THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

 First of all let me say that I am overwhelmed by all the comments on yesterday's post.

Thank you, all.

But now it is time to put that aside and get on to the real business of the week: lightening the gloom with a dash of good humor.

So stand back and brace yourselves for this edition of The Friday Funnies!

And there you have it.

Now if it's too early to mow in your neighborhood, use all that spare time to have a wonderful weekend.

And always remember to keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

ThrowBack Thursday

 It was about 1964 and North Dakota's own Lawrence Welk was paying a visit to his ancestral home and a big crowd had come to the Bismarck airport to see him.

Among them were my then-time wife and our two sons.

Welk was moving along a ropeline shaking hands but when he came to my little family he absolutely missed my two year old son, Scott, who then began to cry.

Someone made Welk aware and he returned and hoisted the little boy up to calm him.

A photographer for the local newspaper snapped a picture which he later gave to me.

Move the clock ahead a few years and by then I had divorced, relocated to Indianapolis, and was making a visit back to North Dakota myself.

Here are Scott (with a tooth missing), his brother Troy and I.

By 1971, my ex-wife had re-married and moved to suburban Chicago.

I also had a new mate and we drove up and visited the boys and took them through the Shedd Aquarium before relaxing outside at the shore of Lake Michigan.

Nine years later, I was working in Phoenix but stopped in Washington, D.C. after our news crew covered the Democratic National Convention in New York.

Scott was living in Gaithersburg, Maryland, then and we got together and posed with the U.S. Capitol behind us.

Probably about 1983 Scott flew out to Phoenix and I took him on a tour of some of my favorite spots in Arizona, like Oak Creek Canyon.

That little boy with the missing tooth had grown into a handsome young man.

Living as we did, in two separate families, often thousands of miles apart, we never were close but we always enjoyed each other's company when we did get together.

I last saw him in 2001 when he was helping move the company he then worked for from Los Angeles to Scottsdale.

We got together for dinner shortly before he moved once again to Orlando, Florida.

His mother called on New Year's Day this year.

Scott Alan Taylor died of a heart attack in his sleep at her home in Southern California the previous afternoon.

He was 57.

ROAD TRIP

 I don't know that you could really call it a road trip.

It was more like an afternoon drive.

Which brought to mind golf terms and it would be a short putt compared to a tee-off drive.

At any rate, it was refreshing to get out of the house for an hour or two and see some scenery.

If you click on that photo and enlarge it, you may be able to see the San Francisco Peaks up around Flagstaff in the distance between those two trees on the left.

Or you may not.

We could see them pretty clearly with the naked eye but my "smart" phone camera doesn't really do a good job on long distance.

This was taken from the Thumb Butte area just west of Prescott.

Thumb Butte is the iconic rock formation that is sort of a logo for Prescott.

It doesn't look much like a thumb from this vantage point but from other areas it does.

You'll just have to take my word for it.

This is very near the trailhead for the Thumb Butte Trail.

There are a plethora of trails winding through the forest up here and we saw lots of hikers wending their way through the trees and in some cases over patches of snow.

And many of them were in shirt sleeves on this sunny day when the temperature had topped 60 back where I live but must have been in the 50's up here.

In my advanced and Arizona-softened years, that's a mite bit chilly for bare arms for me.

We wound up our outing with a visit to Dairy Queen for Heath Bar Blizzards.

Judy said it sounded like our grandparents back in the day - a Sunday (though this was Monday) drive followed by a stop for some ice cream.

Oh well, we are grandparents now and in fact, great-grandparents.

I used to hate those Sunday drives when I was a kid.

But times change.

KRIS

 I've been lucky.

My health has been relatively good through the years with occasional minor bumps in the road.

I'm still ambulatory as I approach my 81st trip around the sun in a couple of months.

I don't really mind getting old.

Oh I do occasionally think, "ah, to be 30 again!"

But those thoughts are fleeting.

What I DO resent about aging is seeing my heroes getting older and retiring or worse, dying.

The latest shock was hearing that Kris Kristofferson had retired.

Hell, he's just a kid, isn't he?

Well, no, turns out he's gliding toward his 85th birthday later this year and had been in our ears for over 50 years.

Actually Kris retired late last year but the word just hadn't gotten out until a few weeks ago when he confirmed it.

I always liked this next song that Kris wrote for Johnny Cash.

Heck, I think I *lived* this song, back in the day.

There's another old-timer in this video, Willy Nelson, who at 87 is still singing for his supper.

And the last of The Highwaymen as this group was called, Waylon Jennings, died a young man in 2002.

He was only 64.

So, let's give up a hand for Kris and his pals, one more time.

OH, WOE

 I just turned to the web site of the local paper and discovered alarming, saddening, depressing news: the Iron Springs Cafe in Prescott has closed.

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that it was my favorite eating place and I had written about it here and here and here and probably many other times.

Apparently the beloved landmark closed its doors earlier this month.

Another victim of Covid-19?

I can only presume so.

I am sad, very sad.

No more Bloody Caesars.

No more Gumbo.

No more Blackened Catfish.

No more other taste sensations.

No more fun.

If it is forever, R.I.P., and thank you for so many good times.

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

 Wella, wella, wella, young fella, it's Friday once again.

That greeting is for all the rest of my thousands of Gentle Readers too.

I hope your week was amusing.

Maybe not if you didn't live, like I do, in the 1 percent of the United States that *wasn't* frozen solid.

My sympathies are with you.

And to help you thaw out and warm up, here's some humor.

And with that heavenly thought let me wish you all an exhilirating weekend full of warmth and cleanup.

And in spite of your troubles, always remember to keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

(Oh-ho!)

"Mother Country" by John Stewart