By Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell

Sometimes I can more than empathize with Douglas Adams’s paranoid android Marvin in “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. Living here on Boggs Run Road has convinced me that the world of my youth is totally gone and I am living in World War III which is we the people trying to survive what mega corporations and bureaucrats are determined to do to us.

The 4^th of July a tree came down on the Boggs just where they had been digging and had the road pulled apart for months. Was I ever surprised that they were building a bridge there because I thought it was just a place to rest for three minuets at the stop lights they installed on each end of the dig. As an archeologist I wanted to get out there and help them excavate but then I would look at all the bottles and cans and lunch wrappers that the workers tossed there and loose enthusiasm.I even begged them at different times to get a trash barrel but I guess DOT couldn’t afford one.

When I moved here almost four years ago I didn’t know WV was that poor but I guess we are.I figured if they got rid of the trash I might become inspirited but it never happened. Since I have been here I’ve complained about the constant falling of rotten trees on the narrow badly pot holed road but no one does anything about it. Logic and common sense are not allowed along this road.Every time I see the sign “Welcome to Benwood Where Everyone is Someone” I laugh and wish we could add “Unless you live on Boggs Run Road”. I wonder what the ghost of the miner who comes down the road every now and then in the early hours of the morning wonders why this road is such a mess.I wonder why about a dozen deer have decided my yard is a good place to sleep since they cut down all the trees up the Boggs and what gives the deer the right to consider my flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs as a gourmet salad bowl.I’m tired of them taking my Hostas as hostages and decapitating my lilies.Ah for a fresh tomato!

If it sounds like I am, like the deer, getting off the beaten road, it is because everything is cause and effect and one day follows another without a break in between which is why it is so difficult to separate them even if I wanted to which I probably do not.Rotten trees fall on the road all the time and power lines are affected all the time and I get really bored telling cable companies, trucks and a host of others that my yard is not a place for people to come sit at my picnic table and have lunch. Nor is it a turn around,or a place to toss their cigarette butts, which drives me to distraction as I have to pick them up so that non of the many birds we feed will eat one and choke on it. I am one of those people that believe every word that the Audubon Society says and if they say filters are bad for birds then I believe them. We won’t even speak of the gravel, concrete, and other debris that large trucks have deposed all over the yard or the paved surface they have badly damaged, or the unspeakable cheapos that think if they go behind our building they can use their vehicles as mobile motels and then not even have the decency of using their ashtray to deposit their used condoms.Some how or another because we own and reside in the old Boggs Run Elementary School people think that we should pay the taxes and they should have the usage.

Usage…now that is what we were speaking of. The power went out on the 4^th of July and we could see some of the fire works from the third floor but other that getting to use the many candles I have purchased at Good Will and yard sales, our building was in darkness. Worse still our phone didn’t work. Our Cell phone will not work in the building only in the road and Comcast’s truck was parked there in the road till 2:30 AM. The electric came on at 2:15 AM but not our phone. Verison was no where to be seen and that is who services our phone. Now I make my living as a writer and as an antiques dealer using the phone and the computer. No phone means no internet connection. It is now Monday the 7^th and I have not been able to make a living since the phone connections went bye-bye .I have been cut off from Verizon at least 30 times; I have left my number numerous times for someone to call me back. I have spoken to some inept people after listening to recordings saying, “For Quality control this phone call may be recorded” Oh how I wish they would record and review it. Prevarication thy name is Verizon!Having explained that the Englishman is handicapped and our cell doesn’t work in the building because of all the brick and metal as well as the mountain surrounding it they keep on telling me a different time the phone will be alive again. “It’s a cable somewhere but we will not tell you where because it does not concern you.”How silly of me, I thought not having a phone and not being able to make a living did concern me.

“How come everyone with Comcast has a phone?”Disconnect…

Talking to Verizon is never as satisfying as speaking to the deer as when I go out and tell the deer to stay away from the bird feeders they at least cock their heads and make believe they are listening to me. And when I say be careful crossing the road the trucks barrel along down here and you have to look both ways before you cross or you will get hit, the deer at least look a mite pensive and shake their heads as if trying to grasp the concept. Then again they might be shaking their head because they think I am barking mad to be saying such things to them. The point is they do listen and they never say “We will stop devouring your roses at 2:00” Then again Verizon doesn’t leave clumps of fertilizer about the yard which has to be picked up with a shovel and bucket.Nor does anyone from Verizon ever come up to me and nudge me with their head as if they wanted to play.If I did not pay my bill I’m sure they would do more than nudge me and it wouldn’t be in play. Then again I worry about deer ticks and I’m sure no one at Verizon has deer ticks. Do they? Philosophically one can only contemplate so many dilemmas while waiting for a cable somewhere in Verizonland to be repaired. Actually, I rather be thinking about antiques or my newest book “Stonehenge Myth Magic Fog” which is to be released in the UK in August.Maybe I’ll have phone “service” again by then. Perhaps, the noises of mine construction will have gone away by then and I can enjoy listening to the little creek behind the house and the birds who have beaten me to most of the mulberries off of the mulberry tree. I wonder if the cardinals know where I can get some fresh tender grape leaves to make into sarma. I wonder if Verizon knows that in spell check instead of their name coming up the word venison appears.

The Boggs Run Diaries#2

When we purchased the former Boggs Run Elementary School we had no concept of the amount of work we were committing ourselves to. We believed everything we were told which either makes us the most gullible of fools or the most innocent of lambs being led to the slaughter. Either way we were unprepared for the vast ocean of mega inexactitudes we would be inflicting upon our poor ageing bodies, or worse still for the