WHAT A LONG WINTER CAN DO TO YOU.

                                    

So today it’s the 17^th of March and month five of a winter that never quits. The forecast tonight is for six to eight inches of snow. There was time in life, when I would have retreated to the fruit cellar with a bottle of Jim Beam and said “I’ll be out when I hear robins singing.” But this year something snapped in side of me and I’m saying to old Mother Nature. “Bring it on old gal. I’ve got the plow pointed out the garage door, so give us your best shot. No more of those weenie three inches that just irritate us and make it all slippery and snotty. Let’s set a big record for the eighteenth of March. I got no place to put the crap but I don’t care anymore. My truck has been in four-wheel drive for three months and I’ve been walking like a drunken penguin since November but I’m not backing down. The voices are telling me not too and for once, I’m listening to the voices.”

With all due respect to my father, who scoffed at today’s weather and claimed that when he was kid, the leading edge of the last glacier was just north of Emily and they used to go up there and gather night crawlers pushed up by the ice. He talked about the year, when on the fishing opener he fished of an ice flow in Gull lake with his old three horse Johnson clamped on the back edge with a couple of C clamps and two boards. That was the year the polar vortex ran all the way down to Aruba and it was July twenty-fifth before they planted the garden. That was the year the tallest trees in the woods looked like they all had a crew cut because the deer ate the tops off flush with the twenty-foot snowpack. He had to add six feet of stovepipe to the discharge on his snow blower, just to get it over the tops of the drifts.

Yes Dad, if you’re looking down at me, Have a little pride in me because your war stories are going to look like Grimm’s fairy tales when this one is over. Heck, lets make it a challenge. Tonight I’m shutting off the heat and wearing my Sorrels’ and snowsuit to bed. I got a pot of corn beef and cabbage simmering on the stove and I added a quart of peppermint schnapps, just to fortify it. I gassed my snow blower and 4 wheeler up with Sonoco racing fuel. I blanked out the weather channel on the television. Radar? I don’t need no dumb radar. The voices are telling me what’s going to happen and those weather guys are full of it. They don’t have a clue, never did-- never will. Liars all of them. They lie worse then the politicians at election time.

Oh, this is going to be so much fun tomorrow. I got the giggles right now. Oh Lord this is better than the Super Bowl.  The dog is half under the bed looking at me. Stupid mutt if she only knew what’s coming. Note to self. If there is reincarnation don’t come back as no dumb dog. What a dull life. No voices to talk to. Just eat and poop and mark the snow banks. Stupid paws without thumbs that can’t handle a snow shovel or hold a cup of grog while looking out the window at the storm. Boring. To all of the snowbirds that ran away last fall. You’re no better than the soldier that deserts his unit in the heat of battle. What are you going to tell your grandkids? How many margaritas you drank while you were getting all pruney in the pool? I gota go now. Need to rest before the battle. Can’t have any distractions because the voices don’t like that. Got to be on top of my game tomorrow. Shhh.

MY PERFECT WORLD

                                                

My friend wrote me the other day. The subject was a preplanned, more perfect city that was being purposed for parts of Aitkin and Cass County. Money was at one time appropriated to study the concept, both from private and government sources, but it really never got off the ground. The biggest reason appears to be that the people, who already lived there, where it was planed, didn’t want it. I guess if I had been living there, I would have been on their side of the aisle.

I think the concept of the perfect city has been brought up many times in many places. I believe that the city of Jonathan, out in the western suburbs of Minneapolis was mentioned in those circles. Not sure what happened there but apparently it never became that much.

One of the biggest problems to me when you say “perfect City” is –define perfect. Talk to 100 people and you will get 100 different answers. How do you work that out with out making some people compromise on their ideas and if you do compromise, then your idea of perfect, becomes not so perfect anymore. I took it a step farther and asked myself what would my perfect city look like?

Well to start with it wouldn’t be a city because I lived in a city for many years and never liked the closeness, the noise, the hustle and bustle of busy people doing what they had to do to survive. To be fair they were good people just like you and I so it was nothing personal with the people. It was just the way we had to live that bugged me. In my perfect place to live I would be able to enjoy the great outdoors right outside my own back door. I could sit on my dock on a cloudless night and see stars you never saw in the city at night. I could breath air that didn’t smell and taste like someone else had already exhaled it. I could hear all of the creatures of my surrounding area, as they went about their business without hearing other mechanical devices, like my neighbors air-conditioned or a wailing fire truck or some kid doing a burn-out with his fast car. I could hear the breeze rustling through the trees or the rippling of the water on the beach and the only interference would be my own breathing. I do have a little redneck streak in me and I own a dog, a gun and a pickup truck that seem to go with the territory, so there you go my friends.

Life will never be perfect where ever you live but I’m thinking I have done the best with what I had to work with. I know this because for all practical purposes I’m happy and happiness is usually a sign that you have made some good choices in life. Oh-- there have been some bumps for sure. I lost the love of my life a couple of years ago but you know what-- I think I found someone else to share my life with. My health is pretty good and I have so many nice friends. Who could ask for anything more? I have a strong faith in my God and a great place to worship him.

I wonder if those people who wanted to create that perfect city knew about where I live. I sincerely doubt it because if they did they wouldn’t have been looking for a different place. Guess I for one am glad they never came over here.

KEEPING UP WITH TECHNOLOGY

                                    

So us old fogies’ like me are trying hard to survive in this teach savvy world. I have found that if you don’t have some degree of participation you might just as well be a deaf mute and go live behind the garage. Beside’s this computer I am typing on, I now have a smart phone and a smart television set, which is pretty good for a dumb man. My grandson calls me the other day and somehow he changes the ring tone on my phone, from his phone, from my usual barking dog signal to a Gestapo style siren. Not knowing what was going on I rushed outside, to go hide in the top of the garage, when suddenly his voice sounded out of my pocket and he identified himself. Not funny Michael.

I was flying back from Mesa a while back and the plane cabin looked like the control room at an N.F.L. game with laptops, I pads and smart phones everywhere. The guy next to me was watching some movie about an airplane crash and the kid on the other side of me was playing some game, where he broke out in gales of laughter about every thirty seconds because he was killing people. Not to be outdone I got out my phone and turned on my music consisting of “Somewhere over the rainbow” without earphones.” Have you ever had one hundred and fifty people stare at you at the same time? “ The pilot actually increased the throttle and banked the plane and the flight attendant gave me the old finger across the throat signal. Fussy people.

I once told my granddaughter what it was like growing up without all of these electronic conveniences. We had one phone in the house and we had to ask our parents if we could use it and the answer was always no. My granddaughter told me she would have simply died rather then live like that. I told her I thought about that but didn’t know how to end it. She told me there was an app for that and gave me the address of a website in case I ever wanted to download it. Relax I didn’t.

I now have many new words in my vocabulary like Hulu and it’s not the hoop. Pandora and it’s not the box and Amazon and it’s not the river. I can skyp, twitter, tweet, and meet you on face book, LinkedIn or e-mail. I Google more than I gargle and my browser is my best friend. Whoops almost got in trouble there. Second best friend. Sorry dear.

So I have upgraded my electronic network and in the spring I will have a garage sale. I have a very nice eight-track player with the best of Elvis tapes. I have two cassette players with several cartridges, including the best of John Phillip Sousa. A tape movie player, see I’ve even forgot what they call them any more, with a box of movies, including Lassie Come Home. Two thirty-five millimeter cameras-- one still has seven pictures on the roll that is in it-- and two black and white television sets and a flip open cell phone with a dial inside of it that’s great for those seniors who don’t want to change and a pong game still in the box. For the time being I’m hanging on to Donkey Kong and Frogger. Any one want to play?