Little children sometimes do unspeakably cruel things. It seems a natural phenomenon. They know that it’s wrong, but as long as they don’t get caught, they do it anyway.

I was thus guilty as a little kid myself.

Well-known folksingers, The Clancy Brothers, once sang about one of their childhood schemes. They would kill a little bird called the Wren, then march it on a platter from door to door, beseeching a penny to bury the wren.

The reader will recognize the cold-heartedness of the exercise, but, hey, they were kids. Many wild animals kill in like manner.

There was a wild animal that utterly terrified me when I was little. It was slow and lumbering, but if it wished, could unmercifully bite off my big toe! An adult Snapping Turtle could weigh 25 pounds.

And so it was. Our dairy barn was located maybe 150 to 200 feet from a pond where lived what was to, this little kid, a gargantuan Snapping Turtle.

The creature saw fit one day to amble from the pond all the way to the doorstep of our milk house. Unwittingly, I stepped outside that morning and practically tripped over the errant turtle. It scared the daylights out of me!

After breakfast, I ventured back to the milk house just to verify that the Snapper had moved on. Scheis ! He hadn’t even budged.

My little kid killer instincts kicked in. I busied myself finding the heaviest rocks I could find.

Snapper shells, I learned have quite the tolerance for shock and bombardment. Did it have to die that morning? Not without taking a beating.

The giant turtle just crossed paths with the wrong little kid.

I beseech forgiveness.

 

A warm Summer breeze this afternoon wafted over the balcony. I just had to go back outside to take it all in, despite the baking hot sun.

Who knows? Maybe it would even prompt me to remember what it was that I forgot to write about this morning.

If I seem to you to be wiling away my hours with inconsequential matters, I suppose that might be accurate. Do remember, I’m retired. Humor me.

While sitting out there, I perceived in the corner of my eye, not five feet from me, a hummingbird. Bingo! And you is thought there was nothing to write about.

Did you know that the average hummingbird weighs less than a nickel ? Regardless, they still sort of throw their weight around. If you think you’ll beat the hummingbird to the next available nectar, guess again !

They are the only bird that can fly backwards. Where they learn that, I don’t know. Driver’s Ed ?

There are 343 different species of Hummingbird. I’ll spare you the list !

Surely you’ve examined a Hummingbird’s beak, or bill. Did you know that its tongue is groovy ? Really. Very groovy.

And you never contemplated a Hummingbird’s tongue? The grooves channel nectar to where it belongs. Indeed, Mother Nature provides, even the much vaunted Hummingbird’s tongue.

Hummingbirds have hairs on the tips of their tongues. Of course, they help to lap up nectar. but they have been derided in human discourse. Surely you’ve heard the expression ,”as worthless as the hair on a Hummingbird’s tongue “.

Believe it or not, Hummingbirds have no sense of smell. Again, an expression is evoked. “They can’t smell their way out of a bag of nectar.”

I commenced this meandering with laments over my memory. Contrarily, Hummingbirds have remarkable memories. Not unlike kids, they never forget a location where they’ve been fed.

It’s a new day.

You may have noticed that my visits to my own blog have, heretofore, been infrequent to say the least. Given that, the World has surprisingly not ended.

You may recall a vignette in my second book that was entitled Lost In Techno Fog.

Well, yes, I still am, but progress has been made. Up to this point, in fact, making an entry in my blog has been an egregious process. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that now an entry is way less complicated.

How special it is when one gets a visit from their high-priced consultant ! Yes, her name is Judy.

Now, when the spirit moves me, I just need to sit and and start writing. When finished, the simple push of one button yields my blog entry.

I already know what some of you are saying… “Duh”.

I only ask that you remember those still left in the world who are not Millennials and remain a bit challenged! We’ll get this technology bit if it’s the last thing we do.

Now, damn it, what did I intend to write about here this morning? I forget. Well, with any luck, it’ll re-surface. When it does, I’ll leap into action and exploit my newfound advances!

Being out there in the garden wasn’t where I really wanted to be. After all, I’d already put in a few hours in the cow barn. It was hot. Dead summer. The cucumber patch didn’t impel my interest. This was just more of the same. In a word… work.

My flailing hoe kicked up a little stone; nothing unusual about that. My double-take, however, may have been similar to something in a Red Skelton skit. What was on that common-looking stone? I knelt to pick it up.

To my nine year old wonderment, one side of the stone was fossilized with several imprints of
tiny seashells. Holding the stone in my hand, I tentatively looked around me, as if to conceive of the next breaking wave! Wait a minute, I sought to reason. This is our garden; a long drive to the nearest ocean. How did this happen?

It slowly dawned on me. In my hand was a connection to another place in time, kicked up by one of the many swipes of my hoe. Perhaps the last time that this stone was “unearthed” was when it was actually formed, an impressionable piece of igneous matter formed by untold volcanic action.

That sounds a bit fantastic, but how else did this happen? And, now many millions of years ago? This farm had obviously been under water. Those seashells had to have an explanation… somehow. There I stood, this momentarily befuddled farm kid attempting to conceive the nearly inconceivable, a connection with when the earth was forming… right there in the palm of my hand.

Who knew what humbling evidence lay beneath the surface, in the very dirt of the Garden State, that dirt that sprouted the veggies that filled our freezer to the brink.

On another matter….

Where the hell is Hoover’s Gap, one might expectedly ask? Oh, believe me, there’s things in the dirt there, too. They tell a story of a different sort, from a much later point in time.

For a while, we owned a farm in middle Tennessee. A stone’s throw from this farm is a tiny Confederate cemetery where are interred the remains of maybe 20 or 30 soldiers. Each of their gravestones reads only three words… “UNKNOWN CONFEDERATE SOLDIER”.

These were the soldiers, at least the Confederate soldiers, who fell at the Battle of Hoover’s Gap. Where are the Union boys who also fell there? They are lost to the vestiges of time, I suppose.

We sat on the porch there at the farm one hot summer day when a gentleman drove up the driveway. He politely introduced himself and explained his unusual hobby. With his metal detector, he occasionally scoured these parts with intent to unearth Civil War artifacts. He asked permission to do so on our fields.

I watched as he began waving his metal detector. He was soon digging in various spots around the farm. In an hour or so he came back up to the porch. In both hands he carried numerous Union minies and Confederate round balls, surely artifacts from the Hoover’s Gap action that had apparently spread over the hill and onto the farm in 1864.

Unbeknownst to me, we owned a civil war battlefield. From there on the porch, one couldn’t have found a more tranquil, a more serene location in the Bedford County countryside. The beauty of the place belied its past. I

A bit of humor found us last night. My sister, Sue, brought over a copy of my book to have me sign it. My handwriting is even more wretched than it used to be. Given that, Judy normally scribes the salutation and I just add my signature.

“Hmm, what shall we say”, I questioned.

Sue replied, “just write something clever and witty.”

Per my instruction, Judy wrote as follows: To Sue, Something Cleaver and Witty
I then signed, Pete.

Sue looked at it and the laughter was animated.

“Just one problem”, Sue said. “You wrote cleaver, not clever.”

I asked Sue for the book back and asked Judy to write as follows after my signature: I used to be a butcher, you know.

A bit of humor found us last night. My sister, Sue, brought over a copy of my book to have me sign it. My handwriting is even more wretched than it used to be. Given that, Judy normally scribes the salutation and I just add my signature.

“Hmm, what shall we say”, I questioned.

Sue replied, “just write something clever and witty.”

Per my instruction, Judy wrote as follows: To Sue, Something Cleaver and Witty
I then signed, Pete.

Sue looked at it and the laughter was animated.

“Just one problem”, Sue said. “You wrote cleaver, not clever.”

I asked Sue for the book back and asked Judy to write as follows after my signature: I used to be a butcher, you know.

I write this morning on the day after Christmas and am musing over a Holiday salutation received from Chris Mitchell. Chris and I grew up together, her being in the house, the only house, next to the farm. Chris is a doctor’s daughter, but as a child underwent a curious transformation. Our farm became her paradigm, her life’s framework. She worked in the barn with us every day, not because she had to but because she loved to. Chris became the consummate farm girl.
In her recent note, she described an occasion from many years ago when she was all of age six. Chris was on her way up to the dairy barn when her Mom was summoning her back to the house for some reason.

“But, Mom”, Chris countered, “ The artificial inseminator is about to get here!”

This, of course, begs the question: How many six year old girls back then were conversant in matters of artificial insemination ? Chris sure was!

On another matter, I suppose it is just the ongoing wussification of America. In the spirit of full disclosure, it is also about my wussification. After all, here I am in Florida, getting away from the miserable winter in Jersey. I write, however, about a further level, one that even a wuss might recognize.

These weather alerts delivered by way of bells and whistles over the cellphone are beyond the pale! Yesterday, for example, was it really necessary to have everyone’s day interrupted by the dramatic tolling so that all hands are aware that tomorrow a “cold front” will sweep across Florida. The temperature will drop six degrees!!

As Marisa Tomei said in MY COUSIN VINNY, What a f- – – – ing nightmare! Our lives hang in the balance. The temperature today was 80 degrees. Do you realize what that means, all of you glued to your devices? Hell will freeze over here in sunny Florida, a precipitous drop to maybe even 74 degrees.

The nurses will wake you up when this is all over, assuming, of course, that you have survived !

As you peruse my paragraphs here, please try to tolerate my impulsiveness. I tend to flit from one subject to the next with no apparent continuity. Stay loose dear reader. You’ll get used to it! Who among Ye conforms to a standard format anyway?

Not to mention, there is some insistent ,sad, uncertain software that sees fit to re-arrange the spacing in some of my poems. ANNOYING! Yes, spell check is convenient, but other software seems to assume that the writer is a mindless idiot. I will submit that the software is correct to an extent, but can it cut me some slack? How do I tell software that I’m not as dumb as I look?!

_____________________________________________________________________________
It is the year 2018. It is in the bleak December and each separate dying ember writhes its ghost upon the floor. (Pardon the Poe paraphrase.) The News would have us believe that this is to be the Mother of all Winter’s. … with a Polar Vortex arousal forthcoming.

This, of course, is why we go to Florida for a couple of months. At least a goodly chunk of Winter is occluded from our routine. With any rotten luck, however, come early March when we get home, it’ll snow like the Hammers of Hell. It did last year.

What is the Polar Vortex, anyway? Not that I am a mass of knowledge on the matter, but I do know that there are two of them, one at the North Pole, one at the South. They are massive areas of low pressure that are stationary, with counter-clockwise winds that effectively retain the frigid air to the poles. Doctors prescribe either Vortex as an antidote for those who chronically purport global warming.

I rotate my writing recliner to face the inspired view. Behold! The frost is, in fact, on the pumpkin. The horses are still grazing the whitened grass. Cold nights will soon wane away whatever of it is left and Winter will concentrate on being Winter. Nature naps for a notable pause.

Most folks don’t live on a “dirt” lane,
especially one that’s a mile or so long.
Residents on the lane maintain it, as well…
always have.
The following verse is the perspective of
a life-long lane dweller.

————————————————

Came home from the Med Center,
Had just been born.
My folks were a bit wearied,
Safe to say, careworn.

For the very first time
That I came down the lane.
I could tell even then
It’d be hell to maintain — where’s the shale?

Finally got to our house,
A sorta frazzled hovel.
There it leaned on the porch,
A round-pointed shovel— where’s the shale?

I knew right then
I’d be heftin’ that thing.
Better practice right now,
Better start shoveling— where’s the shale?

Quickly came to realize
This was one lengthy lane.
A full crop of potholes
I knew would be my bane — where’s the shale?

When did I fill my first pothole?
I don’t really recall .
Safe to say, though
I was pretty damned small— where’s the shale?

So decades scrolled by
On this beleaguered road.
Shale was still cheap
Thirty five bucks a load

So, we kept filling potholes
Though quite frustrated ,
As the look on my face
Clearly illustrated.

It was a poor as hell method.
You see, shale turns to mud.
With one heavy rain
The lane’s a messy flood — damn the shale.

Overnight they reappeared
Each lousy pothole
Very much an understatement
The lane’s outta control!—where’s the shale.

Later on in life
The wife and I owned the farm.
We switched to QP.
Now that was the charm — to hell with shale.

The lane smoothed right out
Which caused me to wonder
Those years of shoveling shale
We’re really quite the blunder.

What took us so long
To figure that out?
It was a real simple matter,
I sorta felt like a lout— damn the shale!

The lesson here is simple.
We’d used shale all along.
Didn’t mean that was right,
Hell, it was always wrong! — that rotten shale!

Pete Tucker
Nov. 2018

 
Good day, bloggers. I’m Pete Tucker. Yes, this old farm boy now wields his pen rather than his pitchfork. A little while back, I finally started to keep a diary, then got caught up in this blogging frenzy. Who knew? Excerpts from my diary are contained herein.

By way of further introduction, my wife and I live on the old family farm, yes, the farm where I grew up and milked cows in the wee hours of the morning. The “fun” continued after school. The whole long saga amounted to a most unusual childhood experience, so much so that I have seen fit to write two books about it. Unless you’re a tad stodgy, you will laugh!

Should you care to read, just visit AMAZON. COM, type in the name Pete Tucker. Voila! There’s my books. It still amazes me that your order will be in your mail within approx. three days.

Finding the farm isn’t that easy. Yes, GPS will get you to the end of the lane, but I recall a joke that one of us would repeat when we were traveling back home from, let’s say, Grandma’s house in Michigan. We’d finally pull up to the mouth of the lane and one of us would say, “Well, we’re half way home.”

Indeed, the unknowing individual would find it hard to believe that somebody actually lived that far off the road, but us hillbillies did! It was life in the country and we pay dearly to get back here, especially in the winter.

I should add a little perspective, though. Our lane is long, but it doesn’t hold any world record. We were leisurely driving one day in the depths of Nowheresville, West Virginia. It was hilly, remote country, spectacularly beautiful. Way in the distance, Judy and I spied a lane that ascended a mountain to a house at its very top. Without doubt, the resident here undertook a veritable journey just to get from the road to their house.

Stopped in the car at the mouth of this lane, Jude and I engaged in a conversation about what motivates someone to live on a lane that was obviously far longer than ours. For the fun of it, we opted to take a drive up, introduce ourselves, and ask them. Chances were we’d meet someone of like mind, or perhaps my reader hears the intermittent pluck of a banjo!

At long last, we pulled up to the house. The view from up here was close to indescribable. A young lady answered our knock at her door. Though a bit taken aback by our unlikely arrival, she was of pleasant disposition and wore a winsome smile. She appreciated our enthusiasm for her location as Jude and I explained that we, too, were “Lanies”.

In further conversation, it became apparent that she lived here alone. Our chat ventured to the motivations that possess someone to live this remotely. She said nothing. She simply pointed her hand toward the vast acreage within our mutual sight.

“Need I say more”, she subtlety inquired.

Her point was well taken. There was no need for her to say anything. We didn’t stay long. We exchanged good byes and descended from the mountain. It was a brief and unexpected spiritual moment there in “Almost Heaven.”

Another journey begins…a venture into the Blogosphere. Sounds Galactic, doesn’t it? (Major Tom to Ground Control)  Who ever would have guessed this about an old farmer? Yes, perhaps I am nuts. I write all day and finally, finally I’ve found something that will keep me writing into the night. Oh, what a relief!

Just so we’re on the same page, my intent is to have fun with this effort. If I can’t write and have a good time at it, then to what avail?

Yes, it is official. I have retired my pitchfork. On my worse days you will catch me in a wheelchair, better days with a cane.  Neither is conducive to handling a wheelbarrow. My condition is called 35 years with MS.

I urge all of my readers to do what you can do as soon as you are able. Carpe diem. Remember, life is not a dress rehearsal. A day will come when you can no longer do what was possible way back when.

In the meantime, you will probably find my blog to be a smattering of unrelated items. I’m not trying to change the world here. That’s tough to do with unrelated items. So…check ignition, turn your engines on. Blog away mates

FYI, I enjoy dialogue on venues like this. So have at it. Tell me what you think about whatever. Do know that my replies will tend to be brief. When I’m punching out the verbiage on my I iPad mini, brevity is my soulmate.

One rule: No Pomposity.