AUDIOBOOK As Per Yalls Requests - Bo Ray

Last fall, I received an email from a man in South Mississippi who wrote that his brother had published a book, a collection of short stories remembering his childhood and some of the funny circumstances of his adult life. I read the first two chapters and immediately call the man back and I told him I would narrate the book. I think these stories were initially posted on social media for fun, but with a growing list of readers, he was prodded to publish

the stories. And it's my understanding that the writer resisted for a time and finally gave into peer pressure and published the book. The author's name is Beau Ray. The title of Bo's book is as per y'all's requests. The book You Were About to Hear is available to buy on Amazon, and the audio version is available on Audible. I'll paste the links in the description. Thank you, Brad and Beau for allowing me to read this and share your memories

with this audience. It has been one of the most enjoyable projects this amateur and unpolished narrator has done. This reading is about three and a half hours long. It's not a monster story, it's a people's story. Mostly you will laugh, you will identify with some struggles he has as an adult male, and you'll be moved by a tribute to Bow's brother who he lost a

while back. And if you were born like me at the end of the boomer generation, you will remember and now as per y'all's requests written by Beau Ray. Author's note, I currently reside on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I'm just an ordinary guy with ordinary but unique memories. I've lived a charmed life with great parents and great brothers and a perfect wife. I've collected and written these stories over the years, with friends and family encouraging me to assemble them

into a book, and so here we are. The poetry comes to me spontaneously and without warning, and there's nothing I can do to stop it, and I'm compelled to write it down. Some people have attacks of gout. I have poetry attacks. Mark Twain said, I like a good story well told. That's the reason I'm sometimes forced to tell them myself. So if you're in the market for a well told good story, you should pick up a copy of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, because the following is a collection

of mediocre stories told with a fourth grade level mastery of grammar. For years, people have been pestering me to put all these stories in a book. Well, now look what you've done. I hope you're happy with yourselves. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed living them. As per y'all's requests, Reader Reviews, best book I've read this year, Bo's mother, January two. It was the perfect thickness to put under the leg of our wobbly kitchen table. Bigger than Old Man in the Sea,

yet smaller than War and Peace, Bo's brother. If I could read, I bet he'd be really good. Several of Bo's friends. I never thought he'd amount to much. Apparently I was right, Bo's fourth grade English teacher. There seems to be a disproportionate number of poop stories. Homeless guy behind the Exon if he spent half as much time mowing them is writing these silly stories? We could find the other El Camino in the front yard, Bow's

wife. Did I mention the unusual number of poop stories? Homeless guy again behind the Exxon? Chapter one? Mima also and popaws. Even though we resided in Jackson, Mississippi, we lived on the Gulf coast, and Jackson is where we went to school, to the doctor, and to bed on time. The coast is where we fished the bayous and hunted bob white quails and the tall pines, and guzzled Bark's root beers by the wooden crateful.

Life for a boy was good down there. Many a Friday and nearly every holiday throughout the year, we'd load up in Daddy's nineteen sixty two Chevy Biscayne, affectionately known as Choka Boom and head for long beach off weed sputter, Mama, Daddy, Me and my brothers, Brody and Brad. In boytime, the drive was longer than a trans atlantic voyage, but in real time

it was about three hours south down Highway forty nine. The stretch from Jackson to Hattiesburg was nearly intolerable, mile after mile of cow pastures and thick woods, with the monotony occasionally broken by the glow of a neon oasis as we passed a motel, a truck stop, or a restaurant. Southward, we drifted down the asphalt and concrete river in the Chocapoom. You could tell by

the changing landscape when we were getting close to our destination. Lying on the floorboard in the back seat, I was hypnotized by the vibrations of the car, the rhythmic thump of the tires hitting the expansion joints in the concrete sections of the highway, and the warmth of the exhaust passing under me. Looking up and out the rear window, I saw the canopy of the woods turned to tall pines. There was hardly any undergrowth except for sage grass, a

coastal pine savannah I believe the scientists call it. The Chugga Boom rumbled south into the northern fringes of Gulf Port, marked by rows of tiny pink howses with happy little black children playing in the dirt yards. This portion of the trip was especially exciting on any Christmas morning trip, as it seemed every kid there had gotten a bike for Christmas, and the shiny spokes flashed like tensil

in honor of the season in the bright, clear morning sun. A few blocks further south, we whizzed by the Coca Cola plant a few blocks more and the air became fragrant, scented with the smell of salt water sea life and sunshine. Once you hit Highway ninety, you were there the beach, heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, or whatever you call the good place your chosen deity sends you after you die. We were at that good place Memo's House, Chapter two, The Magic Truck. Mam and Daddy were originally from Long

Beach, as were their parents and my grandparents. My mama's parents, Ralph and Mary, were known by the grandkids as Memo and Paupaul. Me ma A worked in the school cafeteria, and Paupaul was a carpenter and worked for Roy Anderson. To hear Paupo describe it, you'd believe he single handedly built every structure on the Mississippi Gulf coast since the last Biloxi Indian crafted a tepee.

Now, I don't know for a fact that the Biloxis actually built tepes, but of course, as a kid, you just assumed all Indians lived in teepees. If one brick were set atop another anywhere in Harrison County, Paupaul either did it or supervised it. We had no idea who this Roy Anderson fellow was that Paupaul worked for. We just knew he worked for him because his name was on the side of Paupaul's truck. Paupaul's work truck was

the totor of all things good. Like most work trucks, it had a gun rack in the back window that held an umbrella a level in blueprints. It also had a toolbox in the bed and a ladder rack on top. The toolbox wasn't shiny metal like the ones today. It was wooden with galvanized tin on the top and sides. A simple wooden box covered in metal, very similar to the arc of the Covenant, I imagine, only with better

things inside. Popaul had built a toolbox himself right after he had gotten back from beating the Germans on Guam. He was a sebee in Worldorld War II and had been sent to Guam. Drawing on my vast knowledge of history, I knew he had defeated the Germans in World War two, and thereby deduced that Paupaul, having participated in the war and having been sent to Guam,

must have killed every German on Gwam, probably with his pocket knife. Anyway, I was sure that he built his own toolbox, as well as a lot of other amazing things surely we thought there must have been something much better than tools in that toolbox, because he kept a padlock on it. In our minds, a padlock wasn't a security device so much as it was an

invitation, an invitation to enter at all costs. On the rare occasions that it was opened in our presence, we'd strain our eyes rapidly taking in all that was inside before it was snap shut and the padlock again secured. All we ever saw, of course, was tools. Why on earth would anyone want to keep someone us out of their tools. It just didn't make sense

at all. Our dad didn't lock up his tools, though admittedly the few he had were rusty and spread all over, generally because we left them outside. The ability to use tools is, after all, what separates us from the monkeys, and since we couldn't get to Paul Paul's tools, that left us right smack dab there with the monkeys, toolless and stinky, millions of years of evolution rendered senseless by a simple padlock. It makes perfect sense now,

though, why Paul Paul didn't want us meddling in his tools. Besides the fact that they were expensive and he used them to make a living. Idle hands may be the devil's workshop, but busy boy hands with tools can become his global manufacturing facility. Welcome to Beelzebub Co. Inc. Makers of

Mayhem and all things unholy. A shudder at the thought. From dawn until three pm Monday through Friday, that latter rack carried pipes, ladders, and lumber, and on Saturday mornings before dawn, that truck carried a fourteen foot aluminum john boat atop the ladder rack, a nine point five horsepower Johnson outboard, and three very sleepy boys to the swamps of the Pearl River. Until the day he died. Papaul carried the warranty card for his outboard and his

wallet, even though it had expired more than forty five years ago. You can never be too safe when it comes to warranty issues. We always took egg sandwiches and fishing cookies with us, as well as enough Bark's root beer to live on for a year should we for some reason become stranded in the swamp. Papaul bought Barks by the case and we consumed it by the case. He believed it had medicinal purposes. After all, it said right there

on the carton good and wholesome. A product may be good, or it may be wholesome, but a product that is both is indeed a rarity. Fishing cookies were really just nut or butter cookies, not particularly marked to anglers, but since we took them every time we went fishing, from that time

forth and forevermore, they shall be known as fishing cookies. I mean, while would pack a brown paper a and p sack full of eggs, sandwiches, and cookies, and pour up a thermos of coffee for Paul Paul and wish us good luck as we climbed into the truck and she climbed back into bed. I have no idea exactly where we went in those swamps, because it was always dark when we left the house, and it was usually still dark as we left the dock and motored at terrific speeds up and down the

foggy byues Pau. Paul wasn't a big believer in modern fishing equipment and anything invented after the stick he considered modern. We used cane poles because they were not susceptible to the problems of mechanical contrivances that had a higher than average failure rate in the hands of young boys. The cane poles were fool proof and easy to operate, and had no moving parts except the butt in where it

connected to one of us, and that part moved plenty. I guess a boy could technically be considered a moving part, but probably more accurately, could be considered an energy source like the Sun or un nuclear reactor. We weren't fueled by hydrogen or uranium, though, but by pure sugar pumped into our

bloodstream by root beer and cookies. Papaul would, however, occasionally abandon his lyddite ways and bring his wind up rigs, as he called them, was a beautiful gem like Swedish made ruby red and Ambast five thousand, or his fly rod with a Martin automatic reel on it. These were not mere fishing poles, no sir, but magic wands, as far as we could tell, shiny and mechanical. They needed input from the fishermen to conjure fish from

thin air or brackish water. As was the case, these things caught fish without bait. A few twinkling twirly gizmos, the snagless sally, the jitterbug or the cork bodied, rubber legged bug was all it took to pull green trout and bluegills from the slick black water as vapors rose from its surface like a simmering cauldron in the wheat pre dawn light. It was indeed magic. We heartily lusted for such things, but were forced to make do with the

cane poles and worms. Fetching the worms was generally as exciting as anything, though they were usually purchased the day before our outings from the apply. Named a worm man, he lived in a little white house, just like all the other little white houses on his street, except his had a poorly hand lettered sign out front that proclaimed the availability of both red worms and nightcrawlers,

a veritable ichthological buffet. I believe he may have sold crickets too, but my Pau Paul was not a cricket man, and on occasion when Paul Paul's tree had some on it, we'd use cataba worms, but as a general

rule we used regular old worms. We drive into town, meaning gulf Port, somewhere off twenty fifth Street, and Pau Paul would pick up a couple of round cardboard containers full of worms he'd open them and poke them a bit with his finger to make sure they were lively and juicy, and we'd concur on both of their liveliness and juiciness, and he'd pay the man make a

little small talk, and then we'd be on our way. The next day, under a warm summer sun, deep in the swamps of the Pearl River, we'd catch shell crackers and bluegills in the old green trout, and even a lost wayward crab until the worms coffee or root beer gave out, and then we'd head for the truck with a rusty metal comb and ice chest full of fish, bellies full of barks, and a lifetime full of memories. Chapter three, The Great White Hunters, Strange crops, and honky talk quail.

As summer cooled into fall and fall darkened into winter, Popaul's magic truck transformed yet again. It became a hunting truck, a bob white quail hunting truck to be exact. This simple transformation was accomplished easily enough by placing the dog box in the bed of the truck. Now, the dog box was basically a wooden doghouse type of fair that fit in the back of the truck and was used to transport the dog to and from the hunting grounds. Paupaul

always owned Britney Spaniels, although nowadays I think they're just called Britney's. The two we hunted with were Buttons first, and after she died, Brent sniffed out our birds. We knew coail season was fast approaching when the dog box was loaded into the truck. On more than one occasion in the late fall, when returning from one of the last fishing trips of the season, Papaul would pull to the side of the road near any wooded pine prairie and blow

his quail call. Now I call mimicked the call of a female quail, and Old Bob White, hearing it, would reply, Bob White. I knew Old Bob's days were numbered. As Paul Paul made a mental note of the place and we'd return several weeks later. And one of Paul Paul's favorite places to hunt was the Penal Farm of Town. Now I know it was land owned by one of the timber companies that bordered the penal facility on which the prisoners operated a farm, But then we had no idea what a penal

farm was nor what grew there. We knew a cotton field yielded cotton, and a cornfield produced corn, and a cow pastured Gray's cows. Paupaul told us what a penal farm grew? What else but penises? Now that was terribly funny to three little boys. Heck, it's still funny. Buttons and later bred flush many birds from the fields and marsh bottoms near the penal farm. Paupaul would often lament the fact that there were fewer and fewer birds and

more and more people in these woods. But we didn't understand. We would. Later one day, after hunting several of our usual spots, Paupaul decided to try a new place. We pulled off the road near an old, deserted, run down honky toll, surrounded by encroaching woods. Paupaul was right, there were quail there. Before we got out of the truck, we saw a covey of birds at the rear of the dilapidated building. Paul Paul swears they were flying up under the eve of the building to pluck wasp from

a large nest hanging there. As the diffused light of the warm late autumn sun waned. We sat and watched the birds for a few minutes. I don't recall if we even left the truck cab that afternoon. I don't think we did, as it was late and by the time we unloaded the dog and loaded our shotguns it would have been too dark to shoot. But I think I understood the lesson of a honky tonk quail. Paul. Paul was

right again. There were more and more people in these woods. I don't remember hunting quail much after that season Chapter four A lot like camelots lot, A boy's neighborhood was his kingdom, and like real kingdoms, they varied in size and natural resources. Some contained wooded sections and some had creeks or ditches, while others had schools or parks within their borders. Now, most borders were determined by large thoroughfares, which, like the rivers or mountain ranges and

real kingdoms made ideal borders. Any advancing hordes bent on pillaging and plundering a nearby kingdom were generally stopped by a four lane thoroughfare and their moms warning not to cross such. A boy's social ranking in his kingdom was determined much like a real kingdom, again by the dangerousness of the items he owned. Simple kid logic dictated that the more dangerous an item was, the more we desired it. Had it been allowed, we'd have ridden around the neighborhood with a

twelve gauge and a half dozen hand grenades trapped up our handlebars. But alas our parents were killjoys, most boys had some sort of pocket knife. Your first one was usually a worn out or broken one passed down from your daddy or some older male figure. Mine, as you would assume, came from my Paupaw. I think one of its three blades was broken off when I got it. I was pretty sure he had broken it off. Stabbing hitler

on guam. Gradually breaking off the remaining blades of your hand me down cutlery, honing your knife, throwing skills, and stabbing pine trees and such afforded you the opportunity to upgrade, and in our neighborhood, this was usually accomplished at the Stop and Go convenience store. They had a first rate knife display

case. Every visit there would result in my asking for and the accompanying parents denial of the purchase of the mother of pearl handled subject of my life lust the slim Gem that was a fine five dollars oriental made knife as a boy was likely to find anywhere. It was perfect as it had all three of the qualities I was looking for. It was big, it was shiny, and it was cheap. The giant bowie knife was also always attractive, but the mother of pearl handle on the slim gem really sold it. Much like

the persistent drip of a Chinese water torture. My begging eventually caused about a temporary insanity, and my mother relented. That beautiful slim gem was mine, my own excalibur. My supremacy within the kingdom was then well established, as all the other boys gave me the stink eye as I lorded my elegant slim Gem over them, till the next week when some other kid would get a Samurai sword, and not just any old sword, mind you, but his dad, he's real, honest to God, took it off a jat and

chopped his damn head off with it. Samurai sword, Now that's hard to compete with. Right there. Edged weapons fell out of favor, though, as more powerful and lethal projectile weaponry was acquired Archery was dabbled in by a few, but wasn't taken seriously because of the difficulty of the accuracy placing shots and the expensive arrows which were easily lost. We only knew one kid with a bow, so he was an oddity. Even without the bow, he

was an oddity. Most bows were far too difficult for a boy to draw, owing to the fact that they generally belonged to their dads and had to draw a weight greater than the kid wielded it wide, but that didn't stop them from using them any more than our dad's golf clubs, being too long and left handed, kept us from hitting rocks with them. One kid, however, was particularly taken with archery and persisted in the use of his dad's

bow despite the sixty pound drawway. Naturally, in our minds, bows had one purpose and one purpose only, and that was the shooting of cowboys. The boy with the bow was by default an engine, while the rest of us were cowboys and assorted pale faced Western figures that needed a good killing. Now, we cowboys would run around hiding behind trees and out buildings while the engine would launch and retrieve his lone arrow. This was a real bow and

a real arrow, mind you. And this went on until one day Squanto connected with one of the cowboys. Luckily he was hitting the head, so nothing important was damaged, and penetration was limited due to the badly worn and blunted arrow and the fact that the engine could only draw the bow a few inches. On TV, the arrows would rarely actually hit the cowboys, but would most times lodge harmlessly in the tree or building behind which the cowboy was

hiding. Should you be hit, you'd simply pluck the arrow out of your guts, or break it off if it had penetrated your whole body, plug the hole with a filthy bandanna, and poured some whiskey on it. And by next week's episode, instead of the maggoty festering, perforated colon painfully killing you, you were fit as a fiddle and shooting engines again. I surely

had worked this way in real life, too, we wrongly surmised. I'm thankful to this day that none of us was familiar with the story of William Tell, so archery, while both deadly and fun, never really gained much of a foothold in our kingdom. The BB guns were next up the list of enviable deadly weapons. Every boy eventually had a BB gun. We were very respectful of the power of our BB guns and for the most part, used them safely. We rarely shot at each other and seldom caused any property

damage to speak of. All the kids in our neighborhood became adults with two functional eyes, even if they didn't become much else. I'm sure one kid had a BB lodged under the skin an inch below his eye, but as they say, a miss is as good as a mile plus years later, it made for good theater when he made the girl squeal when he'd moved around

with a magnet. Bottles and birds were our preferred targets, though, and we roam the neighborhood stalking the wary sparrow with the same intensity and concentration as any legendary African big game hunter, rhino or sparrow. There was little difference in the stalk and the shot and the kill. Some may not agree, but I believe the predator instinct is still within us, deep in the basic programming of our brains, leftover for when our ancestors hunted the wooly mammoth,

the predator instinct, like our appendix was more necessary for our survival. I think the instinct is still there even for those of us in which the appendix isn't. Moving up from the bb gun was the more powerful pump up pellet rifle, the Benjamin pellet rifle to be exact, or the Sheridan if you didn't mind a wonky communist sized five millimeter pellets that were hard to get and expensive. Now, these pneumatic rifles were just one step down from a real

powder burning gun. It's still suitable for suburban neighborhood usage. Any excess energy that might have been wasted on mowing grass or washing windows or some other type of nonsense was expended on pumping up one of these beasts. We all looked like Johnny Wisemeller from pumping these things a thousand times a day. The Benjamin could break the strongest of bottles, bottles that at red riders and deflicted bebies

like bullets off of Superman's chest. It could also handily dispatch any neighborhood game, including the squirrel, which was the ultimate neighborhood trophy. A kid might occasionally take a slow, puny, sickly squirrel with a daisy spitting image if you had an incredibly lucky shot, but the Benjamin would knock them from the top of the tallest pine tree deader than disco. If you had a Benjamin, you may as well have had a bazooka or a full auto Tommy gun,

as you were the unquestioned king of the neighborhood. Chapter five Fishing Royalty and Sparkly Major Awards. The rigs we used to fool our wary saltwater prey were the exact same poles we used in the rivers, but instead of a big water worms on the hook, we used a big water shrimp. Over the Labor Day weekend, in nineteen sixty eight, Long Beach held its first fishing rodeo and in the biggest, most blatant disregard for the rules of boyhood.

Whereas the older brother always got to be first at everything, Brody went and won the whole shebang. He caught a fourteen ounce speckled trout that won him both the Largest Fish Award and the King Fisherman Award, not one, but two giant, gleaming silver trophies with the brilliant blue annidized name plates that shone like sapphires at the bottom and leaping fish atop them. They were the most fabulous things I had ever laid eyes on. No king had ever owned

anything as splendid, and the treasures of Solomon paled by comparison. I was certain that God had one of these trophies on either side of his throne. I learned the meaning of jealousy that day, for I was green with envy. Mama still has those trophies, but now they kindle fond memories as opposed to a blinding jealous rage. You see, a trophy was among the ultimate possessions a boy could have, next to a pump up pellet rifle or possibly

a shwin stingray. What you did to win the trophy didn't really matter one whit as its size and reflective properties were the most important thing. Your trophy could have been for fishing or baseball, or a Nobel something or another. Regarding physics or the pinewood derby, it didn't really matter as long as you had one or better. Yet, several pen on metals were a weak substitute,

and it took quite a volume of metals a dozen or more. Something akin to the number and assortment on a ten horned dictator's uniform to equal the shine value of even the smallest of trophies. I would dare say that had there been a choice between those trophies or a check for ten thousand dollars,

that Brody would have taken the trophies. I know I would have, And fifty years later I occasionally fish from that same rock piled jetty in the Long Beach Harbor, perhaps standing on some of the same rocks that burned our bare feet in those award winning days fifty summers past. Chapter six. The white

trash at the end of the street. Our prisons are full of murderers, thieves, crooks, kidnappers, politicians, and various other forms of undesirables, but apparently the lowest form of human life known to exist freely wanders are streets that would be white trash. According to Mama, there was nothing lower. She never threatened bad behavior by saying, you boys better behave y'all want people to think y'all are politicians. No, she'd say, y'all better straighten up.

But these people are going to think y'all are white trash. We'd have rather died than been thought of as white trash. Unfortunately, however, the family that lived at the end of me Mall Street was white trash. White trashiness must not be a visible malady, since they all looked very much like us. They too, ran around barefooted and shirtless from the day school let out until schools started back the day after Labor Day. Our summer wardrobe consisted

of cut off blue jeans and dirt. Anything else was strictly optional and left to the discretion of the wearer. We would occasionally put on shoes, but the soles of our feet were generally much harder and blacker than the soles of any shoe and could likely draw sparks from concrete. There were two boys around our ages and an older sister that comprised the spawn of the white trash family.

I hesitate to mention their names because those that aren't in a correctional or rehabilitative institute, or have it been killed in a our fight, may seek retribution. I believe in hindsight that it was the older sister that garnered them admission to the realm of white Trashtom, but I'm not one to start rumors. We were forbidden to play with any of them. Play, by our

definition, meant to engage in pleasurable activity. Therefore, we felt free to merely interact with the white trash family as long as we didn't enjoy it. The white trash boys rode their bikes up and down me Mall Street, knowing I believe that we were not to play with them. It was during one of these taunting rides past me Mall's house that I decided to interact with the oldest boy. It was spring or early summer, so thick tufts of wild

onions sprouted everywhere in the yard. If you've ever pulled one of these up, you know what. A large water of dirt comes up with the stalks. When grasped by the stalks and throne, this botanical whistle flies like a dark dirt first stabilized by the trailing stalks. I thought it would be very sporting to toss one of these onion darts at the white trash of velocipede jockey

as he sped past. After several passes, he was feeling quite confident of his skills, and he rode by on the near side of the street. An I let fly a particularly accurate onion projectile. It was on a perfect trajectory for his head, and sensing the unavoidable, he took evasive action, which consisted of rapidly ducking and slamming his forehead into the handlebar stem. Now this would have been incredibly hilarious had he not opened a sizeable gash on his

head. As the blood began to flow, he pedaled to his house and I ran inside Memo's house. I felt horrible, not particularly because I'd kill someone with a clump of onion grass, but I really didn't want to be locked up for the rest of my life, because I was only seven and I had lots of plans Paul. Paul assured me that he probably was not dead, and I was feeling a little better until the police car pulled up. It might not be possible for a seven year old to die from heart

failure, but I came very close. Apparently, White trash Boy had gone home and told his mama that I'd thrown a brick at him. I wish that, at seven, I had had the strength to throw a brick any appreciable distance, but alas it was merely a wad of dirt. White trash Boy had lied to his mama and sick the police on me. You just can't trust White Trash. Chapter seven, God Bless America and Chinese Fireworks.

Another interaction with the White Trash family involved fireworks. Fireworks are the kid equivalent to corn liquor. Nothing good ever came from a misuse of either one of these products, and generally a story rapidly deteriorates after the uttering of the words liquor or fireworks. As in this story, we weren't allowed to have fireworks and bottle rockets and Roman candles or any other pyrotechnic device that launched a projectile

of This effectively ruled out most fireworks. We were stuck with the most mundane of all fireworks, sparklers and snakes. Snakes were the worst, because after lighting them, you were done. You simply watched as a small black pellet became a stinky, fragile, black, twisted cylinder of ash. Now, this may have been a neat parlor trick before the Civil War, but was

hardly worthy of the moniker of fireworks. The sparklers were nearly as boring, but at least you could wave them around wildly in circles, spewing hot sparks in every direction, and as they spoke ut out, you were left with a glowing red, hot metal rod. After several boxes of snakes, the boredom was intolerable. The sparklers were our only hope, but we knew their

destructive powers were near zero, and so we held out little hope. Being the oldest and the leader of our band, I quickly sprang to action and devised a plan. We would use the sparklers in the usual fashion, running around at full speed while twirling one in each hand, But when they were just about to go out, we would throw them into the air and watch as they cut a fiery trail through the night sky like Haley's comet. Well,

it was a brilliant plan, and timing was everything. You didn't want to throw them too soon and waste valuable sparks that you could have waved in wild circles, looking like a doomed helicopter. You also didn't want to throw them too late, only to see the boring, faint dog glow of a hot metal wire arcing through the summer sky. Ideally, your sparkler would sizzle

through the sky like a shooting star and die shortly after impact. The White Trash down the street were apparently prouder of our nation's independence because they had real firecrackers. Not to be outdone, we inched closer and closer to the property line so they could see our jubulation and national pride as we tossed our sparkler skyward in an attempt to make them look fun. The White Trash had been celebrating for several days and had even camped out the night before in a tent

in their sideyard. After several minutes of this impromptu pyrotechnic competition, night suddenly turned to day. One of the White Trash kids yelled fire, and we all quickly realized that their tent was, as professional firefighters say, fully involved. By the time a hose could be pulled from the house to the camp site, which was fifty feet at the most, the tent was, again, as professional firefighters might say, gone, nothing but a smoldering black spot

in the grass, surrounded by charred ropes attached to stakes. Now this was before the days of government mandated fire retardants. In fact, I believe this particular tint was actually manufactured by soaking canvas in gasoline and gunpowder. At any rate. It was the most exciting thing we had lit the whole night. I'm not trying to escape blame, but the fact that I had thrown a sparkler in the general direction of the tent right before the blaze is hardly proof

that I in fact had destroyed their tent. I suspect being white trash and all that the older sister smoked, and that smoldering cigarette which she had left in the tent hours earlier, had caused the tent to burst into flames at exactly the same moment I threw my sparkler. The white trash had we already called a law on me twice, so thank god. The tent blaze was over in a matter of twenty seconds, and the fire department wasn't needed.

Everyone stood around, stunned and astonished that a tent could disappear so quickly. After a brief period of lamenting and finger pointing, the festivities resumed, but were much calmer and more subdued than before then. The celebrations sputtered to an inn like a wet sparkler. The hot summer night was thick with the smell of sulfur and tin smoke. As we dragged ourselves inside and chugged one last root bear and fell into bed as black and grungy and smelly as snakes.

Chapter eight. I must go down to the sea again. Wanderluss must be genetic, a natural desire to explore and go new places. If not, I guess everyone would stay where they were born, and there'd be an awful lot of people in just one place. As kids, we first walked everywhere we wanted to go. Then bicycles expanded our range greatly, like the horse

did for the earliest explorers. Imagine if our prehistoric ancestors had had bicycles when they crossed the land bridge of the Bearing Straits, instead of wandering around the frozen northern plains eating woolly mammos, they could have gone straight to Florida and bought a condo and retired by passing one hundred thousand years of human history. Theoretically, with a bicycle and a boat, you could travel every square inch

of the globe. Our family didn't have a boat when we were real young, but Paul Paul did, and it soon became apparent that a boat could take you places you couldn't otherwise go. We always wanted Pauppal to launch his boat in the Long Beach Harbor so we could fish the waters of the Gulf and be on We may as well have asked him to juggle flaming chainsaws,

as that was probably more likely to happen. As we got older and more confident and a little more independent, it dawned on us that perhaps we could go fishing on our own. Pop All seemed to be wasting a significant portion of his life working, and we were sure that fish would buy it on other days than just Saturday. We had nearly everything we needed, fishing poles

and a desire to catch fish, and Papa had a boat. The only thing we liked was a way to transport the boat other than the aforementioned bicycles. Our planning eventually led us to the obvious conclusion that if we intended to use Papol's boat, then it had better be in a body of water nearby. The closest water, the Gulf of Mexico, was, of course, at the south end of Jeff Davis Avenue, and we could practically from me

Mao's house. It was decided that the golf would be the scene of our next piskine harvests, and we just needed to put a fine point on the details. At this stage in our journey through life, my friend Todd Wallace usually accompanied us on our adventures, providing extra muscle and brain power. What we lacked in one we more than made up for in the other, although the particular trait found lacking, whether muscle or brain power, varied from task

to task. With our plan finalized, we approached Paul Paul about dropping us off at the harbor early the next morning as he left for yet another wasted day of laboring in the hot sun. Now this was not met with the level of enthusiasm we had hoped it would be. He was pretty emphatic that he did not want his outboard used in salt water, and really didn't want us to operate it in any water, whether salt water, from water or

holy water. Luckily, our plans made allowance for such inconveniences. We said we'd be willing to paddle if he'd just give us a lift to the beach. We knew that paddling versus motoring meant we'd probably be limited to twenty miles or so offshore, as opposed to say, having lunch in Havana, but

it was a compromise we were willing to make. Our counter offer to paddle wasn't met with any more enthusiasm than our original suggestion, and was instead rebuked with the seemingly impossible, sarcastic reply of if you can get it there, you can use it now. I'm sure this statement was made with the same intent meant by when pigs fly, but in only the way boys can.

We actually took this as not only permission, but a challenge. The next morning, we were out in the yard loading our stuff from the boat Paul. Paul had long since left, headed out to build a new hospital or orphanage or some such nonsense. Me Ma asked just what we were doing, and we explained that we were taking Paupaul's boat to the harbor to go fishing. She expressed disbelief, but we assured her that he did indeed say we

could use it. The naval architects that designed that fine fourteen foot aluminum craft had wisely foreseen just such as scenario where boys would be forced by stubborn adults to carry their craft to the water, and they had wisely placed handles on the boat, two aft and one at the bow. That's an auticle talk right there. There were four of us, so we could trade off as we grew tired, and in short order should be joining the golf breeze and

productive fishing. I briefly longed for my shepherd's coat hang Glider Sea chapter thirteen, to ashing a sail from old Man in the sea style, but soon dismissed such tangential planning as detracting from the current endeavor. The boat by itself was pretty heavy, and the paddles and fishing gear and the root bears didn't do anything to make it any lighter. But we didn't have but three quarters of a mile or so to go, and we were eager to get going,

so off we went. The first ten feet or so was easy, got a little harder after that. We had all day and not so much else to do, which was a good thing, so we plotted on. Now. I believe most of the root beers were gone by the time we had reached the railroad tracks just to block away. Now. Our task was not made any easier by the fact that the pavement was only slightly less hot than free flowing magma. We probably ate the egg sandwiches just south of the

tracks. It's a good thing we brought the life jackets because the boat seats got hot in the sun, and sitting in a boat on a sidewalk along Jeff Davis Avenue eating egg sandwiches would have been unbearable had we not had the life jackets to sit on. Now I realized that that is a run on sentence that ended in a preposition, but rules aside, I think it conveyed the scene nicely. By about three o'clock we had made it to Elix barber shop and about a third of the way to the Gulf. We were tired

and hungry and out of root beer. We also learned a valuable and undeniable truth of life, that being that while on a road trip, at whatever point you decided to turn around, you are exactly halfway done. There was great consternation and much brain power expended in solving our predicament. We discussed just how we could get the boat in the trunk of a car, or lay it on the railroad tracks and allow passing train to push it to New Orleans.

Just leave it there on the sidewalk in front of Elix and Hope Paul Paul wouldn't notice it was gone. Our situation was growing desperate and there was no resolution in sight. As we sat there in the brawling sun, dehided brains of buzzing, we noticed a familiar vehicle approaching. It was Paul Paul and a is Ry Anderson truck boy. Were we glad to see him? I only wish that I could have said the same for him, but he

didn't seem as happy about the whole ordeal as we might have. Thank God, one of the benefits of Paul Paul's inconvenient construction job was an early afternoon quitting time. We never did make it to the gulf in Paul Paul's boat, and had I known how to type, I might have sent off a sternly worded letter to the manufacturer of the boat, advising them of the waste of time and money it was putting handles on a boat. But instead we went home and had a root beer or twelve, Chapter nine, Our Narrow

Escape from the shallow end of Davy Jones. Locker Yachting is a leisurely pastime enjoyed by the wealthy, and on the odd occasion, dangerously dabbled in by the underclasses. We were the occasional dangerous dabblers, having never owned a boat of any size, My daddy decided we had to make up some time. So we by passed the starter boats, you know, the small outboard powered, center console trailer boats, and we went straight for the thirty three foot

twin engine offshore fishing boat. Now, I'm sure in my dad's mind the decision went something like this, Well, it has a steering wheel, a couple of shifters, and a couple of throttles. I can drive a stick. Plus it's cheap. How hard can it be? Of course, that same question could be asked of a Saturn five rocket minus cheap part. In those days, Daddy did something at the bank. I'm still not sure to this day just what it was, but it involved credit and credit cards and

a knowledge of win. Certain things like boats way beyond your nautical capabilities became available due to the lack of payment by their original captains. Thus was acquired the bees Hive. It was a thirty three foot Silverton a few years old, sporting twin Chrysler V eights that just loved that in Bargo era marina gasoline like a hobo loves ripple. Navigating was not really that hard, since anywhere you wanted to go with Southish, and returning from wherever you went was always

Northish. Assuming the compass work, we could always get reasonably close to home. At worst, we could possibly end up in Mobile Bay or in the Louisiana Marsh, but mostly we made it back to the Long Beach. Harbor. Ship Island, Cat Island, Horn Island were the only real obstacles and all highly visible. Also, allowing a fourteen year old kid to plot courses for a day's adventuring pose little risk. There was no GPS in those days.

You worked off a paper chart with parallel rules and dividers. You decide on a heading and hammered down for the predetermined amount of time and eventually arrived within about plus or minus twenty miles of your intended destination. Nautical navigation is dead simple, and frankly, I'm flummixed by how long it took to discover the New World. There was never a time I remember that we went out without some event. Even the day we picked the thing up was exciting.

It was at Diamond Head Yacht Club we all boarded for our maiden voyage out to the Jordan River and into the Bay of Saint Louis, and back leaving was simple enough, as Dad idled forward out of the slip and headed for the briny blue or in this case, the brackish Brown. Returning a few hours later from our maiden voyage, found that the wind had picked up considerably

and we were to enjoy our first docking experience. Trying to back into a slip and a stout wind is a tough thing for an experience captain and downright impossible for that Jackson Banker with the new boat. After several tries and bouncing off numerous sail boats, Daddy finally drove it up a small canal and grounded it, and one of us leapt off the bow the boat and got the

harbormaster. He kindly backed our boat in for us, and I'm certain to this day the folks dining in the restaurant over the harbor still remember that incident and that their Thanksgiving dinner conversations begin with you remember back in nineteen seventy four when we were eating at the yacht club that Saturday, and that guy and that silverton hit every single boat in the harbor. I wonder if he's still

alive. Well, Lord knows he's lucky he still is, but it ain't from lack of trying to die on the high seas and kill his whole family with him. God does indeed watch over fools and children, and fools with children. Our talking improved with time, not so much because Daddy's abilities improved, but we devised a method where we'd liso the pilings and then manhandle the boat into the slip with the lines. And what we liked in seamanship we

more than made up for in rodeo skills. One of our last trips out was one of the most adventurous. My Paupa and my friend Rodney were along for the experience that day. Up until the point that we thought we were all going to die, it had been a fun, uneventful day, but as I said, they never remained uneventful. We were somewhere between Ship Island and Long Beach when my dad noticed that, even at full throttle, the boat just wasn't moving very fast. The engine RPMs made it sound like we

were really moving, but we were barely making headway. Now, boats are made of mostly corrodible materials and operated in a highly corrosive environment, and they require constant, meticulous maintenance. We would have no truck with such tomfoolery. Our way was such that you used things until they broke, and then you repaired it with whatever you had on hand. Well, this philosophy worked fine with lawnmowers and bicycles and even cars, but it's less than idea when it

comes to boats and especially airplanes. And thank god we never got one of those. As in aside, and on a somewhat related note, let me say that Jaguar xkes of the era were actually manufactured defective, so in our defense, it wasn't really our fault that it was constantly in the shop. But I digress. My Paupaul left the flybridge to go down and have a look at the engine compartment. He was a CBE in World War Two, and even though his specialty was construction, we reasoned that seb's were part of

the navy. Thus he was the most experienced sailor on board, and what we needed was a Navy machinist mate, but we had a first class carpenter and that would have to do. Upon opening the engine hatches, he discovered the bilge was flooded and the motors about half submerged, but still running, and Papaul suggested that Daddy point the boat at the nearest piece of land that he could see, and had that way, and then Paul Paul jumped down

into the warm water to look for the problem. Daddy passed the wheel to me and said head for the Gulf Port Harbor, which was just a nondescript lighter spot on the horizon when viewed through the atmospheric haze. I'm sure at this time Rodney was thinking he never should have gotten involved with these crazy people, but now it was not the time for regrets. Now. Daddy rushed to the radio and the salon and frantically issued a may day, we were

sinking. Time after time he repeated mayday, may day, may day, but with no reply. It eventually became obvious, even though Daddy had no formal nautical communications training, that the microphone attached to the radio that wasn't turned on would not work with the radio that was turned on. He eventually sorted out that problem and shortly had the coastguard and bound, and in the meantime pap Paul had figured out the problem in the bilge through the whole connection feeding

the engine cooling water had broken. I can't imagine why, and it was flooding the boat. He simply closed the seacock and allowed the bilge pump to evenly remove the water from the boat as we waved off the coastguard and limped home. I was glad to learn what a seacock did, but couldn't help but think it'd be a cool name for a Marina restaurant that served fish and chicken. They say heroes aren't made, that they are born, or perhaps

the other way around. I don't really know, but what I do know is that memories can be foggy under situations of duress, and I suspect that may be why some people remember that day differently, and some may have You believe that when I was passing out life jackets, I held one back and secured it around my fishing poles that I had gathered up in the frenzy of sinking. Whether that's a result of the brain fabricating things under stress or the

truth, we may never know. The way I recall it was that I passed out life jackets to the women, Mama and Case, and the children Me Brody, bred and Rodney, leaving the captain in the ship's carpenter, doomed to go down with the ship, and by down I mean eight or

possibly ten feet. In reality, they could have both probably remained seated on the fly bridge with the rest of the boat sitting on the bottom of the sound, and not gotten their shoes wet and waited on rescue in the shade of a beemony top while we and my fishing poles all bobbed around in the boat and life jackets. We eventually made it home, tired, sunburned and

smelling like a chum bucket and hungry. I sure could have gone for a number five combo fried shrimp and a chicken leg down at Seacock's Fish and Chicken. But alas, some dreams are not to be Chapter ten, The Ghosts of Christmas' Past. Even though I was only in my second year my former education, I was pretty sure there were twelve months in the year, or such was the government propaganda being spewed at Iola Tapley Wilkins Elementary School in Jackson,

Mississippi in nineteen sixty nine. We could recite the months in order and even spell most of them except February. February the second month. It didn't matter that the year had twelve months, since kids really only cared about June, July, August and December, summer and its blissful ignorance free from organized learning, and Christmas. All those other months were just filler put on the calendar by some monks to make the time between summer and Christmas some type of

character building experience. If it wasn't fun, it was always said to build character, put hair on your chest or make your bone strong. Lord, we should have all been calcified, Harry pillars of virtue. Any other time that wasn't actually Christmas Day or summer break was merely time spent waiting for them

post Christmas awaiting summer, or post summer awaiting Christmas. We weren't completely oblivious to the passage of time, and would have agreed with Einstein if we had known who he was, that the speed of time can indeed very since recess went much faster than did math. The first memories I have of the marking of the passage of time, other than the large molasses fill malfunctioning clocks that hung over the blackboards, was noticing the changing covers on the Ladies' magazines by

checkout stands at the local grocery store in July. As you hung on the outside of the Liberty Supermarket buggy filled with snacks of sugar, packets of kool aid, and pounds of maloney and weenies, you didn't care too hoots about how today's modern housewife hosted a backyard summer gathering. Heck, we were living it eventually, though, those publications featured covers filled with yellow leaves and orange

pumpkins and brown pie crusts. The turkeys they sliced next month on the covers were always juicy, and if it took extra long for Wanda to ring up your mama's grocery purchase, retrieve her Virginia slims from the rack behind the register, and dispense the S and H green stamps, and then relate her weekly trials, you could actually begin to smell that turkey from memory. The absolute

best covers, of course, were the upcoming Christmas specials. They touched every soul, greens and reds, and silvers and gold and tensil and lights, and every imaginable tasty treat. Those particular magazine covers and ads within were captivating. Just close your eyes and you can see them too. A late winter sun sets behind a claborate country church, offering just the faintest smudge of pink through the dark woods. In the distance, stars already filled the darkest part

of the sky, and snow blankets everything. A pair of cardinals snuggle on a frosty limb in the foreground, as one horse, open sleeve filled with presents, makes its way down a narrow lane toward the warm glow issuing forth from the church windows. The quintessential image of Christmas, all neatly wrapped up in one image, inviting you to sample the smoothness and the flavor of America's

favorite cigarette or Kentucky Bourbon. These ads were so beautiful and powerful that, even though I was only eight, I thought of asking Sanna for a fifth of Old Granddad and a carton of pall Mall's, you know, for their flavor and smoothness. To this day, there is but one Christmas magazine cover memory that haunts me, not in a Jacob Marley type way, but in what a bunch of line bastards type way. I remember being particularly enthralled by

a cover photo of stained glass cookies. They were just simple sugar cookies with openings cut in them, and were filled with crushed life savers that supposedly melted to fill the opening with beautiful transparent colors, producing cookies that rivaled the windows in the cathedrals of France. Or so the blurb on the cover said.

Exceedingly accurate timing was necessary to produce these cookies, accuracy apparently achievable nowhere else on Earth except the Betty Crocker NASA Atomic Time Keeping Cookie Production Facility, located deep underground in one of the Rocky Mountain States. Try as she might, Mama could never coordinate the melting of the life savers to coincide with the cookie part being the perfect dunness. One or the other was all overdone or underdone.

You either had perfect cookies with bumpy glass in which some of the letters from life savers could still be read, or if you got them hot enough, the life savers would flow nicely filling the opening of your now black cookies. And as far as I'm concerned, there should be no statute of limitations for prosecuting cookie fraud. Chapter eleven the Wish Book. You'd think the stained glass window cookie debacle would have soured a youth on the commercialization of the entire

Christmas experience. But you'd be wrong. There was, in fact a printed assemblage that embodied the entire Christmas experience neatly and holy within its shiny, soul altering pages. To this day, I can remember its arrival in the mail, the way it smelled, the way its newly sheared pages and static attraction and offered slight resistance upon first opening it. Oh the things it contained.

And I'm speaking, of course, of the Seers Wish Book. It usually arrived in a timely manner, in keeping with the season, and as best as I can recall, it wasn't delivered with the Labor Day half off all barbecue grill circulars like today's first holiday advertisements. At the time, my daddy actually worked for Seers, which, with the popularity of the Wishbook, you'd

have thought was tantam out to working for Santa Claus himself. Besaus was not the case, and he had very little to do, nothing at all really with the Wishbook, unless, of course, you'd like to set your purchases up on a ninety day easy payment plan. You see he was an account executive in the finance department and calculated interest payments on Missus Lewis's new avocado green Ken Moore refrigeration. On our frequent trips to Sears in downtown Jackson, we

learned a lot. I don't actually recall seeing exactly where my dad conducted his daily tolls, but I do know it wasn't at the popcorn machine, at the candy counter that filled the store with the aroma a fresh popped corn, or even in the automotive department where men changed tires on loud, hissing,

clanking machines that a boy could watch for hours. He didn't even work in the basement that could function as a fallout shelter should brash Nev get a little deep in the vodka and grow bored with just looking at the big red button, the very same basement that was transformed yearly into a Christmas toy wonderland.

I'm not sure what Daddy had done to deserve such a poor job as credit manager, as opposed to running the popcorn machine, or changing tires, or even helping set up the toy land, but he managed to keep us in kool aid, weening and space food sticks the day the mailman left the wishbook in our mailbox until we actually unwrapped the presence selected from within its pages were heady times. Indeed, Brody, Brad and I would each select a unique

color of crayon to circle the particular booty we desired from the wishbook. We were usually relegated to colors such as burnt sienna, raw umber, and the like, since all the real colors had long since been used up or broken into pieces too small to even use. Even brick red was unusable, having been just weeks ago used to nub in a Thanksgiving drawing which depicted a large

number of semi nude Indians. Some items had multiple circles, while some had single circles, and there were even portions of the Wishbook that remained a pristine Now you'd see these silly sections as you flip past them heading to the toyes and wonder just why on earth anyone would have any interest whatsoever in receiving underwear, a hand carved Meershan pipe, or a vacuum cleaner with twice a suction of the next best selling model, or, for that matter, a pair

of tusskin jeans are. We poured over our copy of the wishbook for hours, like scholars studying the Dead Sea scrolls, only with more intensity. We'd work ourselves into a frenzy with anticipation, sometimes even to the point of sickness. Our cardboard fireplace roared with imitation flames, and the fake aerosaw snow piled up in the quarters of the windows as we daily circled more toys. Thumbtacked and tape to our front door was the full size image of Sanna holding the

door wide open and showing off all the goodies under the tree. Within the tensil twinkled on our tree, and the pieces that got to the giant multicolored bulbs wrinkled in the heat, the same bulbs that threatened to burn the whole season to the ground, but for just one more degree caused the Scotch pine

to release it's heavenly scent. It is a shame that today's kids have no idea what a wishbook is, and an iTunes gift card is a far cry from weeks of joy circling creepy crawlers, evil knieval daredevil figures, incredible edibles, and verty birds and Strange changed machines and hot wheels, supercharger sprint sets. Chapter twelve, The Christmas we all became criminals. I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is for pillaging government property, but I'm betting it's not

forty five years. Hence the burden lifting confession and telling of this tale. Back in the seven in ease, my family and I were quite skiers. I know it's difficult to imagine snow skiers from Mississippi, but such was indeed the case. In fact, though, I became so proficient that one year I placed third in a Saint Patrick's Day slalom competition against bonafide, long haired, rocky mountain bred fogelbird listening hippie kids. I fancied myself the hillbilly version

of Jean Claude Kelly, a Dixie land of Franz Clumber. I was to skiing what Jamaican's were of Bob's letting. It was indeed a glorious day for the Confederate ski team. One year, we decided to spend Christmas vacation in Breckenridge, Colorado, and my brothers and I eagerly agreed to forego any Christmas

presents in exchange for the trip. As Christmas Day approached and began to register with us that there would be no tree, no presents, no prey lanes, and no Christmas curls at my aunt Martha's church on Christmas Seed, This Christmas was shaping up to be just like any other of the three hundred and sixty four days that weren't Christmas Day. It became obvious what we needed to do. We needed a tree, and that's where the pillaging comes in.

It was two days before Christmas, so any trees remaining at the grocery store, a grocery store that had never even heard of grits, by the way, were just broken, twisted sappy sticks with most of the limbs gone. And as luck would have it, Breckinridge is located in the Arapahoe National Forest, there are literally millions and millions of Christmas card perfect trees just there for

the knifing. We were staying in a condo that was very well equipped with everything necessary for a ski vacation, but with hardly anything at all suitable for lumberjackerie. Our quest for a chainsaw or axe was fruitless, finding only half a bottle of peppermint snops, a fair of fawcet poster and an Ozark Mountain Daredevil's eight track tape in the closet. The best we could do was a large butcher knife from the kitchen drawer, and that would have to do.

We all loaded up in our nineteen seventy two International travel All, a metallic moss green marvel of modern mechanization with the imitation wood side paneling, and cranked up Jackie Blue and headed to the forest. Since Breckinridge is wholly located within the forest, we didn't have far to go. The best I recall, we went about two blocks off the main street and basically just chose the tree closest to the street. They were all so perfect it was hard to go

wrong. Really, I just couldn't believe everybody wasn't out harvesting a tree with their own butcher knife or corkscrew or garlic press. I wanted to shout, do y'all not see all these perfect Christmas trees? What on on earth is the matter with you? People? Don't buy those gooey sticks at the grocery store with no grits. But they had trouble with my southern accent, and they wouldn't have understood me anyway. Besides, that just left more trees for

us. We made no particular effort at stealth when acquiring our tree, all dancing about in brightly colored ski wear and throwing snowballs while Daddy beat the tree down with a dull knife. We dragged our freshly butchered tree back to the vehicle and tied it to the top with all the pride and revelry required for such an occasion. It was an exquisite tree. Several years later we learned that it is illegal to just will and illy shank a Christmas tree in the

national forest. But I'm almost sure nobody missed that particular tree. And eventually the grocery store started selling grits. So really everything turned out good in the end. Y'all keep this under your hats, though, if the g men come snooping around, I'll deny everything. Tree coppers will never take me alive. Chapter thirteen, Angels we have heard on high and my plans to soar

amongst them. In December of nineteen sixty seven, on the stage of a small elementary school somewhere in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Christmas play was taking place. I was a shepherd in that play, and my lines were as Luke related. And Lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were sore afraid. As I spewed forth my memorized scripture and nearly two my breakfast. I truly doubt that anyone, shepherd or not had ever seen any soreer afraid than

I was at that moment. I'm sure I was quite the dash shepherd. Since Mama had made my shepherd's garb. My costume was not very elaborate and consisted of a drab brown and orange rectangular piece of heavy course upholstery type cloth that was secured around my neck with a headband and hung low to about my knees in the back. If ancient shepherds had shopped at the same fabric store as Mama, they likely would have picked this very same fabric, perhaps even

altering scripture. And Lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them, And the Angel confusedeth greatly, saying, verily I asketh ye, do ye wear it upon thy heads? The coverings from the cushions of thine davenport The rest of my costume was just what I'd have normally worn a school, probably

blue plaid pants and a blue twill shirt. I think this is what I wore every day for about three years, without the head dress, of course, because every picture we had from that era sh me sporting the same trendy plaid pants and blue shirt, and this ensemble did little to boast her belief in my sheep herting abilities. For several years after my theatrical debut, we

always had that very large piece of coarse fabric in the hall closet. It really wasn't good for anything, but was too good to throw away, and then one day, like a bolt from the blue, I had a brainstorm or perhaps an aneurysm. This piece of cloth was big enough to allow some type of flight, and it was large enough for a small parachute, even though small isn't necessarily a desirable quality in parachutes. But with a parachute you still had to get up into the wild blue yonder, and I didn't know

anyone with an airplane, so that pretty much ruled out a parachute. That really only left one option as far as flight was concerned, a hang glider. Now, I had seen them on TV in their construction seemed ridiculously simple. So I decided a hang glidder it would be, and my plan practically formed itself. I had the covering and some material for the frame. I'd have this knocked out by lunch and be airborne by early afternoon. Centers of

gravity in Bernoli's principles of flight be damned. They meant little to me at this point, as I could not be bothered by such technicalities. I had a flying machine to build, and building the frame was just as easy as I thought it would be. I formed a giant V by nailing together two eight foot long pieces of leftover one by two molding, and this formed the outline of my machine. Now I needed a good comfortable handle to hang from and to steer with, so I cut the head off a hole and nailed

it to the handle across my frame. And I used extra nails here for safety reasons. I'm just guessing, but I bet this is where the saying fly off the handle originated. What other twelve year old glider builders probably have used too few nails. At this point I was practically finished. All that was left was to cover the frame with the shepherd's cloth, and I was

ready for takeoff. I stretched the cloth tightly over the frame and tacked it into place every few inches, with roofing nails done, and man, did it look good. I couldn't believe how easy it was to construct a first rate flying machine. And why didn't everyone else have one of these? Oh well, it was their loss, And besides, that left more room in

the skies for me. Seeing how quickly this was coming together, I already loosely formulated a plan for launching my machine, and launching off of the house would only allow for a very limited flying time, so I had to locate somewhere much higher. On TV, the glider pilots launched from cliffs overlooking the

Pacific Ocean. The closest thing to a cliff in our neighborhood was located on the grounds of Wingfield High School. The campus was comprised of three terraced levels, the faces of which sloped at about thirty degrees, and from ground level to the second level was about fifteen feet, and about the same between the second and the third levels. There was a place there, however, that went from the first level to the third, a thirty foot cliff with a

thirty degree face, just perfect for glider launching. Why this place wasn't covered up with glider enthusiasts was beyond me, but I viewed it as merely my good fortune. Wingfield was about a quarter mile from my house, and I decided to walk there with my glider instead of trying to carry my machine on my bike, which would have been very difficult given the size of my flying machine. It also would have meant another trip back to the school to retrieve

my bike once I had flown home. Walking that far while carrying my glider gave me plenty of time to plan my flight. I figured I'd first circle the school a couple of times to get a feel for operating my glider, and then I'd set out over the neighborhoods and over the houses of a few friends, finally landing at my house. I was both excited and proud as I walked along Scanlon Drive, carrying my machine and dreaming of places to visit.

I can only imagine what passing motorists and earthbound homeowners thought as I walked past with my glorious flying machine. So great was there envy that their mechanical laughter was probably the only way they could express jealousy of that magnitude. Arriving at my departure site, I made ready for flight, which was not an involved procedure. I firmly grasped the hoe handle about to way away from the edge of the hill a few feet to allow for a running take off.

I took a deep breath and tightened my grip and ran as fast as I could over the edge of the drop off. And it worked. I was flying, not as far or as high as I had hoped, but I was flying nonetheless. Actually, I flew no higher or no further than I would have had I not had a flying machine. Truthfully, I guess I was just falling through space with a whole handle, molding, nails, and several yards of fabric, temporarily buoyed by dreams and ignorance. The ghosts of

two great thinkers were relieved that day. Their laws held hard and fast, undeniable, unwavering, and unforgiving. Bernoli's laws of flight would not be challenged, and Galileo's laws governing falling bodies proved true. Yet once again, I didn't bother to carry my creation back home, since it had somehow become heavier after testing Chapter fourteen six mini bikes and a micro bus. With apologies to Beck, my memory of Christmas past is the warm, intoxicating elixir that sues

the spastic seizures of any current Christmas season. With the revelry of Christmas present comes visits to Christmas's past. The selection of the family tree was always a special occasion. Now I'm sure everybody all over the world has a memory of just where they bought their trees. As a South Jackson boy, anything we bought, if it didn't come from Sears downtown, was bought from some merchant on Ellis Avenue between Highway eighty and Westland Plaza, And so it was with

our Christmas trees. At the northwest corner of the intersection of Highway eighty and Ellis Avenue stood Gibson's Department Store, and every year in their parking lot appeared a Christmas tree huckster right after Thanksgiving. I vividly remember one particular outing to buy our tree. It was some year in the early seventies, as we all loaded up into our nineteen sixty eight VW van and headed to the Christmas tree lot. The van was an acquisition from the prior Christmas, when my

Daddy came home with it loaded with six mini bikes. We didn't ask questions. He was a wheeler dealer and it wasn't unusual to come home and find new things a boat, a motor home, a Jaguar, the car not the animal, although alive jaguar would have not been all that surprising, either a pile of rifles, or, in this case, a micro bus jam full of mini bikes. The little bus had been a boring white, but at some point Daddy took it and had the van painted a bright yellow.

It was fantastic, like a rolling Beatles album, and since we hauled all the tiny motorcycles in it, the bus smelled perpetually like gasoline. The previous owner had glued turquoise colored carpet to the floor and walls, making for a garish color combination, and we loved it. We always had a Scotch Pine, so like the ten or so years before, my dad bought another Scotch

Pine. But this year we also bought a wreath with a red bow that fit perfectly around the VW logo on the front of the little German bus, and with our Scotch Pine tied atop the van and the wreath on the front. It was a bell bottom scene straight out of psychedelic hippie versions of Norman

Rockwell paintings. Here half a century later, when I passed a Christmas tree lot anywhere, I think back to that Christmas with the little yellow micro bus outfitted with its wreath for the season, and I can smell the lingering fragrances from that Christmas. Most folks remember the sense of evergreen, gingerbread and peppermint. I remember evergreen and gasoline. Chapter fifteen, the dance of the sugar alternative plum Fairy. We've all seen the bumper stickers lose weight. Ask me

how well it's really no secret. Calories in must be less than calories out. It's a very simple mathematical equation. Calories in must be less than calories out, or for the dyslexic, calories out is greater than calories in. With the existence of Little Debbie's Christmas tree snackcakes around at yule Tide, that simple formula isn't as simple as it appears. But take heart, as there is another holiday treat that can help. Did the claws cleanse while sitting around

the outside fireplace. One evening near Christmas, I was lamenting, that's a better sounding way to say, whining that I sure missed having a big old mug of hot chocolate and that there ought to be a Keto low carb version. Jennifer, being the good wife she is, knuck off to the kitchen to make my wishes come true. She mixed vanilla almond milk cream and cocoa powder and a saucepan and brought it to a boil, and to sweeten it, she added several of the sugar alternatives we use, along with a new

one we're trying. And oh my, it was delicious, so delicious, in fact, that I had two very large mugs of it. About thirty minutes after it was invented, the Claws cleans was named. That's common knowledge that some of the artificial sweeteners can have a laxative effect. Well guess what. That newest sweet we tried didn't just have a laxative effect. It bordered on what I call propulsive. This was not a passing thing either, at least not in one sense. For about twelve hours, my enters sounded like

you'd put billiard balls in the clothes dryer. During my ensuing hours in the bathroom, I had plenty of time to work on my marketing plan for the Claw's Cleans. Water is approximately eight pounds per gallon, and with conservatively five gallons of ejective produced, I ciphered that I had easily lost at least forty pounds in one night. Now I'm thinking that the marketing sales pitch for the Claw's Cleans would cause a consumer to forgive the process considering the amazing results.

And I'm thinking a festive, glossy brochure with maybe some gold full highlights or glitter of some sort, and then some catchy prose. How does this sound? Enjoy our rich, hot, delicious holiday Claws Cleans, and after a short, pleasant, seven hour bathrooms day, you'll be a new forty pounds

lighter U, just in time for the holiday office party. Maybe have a photo of a skinny model in a slinky party dress sipping cocktails at the bottom of the brochure, or cousin Eddie with a moose glass full of Claws cleans,

exclaiming it's the gift that keeps on giving Clark. There will of course be assorted small print disclaimers at the bottom, warning not to drink Claws cleans before doing strenuous exercise, to wear an extra large adult diaper for twelve hours after consuming product, and that we are not responsible for repainting your house should you sneeze. You know, just the typical legal stuff. If anybody would

like to try some, I can provide free samples. If you'd like to be able to squeeze into that sequin to party dress, or if you'd just like to make room for a few boxes of Little Debbies Christmas tree caches. The results are guaranteed. Chapter sixteen, The Gods of Rock. At one point in my life I thought I needed to know how to play a guitar. A few guys that I knew that could play were considered cool, and

Hendrix and Page and Townshend seemed to be doing okay, too well. Actually Hendrix was dead, but other than that he seemed to be doing okay. Brody decided that he'd like to play too, so off we went to Worland's Music, where we bought a couple of Japanese made les Paul copies. Mine was black and his was sunburst, and we bought a small peevy amp. We had all we needed to conquer the rock world, except the ability to play. We solved that little problem, too sweet by signing up for six

lessons. I figured the last three lessons would be just a waste of time since the first three would be all we'd really need. Plus we'd probably be out on the road somewhere touring with the band. The first lesson was a real eye opener. We showed up with our new axes, ready to rock. We were led to a tiny little soundproof room where we were instructed to

take our guitars from their cases. We nailed that first step. I figured we were well on our way to start them so easily mastering our first instructions. Now, I was skeptical of our teacher, what with her being a lady and all. But if Anne and Nancy Wilson could do it, I figured maybe she could too. My hopes, however, were dashed when she pulled out something she called a tuning. For Law was baffled, thinking, what the heck is she trying to pull? I want to play guitars,

not work on them. I mean, I had just spent three hundred and fifty dollars on a brand new guitar, he's telling me it isn't even tuned. Furthermore, she went on, it would have to be tuned periodically for the rest of its life. Well, I was a little dismayed but humored by her following her instructions in tuning my guitar. This took nearly half the

lesson time, and I was beginning to have doubts about this lady. But after the excruciating, extended tuning session, I was certain my guitar was ready to gently weep, as if to intentionally delay my ascent to rock stardom. She next launches into a lecture on notes and chords and measures and such.

While every good boy may indeed do fine, it seemed a bit tangential to what I was seeking, like with learning golf and having to use all those other clubs in the bag as opposed to just hitting the ball in the hole off the tee. Perhaps she had misunderstood exactly what type of lessons we wanted. I didn't want lessons on how to teach classical guitar. I was looking to learn how to play songs, you know, smoke on the water and walk this way, assorted Van Halen tunes, or even Johnny B. Good

in some Freebird or Stairway to Heaven for the slow dance sections. It was inevitable that I had to ask, just to prove her abilities, can you even play Stairway to Heaven? Well, sure, she said, and she took my guitar and launched into the Zeppelin classic. Great her bona fides assured.

Now we could get down to business. I'm thinking, surely, the next thing she'd have us do is practice our star spangled banner Hendrick style with our teeth, or at least some Pete Townshend style wind milling exercises clockwise or counter clockwise, it didn't matter. But nope, not even some old school chuck Berry duck walking or lighting. Even the tiniest amount of lighter fluid squirted on our new guitar yours. This was turning out to be a nightmare.

Eventually this torture ended and we were sent off to practice scales or chords or some such nonsense until our next lesson. I don't remember going back, so let this be a lesson to all you guitar teachers. When a teenage boy shows up with an electric guitar, the first thing you do is show him how to plug it in and turn it up to eleven, and then slide the pick up and down the strings while working that whammy bar like a chimpanzee

freebasing red bull. And if he's agreeable, I'm sure he will be light it on fire and swing that new Chinese strat over your head like a sledgehammer and smash the heck out of his tiny little amp. If the amp should spew sparks and catch on fire too, then so much the better. He'll be back next week, I guarantee you. As for me, I quick league grew bored of tuning and trying to make chords and all the other tomfoolery, and I sold my guitar and put the money towards something that didn't require

all that silly musical knowledge. I bought a giant set of drums. You don't have to read music. There are no chords, and tuning is optional. All you need to know is how to hit things and count, and usually only to four. The only things simpler is a kazoo rock. On chapter seventeen, verily doth thy smoketh thy swine. Barbecue joints are about as ubiquitous throughout the South, as are cracker barrels, yet each is a unique

entity in its own right, the barbecue joints. That is, because the cracker barrels country fried steak is the same in Tuscaloosa as it is in Tallapoosa. There's nothing wrong with consistency, and cracker barrel has that down pat But barbecue joints, true barbecue joints, are the very essence of uniqueness. About the only thing they have in common other than delicious smoke assorted barnyard animals is their name. And even that topic is particularly ornery, what with all the

barbecue versus barbecue versus barbecue, on and on. One common trait most good barbecue joints have is that at one time they've all been burned down. The really good ones have burned down several times. Most all of them are just ramshackle, wobbly wooden structures, built of light or not pine and infused with years and years of pork fat smoke. Honestly, I'd be more surprised if they didn't burn down. The combination of fire and wood and grease just has

the structure is fully involved written all over it. Heck, the first chickens to come out of a newly rebuilt joint, or probably cooked with the charred remains of the previous building. A tasty bird smoked for hours over the charcoal made by the fire of the last structure is a delicious Southern phoenix of sorts.

Barbecue is a very personal thing too, like religion. Some like sweet barbecue and prefer the King James version of the Holy Word, while other blasphemers prefer Carolina style barbecue and the trendy NSV or some other hippie perversion of the Good Book. But the truth be told, all barbecue is good. Unfortunately, most of the heathen or heathen, as my memo said, non Christian

religions like Judaism and Islam. For example, consider a pulled pork sandwich was law on top on one way ticket to Shoal in succulent sliced brisket with a perfect pink smoke ring and a side of beans insureds reincarnation as a dong beetle. For the Hindus, the Buddhists are a little more culinarily tolerant. But have you ever seen real Chinese food? About half of it should technically go

to the gut pile. I'm sure all these other religions have their beloved delicacies, but I'm sticking with Jesus in a pork but cooked fourteen hours over pecan wood. Hallelujah. Chapter eighteen, A Briefer History of Time. Time has always fascinated me. It really only has importance to mortal beings. We only measure it because we have limited quantity of it. Next to a creator who

inexplicably loves us. It is the most precious thing in our lives. In the hereafter, a clock will have as much use as a blind man has for the really big boxes of crayons, the one with the sharpener on the back, and all the good colors like Rasmataz silver and gold and Coarellian blue. So, to borrow a partial title from Stephen Hawking, Here's a briefer history of time. I find it amusing that TV producers have seemingly settled on

twenty years as being the threshold for nostalgia. Take Happy Days, for instance. It came out in the seventies, and it was about life twenty years

prior. In the fifties, as a fifth grader, I was enthralled by the antics and rituals in everyday life of these most ancient of peoples, and as far as I'm concerned, the nineteen fifties, in the eighteen sixties, and the Jurazic era were all relatively about the same place on the timeline, and I doubt I'd have even questioned it had Phonsie ridden up on a triceratops

as opposed to a motorbike. I was also totally oblivious to the fact that I was watching a show about my parents' teenage years, as I envisioned them as possible Civil War participants. What I viewed as ancient history were there yesterdays. There was, however, a huge difference between nineteen fifty five and nineteen

seventy five, far different than between two thousand and twenty and twenty. Between nineteen fifty five and nineteen seventy five, we went from straight leg Levi's to elephant bell bottoms, from hot rods to oil embargoes, from white T shirts to Paisley's psychedelics, and from chastity and Purity to the Summer of Love, and from Sobriety to LSD, from Spotnick to Beatnicks, and from the Cleavers May Feel to the Moon there was indeed a vast difference in those two times.

Now about the only thing to change in the last twenty years is that all electronics now have more memory, and the world has gotten smaller, while cell phones have gotten larger, and China now manufactures everything on the planet, and there are a few more fast and furious movies. I think, in keeping with the twenty year nostalgia theory, each decade since the advent of TV

has had its tribute twenty years later. As we've already covered, the fifties were honored in the seventies, and the sixties were relived in the eighties by the best show ever to oscillate across the airwaves, the Wonder Years. The seventies were a flashback in the nineties on the imaginatively named That Seventies Show. There was even a short lived spinoff of That Seventies Show about the eighties called

Astoundingly That Eighties Show. As the decades since have all become so similar, the twenty year theory looks to be less and less like a hard fast rule and maybe just a chronological anomaly applicable to the late twentieth century, and as a current resident of the timeline near the dot mark twenty twenty two, I can't, for the life of me think of anything appealing about the turn of the century, other than being relieved to mark that milestone, Remembering that as

an eighteen year old in nineteen seventy nine, I noted I'd be a decrepit thirty nine years old at the stroke of two thousand, and I wondered if I'd still be able to choose solid food or walk, or if I'd like my new nursing home. But other than the fact that Princess Song nineteen ninety nine finally had a use, and that the number two thousand made cool eyeglasses for New Year's Eve, what with the two o's as eye holes, I've

essentially become stagnant as a species. I think we truly peaked in the fifties and sixties, and I'm truly glad to have lived it. Chapter nineteen, the probe ning there are certain things we do as humans that occur seemingly simple. For completing so many trips around the sun, complete thirteen trips, and if you're a Jewish boy, you break in the booty at your bar mitzvah, make sixteen round trips and you can operate an automobile. And after fifty

round trips, the medical establishment tells us that we need a colonoscopy. Now. Colonoscopy is a word derived from the Greek terms colon meaning poop tube and scapi means look up, hence the modern medical term colonoscopy, literally meaning look up your poop tube. Now, my Greek is limited, so I may be a little off base, but not much as lost in the translation at

fifty two. I'd dodge the button bullet for two years, but I'd given into the pressure of conventional wisdom, and I've grown weary of waiting on the

aliens. Honestly, I was hoping for an alien abduction by now, and since by most all accounts, a thorough probing is part of the standard alien abduction exam, considering their advanced knowledge and tools, that the alien procedure would be more pleasant and they would be kind enough to just leave a notarized written document with the test results for an inclusion in my medical record and any insurance

reimbursements. I'd also imagine that should they find any anomalies in my bowels, they'd have the technology to instantly cure any maladies, and I'd be deposited back in my bed, none the worse for wear, and with a good story to boot. It does seem odd, though, that any civilization that has mastered interstellar travel would do so simply for the opportunity to look up the backside of any new life forms they discovered. Who knows, maybe we did that

to aliens we found at Roswell and this is just payback. Imagine Kirk traveling the galaxy only to peer into the nether regions of triples and then zooming off at warp speed in the USS endoscope to probe the Gorn. Knowing what we know now, I'm sure mister Sulhu would have been a proponent, but I'm not sure about the rest of the crew. I'm not real versed in interplanetary species interactions, so maybe, unlike just sniffing each other's butts like dogs,

the standard protocol throughout the universe involves a good probing. Now, I don't know Stephen Hawking can figure all that out anyhow. The aliens let me down, so I'm left to be probed by mere human doctors. Luckily, the doctor doing my procedure is older and has done quite a few of these, and I would dare say that he's been up more backsides than the village people and Fredick Mercury combined. But like Captain Kirk, he's going where no man

has gone before. Actually, since you're unconscious for the procedure, you really don't expect any discomfort. And frankly, they could just insert a twelve foot long section of three foot covert and crawl in like coal miners with pickaxes and carbide lanterns on their hard hats, and you'd be none the wiser. The catch, and there's always a catch, is what they euphemistically called the prep. Prep is a common word short for preparation, and we all know it

means to make ready for an event. Prep can involve everything from simply making a phone call to reserving a seat for dinner, to years of organizing a program to send a man to the moon like the Apollo missions. The prep for dinner is obviously less involved than sending a rocket into space. Prep is

relative and its intensity equal to the task being undertaken. In this particular instance, where you are prepping for a flanking mission, prep means that your entire eleimitary canal from your wisdom teeth down to your exit sphincter must be as clean

as the day you first drew breath, squeaky clean. Actually, my examples of prep involving dinner reservations in space travel is more illustrative than I thought in this situation, since it involves ingesting something and then expelling it like a Saturn V rocket. To give you a visual, not that you ask for one nor want one, let's enlist the help of the amazing Guido, the sword swallower at the local carnival. Imagine Guido goes to the local pay and spray

car wash. He inserts his one dollar and twenty five cents into the slot and he chooses hot foamy soap from the selection dial. Goes into his act, his sequined robes sparkling in the sunlight. He inserts the wine fully down his gozle and pulls the trigger. A three thousand psi burst of foul foamy fluid flows freely from the flamboyant freaks, flapping floodgates like flatulence through a flashy flugelhorn. And while it bordered on being Sussian, you've got to admit that

was some first rate alliteration right there. Guido's demonstration and my eighth grade English experiment give you some idea of the prep. Movie Prep is the brand name of the heinous witches brew responsible for the cleansing, and I'm sure that the makes of movie Prep are allied with Satan, because only through the dark arts and sorcery can one lid of liquid be magically converted within the confines of the human gut into twenty gallons of the violess substance. Only demons can now they

sure missed the boat. However, when it came to naming the product, most products have a name that somewhat describes what they do. Hamburger Helper,

Mister Clean, and Ultra Bright toothpaste are all good examples. I suggest Movie Preps seriously reconsider naming their product something like Mount Vesuvius Intestinal polish or General Will m t. Sherman's Cleansing Elixir. The catchy advertising copy practically writes itself the suvious the power to destroy civilizations, or Pintubo feel the pyroclastic flow of cleanliness, or the General's Elixir. We go through you like Sherman through Atlanta.

But enough of that they can write their own copy. I'm given to understand that the current medical dogma says that one should have a colonoscopy every ten years. Assuming that that doesn't change in the next few years, my math puts

the next violation occurring in the year twenty twenty four. Surely, within the span of a decade, the aliens will step up their game and maybe partner with Google or Apple and offer their eyegut services or Google Probe free with the purchase of the iPhone twenty seven, unless socialized medicine puts the aliens out of work too, in which case we're all doomed to an existence of polypy colons and solid bowel movements. I'm pulling for the aliens. PS postop nine thirty

am Wednesday. All went as scheduled, and I have a colon and an esophagus as clean as a polished alabasterer. I'm still under the effects of the drugs and I was told I'd be gassy, but no such luck. And after I'd practiced farting freebird for the last few days off for nothing. It was a holy enjoyable experience, except for the prep. So if you're over fifty, you get your wrinkly old butt out there and schedule your own rectal

violation. The proper fall alone is worth it. Chapter twenty Monkey Shines. Hurricane Katrina left us both homeless and officeless, So after a few years of renting, it came time to build my wife a new dental office. As the male spouse, it fell upon me to organize and oversee the construction of

a modern, efficient medical facility. It's not that I'd ever done anything like that before, but it seemed a manly thing to do, and Jennifer was too busy doing dentistry, and the autumn flounder run was all but over. I figured I was way in over my head, and I reckon that commercial

could instruction would be akin to rocket scigns. Being the perceptive sage I am, it didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that most construction workers are illiterate cretans with rusty out of pond tools and severe substance abuse problems. I surmised it wouldn't take more than a few days to train monkeys to do most of their jobs. After calling all the local pet stores, it became obvious that the fatal flaw in my plan was the actual acquisition of the needed

semion laborers. A few stores had some of the smaller varieties, but what I really needed was about a couple of dozen of hearty chimpanzees, not a handful of pygmy marmosets that could barely pick up a hammer and let alone well to red iron. They'd probably just grow tired and lazy after a few wells and start throwing poop at one another, just like the human welders. But at least I could shoot the monkeys. Plan really started to unrival when I

learned the cost of monkeys. Since no one had the number or type of monkeys I required in stock, I was left to import them or get the leftovers from the medical testing labs. The lab monkeys were mostly sick or dying or had three arms, which should have been an advantage, but alas, instead of hammering with the extra arm, they merely flung twice the poop.

I had a really great follow up plan to offset the initial purchase price of my labor force by having a big fundraising barbecue at the conclusion of construction. A feeding monkeys pulled port wouldn't have really netted me a return on my outlay. So my ingenious plan was to barbecue the monkeys and sell the sandwiches to the folks in the area. Monkey sandwiches may not sound appetizing, but I planned to sell them for only two dollars, undercutting my competition and making it

up in volume. The whole monkey business sort of fell apart before it got started, so I was left to deal with the only other animal sporting opposable thumbs, or, in some cases, due to drunken circular saw fights, just a single thumb. Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say all criminals are manual laborers, but I can say with some certainty

that all manual laborers are criminals. In Mississippi, contractors must be licensed, and I suspect it's for the same reason sex offenders are required to register. They need to know where the criminals are. The requirements to obtain a contractor's license are pretty stringent. One must have a truck, preferably twelve years old or older, and a magnetic sign attached to the door displaying your business name

and the disconnected cell phone number of your last girlfriend. The truck is the workman's best friend, like the cowboy trusty paint, and unfortunately, most workers trucks are far less reliable than the cowboys mount The monkeys would have lived on site and totally done away with the transportation problem. But I digress. Most

workers trucks operate only intermittently. On cold, rainy, wet days when work is called off, I'd see them motor by the job site with their deer rifles in their window racks and ice chests full of malted aiming fluid bouncing in the beds of their trucks. Of course, on the next sunny, temperate day, the farthest they can coax Old Blue is to the corner tavern, where they go in and discuss for the next twelve hours what could potentially be

wrong with their trucks. Despite all the setbacks, our nine month long project was done well ahead of schedule, taking a mere fourteen months and going over budget of paltry thirty five Percent's office turned out beautifully and has worked flawlessly for her. She, her staff, and her patients love the new office.

Plus I learned a few very important things about commercial construction when importing monkeys, always poke holes in the shipping container and never lend a drywall hangar twenty dollars for beer, Chapter twenty one. God save the Queen's fine china. There are some things that seem to endure well past their usefulness. Heck, that might even be the definition of tradition. One of those useless traditions was, and I'm not sure if it still exists, but it did thirty plus years

ago when I got married, the buying of fine dinnerware. My mama obviously skipped that tradition, though, because as a child most of our glassware originally held jelly and was made by Bama or Gorum. Most every other prospective bride, though from Eve up through those in the nineteen nineties, mine included beat the trail to the local department stores either Gafers or McRae's to pick out a fine china pattern and sterling, as well as their everyday plates and forks.

The fine china was meant to be enduring and added to or pieces replaced throughout a lifetime of entertaining, visiting potentates and such. You'd never know when you might be mowing the yard and the Queen of England stops by for a spot of tea, and you'd better have a full lead crystal Lady Anne iced tea glass at the ready, her Highness could eat her scones whatever those are off

the wedgewood, strawberry and vine pattern scone plate. I'm just assuming they make a royal scone plate, since there is apparently a specialized pea for nearly everything else. I mean, what kind of barbarian would serve the queen some sweet iced tea from a gravy boat and offer up fresh scones from a soup to reen? You can never be too prepared, hence the enduring tradition of owning

a compotier. Should the Queen also request compote with her scones. Although I'm not one hundred percent sure what either of those two things are or whether they would ever even possibly be served together, that doesn't preclude one from owning such pieces, though as similarly, I own a giant wrench big enough to twist the lugnots off a locomotive, although like an accent salad plate, I suspect

I'll never really need it, and no wonder one needs a butler. The sterling can be mighty complicated, should the Queen wish to put butter on her scones, and again, not knowing what that is, that may make as much sinse is her buttering her hat. She could choose from about eight different butter knives. Don't mistake the master butter knife with the individual use knives, lest the queen think you a ghost. Some of the less used pieces include

the lemon forks, the sardine spoon, and cracker spoon. But there is the possibility, however, slim, that a Norwegian print suffering with scurvy could have a flat in front of your place, and it would be kind of

you to offer him a lemon and some sardines and crackers. The larger of the two tomatoes servers, in addition to serving tomatoes in grand fashion, does just as good a job serving tiny little pancakes or getting the last pickle out of the jar, assuming your butler doesn't have time to find your pickle fork. I suspect the single time butter pick was just made of leftover parts as a joke, and some southerns soon to be bride just had to have one.

I finally got curious enough to google scone. Well, it turns out it's just a biscuit. You can throw a handful of blueberries into the mix too, if you like. And I'm sure there is a dedicated sterling silver blueberry biscuit making fork somewhere in your pantry. Ask your butler, and if the Queen does drop by, just call your biscuits scones. She'll be impressed. I know I would be Chapter twenty two something odd in the punch Bowl.

It started innocently enough, as most disasters do, with a simple conversation, like when JFK said, Jackie, I'm thinking about visiting Dallas, or when Lincoln told his wife that he had tickets to a new play over at Ford's Theater. My ensuing escapades didn't get me shot in the head, but there was a moment where I wish it had. You see, my wife had several of Robert Saint John's cookbooks, and I enjoyed reading his pieces in

the newspaper. So when my sweet mama got when that mister Saint John was going to appear at the Great Southern Club, she called and surprised us with the gift of a couple of tickets. That's where it all started going wrong. It was a typical weekend night in downtown Gulf Port. There was no one about except at the eating and drinking establishments, so we were lucky to

park up front since we were running a bit late. We spoke to the security guard and took the elevator to the top floor, and we were greeted at the door of the club, and we told a nice lady that we were there for the Robert Saint John's event, and she ushered us to a private dining room. We were met there by a couple of very prim ladies

attired in eveningwear and sporting gloves. No less, I didn't know mister Saint John at that point, and I still don't, but I assume he must be one classy guy if he has women of his caliber working the door and collecting his loot. I was sure, if the commercials were correct, that

he enjoyed gray poupon at every meal. The elegant ladies looked us up and down in a quizzical manner, but I just assumed they were admiring my red and white, vertically striped polo shirt and a fairly fresh pair of deck shoes. Now, we've all heard of the fight or flight reaction when placed in a stressful situation. Although I'm not sure it's ever been tested in this exact situation. That situation being that we've now entered a dining room filled with people

in formal attire. Jennifer looked at me, and I looked at her, and I think she had already made the flight decision, but I, for some explicable reason, had decided to fight abed her hand and assess the situation, and chose the table in the middle of the room. We walked over, and I pulled out a couple of chairs and proclaimed, the good evening ladies and gentlemen, would you all mind if we joined you. Remember, these fine folks are in evening wear, and I'm in that shirt that I

described earlier. It looked for all the world like a war's waldo goes to the Penguin hatchery image, or possibly a clown in a mob funeral. And I admitted that we were apparently under dressed, but that I had no idea that mister Saint John commanded such hyebrow audiences. One of the kind of elegant ladies at our table explained that this was the annual formal event for their private supper club, and I'm sure in her mind she was wondering just how Waldo

and his plus one were able to get tickets. Honestly, I was wondering the same thing at that time. About this time, a very fortuitous break in the unpleasant and presented itself in the standing and pledging of allegiance to the flag. Heck, I looked half like a flag myself, so maybe that's why many of them were looking at me. I don't know. One lady remained conspicuously seated, however, and this was long before the whole Colin Capernick

thing, so I didn't figure she was protesting anything. One of the other ladies at our table, who had apparently arrived early so as to extract maximum benefit from the open bar, loudly proclaimed, well, I see someone doesn't know how to respect the flag. The seated woman then stood up and spat back in an obvious British accent. I'm a British subject and I don't pledge

to your flag. Now this is getting fun, I think, hoping that the limey chick would break out a cricket bat or a spotted dick, whatever that is, and things would get real. But such wasn't the case, and we return to our civil chit chat. Eventually, mister Saint John did take the podium, and it turned out to be a pleasant, enjoyable evening after all, complete with an invitation to join their club and directions to several formal wear providers. I replied, with the same enthusiasm I use on the

Jehovah's witnesses, that I'd be thrilled to join their ranks. Should mister Saint John ever be in your neck of the woods, I could highly recommend that you see him, but I'd enquire about the dress code just to be sure. Chapter twenty three He sent Quail. Two thousand and eight was a year of leaving. In February, Brody left us suddenly, and seven months later

Paul Paul left to go see him. Jennifer and I moved into our little house on the Bay that October. Not long after that, maybe with a year, I heard a pleasantly familiar but wholly unexpected sound, the call of a Bob White Quail. This call was followed by another, but from a

slightly different location. There were two Bob White's calling, and memories came flooding back from years before, when Paupaul, Brody, Brad and Eye hunted the tall pine forests just north of the smell of salt air, where the rivers turned sweet. Wild quail were hard to find forty five years ago, and even harder to find now, which was why it was so surprising to hear

their familiar call so far from their usual haunts. I call my quail, Brody and Paul Paul, and after five years, they are still here. Early one morning, when I went down to the pier, the toss'es ara spook about to see if any trout were interested. I heard them call. Anyone else hearing them would hear the same, Bob White, But I hear more. I hear We're here, and all is well. Some people may think it sacrilegious or bordering on the occult, to think that wild animals may

bring comfort from beyond, But I'm not so sure. God used birds many times to bring comfort. Noah sent out a raven, and then the dove that returned with the olive leaf. God directed the ravens to feed Elijah, and when the Israelites were fleeing Egypt, they asked and he brought them quail. I asked for comfort, and I too was brought quail. I've enjoyed my quail for the last five years, and I've not mentioned them to anyone. So when I received this text from Brad, I laughed out loud as

I read it. Haven't heard a real Bob White call outside in years. I just heard one outside Mama's house, and he gave me goosebumps. It made me think of Paupaul. I called and told him of my out of place quail too, and we both agreed. It was indeed odd to hear the Bob whitecall within the suburban environment a stone's throw from the Gulf, but for both of us it stirred memories of happy times, and people passed and

joy at the thought of the visit. Chapter twenty four. The summer of sixty nine nineteen sixty nine was only fifteen years distance when Brian Adams waxed nostalgic about it. Fifteen years is nothing. I have socks older than that, really, But the summer of nineteen sixty nine, currently fifty years distance, did indeed have some sort of magic about it. It was a summer of deeply embossed memories. I was only eight, so the summer of sixty nine

really didn't mean to me on Catalina Circle in South Jackson, Mississippi. What it meant to the doped up hippies in the height Asbery neghborhood in San Francisco, or for the kids on Max Gasker's farm. It wasn't the Summer of love that was nineteen sixty seven, but it was summer and I loved it,

so that was close enough. I wasn't totally removed from the hippie scene, though, since my mama and Daddy were, although ancient, seemingly only in their twenties, and when we weren't listening to an old miss football game on the radio, we listened to Jimmy Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and occasionally a

little Johnny Cash on a brown plastic eight track player. The fashions and wild colors of the era were particularly appealing to me, as I remember, on occasion dressing like my mama had shopped for me at a second hand discount clown clothing store. Stripes worn with plaids of totally contrasting palettes were completely acceptable. My absolute favorite thing of the hippie era, however, was, bizarrely enough, the psychedelic pencils with which I scribbled my way through the third grade.

I smile when I think about those pencils. I love those pencils. I still do. I vividly remember writing with them while sitting at my desk in an unair conditioned portable classroom outside of a OLDA Tapeley Wilkins Elementary School. The smell of the freshly mimograph tests, still damp from the reproduction process, was intoxicating, while the sweltering heat of September and the muffled, hypnotic droning of

a large fan dulled our senses. The trance was occasionally broken, though, when a kid would vomit after lunch and the fan would disperse the fragrance of milk, Salisbury steak and green peas and sheet cake throughout the hot classroom, leading to a few other kids wasting their thirty five cent lunch too, until

the waves of st and the janiture arrived with his bucket. But the swirls of colors on the floor paled by comparison to the colors on my pencils, which thrilled my soul as I vainly struggled with numerators and denominators and the smell of vomit. The pinnacle of mankind's technological achievements occurred in nineteen sixty nine.

Two. That was, of course, the July twentieth moonlanding. One small step and all that, it is difficult to accept the fact that in the following half century weave as a species have done nothing even remotely as amazing. We've rested on our lunar laurels and failed. The social experiments have been all the rage for the last fifty years, and only the invention of the wheel

could weakly compare to the moon landing. And I suppose that taking the wheel with us to the moon on Apollo fifteen was the best of both achievements. I fear America's best days are behind her, as the pride we felt when our flag was planted in the lunar dust has now been replaced with hatred of anything American, the worship of mediocrity, and the normalizing of evil. And I'm glad to have lived through the best of our existence as American men rode

rockets to the moon. On returning to Iola Tapeley Wilkins Elementary School in the fall of nineteen seventy there was a new plaque on the wall outside the principal's office commemorating the moon landing. I'd like to think it is still there, and would one day like to look at it again. Given the current trend of destroying history. As such, I'd not be surprised to see it having

been removed. There is no way to mention nineteen sixty nine and not mention the muscle cars of the day, just like space travel, cars reached their zenith in nineteen sixty nine, had Mustangs and Terrenos, and GM had Camaros, and Corvettes and GTOs and Firebirds. Mopar had their Kudahs and Roadrunners and super bees. Muscle cars ruled the earth. They were everywhere, and they

were fairly cheap too. Imagine pulling up to school in a nineteen sixty nine Boss three O two Mustang in Grabber blue, or a four to twenty seven Corvette convertible, although as a two seater a couple of us kids would have to ride on the luggage track on the trunk, not that that would have been any big deal as the school was fairly close, but alas we had a nineteen sixty two Chevy Biscayne with holy floorboards, and in nineteen sixty eight

Olds ninety eight. Now sure of the Olds had a super plush navy blue velure interior and lighters and ash trays and all four doors, but we rarely had a reason to smoke a cigar on the way to school, so such a luxury were lost on us. The closest we got to a muscle anything

was a Seers Screamer bicycle or a handful of hot Wheels cars. We eventually did step up our automobile game, but in nineteen sixty nine, in the lap of luxury as opposed to on the luggage rack, it seemed that the most enduring memories of nineteen sixty nine all took place over a twenty nine day span, just a few short weeks after the moon landing, as the hippies were gathering at Woodstock, the clouds were gathering in the golf as Hurricane Camille

began to form. While Hendrix the Who and Jefferson Airplane rocked Woodstock, Camille rocked the Mississippi Gulf coast. I recall returning to the coast with Memo and Paul Paul to the surreal world after Camille, a side i'd see again as an adult after Hurricane Katrina. As a child, the devastation was fascinating. You knew nothing thing of insurance and rebuilding and lives lost. You just thought

it was cool that there was a ship in the highway. Years later, I'd get to experience total devastation through the eyes of an adult, and I can honestly say the view through the eyes of a child is far less red and blurry. But we lived through both storms and came out changed and probably for the better. As God's plan is confusing at times, yet always perfect, the summer of sixty nine was indeed special, eventful, and memorable, although I'm sure I'm the only one who will sum it up as the summer

of pencils, spacemen, and devastation. Chapter twenty five tep grave, H two, HDL extras and cold fusion two out of three ain't bad. After observing the phenomenon for years, I finally decided to postulate a theory. It's what I call the theory of enhanced personal gravity. You may call it tep graph from here on out, since it sounds cool and if I'm to be

known for something, the father of tep graph sounds especially cool. My theory states that an individual's personal gravity increases proportionately with regards to the specificity and uniqueness of said individual's quest to make a retail purchase, and such increase is inversely proportional to the size of the establishment and the number of other individuals within the structure. For example, I go to the world's largest Walmart in search of

synthetic chartreuse left handed helical ball bearing oil. It is three o'clock in the morning, and there are only two other shoppers in the establishment. My theory says that my personal gravity will increase to a level of irresistible force, and the two other shoppers will immediately be drawn to the exact same spot in the store where I'm standing, right in front of the synthetic shar truce left handed

helical ball bearing oil. Of yet to work out the specifics, but just like cold fusion, something is going on and I intend to get to the bottom of it. Another phenomenon I've observed, and one that is very similar to the tep graph theory, is known as the hank Hill Home depot Low's theorem or H two HDL. That theory suggests that the likelihood of finding a knowledgeable and helpful employee diminishes with the specificity and technical complexity of the item sought.

For instance, if you come in just looking for something general like hardware or lumber, then the helpful female clerk with the six inch nails who doesn't know an Edison based light bulb from a survalve can point in a vague direction and mumble some indistinguishable aisle number and gets you close enough that you can wander around until you find the empty peg upon which what you came for generally hangs.

If, on the other hand, your request is for a particular item, like the theorem's namesake quest for some WD forty and a tap and die, then the likelihood of your being directed to a location within the store,

even remotely near the item you see, falls to practically zero. At that point, the helpful, well trained professional usually deploys the often concurrent reaction known in scientific circles as the extra task revelation an alternate solutions maneuver extras, whereby the helpful professional, who has no idea what you're asking for, queries you on the task that you are trying to accomplish. And then directs you to

the products he used to solve the problem. For instance, if you have a titanium joint that needs welding, and you ask for argone shielding gas and some one sixteenth two percent serrated tungsten electrodes, the helpful professional has no idea what you asked for, so he quizzes you, what are you trying to do? You reply, well, I'm trying to weld titanium. The helpful professional immediately initiates the extras maneuver and says, with all certainty, Oh,

you don't need all that stuff. You just need some JB WELLD and some duct tape. It'll work just as good. The extras maneuver is rarely successful, and the proper response to the usual query of what are you trying to

do is I'm trying to get out of here? Where's the exit? The helpful professional then points you down an aisle blocked by a beeping perpetually in reverse forklift, surrounded by seven people with flags and exquisite nails, and, as luck would have it, as you wander around the store looking for a way out, you find an entire pallett of synthetic shartrus left handed helocal ball bearing

ole for fifty percent off Chapter twenty six, Operation Holy Turkey. Mission prep is critical to mission success, and I'm sure somebody famously said that, but I don't know who, so we'll just go with Abraham Lincoln or JFK for now. My mission to buy six turkeys for our churches Boys and Girls Club Thanksgiving dinner was thwarted yesterday badly. I went to two different Walmarts, one

of them twice and to win Dixie. My first Walmart trip was nearly successful, as they had the required number of turkeys, but I did a poor job of acquisition. As I was loading said turkeys into my buggy, a large man who looked just like mister T walked between me and my buggy as if I weren't even there, and snatched up the last turkey as I was reaching for it. I kid you not, As these were essentially holy turkeys meant for a church function, I felt it was inappropriate to go upside his

head with a twenty pound frozen turkey. Plus he was really big, so I bent my tongue and I left turkeylus. Next, I went to one of the little neighborhood Walmarts, thinking i'd fare better, but such was not

the case. While they had the required number of turkeys, they were somehow different and were twice the price, And since I was buying more than one hundred pounds of gobbler, that was a substantial difference price wise, sixty eight cents per pound is one thing, A buck seventy eight is another thing. Now, I'm not trying to cheap out on these underprivileged kids, but I

et sixty eight cents per pound turkey and I enjoy it. Thus Plan B fails miserably, and on to Plan C. I was within spitting distance of when Dixie, so I decided, what the heck, I'll just take a look, see and evaluate the situation. Bingo, plenty of turkeys in just ninety eight cents per pound with the card. I briskly loaded the bountiful, big beautiful butter balls and the buggy. I love alliteration, and I made

my way to the checkout stand. That's where the mission met resistance. Well, I'm sorry, sir, but you can only buy one turkey with a card. Drafts foiled again. I consider just leaving them there in the checkout line, But remember these are holy birds, so I politely returned them from whence they came. So far I had loaded and unloaded eleven twenty pound birds and it wasn't even arm day. I don't really have body parts days.

It just sounded good. But now on to Plan D. At the rate I was using up plan letters, I feared running out of them by the end of the day, but I realized, like the hurricane namers, I could resort to the Greek alphabet should the need arise. I felt better about the mission naming plan, but not so much about the actual mission. Okay, I'll just go back to the big Walmart and have the courteous associates retrieve

me the required turkeys from the back wherever. That is sure enough. I saw a man near the turkey freezer who was unable to avoid making eye contact with me and quickly sprint away as they usually do, so I asked about obtaining six turkeys from the back. He said the turkeys were in the freezer truck outside and that he couldn't access that particular area. I pointed out that it was a mere ten days until Thanksgiving and their turkey cooler was completely empty,

and that probably was a good thing. But he assured me that in just sixteen short hours the next day, at seven am, they would indeed move numerous turkeys from where they were currently located on the property to the turkey cooler. Now, I no Sam Walton, but if I had folks wanting to buy turkeys, and the turkeys were actually there on the property and Thanksgiving was just days away, I'd have someone doing nothing but moving turkeys from the

back to the cooler where folks could actually buy them. On to plan Epsilon, I mean e As I said, mission prep is critical to mission success. So I girded my loins, saggy as they were, and hopped in my truck early the next day and I headed to Walmart, hoping to find turkeys stacked to the ceiling. To put me in the proper mood, I listened to mercy mees I can only imagine, and this boosted my spirits and made me confident of success. The closer I got to Walmart, however,

the less confident I became in success. Mercy Me just wasn't cutting it. It was time to take the gloves off. Kids were counting on me. Nothing would do but five finger death punches bad company. I turned it up to about thirty two maybe thirty five, and I rolled into the parking lot and victory was mine. I threw my truck into park and I jumped out while yelling cover me. I wasn't talking to anyone in particular, and there was virtually nobody else in the walmart to hear me, but it just kind

of spontaneously came out. After listening to five FDP, I donned my useless paper mask, I grabbed the sun sanitized COVID freeze, square wheeled buggy from the parking lot, and I strode in, singing Bad Company under my breath, just like you just did. Yeah, I heard you. I was pleasu surprised to find a very helpful young man replenishing the turkey freezer, and I told him what I wanted, and he even helped me place six of

the largest birds he had in my buggy. It's possible he heard me singing Bad Company and didn't want any part of that, but who really knows. Anyhow, the mission was now complete, at least the acquisition part. The cooking part comes next Sunday, so stay tuned for perhaps another exciting mission.

I'm thinking Oreo's riding the storm out might be useful. Chapter twenty seven, A Puka lips well I experienced the first recently, I changed my first dirty diaper, and by mind, I don't actually mean I was wearing a diaper, but that I changed my little nephew, Dalton's diaper. Jennifer and her mama left to run an erin and they warned me that he may make poopy, and that should he do so, I could just wait for them to

return, and they changed him when they got back. Well, they had been gone for all of forty three seconds, and he decided to blow. There was no way I could stay in the same room with that vile odor emanating from Junior's huggies. I knew that I was in for an event, so I got creative and decided to change him in the bathtub. That way, any errant duty could just be hosed down the drain. Dalton didn't understand my plan and refused to cooperate, so a conventional changing was in order.

Once that first velcrow tab is loosen, it's on and there's no going back. I was convinced the apocalypse had happened. In Junior's drawers. It was full bore ww F style, no holds barred mud wrestling extravaganza. I would have guessed the infant's entire elementary canal could maybe half a cup, but apparently

they're just descending colon holds enough to fill a milk pail. When someone says they have a twenty pound baby, I now know what they really mean is that they have a five pound baby and fifteen pounds of poorly digested, strained turkey. I had not seen anything that disgusting since the dump hose on our FEMA trailer busted loose when Jennifer was emptying it. Now, that was funny, but karma has a way of getting you back. It was traumatic for both me and Dalt, and he cried and I gaged, and it was

truly an event to behold. I now have to ask who the heck designed the baby wipes. They should not be six by eight. They should be at least the size of a standard bathtowel. It was like trying to clean up the Exon Valdez spilled with a water Burger napkin. And as first go I'd have to rank this one weigh down on the scale. I don't think I'll be doing that again without a respirator and salad tongs and an incinerator.

I think the stinct molecules actually sended my old factory nerves since it took several hours for the smell to leave me. And it's been a while now and I'm almost back to normal. But thanks for asking. Chapter twenty eight, Hunter Gatherers. There are two vastly different schools of thought in the Ray household with regards to grocery shopping. The first method, which we'll call Method A or the Right Way, and Method B, which we'll call the crazy Lady

way. Method A involves keeping a running list of needed items on your shopping app on your smartphone and systematically and with economy of motion, gathering those items and then getting the heck out of Walmart. One of the biggest problems with

Walmart is that they'll just let any in there. I'm a big proponent of Method A. I get my multi meal Captain Crunch knock off cereal, a gallon of fat free milk, a case of bottled water, and the biggest sized package of megastuff Oreos they have, and maybe pick up a rotisserie chicken at the register, and then I blow that pop stand A Jennifer is a

practitioner of Method B or the Crazy Lady way. A Method B involves gathering a seemingly random assemblage of items procured on multiple trips down the same aisles over and over again. It usually takes a minimum of three circuits through the grocery side of the store, with occasional forays into hard goods and pharmacy side of the store. I call these three trips the initial random pass, the filling

pass, and the clean up loop. Magellan went around the world in less time than it takes to make a Method B trip through w The initial random pass is just what it sounds like. Imagine if you were standing at the front of the store and let loose a double alt load of buckshot. The nine random items that were struck by the blast or put into the buggy with no thought whatsoever as to why you need them or how you intend to use

them. Now you understand the initial random pass. An example of items picked up in the initial random pass could be tofu, baloney, bananas, cocktail, toothpicks shape like little swords, a hammer, charcoal, a twenty four pack of Glow in the Dark condoms, a yellow cake mix, and a file. You'll notice that none of these ingredients combine to make anything useful unless you're providing the ord'euvs for the horny society of vegetarians with no sense of taste

HSOVSOT or foraging horseshoe user planning a prison break. This is where the fill

in pass becomes necessary. Now you make your own way back to the rear of the store and you start over, and this time you try to pair things with the assortment of things already in the buggy that can be combined to make a meal, and maybe some bread to go with the tofu baloney or with the bananas if you like, an Elvis style treat, a few hamburger patties to make use of the charcoal, and a couple of containers of icing, one for the cake and the other to eat while waiting for the cake

to bake. The fill in passes a little less nonsensical than doctor Zeus on meth, but just barely. The cleanup loop is really just a method a with an appetizer of chaos. Again, it involves going back to the rear of the store, only this time to gather a handful of items you truly need to complete the meal you've planned for the guests that are probably already at

your house. The clean up loop often includes stopping at wind Dixie, since you have to pass it on the way home anyway, to pick up a crucial yet forgotten ingredient for an integral part of the planned meal, for instance, the green beans for the green bean casserole. If all goes well, then when you arrive home you were still married, plus you have five hundred cool little plastic swords. Stay tuned for the upcoming treatise entitled The Kitchens Sink,

Indoor compost Pile, or Impromptu Sterile Home. Surgical Sight Chapter twenty nine, Target Sighted bombs Away. Nothing would do except that we attend the grand opening of the new Target store, and thus begins the hilarity. I hate crowds and would have sooner gouch my eyes out with a spoon, then go to the opening of the newest purveyor of Chinese Jump. Jennifer was insistent,

so I put the spoon away and got in the car. We blended into the river of people flooding into the store, and the automatic door slid open to reveal the brand spanking new target, sporting that new store smell. That was where the pleasantry of our outing ended. Unseen to Jennifer was a trail of poo stretching from the threshold of the door all the way to the display

of roasted nuts thirty feet into the store. The length and breadth of this bile hazard was quite impressive, and the sheer quantity ruled out an infant or any service animal smaller than a service elephant. Jennifer did, in fact have an encounter with the offensive leavings. She didn't really step in it, but sort of kicked it in midstride as she flowed with the masses into the store. Horrified, she panicked, and not knowing what to do, she froze

like a deer in the headlights. There she and the entrance of the new target, surrounded by hundreds of people flooding into the new store, seemingly stuck to the floor with pooh glue. While the mind layer was somewhere ahead of us, headed to the depenzile. No doubt, she quickly evaluated her options.

Option one was that she would continue into the store as if nothing happened, or Option two was that she should just leave the store, or Option three was that she should create some sort of diversion by pointing at the Aunt Jemima look alike in the Moo mooo on the writing grocery buggy and loudly say ooh, and then run into the stores. Everybody was looking at Jemima. Personally, I'd have chosen the Aunt Jemima option, but that's just me.

Others entered the store and began to become aware of the hazard and went around the shah Nola like Johnson around Earnhardt. She chose option one. We quickly merged with the other shoppers streaming into the store and beat a hasty trail deep within the bowels of the store, putting as much distance between us and the front door fecal festival as possible. I'm pleased to get to use the word

bowels in this story, but I digress. Once clear of the scene, Jennifer was still faced with what to do with the stinker on her toe, still attached and looking very much like a little dec dipped comb on the tip of her brand new spears. Not wanting to spread the joy, she walked like a peg legged pirate with the leg held stiff and the toe of her shoe elevated. It looked to me like an uncomfortable way to walk, But then I've never had a turn stuck to my toe and Target, so I

can't really speak from a position of experience. Our minds frantically sought a plan as to where to drop the offending hitchhiker. I mean, what kind of department store doesn't have a carpet somewhere in the store. Our options were growing fewer as we go further into the store, dropping a pineapple on her foot, and the produce department was starting to look good, except we ran into some friends just as we approached the grocery section, so the pineapple wipe was

foiled. Just stepping out of her shoes and abandoning them in midile was an option, but they were brand new sperries and appeared to be salvageable well. She eventually just resigned herself to continue the pirate walk until she could hobble outside to the grass, all the while shopping as if she were wearing two perfectly good shoes. While our first trip to Target was certainly eventful, I think I preferred the traditional greeterer at Walmart Chapter thirty oh la lah. Some things

can be learned by trial and error. Others can be learned by experience. When the lesson is uncomfortable, it's always best to learn by the experience of others. I suspect this tale will only benefit but a few souls, but then so be it. It's a tale that must be told. I recently installed a bidet in our bathroom. As I recall from my high school French

bidey pronounced beiday is French for butt washer. Actually I took Latin in high school, but the Lattish people didn't have a word for butt washer, and apparently they weren't big on personal hygiene tersus foreman is the best I can do in lightin But that isn't a very pleasant name for a bathroom appliance. The bidet is probably the only decent contribution the French have made to modern society, excepting French fries and French bread. But how far can two side dishes really

take a civilization? The bidet is the crowning achievement of the French. Anyhow, back to the lesson. Since our house is elevated, the plumbing is exposed to the elements underneath, and the incoming water temperature fluctuates accordingly. It is December, so cold weather is to be expected by this time. You've probably put two and two together, and so as to not offend the sensibilities of some, allow me to just say that a blast of thirty two point

three degree water to the nether regions could be described as brisk. It'll probably be years before the long jump from a seated position becomes an Olympic event, but until such time I can safely assume I currently hold the world record. So in summary, as if you really needed telling, when you go to buy your bidet, be sure to spring for the warm water model. That's all for today's lesson, Chapter thirty one. Grinnin like a muse eating briars.

Everyone has a meuse, you know, that thing that drives you to create something. To some is the traditional Greek goddess. To the people in the caves of Lascal, it was the reindeer and mammos they hunted. I discovered today that my muse is a forty two inch craftsman writing lawnmower. I suppose that a forty eight inch or even a fifty two inch might work too, But why mess was something proven I have a theory as to why certain

things come to me on my mower. I suspect that some part of my brain is otherwise occupied, leaving the other parts wholly unsupervised, thus free to wander around in unfamiliar places. Now, I'm sure there have been detailed psychological studies on such things, and if not, there should be. So whether your muse urges you to blow paint on your hand in a dark cave, or string words together as you slaughter weeds, you just go where she leads.

So while the artists can create an image with pigments, it's possible to do the same with words. Writing, however, is much cheaper than painting, as you don't need all those brushes and chemists and paint and whatnot. All you need is possibly a dictionary, and maybe not even that. If you're bothered to remember a whole mess of words, they don't even have to be real words. I mean, look at doctor Zeus Gredunza. Indeed, Zeus does prove though that you need just a touch of crazy to string words

together in a manner others find pleasing. Not too eccentric. Minds you, lest people start labeling your assemblages as to catch her in the riyosh or a

manifesto of some sort or other. That's not to say that you need to hack off one of your ears while dying from an untreated case of syphilis, but it is hard to argue with the brilliance of story night to little eccentricity, however, and you'd do as well write an assembly manual or a cookbook, which, if you think about it, cookbooks are really just food assembly

manuals. Nope, the trick is to find that perfect amount of derangement not to my uncomfish, no hacking off of appendages, but also not writing cookbooks or Ikia manuals either. It's a very fine line, really, So follow your muse unless she says she knew vincent, and then wash your hands really good first, and then go get a writing more. I recommend the Red forty two inch model, Chapter thirty two, The Scent of Blessings. When I ride my bike, it always gives me a chance to think and ponder

and admire, sort of a rolling worship service. This evening's ride started pretty blandly, with overcast guys and weak failing light peeking between the dull colorless clouds, not much of a sunset at all, with not much to look at in the pale twilight, another sense took over, and oddly enough, it was smell. One neighbor was just finishing up his yard and the scent of

freshly mode grass filled the thick, hot air. It is said that smells can trigger memories more vividly than any other sense, and in this case it did indeed, And for a moment, it was nineteen sixty nine and I was in the third grade again at Iola Tapley Wilkins Elementary School, staring out the open windows at the men pushing lawnmowers around the school as the teacher paused

her lesson while they passed. The roar of the mowers died as they continued around the building, and the earthly scent of wet grass filled the classroom and mingled with the other sense of chalk dust and floor wax. The lesson resumed, but we were all in talksated on the vapors of fresh cut grass, dreaming of summer and baseball and swimming in anything but math. Around the corner,

another neighbor was apparently boiling shrimp or crabs. The sharp smell of a shrimp bowl that will take your breath away also means that there will soon be a feast, for shrimp aren't really bowled as a snack. It is an event, and there is always a gathering of some import when the boiling pot hits the fire. Birthday's, mother's day, Father's day, graduations, marriages, deaths. The pot is not fired up for just any trivial occasion.

Family is almost always integral to a shrimp bowl, as are corn taters, sausage, and just like Shakespeare's witches brew, there is power in that building cauldron, the power to conjure many things in stirfine memories and south the pain.

Saturday is obviously one of my neighbour's laundry nights too. As I rode past, I smelled the flowery fragrance of drying laundry and was again transported to my youth, where I slept under crispy clothesline dried sheets that, while they didn't smell like my neighbor's perfumed laundry, had a feel in fragrance all their own. And it was a cocktail of sense, mixing the smells of my MEMA's house with the scents of nature and ivory, soap and salt air.

My mema was a very old lady before she ever got a machine to dry her clothes, and her sheets may have thereafter been softer, but they certainly weren't as memorable. As I pondered these smells, it occurred to me that what I was smelling was the sense of blessings. These scents of shrimp, laundry, and grass represented the blessings of food, clothing, and shelter,

three basic blessings that we probably all take for granted. So to mix the axioms of counting your blessings and stopping to smell the roses, I was able to roll by and smell the blessings. May we all be grateful. Chapter thirty three, Deep Fried Parrot and Dolphin kebabs in a garlic IOLI. I think anybody that knows me can agree that there are lots of people smarter than me. Or I I'm not sure. See lots of people are smarter than me. However, I have yet to be brainly tested by anything in the

animal or plant kingdom. The tic tac toe Playing chicken doesn't count, as I was not at the top of my game and I suspect the chicken was cheating. That happened in Mexico, and I didn't speak Spanish, and the chicken didn't oblow much ingless, so there was a communication problem. Other than that chicken, though, which we've all agreed doesn't count. I'm certain I could mentally best anything else in the plant or animal kingdom, except maybe for

some of the great apes or the more cunning monkeys. They might come close in a Sudoku tournament, but I'm sure I could take them in an arm wrestling contest. The cunning monkeys, not the great apes. Those things are strong. Also, minor birds and parrots, although they are no chicken, might put up a good showing, but a little crisco and flour, and

just like the chicken, the competition is eliminated. So I think we've established that there may be a few non delicious, crispy fried and mental competitors in the animal kingdom, but very few. Just an FYI, pulled chimpanzee is nowhere near as good as pulled port. I can, however, state emphatically that there is nothing in the plant king them that can fool me, except maybe that vine that has the thorns. The gallons of round up mixed with

gasoline and then let on fire can't even kill. I suspect there are some of these vines growing in the core of the Fukushima reactor and that's what caused it to fail. So other than this vine and possibly kudzu, I'm certain I'm smarter than most plants, except maybe the venus fly trap. But at each disgusting house flies on purpose, I just eat them if I'm asleep in the hammock with my mouth wide open, and even then I don't really enjoy

them much. A grass is stupid, though, why just this morning I outwitted it handily, and try as I might, I just can't get it to grow where I want it. However, it thrives in my flower beds, being marginally smarter than grass. It dawned on me that if I were to cover the bear areas in my yard with mulch and then an ounce so that the grass might hear me that I was putting in a new bed, than grass would practically spring forth overnight. Mosilic grass now chuckle at my slightly

higher cunning than a capuchin monkey. Dolphins, dang, I forgot dolphins. They are smart and cute and athletic jumping through those rings is not at all as easy as they make it look. Plus all the questions you have to answer afterwards in the legal fees hardly make it worth trying. On an unrelated note, dolphin kebabs aren't too bad. They taste like Mexican chicken. Chapter thirty four. It's springtime and love is in the air, literally, and

it's disgusting. Well, I just mowed my yard for the first time this spring. Notice I said mowed my yard as opposed to I mowed my grass, because frankly, very little grass was involved in the venture. The mowing did nothing to improve the quality of my yard. But I do now have a broad assortment of weeds, all nearly the same height. It's sort of like stacking empty beer cans in a neat pyramid as opposed to just leaving them on the table or in the aquarium. It really serves no purpose but looks

marginally better. So it is with mowing weeds. While I was mowing, I noticed huge amounts of pollen in the air, which got me to thinking about what pollen really is. It's the reproductive matter of plants, and it's everywhere which is kind of disgusting. It's in our eyes, it's in our hair, We're practically covered in it. Just going outside is like using Hugh Hefner's hot tub after a particularly randy party where the guests list included an assortment

of Kardashians. It's a veritable botanical orgy, what with the live folks getting lively down by the water, and the crept myrtles are doing the nasty and the flower beds and there's a pine tree three way going in the neighbor's yard. Imagine it's nineteen seventy three and you've stumbled on to the set of a drug fueled three day long art movie shoot in a condo outside Malibu. But just replace the humans with various types of plants, and it's just non stop

tree on tree action until at least May. Ugh. I now have a headache and Anita shower. Another bad thing about spring, besides the mowing and the continual tree sex more an autumn person myself, is that the gnats come out in full force. If you've ever experienced the torment of the Salt Marsh gnat, just imagine millions of hungry, tiny little ghost vampires nearly invisible to the naked eye, yet each able to drink a full pie of blood.

If they were twice as big as they are, they'd kill you. And frankly, I think the Egyptians got off easy with the locusts and the frogs. If God had really wanted to punish them, he'd have sent the gnats. Pharaoh would have had the Israelites packed up by nightfall, and four Baptist churches would have opened the next day, and the new Moses Land theme park would be adding a red Sea flowme ride such as the Power of the Gnat.

Now I've got a headache and I need to close the blinds. The Indian hawthorns are up to page thirty seven in the Kamasutra, chapter thirty five and miles to mow before I sleep. When driving down Highway ninety along the beach, the traveler just passing through might think that Hurricane Katrina was but a distant memory, since the mostly healed scars that are left along the wall are obscured by the flashing neon of casinos, gas stations, and fast food joints.

However, there are thousands and thousands of vacant lots just north of the sparkling Gulf waters all the way from the Pearl River to the Alabama state line. Of these vacant lots represent the dreams and lives of many families. Christmases celebrated and birthdays accumulated, weddings performed, and Easter eggs hunted, and deaths mourned. Entire lives lived in that one hundred foot by one hundred and forty foot piece of dirt, and bent and twisted remains of chain link fences marked

the borders that contain these dreams. Not only trees were torn up by their roots, but people too, just the same force. The people that lived on these parcels have since created new lives, some nearby and others distant, but their connection to their grassy plots cannot be severed. Most folks would drive by the old man on the mower and not think twice about it. But

it causes me wonderment. Manys the time I've passed a pickup truck on the side of a barren road and seen an old man on the mower while his wife swelters in the truck waiting with cold drinks. These are the people that used to live on that plot. Of ground, and although they no longer have a home there, they seem oddly drawn to maintain an overgrown, vacant lot. In the dog days of summer, they'll mow knee high parched grass, as if to pronounce, Hey, this is still mine, and I

will not surrender. They tend it as the living tend to grave, and

they defiantly proclaim their attachment to that dirt. They mow where their kids played with a new puppy, and they mow over the place where they buried the same dog as a member of the family fifteen years later, while the kids were off at college, and they mow under the tree their grandfather planted seventy five years ago and still yields pe cons that they pick up from the dead brown grass every autumn and use to make pies for their Sunday school class.

They mow around the concrete piers that once supported the porch where they sat and cried when they learned that their son wasn't coming back from some jungle in a place they'd never even heard of. And they mow over the broken concrete of the driveway lost to time in the creeping Saint Augustine, and they can still see in their mind's eye the brand new nineteen sixty nine Osmobile ninety eight gleaming in the sun, a treat for the years of hard work and sacrifice.

They don't mow to make the grass shorter, They mow to make the memories longer. Chapter thirty six. Lasts in the blink of an eye have a sinister yet compassionate habit of sneaking up on you. It's for the best, though, because if they didn't creep in covertly, you'd never forever be stuck in a place on a timeline, last, come ephemerally with nary a hint of their presence, and passing Only much later do you even realize what they

really were. Had you known that it was the last time your child would reach for your hand in a crowded parking lot, you'd have stood there in the cold for hours holding his hand. Had you known she'd never ask you to read about the Red Fish and the Bluefish ever again, you'd have made that story last as long as war and peace. Had you known your spouse would never again return home, you'd have kissed her twice when she left.

If you'd known that it was the last fishing trip you would take with your brother, you would have cast well past dusk into the night, and had you known it was your last dinner together before they moved miles and miles away,

you'd have insisted that your friends have another piece of dessert. Had you known it'd been the last time you pass through a town, you'd have driven more slowly and waved at the old couple on the porch swing, perhaps experiencing a last of their own that they'd only learned of the next morning when only one of them awakened. I suppose that lasts often lead to first and the

excitement of the first salvesdy aches of the lasts. Being human means that lasts you're cumulative, and eventually everything will become a last, up until the two ultimate lasts, your last breath and your last heartbeat. So take lots of pictures and cherish every single moment, because you never know which of those moments

might be a last. In disguise. On the Anniversary of Desolation, written on the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the sun shone strong on the sparkling waters and tanned the faces of Southern daughters who enjoyed their lives under the live oak trees, whose branches swayed in a salty breeze. Their children ran down a long sandbar, scratching in the sand their names and stars, as generations before had done the same, until the wind blew and the water came.

The stately homes watching over the sound had witnessed much amid their grounds. Christmases passed, colored eggs hid for hunting, fireworks and picnics with rails hung in the bunting hot golden turkeys and sweet pecan pies, and even a rare flake from steel winter skies. The old cypress swing creek on orange rusty chains, until the wind blew and the water came. With sun baked skin and broken backs. Men trawl, shrimp and fill oyster sacks, just like their pawpalls

and their uncles and fathers. They wrestle a living from these bountiful waters. Old wooden boats made by men long since gone, work hard through the night, and then bring their crews home. For decades prior, men have done just the same until the wind blew and the water came. Blackwater rivers creep down to the bays where sleepy gaiters bask, and warming rays where the egret

hunts, and the mullet jumps, and turtles lounge on cypress stumps. The lazy bayous wind through the trees, and snails ride the grass that blows in the breeze serenely flowed the rivers known by Indian names, until the wind blew and the water came. She rowed ashore on her wicked broom, a whirling mass, this gray typhoon. She waved her wind and cast her spells, unleashing demons from beneath the swells. Both sinners and saints suffered in this mix.

When poker chips floated with the crucifix in the darkened, churning witches brew When the water came and the wind blew. Time, our most precious gift cannot be measured by balance, vessel, or rule. But with a mechanical device we measure our lives. It ticks constant, cold, and cruel. Luna Venus and Soul. Venus chased Luna across the sky, a celestial race in the heavens high and al. The Baron followed closely by, while in awe in silence, there said I Soul came to see such game. Then

Venus blinked and lost her flame. Luna continued her steady pace, her luster dulled by soul's bright face. Sanity. The veil of sanity has but only one side. So sheer is the shelter where within we hide. For beyond its boundary lived the nightmares and dreams of hobgoblins and devils and all wicked things. Should the veil be moved aside by a lilting breeze, allowing you to glimpse all of these, dare not to linger in o terry too long,

lest they entice you to stay with the sirens song. They dispense a random concoction of pleasure or pain. It's a toss of the coin when going insane, six of one or a half a dozen of the other, an injection of one tincture of another. What you will get is far from certain.

Should you ever wander outside the curtain, dog days in the delta and dusty porch chairs, delta painters rock, where the august heat slows even the clock ochre talk covers everything, and at night the frog and the locusts sing, and lesser stars than Sirius let loose of the sky and fall toward us in vast green oceans reaching out of sight, are desolate and depressing, though filled with life. When the dog star rises, it brings such as these,

the hope of the harvest and the autumn breeze. Just the other day, Twas just the other day, I said, When I was just beginning to walk, I skinned my knee and bumped my head, and shortly after learn to talk. Off to school, I went to learn reading Dick and Jane and ciphering math, a questioning spirit with time to burn, exploring Frost's less travel path. Then the child morphed into a man unlike Darwin's monkeys can I learned Poe and Twain, and of pioneers headed west, and the traits of

moving bodies and those that are at rest. Some things made sense and others not. But miles of roads still lay ahead, and scarcely looked up to the clock, for we can sleep when we are dead. Now sign posts appear along the way sooner than I would fear reading. But just the other day, when the truth is, it's been so many years, life is nothing more than memories. As we rush headlong toward the grave, Some discarded

instantly, and others bound and saved. And as the end drawls, still nearer, will all be heard to say, For at that point our time is dearer. Seems all my life was just the other day. The cow I pull one tee, then the other, because one's for milk, and one's for butter, one's for cream, and one's for cheese. I wish my cow had more of these. A fisherman's view of life. A lone gull cries, a mullet flies, A pelican sits and watches with an intent

gaze, and a crash in the waves. A hapless fish he catches as an old man fishes. He sits and wishes for days that are long since pasted. A second look at an empty hook, and he makes another cast. The tide rolls in and then out again, as it has for untold ages. Our lives are just books, and time is a crook that slowly steals our pages. The ebbing tide makes small crabs hide among the drying rocks, while shrimping men over diesels den make deals along the docks. The sun

sinks slow, and the wind it blows. Another day is pasted. It's almost night, but in the pale moonlight there's time for one more cast an ode to Poe. In the deepest part of the night, when the clock runs slow, comes a velvet cloaked visitor who goes by Poe dread in fear, phillis clutch hoping joy are gone. As such, there's no way back

from the sooty hell, my rapid heart. The tale it tells. He is easily heard above the clock's two bells as the master prepares to cast his spells an unwanted guest, though I feel strangely obliged to tolerate his visit from the other side, the executioner of peace, the bringer of woe, this tormented man, this man named Poe. The way is dark and rife with

crags. As the specter opens and unloads his bags, squeaky brass, latches in creaking leather, and a palette hand withdraws one black feather from the carcass of the raven, though I know not whether he is dead or alive, as the scent of death would be masked by the heather from the vapors of an earlier team made in the corner of the weather. Wicked, vile, simmering potions, sickening salves, unduans, and lotions stirred and twirled, and

nauseating motions concocted of species from across seven black oceans. The sorcerer worked his recipes slow this evil cook, this man named Poe, in hopes of avoiding the fortunes of Fortunado, an expert vnor in wine aficionado. When pride drove his quest for the Amantillado, I summoned up a whiff of false bravado. Fearing the trial and mortar board, he wielded with weak, shaky breath. My voice box yielded, and then asked my tormentor, shall I see dawn

upon my door? And then came his answer, So dread an answer, no, never more, never more. Here and now and there and then. There are only two places we all have been. That's here and now

and there and then. While here and now are the present tents, there and then can be passed her hens then lives in our memories is known as the past, but it's also the future, and the die yet cast the then in there that are yet to be, or shaped by the here and now You see the then and there's wise and hows are determined by your hear and now spend them wisely do what's right, so that then in there you'll sleep at night. Here and now is your chance to mend. And then

in there, at the very end, the preacher and the teacher. When the teacher is done, she is said to have taught. But when the preacher is done, has he not brought? Of course he hasn't. We all know he's preached. So pray tell why the teacher hasn't teached? Autumn, As your sky is filled with the orange butterflies, and narrow a cloud is seen, A cooling breeze rustles the leaves that turn to gold from green. A midnight haunting. The mind works differently in the dead of night,

slower the pleasantries fast as the fright. Once awakened, long before first light, my mind torments me throughout the night, when fast my brain should be asleep. Ghosts wonder its crevices, dark and deep, things long since passed and deeply stored, or torn from their moorings. When the mind is bored, while half awake yet half a slumber, the ghosts in my mind soon grow in number. Though a twisted dream, they begin they're traveling a tapestry

of memories. They're soon unraveling. They open hidden boxes and spread all around things that were never in tended, unbound. Fond memories tortured now are haunting. The past is longed for, the future is daunting, an aching sadness for things long gone yet waiting for no man. Time marches on outside my windows. A wind chime rings, a random tune on a night's winds wings away in the distance. A train whistles, moaning keeps ghosts in my mind

from roaming anymore on the sleepless night. As dawn approaches with welcomed light. The artist and the poet. What the artist does is pigment. The poet does with a pen. The artist makes us sea without, and the poet see within dead reckoning over jagged waves. Are ships with captain think our course alone. We steer, not decided by us. Our courses they happen,

yet not by chance. New ports draw near. We're only passengers, though at the wheel, pretending control, we order hoist all her sheets full speed ahead, goes brass, wood and steel, our luminous weight, changing the courses of those we meet, just as ours was altered by the others. We passed under billowing sail and creaking masts, each ship moves the other to

alternate ends, directing their course much more than the winds. The altering of plot by just one tiny degree then brought our ship eventually alongside of me. We think it is us who steer by the stars, when in truth it is the maker of those very same stars who makes the winds blow that drive us along. While in the rigging whistles a familiar song, an old time hymn, and clanging ship's bell says to us that all is well, Yes, all is well the purpose of life. I'm just passing through, though

I know not why. I breathe, love, live, and die. For my purpose, I beg a glue to lead a nation, as some men do, or silently pass my task unknown and sleep anonymously under a yet quarried stone. Perhaps my task is a cumulative thing, not to strum the heart, but merely pluck one string and then another in no recognized tone, seemingly out of sync with the comic metronome, never hearing the sound of the

symphony complete but a few single notes without sustain. Fading fleet, Should the smallest cog missing inside the clock then render its heart a tick with no talk? The entire mechanism would then be of no avail other than to mark the time that the small cog failed. The parts of the machine must exist in the hole if we are to hear the chimes and the hours told. A night's bright armor is but one rivet, shy of deciding whether the warrior might

live or die. So, whether cogg or rivet or vibrating string, we all have our part in this mystical thing called life, where nothing is certain except its end and the unknown links of the paths we wind. To believe you've a purpose, yet know it not. Is to deny yourself and acknowledge your God. This has been as per y'all's requests, written by Beau Ray, read to you by Cameron Buckner. People for t