yard near our bedroom, one of the first things we did (after shaking our heads at how many weeds have grown there) was to decide it would be an ideal spot to build another patio. 

Hiring someone to pour a 4-inch patio slab is both labor intensive and expensive. But we weren’t looking for anything fancy or even permanent, just some concrete pavers to cover up the sand and give us a solid surface to work on while also keeping the weeds at bay. Glenn decided he wanted to give it a try himself, so just like that we began shopping around for 60-pound bags of concrete mix and tools to shape whatever he tried to create, either a slab or individual stones. 

We calculated that it would take around 70 bags of concrete to build a 24x4-foot slab at 2½ inches thick — a little thinner than the other patios we have, but probably more than enough for as often as we are likely to use it. But because it has been a few years since the last time we made a concrete slab for anything (a couple of footers for the stairs on our retaining wall, back in 2000) we decided it would be a good idea to test it out on a smaller project first. 

Roni wanted to create a small path near Winter’s Garden to help her reach the plants there while watering the garden. Originally she was thinking about using stepping stones to match the look of the flagstone path we already have. But because Glenn wanted practice, instead of stepping stones we decided to make it a concrete pour. 

We bought some bender board at Home Depot and used that as our form for an undulating garden path. As of yet we haven’t started pouring the concrete, but that should be done by the time you read next month’s newsletter.

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M

EANWHILE, THE SIDE yard patio idea continues to evolve. Originally Glenn was thinking about using 27x27-inch pavers to create the space. This is an odd size that isn’t available at the home improvement stores, so it would have to be cast from a custom form. We’d need 10 to 12 of them. Each would weigh about 250 pounds, far too heavy for one person to move, so it would probably mean casting the stones in place, one at a time.

The next idea was to do what is known as a “dry pour.” This is a professionally unapproved method of creating a concrete slab from bagged mix by setting the form and then pouring the bags in place without water. The slab is shaped and smoothed first, then water is misted on and the mix allowed to set for several days with repeated mistings. This creates a weaker slab that produces perhaps half of the compressive strength of a concrete mixed and poured the conventional way, but it may be enough for light-duty uses and has the advantage of being able to be poured by one person without the need for mixing machines or multiple sections. 

But now we have come back to the idea of going the conventional route, mixing and pouring the bags in place, one section at a time. Glenn bought a collection of shaping and finishing tools he’ll need from Harbor Freight and is currently prepping the area for when he is ready to start the work (after Roni’s garden path is finished.) 

Once the new patio is in place, the plan is to add what would be our third pergola as a covering. This will be a conventional lean-to with a fiberglass panel roof, detached from the house so as to avoid the need for permits. We are also entertaining thoughts of adding solar panels for a very small system that would be capable of powering some tools, a couple of fountain pumps and Christmas lights. 

How and when all of this gets done remains uncertain. But like all our projects, the getting there is half of the adventure. Stay tuned. 

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T

HE GATHERING OF friends and families, the sounds of local bands, the world’s shortest parade and the scent of pear pie were back in Courtland on July 31 for the first time in three years as the Pear Fair came to town.

The Pear Fair has been our annual summer tradition since 1988, and we’d been to every one without fail except for one year in the mid-’90s. That was until 2020 when the specter of COVID-19 forced the fair to cancel just weeks before it had been set to take place. The calendar was blacked out again last year when the so-called Delta variant made the rounds. But this year organizers made tenuous plans for a return to action this summer, and we were all looking forward to getting back to our favorite country fair, without masks. 

This should have been the 50th annual festival, but instead they stuck with the 48th. Ben decided to come with us, which felt great that we were all part of a weekend family outing. We got very lucky because the weather in late July on the Delta can be brutally hot, but it was merely in the 80s thanks to some cloud cover that even brought a smattering of raindrops in the mid-afternoon. Not enough to run for shelter, but enough to feel a bit of moisture on our brows and say, “What was that? I hope it wasn’t bird poop.” 

We weren’t sure what to expect from the fair after a two-year hiatus, but most of our favorite attractions were back. The Delta Lions Club’s loaves of pear bread were a bit smaller than in years past (thanks, shrinkflation) and the pear pies at the Bates Elementary School PTA a bit more expensive at $20 (thanks, inflation), but the sausage sandwiches at the Lockeford Sausages booth were just as delicious and still attracted a huge line. Jay Rolerz, the opening act on the main stage and a staple of the show for more than 30 years, still sound about the same — which is either a good or bad thing, depending on your taste in music; even our least favorite aspects of the festival felt good to have back when the alternative was sitting home on a lovely summer Sunday with nowhere to go. 

Roni eagerly scooped up some potted succulents from the La Perita garden club, Ben spent time perusing the DVD section of the Sacramento County Library used book sale, and Glenn found a new hat he liked from one of the vendors. We checked out the history photo display inside the gymnasium, rocked out to Antioch-based country musician Rachel Steele on the main stage, and watched the parade that was literally no more than five minutes long, devoid of most of the floats that usually are part of the lineup. But we loved every minute, or is that every second? 

And perhaps the biggest surprise that awaited us came when we went hunting for the little metal commemorative pins that are always distributed free from the information booth. We initially were disappointed when we got there to learn the pins hadn’t shown up yet. But given that it was still early in the day, we held out hope that the delivery would occur. And as luck would have it, right as we were preparing to walk away we saw one of the festival staffers walking up with two big boxes of souvenir items including pins and bumper stickers. 

Not only were we among the first of the day to score our commemorative 2022 Pear Fair pins and bumper stickers, but we also got the missing 2020 pins to keep our collection intact. That was an unexpected treat. We knew the 2020s were out there somewhere because they had already been made before that year’s show got canceled. Apparently someone had them stashed away all this time and decided to bring them out. Whoever that person was, bless you! Alas, no 2021 pin because they were never made, but the festival T-shirt designers commemorated the pandemic’s interruption in their own way, coming up with a shirt featuring a mask-wearing pear and a caption that read, “Pear Fair 2020-2021 — the missing years.” 

We just hope that’s the last time they — or we — will miss the Courtland Pear Fair.

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W

ELL, SO MUCH for our summer stock market rally. If July seemed too good to be true, the last half of August has proved it. All it took was a bit of dour jawboning about the economy from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell at the annual Jackson Hole Summit to put Wall Street back in fear mode, as the promise of continued inflation and interest rate increases has set the ball in motion for further investment losses into late September, the next time the Fed meets to set rates.

We are less concerned about the national economic recovery than the status of our own accounts, which continue to wobble on bear market vibes. We mentioned last month that we “acquired” 300 shares of RocketLab on the final day of June off of an option contract that had been set to expire next January. We immediately sold call options on all the RKLB shares we own in the hope to pocket about $120 from the premium. Any cash that can be brought in during a falling market is welcome.

But that plan quickly appeared to go south when the stock price began to “rocket” higher ahead of the company’s earnings call. Our 5.00-strike call options we’d sold for $30 each climbed to nearly $200, meaning we would have to spend a lot more to close them if we wanted to prevent our shares from being called away at a fraction of what we’d paid for them. 

To remedy this, Glenn bought 400 more shares of RKLB at 5.70 each the day after earnings. That meant if we lost our 400 original shares, we would have 400 new shares to replace them for just a slight loss and a much lower cost basis. The day of the purchase it looked like he’d made the right move — the stock shot higher by more than 20 percent, closing above $7 a share. Had we sold the position immediately, we would have profited $500 in a single day. But you can guess how this story ends… 

Over the following week, the broader markets suffered a bloodbath. Those additional 400 shares of RKLB, much like the original 400 shares, are now underwater, trading around 5.13 as of this writing. The call option we sold in July won’t expire until Oct. 21, and although it is still in the money the price has dropped to $70. Meanwhile, thinking the stock wouldn’t be back in this range anytime soon, we sold more put options at 4.00 and 5.00 strike levels. So a lot of things could happen by mid-October: we could be left with 400 shares, 800 shares, or possibly as many as 1,400 shares if the price falls so far that we have to buy those additional puts. At least we are upbeat about the company’s prospects in the growing space sector. 

Other additions to the taxable account in August included 25 shares of B&G Foods (BGS), 100 shares of Oatly (OTLY) and 100 shares of RingCentral (RNG), the latter two of which were acquired via assigned put options. And as a result, we are cash poor once again. Now we’ll cross our fingers that we can hold out until the next market rally, whenever that may be. 

See you in September.

 

Glenn, Roni and Ben