The Finds (2)

“Shit! Shit!” Scratched, exhausted, and dehydrated, Bruce fell to his knees and stared. There was no air yacht. There was nothing but an empty field of lightly waving weeds. “Shit.”

Trotting ahead, Jasper the dog paused to look back at him. Bruce let himself sink to his knees. That whole climb up, he’d been going through ideas about what an air yacht looked like. Between those ideas, he’d rested, questioning if there wasn’t a better way to get up the damn hill, and entertained ideas about the couple and their demise. Seemed weirder as he thought about it. As weird, the dog didn’t seem to care. The dog, in fact, appeared to have the best grasp of events.

Now, up here at almost dusk, knees quaking, back aching, stomach rumbling, Bruce wanted to spew. Stupid of him. Stupid. Jerking weeds out, he tossed them aside in anger. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” So erudite. His teachers and parents would be proud. Maneuvering to sit, he pulled out his water. The dog was still watching him, like he was waiting. “What?” Bruce called. “What?” Now he’d have a dog following him. Getting food and water for himself was enough struggle without adding a canine mouth to feed. Fuck. He should have never gotten involved. Should’ve just kept walking. That would teach him to be humane to another. Never again, no, never again.

Standing, he remembered the fob, peered around, and dug it out of his pocket. Nothing special, just one of those made for keyless entry to cars. Light gold, it had three buttons, none marked. What the hell, he decided, pressing the top button.

A series of short tones sang through the air, then the side of a vehicle appeared. Vehicle? Forty, fifty feet long…yeah, “A yacht,” he scoffed. “What the hell?” Gawking as Jasper trotted toward it, Bruce stumbled forward. The thing was tall, like three stories (levels?). Lights were on. It had a porch running most of its length. Steps led up onto the porch, where there was an open door. Jasper was just going through that.

“What the hell.” Suspicious, Bruce put a hand on the old man’s gun and exercised a slow three sixty of the area. No others were around. It was cooling as the sun turned red and drooped toward the horizon, less like it was done and more like it was giving up. Yeah, what the hell.

Pulling the gun out (may as well, in case he needs it) (and hoping he didn’t shoot himself — he really wasn’t comfortable with guns), he sucked in a few deep breaths and strode for the vehicle’s door.

December 13, 2020 0

For Free

I broke my arm in July and have been rehabilitating it. I’ve recently achieved doing pushups again. Proud of it, I went in and announced to my wife, “I can do pushups.”

She looked up. “For money?”

I thought about it. “Are you going to pay me?”

“No. I don’t think anyone will pay you to do pushups for money.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

I explained my purposes, but now I was a little down. I can do pushups, but nobody is paying me.

It’s like I’m working for free.

December 10, 2020 0

Trump Logic

December 9, 2020 3

The State of Things

I was thinking about being on Okinawa in December, 1982. I’d arrived there after thinking about other Decembers, starting with here and now. I’ve been in Ashland for fifteen years, the longest period I’ve ever spent in one place. Fifteen Decembers in Ashland. That’s extending the current record. I’ve spent Decembers all over the place. Decembers in the 1950s were in Virginia, California, and Texas. I don’t really remember them, except for glimpses, as I was born in 1956. Family lore, and old Kodak glossy black and whites, tell me that this is where I was.

For the 1960s, I was in and around the Pittsburgh, PA, area — Wilkingsburg, Verona, Plum, Penn Hills, Monroeville. These are more sharply remembered. Then I left Mom to live with Dad, ending up in Ohio and West Virginia. Graduating high school in 1974, I joined the military. Decembers were spent in Texas and Mississippi; Ohio and the Philippines; West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Korea, and Texas. There’s split time, as I often started December in one place in that decade and ended it in another. The last December of the 1980s was spent in Texas, and then the next four were spent on Okinawa.

But I stopped at Okinawa, remembering people and events. I struggled with one event: was that 1982 or 1983? Well, I’d look it up. That’s what the net is for, right? Goofing, I just put in, “On this date 1982”. That search brought me in information on November 27, 1982. May, 1982, July, June. December? No. What the what? Thinking, maybe I’m crazy, and this isn’t December, I checked my computer’s date: it showed 12/9/2020. Okay, twelve is December, right? (Yes, my computer shows month, day, year. In the military, we always showed year, month, day. Took years of weaning to unlearn that.)

Blame it on the search engine. Had to be. I tried other search engines. Weirdly, they all came up with information about those dates but none sprang up with what happened on this date in 1982.

That’s the state of things. The computers don’t return what you want, but what others looked for, or maybe, trying to second-guess me, what they think I want. I kept flipping through search pages: April, August, October. One December result, for December 2nd, from Facebook, something about Michael Jackson.

Maybe my memory is doing things to my mind, but I recall being able to put in such a nebulous search and having today returned, along with happened on this date in history. Not any more, though. When I put in December 9, everything came up as I thought it should.

Yeah, just another rant about the way it used to be, innit? Or maybe I’m just imagining what I think I used to remember.

December 9, 2020 0

For Those of A Certain Era

December 8, 2020 0

Mask Musing

We ninja up in the morning

slipping out at dawn

masks tight on our face

racing past icy lawns.

Visiting the grocery store

has sure become an task

but it beats the alternative

of being dead sick on our ass.

December 8, 2020 2

Family Lore

I woke up thinking about Mom and being snowed in. I’d already sent her a quick, kidding message about having enough food on hand. It’s an ongoing joke that Mom always has a great deal of food on hand — especially desserts and treats. Besides, my three sisters and four adult grandchildren live in the area. They’re always checking in on her to ensure she has food. Mom’s boyfriend lives with her. His family also checks in on them. Food won’t be an issue.

Mom enjoys telling stories, and being snowed in reminded me of one. A retired nurse, she was a recurring baby-sitter for my grandniece, Amy. Once, when Amy was six (she’s graduating from college next year), Mom was driving her through a slippery Pittsburgh snowstorm on one of the back roads around Penn Hills and Monroeville. As the car began spinning and swerving, Amy shouted, “Grandma, don’t kill us!”

The car ended up off road, but a young man witnessed it and got her out in short order. However, the sentence, “Grandma, don’t kill us!” is enshrined in family lore.

December 4, 2020 3

The Healthy Stuff

Sickening, you know?

I was grocery shopping in a store during the ‘vulnerable hours’. Walking down the frozen food aisle as my wife shopped for baking supplies, I spied ‘healthy’ meals. You probably know of these. They proudly proclaim, ‘Organic!’ ‘Low Fat’ (or Lo Fat). ‘Gluten Free’. They like to tell about how little sugar they have and how much protein they have.

That’s all great. Checking out the sodium levels on the nutrition panels always leaves me shaking my head. Rare is the one that lists sodium levels that are in the twenty-thirty percent range of the recommended daily levels. Most are forty to fifty percent. That’s because sodium is not just for flavor, but is also a stabilizing and binding influence, and also helps extend the shelf life.

Well, how is it healthy?

We know that it isn’t don’t we? But, here in the United States, we play these games about what is healthy and safe, what’s a ‘good value’, and what’s nutritional. It’s been going on (and escalating) for decades. Remember when ketchup was classified as a vegetable under the Reagan Administration back in the 1980s?

Just a mid-morning mini-rant. Sorry. Do carry on. We’ll now return to our normal activities already in progress.