I think the motto for the California legislature is (or should be)…Don’t worry if Plan A fails, there are 25 more letters in the alphabet…I think maybe we’ve run the gamut ’n started over a few times….

The People’s Republic of Kalifornia is burning down…or should I say, up!  Well, doesn’t really matter, the State is on fire…and a smoky haze casts a pall over much of the landscape…there are multiple fires, fires to the east of us, fires to the west of us, fires to the north and the south of us…fires burning all ‘round us but, fortunately for us, there are no fires here in Olde Faire Oakes…we’ve been lucky!  

The firehouse down the street is being kept busy as are all the rest of the firehouses in Kalifornia…I’m told we’re getting help from other States as well, although some of those other States (specially western States) are also on fire, covered with smoke and soot and drifting ash…

The fire up the hill from us, the one called the Butte Fire, is an especially egregious blaze because there is so little water in those hills and the planes have to go a pretty good distance to pick up water and/or fire retardant and then because of the heavy smoke, they can’t always find a place to drop the stuff…what use’ta be referred to as a Catch 22 situation, damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

The countryside where the Butte Fire is blazing is, or at least was, some awfully pretty country…I spent quite a bit of time wandering thru those hills 30 years ago, nice little towns, small farms ’n ranchos…several places up there where I would have liked to bought property…biggest problem ’n the one that ultimately kept me from actually buying there is the lack of water…gotta drill some really deep wells ’n still won’t get enough water to actually make the country thrive…Oh, you can do alright in wet years, those years when NorCal actually gets what is termed ‘normal’ rainfall along with a decent snowpack…thing about those so-called ‘normal’ years is that you c’n quite often go a lot of years inbetween ’n generally, those inbetween years are dry…not usually as dry as the last 4 years have been, we’re maybe setting some records this time but Kalifornia is, for the most part, an arid State ’n I’m not talking state of mind altho’ that seems t’be a little on the arid side lately what with our love affair with socialism…

I figure if the Feds go conservative republican, they just might pull the plug on some of that federal funding that our socialist legislature depends on…’n then we’re probably gonna become the biggest damn Greece the modern world has ever seen…

“G’nite, Mrs Calabash, wherever you are!”  J. Durante