Enough, already!

Okay, so about 100 spectators showed up to watch this.  You can get more people than that to watch my neighbors 1989 Ford F150 rust away.  It was hardly worth a front page mention.

I wonder what the average IQ of this crowd was.

The finished version.

The post following this one entitled ‘A party for Dannielynn’ started out as just another entry.  After I wrote a few hundred words, I decided I might as well get paid for what I was putting out there so I turned it into a column.  (Those of you not familiar with links, click on the blue word ‘column’ to read the story.) 

I thought the post would make a good column but after I saw it in print, I decided differently. I don’t do current events very well which is a pity. If I was any good at it, then I would have a ready supply of topics. 

Maybe with a little practice I’d get better but probably not. I’m too opinionated and on top of that, I can’t be serious even when the situation calls for me to be.  Yesterday I wrote a serious letter to Senator Lugar about the problems with chinese grits and I ended up sticking in a little story about East Indian Hamburger Dills.

I doubt now that the good Senator will even pay any attention to my problem with the grits. 

Such is life.  

A party for Dannielynn and I hurt my foot.

On friday evening, I was standing at the kitchen stove working on a batch of bean soup.

 (actually, where else would the stove be? I suppose that phrase originated in the days when there was a stove or some sort or another in multiple rooms. )

Easy there, Gord. You’re wandering. Remember. Stick to the subject.

Getting back to the stove, the television was wrapping up the evening news while I was adding the ham hocks to the just washed beans. Following a commercial, One of those ‘entertainment’ shows (my italics)that talks about celebrities came on. The lead story was about the first birthday party for the little girl born out of wedlock to the big boobed lady. (Sharon Anne Smith, I think). 

This was the lady who married a rich octogenarian suffering from dementia. He died shortly after the wedding leaving the former stripper a rich and very bereaved widow.

A few years later, She herself died of a drug overdose a few months after giving birth to the celebrity baby and several men came forward with apparently legitimate claims to be the father of the baby.  This was in response to the fact that the baby stood to inherit the millions originally belonging to the doddering old fool. Naturally, that had nothing to do with mulitude of claimants.

One, an itinerant something or other named Larry won the DNA contest. I don’t know his last name because these shows as well as the check out lane gossip magazines never seem to use last names anymore.

Anyway, I’ve already told you way more than you probably wanted to hear but this show was featuring the birthday party and the ‘hundreds’ of guests.  When I heard ‘Dannielynn’ , I turned away from the stove to go in the other room to grab the remote. The TV was already showing a picture of the deceased mother in one of those vaseline-smeared cloud like pictures and heart rending music was playing as the correspondent was busy elevating Sharon Anne to sainthood for being a model mother for this poor little child. 

Now, I don’t mean to pick on the deceased but this was too much for me.

I couldn’t stand anymore of it. I made a lunge for the remote and tripped over one of the kitchen chairs, banging the hell out of my big toe in the process. 

Now I’m walking with a limp. Thanks a lot, Sharon Anne.  

G2 note:

My little word counter just told me I have 381 words in this little ditty. Another 3 hundred, a bit of cleaning up and maybe some sentence restructuring and I have myself a newspaper column for this week.  I might even throw in something about the world going to hell in a handbasket while I’m at it.

Some people have falling leaves. I have Susie’s feet.

If you don’t get to read either of the Morgan County papers or the Loogootee Tribune, here’s the link to last week’s column. 

http://www.reporter-times.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=89877&format=html 

Should I sue somebody??

Pepsi Cola has announced that it is bringing out another version of Gatorade. It is to be called G2.

The end of a story.

Last winter, shortly after New Year’s I wrote a column which I am reprinting here. 

          A few weeks ago, we spent the day cleaning Fionna, the  RV that serves as our winter home. We needed to clear some space for different stuff that my wife, Susie, had picked up in our six weeks of volunteering at a State Park in the Florida Keys. Some of our possessions were pitched into the trash while others were shifted from one storage spot to another.         

Some of these new possessions were destined for our Granddaughter’s house. A new Teddy bear, a Horseshoe crab shell and some new outfits found on sale at the Marathon Key K-mart. I kept telling Susie that Riley Marie, our granddaughter doesn’t need any more stuff but my pleas fell on deaf ears.          

Also included in this inventory of new stuff were several large pieces of driftwood which looked  beautiful when dragged off the shoreline but when it came time to find a place to cram the things in Fionna’s underbelly, the misshapen logs suddenly looked like something dragged off a woodpile.            None the less, after much discussion with my soul mate about why we needed all this driftwood, I found a place for it but it took up every last square inch of available space. We were ready to go but I took some time going over the Camper and our truck looking for any new rust brought on by the salty Ocean breezes before heading for the exit.

\           Ten months from now, God willing, we will return to this park and a slightly altered Park Staff because 2 of the Rangers will be headed off into retirement. They’ve both served their time, each having in excess of 35 years of service to the Park System.

           One of the two will find himself walking out that office door for the last time next September. He has installed a counter on his workstation so that when he comes in each day and flips his computer’s ‘ON’ switch, a small message in the corner of the monitor tells him how many days he has left to work.          When we arrived in late October, he showed me the display, a tinge of anticipation mixed with a bit of uncertainty in his voice. The slowly blinking display announced. ‘316’.

            “Are those 316 work days?” I asked.

           “NO, NO. Mon.”  He answered. Being in the keys for most of his life, he has picked up a Caribbean accent.  “It gets too confusing to just do work days, what with holidays, some vacation time and being sick once in a while.” He paused.and looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.  “No, sir. It’s just days. I want to see every last day roll off of there.”

           It was raining buckets the day the counter slipped below 300. I wanted to be there when he flipped the computer switch for this milestone and see his reaction to the blinking ‘299’ but I didn’t feel like getting drenched. The event went unnoticed by everyone except God,  the Ranger and the computer’s CPU. 

           Near the end of our stay, day 277 for the ranger dawned like most other days in the park with a beautiful sunrise over a mirror smooth ocean surface. A flock of pelicans flew low over the water looking, I suppose, for a fresh fish breakfast.

            ”Another day in paradise.” The locals like to say. This laid back, easy going lifestyle has the days slipping by way too fast. I looked for some way to slow them down, metaphorically drag my feet in the sand, as it were, but all to no avail.

           As day 277 moved quickly by, we met with the ranger and his supervisor for a rare administrative meeting. As we listened to the supervisor go over some new rules handed down by some faceless bureaucrat in Tallahassee, I could see the ranger’s normal pleasant demeanor disappearing from his face.  I watched the Ranger shifting from foot to foot as the supervisor explained new bathroom cleaning rules; something about new procedures for applying scrub brushes to shower walls. The silly rules and tasks that bosses, Government and otherwise, can dream up are maddening, even to a bystander like me.

           “Schedule an In-Service for the volunteers on mold eradication.”  I thought I heard the supervisor tell the Ranger.

           The ranger nodded and his mouth moved imperceptibly. He might have been giving his assent to the order. He also could have been blowing bubbles, whistling or even saying the Rosary as he wasted another few minutes of his precious time on earth listening to the bureaucratic nonsense.      It could have been any of those things on his lips but it wasn’t. Standing next to him, I knew what it was. I could see that day’s number on his lips as he repeated it over and over, his lips now barely twitching.

          “277. 277. 277.” His counter must have been of some comfort to him and I understood why. Back in the last days of my working life, I was of the same frame of mind. I hated my job and all the corporate silliness that went with it. I couldn’t wait to get out of it as the minutes and hours dragged by. I didn’t have a counter on my computer screen but I had one in my head and it never seemed to move along.

            But it did and I finally didn’t have to show up at my desk anymore. That last day on the job was only yesterday in my head but while it doesn’t seem possible, when I look at the calendar, it’s been 5 years.

            I wanted to tug on that Ranger’s shirt sleeve and let him know that he should not be wishing his life away. As soon as that work day counter hits zero, then another counter starts. His days are numbered, as are all of ours, he’s just not going to have a computer to tell him how many days he has left. Statistics tell me that I have 11 or 12 years remaining and I’m hoping they go a lot slower than the last five. I’m also hoping that the statistics are wrong, at least in my case.

           In a minute, I’m gonna finish this thousand words and then I’m going to climb out of my chair as best I can, trying to straighten up and ease the pain in my back. I’m also wondering if I’d do life all over again if I could. Suddenly turn young again and suffer through those workplace days with unseen idiots at the helm? Trade this aching back for a chance to straighten up without pain and report for work every day? Would I do that if I could?           I don’t know.  

Gordon Grindstaff grew up in Loogootee, In and spent a tiny bit of his adult life ever wondering why he left.  He  has spent the past five years traveling about the country with his wife, Susie and   has recently completed ‘Travels with Susie”, a compilation of their adventures. Signed copies of the book are available at Barnes and Noble in Plainfield. They are also available through both Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Mr. Grindstaff is currently busy wondering why his recent newspaper columns have approached a serious thene instead of the usual nonsense.  He can be reached via e-mail at gordongrindstaff@yahoo.com 

That’s the column. The Ranger with the countdown clock on his computer is Gary Creech, our Volunteer Coordinator. Last Monday, on September 5th, Gary collapsed and died a few hours later of complications from a stroke. He was about 58 years old,  a Vietnam veteran and a helluva nice guy. 

The computer countdown clock, although I did not see it, would have read 25.

  

when you really stop to think about it…

I have been limiting what I eat now for several weeks and I have begun to realize how much food I used to eat.  All those buffets restaurants; Golden Corral, Ponderosa, Shoney’s, Cici’s Pizza, Mama Rose’s, all the Chinese places, even the salad bars with their gallons of salad dressing. Good Lord. I don’t know how I’m still alive.

I have resigned myself to never eating in any of those places again and in my current state of mind, I think I can stay away because it’s such a waste and so damn unhealthy. 

Still, when I think about the breakfast buffet at Golden Corral and those scrambled eggs with salsa, pounds of bacon, ham, sausage gravy by the quart. This doesn’t even include the little link s atr ski  df  gk*9 % rH r 60 T  

Whatr the hell ?? //)I gh 8 ^ * &

Sorry. I started slobbering and the mositure must have screwed up my keyboard. I’ve got it dried out now and everything seems to be working okay. I’ll get back with you on that. .

Yet another sunrise. (Thank goodness I’m still here to see them.)

I was up early and walked the 600 feet to the road and got the Sunday paper. The sun was just beginning to peak through the trees and across the road, there was an unbelievably beautiful pastoral scene with cows in the pasture, a patch of fog and a couple of farm buildings. I rushed back to get the camera and took about four or five shots, none of which even came close to capturing the moment. Either I need a better camera or the camera needs a better picture taker.  

The best picture will just have to remain in my head,  I suppose. 

After I turned around and headed back up the drive, the sun poked it’s rays through the trees and stopped me again. It’s not a Maine or a Florida Keys sunrise but still , it was pretty.

Many’s the day, after a couple of hours on the mower and with eyes watery from the pollen, I wonder why we remain in the country. A really great September morning helps to answer that. 

Imagine my surprise!!

I was out this morning watching the hummingbirds and what to my surprise, these two apparitions appeared.

“Why, it’s the good fairies!” I cried.

“We are not fairies and please don’t call us that. We’re butterflies.” The bigger of the two fairi.. , uh, butterflies told me.

‘Yeah.” the little one said. “we’re butterflies.”

look like fairies to me. 

Is this better???

A week or so ago, I published a picture of myself with a chainsaw and a stump that I had just created. I received some disparaging remarks about the experience; some things to the effect that, indeed, size does matter.

No matter. If my detractors wanted me to cut down something bigger, I would. It took a little longer and it also took a little bigger chainsaw but……….