OLD BEGINS AT SEVENTY

      July, 2012 -

     The last July 4th 5k race I have record of was 2003, nine years ago.  I've been running all along, but never entered any road races.  Complained to myself it was too much effort to get into racing shape and the excitement of competition is too taxing.
      This year, I received notice of the race and tossed it aside.  I've been sans transpo for five years and the race is ten miles away, so I didn't even consider entering.  Plus, I'm still recovering from a right knee breakdown and two trip-falls, which blackened toenails and opened a gash under left knee.  Instead of every-other-day schedule, I've been resting legs two days between runs.
       But on the second of July, behind a half-a-rack of Old Milwaukee Best Ice and numerous bowls, I spoke of entering and Bart offers to drive me to Jackson. On the third of July, during similar partying, we further discussed it and he spoke of my training regimen, and he asked when it started and I told him 10 and he said he'd be by at 8:30.
     I was taking my time getting ready, but by the time he arrived, I was dressed to race, except for a top.  Black Adidas running shorts and bright orange Adidas adizero adios shoes sans socs.  These are the running equivalent to the hoops shoes advertised during the NBA finals, the ones so light they float.  Actually too light for training but excellent racing stomps.  I flossed, brushed and peroxide rinsed before pulling on a white t-shirt with black brush strokes and had him check whether it was even on since there was a county-wide power outage.  He punched around on his phone and finally announced, "It's on and it begins at 9 and it is ten til and we're 20-minutes away!
      I snatched twenty dollars ($15 entry fee), we jumped in his 'chine and split.  He went to the wrong park and I figured he knew a shorter way, so I didn't start screaming until then. We pull onto the race route and see the lineup at the starting line, three blocks away.  Wanna jump out?  Keep driving.  Half a block from the racers...stop here...can I still get in this?...you have to go clear over to the shelter house (a creek jump and a 100-yd. dash away)...false start...I'm ready to jump in un-numbered...keep going, landed on all fours at creek bank, up and running....
     One woman standing, two sitting...I want to enter the race...fill out this form...Hey, it's ready to begin, you want all this filled out?...just your name, will do...I write Maxx and the standing one finishes for me and says "Phillips" to the one seated, entering the info on a laptop.
     I'm panting, confused and wondering about the race.   She nods to the second lady seated and says "See the girl in the red shirt?  She is the starter.  Nothing happens until she commands it.  You just take a deep breath and relax.  I work for the newspaper and recognize the double x from your letters to the editor."
    The first seated lady gives me my number to pin on and mentions not to bend the computer chip. I amble over, cross the creek banks to the race site and step to the back, go to a pole and take a couple knee bends, back in line, move to near the front and the lady in the red top hits the key.
     If it hadn't been for the computer timing element in these modern races, I wouldn't have made this one.  As it was, I was the last entry of 180.  I finished 100.  2nd in my age group.  Oldest in the race.
     It was totally satisfying and I had some fun races within the race.  At the last water stop, a small boy, 5 or 6, was standing with two paper cups.  As I approached I pointed to my face and asked could he put it here.  Two steps away, I shouted "Do it!" and he hit me a splash on with the one in his left hand.  I barely slowed for a face taste.
     I know the route well enough to remember how best to pace it and still have enough for a seconds-saving last six blocks of downhill to finish line. 5:27 off my best 5k time.  It didn't feel that much slower, even though I was the oldest runner.  Only three in my age group, I still finish second to a 70-yr old, but I outran a 70-yr old.  Start to finish was pain free, not a twinge.
      Thinking about it, now, 9 days later, on this Fri. 13th, it was timing.  Near perfect, from the git-go.  On the drive to get there, I never doubted for a second, that we would make it.
      Seems this new birth year is unfurling my thoughts and plans for future right on time, even seemingly insignificant stuff falls into place.
  
      30Nov - God created us in God's image which is perfection.  Perfection takes forever.  God has all the years.  Man has a few.  For mankind to achieve perfection takes all of God's years.  We call them lifetimes and eras.  God knows it is evolution of our species.
    When your train runs out of track and none of  your paths lead back, can you get up and pedal, put your foot to the metal?  Can you go 'til there's no go ahead?  Can you live 'til there's nothing but dead?  Then you are in it again and it may last 'til you don't know when.

11-11-09 - I was a vet behind the last two years of the '50's and first two years of the '60's.  Four years of no war anywhere.  Between Korea and Vietnam.  No heroes and heroines gladly giving it up no matter how close to death they may come, then returning home with death's close images.        
     Most of my immediate walls which are the rough side of panelling, have maps, posters and snapshots stapled to them.  One space is occupied by an 11-inch round clear acrylic black numerals thermometer.  Recently, my ninety-year old original mother-in-law had to go total care.  Her daughter sent me the photographs she'd saved in a trunk.  Wedding to end.  I stapled them in a sort or chronological order in a square pattern bordering the top and right side of the thermometer.  Which urges me to put 'em all up somewhere instead of stacked in no-view drawers and boxes.  Or a trunk.
    It was "Beggar's night, beggars's night, don't be tight and give me a bite."  There was a designated night but sometimes the bravest would do an early and a late and stretch it to three. Most kids had permission to take a sack and any disguise if just a lone ranger mask and run the neighborhoods knocking on doors on  "Begger's Night."   Scads of candy, apples and sometimes change.  The older kids would travel in packs to  all neighborhoods and really haul in the sugar.  New Jersey Bernie was my age but he did  "Trick or treat?" whereby the neighbor would ask  "What's the trick?"   Bernie explained how the kid would do a little trick/skit in costume and receive the treat.  So he's living in an Ohio town and answers the door to a porch full of  nearly grown Mexicans with grocery bags; migrant workers, idling car waiting, getting a begger's share of the stuff people buy to give away.  "Trick or treat?  These were big kids.  I think one had a moustache.  I was intimidated.  I was generous with each...man, I'd have let them take it all."
    Appears parents who used to have to decide at what age to allow kids to go alone decided to take the kids as babies and continue to go along at the age we were pretty much on our own.  Older siblings were handy and regular friends.  Parents would wait and share the excitement of the bounty.  Ray had a really good pirate outfit and he was asked  "Where's your little buccaneers?"   Ray answered, "Under me little buckin'  hat, I guess."
     
     Agassi's book talking about failing a drug test behind crystal meth and getting by with a lie about it being in his assistant's soft drink who used regularly?  In 1997, crystal meth was the crank being cooked from bitter doses, like today.  The  prescription stuff is crystalline methamphetamine.  A piece crushed and snorted would keep a person awake for long hours of driving, cramming or any endeavor where sleep is the enemy, while maintaining alertness and lack of appetite.  A professional tennis player would have little opportunity to gain anything by using legal or illegal meth.  I figure bad-boy hype to boost the type.  

I was jogging with Huth and a pony ran along, then turned into a huge mastiff.  We ran into a hovel and a woman was cooking on a coal stove.  She turned and her face was that of a chimpanzee and she attacked the dog.  They chewed each others faces in a vicious side-lying frontal attack.  I was at Timmy Tubb's and the kitchen sink was three-feet high in dirty dishes.  He just smiled and pointed the way through the house with tributaries of a river of stacked plates, bowls, cups, glasses and flatware beginning at the sink.  People kept walking in while finishing food and set the empties on the nearest pile.  In a grocery store with many aisles and couldn't find anything on my list, even though different people I know were running around helping with the futile search.  There was a flood and diverted water was sluicing across jutting property and providing mud-water slides back to the river.  People were anxious to jump in and be violently swept down, covered and splashing in cocoa-colored glop, to the rushing water below.  Nobody was concerned with getting out after they'd been rinsed with the clearer river water; thus were scrambling to get back ashore.  Just then, two dudes came by and made an offer I jumped at.  All I had to do was put in one of my credit cards and get some cash which these guys would triple on some far-out deal.  I tried everything including my social security number and the machine began deteriorating and the other two were already walking away.  I was checking out a house under construction and Dick Cheney showed up.  He would discuss nothing except the workmanship no matter how hard I tried to engage him.  Samples of  wake-up-demons which come to call while fasting from regular subtle brain nudges (smoking pot).
      

     When you are old, lots of early memories are anachronistic.  Everybody used to burn their trash in the back yard.  There are still people who believe it is their right and still do it.  Not inside towns smaller than the one I grew up in, especially not in cities.
     Carry it out, pile it loosely, strike a match and walk back to the house after it gets started.  It would burn, then smolder, then smoke and on low pressure days the smoke laid around close to the ground smelling.  I used to run the neighborhood near dark with the Klondike boys looking for bonfires which could be brought back to flaming life by blowing on sparks to torch a piece of paper.  Lots of fires were easy to liven up and watch for awhile before going on.  Gary Klondike could turn over an ash, find a spark and have a tiny piece of scrap on fire in seconds. We weren't the only ones engaged in this game.  I remember we were in another neighborhood and two boys told us everything was out.  Gary walked to the closest fire site after seeing a wisp of smoke and and a fire which lit up every face staring down and moving only to provide fuel was blazing.
    

     I'm proud of the timing of the fire I turned up, today.  In  terms of weather, it was warm and the sun was supposed to come out but it never did shine through, even though it's a high pressure day.  So smoke still goes straight up and is hidden by the overcast.  I began while kids were still in school  and ended before workers got off and what smoke didn't disappear drifted over one house and into the surrounding forested area.  I have lived here nearly ten years and have  burned garden leftovers every year; stalks, vines, raked dried weeds and scrap wood.  I also have a stone burning place about belt high.  This year, I talked my neighbor out of a stack of  scrap, everything from a door and frame to sheets of pressboard.  After separating and getting what wasn't weathered and wetted into the cellar, there was a stack about two wheelbarrows full deep.  Also, I took most of my scrap deck up after Zimba excavated through the mint bed to damage boards by chewing the rot away or digging up support stakes.  It was constructed in layers with drywall screws, so by the time I reached the rabbit's spot, there was a heap of  ground soaked lumber next to my stone burner.  Nearby, the fridge box from my last purchase was also folded and dampened.
     I began by clearing all the rocks that had fallen inside the burner.  There was a piece of scorched stump and other debris which I also removed.  I had two small cartons from the house and lit one with a match.  After it was flaming I put the other atop.  Then I began separating layers of the refrigerator box and feeding them into the fire.  Fire aspires to grow upwards.  It doesn't follow beauty, it follows the trail of smoke trying to reach the next height by running up a low hemline instead of a reaching for a hard leg in denim.
     Once a fire is started, the fuel has to be added at the top.  If it collapses and puts out the flame, the fuel was added too soon.  Build it high but separated by layers.  Even though smoke was not even a concern, as soon as I noticed any, I'd feed roll of cardboard under it and flame it away.  Used one piece of pressboard, everything else was mostly wet boards five feet to splinters.  I walked away from it twice to check on my bread but it flamed on to completely out; both stacks which I'd considered putting out a couple pieces at a time in the city garbage.  A beautiful full red fire sending heat waves as high as a telephone pole and producing btu's enough to power the lines.  Or spruce up a backyard.

      If I had the ear of the President, he'd be told to ask the question, "Do we depend on military budgets to keep this country going?  Is the military-industrial complex driving the wars?"  If it is and our money is poured into it because we feel threatened, then we need to brave up, pull out and bring the "money" home.  Look at the map.  Afganistan is no threat if we remove all the dollars.  We have DEA agents engaged with US troops waging war on "drug havens."  Not knocking down doors, like in LA, but attacking with armed helicopters. That's big money being blown away in the sand with no accounting to the taxpayers footing the borrowing of billions to win something in Afganistan. There's nothing to win and you want to send more troops because more are being killed and wounded?  I don't have his ear. 

     One time in THE ALL-AMERICAN HITCHHIKER, I thought I did.  It was Melmire on Wilder Ridge who put a large hooded robe on me and said I was now ready to preach my speech to the masses.  I took it off and expained about writing which would reach the President, initiate changes...and Mel said you have to get the ear of the President.  Of course, that was Ray-guns, so there wasn't the feeling of relating, like with Obama.  Do you see China soaking sand in blood to reach the oil beneath?  No, they are buying companies and drilling rights.  It's human evolution which we see may be a finite period of time.  The only country which seems to believe the evolution will continue here and end at some point on the globe is China.  Amercans think wealthy is being able to waste.

      I remember my grandmother heating water in kettles and pans on the gas range and clearing a space for the  steel washtub with the clanging carrying handles.  There were three grandsons living in her house and she lined us up for a bath.  The order may have been by age, but nobody got out without standing in, stooping to get inside as far as possible and having a stout woman scrubbing with soapy cloth and pouring the rinse over you.  While the others watched, she grabbed and pulled and pushed each into position to wash from top to bottom.  Orders were snapped as she worked in a hurry.
     "Stand still, that water's not hot!  Turn around.  Sit down. Move this way. Raise that arm."
     And just as it begin to feel pleasant, she'd dump a container of hot rinse on you, snatch you out of the tub and rub the heat up with a warm towel before pushing you away and nodding for the next boy.
     It was in the 1940's and water was way cheap.  Too cheap to meter and it was conserved, religiously, by nearly everybody.  I've taken baths with a woman assisting, in amounts of water which would have filled that entire house, was kept at a lounging temperature and bubbled effortlessly.  I've stood in showers until enough water went down the drain to fill one of Grandma's tubs a hundred times over.  Never felt any cleaner any time since then.  However, I have learned to be nearly as penurious.

     I'll admit I use a Maytag washing machine similar to the one Grandma used and I recycle all the water just like she did.  Don't hang 'em out, though.  Upstairs on a rope is a great humidifier.

     Every strain develops into pain in an area you may wonder about, later.  I think I know what caused the stiff soreness in the area connecting my elbow to my forearm.  I am shocked by the fact it can awaken me and that some small rotation hand movement is an ouch.  Never a problem when running.  Still curl and press with it.  No doubt if I struggled up one morning and began medicating the pain away, then all the suffering I did to keep it unlocked would be lost to calcification.  The major thigh strain which stretches into my gluts to cause me pause to rearrange the pain to get to sleep again was exascerbated by a slip/stretch while wrestling with Zimba.  I stepped back with my right foot and it kept going on damp grass to dip me down on my left knee flex.  Point is, every thing that hurts a little will keep sticking around until it shows up someplace else.  When one is old, all the growing pains we endured are back, only it's tougher to just rub, cuss and keep going.  No matter what, old requires being more careful to avoid bumping, scraping, twisting or trying to do a job while angry. 


18Jan - Sadness comes in gushes
Memories are crushed
There's no thought I trust
Can't get past this pall
It's like I never was loved at all

But I'll break through
Start to trust what's true
Get past this blue
And lift the fog
Holding on like a strong-jawed dog


12Jan09 - I've lived long enough to know that age seventy is when attempting to live longer is all hard work. There are exceptions. In 2009, however, at this stage of human evolution, lasting a long time will be earned by steady activity. Fooling one's genes into believing we are still productive. Acting young and fertile when we know it is old and futile. We're past the reason the genes keep us tuned up until we've established the next generation but the only way they are tuned in is by what we're thinking and the way our bodies respond to all the little ways our genes are programmed to slow us down until we've stopped.

Everything that has ever evolved had to reproduce. So sex in some form is basic for successive generations. Therefore, the main genealogical force is centered in reproduction. After that, the force subsides and the used body of reproduction navigation deteriorates.

I am in the process of attempting to fool my genes. At this stage, simplicity is necessary. Simply filling up every day with activity. Simple prepared food. Simple exercise routine every day. Simple entertainment. Sounds like a simpleton could do it. Perhaps I am.

13Jan - I've jogged into Mexico and in Canada and on beaches in Maui, Oahu, California and Florida. In Ohio, California, New Jersey, Michigan and Indiana, I had regular routes which were long and isolated, sometimes through wooded areas. My current running is every other day for an hour and ten minutes, more or less, from my door to an asphalt path to a lake with an island and bridge to it. I circle the lake and the island and return home. Unlikely, home is now my original hometown. No other run I've ever done can come close to the sum of satisfaction from this one. Today, as I was preparing to run, it began to snow from the south and was covering the ground quickly. My dog and I made the first tracks on the pathway. By the time we started back, the temperature was rising and the snow stopped. Within minutes of reaching home, all the snow was melted and our tracks were gone. Since then, it has begun from the north and is covering the ground again. Two Canada geese were standing on a frozen section in the middle of the lake and a puffin was diving. On the south bank a startled great blue heron flew ahead and landed until we came closer, then flew to a length of half-submerged log and landed with slip or two on the perch inches above the water. Two male squirrels were grappling in a ball of fur curl match on a low branch which got Zimba's attention until they noticed her beneath them and went on different limb paths to higher up the tree.

14Jan - Today is a lifting day. Forty pounds of iron on a vertical grip bar for four exercises, ten repetitions, change to wide horizontal grip for four exercise, ten repetitions. Put iron down. Do 100 knee-to-elbow crunches, grab bar and flip backwards before lowering with knees up to do ten behind-the-head curls, lower knees and do ten curls off forehead. Release iron and do ten straight-leg sit-ups, turn over and do ten push ups. That's a set. Three sets is an excellent workout. Every other day, I do at least one set. Squats, curls and presses (front and behind head.)

     It'll be too close to below zero to matter tomorrow when I do the donut. That shallow lake could freeze to the bottom mud. Sounds traumatic. Guaranteed it is walkable shore to shore. With enough snow to show tracks. Which reminds me of that Canada goose that lived on the island, last winter, after some hoodlum kid broke its wing by throwing a plastic bat. Another goose or two were always nearby as it was ground bound and couldn't leave with the main flock. When startled it would run up onto the island instead of staying on the water. I supposed something or someone finally put it out of its misery. But Thursday, three geese were on the frozen lake. Two flew when they sighted me. The other one had a useless wing. It's lived a year, unable to fly, if it's the same one. I figure ice fishers will be drilling and people will be trying to slide around. And that huge carp I've been seeing cruising around the low edges of the lake will have to go deeper. It's five feet long if it's an inch. Clean and lean enough to smoke. Easy beans bow shot.

When is the United States going to seriously consider statehood for Mexico, either by choice or force. Right after we decriminalize marijuana to the dirt cheap price it should be. Take off the criminal penalties, the cost is reduced to represent the weed it is, the Mexican traffic stops. It ain't the best smoke in the world, it's just the most prevalent. And it supports the criminal element that sends it north. So us US users are criminals and the people we buy from are charging for the risk. Allowing the cultivation of marijuana in this country would be very profitable. All users do not want to grow their own. Show Mexico we're serious about stopping the consumption of Mexican weed. Decriminalize cultivation in the United States of America. Then take down the fence and start building four-lane highways into the newest state. We need more territory. A new frontier. Or we can allow the criminal element to rule and run over to further over here. It's easier for me to visualize budding adults with more of a new place to see due south than successive tours of duty in the middle east. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. It's a natural evolutionary move for this country. Besides, who is going to stop us when we finally take a country and really make it one of us? Wanna join us Belize? Guatemala? Fifty-three. Fifty-four.

Two days dry and two bowls and eating a path through this high fructose corn syrup stuff the Cat dragged in. So far, ten slices of Merita toast sandwiches of Oscar Meyer ham lunch meat, Miracle Whip, American wrapped slice cheese, and Welch's grape juice cocktail splashed into Bigelow decaf tea to rinse it all down. Gotta get that stuff outta here. It's unhealthy.

19Jan09 - Did the donut run on a path around the lake and the island, on the lake. The cushion of two inches of fresh snow on a smooth surface is like running in new shoes. Only two people ice fishing and they were folding it up.

22Jan - Talked the Paleo into driving onto the bike path to just below the Duke of Earl's split rail fence. I used a maul to loosen logs frozen to the ground. These are sections of trees I felled across the path, a couple years ago. We loaded nine sections into the F-150. Crosswise and snug, from four to six feet long. They're mostly sectioned and split and back in the bed. I came home and did my weight workout.

23Jan - Sister cuz from Sunnyvale and Seestor from McGee Lane visited today. Had to entice them in with some Argentina viognier. They passed on the black and soy bean soup. E said she had no idea about the drug run that went through her crib during COLUMBIAN HIGH. I tried to copy the page from the AOL journals which described it and copied all 26 pps. She's soloing at the Presbyterian Church Sunday. Those Kelley genes been coming back to sing since Aunt B in the '60's. It'll be a nostalgic tug at the heart strings. Especially because of all the decades since the granddaddy of us all looked down as he led the congregation singing at Sunday school. I scripted Obama and O-44 in the snow on the lake during my donut run.

26Jan - Went to hear Sis Cuz. She can still handle some clear high notes but competition for Ernest D.'s ear was Aunt B.'s conservatory of music range. I had plans to pick E's brain but never got the chance. She's the last one able to fill in blanks left at 9th and Vermont but I may have waited too long to want explanations about my earliest history. In any case, she's on the way back to the west coast and I'm still wondering. It's doubtful she would feel comfortable speaking to my questions. She refuted my comment about her brother being racist.

My snow writing had melted into the dark green ice which could easily handle a Zamboni. Of course, it snowed an inch since I was there and up to five inches is expected by tomorrow.

28Jan - The donut run was a slog jog in four inches of snow over ice, especially on the lake. I stopped and turned and went down immediately. Bounced on my left side. Zimba stayed mostly on the shore after her first slip. She kicked snow onto the backs of her legs and stomach and it formed small ice balls on her fur. It snowed an 8th inch while we ran. Then last night it rained and froze on everything until it changed to giant snowflakes and layered a few inches of white on the ice. Neighbors next door have limbs down from two pines and one maple. More are sure to fall all over town tonight when the temps fall. Only chance for a run tomorrow will be if the layer of ice holds my weight to keep feet out of the deep snow. Power was off for a few hours when I first got up, so I heated tea water on the stove and kept the oven door open for some warmth. Just like in the 40's and 50's at Kelley's. Used to toast eight slices of bread at a time in the broiler drawer of that old range.

30Jan - Four inches of snow, an inch of ice, another two inches of snow coated with frozen rain; that was the sandwich underfoot as we did the donut yesterday. Every step was foot shock, either from the bottom of the cushion or some rough ice in an atv track. The sound from the ice, snow crush sounded like a pedal bass drum. My pace was setting the beat. Total leg punishment. The snow was off the lake so that surface was out. It appeared the entire landscape grew older overnight. Every trunk, limb and twig, every bush, thicket and blade had aged to silver-gray and was leaned over by the heavy coat of ice and snow. Went up to the Do-Fry aerie to play poker. I drop thirty and sickened myself on cookies and white lightening. Wore my Longhi's Lahaina Maui shirt with script query on the sleeve. Still recovering, putting off the weight workout. Right now I feel like bagging it.

1Feb - All the snow had been blown from the ice coating which sparkled in the morning sun. The trees seemed renewed as the ice released and came crash-tingling down like tons of chandelier glass to scatter on the deep snow. I ran on the frozen lake but Zimba didn't trust if after the first sound of cracking. I was startled for a sec but kept running. It was just a topmost layer slipping near the edge. There was some air movement beneath the ice which sounds like whale sonar. It is most prevalent when the ice is warmed by sun. One can imagine whales beneath the ice bouncing messages around. Late yesterday, I was entranced by the sun shining through the ice coated trees in my backyard. If one focuses on a particular area, the movement of the sun splits spectrum into single flashes of what appears to be blue and gold-red fibre optic lights. At times the flash continues for many seconds as a single speck of ice reflects tens of facets. Through binoculars it was so unreal my wrists got tired. The spectacle is over today. It's 40-degrees in full sunshine and the buds on maples have popped right out of what was a deep freeze. Easy beans compared to the state just to the south with lots more ice and snow and isolated communities.

3Feb - Yesterday, I ran to the bank and on to the path after a young dude told me it had been plowed. Not. With this glaze of freeze on every piece of snow or ice, the footing is impossible to run on. I had to use the side of streets. Ran from A to B and turned up B. It was clean to the top, so I ran up and turned on New Jersey, then left on A to the cemetery and did a turn before coming down the hill to home. Not a donut, but mostly uphill. The professor and Tess came in from NC. He brought a bottle of malbec from Argentina but we finished the viognier I uncorked for Seestor and Elinor. The paleo and his firewood sidekick stopped for bowlfuls. Emptied my crock pot. Been doing the skillet greens and dumping them into the bean soup. It's faster and I don't feel the need to consume an entire skillet load at a time. Although Zimba and I manage to clean it up every night. With a visiting hardleg or two, the bean-an'-greens go in a hurry. Fact is, the last three batches have been sans soy beans because I haven't taken the time to presoak any. Black, red, white, pink and pinto, though. Today, the greens are broccoli and there is just the right mix of ground chilis. Gabe said I had changed his thinking about vegetarian fare.

Prof Free left for Willoughby and Tess is upstairs. He set her up between my mat and presses seat and she never moved throughout my entire workout, even when my foot was resting inches from her nose. Cool cat, indeed. I take Zimba up to check on her and Tess sets like she's on eggs and watches Zimba nose around. She probably realizes the dog is only interested in that highly scented canned cat dessert. Prof met Paleo last night. I figure they will be hiking the woods together before long. Paleo has two diggers working on a cave and the arrowheads they are turning up are exquisite. He checks on them nearly every day and buys their finds; few bucks and bud.

5Feb - Lifting day. Yesterday, I bagged my regular run, again. The footing is still too treacherous. Professor Free drove in, last night, and we uncorked 1.5 liters of Argentina Malbec. I had to end his harangue about shaking cans of spinach to find the one which felt the fullest by announcing that I was finished listening and headed for bed. Tess had to meow him awake, this morning, crying for fresh water. They were packed up and headed back to NC before noon.

9Feb - Did the donut, yesterday, and soon realized how much I missed the every other day regimen. Paleo showed shortly after I finished and spoke of cutting the 16 trees blocking the walk-in cooler corridor just past PDQ. The night before he offered to be just ahead with his chain saw, clearing my path but copped a plea about not being able to leave his chick until after noon, so I went with him and pulled all the limbs off the asphalt. Ironically, I moved the F-150 on a line parallel to the highway section where I lost my license. Later on, I rode my bike to the SEB and had more than a few PBR's. After peddling 15 blocks against the slight uphill grade, I could barely stay awake for Harry Shearer. Restless night behind the brew and the cup of chocolate frosting I spooned to near finish prior to crashing.

When my diet and exercise are fulfilled each day, each morning begins with the launching of sewer line submarines immediately after arising. Then the day can begin with a large cup of green tea with cocoa and powdered milk. On lifting days, I heat a slurry of oatmeal and raisins and sip the liquid. With the luxury of time, I usually wait for two to three hours after arising before lifting or running. Have to allow the impetus to kick in.

10Feb -Cat dragged in a young lo' 'ho' this morning while I was up taking a whiz. I told him no use to sneak I was awake. They were at the bottom of the stairs, house dark except for the street light glow through my bedroom window and I pass butt naked and slide into the water bed with an admonishment about his bad timing. He was glad when I finally was on the way out the door for my donut run, this morning. Zimba did an hour of serious deer chasing on the snow free footing, last night, and didn't go. Felt good to be sans cap and gloves. The island was encased in a ring of fog rising from the melting lake. It was like trying to look through cotton candy with just the topmost pines seemingly stuck in it. From an aerial view the dark pine probably looked like the hole in a donut. Running on the east side of the island where the fog was most dense was degrees cooler. I vinegar steamed a layer of pink salmon and broccoli over olive oil seared garlic and onions before ladling over with bean soup and topping with Parmesan cheese. That 6x8x2 inch iron skillet was full and it filled a man and a dog.

12Feb - I clanged the iron before the Paleo and his latest lay were even close to up, yesterday. He finally got her sober enough to leave way after noon. Pearl Gin made a bootie call last evening. Paleo partied with us while he was packing to leave for Charlotte SC. He nearly became a cb but the wind was gusting outside and made up for the lack of walls inside. This morning, GG used my clippers to give Paleo a leaving town haircut. The F-150 was packed to the slats when they split. I didn't do the donut until 1:30. Zimba bagged it again. All of the ice has been blown to the northeast shore where the wave action forms a fine crystal coating along the edges which appear as a beach of diamonds on the green deep floe. Three dudes were fishing off the bridge and showed me their catch of seven shiny fresh foot long lake trout. Nice mess. Which reminds me of the comment my dad made when he came into the jail to see me and six other friends. "Well, this is a fine kettle of fish!" Pottsy sniggered.

17Feb - Yesterday, there were three people bundled up in a boat on lake Alma. Drifting along the edges, fishing, two on the end casting and middle one still. Had to be freezing wind chill. Pan of fried lake trout probably kept their thoughts warm.
Purchasing anything but a whole chicken is extravagant. Even though it is shrink-wrapped and frozen, as opposed to fresh, it is the only way to buy the bird. Put it in a domed skillet with plenty of salted water and let it steam/cook until skin and bones fall away from the meat. Use tongs to extract the skin, fat and bones. Zimba relishes this because she gets it all. What you have left is cooked chunks of chicken meat and a half skillet of chicken broth which cools to a clear jell with a white layer of fat. Nearly all the chicken I eat is in a peanut butter toast sandwich or just fingered from the fridge.

Men look for mothers in others throughout their lives until re-influenced by girlfriends and wives. I was married on St. Valentine's Day because it was a Roman Catholic ceremony and the Lenten season begins the day after. There are no weddings during this time and after Lent would have been too late to conceal her pregnancy. Isn't that romantic?

19Feb - Rommance? Is that like a roaming romantic? Romantic necessity would have been my description at the time. And remember it was my project as soon as it was my child. Chauvinistic control. Anachronistic today, except for those marriages based on the next physical outburst followed by begging apologies. Either way, it is dysfunctional. Delayed familial evolution which must be put back on track by the next generation.

20Feb - The 70's years are a daunting decade. All the things that feel old seem magnified. Accidental nicks and cuts and and bumps seem more foolish and bother for longer than we remember being conscious of the small stuff. Joints are drug abuse...aches and pains settle in when we are still and sharpen up when we get up in an attempt to keep us down. It's the genes trying to get us over with so they can permanently rest. Even if you are still in breeding shape, i.e., maintaining a state of being sexually active, the genes are still only willing to assist to a point. The older mechanisms of the body wear to weariness. It becomes way harder to put the jack in your jock bone. Or to find someone even close to your age who is fit and free and sexually frisky.

Didn't see anyone like that when Zimba and I did the donut, today. In fact, at 20-degrees, there was nobody else at the lake. There were geese on both beaches, in the grass away from the sand. I unleashed Zimba and she hurried to where she was on the sand and they were still scattering towards the water. She's a beauty when she's in a flat out sprint striding across that packed sand. They fly, or else, because she's there, and then she brakes to a stop by digging in her back paws in a spraddle legged stance before wading into the water to drink while the geese all cuss her out in loud chorus.

21Feb - I put raisins and oats in half a large glass and fill with water, nuke it for two minutes, stir and sip off the water just prior to lifting. Afterwards, add powdered milk, sugar and cocoa, add more water, stir and nuke for two more. Perfect post workout drink. By the end, the raisins are drinkable.

22Feb - Yesterday, it was 59-degrees so I took a bike ride to mail a letter, buy a lottery ticket and go see Danny at the SEB. It wasn't quite 2 pm, he wasn't open so I made my last stop Xrays. It was time. Previously, his wife gave me a freezer bag full of broccoli. I stir fried it and could taste the green in the full flavor. Saturday, she gave me a can of black olives because she doesn't like them. They were gone shortly after opening. Today, it's 29-degrees and spitting snow. Donut's finished. I'm piecing around on apple, peanut butter, tuna, wheat bread and ground roasted soybeans, spread or spoonful with a crock of black, red, white and pinto beans on high. The soybeans were ground in leftover dust from chilis.

     Decades ago, when I was keeping order on a bus load of autistic lads on the way to the Johnson estate in Princeton, New Jersey, I envisioned how they might react to a double of themselves in a video. One reminded me of Dominique Wilkins and it intrigued me to think about this autistic watching a double himself dunk a basketball and then talk and interact with others. Put a lot of young actors to work with a lot of desperate parents.

23Feb - The yellow curtains in the kitchen
Bounce the sunlight off the wall
It's a bright mid-winter's morning
Outside the fluid dewdrops fall
The old man's time seems to be
Just thoughts of a distant past
There's no future he can see
There's no need for him to last

Her night prowl leaves her hungry
The cat scratches at the door
The dog wags and wobbles
His paws click across the floor
His master's mind rides a peak
Now it slips to a subtle fall
The voice can barely speak
And he wants to end it all

It's another week day moving
Through the motions of a wait
Until the weekend visits
From those who rue their fate
He's left an unhappy man
Without really knowing why
Who'd understand anyway
That fact makes him cry

FUN FUNERAL

When it's time to lay me in the ground
Don't play any slow church music sound
Crank the tunes when I'm in that hole
Send me away with some rock and roll

Don't use any operatic strains
To purge my sins or ease your pains
Blast some tracks for a high volume train
No detergent dirge can bring me back again

Even though I can't finger pop
Keep it rocking and rolling non-stop
Turn it up loud so that all can hear it
Let them know I'm there in spirit

Rock music is my choice now and when I die
Don't bother to be glum or sniffle or cry
Be happy to party on me one more time
Remember when I tried to sing each rhyme

Play some '50's stuff like Chuck, Little Richard, BB King
Let the guitars crack and the cymbals ring
My taste was weened on the early rhythm tunes
And satisfied on The Dark Side Of The Moon

Rock and roll awakened the sex-th sense
And drugs just made it more intense
When death ends the live Rocks and Rolls
Spin my body on the turntable of worn out souls

WRONG RIGHTS

What happened to my mountains?
What happened to my view?
It's loaded up with houses.
The trees are all down, too!
Who soiled the paths with rubbish?
Who spoiled the water with waste?
It isn't home to wild creatures
And the air has a tainted taste.

How could I have stopped it?
How much can one person do?
I certainly can't reverse my life
I see little hope for you.
Why try to survive on memories?
Why nurture sadness for what's gone?
It's the present that needs the energy
For the young to continue on.

And when the old men ride to glory
When their women pass from sight
It isn't important that they did wrong
But that most of those wrongs seemed right.

26Feb - In 1987, my second wife gave me her California car to go to New Jersey. It was the end of another perfect marriage and at that time I became a vagabond for the next dozen or so years. Homeless, jobless and penniless. In NJ I offed the car for a few hundred dollars. It was an F-85, two-door, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with no reverse. Everything I owned was in the back seat or the huge trunk. I drove it like it was the last ride and it would fly down a highway, uphill or down. My best man suggested I inhabit his house in Roosevelt and rent out rooms while he took a job in Florida. There was a weight room, a computer and fully stocked larder, far enough away to prevent my interference with the inevitable divorce. Perfect. Except that the job in Florida fell through and my position changed to houseman to a hardleg. There were thoughts of getting a New Jersey driver's license and making it a permanent move but I left and returned a couple times. One time was to remodel a bathroom. Another time I installed a fireplace insert. He couldn't pay me what I was worth so I worked practically for free. I hitchhiked to Michigan and became a live-in farm hand to the family of a friend I'd worked with during my first marriage.

27Feb - Limbawl brags that he knows liberals like the back of his hand. Is the back of his hand black?

6Mar - Heard the spring peepers as I ran by the marshy area across from the water works on the way to the donut part of my run. The tree swallows should be returning to skim the surface of the lake next week. All the nesting pairs from last year have returned: robins, cardinals, song sparrows, mourning doves, grackles and starlings. Last week, I viewed three woodpeckers at once through my kitchen window: pileated, red bellied and flicker. There's a small flock of slate backed juncos that regularly feed on the fine seeds of my driveway grass and a couple tufted titmice that come to crack open sunflower seeds from my feeder.


26Apr - An old friend of mine had me dump some stuff.  Most of it, I kept.  One item was a Sunbeam toaster.  It is the only automatic sliced bread toast maker I've ever seen.  I certainly never saw one in the era it was manufactured.  The finish is real chrome plating, heavy and still shining brightly.  Immediately upon lifting it the heft is noticeable.  The cord is thick and cloth covered.  When a slice of bread is dropped into the one slice slot, the bread slowly descends.  After it is toasted, it slowly rises back up.  I'v e been showing it off for a couple of years. A couple of months ago, it stopped working.  I disassembled it.  Eventually, I reached the problem.  The contact brushes were corroded and a strip of fine sandpaper cleaned them.  Attaching the sides to the end pieces was a lesson in precision fitting.  I also discovered that the darker/lighter dial can be turned completely around in either direction for an exact shade of brown.  The manufactured date inside is 1955.  Guess Teaperk was a junior in high school when he first saw the toaster.

12May - It's the little upsets from the body which immediately get translated into death thought watches.  Every sharp arm pain or lungs weight seems heart-related.  You're at an age when sudden death is not unexpected, no matter a healthy appearance. Then the heartburn gets you up in the middle of the morning to sip some baking soda in water in order to get back to sleep.  Next morning you begin a recall of the amount of food you'd consumed  and decide to live to eat again.  After a weight workout, of course.

16May - Bagged a workout, today.  Took my new fishing arrow to water works and Lake Joke immediately after tea.  Couldn't see deep.  White sky.  Rained even. Moved bike to stand under a small pine on the island  and watched.  Couple of bird calls quiet, except for the steady drum of drops into lake surface.  When the shower began to end, the drips were so minute, it appeared they were surrounding the island until I realized they were too small to be seen outside the perimeter of the island.  Soothing sight by cloud dimming light. I never got my arrow wet.  Should have taken hook and worms.

19May - Went back to the lake with a rectangular Tupperware (Fresh and Fancy) container, bow and arrow, spin caster and baggie with five or six worms.  There's a bluegill in my bathtub pond. Which reminds me of Jeff which saddens me every time I think of him.  I believe it was Esaul's pond where he used to spit on the water surface and hit bluegills with a stick when they came to feed.  He'd do a Costeau rendition.  When zee bluegeel comes to sip zee, how you say,? zsnot?  When zee bluegeel feeds on zee snot zee stick swiftly stuns zee bluegeel.  I should be able to get at least one to bring home anytime I choose.

18Aug - I'm looking at the map and wondering about the US's thinking about the world.  Afghanistan has one way to transport its poppy crop to the users of the world; through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.  Why would we bother to go into Afghanistan when all we have to do is set up shop on the coast of our ally, Pakistan?  Look at the map. I mean why put a highly at-risk contingent of armed forces in the fields when the production has to come to the coast?  Obama has obviously changed his thinking about how much the really top canines in our pack of capitalists control the entire bank of kennels, and has deferred to the war dogs.
     We citizens have accepted some kind of war in some far away place as long as we can watch it on tv.  We are accepting the sacrifice of some of out brightest and best next generation because they have volunteered to go.  And the government of us, the United States of America, always finds a place for them to do their duty. Until we all look at the map and decide there's no place like home and the rest of the world should be seen in civilian dress, we'll keep filling veteran's hospitals and Arlington plots.

24Aug - Big dye lie, as of last week-end.  Tired of glowing in the dark and listening to the patronizing young hard legs, deferring to my silver.  Challenged two, already.  One repeated how he was "going to tell me," once too often.  You are not telling me anything, all the facts you have on the bitch are facts I already have, so you can't tell me anything, motherfucker...not another word.  I was just a jump from putting a period on my point and he begged off and was sorry and I got up to leave with "It's history!" 
     These dudes are decades dumb, to me, and the only thing we have in common is thc.  It's the price one pays for having no chronological peers who are ti'cs.  Pot gives everybody a voice full of facts.  Youth got nothing to get high about.  With any half decent diet and activity, kids got all the advantages of marijuana in their genes.  The impetus to do something in motion, the appreciation of music, a constant appetite and social interaction.  Passing a joint is a social activity which accepts the passer as acceptable.  Taking a hit is a kiss which is handed off with another set of lip prints.
     I certainly sympathize with tetrahydrocannabinolics who are raising kids.  You definitely do not want to be the one to turn them on and you don't want them so red they may narc you out behind anger.  So you can't toke up in your own house, in complete peace.  Of course, if marijuana was de-criminalized and age limits applied, it would be like cigarettes used to be.  Parents who smoked, either kept the fact away from their children or smoked all over them.  Since the second-hand smoke rules are already in place, adding hemp would be an easy automatic.  Good exhaust ventilation system and one-hit drags keeps the hassle to a minimum. Do bowls.  Due bowls. Dew bowls. Joints are drug abuse.

911/09 - The thing which bothers lots of people about a national heath care law is the fact we would be required to forego those self-absorbing habits detrimental to life, smoking chokes and eating to obesity.

14Sep - Old Zimba went on the donut run with me.  First time in many weeks.  On the island, she had to inspect the hollow log the muskrat used last winter.  Afterwards, I was thinking of the raccoon I'd seen and what a chore it would be to keep her on leash if it appeared.  Just then, there was splashing along the bank as if ducks were startled.  I turned to see two fawns, no bigger than Zimba, come up the bank and back along the path we'd just covered.  As soon as they were out of sight, the dog turned to see if I was going to unleash her.  I chose not to since she would have covered that island until she located them.  Made me think of that time Crazy Mike's beagle. Go-nuts, followed along on my run one winter day.  He chased two deer up one side of the island and down the other, onto the ice and across the lake, then returned to pick up the pace with me. 
     Saw a great blue heron.  Always reminds me of  Grandpa Kelley.  I believe his spirit reincarnates in those stately, patient birds he called "Shyte-pokes."

22Sep - Wiping the Taliban off Afganistan would be like Muslims coming here to wipe out the NRA.  Men, women and children.  Any thinking American realizes how impossible that task would be.  Cut down another overhanging dead branches tree on the bike path.  About two feet thick.  I felled it trimmed it and dragged the trunk off the asphalt before anybody came by.  That Neuton pruner/saw is one neat implement.  I could sell them door-to-door.  A chain saw so lightweight ( six pounds) it can cut down a tree or be used with a hold and saw action impossible with gas machines. Easy beans, just put the battery on its charger and it's ready to go in minutes. Win Afganistan?  Get out.  I believe the majority of Americans are ready to be rich in monetary terms.  How long we gonna finance the rest of the world?  Guns or butter has always been a rip-off because we give up butter to purchase the guns.  Here it is, if this country is going into debt anyway, why not go the other direction and do all butter.  Pull out the troops from anyplace not directly beneficial to the USA.  That's every country not connected directly to our land mass.  Look at the map!  Turn the bucks into the citizen industrial complex.  These fat cats been at the war effort trough so long they know it is always full. But all they want is government contracts.  Duh, we turn warbucks into peace cake, Uncle Sam will have plenty to distribute and the same big timers will find ways to get the contracts. You believe anybody in their right mind believes some young body getting blown away in a foreign land is keeping that foreigner from getting on a plane and crashing into another high rise?  Fact is, some Americans do, and they call themselves patriotic.  I volunteered between Korea and Vietnam, total peace, everywhere in the world.  My service was no less important.  I would have gladly gone to battle.  The military has molded many men to manage more maturity.  But standing armies all over the map is nothing more than a military-industial spigot to foreigners;  taxpayer money showered offshore.  Billions.  We can afford health care, college degrees, clean air and water and credit for all if we spend it on ourselves.

Oct 13th - Spend it on ourselves.  When did I write that shit?  Long time ago.  My choice for the job has already sold out to the war mongers.  I thought he'd call their bluff.  I believed that we would get out and wait 'em out.  Any American afraid to the point of fighting any foreigner?  Afraid to the breaking point?  Well, you're scaring everybody buying away your paranoia.  If we're not safe, here, from attack, then how can killing populations in Afganistan make us safer?  Are we after the next Bin Laden and never caught the first one?  What's the plan?   Kill entire tribes to shorten the life of the next Geronimo?  I go back a long way with my view of  the situation.  For instance, I had a poem published in the third week of  December, 1983:

If we are behind in defense capabilities and continue to face peace liabilities and have so much to fear
Why ain't the Russians here?
If it is true, as has been stated each year, that we need more weapons, conventional and nuclear, more paid armies forced to volunteer
Why ain't the Russians already here?
I'm tired of taxes that pay to reduce the threat of war
On a country that's never been attacked before.
If we can't protect our shores
How come the enemy ain't kicking down our doors?

Who is the enemy, now?  The network of Saudi Arabians who pulled off 911?  No Iraqis involved.  No Iranians or Afghanis.  Those people didn't mean for us to attack countries just because they are Muslim.   They figured we'd take it out on the Saudis.  I guess.  Who knows?  One thing is certain.  They had no idea of the biblical proportions of death and destruction their act would bring to their people.  Or they knew the United States would provide plenty more targets for those bent on protecting their homeland from invaders. Their suicide mission in passenger jets allowed for peasent compatriots to strap exposives to themselves or the side of the road and accomplish the same death to Americans.  Best way to prevent it is to remove the targets.  Seems every generation expects to do battle and looks forward to it.  One day an older generation will stop the youthful progression.   Mine won't.  Can't.
    I've got stories to re-write on this blog.  Plan to begin THE ALL-AMERICAN HITCHHIKER.

22Oct - I've torqued my left elbow and my right thigh.  Been suffering with them for a week or so but kept running and lifting.  Today, I was wheelbarrowing wet dirt from my cellar and realized immediately where the elbow strain came from.  I had to put extra lift on the handles the last time I was using it because I got caught with an overload and it backed me back down the slope before I recovered and forced it back up.  Turning my hand inward, palm down, really wakes up the hurt.  It was recovering until today, even though I was keeping the loads at half-full.  It will probably interrupt my sleep for awhile  and I'll struggle through the iron curls.  I figure the deep thigh soreness is a result of slinging cinder blocks to re-build the back entry landing after Zimba destroyed the scrap wood steps I screwed together.  There was an opening which was full of mint but she dug all of that out and then proceeded to chew and underpin the layers of old wood.  She was after a rabbit and it didn't leave until I had most of  the weakened boards removed.
     Last weekend, she turned her attention to the stone enclosure on the north side of my garden area.  She was shoulder deep and turning over large rocks in an attempt to get to some kind of critter.  The next day I found a dead chipmunk nearby.  She treated it like a rat and broke its neck.  I'd never seen it, before, or I'd have kept a closer eye on her hunt.  The poor thing had to have escaped the cats in the neighborhood  but they just stalk whereas Zimba doesn't rest until she has excavated to the end of the scent.

It's Frieszzday.  Couldn't handle the 'mares anymore.  Called xx-rays to drop off a fat fifty.  I'm better off, on it.  Or better on, off.  Baking bread and the first rhyme I was ever taught came as a memory of my mother, father and I lounging on an unmade bed.  Dad had me in his lap, moving my hands with his until I mimiced.  Patty cake a patty cake a baker's man, bake me a cake as fast as you can, roll it and roll it and pick it and pick it and throw it in the pan. When I began doing it with prompting, the "throw it in the pan" resulted in emjoyable laughter from both adults. The roll it was the motion of using a rolling pin.  The pick it was a quick motion of grasping with thumb and forefinger in a pinching movement.  And then the hands were brought backwards to prepare for the throw.into the pan   While working dough, I wondered about the "pick it" part.  With whole wheat bread it would be tuck it and tuck it as the ends of the loaf are closed.
     That "funny"  guy who claims he snorted coke close to the Pres.and has pics to prove it is jive.  It is simple to simulate sniffing stuff.  If he chanced a career by carrying it to a gig like that, he's probably full-time on it.  Or something, more powerful, like alcohol.

Yesterday morning after it quit raining, my backyard area was an aviary airport.  I observed thirteen I could identify and two sparrows I couldn't.  Bluejay, Cardinal, Carolina Wren, Cedar Waxwing, Chicadee, Junco, Mockingbird, Robin, Starling, Song Sparrow, Towhee, Tufted Titmouse, Yellow-breasted Nuthatch.  They were all over the Hawthorne berries and investgated the corn/sunflower shock. Come to think of it, that one small bird may have been a Goldfinch in winter plumage.  That would explain the yellow on the sides. I was running back and forth between my two window sight sites with my 'nocs in one hand and my Peterson guide in the other.  Today, there are two starlings in the top dead branches of my neighbors box elder, engaged in wing shivering, tongue twittering conversation and no other birds are in sight.  They are probably discussing the possibilities of the color scheme in a tight formation flock of those fifteen migrators.
     Did the donut before noon.  The leaves are just waiting for some sun to really light up against the back shadows.  The recent showers brought out the water colors, every shade from gold to purple splashed on in like patterns with all the green fall-ed out.    Approaching, then going beneath to see limbs on the same tree with different shades was a smile, but the path along the steep south bank aligned with knee-high trees was the real treat.   There were patches of leaves so bright, I imagined a ray of sunshine had spotlighted through the dense overcast. As if neon lit, the golds glowed.  The path was carpeted with a layer of leaves from the larger trees but none had  dried to match those still clinging to those slender stems.

6Dec - Went to a dinner and intermingled with my sister's kids.  I realize their recollections of me are from a period of time when I drove  "The Hummingbird,"  a l978 Chevrolet Monza station wagon.  The car had been purchased used by my brother-in-law and he'd allowed the older girls to use it as college transpo until they refused to drive it, lamenting on its lack of  power and a bad side window crank. It was given to me to get it out of the yard.  It had a four-cylinder engine with a three speed automatic transmission with I used to downshift at brutal speeds.  Within weeks of obtaining it, I had it in fifteen different eastern and southern states and ignored the speed limit in every one.  In a fit of lunacy, I drove it from Chicago to the California border in 48-hours.  It may have been the return from that trip which Mike recalled.
     It seems he hadn't seen the car since I'd driven it from his yard and I pulled in at his grandmaother's house while he was standing outside with a high school friend.  He says when the car stopped a cloud of bluish smoke drifted up and he was shocked to see me after so long a time and there was a tumbleweed in the passenger seat. belted in.  Wish I could just as easily forget some of the more bizarre Hummingbird stories these adults remember from their youth.

8Jan - Robert Lynn's birthday yesterday and I didn't acknowledge.  He invited me to his crib for my 71st and layed a half-C on me but he ain't coming inside mine so calling and offering a drink would have been futile. Pussy-whipped has nothing to do with getting any, otherwise all these old prostates would be more free.  It's the mothering they can't do without - be it wife or mom - the little-boy bullshit all males continue,  to keep from growing up and maturing away from the nurturing.
     Why should someone scheduled to be put to death be given fame for the last fifteen minutes?  How easy would it be to not have a set time to poison the prisoner at some point from awakening to passing?  The condemned need not know the exact time, only that it would be today.  Could be in the stethoscope or the last meal but it would be asleep, then gone.  Record the last ten seconds for media consumption.
8Jan?!  What the hell year was I in?
15 Dec - JD invited "the Phillipses" to his house.  I haven't been invited since when I was chinein'  Mom, fifteen or more years ago.  Went straight which worked since I still gorged on everything with sugar or chocolate.  I'm in full beard for the first time, ever, and it's glow-in-the-dark white. The house is built on a corner of a block which used to be grown over with locust trees and  sections of  of high weeds and vines. Robert claims the Klondike boys and I buried him and Don Tribby up to their necks and left them.  For awhile.  I may have watched it happen but I don't remember moving any dirt.  Of course, that was after JD and the Massie boys had abandoned that section where they built cardboard shanties and smoked tobacco.  Guaranteed, none of us went to that corner of the block because those Massies lived just across the street and they were older and known to be on the tough side. JD was their friend.  Juvenile Delinquent.  He's very gracious, these days, golfs every day and could pass for years younger.  We were raised in the same house, a block away.
      My bro-in-law told a story about being in a Middleport store which was covered with the high school team memorabilia.  He's talking to the proprietor and when she finds out where he's from she tells about the game in his hometown when the game was won and this little short sum-bitch took the kickoff and ran it back for a touchdown to beat us.  Larry said, "I'm that little sum-bitch."
   
       Then I told a rat story.  While working on a farm in Michigan, the grainery became rat infested and the owner's brother-in-law who'd seen his share of rodents expressed  some fear of the size of a rat he'd seen while getting a tool.  He claimed it was large enough to wear a muscle t-shirt.
     I borrowed his rifle and offered to exterminate the vermin.  Being in a structure inhabited by rats, after dark, with a dim overhead light is uncomfortable, at best.  Earlier, I'd stored the wheat seed in an old watering trough and laid two boards across the top.  I wrapped the oat seed in a section of canvas.
     While moving deliberately along the second floor, I noticed a large rat moving along a wall of the first floor.  It paused in a corner where I'd stacked tractor parts, then emerged, moving to my left.  While tryng to get into position to shoot between verticle support boards, the rat began climbing a 2x6 directly in front of me.   Coming into full view, it turned and paused, lower half exposed.  I fired the .22 long rifle slug into the thigh area.  The rat squealed, dropped to the floor and crawled behind some disc blades while I was reloading the bolt action.
     I hurried down the stairs to get a flashlight and directed the beam in the spaces between the round steel discs.  After moving three or four, I found the rat lying prostrate, still alive.  I fired a round into his skull and he struggled for another ten seconds before stiffening a final time.   I carried the carrcass outside and dropped it on the concrete step.
     Once inside, I noticed a rat moving slowly along the space between the bottom of the sliding door and the concrete step below it.  I turned to aim the rifle from point blank range, slid the safety off and fired a slug through its head. It jumped into the grass, jerked and moved its legs for a few seconds before dying.
     At a location furthest from the front door, I discovered a large hole in the floor where the rats were entering and leaving their runs beneath the grainery.  I cleared an area to provide a line of fire and sat on an ammo box about fifteen feet away.   After awhile, I detected the sound of a rat scurrying inside the wall space nearest the hole. It went from floor to ceiling, then turned back.  When it reappeared, it began coming headfirst down a 2x4 towards the hole.   When it came into full view, I carefully sighted and squeezed the trigger.  Misfire.  The rat froze, then went back up and over the edge into the wall space.   After half-an-hour it returned and I shot it as it was coming down the 2x4.  It fell to the floor like a stunt rat; flipped over, landed flat on its back and began air-running and twitching before dying with its tongue hanging out and eyes half-open.
     I heard the fourth rat skittering across the second floor and watched it go up the wall board and disappear into the space between the inside and outside walls.  It reappeared as a dim outline and I was concerned a shot may cause it to drop into the space clear to the first floor and be lost to count.  However, when I fired, the lead entered through the lower back and exited through the neck.  The large rat reared up just enough to tip the balance and it fell to the floor.  I retrieved it and took it outside to tie all four tails to a length of string and display them on the barn door.
     The next evening, I covered all but about two inches of the floor hole with a section of 2x10, set two white plastic containers beside it for background and  tipped a container of egg shells and table scraps onto its side in front of the hole.  Then I seated myself on the ammo box.
     Within minutes, another big one offered only whiskers and eyes before backing into the hole. It bobbed its head up and down a few times, then slid out, snatched an eggshell and backed into the hole.  Eventually, she returned to grab a morsel and when she turned to go back, I blasted her.  She raised up, backed into the wall and sat upright while leaning against one of the palastic containers.  Her eyes were wide open and the whitish fur of her stomach was fully exposed.  She looked like a fat person sitting in a recliner, staring  into space.  I approached cautiously and nudged it with the tip of the gun barrel.  It slumped sideways. The largest of the five, her body was the length of the steel part of a garden shovel.  I tied the tail to the same dangling string which would hold ten in the end.
     The next five rats were probably older as they were more difficult to shoot.  Two offered no more than the tops of their heads, so I had to reach into the hole to get the carcasses.  One fell down between the walls and wasn't recovered.  Another was killed by a lucky shot through some hanging chains and the last one was killed while I was holding a flashlight in one hand and the rifle in the other.

19Dec -Two inches of new snow for first ever run in new New Balance shoes.  Sloppy babtism.  Seems a one-eighty from those days in Eureka when I wore baggies over my Brooks to keep them dry.  Slipped to a three-point stance over snow covered mud at lake.  At one point on wet pavement the shoes felt like they were lifting my knees.  Been changing back and forth, for years, between "Airs" and "Gels."  Right now, my most comfortable pair are Adidas.
     Ten cardinals in my snow-flocked hawthorne turning upside down to pluck the berries.  Only one flew down to check out the unfrozen water in the bluegill birdbath.  De-icer doing the J-diamond-B.

22Dec - Dealer's 'nection gets popped behind an FBI reverse buy.  Gonna miss the delivery to the door $50
 1/4's.  Loading bowls with stems and all to make this last bag last 'til Christmas.  Seriously, my small SS checks should come with the benefit of buying marijuana at prices to reflect my income.  The price I paid nearly forty years ago ($160 per pound) for the same Mexican weed would lessen the bite on my check. It is now costing me $3200 to burn a pound.  A weed.  A dried herb.  $3200 a lb.!  Grass, growable in nearly any soil in this country, costing $3200 per pound because it comes from Mexico.  And is governed by criminal laws and penalties.  The age group I began getting high with is now concentating on pills as their drug of choice.  I contend this is due to the pressure on pot smoking.  Marijuana is not easy to conceal, simply because of  its volume.  And odor.  And illegality.   When it was cheap, it was still popular, but with more policing and price increases, the youth went to medicine cabinets and then to street chemicals.  Plus, they find what they were looking for before, taking a small amount of a drug and fogging out.  One can only get so high on toke.  Unless it's mixed with alcohol, etc., a toker never gets clear out of it.  A perfect drug for old people.

30Dec - Times with pot will get you through times without money but money won't get you through times without pot.  Times with neither (since the 24th) makes for boring holidays.  My New year's resolution is to not run out of my d-o-c in 2010.  Xx-rays says he's retailing again, so I told him I need an ozker as soon as the eagle squats.  By the time that five days passes, I'll be trying to forget the bad dreams and forcing the impetus to maintain my regimen of beans, greens, weight training and running.  And clearing my desk of all this accumulation of notes, poems and drafts which I intended to have finished this year. Kay Sarah.