The drought continues unabated here at Damphewmore Acres. However, as with everything in life, what’s bad for some is good for others. For example, the resident great blue herons — or shitepokes, as the old-timers of my youth like to call the fish and frog-eating birds — are having a hey-day in the drought. All they do is fly from one going-dry pond to the next to dine on the abundance of fish confined to the ever-shallower waters. They’ve never had a better or easier lifestyle.
What’s most irritating about our drought is that most of the area southeast of us has gotten runoff and ample rain. Even 15 miles west of us got 1 1/2 inches of rain two days ago and we got 21-hundredths.
I think I know what the problem is. Someone sneaked in here at Damphewmore Acres and hid an “anti-rain magnet” on the place.
I know and respect the value of trains in the U.S. But, the Burlington-Northern, which has two tracks, plus some sidings, just 2 miles south of us, sometimes exasperates me with it’s callous disregard for the the citizens who buy the freight it hauls.
For instance, last Wednesday, I wuz in charge of buying the food and helping cook breakfast for the Saffordville Old Boars’ Breakfast Club. So, I left home a few minutes before 6:30 a.m. and pulled up to the B/N crossing at Saffordville, only to find it blocked by a train so long I couldn’t see either end from where I sat in my pickup.
I figgered it would move along in a few minutes. Wrong! Twenty minutes later it hadn’t moved an inch. So, I decided to backtrack to the county line road and make a 5-mile detour to the breakfast site. Wrong! When I arrived at that B/N crossing, there was another train with that crossing blocked, too — but only by HALF A RAIL CAR! If it had moved west 50 feet, the crossing would have been clear.
So, I sat there another 20 minutes and nothing moved. So I went back to the Saffordville crossing. By, then about a dozen of the guys coming to breakfast were waiting for the trains to move.
I might add, there were people trying to get to work who were caught on the other side of the tracks, too.
Suffice it to say, the train didn’t move for one hour and 10 minutes. We were about ready to call the breakfast off when the train clanked to a start.
We ended up eating breakfast a half-hour late and didn’t have time to fix all the food we intended.
I know the Burlington-Northern doesn’t give a flip what us Chase countians think of its discourtesy, but I wish it would. Good public relations never hurts.
Guess I’ll just have to be happy with the county taxes the B/N pays.
Last Sunday, ol’ Nevah and I were going stir-crazy because we’d hardly left the place in two weeks, thanks to my surgery recovery. So, we decided to find us an out-of-the-way place to dine.
Well, we found one in Harveyville, Kan. It’s called the Hell Raysors’ Road House. It’s located in a metal building that looks like a former tire dealership. Now, it’s been renovated into a sports bar that caters to bikers and anyone else a little rough around the edges.
For instance, the wait staff wore T-shirts emblazoned with “No NFL TV Games Until the Players Respect the Flag.” The TVs were tuned in to various NASCAR and motorcycle and off-road races. The menu is two sizes of burgers — 1/2 pounders and 1-pounders — and you get to pick all the stuff you want piled on the burgers and flavor of sauce you want.
You get to pick how you want your burger cooked — rare: cool blood; medium rare: warm blood; medium: hot blood; well-done: not recommended. When our medium burgers came, they were at least 6-inches high — and delicious.
The saga of the race-horse syndicate I joined a few weeks ago took it’s next step. The first trainer, ol’ Getty A. Tension, is finished with the ground work. The colt — Giant Clawsway — will be rested a few weeks, then taken to his next trainer in Tyler, Texas, who will start the semi-serious training for actual racing like getting accustomed to saddle, bridle, and starting gate, etc.
I’ll continue to keep you posted.
Got a grandson getting hitched in September and he and his fiancee are having a wedding shower in two days. I’m glad I’m not doing the gift buying. Ol’ Nevah’s got that handled. All I have to do is be there, smile and be happy.
A young country lad was driving his beat-up pickup in town when he saw the flash of a traffic camera. He figured that his picture had been taken for exceeding the limit, even though he knew that he was not speeding. Just to be sure, he went around the block and passed the same spot driving even more slowly, but again the camera flashed. Now he began to think that this was quite funny, so he drove even slower as he passed the area again, but the traffic camera again flashed. He tried a fourth time with the same result. He did this a fifth time and was now laughing and waving when the camera flashed as he rolled past, this time at a snail’s pace.
Two weeks later, he got five tickets in the mail for driving without a seat belt.. You can’t fix stupid.
I’m not normally a boastful guy, but I have to tell you I finished my 14-day diet in three hours and a half. Have a good ‘un.
