October should always begin with a trip to APPLE HILL!

A bad hair day don’t even begin to compare to a bad foot day ’n Wednesday wuz a baaaaaaad foot day….I hobbled up the street ’n down with da boyz ‘cuz they don’t give a big hoot in….well, you know, don’t you?  Anywayz, I wuz rolling along like a drunken sailor, limping on both feet, feeling picked upon by life in general which ever’body does now ’n then but it don’t help to complain ‘cuz nobody ever listens so it ain’t a helluva lotta use to cry…besides, it come to me that I wuz still walking ’n on the green side of the sod at that so things ain’t never so bad that they can’t get worse…

Anyhow, I wuz up ’n down thru the night as old men are won’t to do  (old dogs also)

popping a few pain pills, washing ‘em down with crackers ’n milk ’n when I still cudn’t sleep, playing computer solitaire…

So it wuz, that I kind’a slept in this morning ’n when I finally got out of bed ’n stumbled into the kitchen, found that Millyrose had made my coffee for me ’n had a couple biscuits in the oven ’n the paper wuz on the table…(I wuz immediately suspicious but I didn’t let on)….what it wuz that I had forgot wuz the planned roadtrip to APPLE HILL with our friends, Annigan ’n Willy ’n that I wuz the designated driver…we, all my fault, ran a little later than the plan called for but only an hour which in the grand scheme of things don’t amount to much at all….

Annigan ’n Willy were sitting on their stoop waiting patiently (I made up the patiently part) ’n we quickloaded them into the little Matrix ’n up the hill we went….wuz a lovely sunshiny day, light traffic, off in the distance the clouds topping the sierra looked like snow ’n as pretty much usual, when we arrived at APPLE HILL, since I only get up there once a year anymore, we drove up ’n down the highway searching for the signs that would direct us to the various ’n sundry apple farms that we intended to visit (y’know, every year I wonder why I don’t go equipped with a map but that, I guess would be another story)….

Anyway, we found the stops we wanted to find…had some apple pie, well, the others had rhubard ’n apple pie ’n I had an apple turnover ’n coffee, well, two cups of coffee actually ‘cuz I spilled the first one all over me when I turned over the pickanick table ’n dumped Millyrose on the lawn…(turns out that wuz pretty much the highlight of the day)…

We got home some six hours later to find that one of the dogs had eaten a book (Sophie’s, I think, not one of mine)…the cat had hidden herself upstairs (I didn’t tell you about the cat…I’m sorry, I’ll do that another time)…and,,,well, that’s pretty much our Thursday…

I know I haven’t been blogging as much as usual but it’s been a stressful September what with one thing ’n another(sighhhhh)...

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...

Imagine, a whole entire day devoted to work....

...makes a body tired just thinkin' about it!

Well, it’s Labor Day ag’in ~ comes around every year just like clockwork ~ kind’a nice to have some stability in what seems t’be an ever-changing world…   I don’t know if the world has really changed or if it’s just me getting older ’n find m’self saying things that remind me of my grandparents…

John Sam ’n Nora Smith were my grandparents, well, along with Hannah Bradshaw Howard, my maternal grandmother who lived in northern Michigan, but I barely remember my great grandparents ~ my great grandma was blind, had been for twenty years or so by the time I came around…macular degeneration, I think, altho’ it certainly wudn’t diagnosed as such back then…My father ’n my Aunt Eunice both ended up with the same malady ’n I have a cousin that endures it now ~ I’d say I have something to look forward to but Gawd!  I hope not….

Anyhow, I was a boy during World War II and the country as a whole was fiercely patriotic…Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR, as he was popularly known, was President and the country, even those who vilified him, stood four-square behind him…(four-square, an adjective but also an adverb meaning firmly or resolutely)…

FDR’s picture hung in every classroom in every schoolhouse the length ’n breadth of this land ’n every child in each and every classroom placed their hand upon their heart ’n recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning whether they understood all the words or not…but, we were patriots, ever’ last one of us ’n we didn’t take any guff about it either…

There were a few Civil War veterans still alive when I was a boy ~ not many, ’n those were dying off as fast as they could but there were a few of ‘em left ’n they pretty near always started their stories about how the world sure had changed since they were young…

I’m thinking that I read somewhere that the only certain constant was the inevitability of change which conflicts with that old saw, the more things change, the more they stay the same….

Ahhhh me, life is full of contradictions, ain’t it?

The Democrat Bellweather......

My Democrat Bellweather (who shall remain relatively anonymous) tells me that Obama is really sticking it to the Republicans by forcing them to vote on whether or not the USA should intervene in Syria ~ I told him that I tho’t Obama was more like the schoolboy sissy who boasted to his friends that he’d punch out the school bully if only his mommy’ud let him…The Bellweather didn’t think that was funny ’n insisted that the latest poll showed that the majority of Americans supported military intervention ~ I told him that I didn’t think so ’n that the last poll I’d seen saiid only about 25% of Americans supported that view but he insisted that ABC or maybe it was CBS said definitely that 75% of Americans supported Obama…

When I pointed out that ‘way back when the devil incarnate, George Bush, was President ’n Commander-in-Chief of these United States, the majority of Amerians ’n indeed Congress itself (including Democrats) had supported the intervention in Iraq, he then insisted that this is totally different today because the Syrians had used chemical weapons on their own people…

When I pointed out that Saddam Hussein (’n his co-hort, Chemical Ali) had used chemical weapons on his own people, the Bellweather then insisted that was different and that the devil incarnate Bush had lied about MWD’s and that made all the difference in the world…

Then he bet me a cup of coffee that if the do-nothing Republicans dared to vote against him, Obama would just take command and do it all himself as he had declared on national teevee  that he didn’t need Congress anyway, thank you very much…

Well, I had to admit that I’d heard the big O say that myownself during his teleprompted speech but that I still tho’t that he was just looking for Congress to give him an excuse to back out of the threats that he’d made previously…

Which just goes to show that when you walk the dogs down Crestline in the gloaming, you just never know what lurks in the minds of men...

Sun-Daze....

’S a quiet, durn near sombre day here on the street where I live…

Crestline Avenue in Olde Fair Oakes is basically two short blocks ‘cept one of them ain’t got no homes at all ’n is pretty much just an alleyway…’n I ought’a know alleyways having spent a number of my formative years in Beattyville, Ky where all the streets were alleyways, cinder ’n gravel they were, tucked betwixt the C&O railroad tracks ’n the mighty Ohio River…

We lived in two houses in Beattyville tho’ not at the same time of course which might’a made for an interesting story if we had BUT we didn’t…

We lived on the southernmost street in our little corner of the world, next to the railroad track ’n across from Big John Stephenson…in our 2nd house…

There wuz a driveway (alley) separating us from the first house we lived in which wuz a brick home, pretty much uninsulated ’n hard to heat in the wintertime…mostly, I remember it being cold….well, that ’n the big plum tree in the front yard…

The Craycrafts moved in there after us…Barbara Craycraft wuz a little bit older’n me ’n a cheerleader…I remember she ’n other girls ‘ud practice their cheers in the yard…purple ’n gold, their outfits were, short skirts ’n sweaters…I don’t recall all of the cheerleades from my daze at SP school but I suspect I’ll never forget Barbara ’n Yvonne ’n Betty Jo…

Anyway, on our side of the street, there wuz our house ’n the Craycraft ’s ’n the Keith’s…across the alley from the Keiths wuz Delbert ’n Iva Fultz ’n next door to them wuz where my Aunt Billie ’n Uncle Fred lived, ’n for the life of me, I can’t remember who lived across the alley from them ‘cept the house wuz kind’a hidden behind a tall hedge…

That wuz just one side of one street in that little village where ever’body knew ever’body else…now, I live on a short street where I’m on a wave ’n smile acquaintance with most of my neighbors (save one that I make it a practice to ignore, but that’s another story) even tho’ I don’t know all their names…

“It don’t matter at all where you lived before, California’s a brand new game.”  The Gatlin Bros

SCOFFLAWS IN VILLAGE PARK

At the risk of being called a curmudgeon, (Curmudgeon~noun~a bad-tempered or surly person)…Me ’n the ould Dogger ’n Willy wuz walking thru the park this A.M. as is our wont when we happened to meet some bearded ’n scraggly young men, each with a large dog (fortunately fairly amiable retriever types) off-leash…after asking, politely I tho’t, for them to control their animals ’n being ignored, I raised my voice a tad ’n told them to control their dogs…after being ignored again, I took my camera out, photographed them ’n demanded that they control their dogs or my next act would be to call Animal Control…at which point they called their dogs to them allowing me ’n da boyz to pass…I pretended to ignore their sniggering remarks about it always being the small dogs that were aggressive ’n didn’t bother to ask them why it always seems to take a very special kind of stupid to believe that the law didn’t apply to them…..

Of course, in t’days climate when Obama ’n his posse demonstrate the same kind of attitude toward our country’s laws, ie, State Dept, DOJ, IRS, et al…y’just gotta figger that it’s the trickle down effect in action…

“Lazybones, sleepin’ in the sun, how you ‘spect t’get your days work done…”

Snuck up on me ag’in…t’morra morning is trash pickup ’n it’s green waste already which meant that I hadda get some go on…I have two green cans plus two from my next door neighbor AND two from the empty house acros’t the street…

I started filling the cans last week, tho’t I’d take my time, fill a can ever’ other day or so ’n wudn’t get caught bustin’ my buns at the last minnit…ah well, procrastination is the name of the game ’n I had t’get out t’day ’n fill two cans ’n I worked up a sweat doin’ it….

At my age, it don’t take a lot of toil for me to work up a sweat, ‘specially on these warm August daze…think it has sumthin t’do with age…as a body grows older, the definition of toil seems to take on new meaning…for example, I live on top of a small hill….back in eastern Kentucky where I grew up, it wudn’t even be considered a hill at all but times change…my buddy Vic lives on the side of a Kentucky hill…his driveway has a couple two or three switchbacks ’n he ain’t even at the top…

Anyhow, I got six full cans of green stuff lined up at the curb (‘cept we don’t really have curbs on our little street~nor sidewalks or street lights) ready for the big green machine to come by ’n pick ‘em up…the county sends out two huge trucks on pickup day…one for green ’n one for reg’lar old garbage…Sacramento county, you gotta pay for garbage pickup whether you use the service or not…empty houses get billed ’n if the mortgage holder don’t pay the garbage bill, the county hangs a lien on ‘em…when we bought our first home in California, there was a private company that picked up the garbage…they had a big truck manned with a driver ’n two helpers…they’d come into your backyard, empty your garbage cans ’n never leave a mess…’n they did it for sumthin’ like $2.50 a month…costs a bit more theze daze…thanks, of course, to our progressive Democratic government…

We didn’t have garbage pickup back in Beattyville when I wuz a boy…I can’t seem to recall just what we did with our garbage…I recall, in the fall, we raked up all the leaves ’n burned ‘em…ever’body did…wudn’t really a throwaway society back then but I know there must have been sum things that constituted garbage but it just wudn’t important enuff to stand out in a boys life back in the day….

Ah well, Beattyville is durn near gone now…like eventide in Brigadoon, slowly disappearing into the mists of time...it’ud make a nice location for a riverside park ’n I expect the old Methodist Church could be headed for landmark status but maybe not…time’ll tell, I guess…

“The funny thing about time is it moves in one direction while memory moves in another.”