Merry Christmas Isn't an Insult

Mentioning Christ, Now Them's Fightin' Words

 

 

 

A couple Millennia ago (or so) a Philosopher was born in the Middle East who spawned a religion that has grown ever since, and inspired both the love and admiration of Billions. He also inspired the disdain and mockery of others who don't like what he said, or the history of some of his followers whom didn't always listen to what he said with close enough attentions.

 

 

Lets forget his parentage, or the attributing of magical powers to his story for the sake of staying focused and concentrate on his messages to see what exactly seems to rub some people the wrong way every time his name gets mentioned.

 

 

Many deny he ever existed. They are like those who claim Shakespeare never wrote any of his own plays, or that it was really Francis Bacon who did the work on the side. In both cases, whoever said the words, be they Biblical or the Bard, the message and delivery were something remarkable. Whoever said (or penned) them as the case might be, was a person of exceptional talents and insights. That kind of thinker doesn't just pop out of the woodwork every day. I prefer to think Jesus said what he said and Shakespeare wrote what he wrote, even if there was no register at the copy write office to back that up.

 

 

But if you are on the "Dis-Christian" bandwagon, the preferable leap of faith is toward the other direction and that conspiracies were responsible, rather than what seems to me a greater likelihood of Jesus being a historical as well as Biblical figure.

 

 

And what were the things Jesus said that rub so many the wrong direction? The biggest one I have come to believe is "Love God and follow His instructions." That one right there seems to raise more ire than all the rest of his controversies combined.

 

 

 





Jehovah literally means "God with no name" and His old Testament antics cannot under any stretch of the imagination be called politically correct. Heck, before the first book of the Bible was over He had already wiped out all life on Earth (except a small boat load of animals) and He went around blasting cities and cultures who didn't agree with Him like an omnipresent Norman Schwarzkopf. He instructed us for several more books, how to live, what to eat and what to  avoid if we didn't want the same treatment. That included no outside of Marriage dating, no premarital sex, and certainly no homosexuality.

The sex edicts tend to rub the wrong way a great many people with frisky tendencies. Naturally the sexual revolution in the 50s and 60s had a hand in upping the antae on provocative behavior and dismissiveness of traditional morays,  but lets be honest folks, men and women have always chafed a bit on the "Just say no to sex " rules. Its nature to want it and somehow God instructing otherwise is a bit counterintuitive to our thinking on the subject.

Jesus went further in making enemies in the secular world by putting down wealth acquisition and suggesting we all act a bit more collectively. That tends to chafe Conservatives almost as much as sex rules chafe Liberals. Jesus can be said to be non-discriminative in taking on the classes by torpedoing everybody equally for their unruly behaviors.


Between the two extremes of disobedience Jesus covered a lot of ground I don't believe too many people of any religion or political persuasion can find fault with. Love your Neighbor. Be generous. Forgive others. Walk softly and be willing to take a blow or two for peace. Those of us Christians who can even get that much right are actually doing a great deal more than  most of the faithful manage to achieve. Unfortunately, even one of the 12 disciples turned out a murderer and the rest of Historical Christianity has even a poorer track record than that for doing his will.

So there is a lot of bad history the modern Christian has to live down, as well as a basic tendency for many to reject parts of the Christian message even if we had no baggage to deal with. Take the Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered movement as an example. I know quite a few people who profess allegiance or sympathy with that cause and because of some Old Testament scriptures, reject all of Christ's teachings right along with the Laws of Moses that condemn homosexuality. This is most unfortunate and I believe a lot of them missed an important point.

Jesus did not come to cancel Old Testament rules, but he did come to reinterpret how to deal with them. "Let you who are without sin cast the first stone" was his ruling and none of us are any less sinful than the other when it comes to Heaven-worthy perfection. Even if Homosexuality is a sin, it is only one of many and therefore nothing we should single out for special ostracism. I am sure there are those who will maintain with angry breath that Homosexuality isn't a sin. If they are right, they will have to ignore certain Old Testament Teaching and statements made by Paul after Christ died. Of course the Old Testament also forbids eating pork and shell fish. That's bad news for Red Lobster and Famous Dave's BBQ.

Its getting so if a Cross is erected in public, someone sneezes in school and someone says "bless you" that some great American freedom of thought has been violated. I would point out there is freedom of religion, not freedom from being offended. The state may not exercise an endorsement of a faith, but they also can't stop anyone from doing so, even if its on their time. If Religion can't be expressed in school by non employees of the system then neither can science. It is the new religion regardless of what secularists claim. It would be a damned fool idea to ban science so I say open the door to all thought, and allow it's expression. Yes that includes Islam and Atheism as well. Christianity need not be excluded because of Historical monopolies it once held.

Then there is the notion that Christianity is a male dominated religion that oppresses women and has no place for them. I reject that entirely, especially as a Catholic. In that original Christian Dogma, Mary has a cult following that certainly eclipses all 11 disciples and Paul combined. If Christmas is about anything, it is a celebration of that young girl, her trials and tribulations, and her success as a Mother in bringing a son into the world who changed things for the better. The story of Christmas is the story of Mary. She may not have any scriptures she left like the apostles, but her role in things was without question far more influential to the whole beginning of things. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.... Think about that when someone says "Merry Christmas". Joseph, you still have my vote for Step Dad of the Year as well.

Green Acres is the Place to be, Farm livin' is the Life for me...

Green Acres: Two City Slickers become Country Good Ole Boys

 

The Summer dragged on and I soon discovered, living out of a suitcase in Susan's Basement had it's clear disadvantages. Number one among them was what miniscule organizational skills I had were lost in a clutter of disarray and bad memory. I quickly misplaced such important things as my password to Google, who is the parent of this blog and thus the gate was barred to me for several months doing posts.

Finally in early October we were able to take possession of the property I hope to raise tomatoes next spring up at Nomad's Bluff, which is a ten acre, (mostly wooded) location.

Having practically no furniture made moving easy, but left Sean and I with little to recreate on, (including chairs) so that our farm house was more like a big hollow filled with a few pieces of camping equipment. I learned to use a painting pallet knife as a spatula and we drank out of two coffee cups, ate off of either a frying pan or a tin pie plate and did the laundry and the dishes in the same sink.

Fairly soon people began to donate their cast off dishes and soon I had an acceptable supply of cutlery, knives and forks and commemorative football glasses earned at Hardies during various promotional give-aways. We are still sleeping on army cots, have neither a couch nor a Television and trash we dispose of by making a large pile in the middle of the back yard and soaking it with barbeque starter fluid.

The previous tenants left us two moldy old couches that we disposed of in this way making a bon fire of them that lit up the night sky and smoldered as embers for several hours. I considered loading them down with russet potatoes first, thus creating a new way of preparing "couch potatoes". But since the couches were of suspect cleanliness (I found a snake and two field mice having a party in one) I decided to fry the potatoes up in my only salvaged cast iron skillet I brought with us from Virginia.

Sean's Smoker has come in handy quite a bit up here. He finished it at last and it can cook up meat finer than an old Whore can polish a door knob. We cooked on it so often we actually got tired of smoked meats and had to let it idle for a while till out pallets forgot the savory flavor over exposure.

This is our house, a prefabricated double wide trailer home combination on steel girders and cinderblock moorings. The only internet we get is so-o-o-o slow that the USPS can deliver mail faster than I can send out e-mails. Its an all electric house with well water that has so many energy saving features one has to argue with the light switches to keep a bulb on for more than 5 minutes. I ain't complaining and have lived in far worse, even in the city. We bug bombed the hell out of it when we moved in and I repainted the entire interior.

This is the back yard where many of the tomatoes will grow. Behind it is a short section of woods and a rather steep cliff that allows a view of several miles when the foliage is removed from the trees. At night the stars are so clear one can see the milk of galaxies and the faint features of dim stars one never sees in a light polluted cityscape. It is very quiet at night (except when a train passes at the bottom of the cliff) and one hears owls and coyotes hooting and howling on occasion to punctuate the stillness.

The green barn at the top of the page is also on the property. It was once used as a dungeon for SM sex parties by the local patrons of the Wiccan Church next door. I understand this is not part of the Wiccan routine, but merely a diversion of some of it's former members who have moved on to other dens of iniquity elsewhere. It currently holds a lot of broken appliances and dusty deteriorating furniture. No doubt there will be more bon fires in the back yard to clear if for livestock in the Spring.

The house also came with it's own feral cat, known to the locals as Critter . When I arrived she was thin and covered in ticks and fleas, but after some medication and a lot of cans of tuna and chicken she has fattened up and adopted me as her person. She shows her gratitude by once a week bringing me a dead mouse which she leaves on the front porch. She is small for a full grown cat but has a nice temperament, uses the litter box and likes to sleep on my bed now. I have been told before I arrived she refused to go indoors except for the coldest days of Winter. I suppose I arrived just in time for her to go into retirement and become a house cat.

Sean recently turned 21 and since I was broke and couldn't buy him a proper present, I acquiesced, allowing him to adopt his cousin's dog Kodiak who I had serious reservations about since if there was ever an evil Jinn in the form of a dog, it was in this one. But Sean's love quickly reformed him and he is turning out to be quite a good dog. Huskies have a reputation for being wild and Kodiak is no exception. But Sean has managed to bond with him and gotten him to respect our things with minimal destruction. He does like to dig up the yard going after burrowing moles, but otherwise is content to chew on chew toys and scraps of wood we give him.

We made him a doggie door to the back porch and a gate on the railing to keep him in. His romp on his own nearly got him shot by a local chicken farmer so we are working to get him to recognize that the ten acres we live on aught to be his boundaries. He looks a lot like a wolf which does not endear him to local owners of livestock.

I build him a bed which he sleeps on and he walks twice a day with Sean exploring the woods and sniffing all the interesting trails left by game. He even tolerates me, but Sean is his boy and there is no mistaking they belong to each other.

Critter of course found the dog to take some getting used to. She stayed alive this long by avoiding coyotes, and this looked like an especially large one of those. For a couple of weeks she refused to return to the house, but her love of home cooked meals finally strengthened her resolve and now we are one happy family with only an occasional hiss or growl.

I have been working odd jobs to pay the rent while Sean has largely been unemployed. Winter is now here and Christmas is close at hand. I designed my own card this year. Here is the cover.

I am hoping to soon recue the remainder of my furniture and art studio from Virginia. Sean is heading back there in two days and will return with a Budget rental Truck and our things (God willing). I have to work and stay here if we hope to keep the rent paid and the wolves from our front door.

In closing, here are a few shots of the surrounding countryside.

Our Barn at Sunset















The Oak Spirit Sanctuary (The Wiccan Church Next Door in a circa 1920's Farmhouse

The Bluffs on the Missouri River a mile or two from the house

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main street of Wooldridge, (The closest town)



You Can't Catch a Chupacabra With a Corn Dog

You Can't Catch a Chupacabra With a Corn Dog

The animals around this place are not only very wily, but extremely difficult. I have spent more time chasing Kodiak, the blue eyed husky up and down the block than I care to. It seems the other dog, Barnaby the English shepherd, (who was here first) is attempting to murder him whenever we aren't looking. Sometimes I agree whole heartedly with that sentiment, but being a good steward of all our animal brethren, I try to remember Kodiak is hardly more than a pup. (A willful, disobedient very sneaky pup.). English Shepherds are among the smartest of all dogs, ranking right up there with German Shepherds and Lassie. Barnaby likes to lure Kodiak out for a romp hoping to take him far enough out he gets lost and never makes it back home again. Sort of like if Lassie had led Timmy to the well, then as he was peering in, gave him a push from behind. So the two of them run off regularly, one with the idea of getting rid of the other, the second with pure mischief and mayhem on what little mind he owns. The good news is Kodiak is finally house broken, though now chews everything not secured from his clamoring snout. I am constantly watching for my shoes and socks to disappear.

Then there is little Totoro the cat who lives down stairs where we sleep. He is a fur ball with enough energy to power a convoy of over-loaded Toyota Prius over the Rockies. He is into everything. Twice tonight he has retyped my blog when I wasn't looking. Above he is playing me at chess. He isn't that good however. I beat him 3 out of 4 games.

Sean and the boys, (Noah and Robert) repaired the jeep this week, taking the head gasket off and replacing the old worn one, then the oil and other tweaks to get Jeepney Driver VII back in first rate running order. I used it to job interview a couple of places this week, as well take Sean to a weird interview in Mexico. (Not that Mexico, Mexico Missouri, though its a nice Segway to the Chupacabra title...)

They filled  the jeep with Royal Purple Oil, though from what I can tell, its the same color as regular oils are.

Driving much better I went to a job interview on Tuesday at the Columbia Lawncare LCC which is out in the country in a pastoral setting with can shaped hay stacks, open fields and white gravel roads. It is headquartered in a barn and has an office next to it, both prefab metal buildings that are both roomy and cheap to build. There is no company sign as customers do not seem to come to the office, but rather it is a mowing crew company wanting to better expand into lawn maintenance with fertilizers, some decorative bed gardening and general up keep of large accounts like apartment complexes. I wrote them a sample Fall service program using current account companies they subscribe to for products, and some other companies where they have no account but need the service of that particular lawn care agent. I shopped around for good pricing and sent it off in a nice package e-mail to hopefully clench the deal on hiring me. It worked, though not before I went in for a second application this week, trying to make sure something in the way of employment was lined up soon. The second application I put in was with Ortho Pest Control. The manager there seemed like a first class ass, and not nearly as affable as Allen was at Columbia Lawncare.

Sean meanwhile is getting antsy waiting for the Flat Branch to call him in and has been called in for an interview with Tradesmen International, who seem interested in his welding skills. This would in our minds be far a better gig than restaurant work, though we have to be sure its a legitimate Job and not a Job Service posing as a welding job only to extract a fee from him for their employment assistance. This is a common BS go -between in these parts and about what half the Arkansas job offers are run through. Thus one has to beware of little scams since one can look for work as good as any service without paying them a fee. If this place is legit, they are telling Sean he will work as far away as Louisiana and Mississippi, and travel two weeks at a time to remote job sights. That sounds like real welding to me.

Before that however I spotted a welding job in the Craigslist in Mexico Missouri, and we decided to put an application in for it. The drive there was not quite as far as Old Mexico, nor New Mexico, but it was a darn sight farther than I ever drove before to fill out a job application. To celebrate the waste of gas to Mexico, we ate lunch at Taco bell. After stuffing ourselves with cha-cha congas we drove another 20 miles farther still to a sleepy little berg  near No-where'sville and certainly wa-a-a-a-y beyond reasonable commute distance.

We arrived at the "Armed Camp" which was our destination
to find the entire property surrounded in high link fence with barbed wire around the top, with a second fence on the inside and a security check point in a small trailer leading to the inner sanctum of the main warehouse. For a town in the middle of Missouri corn fields this looked entirely like a military industrial complex to me. Sean approached and was stopped by two armed guards. "What is your business?" they demanded with proper CIA-esque paranoia.

"I came to answer a job add on Craigslist." Sean replied.

"What job listing?" said Rent-a-cop one.
"No one told us about any job listing." said Rent-a-cop two.

"Try the help wanted section." suggested Sean.

They got on the phone to their fuehrer who did in fact back up Sean's story. Lucky for us "the Boss" did or I might be writing this entry from Guantanamo Base Prison right now.

Sean came back to the jeep to fill out the application. "Gosh I hope I don't get this job." Sean grumbled as he filled in the blanks and permission slips for background checks and other legal paranoia attached to the paperwork. We left the place content in the knowledge that working there was not any better than being unemployed derelicts. We decided then and there to go fishing rather than sweat poverty. If he was hired we would have to keep the job after all. I'm sure their retirement package involves an assassin making sure you don't spill any Government secrets.

Coming back home I learned my job

application had been accepted and I start Monday. One less problem for now at least.

We worked on the new smoker. So far I have invested about $200 in metal toward the practice exercise which Sean is welding together in our considerable free time. Noah came out giving us some pictures and posing for a few mugs himself.

Talking again with my long lost Nephew he reminds me more of me at his age than he does my brother Dan. Though a very large fellow (he looks at home with a group of line-backers eating turkey drumsticks) we also have some differences. We both spent time drifting for sure, but oddly he is from Virginia and raised in Arkansas thus very rural, while I was born in Arkansas, spent the last 25 years in Virginia and am much more cosmopolitan. Sean is a city boy who takes to country living like a cow takes to blooming buttercups. 




True to our promise to

ourselves this Sunday we set out for Finger Lake, where one can fish for fish, shoot guns at targets, and presumably hunt and shoot fish simultaneously if the situation arises. It didn't. We did catch two minnows and a fish that if it had a full belly weighed about 1/8th of a pound. Sean did feed the fish in lake well again however, and they swam away with all our store-bought red wigglers entirely hook free.

I spoke with Terry by phone yesterday, who is finally back from his Alaska Vacation. Seems he likes the place but not well enough to move there and drill oil wells. We are invited to ride with him on his boat and fish in Arkansas. We look forward to feeding those fish our worms as well, and further hope they are a little less shy about biting down on hooks.

That's all the blogging worth telling tonight. Tomorrow I go to work. May the Cash be with me.

Pawn Takes Bishop

Pawn Takes Bishop

The Job at Wilsons only lasted one day. I convinced myself writing this blog, that staying there even temporarily was counterproductive. It would prevent me from looking for better work if I committed to stay on rather than end it before it began. If Chuck had gone ahead and signed me up with the proper tax forms as an employee, I would have felt honor bound to give two weeks notice. In four weeks, working at Wilsons, I might be laid off simply because I finished the bricks. He certainly seemed to have little interest in me helping out with plant related things. His nursery after all, is a fruit stand that murders plants, not nurtures them.

So then. Today I started again, with 6 copies of my resume I set out to find every nursery in the vicinity and make a call on the owner. This was in part hobbled by the fact the jeep is parked until next Monday.



Robert came to me and warned that he had checked the engine, and that it had a blown head gasket. He knows mechanics and can fix it cheaply, but not until his next day off on Monday. Until then, driving it is a risk, one I can't afford to take. Blowing an engine right now would blow a lot more things. Transportation. Vehicle ownership. A thing to call my home when all other homes are gone. The damned Jeepney Driver VII is suffering from a mental break down. Head gasket blown. It truly is a crazy jeep now.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 





Susan managed to poison herself with an Oreo cookie cheese cake, which she only took a single bite from. But it was enough to totally mess her stomach up. She is very intolerant of chemicals in processed foods. All day she was nauseous, but still managed to haul me to three different nurseries in her fuel hybrid car. We also saw a historic oak that sat at the edge of a giant soy bean field, where the beans stretched for miles along the river bottom next to beautiful rolling wooded hills filled with deer. The tree was massively old and twisted. Did I take a picture? No, I forget to do that a lot a key moments in the day. Just picture in your mind a Tree Ent that doesn't move any longer. That was the tree.

One of the three nurseries I cold called upon seemed to give me some hope of consideration. Dave, the owner seemed impressed by my knowledge, and I sort of showed off a bit by helping a customer with answers his own staff lacked knowledge about. Will it work into a job? I wish I had Dorothy's silver slippers right now. Then I could say definitively yes. (Though gardening in silver slippers may look a little queer, at least the commute home would be easier when I commanded them to fly me.)

Sean was meanwhile going to his first attempt to work at the Wet Branch Saloon or whatever the name of the place is. He borrowed a suit from Grant, was given a proper introduction by Noah and Robert, so it was sort of a household wide effort to get him on in the Family business. In this case the family doesn't own the business, just they all seem to work for it. He met "Chef" the man with power to hire and fire and was given an interview for early next week. Tuesday I think I heard. No wait, NEWS FLASH... Robert and Noah just returned and Sean is hired. That is good news. Now at least one of us is employed.

• Sean and I played chess this evening and made a list of equipment we will need for our welding business. Its a wish list of course, but we are planning it ... HARD. We are going to get rich fixing hitches and broken farm implements.     Sounds as likely a way as any of making a living. When I get money this time I plan to weld my piggy bank shut!

 Sean, Barnaby, Kodiak and Noah's Elbow

Wilsons Nursery, a tale of 1000 bricks....

Wilson's Nursery, a Tale of 1000 Bricks...

The first day of work at a new Establishment should not go quite like it did. When I go to work for a Nursery I expect them to behave differently I suppose. This is Wilsons Nursery

 
 
 
 




which I was supposed to start work at yesterday, but due to heavy rains I was told to stay home. Chuck also requested I laquor the brick I had as a sample that he hopes to in the near future laser engrave. (That and 999 others give or take.) Today I came in with a perfect brick, covered in a clear polymer glaze that was pure and smooth and clear as frozen mountain ice on a beer can commercial.

He looked at it, put it  aside and handed me 4 more and a bag with a body grinder. "Sand some of these off." He said. "We will take them to the Boy Scouts this afternoon to see how they laser engrave. They have a laser."

Gee, all we had in Cub Scouts were silver rings and pocket knives with two blades. Its a well armed troop. They actually have two lasers. I am guessing that the Girls Scouts can only counter with light sabers.

I went to work and soon had one brick sanded on all 6 sides, another on the top and bottom. "That is enough on finishing for now." Chuck took the pile of bricks. I will go see them today."

"I thought you wanted me to come along since I'm engraving the bricks." I said.

But apparently he had other ideas.

"What about me filling out paperwork for w2s?" I had my passport ready as is the usual document to cut through the pre-employment paperwork quickly.

"Naw! I haven't time for paperwork." he replied as though it was of little import. "I trust your a citizen."

OK. Now I know we are welcoming illegals with open arms, but as an employer, failure to fill out IRS documentation is a serious infraction of the law, and made me think this job is phony baloney some how. The usual way its done is fake documentation, not skipping the whole process as though it was his word to pay me, mine that I was legal. I begin to eye the exit.

"Just take care of these plants."  he pointed to a tangled mess of weedy yellowed over bloomed and under blooming perennials in two large rows behind the building (A former Sonic Restaurant if I ever saw one) "Pull out the dead buckets and recycle the dirt in those big silver bins over there."

He promptly left for other business and I stood in the sun doing what the plants needed, weeding, a quick funeral, a lot of pity.
The fertilizer he pipes in on them daily is a concoction illegal in Europe for the last 20 years, 20-20-20, a liquid quick release nitrogen, full of pollutants and salts, bad for plants and bad for the ground water. I was not tasked with watering, only seeing the results of bad food on nursery plants, those supposedly for sale to the public. Its hard to tell, since the place looks far more like a fruit and vegetable stand than a nursery. There are some plants, yes, a small greenhouse, also yes, but more of the enterprise seems adapted around selling fruit and sand blasting rounded rocks. Bricks, that was a new line he wants to expand into. How about expanding into growing plants? I wondered.

I met Augie who was doing the watering and is an expert in animal husbandry and fixing Canadian imported BMWs. We had an interesting talk and I found him down right likable. He has a pony tail on the top of his head, sun glasses, a beard and a lot of tattoos. Mid day he called me that he had knocked the ladder down and was stuck on the roof. I offered to lift it to him for a dollar. Might as well make some money this day. I can't say as I trust Chuck to follow through with 40 hours a week at $10, not an unwieldy sum for even a small nursery in a good location (which it is).

Hidden some place in this Nursery Photograph, you will find a hidden plant. See if you can spot it....



















So I spent the day trying to inform the few customers I saw how to grow plants, the simplest basics, and they were amazed, like they found a gold ring in a box of cracker jacks and it wasn't made of plastic.

This Nursery needs serious help. I mean this fruit stand is doing a booming business but is murdering plants...I mean, well its both.

I returned to find Sean literally bored out of his mind. "What did you do all day? " I asked.

"I killed pirates and took over a city." he replied tiredly.

All the PC gamers will note he is a normal on-line junkie like the rest of his generation seem to be. Tonight he goes in to the The Flat Branch Pub to seek employment from "Chef" the head... dare I guess his work? I hope he gets a job, even if it sucks and he turns it down. He needs some diversion. We both do. Money would divert us just fine wherever it came from.

Missouri Hospitality

Missouri Hospitality

One cannot help but notice some similarities (and differences) between Arkansas and Missouri in the layout of the land (similar) to the degree of Unionism and Road Production (different), to other intangibles I am still mulling over. I grew up in Arkansas and hear many similar night time noises in Missouri, smell the air and get a sense of childhood, and yet it feels more...shall I say it, Yankee? The people seem a bit more northern, a bit more liberal, yet hang on to many of the aspects of rural life as it permeates both states peoples. In Arkansas one feels as though the people of the city just got there and haven't shed their country ways. In Missouri it feels more like Alexandria Virginia was uprooted and part of it's population resettled here, including the health food stores, the College nightlife pubs, the eateries and the massive structure around disposing of garbage.

One cannot merely throw away trash, nor even discard a bag of recycled trash. One must haul it to public bins and sort the plastic paper and glass, take other reusable jugs in to local stores and buy water at 25 cents a gallon out of vending machines that pour it in your jug, and the food waste?...well that's between you and your conscience. Pay a garbage man a fat fee or compost it in the back yard.. To do all that trash juggling takes a filing system during evening meal clean up, with one pile of food waste going one way, the plastics and papers two others, and living under the constant fear of letting anything not scheduled to going in the real trash can.

But one can't complain the place isn't tidy and well kept can they? The other unusual shortage I found in the town of Columbia is a complete lack of fly swatters. Our first week here saw outside construction on Susan's house, putting new siding on the older trim and wood surfaces. Many flies found their way in the doors till the house was all abuzz. I asked Susan if she had a fly swatter and she replied no she did not. I figured it a friendly gesture to pick one up for her, so the next time I was out and about all the round-abouts they have at every other street corner here, I stopped in to a dollar store. Sorry, fresh out. Target...nope out of stock. Groceries? Half a store full of vitamin shelves, a section for incense, but no fly swatters. I was beginning to think there was some sort of local cultural live-and-let-live attitude about flies in this state. Susan then explained to me this was the reason she had no fly swatter, she couldn't find one either. Hmmm. I did not give up. Finally at a Tractor supply place on the edge of town, in the horse care section I found fly swatters 2 for two dollars. I bought four. Sean and I got to work in an orgy of cephalopod murdering frenzy; the flies literally dropped like flies. We broke one swatter and kept on going, ten, twenty, a hundred, it was an insect Armageddon. It was good to sit down to a meal again without looking for enemy aircraft coming in for a strafing run.

Its family night and the group gathers for some Dungeons and Dragons board game played till the wee hours of the night. Left is Nikki, (that is Susan's son Robert's Girlfriend. Susan sits in the middle with Bob to the right in the red vestments robe.

On the other side of the table are my nephew Noah left and Robert, Susan's son on the right. Noah is the Game master, the others the characters in their


imaginary world of non-computer generated play. Its funny to think of Dungeons and Dragons as old fashioned, but that it is these days. Getting the kids away from the computer to socialize is harder than it was in the days of the TV. Everyone is off in their own virtual world from their phone to their game system to their PC. Interacting with fellow human beings is becoming a rarer and rarer evening pastime. Of course, I sit here typing on a computer giving others advise on social interaction. Duh.

So they play D and D while Sean and I enjoy a bit of quiet time in our room which is a bit over-crowded with our stuff right now. I feel like I am urban camping to be honest, but with a very nice set of Park Rangers to care for us as we sack out.

My bed is a army cot with several quilts and a bag of dirty laundry as a pillow. It is really quite comfortable though I tend to step on Sean when I get out of bed at night to powder my nose. He sleeps on the air mattress to the right of the bunk. That's about the size of it; small and a bit cramped at the moment. Sean got two job interviews today while I tried to coat a brick with plastic polymer. This job at the nursery is beginning to give me room for doubts about the sanity of the project. 1000 bricks. Polymer that is finicky and difficult. A laser to cut brick with. Am I in an episode of Buck Rogers and don't realize I'm fictional?

To the right Robert and Noah are taking Sean to a shooting range where he is learning to fire his Grandfathers Mausberg 500 which is a fancy name for a Sears Shotgun, as well they fired other exotically numbered firearms with tough sounding military names. They are apparently expert dirt shooters since the target range has no targets to shoot at. There are plans in the works for a big wild Farrell pig hunt this fall. If Sean is as lucky at hunting as he is at fishing, we will have piglet giblets at least for one breakfast after that.

Angels have Lyres, so do wives of Fishermen...

Angels have Lyres, so do wives of Fishermen...

We have been staying with Susan now for a week. So far I have found a job after several interviews, but it has its quirks. First of all I applied to work as a Nurseryman, and the boss at Wilson's nursery wants to hire me as an engraver. He wants to start engraving bricks of all things, and finds his sand blasting system (for rocks) not up to the task.

I have already done some research into this and find that laser engraving, polymer filling is the way to create this right, and wonder at what I am getting in to. He wants 1000 bricks done this way. If I pull this off it will be a miracle.

Sean has a line at working a high class restaurant in town though they have not interviewed him. Still, he knows well three of it's employees Robert (Susan's son) Noah, (Sean's Cousin) and Grant (A housemate of the other two staying here). It seems a referral this way at this business is usually a shoe-in.

Before either of us jump back into the work-a-day world again, I suggested to Sean we take a fishing trip. Sean has never in his life fished, and that is much of what Missourians and Arkansans do. So we really aught to learn if nothing else to shed a bit of our Greenhorn reputations.

We mapped out a nearby lake with camping and set off for it Saturday Morning. This was our camp

Once we set up we set off for the lake, equipped with recently purchased rods, cans of worms, hooks and bobs, looking for the stupidest fish we could find to mug. The morning was hot and we found that the fish were very clever at removing our worm and leaving the hook. It seems they had done this before. We continued to try, moving to a boat dock that was unoccupied. Another old man set up a few feet from the dock where he proceeded to catch fish about every five minutes while we just fed them our worms.




Catching them would require greater wiles on our part, so I took a cherry flavored jelly bean, adding it to my bait to catch some young fish with a sweet tooth unawares. Eventually this ridiculous strategy caught me this Nar Whale pictured here. He fought the good fight, but was no match for a completely novice fishermen like myself.

As you can see the size and ferocity of the leviathan are of an extreme nature, and I am doing all I can to keep the pipe in my mouth as I lift him over the railing. We placed the fish in a bucket of water, hoping to find more stupid fish to make a meal. I figure this one would not go very far in a skillet by himself. Sean was having no luck at all in his efforts. I suggested we use sticks of dynamite, but he would not hear of it. It was a fishing pole or nothing.

Sean would not give it up however. He did make good friends with a turtle whom stole his bait no fewer than ten times. We tried up the lake and then back down, and decided to go back to the tackle store for smaller hooks and better bait. The fish had already eaten most of our worms and were growing tired of the lack of variety. We hoped to challenge them better with a more subtle hook as well. We also picked up half a case of beer, just in case we found any beer drinking bear at camp we could throw them down and save ourselves.

We came across this portion of swampy looking bank and set up, thinking many fish might like living around underwater tree branches. It was past 6pm and I was beginning to worry Sean might fail at dumb fish catching and go home frustrated. I had already released my Nar Whale, not wanting to have to kill and gut it, and besides I bought hot dogs and sausage with the beer. I can't eat catfish. They are too cute to eat. (And taste kinda mucky).

Sean had a close encounter, then a catch. We identified it as a deadly South American Piranha that must have stowed away in the fish bowl of a recent illegal immigrant. Not wanting to eat illegal food in the country without papers, we let it go for ICE to round up later.

Satisfied with at least finding a use for fishing rods besides tangling line, we headed back to our camp. Luckily we found no beer drinking bears waiting for us, so we decided to lighten our load by a few ounces so as not to over tax the Jeep's transmission.

Sean soon was wandering around the camp singing Bavarian Beer Drinking tunes and dancing in lederhosen. I shed my shirt to demonstrate I too was of white Germanic Heritage. Ya, Ve ist der Master race when it comes to drinking cheap beer. Good fortune shown upon us again, (or perhaps it was Sean's I-phone and it's flash attachment) and in a nearby stream I caught an entire school of red checker fish. The black ones however eluded me, thus I had only the red ones. Since one has to have both red and black ones to get them to play checkers together, I decided that since I had given the Narwhale and the Piranha clemency, it was high time I was rewarded. Thus I fried them up with chili, hot sauce and hot dogs.

Sean watched with keen interest as I prepared our meal, taking only a moment or two to find a comfortable place to watch and wait for dinner.

After a good meal, we discussed getting up at 5 am and going back to catch more fish. We agreed this was the plan and squeezed into our tent. During the night raccoons raised our camp and I had to chase them off. I put away the trash they were after and squeezed back into the tent, an experience for me much like being born. By 4 am it was raining. Morning came finding us unwilling to crawl out of our bunks to almost 7 am. It was wet and not exactly great fishing weather (at least not from the catching point of view as far as comfort.) Sean had a chill so we decided to break camp and cash in our fish and chips.

Missouri Shows me... a good time (so far)

I woke to a heavy rain that came down relentlessly through the night. The neighbor in the motel room next door was having a drama of some kind...dare I make a guess, a marital dysfunction? A beautiful young girl of about 30 kept arriving in a red van at his room, sitting in the parking lot and crying, then going in, then leaving again, over and over again through the night. He would then get agitated, get on his cell phone and pace back in front of his (and my) door talking in loud tones that I made effort not to listen to. By morning with the rain it was a somber night and morning of melodrama.

Sean and I traveled on with coffee and rain and a bleak prospect of anything today but travels. "What would I write about tonight?" I wondered. Surely nothing adventurous can happen in such cold damp conditions, and it being mid July that seems hardly a fair deal on the weather end of it. I spoke a bit harshly with God about all the rain. Sorry God, as usual I failed to see the big picture.

We stopped off about 11:30 to eat lunch at a country café and had the best meal I have eaten in days. The waitress was friendly and I had time to read the local add magazine for the Southern Missouri farming community. Quite enlightening things could be found there such as the price of tractors, what farms were up for auction and the cost of a gallon of hand picked blackberries.

On a lark, based only on a sign from the freeway we decided to seek out an antique shop we saw advertised in a small town called Hermann, about 15 miles south of I 70. I was expecting some dusty little shop between fruit and vegetable stands but instead discovered the most unusual little town I never expected to see.

This is the Hamlet of Hermann, with German Immigrant ancestors on the banks of the Missouri River, it is a hub of  cultural activities including live music, breweries, wineries, sausage makers, and many antique shops. We were blown away by the out of place looking European style architectures, the quaint decorations and best of all, on street free parking with no pesky meters.

Sean and I entered several shops finding a wealth in curiosities, some quite affordable. I resisted the temptation to buy very much and settled on a wooden duck covered in brass

 and copper that went for $7. Sean bought a belt buckle that had a pro Gun message. He is turning in to quite the enthusiast for redneck philosophies. He will fit in well in the Ozarks.

 We toured the town and I was most impressed by the courthouse which had it's own dome like a State Capital and sat imposingly on the highest hill like a castle overlooking it's serfdom. Finishing off the trip we made it to Columbia where we met Susan, my Nephew Noah, Susan's partner Bob and others to begin phase II of the trip, actual relocation. Sean put in applications on Saturday and Sunday, and I have an interview this Monday at a local nursery that grows tomatoes. I will keep you informed as to the progress. So far things have all fallen into place. Lord, please keep my luck running good.