April 29, 2020
My wife and I are following the rules of behavior for living in Santa Clara Valley to the letter, for a number of reasons,the virus is very active here, we are both over 75, and everything seems to be shut down in the area including Stanford, which is usually a main source of amusement for us. Also we are very fond of the Health Officer and Director for the Public Health Department in California's Santa Clara County, Sara Cody, who is the daughter of a wonderful family we have been close to for a number of years. Her father Tad, was an architect and one of my best friends who unfortunately died a number of years ago. Sara has successfully worked herself into her dream job, but probably didn’t realize that the likes of Covid 19 would follow. We trust her absolutely. If she told us that there was a new rule demanding that we empty our refrigerator, pull the plug, and crawl inside until she gave us permission to emerge, we would do it. Well maybe not quite, but we certainly do trust her advice.
We do communicate with our friends, who also are following the rules, and they usually want to know what we are doing, in the tone of voice which implies that perhaps we have trouble filling our time. We both have enough projects underway to easily outlast us for several dozen years, and are getting a great amount of pleasure from working on them full time. Marian is spending huge amounts of time on her exploding garden, being involved in various Zoom sessions, attending the now relatively few but high quality talks being given at the university, buying our food, and wringing everything she wants to out of the internet, her backlog of books, and TV. I am organizing 20 years of paperwork for the Stanford archives (or trying to), replacing rotten beams in her greenhouse, being very aware of things that need attention in the house (sash weights with broken cords, screen doors that stick, leaks in our main drain pipe, and I should be prepping it for painting, if not painting it. I am also making sense out of my work spaces, which are overflowing with tools in the wrong place, many surplus, and wood and metal projects I have started and am frantically trying to finish. And there are my machines, which we just uncovered and are definitely needing some tender loving care (as always)
One of the joys of the machinery was that Loren Bryon, a person of great curiosity and knowledge of old (and new) machinery and who I have mentioned in past was spending one day a week helping me restore them (or as he says, rescuing them to be restored —he does have very high standards.) And he is a joy to work with. But he too is living by the rules, and his rules are much tighter than mine, because for three days a week he works in a hardware store. But we keep in contact by phone and internet, and he too has a shop and can work at home.
As to the Peterbilt, I consider the wiring to be in great shape (the old wire was a confused mess and Loren re-did it) and the interior to be beautifully redone (a two person job). It now requires a bit of cleaning and body work (quite a bit, including a paint job) and we can justifiably be pleased. He is able to take parts home and work on them (he is presently redoing the headlights, which were in terrible shape), and I am working on the body itself. At present I am working on a very large air cleaner which protrudes on the passenger’s side, and the main parts received a huge amount of damage. Below are a few photos of it before, after I stripped the old finish off, after I applied some Bondo, after I applied more Bondo and sanded it, after I primed the surface again (I ran out of red primer and switched to gray), and after I applied paint to the parts. Not perfect, but better, and very satisfying to me. Maybe some day I will shoot for perfection, but probably not—it is a 1957 truck, for God’s sake.
And apologies for the photo placement. I will spend some of my spare time figuring out how to get the program to let me place them where I want them, rather than using its feeble brain!
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