Insomnia 'n mem'ries.....

I wonder what it’ud be like to sleep thru the night…I have a pretty good memory for most things (I’m not talking about losing the right word seems like ever’ other time) but mem’ries…I remember the darnedest things, a huge silver moon in 1948, paddlewheelers on the Ohio (tho’ I’m hardpressed to recall the names of the things)…I remember June bugs and Doughboy firecrackers and the wooly coats we called ‘Mackinaws” in the winters…I remember leather mittens being warmer than gloves…and the smell of wet honeysuckle on summer days…I remember Betty Euton and Margie Kieth and Marilyn Harvey, all in Euton’s front yard practicing cheer routines (Betty Euton was amazing, double-jointed they said she was…only see that stuff in yoga classes today…

I remember the first time I ever saw froglegs frying…coudn’t eat ‘em after watching them moving jerkily in the pan…I remember driving Dad’s 193 7 Olds thru the streets of Beattyville (I couldn’t see over the steering wheel, even sitting on a pillow)…

I remember the brown flood waters and helping neighbors carry household stuff out on planks over the rising water….

I remember lots and lots of stuff but for some reason I can’t remember what it’s like to sleep through an entire night without waking up…I keep a bottle of water on my nightstand ‘cause I wake up ’n need a drink….that’s probably part of the reason I wake up to go pee in the middle of the night…and sometimes I just lay there, eyes open wide, staring into the dark…well, almost dark…I remember dark, when I was a boy, so dark some times that you really couldn’t see your hand in front of your face…’course, during the war, we had blackouts and white-helmeted men, wearing white belts, ‘ud patrol the streets to tell people to turn off their lights because we didn’t want to have those Germans bombing us, now did we?  “Course, living int he middle of the country, it was damned unlikely that we were gonna get bombed by anyone but we still had to do our part for the war, you know…after the war, when I was 12 years old, I think, I did a stint as a ‘spotter’…I would cross the river, go to the Hurth Hotel (4 stories, one of the tallest bldg’s in Portsmouth) ride the elevator to the top and sit up there scanning the skies watching out for suspicious aircraft….it was 1949 ’n the war was long over but we were all patriotic as all get out back then ’n I felt like I was actually doing something of worth…(kids are believers)

I remember lots of stuff, good and bad and indifferent but I can’t recall what it felt like to sleep like a log all night long…well, life, they say, is short and we’ll all sleep some day…

So, for all those fellow insomniacs out there who might be reading this at 3 o’clock in the morning…enjoy the quiet and have a good day tomorrow…..Justin Other Smith

Super Moon...

I was reading about the ‘Supermoon’ that’s gonna light up the night sky this month…the largest, they say, since 1948….

Got me to thinking ’n I remember the moon from 1948…hadn’t thou’t about it forever ’n ever but in 1948 we lived in Beattyville, next to the railroad tracks and across the street from John Stephenson…

The moon was so large and so bright that November that you could read by the light of the moon…I recall standing in our side yard one crisp night (read cold for crisp) and the moon seemed to be sitting on the hill that overlooked our little village…’Course, back then I never thought of Beattyville as a village, it was pretty much my world at the time.

I’ve been reading O’Reillys books, Killing Patton ’n Killing the Rising Sun and they’re brought back a lot of mem’ries of that time…even in the little world that my friends and I inhabited, we were aware of what was going on in the rest of the world…you couldn’t help but know…the newspapers, the news reels at the movies, the paper and tin can drives that we all participated in, the Victory gardens in almost every yard…the ration books that parents complained about…the window decorations that told everyone that a family member from that house was in the military and the black ribbons that told us that someone was not going to return…O, we were aware of the rest of the world alright….everyone knew someone that was ‘over there’ for Europe and ‘out there’ for the Pacific…

Anyway, I digress here as I’m wont to do but the memories keep coming in the night, mainly, when I’m asleep…memories of a long-ago childhood in a gravel street village, of summer nights ’n June bugs, of winter snow and sledding on the railroad crossing on our street….if you got a good enough run at it, you could go all the way to end of the street where it went over the hill to the riverbank..

And of the giant moon that looked over Beattyville back when our world was new….

I hope this giant moon of today will make a lot of memories for people today…

Enjoy, Justin Other Smith

God made this day too...

Here t’is, ELECTION DAY!  Gonna be a new POTUS…one or the other of them is gonna win the coin toss, God save us…reminds me of the recurring Oliver Hardy line, “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

I can’t stand either of the Clintons…maybe I should say any of them because I don’t like the daughter or her husband either…they are corrupt nightmares that, in olden days, would have been tarred and feathered and ran out of town on rails…

That said, the kindest thing I c’n say about Donald Trump is that he’s the biggest damn monkey wrench that could possibly be thrown into the mess of vipers that, in our collective wisdom, we have elected to represent us in Washington, D.C.

That ‘shining city on the hill’ was meant to be a beacon of democracy to the entire world....it seems to have morphed into an emblem of excess and waste, an example of what should be avoided.  I don’t know who’s going to win this election but I think whether Trump is elected or not, he’s the spark that portends a revolution…

We need to take our political system apart and put it back together again…the changes that must be made are relatively simple, I think….we need to get rid of all the REALLY GREAT IDEAS FOR A BETTER AMERICA that  have been forced upon us, the people, by the  power hungry representatives that have been gorging on the goose that laid all the golden eggs…..

It’s time that we held our representative responsible for their actions…it’s time that we take steps to get the profit out of ‘public serviee’ and return it to its original form…it’s time for term limits, not only on the President but on Congress as well….it’s time to take away the lavish pensions that they voted themselves…they should live and work under the same umbrella as all the rest of working America…

Sounds pretty good, don’t it?  Is it gonna happen?  Well, anything is possible even if it ain’t probable so a boy can dream, can’t he?

Ms Fannie Williams, my fearsome teacher in 3rd and 4th grades at South Portsmouth School told my parents that one of my troubles was that I was just a dreamer and would never amount to anything of consequence….(I didn’t believe her but by her standards, I guess she was right)…

Martin Luther King said he ‘had a dream’…too bad it seems to have fallen upon the deaf ears of the Progressive Liberals….

Anyhow….here in northern California, it is an absolutely gorgeous day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, all the damn chickens are fat and sassy, I keep telling people to think ‘dumplings’ but no one listens..

Willy and I had a long walk this morning and he’s curled up asleep…dogs seem to have a very low threshold for happiness…food, water, walks, poop ’n pee wherever they like and nap wherever and whenever….

My phone keeps ringing…from a toll-free number and the recording starts, “Today is an important day…..”  That’s when I hang up, not because I disagree with her, today is an important day…not for the same reason, howsumever….today is an important day because the sun is shining, a balmy breeze is blowing, birds are singing and my wife and I and our children are all on the green side of the sod…it’s an important day because it’s a day that God made for us…

Hope you enjoy yours…..Justin Other Smith

On the street where I live...

Crestline Avenue ain’t much of an avenue seeing as how it’s only two blocks long and they’re short blocks at that and one of them is basically an alley with no homes or business’….
That said, neighbor Doug ’n myself often refer to the block where we live as ‘upper Crestline ‘and ‘lower Crestline’  ’n it just so happens that I live on the cusp..
Which ain’t got a durn thing to do with much of anything…
On our little street, we have feral cats and feral chickens and one guinea hea…’n one of the chickens is a naked redneck (dunno if he’s a Trump supporter or not)…
So I been telling people that the redneck chicken is actually a Turken, a hybrid….half chicken ’n have domestic turkey…


Y’know, I’m always a little surprised when people believe some of the stories that I tell…this Turken is just an example…I told a story about my Father and an oversize rooster that he told me about….I called it ‘Woodrow ’n the Super Chicken’ and when people ask me if it’s a true story, I tell them that I only repeated what had been told to me as the gospel truth….either that or I tell them that it’s all true give or take a lie or two…
I have a friend, Nick by name, a retired cop…after his retirement from a fairly major police force here in northern California, he became a college teacher where he taught Criminology…Nick has led a pretty interesting life ’n told me some true stories…not terribly interesting, but true…I told him about the time Cousin Ballard borrowed my Grandpa’s mule to deliver the mail out on Beauty Ridge and got stuck in the mud for three days…he asked me if it was true ’n I told as far as I knew, that I was only repeating what Cousin Ballard had told me…..’course, I guess you had to know Cousin Ballard….
Anyhow, we have a genuien Turken living on Crestline…fortunately, he lives closer to Doug than to me….