Sunday, September 15, 2013

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...

No comments: