• Hero

    Recently, I met a Grunt who survived seven tours, three in Iraq, four in Afghanistan. During his last tour he got dysentery, but not quite bad enough to be sent home.
    The Skipper called him a malingerer, yet on his next ‘walk outside the wire’ he saved his squad from an ambush. Got a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.
    Then they sent him home. He bought an all-chrome hot-dog cart with a large yellow umbrella and now sells red-hots and foot-longs to lawyers, tourists and millennial’s all day long.
    He says, “There ain’t much call for heroes these days.”

  • Dog-speed

    “When you say ‘dog-speed,’ what do you mean?” I asked in response to her strange ‘good-bye.’

    All I can think of are our dog’s.

    The eldest is 11-year’s old. He’s not as spry as he once was, enjoying sleeping on the couch and not being outside running with the others.

    Then there’s the middle dog, who at nine-years, enjoys sunning herself and wrestling with the youngest. As for the’s youngest, he’s still a puppy, racing all over the place.

    She frowns at me, “I said ‘God-speed, not dog-speed’”

    With a stupid smile on my face, I simply replied, “Oh. Sorry.”

  • Mystery Grab Bag

    At the end of summer, a few days before the new school year would start, came the Del Norte County Fair. One of my favorite’s things was the ‘mystery grab bag,’ where for a quarter I could select a brown paper bag full of stuff.
    Sometimes it was full of crap, which was disappointing. Sometimes it was filled with stuff I couldn’t wait to get home a play with.
    Because I never accepted the disappointment, I’d return each year with a pocket full of quarters and optimism. Life is very much like a ‘mystery grab bag’ and worth the price.

  • Weather

    It’s been said that you shouldn’t buy a book in which the story begins with the weather. I don’t know why, because without the weather – what would any of us have in common to complain about.

    It would be a rare thing if we all agreed on the weather. The best example is the weather-caster, who publicly complains it’s “too cold,” when days before he or she complained it was “too hot,” and we needed, “cooler temperatures.”

    Not all wishes come true. As for me, I’d quit complaining in an instant – but then I would have nothing to talk about.
     

  • Saying ‘Goodbye’ to Trixie

    For the third time in eight years, I found myself sitting on the floor in the veterinarian’s office in tears, saying goodbye to one our dogs. I had to have our Yorkshire Terrier, Trixie, put down this morning.

    It was time, she was very old as dogs go, 17-year, one month and 18 days old in human time – 71-year’s in dog-years when properly calculated. She had long ago lost her ability to hear, she had only three teeth remaining and blindness and incontinence had come on her without warning.

    For all of her life, Trixie was a brave, independent and stubborn spirit. She traveled and explored places with me, chased rabbits and even backed-down two Rottweiler’s that she felt had gotten to close to her human, earning her the nickname, “Rotten-weiler,” for a bit of time.

    Once, while hiking the slopes of the ghost town, Bodie, California, I heard her barking furiously. After barking like a crazed-dog, she’d charge forward then race back to me.

    After watching her do this a couple of times, I finally saw it: a rattle snake. Trixie not only was trying to chase it off, she was also warning me, trying to keep me safe. She got an extra treat for her bravery that evening.

    She was also my ‘four-legged supervisor’ when it came to projects around the home. She was endlessly curious about whatever I was doing, whether re-plastering a wall and painting it to fixing our fence to pruning the rose bushes.

    Her curiosity was such that as a puppy, she’d growl at the bull-skull that hangs in our living room. I’d hear her, but never could get to the living room in time to see what had her on alert.

    Finally, after a couple of months, I watched as she placed her front paws on the wall, making herself twice her height and studied the skull some ten feet above her head. After a few seconds, she emitted a low growl of suspicion, which was finally satisfied when I pulled the thing from the wall and let her investigate it to her hearts’ content.

    My wife and I both saw the change in her behavior and we knew that one day soon, we’d have to make the hated decision. That day came last Thursday when the always the food-centric dog no longer had an appetite and what she did eat, often came back up on her.

    And instead of retreating to favorite blanket to sleep, as was generally her habit, she began standing for long periods, head down, back-hunched, listlessly staring into the distance and acting seemingly confused. That’s no way for a dog to live, especially Trixie, who had been so full of life at one time.

    So there I sat, red-eyed, face-swollen from tears filled with both sadness and joy, as I reminisced over the memory of “Trixie-licks,” as I called her (she loved licking our faces – especially our noses.) She has more than earned her well-deserved rest.

    Finally, with one more gentle kiss on her tiny nose, I let her go, forever. Rest well, my sweet little baby girl.

  • Dog

    A human being cannot find a better teacher than the average dog, who knows the full meaning to a natural life: ‘If you can’t screw it or eat it, then piss on it.’ Their definition of a door is that something he’ll find himself on the wrong side of every time.
    Finally, because of his character, a dog can’t help but show his truer nature; no head-game to his wants. If a dog wants to be loved, he’ll simply place his head in your lap, tail wagging and look up at you.
    Bless the dog that cannot hold his licker.

  • Seven Things

    If I could go back before my birth, I’d tell my folks these things:

    “Teach me to always tell the truth, even if it gets me or someone else in trouble.”
    “Make me say my prayers each and every night.”
    “Show me how to use my head before my fists.”
    “Remind me to smile a lot, even when things are bad.”
    “Help me learn to control my temper.”
    “Finally, make sure I know there’s much more to life than stuff.”

    Perhaps then I’d include, “And please — go easy on me when I set fire to the field while killing spiders.”

  • Spilt Milk

    You’ve spilled your milk. But why?
    It spilled because there was milk in your glass. Had there been something else in the glass, you would have spilled that.
    After all, whatever is in the glass at the time is what will spill out when it gets tipped over (and it will happen.) Likewise, when your life gets tipped over, (and it will happen,) what’s inside you will spill out.
    The question is: will it be anger, bitterness, harsh words and vengeance or joy, gratefulness, peace and humility?
    Remember, one needs no clean up while the other remains a mess forever.

  • Cancel the Magazine Rack

    My wife’s logic is hard to argue with. Once, while we were shopping, I asked if we could buy a magazine rack. (Yes – sometimes we married men must ask our wives for permission to spend our own money.)
    I argued, “That way we won’t have them laying all around the house.”
    She simple said, “No.”
    I asked, “Why?”
    She politely smiled, “Because we’d never get rid of them and we’d end up with more clutter,” adding, “Instead, how about we cancel all the different magazine subscriptions we have.”
    She calmly turned and continued shopping.
    Damn it! Cornered by my own argument.

  • Twice the Protection

    Some years back, while lost in a hardware chain store, I overheard a man say to another, “They need to get this n—-r music off the radio.”
    He was talking about the in-store music system. At first I was embarrassed because like me, the guy is White, then I grew angry because the guy was White.
    My anger was soon dispelled by a thankfulness as I came to realize that an aspect of the U.S. Constitution was in play – freedom of speech. Further, I learned that enshrined document is there to protect bigots like him from people like me.