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....