Another day 'n time.....

I wuz six years old, Christmas 1942.  I can’t tell you what I got for Christmas that year, probably a toy gun, a book, some clothing.  The world was at war ’n things were rationed, hard to come by.  Sugar wuz in short supply ’n expensive so candy was rare.  Well, lots of things were rare back then. But, there wuz a Christmas tree.  Almost every home had one.  But there weren't many strung with lights.  Matter of fact, not many of them had lightsat all.  Heck, not every home wuz electrified in those halycon days.  Hard to believe but people would put candles in their trees ’n light them. Can you imagine, open flames ’n dried evergreen. Had to keep an eagle eye or watch the house go up in smoke…And because it wuz wartime, outside lights were prohibited.  Air raid wardens made sure that blinds ’n curtains were drawn so that no light showed to tell enemy bombers where to drop their explosives.  Not that there wuz much chance of any enemy bombers finding their way to the middle of the country but everyone wuz patriotic ’n nobody wanted to take any chances.

It’s a different world today in so many ways, one of which is that people are encouraged to enter into competitions to see how many lights can go on a home.  I’m told some of the decorated homes can be seen from space.

I don’t think people are any happier today but probably not really any unhappier. Most likely, six of one 'n half dozen of the other. Every age has its own problems, its own fears.  People like to remark that the forties or the fifties or whatever age their childhood happened to be, wuz somehow a more innocent time, slower, less stressful.  It ain’t true, y’know.  People been making their own stress since the dawn of time. We are supposed to be unique, I'm told, as every snowflake is supposed to be a little different, but what we are, what we really are, what makes us human is our similarities.  We’re all pretty much alike, the same fears ’n frustrations, the same dreams.  And it don’t much matter what your pigmentation might be, or your gender, or your religious beliefs or lack of them. To quote the long forgot Mr. Kipling, the Colonel's lady ’n Rosie O’Grady are sisters under the skin…..

Christmas of 1942 wuz seventy years ago, a diffent time ’n place.  Seems like the more things change, the more they saty the same.

Merry Christmas to all…..

Waiting for the snow…

well, ’They’ say it’s gonna snow here…here meaning Ol Fair Oaks…I’m taking one of those I’m from Missouri stands on it howsumever ’n I’ll believe it when I see the white stuff in the air…it could happen….but I don’t think we’ll see it on the ground….

I recall one time when we lived over on Montcurve (‘bout a mile away)…it wuz early evening, around dinnertime, I think, when the word began to spread that it wuz snowing ’n we, along with most of the neighbors, came outside to stand in the street ’n watch the snowflakes as they drifted around…I don’t remember any of them ever actually hitting the ground…I do remember Ron Buehler standing in the street ’n offering me a glass of wine…I believe he wuz drinking Gallo Hearty Burgundy at the time…

Ron had a ’62 TR3….it wuz technically, I think, a TR3B which means that it wuz a TR3 body but a TR4 underneath…Triumph Motors wuz big on doing that…didn’t like to waste money…made for some interesting models however, ‘specially when an owner went looking for replacement parts…..back in those halycon daze, I owned for a couple years, a ’57 TR3…interesting model year as there wuz an early model ’n a late model ’n both of them looked the same on the outside…the early model using up all the parts that had been left over from the ’56 model year….

When reminiscing about my little Triumph, I generally describe it as being the best and the worst little car I ever owned…it wuz certainly the most fun being essentially an oversized skateboard that you cudn’t find parts for this side of the Atlantic Ocean…

The last year I owned it, the canvas top shredded so bad, I just threw it away ’n went topless….

Hak, hak, koff, koff....

Debilitate is a ten dollar word that translates into getting one’s butt kicked…

So, the cold, sneezy, runny nose part ain’t exactly fun but it’s the omnipresent coughing, the dry hacking, the light-headedness that ensues from attempting to expel all the air that occurs with the damn coughing, that is the true definition of debilitate…

The good news is…I don’t have pneumonia…pneumonia c’n be treated with antibiotics ’n suchlike but I don’t have it….I got a virus…my doctor very professionally informed me that I have “some kind of virus.”  

And antibiotics don’t work on viruses…they just have to run their course…so I came home with another bottle of codeine cough syrup ’n instructions not to take with alcohol…

In the olden days, I believe doctors use’ta prescribe brandy ’n whiskey….ah well, times change….when I wuz a boy, even tho’ most people knew that cigarettes were called ‘cancer sticks’ for a reason, advertisers insisted that smoking wuz good for you…I recall oldtimers blowing tobacco smoke into children’s lungs in the belief that it wus helpful…now the anti-tobacco people scream if they spot someone smoking on the street where they live ’n the ‘do-gooders’ want to raise taxes on cigarettes by another two or three dollars a pack….I suspect if you’re a shrewd enough biznessperson, that’ud look like an opportunity to go into the bootleg cigarette trade…

I saw a US Senator arguing with a pundit about the need to double the tax on a gallon of gas…the Senator wuz wearing a bicycle lapel pin ’n I’d say it’s even money than someone in his family has a vested interest in the bicycle business….they say Americans don’t really trust their fellow man all that much these days I say that you c’n almost always trust a politician to not only serve his or her self first but to take more’n his share if he thinks he c’n get away with it….’course, maybe I got a different definition of trust going on here…..

Anyway, according to the information that I got from my doctor this morning, the virus that is causing all my discomfort is just about run its course ’n I maybe got another week of the cough to deal with….that ain’t so bad, I guess…it’s cold outside ’n I c’n prob’ly force m’self to snuggle up ’n wait it out….Time flies whether you have fun or not….good tidings to all….