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Friday, July 31, 2015

R-E-S-P-E-C-T spells what?

As I zero in on the end of my journey, I am beginning to get pretty excited about the next mile or so.  I look around at my world and wonder what in the hell happened.  All of my life I have been taught and knew as a fundamental law that my elders were to be respected.  And the elder they were the more respect they were due.  My mother worked all her life to give me life.  I owed her respect for that if for no other reason.  My father did not work, but I still respected him for the simple reason he was my father.  When I was young, that was my world.  I would never have dreamed that the day would come when I would watch young people elbow in ahead of me in a line at the grocery store.  If someone opens a door I am planning to go through I fully expect to walk through it, not be knocked out of the way by some snot nosed kid as he passes me on his way in or out.

Seems like this all pretty well started back in the '60's when Vietnam was in full swing.  It was then that people began to dig into our government and find secrets that were being hidden.  I can remember hearing Vietnam when I was a mother with only 4 kids back in 1965.  How long it lasted is beyond me because when I moved to Colorado in 1973 they were publishing the death count on the news every day.  Jane Fonda was making waves and flags were burning.  The government lost all credibility.  From Richard Nixon and Watergate to  Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick our leaders turned out to be mortal men.  Televangelists were not immune either.  Bobby and Tammy Faye Baker and their falling empire led to Jimmy Swaggert and and a host of others.  Seems like every one had a secret to hide.  It has not stopped.  The few honest politicians are few and far between and have given rise to the saying, "You can send an honest man to Washington, but you can't get him back."

Seems like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Honesty does not count for anything any more.  An honest day's work for an honest day's pay is non-existent.  We used to get hand me downs from the people on the other side of town, but now Goodwill, Thrift Shops, Consignment Shops are the norm.  Those and yard sales.  Days of sewing our own clothes are history.  Fabric to sew a garment costs more than going to Walmart and buying  something that was made in Tiawan or China.  That is sad.

The information super highway lets us watch the news as it is happening.  That really came across when we were bombing Baghdad.  The rockets red glare has a whole new meaning.  Schools will soon be obsolete because kids are blessed with a smart phone as soon as they can grasp an object.  Want to know something, just type in your question and the answer will appear.  Is this a good thing?  I don't think so, but no one asked me.

So I am going to work on my bucket list and let the world go by at the speed of light.  I will still respect my elders, though they are getting harder to find as I get older.  Guess I am just getting soured on life as I miss the days when deals were sealed with a hand shake and lawyers were used to write your will.  For now I am going to set on my deck out back and look for the Blue Moon which is supposed to be very bright.  At least the moon is still something I can count on seeing.


Saturday, July 25, 2015

Hot days make me remember Momma.

Seems we are enduring another 100 degree day.  I can hear the central air and feel it blowing on my legs.        Makes me wonder what we did back home on Strong Street.  I do not even remember us having a fan.  I can remember going to Bull Creek and wading.  I can remember running down a sandy road to a sand pit somewhere.  I knew how to swim up until the time I was 15 years old and I fell over an underground ledge in Sterling Lake and had to be resuscitated.  No more swimming for me.  I did go to the YWCA and take swimming lessons just long enough to learn how to save myself.  I have never overcome my fear of water, but I have learned how to live with it.  I do not get myself into a situation where I am going to need to do the roll over on my back and float technique.  I just stay out of the water.

So what did my dear mother do to cool off on hot days?  Back in those days she cleaned houses for ladies in town.  She walked to work and then walked home.  Pretty sure she did not stop off at  the sand pit for a dip.  I can recall laying by the window and hoping for a breeze.  That did not happen often.  I remember in 7th grade she had a hysterectomy and she had a bed in the front room.  Seems back then if you were ailing or had an operation you could not recuperate in your bed, but had to be in the front room in case company came.  You never entertained in your bedroom.  It was for sleeping, not visiting.

For those of you who do not know, Kansas and Colorado are different in the way the temperatures fluctuate.  See, here in Colorado, when it starts getting evening and then night, the temperature goes down.  Colorado is not real humid so nights are cool.  In Kansas, the only thing that happens at night is it gets dark.  If it was 90 in the daylight, it is 90 in the dark   And humid!  On a hot day you can climb out of the shower and never know when you got dry.  And that towel you use might as well be tossed in the hamper because it will be sour before it ever air drys.

We cooked on a wood stove so that was added heat.  We did heat the wash water outside in a 3 legged kettle.   When we moved to the big city, that thing was left behind because we were going where there was hot and cold running water and we would never need that again.  Man I wish I had one of those today!  Don't know why, just wish I did.

We did not have dogs growing up.  I know we had a cat because momma had a canary and the cat ate it. A chirping canary can still send me into flashbacks.

I do remember setting on the front porch a lot.  We had two big Catalpa trees out front that shaded the house and gave us something to climb.  The bottom branches were worn smooth from our climbing.  Besides that the beans were what we used for cigarettes when we were playing movie stars.  That and climbing on top of the pig sty's next door and jumping from one to the other was our sole entertainment.  Momma had a fit when she found out we were doing that.  She told us in no uncertain terms that we were probably going to be "et by a hog."  But we weren't.  Would I do that today?  Hell no!  And there was a BlackWidow Spider that lived behind the door of the chicken house.  That could have bit us, too.  We did learn to recognize the web which crackles when you poke it with a stick.  The male is small and the female eats him or feeds him to her babies.  That is creepy.  Oh, and when the Preying Mantis mates, she eats his head.  Learn a lot growing up country.  Glad I never picked up any of those habit.

For now.....

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Wouldn't it have been much simpler to educate the populace?



I am so disappointed in our city fathers that all I can do is shake my head in wonder.  Pueblo is now on the cutting edge because we have bicycle paths painted all over our fair city.  We now have bicycles going both ways on a one way street and cars parked in the middle of the same street.  We are accomodating the people who ride bikes, but guess what?  The bicyclists are afraid to ride in those lanes because they can see a disaster waiting to happen.

When I was young I rode my bike every where.  The first thing I learned to do was think of my bike as a car.  I must ride on the ride side of the road, just as if I were a car.  That way if a car came up behind me and wanted to pass me, the driver would adjust the speed so when the left lane was clear he could speed up and pass me.  I stopped at stop signs and yielded the right of way.  I pedaled fast enough to keep up with the flow of traffic and all was well.  I did not ride on the sidewalk.  So now what?

I was going up South Road on my way to town the other day and came around a curve and was face to face with a very old man on a three wheeler.  He was in my lane headed straight for me.  Unfortuneately there was a car in the left lane so I could not dodge him.  My only choice was to stop right there in the middle of the street.  His solution was to wave his fist at me because I was now impeding his forwar progress.  What was I supposed to do?  He was clearly in the wrong place which apparently made him mad at me.  Wouldn't it be nice and wouldn't it make life easier if motorists were actually allowed to use the roads?

The only way to make a right hand turn off Elizabeth and onto 24th is to run over whoever is in the bike lane.  And 5th street is a one way.  It should me a one way for everyone.  I don't remember many bicycles being hit necessitating the need for the bike lanes.  Someone said it is really to make people slow down.  Wouldn't it have been easier to post speed limit signs at a slower speed?  Not enough police to enforce the speed limit?  Last week three policemen showed up at a friend of mines house because animal control said he had too many cats and he would not let her come in to count them.  Priorities may be a little out of whack here.

Education is the key here.  Give motorists a quick course in bicycle etiquitte and give all the bicycle riders a lesson in riding like driving a car.  Should me simple.  If a car hits a bike and the bike is in the wrong, give the rider a ticket.  If the car is in the wrong, give the driver a ticket.  The way it is now, we just confound the whole mess and we never will get it right.  Rules are rules.  We all have them, we just need to obey them.


Another year down the tubes!

Counting today, there are only 5 days left in this year.    Momma nailed it when she said "When you are over the hill you pick up speed...