You’ll recall yesterday’s missive, Fed Ex – Country Style, whereby a contingent of delivery trucks got stuck in neighbor, Phil Rochelle’s hayfield. I’m still pondering why on Earth a delivery driver would have chosen to take his truck down that bridle path .

While writing the piece, I had placed a call to Phil to hear the story straight from him. He was finally able to return my call this morning , the horse having already breached the gate, so to speak. I just had to share one little witticism from Phil our conversation.

Referring to the FedEx driver’s decision, he described it as “a special kind of stupid.”

Sad, isn’t it ? Mr. FedEx will have to live with that ignominy for time immemorial !

On another matter, it wasn’t ever going to be one of Johnny Cash’s top songs, but EGG SUCKIN DOG did grace one of his old album covers, way back when. The song lamented his dog’s reprehensible habit of devouring whatever eggs it could get its mouth on.

To my horror, I discovered this afternoon that I , too, have an EGG SUCKIN DOG !

A duck couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, visit our pond annually. Of course, they nest there. In fact, I was able to observe yesterday exactly the spot where the Mrs. has her nest . Her approach is easily observable from the Writer’s Perch.

Today, as I momentarily unglued my eyes from my IPad, there I saw the dog, Echo, sniffing around the locale of Mrs. Mallard’s nest.

“Echo”, I yelled, wanting to immediately distract her from the spot.

Not the least obeisance made she, a sure sign that she is hell bent impelled by whatever she’s doing.

“Echo “, I yelled again. It was as though she couldn’t even hear me.

Shortly she ran by the Perch, obviously with something in her mouth. Seconds later, I could hear eggshells cracking. Echo repeated the routine several times. How many times? My guess would be exactly the number of eggs left in Mrs. Mallard’s nest

Uh boy, she’ll have to try again next year.

There was a little episode on the lane yesterday. For backdrop, picture a skinny, gravel road that meanders through the woods to a point where a weary, wayworn driver might seriously begin to wonder where the Hell he was going !

The driver can’t panic. He needs to keep his wits about him and just stay on the lane.

There is a spot up at the north end of the lane where it is joined by a bridle path that has been used for ages by horse and rider. The path eventually empties into a hayfield that offers spectacular views spanning over into Pennsylvania .

Yesterday a Fed Ex driver was making a delivery to a resident on the lane when apparently he panicked. There is really no plausible reason for him to have steered his truck off the lane and down the bridle path, but that’s what he did.

Sometimes people deride country folks for being a little obtuse, but that would have been the pot calling the kettle black in this case. Who knows? Maybe the driver had just left his city mettle back in Bayonne, but sure enough, he drove his little Fed Ex truck into the hayfield and got it seriously stuck in wet ground.

One thing lead to another. Then another. The driver eventually commandeered a tow truck to come pull him out.

Then the tow truck got stuck . That, of course, required a second tow truck. That truck got stuck, also. Can my reader see the makings of an old Laurel & Hardy skit here ? Maybe Red Skelton ?

My neighbor, Phil Rochelle, whose hayfield was being chewed up by spinning Fed Ex tires, found no choice but to fire up his old stand-by… a John Deere 4020.

There was a time in these parts when possession of a 4020 was an extra feather in a farmer’s cap. Surely it was and still is powerful enough to pull out five Fed Ex trucks at once, but seldom is there a call for that.

Bottom Line ? Eventually all trucks were pulled out of the Springtime mire , but it wasn’t FedEx’s proudest moment. Their drivers did not prove themselves to be the invincible lads that they always are.

One is reminded of a memorable line in a 1979 Fed Ex tv ad. .”When it absolutely, positively must be there overnight.”

Yesterday they may have slipped a notch in their former bravado !

W.H.O. I’m confused. Is it the World Health Organization or the Wuhan Health Organization ? Either way, they appear to be good buddies. They have each other’s back.

They are only complicit in the death of nearly 100, 000 people, but it’s early yet. There’s still time for this thing to get a real foothold.

By the way, China, who the hell over there eats bats ? Is that some sort of glitch in your collective DNA ? Doesn’t bat hair get stuck between your teeth ?

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that your wet markets are barbaric. You’re a little obtuse, as well . This isn’t the first time that you’ve been culpable in pestilence on account of those things. Wake the Hell up !

I can only hope that your alien ways catch up with you.

— Plainly the fox belongs to a different sort than that which reigns in the village . Our courts, though they offer a bounty for its hide, and our churches, though they draw many a moral from its cunning, are in few senses contemporary with its free forest life. —

H.D. Thoreau .

I sat there in the woods yesterday morning on my John Deere Gator, positioned to best absorb the features of my favorite spot. It was always a navigational bearing on the farm when trying to describe a specific location.

Bessie calved only a hundred feet from where “the three streams meet .”

It being Spring, the water flow was vigorous enough to be pleasantly audible. What a gorgeous morning ! How lucky was I.

Presently a fox trotted in my direction , but paid no attention to me or the green machine that I was perched upon. Bushy, red and handsome, not the least obeisance made the fox as he sauntered by the Gator.

If there was a way, how I would have thanked the fox for his momentary curtain call. He made my day!

What was he doing on his seemingly oblivious jaunt this morning ? If he was hunting, which was probably the case, he had a funny way of showing it. What did the Presbyterians say about his cunning ?

Though Winter has retreated, early Spring evenings still put a chill in the air. We’re steadfast fans of the fireplace flame until the season renders it quite unnecessary.

So, last evening while “dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug”, my eye scanned over the pile of firewood that awaited the hearth . Normally there are any one of six species of oak in that pile.

Or Ash. The baseball bat wood is native to the farm, as much as oak.

In fact, the species that contribute to our fire wood supply are varied. There’s Maple or Beech, Shagbark Hickory , Cedar and Elm, Even an occasional Ironwood.

For the record, Poplar is also prevalent but it burns too much like tissue paper.

Do note, my dear tree huggers, we only burn the fallen trees or those that are hopelessly leaning.

Last evening, however, an anomaly was below the mantle. There in the pile were several pieces of Black Walnut, bone dry and ready to burn.

Wait a minute. Who burns Black Walnut in their fireplace ? It is prized furniture wood . Expensive material for the fussy cabinetmaker . The reference to tall cotton , the title for today’s blog, infers a luxurious state of things. Abundance. Superfluidity. Maybe even reckless abandon if one’s firewood is Black Walnut !

He’s peeing in tall cotton when his hearth is loaded with that stuff !

But then the fire popped a loud crackle, as fires will do. It rendered me a bolt of absolution. There’s a reason that particular timber became firewood. I remembered chain sawing it years ago. It had grown exactly on the farm’s boundary before it had fallen.

It was thus pre-ordained a fence post , riddled with fencing staples where decades of stretched barbed wire had undignified its lustrous fibers. That had, at least, precluded it as a viable saw log.

Surely the sawyer wishes not to run barbed wire through his blade !

I could now relax, absolved of any suggested guilt attached to tossing Black Walnut into the roaring fire. I just briefly paused for a luxuriant moment.

I hope you can hit one, because that’s what I’m throwing to you today . No, this is not an April Fool’s joke. Suffice it to say it’s just not my usual blog . So swing for the fences. May your hit sail over the center field fence !

I’ve posted on my website, Www.petetucker.net, a gradual trickle of short stories and poems that you, being a reader, just might like ! They are yours for the reading. ENJOY.

Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water…. your ship sinks.

Back in December, CNN reported that a Roman shipwreck has been located in the Mediterranean Sea, at the bottom, that is. You know, where most Roman shipwrecks are found.

News of the discovery was on my IPad . Rather robottishly I pressed the button to pursue further details. Well, that had to have been reminiscent of the sinking itself, lost in the on-line morass of both breaking news and barnacles.

In the archaic days of newspapers, when, for space reasons, a story had to jump from one page to another, the layout artist made it fairly easy for the reader to find the story ‘s continuation. Apparently that is a lost notion anymore.

Upon pressing the button, there was nothing about any shipwreck. No where! Anywhere ! I felt marooned, abandoned on some ramshackle raft, bereft on a deserted CNN island. Wait a minute. Was this fake news?

I poked and prodded a bit more on the mini- device, but the Roman sailors had nothing more to divulge. Neither did CNN.

For the record, I am not a regular CNN viewer, I guess for good reason. I was just momentarily washed ashore on this vacuous island, teased by an intriguing headline. Any further secrets that were aboard that Roman ship are lost to the briny deep.

Sorry, dear readers. I, too, would love to know what was found on that sunken vessel.

Wait a minute. Maybe I should write a story.

Technology never ceases to amaze ! Advances in the last 50 or 60 years, comfortably within my lifetime, have progressed at break-neck speed.

It used to be that folks would to write letters with ink on paper. Then the paper was tucked in an envelope and taken to the U.S. Post Office. Your intended recipient would receive the letter in three or four days, if you were lucky .

There will come a day when people look at you quizzically when you talk about “snail mail” and wonder about the way we did things long ago. Let’s not forget though, letters were once written by intermittently dipping a quill in ink.

Yes, a quill is one of the heavier duty feathers of a bird. Hell, think back further when people made their own ink !

I digress.

Today was momentous. We had our first Zoom session with kids and grandkids.

We’re pretty well scattered: California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey (surely I forgot one or two) . But we all had a visit yesterday via our computers and ZOOM, a remote meeting software that enables a face to face, real time visit regardless of everyone’s locale.

No, that capability isn’t new, but ZOOM sneaks the technology in the back door of our homes , or the back porch if you prefer.

Gaps between visits seem a little lessened.

Who saw this coming ? Surely not this old farmer !

A fellow named Cro approached me.

On the day when Man’s history began.

Cro had a document with him,

Hell bent for me to scan.

That wasn’t my business, I told him,

But I do have a little device.

With my chisel, I suggested,

I could copy that twice.

I thus pursued the endeavor

And unbeknownst to me

The copies I’d made for Cro

Started man’s history.

Later, I felt badly .

These tablets became books, you see.

And all little Cro-Magnons in school

Had to study History !

Not to mention, lugging these books

Back and forth to school ,

The wheel yet to be invented

It was borderline cruel.

But, on their tests they got B’s and C’s

T’was a testament, you see,

To chiseling things in stone.

Damn ! They got better grades than me .

Almost as though a wand was waved, I sat upon the Writer’s Perch this noon and noted a nearly overnight change in the landscape. The pastures and paddocks are suddenly awash in greenery. The surrounding woods make a valiant attempt to bud their leaves.

The Weeping Willow now undulates with a mild breeze. The pond’s surface ripples in agreement.

Spring leaves little question that it is here. Anyone still harboring doubt need only peel an ear to the distance. A turkey gobbles as if to make the official decree. A Phoebe renders a humbler accolade.

As if not to be outdone, a peeper joins in . It yet needs to find its rhythm, but that will come when joined by others. Today it strikes but the initial chord, a leader among its peeper peers. Soon, at later dusks, the woods will be aloud with them.

Spring intones the subtlety of its season . The world is well.