Durn fool dogs anyway....

Here t’is, Satiday mornin’ ‘n it’s still rainin’.....Willie got me up this mornin’ but then he didn’t want’a get off the porch....I finally walked out in the rain with him ‘n then he didn’t want’a come back in...durn fool dog anyway... my dogs are funny when it comes to rain....they’ll stand on the porch ‘n look at it, don’t really shake their heads no but they might as well ‘cause they’ll turn ‘n want’a go back inside.... howsomever, if they do get off the porch, the rain don’t seem to bother ‘em none at all ‘n they’re never in a hurry to get back inside a nice, dry house...’course, when they do come back, they wait ‘til they’re inside before shaking water all over the place ‘n then curling up on the sofa or chair....durn fool dogs anyway....’n if you yell at them, they get this put-upon, highly agrieved look on their faces ‘n slink off to sulk leaving you with a wet chair...durn fool dogs anyway....’n they all think they should get to eat ev’ry time you’re having a snack ‘n they get their feelings hurt if you don’t share with ‘em...it don’t matter that you put out perfectly good dog food for them twice a day ‘n you give ‘em treats a couple times a day ‘n they treat the whole world as their own private bathroom...talk about a sense of entitlement, durn fool dogs anyway....Brother John tells me his little Oreo likes to walk in the snow so John carries a towel with him so he can wipe his feet ‘n belly...sez the snow gets inbetween his toes so it does a really good job of cleaning....huh! my little Willie likes to walk in mud...gets between his toes also ‘n it’s hard to get out, I’ll tell you ...don’t do me any good to carry a towel for him, what I need is a portable bathtub but that prob’ly ain’t all that practical...what I have t’do is poick him up, drag him into the bathroom ‘n wash his feet ‘n belly...he reminds me of ‘Pigpen’ in the old Peanuts comic strip...durn fool dogs anyway.....

Just say 'No!'.....

The phrase "Just Say No" first emerged when Nancy Reagan was visiting Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California, in 1982 and was asked by a schoolgirl what to do if she was offered drugs. The first lady responded by saying, "Just say no."

Y’know, that wasn’t bad advice back then....’n since the Democrats have been characterizing the Republicans as the party of ‘No’...I’ve just been wondering what in the world is wrong with just saying ‘No!’......That was a really big word with my Mother....’n if I asked her “Why not?” she answered, “because I said so, that’s why not.” It seemed to work pretty well with most of my generation ‘n it’s still the word that parents use most....’n evidently, that’s the word that we as citizens haven’t used enough. It’s ‘way past time for us to just say ‘No!’ to the politicians that are supposed t’be working for us....No to gov’t health care; No to gov’t bailouts of big business; No to Cap and Trade; No to illegal aliens; No to unions that exist solely to perpetuate their own bureaucracy; No to special interest parasites; No to big gov’t; and we could try saying No to dependence on foreign oil when we have sufficient oil reserves within our own borders.
No is a perfectly good word ‘n the biggest problem is that we haven’t said it enough.

Mud in your eye.....

socialist
adjective
the socialist movement left-wing, progressive, leftist, labor, anti-corporate, antiglobalization; radical, revolutionary, militant; communist; informal lefty, red. antonym conservative.
noun
a well-known socialist left-winger, leftist, progressive, progressivist; radical, revolutionary; communist, Marxist; informal lefty, red. antonym conservative.

Just so’s you know......

There’s a lot of discussion going on as to whether or not Obama is a socialist...well, at least on Fox channels, there’s a lot of discussion...’n on the ‘Net....mostly on the ‘other’ channels, they talk about the Tea Party movement ‘n whether it’s for real or some kind of cosmic joke...’course, most of the ‘other’ channels think Sarah Palin is the real cosmic joke...’n enuff of the uber-Libs I know go with the flow....’course, it’s hard to blame a generation that has been taught that if you want to get along, you have to go along...one of the hippie mantras from long, long ago....”Just go with the flow, Babe.”.....
Right up there with, “Tune in, turn on, drop out.”....The communal way of life didn’t work for them ‘way back then ‘n it won’t work for them now....I, personally, wouldn’t call Obama an avowed socialist (I think he’s just another Chicago politician that will do or say anything s’long as he gets to lead the parade)....the problem with Chicago politics is basically it was born out of Tammany Hall in the long, long ago....Irish politics that believed in voting early ‘n often....Thus was born the Democrat Party as it exists t’day.....I say that as an old use’ta be Democrat....I was born a Democrat in a Democrat family in a Democrat County in a Democrat State ‘n I was proud to be a Democrat.....’Course, I was young ‘n ignorant at the time.....Later in life, in the ignorance of my middle years, I became a Republican....but it’s hard not to learn a little something with age so I wasn’t a Republican for near as long before I learned that when you’re walking down the middle of a muddy road, you get just as much mud on the right boot as you do on the left, ‘n when you get deep enough, the mud’ll just suck your boots off ‘n you’ll find yourself barefoot ‘n muddy....’n it’s awful hard to tell the difference between Democrat ‘n Republican when ev’ryone is covered in mud.......

Rainbows 'n mem'ries.....

I don’t know what the day is gonna be like....’course, no one ever really knows what the future’ll hold, but it’s nice when you wake up to sunshine ‘n a bright, new week...
yesterday was grey ‘n funky all day long but it was a long way from being the worst day of my life...not that I can recall the worst day of my life (thank God for selective memory).....thinking back, the bad days don’t seem so bad once they’re over....’n the good days, those golden yesterdays are all stored safely in the old memory banks to be taken out ‘n savored any time y’feel like it...
s’funny how all the good memories are in technicolor ‘n bad stuff only happens in black ‘n white...(hmmmm, I wonder if my brain just automatically colorizes all the dreary black ‘n white mem’ries)....

A yucky day in Ol Fair Oaks....

Chilly ‘n rainy ‘n grey...a perfect day to make another pot of coffee ‘n watch an old movie...or read the new book I bought at Costco....I rarely buy books at Costco,mostly I buy paperbacks from the library for four bits ‘n then pass ‘em on to someone else....
I prefer reading hardback books, always have, but the problem is that they cost more ‘n then you hate to give them away so they end up on a bookshelf, forgotten ‘n gathering dust ‘n causing other people to ask why you haven’t given them away.....’n that’s a question for which there is no answer, good or otherwise...
it’s like when you were a kid ‘n your mother told you t’do something or other ‘n you asked why ‘n she replied because she said so, that’s why...’n then you grew up ‘n found yourself saying the exact same thing to your kids....it’s a generational round-robin.....
which means that your children ‘n your childrens children c’n look forward to doing the same things that my grandmother ‘n grandfather did...’n of course, they were simply doing what their grandparents did even tho’ back in those days, everything that is the same today was completely different then....well, different but still the same, especially the weather which ev’rybody talks about but no one does anything...which ain’t the same thing as climate....
scientifically speaking, climate ain’t the same thing as weather...at least, according to those students of Darwinian Science that actually only exists in the minds of those psuedo-scientists who learned everything they need to know in Jr. High....to wit: Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is proven fact; and we know this because of the Scopes Monkey Trial that proved that high school science teachers were able to read State-sponsored textbooks....
as I recall, way back in the halycon ‘fifties, high school teachers were teaching that prehistoric men, ie; Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and, what was that other one....oh yeah, the famous Piltsdown Man were all factual creatures....funny thing about that however....we have a lot of proof that Neanderthals existed ‘n possibly (tho’ we don’t know for certain-sure) predated Cro-Magnon humans (our precursors or, maybe early us)...but what we really have proof of is that the famed Piltsdown Man was created by a couple pranksters and revealed as a hoax within a period of months....not however, before making it into the State sponsored textbooks that were just too darn expensive to discard simply because some of the information contained therein was in error...Gee! Makes you wonder how much error was actually in them....
ah well, I have it on good scientific proof from the younger Obama generation that Global Warming is irrefutable fact....’n nor a Goracle fable.....

FEBBER ARY.....

shivers me timbers.......

“February makes me shiver...” D. McLean

Spring is bustin’ out all over in Ol Fair Oaks....well, early Spring ain’t a new thing here in the Village...come the middle of February, the paperwhites bloom ‘n crab apple trees start to blossom....among others....new grass pops up all fresh ‘n green ‘n grows ‘n grows.....too tall really for the old lawnmower....time to break out the weedeater ‘n cut ‘em down to size....winter ain’t really cold here in Ol Fair Oaks, not like it is back in the States....that’s the way they use’ta say it, y’know....back when California was the focal point for the world...people came here from all over to get rich...Sam Clemens described northern California as a place of year-’round summer...’course, he came from Missouri where if you didn’t like the weather, y’just had to wait fifteen minutes or thereabouts...Way back when, well way back before my way back when days actually, roundabout the turn of the century....not this last one but the one previous when the clock ticked much slower ‘n the Twentieth Century was a really big deal...well, back then the ubiquitous ‘they’ ran excursion trains from Chicago to Fair Oaks in a marketing ploy to sell real estate...’n they sold Fair Oaks ‘n Orangevale as an idyllic Elysian for Gentlemen Farmers to plant their citrus orchards ‘n sit back in comfort while reaping huge profits....’n they had a ready-made labor force from south of the border t’do all the heavy lifting for them...(shhhh, we still got ‘em but without water in the valley, they ain’t workin’ either) anyways, everything was just too, too perfect for words to really describe....at least, until 1913 or so, when there came a freeze that burst the bubble ‘n turned Ol Fair Oaks into the backwater that it has remained for ‘lo these many years’.....sighhh....now we got signs with chickens....lots of chickens....’n diverse, omg, you never saw the like.....Maui ‘n Key West can’t hold a candle to Ol Fair Oaks when it comes to chickens....but I digress....it’s easy t’do in February in Fair Oaks....

Ah,the good old days.....

I ‘uz thinkin’ that I prob’ly spend ‘way too much time thinkin’ but then that’s what an old fool does best ‘n I’ve often heard it said that a body should stick with what a body knows best....anyways, that’s the kind’a tho’ts that run thru my mind in the wee hours of the mornin’....
It don’t take a lot of that to decide that it’s time to wake up ‘n smell the coffee as Ann Landers wuz so fond of saying..
‘course, to smell the coffee requires that I actually get m’self out’a bed ‘n grind the beans ‘n put the pot on the boil....that’s old-timey talk for pouring water in the coffeemaker ‘n pressing the on switch...in the long, long time ago, you had to build a fire, grind the coffee, put the ground coffee in a pot, fill the pot with water from the well, put the whole mess on the stovetop ‘n wait for it to boil...
after it boiled, you waited for the ground to settle, sumtimes dropped an egg in the pot to help that process along....oh, life was complicated back in the good old days...Heck! If y’wanted to fry up some eggs to go with that coffee, y’had to go out to the hen-house, gather the eggs (basically, steal ‘em from the hard-working hens that you kept fed for that very purpose) trek back to the house, put some lard in a big, ol’ iron skillet ‘n fry the eggs...’n if you wanted toast, you sliced some bread, put it on the toaster which was basically a wire clamp with a long handle ‘n hold it over an open flame ‘til it was charred on both sides....then you scraped the black off ‘n spread some butter on it (‘n I ain’t even goin’ into how you got your butter back then) ‘n it’s way too early in the day to discuss where your bacon came from.....ah, there’s a lot t’be said for the ‘good old days’ but the only thing that made ‘em good wuz life wuz young ‘n oh, so mellow.....

Venting, venting......

VENT

noun
an air vent duct, flue, shaft, well, passage, airway; outlet, inlet, opening, aperture, hole, gap, orifice.
verb
the crowd vented their fury on the police release, air, give vent to, give free rein to, let out, pour out, express, give expression to, voice, give voice to, verbalize, ventilate, discuss, talk over, communicate.

So Millyrose ‘n I were at Winco picking up a few bare necessities (Ice Cream, Candy, a jug of milk, etc. etc.)...
Now, Winco is a bag-your-own place with two conveyor belts for each cashier....when we walked around the end to bag our goodies, a mother ‘n daughter came right behind us on the other side ‘n the little girl came rushing to help us...her mother chided her, saying “Those aren’t ours...”
Without thinking, (which seems t’be a relatively common state for me) I remarked that, “She must have seen that we have candy.” And then I compounded my first error by offering the little girl some candy. I did ask the mother if it was alright. I gave her some chocklit-covered p’nutz ‘n she said, “I love those. Are they your favorites too?”
Pretty much end of story. Millyrose ‘n I laughed over it as we walked to the car ‘n on the way home, I realized that I had prob’ly taught that little girl a dangerous lesson; namely, that she shouldn’t accept candy from strangers. ‘N then I tho’t, “What a pathetic place this world has become when giving candy to a child is a serious no-no!”
I don’t know what the population of the USA was when I was young, prob’ly 150K or a little more. Now, it’s around 330K ‘n growing by leaps ‘n bounds. Maybe if we become a bankrupt nation, all the movers ‘n shakers will emmigrate to China or sumplace.(ev’ry cloud has a silver lining, I’m told) Anyways, when I was a boy, the evening news wasn’t broadcast across country so what happened in Vegas pretty much stayed in Vegas. I’m pretty sure that people back then were just as mean ‘n evil as people t’day but we weren’t fed a steady diet of it on the news.
I think maybe there’s more’n a little truth to the old adage, “No news is good news!”

*What does he know ‘n when did he know it?
And is it age appropriate? And why does he seemingly have a compulsion to share it with anyone ‘n everyone?

Recently, I had a long-time friend tell me with quiet certitude that ‘The Bible’ had all the answers to life’s questions. I didn’t argue with him for several reasons; firstly, there is no way that you c’n dispute faith; secondly, as surely as youth thinks itself immortal, age fears mortality. And finally, I don’t believe the Bible (‘n we’re talking any Bible y’want) ever was intended to provide answers, rather it was intended to provoke questions. Questions of faith, mainly, but questions that we all ask ourselves; why are we here...where are we going...what path do I take...all those existential questions for which there is no stock answer....’course, the easy answer is que sera, sera...but Miz Kappelhof has gone t’the dogs ‘n Lady Gaga has taken the stage....
‘n I’m almost surprised that I not only know who she is but I know that underneath the tinsel ‘n glitter, she c’n sing...all of which has absolutely nuthin’ t’do with anything at all...

Words I never tho’t I’d hear:

Knowledge is the universal key that opens all doors.



“It’s called getting old!” Dr. M. Reyes

and it definitely ain’t for wusses....Anon!

There’s an old saying that goes, “Good things come to he that waits.”....’n you might think that means that old age, that age some young person once upon a time termed, the ‘golden age’, is a good thing....As George Gershwin once famously wrote, “It ain’t necessarily so!” ‘Course, another songwriter, Sammy Cahn (I think) wrote that “love, like youth, is wasted on the young”....then, of course, Alan Lerner wrote, “I’m glad I’m not young anymore” a song that the famed Parisian boulvardier Maurice Chevalier said was the “dumbest lyrics I’ve ever sang” a difference of opinion, but that’s allowed here in the good ole US of A.... also in France where a difference of opinion is a way of life...
So, what we got here is some people thinking that the purpose of living life is to take care or yourself so that you can live as long as possible ‘n other people...well, other people don’t seem to think that much about it all but then, those other people (not us, of course) don’t seem to spend a lot of time thinking...
Y’know, those ‘other people’ have become a fav’rit target here in Canaan-land....fortunately for the rest of us, they’re all a bunch of loser wimps....whether they’re tea-party rubes or suede shoe (psuedo) left-wing indeological idiots, it seems that we can’t get along without ‘em...at least, the pundits can’t....’n speaking of pundits, one global-warming, northern exposure, frozen-brained talking head cited the recent blizzards that finally (thank Gawd) shut down the federal gov’t, albeit temporarily but any respite is good, as proof that global warming is ‘pon us.....Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was on the losing end of an argument with Millyrose when she opened an encyclopedia ‘n read what to her was absolute proof of my error....(she has periodically quoted my reply t’me for over 50 years now)....my sanguine reply was, “Do you believe ev’rything you read?”
Well, it seems that the fanatics at either end of the p’litical spectrum believe ev’rything they read when it agrees with ‘em ‘n denies ev’rything when it don’t.....’n g’nite, Missus Calabash, wherever you are.......

Get what you pay for.....

Knowledge is the universal key that opens all doors.

In Scotland, they’re testing an amphibious bus that would supposedly eliminate the need for a ferryboat....C’mon, unless every single vehicle is amphibious, they’ll still need a ferry...or a bridge....
In California, well, in other parts of the USA also, the ubiquitous ‘they’ are touting the advantage of high-speed rail....to hear ‘em talk, HSR will save the environment by negating the necessity of automobiles....Right!...Mass transit is actually a good idea, given our population of over 300 million ‘n growing but high-speed rail will NEVER move very many people over vast distances....the multi-billion dollar (or more) cost of high-speed rail can never be recouped by selling tickets to ride....c’mon, it’s all a scam to separate taxpayers from their shrinking dollar...sort of a redistribution of wealth process whereby the government takes money from the people ‘n gives it to the already wealthy....(Y’know, what they didn’t tell you in the Robin Hood legend was that the famed outlaw took a percentage of what he stole to cover his expenses) ‘n in the bread’n circuses atmosphere of the p’litical arena, what our ‘esteemed leaders’ never quite spell out for the ‘mob’ is that after they tax the rich to give to the poor, there won’t be anything left after they take their expenses....ah well, hope springs eternal.....
What we really need is a low-speed, low-cost mass transportation system that actually works...the problem with what we have now is the self-same problem that we have with the California School system....too many Chief’s ‘n not enuff Indians...the State of California has lots ‘n lots of poor students trying to scrape up enuff money to pay for the inflated egos of Chancellors ‘n Administrators....I really don’t know why a student sleeping in a closet should have to bear the burden of a Chancellors million dollar home...I mean, OMG! A person with a million dollar a year salary can’t afford to pay his own living expenses....Jeez!
and on a related note, I read that if Meg Whitman is elected Governor of our fair state, like Arnold, she is going to refuse a salary...I’m not sure if we c’n afford another Governor who works for free.....

The winter blahs.....

as opposed to the winter blues, I s’poze...
It’s a little chilly ‘n rainy here in Ol Fair Oaks ‘n I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when...well, I think maybe it was yest’iday afternoon for a little while but that’s beside the point...It’s February now ‘n back in Kentucky it’s full-on winter with snow ‘n ever’thing altho E.V. tells me they only had a couple inches where he lives in Greenup....said it was wet ‘n heavy but he didn’t care cuz he has a cold ‘n a hacking cough ‘n he ain’t gonna go outside anyway....E.V. can’t type so he got hisself a voice program called Dragon so’s he could use his computer...
now, he’s so hoarse that the program doesn’t recognize his voice.....tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday ‘n pretty much the whole country is gonna be watching the Super Bowl (at least, if they have power they are)...I generally manage to watch at least some of it ev’ry year, maybe not the whole game but, part of it anyway even if I’m never quite sure who is playing who or whom, as the case may be.....sort’a like the World Series of the grand old game of baseball....I almost always watch at least a part of it...most years anyway....I enjoyed the games a lot more back when I drank but that was once upon a time a long, long time ago....

A fish story.....

I’ve never really been much of a fisherman, prob’ly because I don’t like fish....well, lemme clarify, I don’t like to ‘eat’ fish, otherwise, I like ‘em fine...matter of fact, I quite like them in aquariums ‘n one of my unrealized ambitions is t’do some snorkeling...maybe even scuba diving at some point in my life...at this point in my life, I’ve pretty much given up some of my earlier ambitions...most of them were pretty childish anyway....I was reminded of ‘em when I saw the movie, ‘The Bucket List’.....y’know, a list of things that you want to get done before you die....that type of list is something that you gotta be young to make....old people don’t really do stuff like that....a bucket list for an old person would consist of hanging on as long as possible...anyways, to get back to the fishing thing, once upon a time I took up flyfishing...my son, Dave, when he was young, gave me a fly rod ‘cause he wanted to go fishing...which is a pretty good reason, come to think on it...anyways, the only trout I ever in my life tasted was one that he caught at Little Grass Valley Lake high in the Sierra....Oh, I fished...I read some books ‘n watched some films ‘n I learned how to cast ‘n I enjoyed flyfishing...well, I enjoyed clambering ‘round ‘n about cold mountain streams, casting flies into sundry pools wherein lurked the crafty trout...I never caught anything....well, I caught a lot of branches, my ear ‘n once, I caught my nose...the ear was painful ‘n the nose even more so....the branches just ate flies ‘n line but it was an experience ‘n I had fun....I use’ta buy a fishing licence every year but finally it got too expensive for me to continue....well, I tho’t it was too expensive since I didn’t really go fishing to catch fish...
‘sfunny, I guess, since I grew up on a river...well, in a riverside village on the south bank of the Ohio ‘n back in that way back when time of WWll, most people not only had victory gardens but augmented their diets with fish from the river...a number of people ran tr’ot lines, as they called them in those halycon days ‘n ev’ry boy (me included) carried a fishing line in his pocket....the poles were universally willow ‘n taken as needed...it wasn’t called ‘flyfishing’ back then, it was just fishing but as I got into the mystique of flyfishing, I discovered that basically what it was, was fishing....a line, a hook ‘n some kind of weight, be it a stone, a piece of lead or whatever a kid could come up with to weight his line...’n of course, that’s what flyfishing is....a line tied to the end of a flexible stick with a hook on the end ‘n a dream...the dream, of course, being that you actually catch something other than your ear or your nose...anyways, it’s great fun to wander a mountain stream for a few hours whether you catch anything or not......

can't take credit for this, wish I could....

Almost everything that appears in this blog is written by me for my own amusement 'n gratification...occasionally (which means very seldom) something written by someone else appeals to me...This is one of those things....
This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes:

"My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet. "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90's, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull !" she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941Dodge, the Van Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with every-thing, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.

If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"

"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again.

"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights.. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count.."

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

"Loses count?" I asked. "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

"No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week." My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving.. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

"You're probably right," I said.

"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

"Because you're 102 years old," I said.

"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet"

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

A short time later, he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns. "

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the one's who don't..
Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a chance, take it & if it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."
ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!












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Wrap your troubles in dreams......

dream your troubles away.....here t'is another Thursday 'n a grey, gloomy thing indeed...'course, any day above ground beats the alternative....at least, I think it does, I c'd be wrong..C'd be this life is just some sort of basic training for a life to come....a lot of religious people believe that, I'm told, not just Christians....prob'ly in the clan of the Cave Bear there was some hairy iconoclastic insomniac who stared at the stars while sensible people slept 'n imagined the unimaginable....dreamed the impossible dream long before Don Quixote 'n pondered if there was an afterlife...a life after death....one of the first oxy-moronic jokes, I s'poze...
another oxymoron, a more current one is Obama, an astute politician (?) saying that the great unwashed watch too much cable news 'n are too involved in politics...go figure...I'm beginning to think that Obama is a 'Nero' type who'll fiddle (or something beginning with the letter 'F') while the late, great USA sinks slowly in the west...'n yeah, I know that Rome burned but the only way I see the USA burning like that would be if Iran hit us with a nuclear bomb 'n in that case, I'm pretty sure that we have a real-life Dr. Strangelove who would retaliate 'n set the whole damn world on fire...I think we Americans are just petty enuff to think that if we gotta go, the rest of the world has to go with us.....
If I sound a little pessimistic this morning, it's just because it's grey 'n gloomy 'n in my mind I'm ready for sunshine 'n warm...also little Willie is pestering me to go outside 'n chase squirrels 'n chickens....ah me, it's all a question of priorities, I guess....

T'be or not....sighhhhhhh.....

Ambition can be a terrible thing to have, I guess...I think once upon a time I might’a had some but I seem to have lost it along the way....when a body’s young, ambition is touted as a virtue, something to be admired ‘n even lauded...why, there are some folks that claim that it’s the driving force behind civilization it’s own self....’n they might be right, I don’t know...’course, when you come right down to it, there’s an awful lot of different kinds of ambition... kind’a reminds me of that Bill Clinton thing of the meaning of ‘is’...for example, there are people who’re always wanting to build something bigger ‘cause in their minds, bigger is better....’n in the micro-chip world where smaller is better, it’s the same thing only in reverse....reminds me of this ‘ol boy I use’ta know (don’t want’a mention a name here) who was a liar ‘n cheat of the first order....he used to say that if something wasn’t worth cheating for, it wasn’t worth having...he also believed that old adage that ‘he who dies with the most toys, wins’....I think he was wrong about that one also....or we could ask John Edwards....or not...
Anyways, on these long, dreary winter daze, I seemed t’be filled with a lack of ambition...maybe even a little envious of the old bears ability to go to sleep in the Fall ‘n wake up in the Spring...I think I’d be even worse if I lived back in Kentucky where they have real winter weather...