Sun-Daze....

’S a quiet, durn near sombre day here on the street where I live…

Crestline Avenue in Olde Fair Oakes is basically two short blocks ‘cept one of them ain’t got no homes at all ’n is pretty much just an alleyway…’n I ought’a know alleyways having spent a number of my formative years in Beattyville, Ky where all the streets were alleyways, cinder ’n gravel they were, tucked betwixt the C&O railroad tracks ’n the mighty Ohio River…

We lived in two houses in Beattyville tho’ not at the same time of course which might’a made for an interesting story if we had BUT we didn’t…

We lived on the southernmost street in our little corner of the world, next to the railroad track ’n across from Big John Stephenson…in our 2nd house…

There wuz a driveway (alley) separating us from the first house we lived in which wuz a brick home, pretty much uninsulated ’n hard to heat in the wintertime…mostly, I remember it being cold….well, that ’n the big plum tree in the front yard…

The Craycrafts moved in there after us…Barbara Craycraft wuz a little bit older’n me ’n a cheerleader…I remember she ’n other girls ‘ud practice their cheers in the yard…purple ’n gold, their outfits were, short skirts ’n sweaters…I don’t recall all of the cheerleades from my daze at SP school but I suspect I’ll never forget Barbara ’n Yvonne ’n Betty Jo…

Anyway, on our side of the street, there wuz our house ’n the Craycraft ’s ’n the Keith’s…across the alley from the Keiths wuz Delbert ’n Iva Fultz ’n next door to them wuz where my Aunt Billie ’n Uncle Fred lived, ’n for the life of me, I can’t remember who lived across the alley from them ‘cept the house wuz kind’a hidden behind a tall hedge…

That wuz just one side of one street in that little village where ever’body knew ever’body else…now, I live on a short street where I’m on a wave ’n smile acquaintance with most of my neighbors (save one that I make it a practice to ignore, but that’s another story) even tho’ I don’t know all their names…

“It don’t matter at all where you lived before, California’s a brand new game.”  The Gatlin Bros

SCOFFLAWS IN VILLAGE PARK

At the risk of being called a curmudgeon, (Curmudgeon~noun~a bad-tempered or surly person)…Me ’n the ould Dogger ’n Willy wuz walking thru the park this A.M. as is our wont when we happened to meet some bearded ’n scraggly young men, each with a large dog (fortunately fairly amiable retriever types) off-leash…after asking, politely I tho’t, for them to control their animals ’n being ignored, I raised my voice a tad ’n told them to control their dogs…after being ignored again, I took my camera out, photographed them ’n demanded that they control their dogs or my next act would be to call Animal Control…at which point they called their dogs to them allowing me ’n da boyz to pass…I pretended to ignore their sniggering remarks about it always being the small dogs that were aggressive ’n didn’t bother to ask them why it always seems to take a very special kind of stupid to believe that the law didn’t apply to them…..

Of course, in t’days climate when Obama ’n his posse demonstrate the same kind of attitude toward our country’s laws, ie, State Dept, DOJ, IRS, et al…y’just gotta figger that it’s the trickle down effect in action…

“Lazybones, sleepin’ in the sun, how you ‘spect t’get your days work done…”

Snuck up on me ag’in…t’morra morning is trash pickup ’n it’s green waste already which meant that I hadda get some go on…I have two green cans plus two from my next door neighbor AND two from the empty house acros’t the street…

I started filling the cans last week, tho’t I’d take my time, fill a can ever’ other day or so ’n wudn’t get caught bustin’ my buns at the last minnit…ah well, procrastination is the name of the game ’n I had t’get out t’day ’n fill two cans ’n I worked up a sweat doin’ it….

At my age, it don’t take a lot of toil for me to work up a sweat, ‘specially on these warm August daze…think it has sumthin t’do with age…as a body grows older, the definition of toil seems to take on new meaning…for example, I live on top of a small hill….back in eastern Kentucky where I grew up, it wudn’t even be considered a hill at all but times change…my buddy Vic lives on the side of a Kentucky hill…his driveway has a couple two or three switchbacks ’n he ain’t even at the top…

Anyhow, I got six full cans of green stuff lined up at the curb (‘cept we don’t really have curbs on our little street~nor sidewalks or street lights) ready for the big green machine to come by ’n pick ‘em up…the county sends out two huge trucks on pickup day…one for green ’n one for reg’lar old garbage…Sacramento county, you gotta pay for garbage pickup whether you use the service or not…empty houses get billed ’n if the mortgage holder don’t pay the garbage bill, the county hangs a lien on ‘em…when we bought our first home in California, there was a private company that picked up the garbage…they had a big truck manned with a driver ’n two helpers…they’d come into your backyard, empty your garbage cans ’n never leave a mess…’n they did it for sumthin’ like $2.50 a month…costs a bit more theze daze…thanks, of course, to our progressive Democratic government…

We didn’t have garbage pickup back in Beattyville when I wuz a boy…I can’t seem to recall just what we did with our garbage…I recall, in the fall, we raked up all the leaves ’n burned ‘em…ever’body did…wudn’t really a throwaway society back then but I know there must have been sum things that constituted garbage but it just wudn’t important enuff to stand out in a boys life back in the day….

Ah well, Beattyville is durn near gone now…like eventide in Brigadoon, slowly disappearing into the mists of time...it’ud make a nice location for a riverside park ’n I expect the old Methodist Church could be headed for landmark status but maybe not…time’ll tell, I guess…

“The funny thing about time is it moves in one direction while memory moves in another.”