On birthdays 'n Autumn 'n stuff like that....

“Two things are infinite~space and the stupidity of humans ’n I’m not sure about space.” Einstein

September Song….

“It’s a long, long time from May to December and the days grow short when you reach September….” lyrics by Maxwell Anderson

September is a little different from when I wuz a boy…

In those ‘wayback days, school began after Labor Day, after the freedom of what had seemed in Spring to be a long and glorious summer, the all too soon end wuz nigh…’n we were stuck in a dreary classroom as the lingering days of summer ticked off one by one, gazing forlornly out the windows at the warm sunshine of a Kentucky afternoon, the dusk coming earlier every day, the last gasp of summer coming to a close right before my birthday...

September is a month chock full of birthdays..me, my mother, one of my brothers, my oldest daughter…’n a neighbor lady down the street born on the same day as me ‘way back in ’37…Come to think on it, Sonny Stockham was born on the same day as me also…Sonny fell asleep in a chair in the waiting room of a hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio ’n crossed over as they’re wont to say back home in the States…

My buddy, ‘Pig’ Phillips was born on the 1st of September in 1937 also which makes him oldurn me by three weeks…

Pig is, as they say, the spittin’ image of his grandfather ’n Mort Bradley lived t’be 103 or 104, I think…Anyway, Pig is liable to live longer’n that just out of plain old spitefulness which I’ve been told he inherited from his grandfather…

I’m thinkin’ I might have to stick around just to keep an eye on him ‘cuz he has a powerful tendency to get into trouble when he’s on his own for any length of time…

Ah well, birthdays come ’n go for all of us, at least for the period of time that we’re here…In the beginning, birthdays are big celebrations with all the family ’n friends gathered ‘round…there’s parties ’n cake ’n ice cream, happy times….then, as we age, birthdays happen whether we want ‘em to or not 'n a lot of time, we'd just as soon skip them...Jack Benny (a once upon a time famous comedian) famously never got past the age of 39...anyway, when we get old, if we get old, they become occasions for celebration again…not quite sure how I feel about that howsumever so I’ll just take a wait ’n see attitude toward the whole thing...

Not quite sure why I’m dwelling so much on age…it ain’t a p’tickularly interesting subject…after all, anyone can get old, all you have t’do is live long enuff...

Imagine, a whole entire day devoted to work....

...makes a body tired just thinkin' about it!

Well, it’s Labor Day ag’in ~ comes around every year just like clockwork ~ kind’a nice to have some stability in what seems t’be an ever-changing world…   I don’t know if the world has really changed or if it’s just me getting older ’n find m’self saying things that remind me of my grandparents…

John Sam ’n Nora Smith were my grandparents, well, along with Hannah Bradshaw Howard, my maternal grandmother who lived in northern Michigan, but I barely remember my great grandparents ~ my great grandma was blind, had been for twenty years or so by the time I came around…macular degeneration, I think, altho’ it certainly wudn’t diagnosed as such back then…My father ’n my Aunt Eunice both ended up with the same malady ’n I have a cousin that endures it now ~ I’d say I have something to look forward to but Gawd!  I hope not….

Anyhow, I was a boy during World War II and the country as a whole was fiercely patriotic…Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR, as he was popularly known, was President and the country, even those who vilified him, stood four-square behind him…(four-square, an adjective but also an adverb meaning firmly or resolutely)…

FDR’s picture hung in every classroom in every schoolhouse the length ’n breadth of this land ’n every child in each and every classroom placed their hand upon their heart ’n recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning whether they understood all the words or not…but, we were patriots, ever’ last one of us ’n we didn’t take any guff about it either…

There were a few Civil War veterans still alive when I was a boy ~ not many, ’n those were dying off as fast as they could but there were a few of ‘em left ’n they pretty near always started their stories about how the world sure had changed since they were young…

I’m thinking that I read somewhere that the only certain constant was the inevitability of change which conflicts with that old saw, the more things change, the more they stay the same….

Ahhhh me, life is full of contradictions, ain’t it?

The Democrat Bellweather......

My Democrat Bellweather (who shall remain relatively anonymous) tells me that Obama is really sticking it to the Republicans by forcing them to vote on whether or not the USA should intervene in Syria ~ I told him that I tho’t Obama was more like the schoolboy sissy who boasted to his friends that he’d punch out the school bully if only his mommy’ud let him…The Bellweather didn’t think that was funny ’n insisted that the latest poll showed that the majority of Americans supported military intervention ~ I told him that I didn’t think so ’n that the last poll I’d seen saiid only about 25% of Americans supported that view but he insisted that ABC or maybe it was CBS said definitely that 75% of Americans supported Obama…

When I pointed out that ‘way back when the devil incarnate, George Bush, was President ’n Commander-in-Chief of these United States, the majority of Amerians ’n indeed Congress itself (including Democrats) had supported the intervention in Iraq, he then insisted that this is totally different today because the Syrians had used chemical weapons on their own people…

When I pointed out that Saddam Hussein (’n his co-hort, Chemical Ali) had used chemical weapons on his own people, the Bellweather then insisted that was different and that the devil incarnate Bush had lied about MWD’s and that made all the difference in the world…

Then he bet me a cup of coffee that if the do-nothing Republicans dared to vote against him, Obama would just take command and do it all himself as he had declared on national teevee  that he didn’t need Congress anyway, thank you very much…

Well, I had to admit that I’d heard the big O say that myownself during his teleprompted speech but that I still tho’t that he was just looking for Congress to give him an excuse to back out of the threats that he’d made previously…

Which just goes to show that when you walk the dogs down Crestline in the gloaming, you just never know what lurks in the minds of men...