TUESDAY TRAVELS

When I was a younger man I liked to get on top of things.

Like buildings.

It started, I believe, when I was a little kid.

I liked to climb trees.

I had a favorite place in what I called "the big tree" in a weedy alley a few houses away from ours in Stanley, North Dakota, where I grew up.

I would climb up there and, sheltered and hidden by the leaves, sit for hours, some times reading a book, some times just looking out over "my realm" and living in my imagination.

Some years later I became an amateur radio operator and climbed on various roofs to string antennas.

Being up on roofs never lost its fascination for me.

The views from above were fascinating to me and made me feel somehow powerful.

I remember once in Phoenix during an evening with friends, Timmer and Beaner, I climbed to our roof to get a better look at a distant lightning storm.

My wife and my friends refused to join me and only got me to come down when I "needed" a cigarette.

(I smoked in those days as did everyone else.)

But old age and the infirmities it brings have put a stop to my climbing.

So this rang a bell with me.

As one of my heroes, the late Kurt Vonnegut, would say - "so it goes."

CHANGING TIMES

Our neighbors are having their house painted.

The painting crew arrived this morning, set up ladders and began work.

Here's what I'm faced with. (Be sure to turn up your volume.)

Right now they're sanding various surfaces with some kind of power tool.

I sort of remember the good old days when the painting crew would arrive with a boom box blasting music out into the neighborhood.

¡Ole!

SQUARED UP

SWMBO hates what I call "Beverly Hills" yard care.

She thinks shrubbery should grow in a natural state, with only occasional trimming of the wild or outlying branch.

She hates this:

Like many plantings around our library and city hall, these have been trimmed into these square shapes.

I must agree with her: they don't look natural.

But still, they're kind of neat.

I call them Beverly Hills yard work because of a walk I took in that tony area of Greater Los Angeles once many years ago.

I was in town for a convention but decided one day to take a walk around in the residential enclave to see what was there.

(At the time I had lived all of my life in the Dakotas and this Beverly Hills was pretty strange in appearance to me.)

I was walking along, checking out the big mansions but also marveling at the lawns and the shrubbery, all of which looked to me like they had been manicured with a nail clippers.

Imagine the surprise of this naive North Dakota boy when a police car pulled up beside me and an officer asked me just what I thought I was doing.

We had a conversation, I think he looked at my driver's license, saw that I was from Dakota and politely informed me that this was an exclusive conclave and people got nervous about some stranger walking around looking at the big houses.

Even though I was dressed in a suit and tie.

But I guess my attire and manner pegged me as . . . . . a square.

Some times it's good to be a square.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

Living in a household of two self professed "political junkies", I could not avoid the chaos and craziness playing out in Congress this week.

While the editorial cartoonist Horsey sees the so-called "Freedom Caucus" in the nation's House of Representatives as rampaging Huns or Visigoths, I could not help being reminded of the good old days of the John Birch Society. 

Back in the 1960's that group of far-right-wingers was running amok in politics and they were parodied by the Chad Mitchell trio in this catchy folk tune.

So relax, folks.

As always, this too shall pass.

FRIDAY FUNNIES

Since so many of you liked a recent post called "Hiding in Plain Sight", here are some more for you.

Enjoy!

This first one is tough but if you keep staring at it, you'll eventually get it.

For all of you animal lovers, that's all folks! Have a great weekend and keep grinning!

THROWBACK THURSDAY

The mid-1940's near Williston, North Dakota.

My dad trying to catch a nap.

Me and my cousin Bonnie trying to keep him awake.

Happier days.

For us.

And for Williston, now the epicenter of the Bakken oil field.

WET WEATHER, HOT FOOD

Yesterday was a wet day in our environs.

Certainly nothing like what happened in South Carolina.

More of a sprinkling than a downpour. 

But a chilly, gray day.

I had a conversation with a checkout lady at the grocery store. 

She said it looked cold outside. 

I said it wasn't really cold, but maybe "coolish". 

She settled on "brisk".

Whatever it was, the couple of days of temperatures in the 60's and 70's must have prompted the BRD to head for the kitchen.

Her skillet cornbread looks pretty darned good.

She said it was yummy.

Let's hear it for "brisk" weather and what it produces.