In days of old...

Not too long ago, I was asked if I had worked as a journalist. I gave it some thought (not much thought, but some) and came up with this sort of explanation of the sordid beginnings of my wanna-be writing career.

Once’t upon a time, I worked in this here little old bitty satellite newspaper office. We had ourselves a officer in charge, a non-commissioned officer (sergeant) who was really the one in charge, a reporter, a photographer, and a re-write man (me) who, it seemed at the time anyhow, was the one who got to do all the work. Well, most of the work.

The OIC came to the office in the morning, had coffee, signed whatever papers he needed to sign and left early for lunch. He’d come back for a few minutes after lunch, amble around the three rooms we occupied and tell the non-commissioned officer (sergeant)  that he could be reached at the Officer’s Club and leave.

The non-commissioned officer (sergeant) followed the OIC’s example but always a few minutes later.

The room I occupied was large and sunny, my desk facing the reporters desk. The photographer had a table in the corner but he had the same kind of chair that the reporter and I had. The other corner had a state of the art Thermo-fax copy machine, which may or may not give you a clue as to how long ago this stuff actually occurred.

Now, the photographer loved taking pictures. He had a great big heavy and, I thought, somewhat clumsy, camera that he carried with him almost every where he went. He loved nothing more than taking and developing pictures. Mostly, it seemed, the same picture over and over because they almost always looked alike.  Well, not the one’s he took off-duty, y’understand. Although, they tended to look alike also even though they was of different undressed girls. He always posed the girls in the same way and since they were Japanese girls, they all tended to be short and dark. Oh, and willing to take their clothes off for two hundred yen (about a buck ’n a half at that time).

The reporter, who fancied himself a writer, was red-headed and obnoxious, given to asking rude questions to people who found themselves caught up in an awkward moment. (The more things change, the more they stay the same).  He was capable enough to make notes of the answers…the  what, when, why, where, and how, whatever it was that happened and I would take his notes and write the story. After, I wrote the story, he’d affix his name,  give it to the non-commissioned officer (sergeant) to come up with a title and then the whole kit and caboodle would go in the daily mail to be delivered to the home office where, likely as not, the whole thing got tossed into the daily trash.

A story of no p'tic'lar consequence...

Now, I want to tell you a story. It’s a true story, more or less, but I’m telling it from mem’ry and it happened away back in 1957.

In 1957, I happened to be in Naha, Okinawa and this is the locale of the story.

Back in those days, in Okinawa, there was this communist fella named (I think) Kamejiro Senaga. And Senaga was a natural born politician who wanted to be Mayor of Naha which at that time and place was the most important civilian position on the island seeing as how Okinawa was under the military control of the United States.

As you might suspect, the military government didn’t have a whole lot of use for Senaga. As a matter of fact, he had been kicked off the island a number of times. Kind’a ridiculous when you think about it because he was, after all, Okinawan and had a perfect right to be there.

But he was an avowed communist and we didn’t like communists back in those days so the military government would have him arrested and put on a plane to Japan.

Problem was, he wouldn’t stay in Japan. He kept coming back to his home in Okinawa. Not too unreasonable but my guess is that the whole thing had a lot to do with viewpoint.  His versus the United States military government.

So, now that you’ve had a little bit of history, much as I c’n recall anyway, on with the tale…

Seems that Mr. Senaga was back on the island, driving around in his 1950 black Cadilac sedan (actually being driven becuz Mr. Senaga was far too important to drive his own self)…he was giving Yankee go home speeches all ‘round the island ’n the crowds were getting bigger and louder and I figured that after this speech in Naha, he was going to be escorted off the island again. 

My Bakersfield buddy and I were lounging around in the neighboring village of Naminoue (that was one of the things that we did well) in our way too short kimonos ’n drinking rice beer and flirting with the girls who were all big fans of Mr Senaga and wanted to go attend the Yankee go home demostration…

Made perfect sense that we went to the celebration. In our way too short kimonos and rubber shower shoes and yelled“Yankee, go home”with as much gusto as we could muster…

It seems that Airman Harkins ’n me were the only Americans attending and so it was that we found ourselves at an after rally party being plied with sake and rice beer with lots of grins and back-slapping and our picture took with Mr. Senaga…

I believe the most salient fact of that p’ticklar party, at least for Airman Harkins ’n me was that the licquor wa free…at least to us…all part of that perfect sense thing that I mentioned before. I supposed it was a communist thing and we were appreciative of that fact since neither one of us gave a hoot in Hell if the Okinawans had a communist government or not as it didn’t apply to either one of us.

HOW SUM EVER~~and whenever and wherever booze flows freely, there is always a howsumever that appears in the equation…

As you might imagine, at a Yankee go home rally, there is a lot of anti-American talk, a lot of yelling and shaking of fists and stuff like that…and at the after-rally party, as the booze flowed freely, they ramped up the rhetoric…(Let me point out here that it was not Mr Senaga who ramped it up as he left fairly early for his upcoming flight to Japan courtesy of the American military government)…No, it was our hosts, our newly acquired friends that Airman Harkins and I began to find a little on the rude side…so we told them that…

Well, the Japanese (’n the Okinawans are basically Japanese) are an extremely polite people, sort of like in the American south and being seen to be rude is a big no no for them and they almost immediately began to apologize, saying that they liked us, they just didn’t like Americans and me and Harkins explained that we were Americans and we went back and forth and round and round until somehow we got it all figured out and shook hands all around and they told us “Yall come back now, you hear!”(which I explained to Bakersfield born Airman Harkins was sort of a polite lie and they didn’t want us to come back at all) and Airman Harkins and me grabbed on to a couple bottles of rice beer and made our way back to the muddy streets of Naminoue (well, they were muddy streets back then)…

“BUT THEY’RE NAZI’S!”

The rallying cry of the Socialist Democrats in their attempt to muster support among the under-employed who have the time to ‘take to the streets’ to make their displeasure known to those Americans who still work and pay taxes to support the elitist protestors.

But, the truth is that they are not Nazi’s…they call themselves ’Neo-Nazi’s’ for a reason. Because the real-life Nazi’s died in 1945 with the death of Adolf Hitler. And his followers, for the most part, after the Nuremberg trials. Those few who escaped were hunted down and arrested, basically by the Jews that they hated.

The Neo-Nazi’s, the Skinheads…they’re not real Nazi’s except by the most ridiculous stretch of their juvenile imagination. They seem basically to be disaffected children seeking attention.  And they got it.  Not from the adults of the world who  had sense enough to ignore their tantrums, but from the Socialist Democrat activists who see in them the opportunity to push their very own fascistic ideals with the aid of a very compliant media. 

There are multiple motorcycle gangs in California alone that have a larger membership than any group of Neo-Nazi’s.  All the attention that is being brought by the complicit media might raise their numbers a little, much as the more attention that ISIS gets seems to bring the disaffected out of their parents bedrooms, but they’re never going to be a real force here or elsewhere.

The danger to this country doesn’t come from Neo-Nazi’s and it doesn’t come from politicians and it certainly doesn’t come from our present or any other President.  The danger comes if we listen to those Socialist Democrats and abandon our capitalistic Republic to become a welfare state. 

We need only to look at the past to see the future and in the past, there has never been a successful socialist state.  “Ecept for Sweden” crowed one of my uber liberal friends, to which I replied, Well, only until they run out of other peoples money, that is..

Justin Other Smith

Searchin' ever' whichaway...

I’ve heard a lot of liberals say that the United States is rife with institutionalized racism…but I’ve looked and I can’t find any…

They say that women have a ‘glass ceiling’ that keeps them from being equal with men…but, I’ve looked ’n I swear I don’t think that’s true but then I’m a guy and glass is glass and it may be that I just looked right through it…

They say that when companies hire people, first they hire white men, then they hire white women, then they hire asian men followed by asian women…and after that, the latinos and lastly, when pressed they’ll hire a black woman over a black man…

That’s what they tell me…

I don’t believe that either.

A few years ago, the liberals told us that ‘black’ men and women needed affirmative action in order to compete in the workplace. They tell us that we’re all equal but that somehow blacks need a head start in the race to the top. I think that’s just deep-dyed in the wool racism so I don’t think I believe that either.

Liberals tell us that conservatives are haters and that there are all these secret societies of haters like the KKK who  hide behind white bedsheets…well, except for their Grand Poobahs who hide theirselves behind scarlet red bedsheets…and they are the real haters especially of black people…and Jewish people…and Mexicans, I guess….

And here lately I’ve been hearing about all the Nazi groups, the skinheads, a bunch of jack-booted thugs who basically hate everyone who ain’t aryan white…they’re a secret society and nobody can join unless you happen to be an aryan white person…I’m told that tattoo’s are not mandatory but that may just be a story…

These are secret societies and they’re probably among us every day, in plain sight…might even be driving the Prius next to you masquerading as a liberal…

There seems to be an awful lot of things that liberals tell us that, when you check them out, don’t seem to be true. If you happen to mention that to a liberal, they will immediately start calling conservatives liars… 

And if you say, well that ain’t really the point I was trying to make, all of a sudden you become a racist, a bigot, a homophone, a xenophobe, maybe even a hydrophobe…do they have maxiphobes and miniphobes or am I just wandering around in my head again…

I saw this woman on television the other day…she looked and acted like a 40 something cheerleader and she was really proud of the fact that she’d evidently got all these people to dress in purple and hold hands and form a human chain the length of the Bay Bridge…she was smiling ear to ear and about to jump out of her skin with joy and she said the idea for the purple came to  her because Hillary Clinton wore purple when she ceded the election to Donald Trump…

And then on the very same television, I saw a group of women with pussycat hats on their heads except they were calling them ‘pussy’ hats because ten years or so ago, Donald Trump had made a joking remark in a private conversation about grabbing women by the pussy…  

Now, I ain’t saying he didn’t make the remark. It’s pretty dumb but men do get really dumb sometimes, especially when it comes to women, and to be truthful, I’ve heard women make remarks every bit as dumb…as an aside, my personal experience is that women are much more graphic in their conversations about sex than men. Men, for the most part, seem to have a very limited vocabulary. Women in conversation with other women don’t seem to have a vocabulary problem. But, I guess that’s another story…

So what we had is the biggest damn demonstration in history…hundreds of millions of women in countries around the world demostrating…standing in solidarity with their sisters…demanding…uh, something…I don’t know what they were demanding…different things for different women, I suppose…television analysts are voicing some really deep opinions…well, deep for television analysts, sage people, these television talking heads…Me, I’m kind’a dumb, I guess so I’ll just do what I always do, scratch my head and open a beer and stay out of the way…it ain’t healthy to get sideways of one woman let alone several hundred million of them…

These have been sage words of advice from Justin Other Smith

Whoa!
Justin Other Smith

When my daddy, Manuel Smith, first started telling me this story, he said he wuz about 16 years old but over the years, he seemed to get younger ‘most ever time he told it ’n the last time, he said he wuz 12 year old ’n they all lived on the farm out on Leatherwood.  All, being my grandparents, John Sam ’n Nora Smith, my daddy, Manuel, ’n my two aunts, Eunice ’n Josephine, both younger than my daddy, (he wudn’t my daddy then, of course, him being only 12 years old at the time).
Now Grandpa had bought hisself a Nash automobile. Not that he much cared for, or for that matter, even believed in automobiles, having a strong preference for horses ’n mules but the times were changing ’n lots of people were talking about automobiles and they wuz  gettin’ to be pretty common ’n Manuel wuz already a pretty good driver ’n even had a driver’s license which he had filled out a form that he’d sent, along with a quarter, to Frankfort to get. Even though you didn’t really need a license to drive.
Anyhow, Manuel wuz splitting firewood in the barnyard. My grandma, Nora, was gathering eggs ’n the girls wuz somewhere up in the barn because Manuel could hear them giggling.
Manuel wuz the first to notice the yellow cloud of dust moving along Leatherwood ’n he knowed it had to be an automobile coming pretty fast to kick up that kind’a dust but he didn’t know it wuz Grandpa until the dust shifted direction ’n he saw the Nash headed for the creek ’n heard Grandpa yelling.
Now, my grandpa, John Sam Smith, was a quiet man. An almost silent man, he wuz a man who wudn’t prone to chewin’ his cud twice’t, so to say, ’n a lot of the time, if you wanted an opinion out of John Sam Smith, you had to pry it out of him ’n he wudn’t a man who pried easy.
 He was a pious man, a righteous man, who never raised his voice, seldom swore ’n wuz well thought of by ever’body that knew him.
But Manuel heard him now. When he told me this story,  he swore that he thought the whold world must’a heard him. Before he saw him, he heard him.
“DAMN YOU, WHOA.”
And out of a cloud of yellow dust, here come the Nash automobile, bouncing over the rutted lane, splashing through Leatherwood Creek, a red-faced John Sam clasping the steering wheel in a death grip…”Whoa, damn you. Whoa.” he shouted as he drove the Nash straight into the side of the barn.
Now, I don’t really have to tell you that he had ever’one’s attention. Manuel stood there, axe in hand, gaping. Nora was frozen ’n the girls were staring down from the hayloft as John Sam leapt from the driver’s seat with a tire iron gripped in his white-knuckled fist.
“By God!” he said, as he lunged to the front of the car, “I’ll learn you to whoa when I say whoa.” And he took an almighty whack at the radiator of that Nash automobile, busting it ’n cursing at the hot steam that come hissin’ out.
Now, my father was 90 years old the last time he told me this story ’n he still couldn’t tell it without laughing. He said it proved that even the most gentle soul had limits that you just shouldn’t go beyond.

 

"BUT THEY'RE NAZI'S!"

The rallying cry of the Socialist Democrats in their attempt to muster support among the under-employed who have the time to ‘take to the streets’ to make their displeasure known to those Americans who still work and pay taxes to support the elitist protestors.

But, the truth is that they are not Nazi’s…they call themselves ’Neo-Nazi’s’ for a reason. Because the real-life Nazi’s died in 1945 with the death of Adolf Hitler. And his followers, for the most part, after the Nuremberg trials. Those few who escaped were hunted down and arrested, basically by the Jews that they hated.

The Neo-Nazi’s, the Skinheads…they’re not real Nazi’s except by the most ridiculous stretch of their juvenile imagination. They seem basically to be disaffected children seeking attention.  And they got it.  Not from the adults of the world who  had sense enough to ignore their tantrums, but from the Socialist Democrat activists who see in them the opportunity to push their very own fascistic ideals with the aid of a very compliant media. 

There are multiple motorcycle gangs in California alone that have a larger membership than any group of Neo-Nazi’s.  All the attention that is being brought by the complicit media might raise their numbers a little, much as the more attention that ISIS gets seems to bring the disaffected out of their parents bedrooms, but they’re never going to be a real force here or elsewhere.

The danger to this country doesn’t come from Neo-Nazi’s and it doesn’t come from politicians and it certainly doesn’t come from our present or any other President.  The danger comes if we listen to those Socialist Democrats and abandon our capitalistic Republic to become a welfare state. 

We need only to look at the past to see the future and in the past, there has never been a successful socialist state.  Well, only until they run out of other peoples money, that is..

Justin Other Smith

Idle thoughts....

ON SUICIDE…

Suicide is kind’a like the weather…ever’body talks about it but most people don’t ever do anything about it…

Way back when I was a teenager, I thought about suicide (most teens do, y’know) but life kind’a got in the way ’n I was too busy to fool with it…

Years later, I got into a major funk ’n tho’t suicide might be the best way to deal with it so I sat m’self down ’n gave it some serious thought…There is just so darn many ways for a body to kill themself that it’s really hard to choose…it didn’t take me no time at all to rule out shooting myself…that is one seriously messy way to go and it looks to be really painful ’n I ain’t fond of inflicting pain on myself…

Pills, now, well, y’know about pills…they got side effects ’n sometimes they don’t really work all that well ’n you could end up vomiting all over the place ’n then you’d have to clean it up….I knew this girl ‘way back when, she took enough pill to kill two or three dozen people ’n all it did was put her in a wheelchair for a couple years…

And I had a buddy who was a deputy Sherrif…he got called to a suicide where a guy stuck a .357 in his mouth ’n pulled the trigger ’n blew away his lower jaw ’n spent years ’n lots of money on plastic surgery…

I spent lots of time around railroads when I was younger ’n I thought if you was to just step in front of a locomotive but then you’re involving other people in your suicide ’n that ain’t fair to them…

Anyway, I gave it some serious thought and I finally figured out the very best way for me to do myself in ’n that was to just die of old age.  I mean, ever’body that lives long enough is gonna die from that one ’n it don’t really upset your family or society all that much…. People are fond of saying, “Well, he (or she) lived a good long life.”

Anyhow, that’s my thoughts on the subject so if there’s anyone out there considering suicice, I reccommend old age as the very best way to go.  

On protests and demonstrations and suchlike...

Now, I want to tell you a story. It’s a true story, more or less, but I’m telling it from mem’ry and it happened away back in 1957.

In 1957, I happened to be in Naha, Okinawa and this is the locale of the story.

Back in those days, in Okinawa, there was this communist fella named (I think) Kamejiro Senaga. And Senaga was a natural born politician who wanted to be Mayor of Naha which at that time and place was the most important civilian position on the island seeing as how Okinawa was under the military control of the United States.

As you might suspect, the military government didn’t have a whole lot of use for Senaga. As a matter of fact, he had been kicked off the island a number of times. Kind’a ridiculous when you think about it because he was, after all, Okinawan and had a perfect right to be there.

But he was an avowed communist and we didn’t like communists back in those days so the military government would have him arrested and put on a plane to Japan.

Problem was, he wouldn’t stay in Japan. He kept coming back to his home. Not too unreasonable but my guess is that the whole thing had a lot to do with viewpoint.  His versus the United States military government.

So, now that you’ve had a little bit of history, much as I c’n recall anyway, on with the tale…

Seems that Mr. Senaga was back on the island, driving around in his 1950 black Caddilac sedan (actually being driven becuz Mr. Senaga was far too important to drive his own self)…he was giving Yankee go home speeches all ‘round the island ’n the crowds were getting bigger and louder and I figured that after this speech in Naha, he was going to be escorted off the island again. 

My Bakersfield buddy and I were lounging around in the neighboring village of Naminoue (that was one of the things that we did well) in our way too short kimonos ’n drinking rice beer and flirting with the girls who were all big fans of Mr Senaga and wanted to go attend the Yankee go home demostration…

So we went. In our way too short kimonos and rubber shower shoes and yelled“Yankee, go home”with as much gusto as we could muster…

It seems that Airman Harkins ’n me were the only Americans attending and so it was that we found ourselves at an after rally party being plied with sake and rice beer with lots of grins and back-slapping and our picture took with Mr. Senaga…

I believe the most salient fact of that p’ticklar party, at least for Airman Harkins ’n me was that the licquor wa free…at least to us…I supposed it was a communist thing and we were appreciative of that fact since neither one of us gave a hoot in Hell if the Okinawans had a communist government or not as it didn’t apply to either one of us.

HOW SUM EVER~~and whenever and wherever booze flows freely, there is always a howsumever that appears in the equation…

As you might imagine, at a Yankee go home rally, there is a lot of anti-American talk, a lot of yelling and shaking of fists and stuff like that…and at the after-rally party, as the booze flowed freely, they ramped up the rhetoric…(Let me point out here that it was not Mr Senaga who ramped it up as he left fairly early for his upcoming flight to Japan courtesy of the American miliary government)…No, it was our hosts, our newly acquired friends that Airman Harkins and I began to find a little on the rude side…so we told them that…

Well, the Japanese (’n the Okinawans are basically Japanese) are an extremely polite people, sort of like in the American south and being seen to be rude is a big no, no for them and they almost immediately began to apologize, saying that they liked us, they just didn’t like Americans and me and Harkins explained that we were Americans and somehow we got it all figured out and shook hands all around and they told us “Yall come back now, you hear!”(which I explained to Bakersfield born Airman Harkins was sort of a polite lie) and Airman Harkins and me grabbed on to a couple bottles of rice beer and made our way back to the muddy streets of Naminoue (well, they were muddy streets back then)…

A sunny day...

Boy, Howdy…a little sunshine can perk up a day…

The break in the rain came at a good time…I wuz gettin’ tard of it…

Lost a tree in the storm last nite, feel lucky that I didn’t lose more…

It was a privet which is more of a shrub, I guess, but this one was 30 some feet high, an evergreen in a row of them,made for a pretty good sound barrier ’n I’m sorry to lose it…have to replace it with something…

There was a break in the rain this morning so I walked down to the motorhome, knocked the water out of the awning…fortunately, the awning is on the north side and last nite’s wind was a southern breeze…a pretty stiff breeze…while I was down there, it started raining again so I put Willy off…He wudn’t happy about it…

Looked up this afternoon, a strange light in the sky, grabbed the leash ’n the durn plastic baggies (boy, we sure didn’t do that when I was young) ’n headed out on our daily S&P stroll…made the little boy happy, he ran hither ’n yon…well, first he ran hither ’n then he ran yon…

Park people, I guess, had been active this morning as there were small  piles of debris stacked carefully around the park…lots of people, a few dogs…Willy practically dragged me to Jon’s Salon…

Busy, busy people there…as a lazy person, I love to see other people working, always have…

Bunch of teens, boys ’n girls, in shorts ’n  yoga pants ’n running shoes running ‘round ’n ‘round the park, laughing ’n giggling as young teens are wont to do…(wont to do, that’s a phrase that you don’t get to use very often these days)…

Anyway, it’s shirtsleeve weather for the time being ’n I, for one, appreciate it…

On the only political note t’day, I was asked if I was going to watch the inauguration tomorrow…I said I’d prob’ly watch at least part of it since as a rule, I almost always watch part of such events…I was told that I was only the second person to say that…Folks, I gotta say I’m really, really tired of this us ’n them bullshit ’n I blame Obama for the rift in this nation. Was it his fault entirely? No, of course not, but Obama and the Democrat National Party did their dead-level best to widen the rift ’n the consequences are ugly! 

Otherwise, the sun is shining (even if it’s only temporary)…hope everyone has a nice day….Justin Other Smith

Muddy paws 'n stuff...

Round ’n about,

’n the fact that the sun is shining (mostly) doesn’t mean that the mud is gone so…Muddy Paws…dunno what it is with dogs sumtimes…you’re walking along, having a good time ’n a sudden jerk on the leash, a turn to the right ’n he’s standing in a pool of water…’n has to wade thru mud to not only get there but to get out as well…’n that’s at the entrance to the park…

lots of people out walking…lots of dogs leading their owners (?)…

After being nipped on the nose by a small dog that lives up the street, Willy has become a little standoffish  with small dogs…not so with the larger beasts that could crush him with one bite…not saying, of course, that they would, just that they have the capability…

Stopped at Jon’s Salon for treats…Jon ’n Diana have some sort of competition over whose treats get eaten first…’n not just for Willy, I hear this from others who also stop for treats…(they have a dish of hard candy for the humans)…

Down around the back part of the park, grass is spongy ’n still wet ’n some of the kids that ignore the remonstrations of their mothers (for the most part) have muddy knees ’n bottoms…”Es no mes problema”…one of the phrases that I picked up long ago down valley when I tho’t it was a good  idea to be able to communicate with my customers…then I found out they wanted to learn to speak American more’n I wanted to learn to speak Mexican…(and yeah, I know we’re talking about English ’n Spanish, thank you very much)…

I didn’t learn a lot of Spanish during those years but I managed to get by, made a lot of friends, had a good time ’n developed a taste for Mexican beer (current favorite is Pacifico Clara)…

Not at all sure what all this has to do with Willy ’n me walking around the park on a Sat’iday afternoon but there you are…Have a good weekend, Justin Other Smith

Blow the man down....

Well, if Bobby Zimmerman was correct ’n the answer is blowin’ in the wind, we may find the truth sometime tonite ‘cuz the durn wind is certainly a’blowin’…
I’m hoping that none of my old valley oaks come down…wudn’t be surprised if small branches do…the already are…’n I got a sycamore that I worry about from time to time…
Stood on my side porch staring at my fav’rite orange tree ‘ n hope that it doesn’t decide to give up and lay down…ground is so soft from all the rain ’n the wind is so strong ’n that southern exposure is harsh…’n the foliage on the orange tree is thick…
I answered the telephone earlier this evening ’n a voice out of the past asked me if this was the person who loved to vent so much on facebook?
I had to admit it’s true…I hate to admit that it’s true…I’ve never in my life seen such a year that so lent itself to political venting…from both sides ’n down the middle…idiots, all of them…’n no let up in sight…
One good thing tonite, at least for conservatives, Obama is giving his Final Speech, His Farewell Address…’course, it ain’t gonna be his final say on anything, he’s a young man ’n he’s gonna be around for a long time ’n I’m pretty durn sure that nobody is going to be able to shut him up…
Anyhow, I ain’t gonna listen to his speech…I think I’ve already heard everything he has to say…well, I mean he basically says the same thing over ’n over ’n over ’n …you get the drift…’n if you’re a conservative at all, you agree with me…if you ain’t a conservative, if you’re one of those commie or commie symphs, you might even shed a tear as his leaving…that’s okay, there’ll be enough of us cheering his exit that he may think he’ll need to take an extra bow…he prob’ly will anyway, he’s been awful good at thinking it’s all about him…
Anyhow, I like the Dylan song, ‘Blowin’ in the wind’…I like a lot of his songs ’n didn’t really mind that scratchy sound that comes out of his larnyx…I figgered, what the hell, I can sing as well as Bob Dylan…the whole durn world c’n sing as well as Bob Dylan…
I like forties music ’n today I was listening to a tune called  ‘The Twelfth St Rag’ ’n dancing (well, trying to dance) to it…it went on so long I ran out of breath ’n had to sit down but while I was sitting, I continued to tap my feet, both of ‘em…
My Grandmother Smith would drag me ’n Grandpa to church wherever she felt she should go…we went to all the churches…my Grandmother like to spread it around…I liked the music ’n would try to sing along but my Grandfather would sit there in he blue go to meeting suit, his hightop kid leather shoes ’n tap his foot to the music…only one foot, mind you…
Old men use’ta wear black or dark blue suits, often with a vest, always with a tie…usually a soft black rolled brim hat ’n those wonderfully soft, black kid leather hightop shoes…I think when I was a boy, I was looking forward to getting old so I could dress like that…but, as Dylan said, the times, they are a-changing ’n old men don’t dress like that anymore…
“O, for the days of the Kerry dancing, O, for the lilt of the pipers tune, ’n O those warm nights of romancing, gone, alas, like my youth, too soon…”
Have a good evening, Justin Other Smith

"Endeavor to persevere!"

The Twelve Days of Christmas…

When I was a boy, my Mother didn’t put our Christmas tree ‘up’ until Christmas Eve.  Then, it seemed as though we worked all day decorating it…she was partial to those old time leaded icicles and she hung them one at a time so that when she was finished, our tree looked like a shimmering waterfall of ice…

She didn’t use a lot of lights, people didn’t back then…not like today when people hang hundreds of twinkling LED’s…matter of fact, when I was a boy,  there   were people who  just didn’t use lights at all…My Aunt Billie was one of those…I think it was because my Uncle Fred was deathly afraid of fire…

Back in those ‘Golden Oldies’, there were people who still lit their Christmas Tree with real candles so there was always news of Christmas fires…as I recall, Christmas candles were similar to the birthday candles of today only fatter…short ’n fat…the funny thing is I c’n remember seeing them on a tree but I can’t for the life of me recall how they were fastened to the tree…

But back to the Twelve Days of Christmas because I’ve been told by…oh, any number of people that while they’ve heard the phrase and they’ve heard of ‘Olde Christmas’ they don’t really know what it means…

It has to do with the combination of the Julian calendar and the Georgian calendar and the Feast of the Epiphany and the gaggle of human mem’ries over the centuries…

January sixth is, or was, considered Old Christmas…or sometimes, Little Christmas and, in my Mother’s mind, at least, the twelve days of Christmas that she (and we) celebrated began on Christmas Day and lasted through the sixth of January after which she took down the tree…

Traditions come and go, and change over the years…some people want their Christmas tree up and decorated the day after Thanksgiving…obviously this must be an American thing because the rest of the world doesn’t celebrate American thanksgiving…

It’s a pretty good stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas and what we like to call ‘live’ trees get really, really dry and dangerous so a lot of people take them down the first opportunity after Christmas…Heck, I recall back in the ‘60s ’n ‘70s people tossing the trees out on Christmas Day…

Now, we have a lot of artificial trees…pretty good ones…look real…with hundreds of sparkling lights…they don’t really need a lot of decorations but most families have boxes of beloved Christmas ornaments that they drag out from their hidey holes just for the occasion…and they buy more every year so that’s a tradition that’s going to be around for awhile, you can bet your local retailers collective butts on that…

Anyhow, the twelve days of Christmas seems to be one of those traditions that is well on its way to oblivion but it’s a small thing in the overall scheme…

Christmas, over the years that I’ve been an observer, has morphed from just being a Christian celebration into something much more secularized, much more commercial, sort of a return, I guess, to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice that the Catholic church ‘wedded’ to the birth of Jesus in their search for converts (or so I’ve been told)…

All holidays change with time…when I was a boy, the 4th of July was actually the biggest holiday of the year, in mid-summer, lasting several weeks with picnics and fireworks and parades and speeches and did I mention, fireworks…

Halloween was basically just for children and the pumpkin Jack O’ Lanterns here in the USA were carved out of turnips in Ireland where they were born…

Christmas wasn’t the biggest Christian holiday either…that was reserved for Easter…and I’m pretty sure that the chocolate bunnies were born in the 20th century…

Anyhow, in my Christmas story, I got the Red Ryder gun when I was nine years old ’n living in Beattyville ’n over the years since, the Christmas trees that I picture in my memory are the ones spent in that little river village so long ago….

I do hope 2017 will be a good year for the world and for all my friends…Justin Other Smith

Justin Other new year...

8 o’clock on a rainy nite…watching teevee, just me ’n Millyrose ’n Willy…Lady Bea is around somewhere but she doesn’t usually come out ’til Willy goes to bed…funny cat…
Out Xmas tree has blinking lites, white ’n colored, cuz that’s what Millyrose wanted…we leave our trees up ’til Old Christmas…if you don’t know what Old Christmas is, look it up…
It’s a quiet nite, I fixed dinner…you know it’s gonna be a quiet evening when I do that…’course I cheated just a little bit….frozen breaded chicken patties, canned corn ’n cream gravy that daughter Gina made for me t’other day…(she does it so much better than me)…
I mentioned yest’iday or maybe it was the day before that a reader of mine (go figure) from England, no less, had commented on a remark I’d made about squirrels…I got to wondering becuz I don’t know most of the people who read my blog…don’t even know if they read it more ’n once or what…anyhow, if you’re one of those people, a one-timer or maybe a once in a whiler, leave me a comment…Please…I’m curious…
it doesn’t make any difference if you like what I say or agree with what I say or disagree for that matter…I’d just like to know that someone I don’t know, will more’n likely never know, is interested enough to read what an old Kentucky windy like myself has to say…
Bob Sanders, an old, old friend from Beattyville days says I can’t fool him into thinking I’m something other than a bullshitter…
Anyhow, please comment…I’d really like to hear what people think….Happy 2017, Justin Other Smith