“ The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand and write when there is something that you know and not before and not too damned much after.“

My fourth grade teacher would have accused him of a run-on sentence, but then she never achieved what he did. I can just see him pounding this out on what is know an antique typewriter.

It’s a detail that often goes unnoticed by restaurants, certainly those here in Hunterdon County. One surmises that it happens wherever.

The two other couples who you are dining with are remarking about how exquisite their meals were. You quite agree . You are a more deliberate eater than the others. You haven’t finished eating yet, but yours is delicious, as well.

Enter here the wait staff to commence clearing the table, at least for those who are obviously done with their dinners . WRONG !

In his book, SETTING THE TABLE, pre-eminent NYC restauranteur , Danny Meyer, makes a specific point regarding this. Surely the House must allow the guest time to waft the rose on his/her table.

So, there you sit, the table cleared for everyone else… but you . That makes you feel a bit uncomfortable with the clamor of dishes and utensils being shuffled . Who needs that while they’re still eating?

Is it more important that your waiter/waitress has a head start on clearing the table for dessert, which you are too full to order anyway ?

Is this just part and parcel of the impetuous approach of Americans ? Is this what Thoreau meant when he wrote that we are determined to be starved before we are hungry ? Does your waiter really not have the time to delay until ALL are finished with their meal ?

Sorry folks. I just needed to vent a little… before I ran out of time !

Got to texting the other day with a fellow Hunterdon Co. native , Peter Graff, about some memorable times locally. We recalled the monumental excavation that it took to build Round Valley Reservoir and later, Spruce Run Reservoir.

Then Interstate 78 came through with its attendant upheaval. Projects like these, for the public good, are many years in the making before the dirty work even begins.

Imagine just the condemnation process alone. That is, in my unlawyer-like description, the taking of privately owned land so that it can be used by the public for an essential purpose (in this case, transportation). The lands needed to build the interstate highways across America, for example, first had to be condemned .

It’s easy to understand the emotional rollercoasters sometimes encountered by the government’s condemnation agent. After all, the farm’s been in the family for four generations and now some mealy-mouthed dude in a suit comes to say he’s here to snatch part of it.

Yes, he’ll pay you for it. Yes, there’s room for negotiation, but not much. It’s not really the owner ‘s choice.

My conversation with Peter evolved to a discussion of Romaine Tenney in Weathersfield, Vermont.

WHO ?

Weathersfield, Vermont. 1964. A wizened old farmer, Romaine Tenney, has refused to do a deal with the government to permit the destruction of his house and cow barn that are in the way of future construction of Interstate 91.

At length, Tenney gets word that the Feds are on their way to remove his worldly possessions from the house to ready it for razing. When they arrive, the house and barn are a raging inferno, Tenney inside with a bullet in his head. Eminent Domain in its ugliest form.

I was eleven years old when that incident took place. I have to wonder how many similar circumstances clouded the judgements of wearied farmers who, right or wrong, felt betrayed; in the wrong place at the wrong time, but for the sake of the public good.

There’s no other word for it. I suppose it’s a little nerdy to even be writing about this. After all, a game that’s been absorbing my time lately is hardly a controlled dangerous substance. It’s a damned game, but I am nonetheless addicted to it.

At dinner last night my friend, Susan, asked me what I was writing lately. I contemplated momentarily, then replied, “Nothing”.

That exchange sort of wrenched me to my new reality. Indeed, the question was legitimate. I do spend much of my time writing, but not lately. I explained that I was currently devoid of a subject about which to write.

Yes, that is true, but I was prompted to further consider. The truth is, I’ve been wholly absorbed lately playing WORDS With Friends with a bunch of folks who are minimally friends ! Excepting my daughter-in-law in California, I don’t know them, where they’re from, what they do etc. For all I know, they could be playing me from their prison cell !

I can hardly put the damned game down ! Harken back to childhood. Remember Scrabble ? WORDS is best described as a modern day version of Scrabble, quite more wieldy, safe to say ; no game board or blocks of wood with inscripted letters that immediately slide out of place at the slightest nudging.

One competes with players from anywhere and everywhere. It’s a sort of Words phantasmagoria occupied by seething minds replete with suspended letters seeking placement in a word that has heretofore been but an apparition.

Some day I’ll start writing in my blog again !

When did I have my very first association with Hackettstown, N.J.?

That’s right. Football. Playing football.

It was 1967, freshman year at Delaware Valley Regional H.S. That’s when we first played Hackettstown High School. For the record, they kicked our collective ass !

My goodness! The calculator indicates that was 46 years ago. Whew, where did that go ?

I have since had an occasional nexus with Hackettstown for one reason or another, but it’s been a while. There used to be a livestock auction there. In the old dairy days, the newborn bull calves were trucked to Hackettstown. In the cattle world, being born a bull on a dairy farm was lousy luck.

Separately . when in the advertising business, Tucker Publishing Co. circulated a piece in Warren County, of which Hackettstown is a part. Consequently, I made sales calls there regularly. Also, for the record, the town was bleak to me. No wonder. It was sort of a depressed town.

A good buddy of mine once quipped, “So how are things in ‘I can’t Hackettstown’? Damn, pretty clever ! All those years of walking Main Street and I never thought of that !

Changing gears, I was just recently vaccinated at a CVS store on the outskirts of Hackettstown. Afterward, I suggested to Judy that, for old time’s sake, we pay a visit to Main St. We did.

Wow ! Talk about suspended in time. Yes, surely there were changes. I recognized only two retailers whose names were there 46 years ago when I pulled up stakes.

Otherwise, Hackettstown looked quite the same, a town suspended in time and forgotten by the ages. I suspect it has been that way for a long time and will remain so. Maybe some day they’ll make a movie there. I hope the producers will refrain from calling it I CAN’T HACKETTSTOWN.

We call it “The Kid’s Wing”, that part of the house that has always been bedrooms relegated to our kids or their cousins/guests, etc. The wing has three bedrooms and one separate bath in the hall.

Full disclosure : over the years, we’ve allowed the kid’s wing to NOT keep pace with the balance of the house with respect to renovations, upgrades etc. The kids seem none the worse for it. They’re not irreparably scarred.

We’re in the process right now of renovating the bathroom which brings to mind a bit of humorous nostalgia. There is an original (1940s) pine door to this bathroom that has always had a quirky latch. Not consistently, but occasionally a user of the bathroom, having locked it after entry, would have difficulty opening the door to exit.

That unfortunate user would then have to knock on the door or more forcefully bang on the door, such that those elsewhere inside the house would hear and come let the poor soul out.

If there was a party happening in the house, this instance could be problematic. Revelers would not here the sequestered door banger, no matter how loud their banging was. This happened to our neighbor’s daughter, Sarah, who found no other choice than to open the bathroom window and jump out to the ground.

Fortunately, for Sarah, ours is a single story house so, her descent wasn’t life threatening. Nonetheless, it was an incident she won’t forget, perhaps something from her own lore that she’ll occasionally share with grandkids.

Meanwhile, the damned latch was always one of those little nagging items on the Honey Do list that never garnered my undivided attention… until now, 40 odd years later. Oh well, any day now !

Some have been busy fighting the virus.
I’ve been busy writing poetry !
Hey, its what I do.
Your visit to http://www.petetucker.net will reveal 29 new poems for your reading pleasure. (No, you don’t have to read them all at once.)

Click on POEMS. See the heading NEW FOR 2021.
Enjoy!
If you have a favorite, please let me know. Thank you !

I first heard the tune sung by one rockin’ band that played in a cafe in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. In fact, Bell Buckle’s only cafe. The band was out of Alabama, somewhere.

Immediately the question was begged: What the hell is a muleskinner ? You may also wonder, where is Bell Buckle ?

My old Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Case, always admonished: One question at a time. Her delivery was notably caustic for us tender five year olds, but the social norms were different then. It was 1958.

So, in deference to Mrs. Case, I’ll go with the easiest question first. Heck, everybody knows where Bell Buckle is. Middle Tennessee, 50 miles due south of Nashville. In fact, we owned a farm there once. It had wonderful views.

Former Civil War country, we once plucked from the dirt, with the help of a metal detector, a pile of Union minies and Confederate round balls, bullets, for those not familiar with the terms. Little doubt was left that we owned a bit of a battlefield. ( Battle of Union Gap, Nov. 9&10, 1863 took place just over the next hill.)

I digress. What was a muleskinner? By profession, he/she drove teams of mules that either pulled drays loaded with cargo or towed floating cargo barges using a towpath along a canal.

Muleskinners were notorious bullies to their animals, but they had to keep moving. This was commerce. There was regimen.

It was said that some muleskinners were deft with their whips, that from 20 feet behind they could pluck a tortuous horsefly from a mule’s ear without touching the ear !

The crack of the whip, incidentally, sounded like a pistol. If it was brought to bear on a mule’s hide, it could quite possibly slice the skin. “Muleskinner” begins to make sense.

I love Dolly Parton’s version of Muleskinner Blues, complete with incredibly long-held notes and amazing yodels . Tonight’s yodels at Bell Buckle were remarkable, as well. Surely they would have impelled any mule team’s attention, even clear across the railroad tracks.

So where is all of this old lore going ? He’ll, I don’t know! How did I even get on the subject? Was it something you said ?

I can tell you this: There was a standing ovation that night at the Bell Buckle Cafe. The mule skinner lore lived on.

Oh, about the Battle of Union Gap, just around the corner of our former place, there is a tiny cemetery. There inscripted in a large block of granite are the words of an eloquent farewell speech delivered by General Nathan Bedford Forrest to his troops. There are maybe 30 gravestones. The only inscription in each one is these three words :

UNKNOWN CONFEDERATE SOLDIER

What became of the bodies of Union soldiers who fell at Union Gap ? I don’t know.

Perhaps it may be assumed that record of their burial is detail lost to the ages, never as much as written down for the agonized mother somewhere up north who would never see her son again.

Indeed, the Union Gap incursion was a microcosm of the unspeakable sorrow visited on America by that war.

What is so rare as the first morning of Spring ?

The temperature still supplies a bit of an edge, as if to remind us all that we just left the back side of Winter. The sun couldn’t shine any brighter, but that edge is clearly discernible. The old order changes, but judging from my chilled fingers… barely.

Nonetheless, the Writer’s Perch is the spot to be at this hour. I gladly laud the the Vernal Equinox. Bring it on !

It is one of the proverbial rites of Spring here on the farm. A bland and quiescent Mallard quack is audible from the pond’s edge, one of nature’s first pronouncements that Spring is in the air.

It is an amusing contest. What creature will be the first to venture out on the limb ? After all, it is no secret that temperatures might well defy. Winter knows better than to relinquish its grip.

On this morning, however, The DUCKS have it, as a parliamentarian would say.

I do suspect, though, that any morning a gobble willreverberate out of the woods. There will be no secret then, the turkeys outdone by the ducks. What did Emerson say ? There is always some great leveling circumstance .