Friday Cemetery Blogging

Like almost every one else who lived in Flat Mound, Texas, Ellis Harp was a farmer. He was a good man, a hard worker, all those sorts of pleasantly positive traits we ascribe to dull, unimaginative people who are otherwise nice folks. He liked to introduce himself to new church members as a “harp workin’ plowboy”. This was usually met with a nervous chuckle and a skittish, perfunctory handshake before the new acquaintance backed away.

Maude and Ellis were married the weekend after Maude’s high school graduation. Ellis left school a couple of years earlier, having learned everything he needed to know, and worked full-time on the family farm. Maude went to work as a full-time farm wife.

They did all the normal things – joined the Baptist church and sponsored local kids at the county stock shows. Ellis wasn’t going to get rich, but they were as well off as most of their neighbors. Maude wasn’t ever going to be a fashion plate or be asked to join the Ladies Garden Club, but she was treasurer of the local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star.

They were happy and when Ellis died in ’48, Maude leased the farm land out to a nephew and moved into town. She was at a bit of a loss for what to do with her time. The war effort was winding down and she wasn’t the least bit interested in volunteering at the local hospital (blood made her puke) or the primary school (children made her itch). A friend invited her to a Thursday night canasta game as a way of introducing to new friends.

Maude took to canasta like nothing she’d ever done before. She and her friend, Minerva Marie Freeman began to enter canasta tournaments whenever they could find them in surrounding cities. One weekend, while Maude was on a roll through the final rounds of the Woodmen of the World bi-annual tourney in Wichita Falls, Minerva Marie picked up a flyer for a Canasta Cruise on a river boat leaving from New Orleans the next month.

As soon as she mentioned it to Maude, it was agreed that they would take the summer’s earnings from the Farmer’s Market and finance the trip.

Maude came in third in the on-board tournament and the ladies were hooked. Maude went pro and Minerva Marie became her agent and promoter. She booked trips to canasta conventions and championships all around the country and even got Foster’s Ford Dealership and Skating Rink to act as Maude’s sponsor.

The two women went on to become legends on the canasta circuit, and were invited to headline a tournament at The Sands in Las Vegas not long after the casino opened. After their first Vegas experience, they decided it was the only place to be for a dedicated canasta professional, so they packed their bags and left Flat Mound behind in favor of a permanent move to the Nevada desert.

Maude got a job giving canasta lessons at a small, family-owned casino in Laughlin, Nevada. Minerva Maria thought family-owned meant a nice little Italian family ran the business as a means of putting the kids through college. Maude never corrected her.

The ladies enjoyed a bit of the high life for many years in Laughlin. Upon her death in 1962, Maude’s body was returned to Flat Mound for burial next to her not all that beloved Ellis, amid a dearth of fanfare.

Thanks to Mindy for giving me the word canasta!

'Cause Mindy said I had to.

Mindy has been after me forever to get me to post a picture of this painting, but the dang thing just does not photograph well. It is much larger and more...imposing, I guess, in person than it is in this photo. (It's also not as l o n g and drawn out at it appears here. Some kind of weird distortion going on!) I'd been working on this painting for a couple of months before I had the bracelet conversation. (This is the second time in less than a week that I've linked to that post. I find that somewhat disturbing...) I finished it not long after that and hung it in my office. It decorated the wall behind the chairs my probationers sit in. When Roger reported the next time, he never even saw it.



I just got the frame a couple of weeks ago. We have an antique/consignment store here that always has interesting stuff. The very best reason to shop there is that one of the boothes is owned by the wife of a world famous-ish artist and she sells their scratch and dent frames for next to nothing. I loved this frame - thought it was perfect. I paid my ten bucks for it, brought it home and spent a couple of hours painting it red. (In the rain, I might add.) It dried for a day, then Katie and I brought it up to my office on a Sunday afternoon to finish the framing job. It was at that point that I realized the canvass was not 24 x 36 after all! Oh well. Now it's a frame AND a mat - ha ha!



Last Friday I rearranged my office and now the painting hangs over my left shoulder. I really do like this painting, especially now that it no longer peers at me from over people's heads. She never said anything, just stared at me all day long and it was really starting to freak me out.

Should be interesting to see if Roger notices it this time.

I always liked that song by Devo...

Jackson and I took a break from "The Official Who's Idea Was This, Anyway? Home Repair and Improvement Weekend" and went to see the new Indiana Jones movie with some friends. The movie was enjoyably predictable and comfortingly unoriginal.

Earlier in the day, during our second trip to Wally World to buy painting and flooring supplies, I noticed the Indiana Jones action figure aisle. I made detour so I could take a quick look. It was frightfully appalling.

Do you remember when kids were tough, resilient, regenerative little rubber monkeys? I do. My parents kept an eye on us, but from afar. We had limits and rules, but we had a lot of freedom within those rules.

We didn't know anyone who owned a bike helmet and no one would have dared to actually wear one. I learned to drive a car when I was in the fifth grade. I learned to shoot a gun much younger than that. We always played with knives and throwing stars, things you can't even buy now unless you're 18 years old. We had a bow and real arrows that couldda put an eye out. One of our favorite games was climbing up on the roof of the house, with said archery equipment strapped to our backs, then shooting at the dolls laid out as targets across the lawn.

When we got bored with all of that, we climbed up on the roof of the church and tested various towels, blankets and sheets for parachute potential by jumping off the roof onto the sand dunes piled up against the side of the building.

The only major injury either of us had, that I can remember, was the time we were swinging on a rope hanging from a tree, a la Tarzan. My brother moved the bike we were swinging over, and he moved it too far. When I tried to make the jump, I landed wrong and broke my wrist. Four weeks in a cast (a plain old plaster cast - not a specially molded and fitted arm brace) and I was good as new.

Kids today are just sissies.

Wally World had a whole row of Indiana Jones toys. I checked out the cheaply made action figures, none of which were particularly impressive. Then I saw something that made me want to give the nearest child a massive and malicious wedgie.

It was a whip.

Well, not really. It was a stuffed toy. A soft, flimsy, stuffed whip toy. Cottony. Fiber-filled. Embarrassingly flaccid.

When we first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, my parents let us buy real whips. Leather lengths that cracked and popped like gunpowder flashes. I could never do anything impressive with it, but I could make it crack and, as my brother indicated in a previous post, I still have it.

Stuffed toy whip? Don't even bother.

Wussy juveniles.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

Tryphosia always wore big hats. The kind that would make Dolly Levi's ostrich plumes droop with envy. Tryphosia was all about the hats.

Her first husband, Mr. Foster, always found them a bit pretentious. There was a lot about his wife that he found pretentious once the newness wore off of their connubial union. He wished she were content to stay at home and can vegetables like the other ladies in town. There were quilting circles and the Women’s Missionary Union at the First Baptist Church that she could be involved in. Surely that would have been enough for any good Christian housewife.

But it wasn’t. Not for Tryphosia. She dreamed of glamour and glory. She longed for the theatre - spelled backwards, just like that. Theatre was rather more grandiose than plain old theater, she thought.

When Mr. Foster died unexpectedly in a freak plowing accident – they didn’t even bother with a burial, the minister just said a few words over the cotton field (that year’s harvest was one of the best in local memory) – Tryphosia used the insurance money to lure a director straight from New York City to come out to the plains to direct the “Happy New Century Musical Extravaganza” that the Ladies of Agriculture Theatre Guild planned as their first civic consciousness-raising performance.

The young widow was thrilled when James G. Scarborough answered her advertisement in the New York Times. He actually arrived before the copy of the paper with her ad in it that she had mail-ordered did. He told the assembled ladies of the guild that he was fresh from his latest triumph on the Great White Way – a musical-comedy revival of Othello – when he read the ad looking for a professional thespian willing to undertake their directorial duties. His muse beckoned and he took the first train west.

The ladies were thrilled.

Tryphosia was enthralled.

The show was a flop.

Tryphosia wasn't particularly distressed by the bad reviews and poor attendance because, by the second week of rehearsals, James G. was sneaking ever so discretely through the kitchen door of her rambling farm house every evening after dark. The Methodist minister agreed to marry them on-stage, following the first performance of the show. Rev. Simpson was new in town, having been summoned by the bishop from somewhere back east. The ladies of the Women’s Missionary Union at the First Baptist Church mentioned this as they clucked their tongues at the thought of such scandalous behavior being legitimized by the presence of clergy. Thankfully their own pastor, a long-time local, understood the impropriety of the situation and refused to participate in such vulgarity.

Tryphosia and James lived happily ever after.

For a couple of years.

Then, James disappeared. It was rumored he left town immediately after a Pinkerton detective had arrived and visited with the local constabulary. Nothing was ever proved. Tryphosia appeared heartbroken and immediately indulged in a recuperative trip to Buenos Aires as a means of rediscovering herself.

A telegram arrived a few years later, reported to be from Tryphosia’s Argentine spiritual and legal advisor, which detailed the death of Tryphosia resulting from an encounter with rampaging llamas. The wire indicated that in her will Tryphosia left a substantial sum to the municipality which was intended for erecting a towering monument in the town square to the memory of the Scarboroughs. Rumor had it the Tryphosia had been with child when she left for South America, but nothing had ever been proved and the telegram was frustratingly silent on that subject. Further attempts at communication failed and no one ever knew for sure.

The Women’s Missionary Union was charged with constructing a fitting tribute. After much discussion it was decided that the most Christian thing to do was to erect a simple tombstone and send the rest of the money to widows and orphans relief in the wilds of darkest Africa.

And that’s what they did.

Happy Memorial Day! (Or as I like to call it - Amateur Day.)

I Don't Know If I Have Enough Bleach.

It's been raining here most of the day. Flowers always look best in cloudy weather and I thought the honeysuckle was especially pretty against the grey porch.

Katie's birthday is next week. She has a couple of friends over to eat her daddy's cooking and spend the night. They're nice kids. Kids you can leave to their own devices without second thought. I was busy playing with some modeling clay when they came into the kitchen and said they were going out into the alley to slide in the mud. Harmless fun - they were wearing flip-flops which could be easily washed off and a few muddy feet never hurt anyone. I said "No problem. Have fun."

They had fun.

A lot of fun.

Sigh...

Friday Cemetery Blogging

Well.




I started this last night, but after a half hour of staring at the screen and not typing, I quit and went to bed.

By the light of day, things still look the same.

Not to say that things are bad. Not at all. This has just been a week of interruptions and busy-ness. I've had too much to do and too little accomplished. Nothing is more frustrating than starting projects and being unable to get them done because new little projects are poking their nasty little pointed noses into your bidness.

Here's hoping next week is more productive!

Elastigirl Found It!

Check it out!

Friday Cemetery Blogging

It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.

- Mother Teresa

That quote doesn't have anything to do with anything, I just like it.

It's RAINING!

Rain always makes me want to write.

I like to walk in the rain, but tonight mud is a bit of a factor. Still, the dog is avoiding me and she sort of slinks away anytime I look over at the leash. I've never had a dog that liked to walk in the rain. I dunno why.

Today was an interesting day. I got flowers. Well, a flower. One of my probationers brought me a red rose. I didn't have to yell at him, so I figured I could perhaps keep it without it being a bribe. Mindy and the boss were standing in the hallway outside my office when my guy left. I took the rose out to show them.

Mindy demanded to know what I had done to merit flowers. I explained that the guy told me it was a Mother's Day rose. She eyed me with a critical gaze.

"Was he younger than you?" she asked.

"Considerably."

"That's it then. He thinks you're his mama."

I think I stuck my tongue out at her, because that's the kind of mature discourse which pervades our corporate culture. My boss took a look at the rose, nipped off one of the thorns and ate it. I kid. you. not. I asked him if the term 'oral fixation' meant anything to him. He asked if that was the big word next to his picture in the dictionary.

Then, my next guy, whom I normally cannot stand, asked if he could start seeing me twice a month instead of just once. As I tried to dislodge the gum that I inadvertently sucked down my windpipe, he explained that he was sorry we'd gotten off on the wrong foot and that he knew he had a lot he had to get done over the next year in order to get off of probation. He thought it would just be easier if he reported more often so I could keep his feet to the fire.

After I picked my jaw up off the floor and finished with that guy, the next one showed up having done nothing on his community service. None. Nada. Zilch. But the first words out of his mouth were "I wanna make a deal." His idea of a deal was to agree that if he didn't complete 24 hours of community service this month, I could send him to jail. He claims he needed some extra motivation.

Vince Lombardi could only hope for that kind of motivation.

I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's the humidity.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

Douglas Adams

A bit o' housekeeping

Fron the 2 Birds With One Big Rock Department:

I have a internet buddy in Budapest who requested pictures of my fair city. So, I pulled a few things together to send to her. Thought I'd post 'em here too, so I put 'em in a slide show fer yer perusal.

Also, Gerry tagged me for a meme and here it is:

SCATTERGORIES! Use the first letter of your first name to answer each of the following.They have to be real places, names, things...nothing made up! You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.



WHAT IS YOUR NAME Rachel

4 LETTER WORD Rain

VEHICLE Rolls Royce

TV SHOW Rhoda

CITY Rahleigh

BOY NAME Richard

GIRL NAME Rebecca

OCCUPATION Robber

SOMETHING YOU WEAR Robe

FOOD Raisin Bran

SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM Retching

REASON FOR BEING LATE Rock Climbing

SOMETHING YOU SHOUT Rock on, you pukes!

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

Everyone at my house has been sick this weekend. A rather grouchy Jackson has frequently reminded me that I started it, and therefore it is all my fault. I'm a giver.

On Saturday afternoon I added a new location to my P.I.P. tour of Big Flat City. Not to be confused with a V.I.P. tour, the P.I.P. tour showcases Places I've Puked. There's a story behind that which I'll tell you another time.

This time I had to veer over into a mostly deserted parking lot half a block from a busy intersection and a Walgreen's store. I revisited the contents of my breakfast while Jackson hoofed it to the drug store in search of medicinal relief. Katie cowered in the backseat of the truck, no doubt with fingers stuck in her ears, trying not to join in on the festivities.

I must have looked rather pathetic, bent over, one hand clutching the bumper and the other holding my hair out of my face, all the while trying to aim away from my tennis shoes and bare legs. A nice lady in a silver Buick pulled into the parking lot to see if I needed any assistance.

I had trouble seeing her because I was still wearing my sunglasses and they were thoroughly bespattered with tears that sort of involuntarily spurt out of your eyes when you feel rotten enough to abandon your vehicle and toss your cookies alongside a public street.

Desperately gathering my shredded dignity, I thanked her for her offer, and told her help was forthcoming as soon as Jackson returned from the drug store. She looked like she didn't believe me - surely I didn't look THAT pathetic - but she finally nodded and slowly drove away.

Jackson brought me some good drugs and even gave me the shirt off his back to wear - as he would want me to note - and we went home. By nightfall, he had succumbed to the same bug and we spent a lovely Sunday grumbling and grousing as we moved back and forth between the bed and chair, trying to get comfortable. By eleven o'clock Sunday night, Katie had joined the ranks of the living dead.

This morning I felt better, but I stayed home with the kid, who'd had a pretty sleepless night.

After getting Katie set up with a blanket, some juice, a couple of crackers and full access to the Disney channel, I did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. After a while, I sat down across from her to play on the computer. Then the evil kid then changed the channel so she could watch Full House reruns.

She does this mostly because she knows Full House is like Kryptonite for me and she enjoys watching me squirm. I hated that show the first time around and I cannot comprehend what she finds so appealing about it. After wailing and gnashing my teeth, I told her I would keep quiet, as long as she would at least pretend to take a nap. After working out the details of the nap pretense - eyes would be closed, but she could stay in the chair and not have to move to a fully prone position on the couch - she started her pretend nap and I continued to play on the computer.

Finally, when I thought she'd moved past the pretend stage and was fully engrossed in the nappage, I eased out of the chair and started to stand with the intent of wresting the remote control from her fevered grasp. Just as I moved, her eyes shot open and she said:

"You're just like Barbie."

Not. bloody. likely.

Suffice it to say that I did not invest a lot of time in my appearance this morning. I managed to brush my teeth a put on clean clothes, but that was pretty much the extent of my morning ablutions.

I was wearing a pair of pyjama pants decorated with retro spark plugs and a raggedy old red t-shirt. My feet were cold so I'd been padding around the house in a pair of granny-lookin' house shoes which, although red in color and therefor coordinated somewhat with my red t-shirt, that accident of fashion did nothing to improve my overall appearance. I hate to admit I even own house shoes, much less find them sometimes cozily useful.

I hadn't done anything with my frizzy bed-head hair, other than twist it up in a clip on the back of my head. And of course, make-up would have been a laughable waste of animal by-products at this point. I hadn't even popped in my contacts and was still wearing my glasses.

And yet -

"You're just like Barbie."

Poor kid must be more ill than I thought. Had her fever made her delirious? Should I feel her forehead? Press a cool compress to her brow? Call the doctor? Or just move right on to boiling water and tearing sheets?

"How, pray tell, am I just like Barbie?" I queried, frozen halfway between sitting and standing.

"When you stand up your knees pop just like Barbie's do when you bend her legs."

If she's still sick tomorrow, her daddy's staying home with her!

Friday Cemetery Blogging

I am pissed.



In the American pretty-damn-mad sort of a way, as opposed to the British drunk-on-yer-arse sort of a way.



Jenstar, of My Life in the Corner fame, threw down a gauntlet earlier today and sent me a cemetery picture challenge. I picked up the gauntlet and was so totally prepared to smack it down because I so totally OWN that challenge! I had the perfect photo. Per-freakin'-erfect.



But I can't find it! (Insert Lucille Ball-esque whine here.)



I know it's here somewhere. Eventually I'll find it. But this is really the last straw. I have, have, have to do something about my abysmal photo organization. Jackson, the in-house nerd, suggests a passport drive as a possible solution. Anybody have an other suggestions?



Until I can find my missing photo, you'll have to make do with this one. I took it Thursday morning while wandering around town in the rain, on the wrong side of the tracks, and sometimes on the tracks themselves.

Smells like fresh dirt.

There was just no way I was going to go to work today.

I've been teaching a drug class for the last couple of weeks in the evenings. I've been busy with some other things as well and we had a fairly harried weekend this past week with no real down time. If there are not significant portions of my weekend bereft of any sort of planned or necessary activity, I ain't happy. So, those were my excuses.

In reality, I just have a huge case of spring fever and when I heard the weather report that there was a chance of rain today - actual water falling from the sky! - I just couldn't stand the thought of watching it huddled under the awning outside the front doors of our office.

I finished up my class Tuesday night and sat at my desk trying to call the people I have scheduled for today. Most of them haven't paid a phone bill anytime in recent memory, so I had to leave appointment cards for them with the secretary. Then I filled out a leave request and dropped it in the boss' mailbox, turned out the lights and went home.

If you ever happen to be in Fake Cow on a rainy day - easier said than done, I assure you - then drive by my office and wave. You'll usually find me, Princess Mindy, occasionally M2 and Ester and whomever else we can drag out there, standing outside the door, sniffing the wet air like bloodhounds and generally trying to stop ourselves from dancing down the street in the most offensively untalented Gene Kelly impersonation of all time.

So, I rolled out of bed this morning, brushed my teeth, grabbed a robe and brewed some tea. I gathered up the accoutrements of blissful relaxation and stumbled my way out onto the back porch. It was foggy! Fog makes me happy. I sniffed the air like a bloodhound and settled down to drink my tea.

My next door neighbor evidently had the same idea. We studiously ignored each other, because neither of us wanted to go inside and actually change into clothes, evidently. He's a fairly new neighbor, but if he's willing to sit out here in his pyjamas and enjoy the view without acknowledging my presence or expecting any such acknowledgment in return, then he's ok by me.

So, here I sit, listening to the cars on the highway, a mile or so away as the crow flies. The sound is always magnified by the fog. I'm waiting for the train. It should be by here any minute. It runs along the highway, just far away enough to be heard in the quiet dark of the night or a grey day like this. I love trains. Distant ones.

Carl Sandburg's Fog - you remember? The poem about 'little cat feet'? - runs through my head. The dog is sitting quietly next to my chair, like some sort of Normal Rockwelleian accessory. My tea stays toasty in it's little pot. I watch birds dance for each other on the sparse bits of grass that are finally beginning to green. I marvel that it's eight a.m and still the sunlight is dimmed enough that the security light in the alley stays lit.

It's all good.

And then a bird crapped on my laptop!

Funniest Thing I've Been Told So Far Today:

"People who are high on Jesus crack really make my life difficult."

You can thank Rose for today's bon mot.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

Maybe not ALL of it, but most of it is.

You should check out this link on You Tube. It is all GOOD for sure!

Friday Cemetery Blogging

This blog needs more religion, so I've decided to print a bible story for your perusal this week. Today's text comes from the 31st chapter of Leviticus, verses 5 through 18:

5 Now Lott, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. 6 But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. 7 And quarreling arose between Abram's herdsmen and the herdsmen of Lott. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.
8 So Abram said to Lott, "Let's not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers. 9 Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company and be fair about how we split up and subdivide the lands."
10 Lott looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) 11 So Lott chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men quarreled violently over the division of the plains. Abram said to Lott, "For thou art not a fair minded man and the heavens will not bless you if you take all the first fruits of the land for yourself, leaving only the crappy parts for my wives and herds."
12 Yet, Lott remained unswayed by the argument of Abram and did make grievously rude gestures unto his uncle And Abram was angry and did speak harshly unto his nephew.
13 Now the herdsmen of Lott were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD.
14 The LORD said to Abram after Lot had dissed him a second time, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. 15 While you are distracting Lott thusly, take the Sword of Divine Vengeance from the Sheath of Stealthiness and smite Lott and his herdsmen and his sniveling children. But spare you the oxen and the bunnies and the dog.
16 I will make your strong right arm like the fist of a mighty giant, so that if anyone should stand against you, then you and your offspring could go all crazy on them and be layin' smack upside their heads. 17 Go, walk the length and breadth of a mudhole into the rear end of Lott, for I am laying odds upon you, three to one."
18 So Abram moved his hand quickly and withdrew the sword and did make quick work of Lott and his men, smiting them fiercely then smiting them a second time. And when, upon the heels of the second smiting, Lott did raise up his eyes and thumb his nose at Abram, then behold, Abram did smite him a third time. Whereupon, Abram sheathed the Sword of Divine Vengeance and went to live, for the summer season, near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD.

Yeah. Something like that. More or less. Maybe I'll go light a candle.

Monday's Blow, Mostly Nasally.

I am generally rather skilled in the willing suspension of disbelief. And I'm trying so hard. Really, I am. But the caffeine-free diet Dr. Pepper fizzing quietly on the corner of my desk is not making it easy for me.

Dr. Pepper is the Elixir of Southern Gods. It is a vital part of the creative process, a cure for the common headache and sometimes the only thing that gets me through the afternoon. And I'm even OK with the diet version, unless I'm using it medicinally; in which case, only the real thing will do.

But now I'm trying to give up caffeine. And this brassy-looking can is sitting here, staring at my half-closed eyes and quietly mocking me with it's deceptively normal and disarmingly charming bursts of fizz as it releases it's carbonated gases into the ambient air. It's taunting me with it's lack of substance. It's teasing me with flavor, but delivering nothing even remotely beneficial.

If I keep drinking this stuff, I may never write again.

Evidently, my muse is not a seventh grade boy named Ichabod, as I'd always assumed. Instead it may well be a maroon-colored aluminum can with a Phd., a ton of sugar and a heavy dose of pep-me-up chemicals.

And, speaking of Dr. Pepper - guess what I found this weekend! Flamin' Hot Funyuns! The ultimate in redneck (and red-fingered) snacking! Yee-haw! I stopped at a store in the armpit of the earth, about 30 miles north of my parents' house. If ever you were going to discover redneck snack Nirvana, this would be the place.

I'd originally stopped there to look for a new CD to listen to on my 3 hour drive home. Unfortunately all they had were two rap albums, a couple of bubble-gum pop divas and a butt-load of crappy country. Some country makes me happy, but really none of it published since about 1991. I loved country in the days of Alabama and Restless Heart and Eddie Rabbit. The current crop of purposely dumbed-down songwriters leave me nauseous. They had a Ferlin Huskey CD, which I almost bought just because I like to say Ferlin Husky.

Ferlin Husky - Ferlin Husky - Ferlin Husky

But, I didn't and instead settled for the next one up in the CD player in Earl the Truck. It was the soundtrack from the Broadway version of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Not one of my favorites. I don't remember who the female lead is, but her voice grates on my nerves something fierce.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is one of my all-time favorite stories. I've loved it ever since I was a spooky little kid. Also The Scarecrow, which is basically the same story set during the American Revolution and The Shadow and The Green Hornet and...

I have a bit of a thing for costumed vigilantes. If I can ever find a radio active spider willing to bite me and transfer a few superpowers or an obscure Asian monk willing to teach me the secret to cloud men's minds, I'm so gonna get me a costume.

I already have the cape...

Friday Cemetery Blogging

"Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood."
- Louise Beal

Friday Cemetery Blogging

But hopefully not void.

This has turned into an interesting week. Remember my dad? Who just had the highly entertaining open heart surgery? I was at work Tuesday afternoon when caller ID showed that his church was calling. When I answered, the nice lady on the other end of the line said, "You're not gonna believe this."

Dad fell off his bike and broke a rib and punctured a lung.

When I got to the hospital, he and my mom were worried sick. About the dog.

Dad rides his bike every day. The dog runs along side and, dad admits, occassionally pulls the bike down the road with his leash. GB is one huge, strong dog. This time dad was making a wobbly turn on some gravel when he and the dog got tangled up. Cue ambulance.

The dog was fine. The bike is fine. Dad is gonna live. And I got to spend some quality time at the hillbilly hospital.

Yeah, that fence is six feet tall. GB is standing on a stack of firewood.