'Possum Patch

Monday, July 4, 2011

Big Bug

BIG BUG

'Entre the new farm employee!

Designated Fox Destroyer..Skunk Chaser..'coon Fighter and Monitor of All Points of Defense.

Her name is Bug. Originally June Bug, according to the Rescue Haven..but I was never fond of the name June so she is just "Bug". Bug is somewhat euphonic with Benny (The Terrible Terrier) and also I think I can remember it.

She had two orientation sessions this a.m. following the drill through chicken chores, calf bottles and goat feeding with a little boundry work thrown in. She is learning to "Sit down" and not kill us inadvertantly by jumping on us (she probably weighs 75 pounds) and walking on a leash without dragging me all over. She was chained at each chore point so I have both hands free for the job and she was pretty good about the whole process and not malignantly interested in poultry or very small goats.

Her first interview with Benny last night did not go well but better luck this morning. Benny's circle of admirers seems to be a limited one. Sarah says he 's down to one. I guess that one is me. I really like the little dude.

I want all to understand that I do not like dogs generally and have known many that I thought should never have made the cut that propelled them into my world. But some are really remarkable people who just happen to be dressed in fur with sappy tongues that hang out on hot days. I hope Big Bug is one of those.

For the time being she looks good lying under the pear tree and if I was a fox I would not want to rile her!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Just For Fun Friends

Any Comparison of today's BLOG to Any Real Person or Event is Accidental and Very Unlikely.

My friend, Bo stopped by last night. He was short on money and had a baby goat with one eye and the carbureter off an old Pontiac he was trying to find buyers for. I didn’t need a one-eyed goat and had my fill of old Pontiacs a long time ago so we just sat and drank Coke and talked about hard times and what we would do when they got better.

Bo’s family is in “straits” right now as his Mom, Pauletta Dean Ray, was laid off at the truck stop on account of the business had fallen off so. His dad, Joe is still working at the feed store but they cut his hours. I guess even livestock is on short feed these days.

According to Bo his dad, Joe, is getting mighty testy being the only one in the family working anymore.

“He is almost succotic sometimes,” says Bo. “He even took the cover off of Pauletta Dean Ray’s favorite Roy Orbison record, (it was a collector’s item), and drew a skull right on the top of Roy’s guitar with a Magic Marker.” Bo said Pauletta Dean Ray was fit to be tied.

Bo said he figured she would get back at him though because she is a “Passionate Aggressive” personality. (Bo had to take some behavior modification classes after the lawnmower-on-fire-in-the-bedroom thing last winter. He said they talked on and on about succotics and hostile and passionate aggressors and such. He learned a lot.)

I asked Bo how his sister, Bunny, was getting along. We were in the same class in school and I always kind of liked her. He said her psoriasis was better and she always wore her hair long now so a person hardly wouldn’t ever notice her bad ear. I was glad to hear it.

That ear thing was a real worry there for awhile. Bunny wasn’t satisfied with just getting something pierced. Oh, no. Not Bunny. When we were all still in school Bunny took a notion to have one of those disk things in the bottom part of her ear. She wasn’t sure how to do it and couldn’t afford a gold disk so she cut circles out of a plastic milk jug and worried with it and kept making the hole bigger until finally even Pauletta Dean Ray, never known to be a smothery mother type, noticed that her ear was all red and swolled up and poked the plastic milk jug plug right out and screamed at Bunny and Joe even hollered at Bunny and so that was the end of it except for the weird looking ear lobe.

Well it got on pretty late and finally Bo asked me if I would help him start his pick-up and I said “Sure, Bo” and we pushed it out onto the blacktop and he jumped in and I ran along behind pushing as well I could until he yanked it in gear and I almost went smashing into where the tail gate would be on most peoples’ trucks..and it started right up and off he went.

I forgot to tell Bo to be sure and bring the pop can back because pop cans are 45cents a pound right now but heck.. I’ll catch him next time. He generally just tosses his cans behind the seat anyway and it’s not like he’s going right home and clean out that truck!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Kill Order!!

Criticism and further reporting on this issue is unwarranted and does not serve the interests of the people of the United States. If ever an action should remain classified and withheld from the public..including photos..this is it. Surely we can agree to be adult enough for this.

The President said simply, “We have killed him. Period. He is gone.”

This must be put aside for two reasons.

1: All precautions must be taken that the identities of these Seals NEVER be made public. We must understand that these kind of people..this enemy..has a very long memory unpurged for generations. Religious vendetta’s are what their culture is all about. Not only the Seals themselves are at high risk of exposure but their families will be at risk for generations. We must stop this ridiculous appetite for tittilating details. For those who get off on blood and gore..look somewhere else. These men and their families MUST be shielded.

2: I believe President Barrack Obama is a gentle man. Many in our culture equate gentleness with weakness and have repeatedly reviled him as weak and indecisive. Of course he is not. We saw that in the high-jacking incident, his operation of the Afghan war and now the “Kill Order” of Osama Bin Laden. I believe it was not easy for him to issue the final “Kill Order”. Like all Presidents in time of war the knowledge of sending troops to fight and maybe die or have parts of their bodies blown off is a heavy and unforgettable responsibility. But it is a known one..one with precedent.

But this act was unique to these times and this President. For a Christian raised in an American culture, the knowledge that he ordered the killing of another human being..an unarmed man..no matter how heinous a man.. is a heartrendingly disturbing aspect of this responsibility.

But the responsibility was his and he met it. Such an act should not be repeatedly questioned and criticized or used in an effort to minimize the accomplishment of the President who gave the order and the Seals who performed this duty so extraordinarily.

Cooking Again!!

The house is filled with smoke again this morning and I have set out candles..both floral and spice..to overcome the stench. I burned my breakfast cheese toast. Burnt cheese is a real appetite squelcher. But it was not my fault. (So few things are.)

Benny, the Terrible Terrier has been particularly bad this morning . He pooped upstairs, ate a pencil, tumped over his water bowl, chewed up a plastic cigarette tip and while I am groveling on my stomach to search under the couch for his bone that he’s SUPPOSED to be chewing, he is jumping up and down on my back, pulling my hair. He has long toe nails. He barks loud and long if I neglect the morning playtime with tossing the knotted up jeans legs and I was particularly hoping to by-pass this session today. He barked loud and long.

But the encouraging thing is that I have taught him a new trick. He has learned, (with rapid speed I must say) when on the leash and we approach the open lot or the garden and I drop the leash and shout “Go..Go..Benny” he is off like a bullet. Well, yes he did kind of tend to do this BEFORE the training session, and yes, I still have yet to get him to come back..but every little step counts.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Spring Has Come to the Chicken Yard..kinda!

Spring has come to the chicken yard..kinda! I have nursed my remaining eleven pullets and two roosters through a harsh North Missouri winter, fought mightily against their propensity for suicide by accident as fledglings, grieved repentantly over the one I dropped the gate on, struggled through snow drifts to ensure plenteous food and a perpetual water supply..and my reward has been what I call extremely minimal.

Only one small hen, of the ancient Dominecker breed if anyone is interested, has shown enough gratitude to produce anything. Of her I will say that she is conscientiously committed and surprisingly productive. But she can’t carry the load alone. I have explained this in terms I thought ANYONE could understand to the flock on several occasions with no result. I have given explicit instructions, provided all necessary supplies..yet the underperformance is…well it’s disappointing.

I’m beginning to think it is the fault of Marlboro, the White Wyandotte Rooster that somehow wormed his way into the order I received for fifty day-old pullets(females) last October.

Marlboro is an extremely aggressive but lovely specimen of chicken manhood and already shows every indication of excessive testosterone. He totally consumes all the spare time the little hens have by running them around the pen and doing what roosters do when they have the slightest opportunity. He is equipped with a fierce, yellow eye, a strong projectile of a beak and large and very sharp spurs. His hostility is magnified by a large, red comb that stands upright and waggles threateningly when he is irritated. He is a man to be reckoned with.

Winston, another chick of the male persuasion, also missed the cut when they were shipped. Winston has a fierce visage, and sharp spurs too. He is as big as Marlboro and as strong. But Winston lacks commitment! At some point Marlboro got his bluff in and Winston now makes no advances toward the hen flock. His comb droops in a rather depressing manner and his gaze tends to wander to the feed pan and to the chicken picture on the feed sack.. This is rather sad because it leaves him with no romantic outlet other than the feed sack chicken.

Winston has taken to dancing with the feed sack in the way of roosters and if ever there was an exercise in futility this has to be it. But, if he gets anything out of it who am I to interfere. Marlboro doesn’t seem to care about the feed sack pin-up chicken girl so Winston has her all to himself and spends considerable time doing the little chicken dance of roosters. ..hop..hop..scratchy scratchy..hop hop hop..one wing down and trailing like a feathered toreador cape..more hop hop..stretch the neck..fluff out the neck feathers..well I’m sure you know what I mean. It all seems more than a little pointless to me but then I’m not a chicken.

Anyway, people who know “all about chickens” tell me that the hens will begin to lay soon and all will lay at once. Won’t that be nice?

Monday, January 31, 2011

I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About This!

Death Panels Some More?? Too many waivers in the Health Bill?

It might be worthwhile to check out who demanded the waivers for which lobby group. It might surprise you. Legislation is not easy and never "pure". As for death panels..oh crap!! We've been living with death panels for ever.

Twenty-five years ago when my mother-in-law was nearing the end of her medicare benefits after living in a coma-like existence for several months benefiting no one but the hospital, (the knee replacement surgery on a comatose patient seemed a little over the top to me,) we received a letter that when her benefits ran out we would be responsible for her care fees. I was wisely told by an older person familiar with health care procedure, and whom I trusted, "not to worry" that she would not outlast her medicare by a week. She passed away five days after the expiration date. Coincidence? I don't think so. I believe she was allowed to pass..

I don't ask to live for ever. I ask not to be put in an unheated hallway or room to hasten pneumonia. I ask not to have food withheld if my stomach spasms or water withheld if my mouth is parched. I ask to be able to remain dry and in a minimum of pain. If you think these things have not and do not happen your dream world is one to be envied.

I simply ask to have the options explained to me by someone who does not have a dog in the fight over the length and quality of my life..and to have that choice.

Incidentally, medicare guidelines have included almost the exact same wording for years as it pertains to Dr reimbursement for taking the time to sit with a patient and explain their end of life options. Now it's called death panels? Good Lord!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

My Friend Bo

Morphias Orbison Bogarden was a friend of mine but like most people around here, I just called him Bo. I think even his mother, Pauletta Deen Ray Bogarden, had a hard time spitting out the Morpias Orbison in a pinch. And Bo was always getting into pinches.

They say he was named after his Great Great Grandfather Morphias Esther Bogarden, who was a kind of cultural icon of the family, him having fought in the War of the Rebellion and all. Most of us called that mix up The Civil War but the Bogardens referred to it as The War of the Rebellion. I think it had something to do with them being Vermonters.

The Orbison was stuck on him from that more current cultural icon, the singer Roy Orbison. Pauletta Deen Ray was a real strong fan of his and even if he was dead she played a lot of old tapes of him singing and would sigh and dab at her eyes every now and then when Bo’s Dad, Joe was looking just to make him mad.

Like I say, Bo was a friend of mine and no matter what he did I always took up for him and stood by him for the most part. And he generally stood by me whenever fate hit me hard in the unnatural vicissitudes of life.

That’s why it bothered me so when the whole neighborhood got all up in arms over such a tiddly little old thing as happened to Bo last winter. They were all hollering about Bo “was a threat to the neighborhood” and a calling him a “dangerous lunatic” and ..well I don’t know what all.

Bo’s hauling his lawn mower into the bedroom in the middle of December to work it over and lighting one little old cigarette and setting the house on fire wouldn’t have mattered so much if Bo hadn’t moved into that new apartment complex with his girlfriend for the winter. Now Bo and his girlfriend, May, would be out on the street if it wasn’t for Joe and Pauletta Deen Ray taking them in. The people were all screaming at him and shaking their fists at him right there on TV.

People just have no patience anymore. Just the least little thing riles them up. I think it’s just politics myself.

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A Bedtime Story for Chickens

Once upon a time there was a little red hen. Each morning she woke early and left the special chicken house and worked hard scratching all day and laid very nice eggs in the special nest in the special house for chickens. But she had one bad habit. She did not like to go to bed at Chicken Bedtime with the other chickens. One morning she did not wake early. She did not wake at all. Fluffy red feathers blew in the breeze beneath the apple tree where the racoon liked to perch at night.

The Moral of the Story is: Go to bed when you're supposed to.

Memoirs

These are my memories and even though others have their own, perhaps contradictory, memories these are mine.

Memoirs Chapter 1

Our House

Unlike many people, I spent my childhood in the same house in which I was born. My childhood was encompassed by the sameness of each room, the never-changing porches, ragged lawns and roughly wooded acres and the multiplicity of a neighborhood comprised of families with names that told the history of the Midwest without even trying.

As an adult I’ve been fascinated by those old names: West, Woods, Rogers, Yates, Mathews, Alexander, Shields, Faucett and of course ours, descendents of the Lewis’s, Allens, Bakers and McDonalds, all reaching back to the English and Scots Irish Kentucky and Tennessee immigrations of the very early 1800s.

The other names were newer, German or Irish and with German and Irish mores: Rittermeir, Rintschler, Stock, (Dad’s name), Ostertag, McGosker, Kirkpatrick, O’Dell, Coopersmith, Mylars.

Many of these German and Irish families, fleeing hunger and conscription, lured by land and wages, came a decade or two later in the 19^th century during and shortly after the building of the railroads and stayed to build the Midwest after the end of the Civil War.

Dad built most of our house. I understand it was just two small rooms sitting on a brushy five acre lot at the edge of a dirt road when Dad, Mom and my six older siblings moved in. He later bought an adjacent forty acres.

He dug a basement, added two upstairs rooms and two downstairs rooms and a porch at the back. The path from the back porch wound down past the walnut tree and through the tall weeds to the out house. A very large family of spiders owned one whole corner of the outhouse so I never sat on that side.

Dad had a lot of help from friends that worked with him as laborers at different building sites that evidently had a lot of “left overs.” His friends were generous fellows and made steady contributions from those sites in the form of left over buckets of nails, left over gravel, left over lumber and so forth. The day the guy came with the concrete truck with the left over concrete for the basement floor was a banner day. Thank heavens for left overs because we really needed the room.

I can just barely remember a pot bellied stove into which went old newspapers, little sticks of wood and sometimes bigger chunks of wood or a scuttle of coal. Dad’s big heavy coffee pot sat on the stove top and the smell of the coffee mixed with the smell of the burning wood and the steam from the coffee made the rooms seem a lot warmer than they were.

Before long the house was modernized even further and a monstrous coal stove taller than either of my parents lurked just under the basement

stairs. Heat rose into the house through a large grate in the living room.

A few steps away from the furnace was the coal bin accessed through a low basement window that opened onto the driveway. The coal truck would be backed down the drive and the driver, usually a black man, would shovel the coal by hand through the window.

Many people say that they can’t remember anything before they were four or five years old and I don’t know why. I remember a great deal before that. They say people remember intense experiences and that is probably true.

My first actual memory was of standing, crying in my crib, gripping the top rails, dressed in a little white flannel gown that tied at the back of the neck, and being very scared. It was bedtime and my crib was in my parents’ room. Mother came to me and lay me down and pinned the blanket to the bottom sheet on each side of me so I would not get uncovered in the night and told me, “Shhh”.

Soon after that my bed was moved into what later became the bathroom. It was a tiny room that opened off of my parents’ room with just enough room for my crib to fit along one wall. This was the room in which I slept during the Chicken Wars.

We had no well and water was saved from rain or hauled in I guess but stored in the cistern near the back porch. It had a large square concrete top with a smaller concrete square that could be moved to check the level of the water and to remove anything unsavory. Two cinder blocks placed on this cap kept it in place.

Frogs and toads lived in the inside rim of the cistern and Daddy said they never hurt anything but the snake he found once had to be removed. He did not like snakes.

During the Chicken Wars of my infancy me and my brother, just a couple of years older than I, would run to the concrete of the cistern top to evade the old Banty rooster. The rooster was very protective of his hens but the hens always came to people expecting to be fed. It was a no-win situation for us.

Even though we were forbidden to hurt the old rooster my brother always fought back hard, throwing dirt clods and sticks and even once throwing a pan of water on him that had been set out for the dog but we always lost and wound up high tailing it for the cistern top.

There we would wait until either someone came to rescue us or the old rooster forgot we were there and wandered off.

My nightmares at that time always involved that wretched rooster and the safety of the cistern.

My worst rooster nightmare was probably my last as it occurred during one of my parents’ weekly Pinochle game and I was taken up to sit on Mom’s lap and be made over by Aunt Opal and Uncle Frank and the Mylars from next door who had been fortunate or smart enough to leave their kids at home.

And Daddy took noisy little sips of coffee from his saucer and clicked his false teeth at me, making the bottom ones slide almost out and it was always the best of jokes although Mom found the saucer sipping thing and the clicking teeth disgusting.

On Saturday nights we, that is the family, went to Nelsons Tavern where Mom and Dad and sometimes my older siblings and their friends would dance to the juke box and Dad would drink how ever much beer he could afford, generally one or two, and Mom would drink Coca Cola out of cool green bottles, slowly so it would last.

Mostly they danced with each other but occasionally a careful ritual would transpire. During a lull when they were not dancing, someone might come to our table and ask Dad if it was alright if he asked his wife to dance and Dad would always say they could and they would ask Mom to dance and she would leave her Coca Cola to dance. She particularly loved the Polka and the Schottische.

Although both Dad and Mom loved music and loved to dance, they did not dance well together. Mother, a very reserved person, danced rather stiffly and with considerable rigidity. Watching them was a little like watching a happy bee cavorting around an upright zinnia blossom. The bee is busy but the zinnia never quite participates.

Daddy said she danced like she had a poker up her butt but I don’t think he ever said it to her face.

And sometimes Dad would turn to Mom and ask if she cared if he danced with so and so and Mom would say no, she didn’t care and Dad would do the ritual. He would go to the table of the lady with whom he wished to dance and he would ask her husband if he would mind if he asked his wife to dance. Dad would turn to the lady and ask her if she would like to dance and off they would go.

A request was seldom refused within reason. But the ritual was always observed. No man approached another person’s wife without that permission. It made for the most orderly and friendly of situations wherein everybody could have a great time and the risk of misunderstandings was minimal.

Up to the time I got bored with party life and was considered old enough to be left at home with the bigger kids, I had lots of partners myself. Johnny Spoons, known for keeping time to the juke box by rapping out the beat with two spoons held between a thumb and two fingers, often partnered me to the poignant strains of Good Night Irene or Sentimental Journey but we both liked the polkas better. Even though he was very old and because of an injury, unable to keep up with polka steps, he seemed to enjoy it.

Shorty, however, was my favorite partner, partly because he wasn’t much taller than I was as a four year old. Shorty wasn’t really short but he too had been injured and was unable to stand erect. This meant we could pretty much look each other in the eye and Shorty’s eyes were always merry and happy.

Sometimes he would stand me up on the bar and everyone would clap and holler and I would do my four-year-old version of the hootchy cootchy to the music of the Sabre Dance and be rewarded with a bag of chips and an orange Nehi soda.

But I tired of the party life. I didn’t like sleeping on a pile of coats on a hard table and was finally allowed to stay home. I’m the only person I know who gave up the bar scene at such a tender age.

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Memoirs Chapter 2:

A Different Kind of Mother

Our mother was not like other mothers. She was hard to love and harder to like. Independent and unbending, she had few friends and regarded most of the world, including her children, who mostly reciprocated her lack of natural affection, as unworthy of her interest.

She was meticulous about her person and of a late evening, winter and summer, in those days before indoor plumbing, we were all ordered to bed and she began her bath.

The night I, having slipped quietly downstairs on some forgotten errand, saw Mother at her bath changed her forever for me.

Pale and naked in the moonlight from the window above the sink and its small pan of hot water, her body gleamed like the inside of a sea shell, cool and incandescent. The flesh of her breasts, flattened by the needs of seven infants, was only a shadow against her upper body and the smooth roundness of her abdomen shone starkly white in the silverness of the window’s moonlight.

The scent of her bath soap and the vinegar she used to rinse her once-red hair filled the room.

Her very luminescence, in the dark kitchen of our home that night, seemed out of place and time,..a visitor from some powerful other world that valued more a stricter code..a cooler hand and heart..that did not belong here with us and certainly not to us. The hot winds and dry suns of the Midwest were anathema to such a one.

Before me was a person meant for harsh and vicious winters and the pale meagerly glint of a Celtic summer. Such a one required friends more fast and foes more ferocious than the weak genetic pool she was stuck with.

Of course I could not come anywhere near verbalizing these thoughts at the time, even to myself, but the experience was a powerful one and it stayed with me to be pondered upon and sorted out as facts came later, drifting into my life as our lives unfolded.