If One More Person Says. . . .

Tags

Humor, Iowa, life in the meadow

If one more person says:

If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Well congratulations Mr. or Mrs. Perfect. So glad to know you never hurt anyone’s feelings, never took the wrong job, majored in the wrong discipline in college, married the wrong guy, bought the wrong gift, or failed to pay a bill on time. The rest of us wish we could have some do-overs on a whole pack of things in the hopes that with fore-knowledge we would be kinder, smarter, gentler, and a whole lot better person than we WERE.

Take heart, things could be worse.

Yes, they could be. I could be dead. Isn’t that the only real response to such a thoughtless and meaningless phrase. Meanwhile by saying it you feel “sympathetic” while at the same time you have wasted not one precious second of your miserable life truly empathizing with another human being. Congratulations, things could be worse buddy.

If only we could return to the good old days.

Yes, I guess that would be great, especially if you lost everything in the crash of 29, or you were a Jew in Warsaw during WWII, or a grunt in a rice paddy in Vietnam, or had an office in the WTC on 9/11, or were a black person living in Montgomery in the late 50’s, or a woman wanting to be a doctor in the 1940’s. Let me remind you of the good old days of polio, and living in London during the Blitz, and going to back alley abortionists because you felt you had no other option. Let’s get back to life in the Gulags in Russia and by all means remember the slave trade and all those lovely ships that free of charge brought blacks on vacation to America!  Get your damn head out of your ass.

I would rather dig ditches for a living than ask for welfare!

The point is you have never been in that position. You were born, most likely male and white in a land that holds neither your gender nor color as an obstacle to be overcome. Your parents might have been poor, but that was when bread cost a nickel and everybody in the whole neighborhood was poor, and nobody knew they were. You have never been systematically denied anything simply because you don’t fit some model of what such a person should look like. You grew up in a world where unions kept wages high and benefits became a right, not a luxury. You grew up where sweat shops were regulated, and kids didn’t work twelve-hour days. You had a real floor under your feet, and a real roof. Shaddup. What you really mean is that you have yours now, and  don’t want to pay to help anyone else who is caught in this economic hell we now exist in. You are between the ages of 35-65 white and male and YOU feel discriminated against. Yeah, you sure are.

If you live in America, speak English, ditch the head-gear, and act American.

You point out in perfect detail just how lousy our free education has become in this country. Did you learn nothing in history at all? We are a nation of immigrants and each has brought their ethnic life with them. Many cities have ethnic days throughout the summer and celebrate Polish Days, and Armenian Days, and Irish Days, and Italian Days. These were fine with you. And guess what? Those folks actually eat ethnic meals and continue a whole plethora of ethnic morays in their lives here. They actually sometimes live in enclaves where most of them are from the same country. But you now get stinkin’ crazy when Arabs and Latinos want to do the same regarding their native lands. Could it be that something else is at work here buddy? Like your ready to bursting racism? See the paragraph above for further elucidation.

America: Love it or Leave it.

Been there, done that. We went through all this during the Vietnam War era. It was somehow unpatriotic to object to the war as being–get this–IMMORAL. All this stupid phrase really means as far as you are concerned, is that you have some corner on what America is supposed to be, and want anyone who disagrees to shut up and disappear. So you call them unpatriotic. You have defined most Democrats as such, and certainly all liberals and progressives. “Libtards” you call them. Calling people Commies because they don’t agree with your personal desires of how life should be led in America simply reflects your lack of knowledge. How do you think the Revolution got started? I guess the English would have called them “libtards”–Adams and Franklin and those guys. Wise up stupid.

When you get to be my age you’ll agree with me.

That’s about half right and half wrong. If you mean that I will become protective of what I have and not want to share. . .then not so much. If you mean, I will have learned from my mistakes, and see the world in a broader focus, and realize that we are all in this together. . .then that’s probably true. People do not all become conservatives as they grow older, sometimes they become smarter liberals. If your principles are real, then they don’t change, they simple become better articulated.

HAVE A WONDERFUL  AND SAFE NEW YEAR’S EVE AND DAY!!!!

Cleaning the Lint Trap

Tags

Humor, Iowa, life in the meadow, vacuuming the brain

Well, we have almost made it to the end of the year. Only a few more precious hours to go before we turn the page. As Keith would say, “congratulations on making it through another year of this crap.”

Now, I am no expert, but I’ve long been of the opinion that most mental illness is caused by an inability to clear out the attic. And no finer time is there for that job than at the end of the year.

Because tomorrow, I’m gonna start making some goodies for the New Year (appetizers are my New Year’s day menu), I thought today would be the day to flick off pieces of lint that have been gummin’ up the old synapses.

So in no particular order:

• I sympathize with the folks of Samoa who have skipped today and are moving on to Saturday. I mean think of all the havoc being played out. No doubt somebody had an appointment to having an annoying growth removed from their chin, or somebody was getting married or things of that order. What are they supposed to do? At my age, giving up a day is very serious business. I would have voted no.
• I have to tell you, one of the reasons I have watched the GOP debates (which takes that whole subject to a new low) is to look over the audience and wonder who the hell are these people? Can they afford all those people they must need to dress them and feed them each day? Such people who look to any of that stage of stooges to lead them out of even a corn maze, are barking up the wrong tree.
• It’s been unseasonably warm here in Iowa this winter. I’d like to think it’s a goodbye present from the state to me. I suspect it has more to do with global warming. To all those folks who claim that all they do is for their children and then say that global warming is but a hoax, I say this: I hope you live to see your children vilify you for gifting them with a dying planet.
• I have one very serious compulsion I’ve never told you about. I want to make ciabatta bread–I mean the kind you get at the bakery, with gigantic holes. I’m on about my eighth attempt today. Terms like “pulling away from the sides” and “glistening like toothpaste” and “dimpling the surface” are old hat to me. Wish me luck.
• I want to thank each and every one of you, both for being alive and visiting me often and entering into my madness. I want to thank all of you who blog and keep me laughing and thinking. I want you to know that there really are no such things as virtual friends. There are friends. And I count all of you as such.
• Jesus was a pretty smart fellow. He knew that even among thieves and nere-do-wells, a certain honor existed and people paid their debts and returned borrowed lawn mowers. He often told his followers that to do as much was not enough, because “even the tax collectors do that much.” No, Christians, and indeed all of us are really judged by how much we step out of our own self-interest and do something for others. God knows there are enough folks out there in need. Children around the world, Muslims maligned for being Muslims, our LGBT friends, immigrants being threatened by draconian intrusive laws. Pick your poison and dedicate next year to helping your fellow human.
• Never under-estimate the power of a pet to teach you things you are better off knowing. We still miss our Brandy terribly and a day never goes by when she is not thought about, or mentioned in our ongoing lives. She taught us a lot about being human, and that’s a pretty amazing thing for an animal to be able to do.
• If you smile more than you frown you are way out in front.
• Writing is nothing more than thinking with your fingers. So said Issac Asimov.
• I have really had a lot of fun with my food blog. Mostly because I don’t do anything there except post recipes. I’ve been pushed, mostly by myself, to solve a lot of recipe problems. I now have the “perfect” lasagna, a to-die-for corn casserole, and finally I solved the “too-dry” mystery of mac and cheese. Maybe this seems inconsequential to you, but “hey, ma, I’m the queen of the world.”  Well, not quite, I still have that stinkin’ ciabatta bread to work out.
• One really good thing I learned this year? Crazy, sci-fi shows on the mainstream ABC<CBS<NBC stations are likely to be canceled in mid-story with no resolution, because they play to world audiences, and more money is at stake. The off cable channels, stick with the stories until they are resolved more often. So I ain’t gonna find out what happened on V or Event, but I am likely to get a resolution on Fringe and Sanctuary. Of course none of this matters if you are smart enough to avoid TV with regularity.
• I continue to be amazed that so little in the way of intellectual capability is required to function in society in some fashion. I think that every time I get done reading Blaze and Daily Caller comments. I also realize how truly poor our educational system is, since most of these morons matriculated through our public education. The few who didn’t were homeschooled by idiots who had themselves barely escaped the public system with sheepskin in hand.
• I trust scientists more than politicians, but then I trust hairdressers more than politicians. In fact I trust rhesus monkeys more than politicians. The only person I trust fully (Contrarian excepted of course) is Johnny Depp.

Okay, so I feel lighter and free once again. Ready to start this craziness all over again next year?

Well, God willing and the creek don’t rise, we will be alive and so will have no choice.

I’ll try to post a few cute pics tomorrow. I’m not cooking THAT hard or long.

Toodles!

In Iowa, We Call It: Embracing the Crazy

Tags

elections 2012, Humor, Life in Iowa, life in the meadow

There is a method to the madness. Of that I can assure you.

Iowa is beginning to be the butt of a whole lota jokes around the nation, and believe me, there are states in our fair union who have a lot of nerve, given their own goofiness. You know who you are!

But one can hardly deny that things are weird here during this election cycle. We give new meaning to the world “surge” as each of the clowns in the GOP circus have had their moment in the spotlight.

Are we fickle? Or crazy? Or both?

I have lived in this fair state since March of 1999, and I know a few things now. Even though we live in what can best be termed a unencorporated hamlet, where “everybody knows your name”, that is till largely not true for me. When we go to vote, all the fine ladies and gents who work the polls, people by the way that I recognize, they all holler, “hey Parker, how’s it going with you?” To me?  “Name please?” They still have no clue who I am, nor do they particularly care. I am simply “not Troy.”

Knowing this helps a lot in understanding this state. One of the first things my darling Contrarian explained to me is that Iowa is the fairest and bestest place in all of the planet earth in which to live. I pondered this, and thought, that well, I didn’t know it well, so perhaps he was right.

You see, it matters not whether you agree or not–they believe it. And all is understandable given that.

All these GOP morons have tramped the state, some for months now, shaking hands, babies (err holding that is) and eating battered butter on a stick. If a farmer tells them that the sky should be purple, they endorse purple skies, and if a lady with blue hair says that only people of age 65 or better should vote, they are for that too.

Fully four of them have glommed onto the fertilized egg being a person, which has scary implications if you really think about it, but it hardly matters, since these pledges only last until next week when the “vote” comes. Then the losers will tear up their set of promises, move on to the next bunch and try to figure out what they want them to say.

Now, to keep it interesting, Iowans engage in an elaborate game of “keep away.” They dangle the prize of frontrunnership before each of the sycophants until they get the scent, and follow around the “people” like puppies following a ham bone. They jump and spin, and find themselves saying the most god-awful things to please the ringmasters.

Then, slick as an otter down a water slide, they hide the bone and look to see who they can favor next.

Over the months, each and every one of the GOPer wannabes has had their turn. Each has danced a jig worthy of Bojangles. Each has been discarded in turn.

Some suggest the Iowa GOP voter is a fickle beast. No, not in the least. This is all planned.

Money is pouring into the state, and even Mittens have been seduced into coming here and spending his dough. Our unemployment is somewhere around 6% and frankly, housing prices are high, compared to most.

If you look historically, Iowa has only a 50% success rate in “picking” the ultimate GOP candidate. Remember they picked Hucky and Buchanan before him. In actuality, they simply close their eyes and throw a dart at a board. They could care less.

Get this straight. There are two Iowas. One is in the East (where the sane people mostly live) and the other is the West, where Steve King lives with his bunch of slow-wits. We are hemmed in by two rivers, which caused people in this region to cling to the flat earth theory for some three generations longer than the rest of the country.

And look around. Do you see anything on our borders that is the least bit encouraging?

You can now see the problem?

Or don’t you?

We get no attention. We are smack dab in the middle of  B O R I N G. In fact, there may be no more boring section of the entire lower 48 than Iowa. It is the center of boring.

You ever heard of  “playing the fool”?

We get attention by acting this way. People come here and grovel at our feet, begging for a vote. They whine, placate, promise, and cajole. They in a word–grovel. And it’s fun to watch rich folk grovel, the richer the better. We dress them up in hunting suits, and give them sticks to drive the pigs around in a pen, and watch them consume phallic-looking crap food that we would never touch. And they drop money EVERYWHERE.

And then, we pick a “winner” who is nothing but a real joke to most of us, and we pocket the cash and return to our idyllic life, safe and secure, knowing that we have put on such a show that no self-respecting sane person would ever consider moving here. So we get the whole place to ourselves.

Which is the objective.

Except for me. I still find it boring. But then, they don’t accept me here yet anyway. Takes twenty years I’m told. Which is five more than it takes in Maine.

The welcome mat is not extended.

Oh Please, Not Again!

Tags

Humor, Iowa, life in the meadow, New years resolutions, psychology, sociology

Since before the time when Archimedes ran naked through the streets of Syracuse yelling “Eureka!” humanity has been on a quest of self-improvement and determination to follow through.

Okay, so Archimedes has zero to do with this. So sue me. Better yet, make a New Year’s Resolution about it.

I have, in the past, noted that I stopped participating in this archaic and largely illusory exercise some years ago. Sort of. It remains as a painful pleasure to those masochists out there who enjoy setting themselves up for failure. Please note that the more you insist on listing  TEN, the more masochistic you are.

Now, I have little doubt that early humans, while looking out of the cave upon a new year resolved to change a few things. Like being more careful when sharpening spears, and not volunteering so much as lead in the Wooly Mammoth hunt.

And down through the ages, people, ever confident have continued this stupid practice of thinking that by sheer will, and the turn of a day on the calendar, magically they could transform their lives into that which they had always dreamed of.

No one would argue that the number one resolution historically is to diet. Yes, it never fails. In fact, the commercial world, dumb as it is, always runs some ads telling us to eat this or that in order to “fit into that swimsuit” come June.

So popular is this little resolution, that supermarkets quite regularly run out of Lean Cuisine on January 2 of every year, and the garbage retrieval companies report a larger than usual dumpage of old-freezer killed packages of same around December 30 or so. (depending on your pick-up date of course).

So unsuccessful is this resolution that it is being noted by planetary scientists world-wide. It has been known for some time that America is “weightier” than any other nation in the world. All the resolution in the world seems to have no effect. Scientists now note that the weight imbalance on our side of the globe is increasing to a degree that it is starting to throw the axis of the earth out of alignment, and that if this continues, we shall roll right out of our orbit.

 It is projected that our next stop will be as a satellite of Saturn. Having watched old episodes of Buck Rogers, I can tell you that the Saturnians are a most unpleasant sort of people, and it is ill-advised to join their system.

Going hat-in-hand with dieting is of course exercise. This causes the usual run on tennis shoes and other work-out wear, but most get so little use, that often it can be re-used the following year.

The median resoluteness of these two grand desires is approximately 2.3 weeks, slightly longer if there is a membership in a weight losing scheme such as Wiggles and Jiggles BeGone or Max’s Pain and Torture Emporium. Then the resolute period is a whopping 3.4 weeks.

Next on the list of “I’m working on me” is those things that actually improve one’s mind. Learn it or lose it, or something like that. This often is considered before the actual resolution date, and is requested as a gift at Christmas time. No dreams of sugar plums in these heads, but rather of looms and needles, and fabrics, and such. Believe me, I know all about this one. I have a room full of barely started projects to prove it. And if you are honest, so do you. Don’t bite this bait again.

Nothing compares to our resolve to become better read, and so most lists include a promise to “read more.” It is most important that you leave it general like this. While it is true that when you wrote it, you meant things like reading Plutarch and Pliny, or something by Steven Hawking, trust me, no more than thirty pages of any of these will be consumed. Truly, that is the average that anyone actually plows through.

No, if you leave it at “read more” you can talk yourself into believing that comic books, the captions on pictures in People, and the ingredients on a cereal box all count. See, success!

My favorite are the even more ephemeral ones like “making a difference in somebody’s life each day.” Now you can cross this one off as a success even before you start. You do make a difference in somebody’s life every day, as long as you don’t hold yourself to the requirement that it be a positive one. I assure you, you got this one. Move on.

People often decide that they are going to take better control of their finances as a resolution of sorts. And you can too. Just don’t start figuring out this one, until you have finished paying off the books and supplies needed to accomplish all the other resolutions you made already. It is important to keep this one at the end of the list. Comprendé?

So, if you plan carefully, you can beat this game that defeats almost everyone else. Stay away from dieting and exercise. Substitute more general terms like “eat better” (use one pat less of butter per week is technically “eating better!”) and “moving” more which can be contorting yourself to scratch your own back rather than reach for the backscratcher. Movement is movement after all.

The rest? Well, I think you get the template here. GENERALLY BE GENERAL, or GBG as we in the experienced trade call it.

You too can be a Resolution success story!

Related articles

• Random resolutions (up-an-atom.blogspot.com)
• New Year’s Resolutions. . .or just screw it! (misleadingtonowhere.wordpress.com)
• How to Test-Drive a New Year’s Resolution (yellowinspiration.wordpress.com)

Base Ten and the Aftermath

Tags

Entertainment, Humor, life in the meadow, top 10 lists

Somebody is responsible for this.

I just am not sure who.

Some suggest it is because we have ten fingers. Others dispute that, or point to something else.

The zero, now that is one of those things that arose in two different places, presumably independently, i.e., Indian and Mayan.

But the base ten seems to have proliferated in a lot of places. And it has caused untold harm, or at least it does today.

In fact, at no time of the year does it wreak more havoc than it does now, at the end of a year.

To what do I refer?

Why the ubiquitous TOP TEN LIST.

Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, there is some yahoo from Dopesville insisting that you listen to his or her stupid list of Most, Least, Stupidest, Smartest, Oldest, Narrowest, Deepest, Longest crapola things on the planet.

You doubt me?

Some might suggest that Barbara Walters is at fault with her “10 Most Fascinating People” whose first winner was Julius Caesar just months before the Ides did him in. But I’m sure it even predated her. I am quite sure it antedated our cave days, since if we were still running around shoeless, no doubt it would have been the “Top 20” list, since count ’em, we got twenty digits in all.

Ever since forever, then, (don’t forget the “10” commandments) we have been rating everything from soup to poop in some fashion at the end of the year.

Part of the reason for this crap is that nobody wants to work at the end of the year, so cablevision needs plenty of crap filler. So we have the “top 10 overtime plays of all time”  and the “top 10 hail mary plays of all time” and the “top 10 best football hairdos of all time.”

I know that the top Green Bay Packer of all time is some guy that played in the thirties, whose name I have already forgotten.

I know what the “top 10 sports scandals of 2011” are, though I am trying hard to forget that too.

I know that I have not read a single of the “top 10 books you should read from 2011” are, and I have not heard any of the “top 10 albums of the year” either.

Meanwhile, in science, Discover magazine will tell me the “top 100 stories in science of the year” proving that science is indeed arrogant and insufferable in its self-importance. (Coming in at #3 was the winning of Jeopardy by a computer, which should tell you all you need to know about the earth-shatteringness of scientific discovery these days.)

Let’s not forget the “top 10 movies of 2011” which will be done all over again in March when the Oscars are held and we are forced to sit through awful speeches just to make catty remarks at the dresses chosen by various actors and wish-I-were-one-too ones.

No doubt somebody is compiling a list of the “top 10 websites of 2011” and of course that will have three dozen subsets, since everyone agrees you can’t compare CanIHaveCheeseburgers with the Drudge Report.

Most of all this crap is funded of course, by people who have a dog in the fight as it were. I mean you draw up a list of “the 10 best restaurants of 2011” to make money selling food right? To say nothing of the food critic who decides, and thus gets to move up the scale of fancy-smancy restaurant fare.

Who doesn’t want to feel “in” by wearing one of the “top 10 best fragrances of 2011”? I know I sure do. As long as whatever it is don’t cost more than $3.99, I’m in.

I want to live in one of the “top 10 nicest neighborhoods in the US” as long as it meets my “warmth” factor. Surely I do.

Now, I can’t hope to have or live in the “top 10 penthouses in the World” or “the 10 most expensive yachts”, but I can sure admire how the hoity-toity live, that is, if I can afford those high-end magazines that feature that crap, which I can’t so, I can never feel bad that I don’t have a $500,000 aquarium as a conversation piece in my dining room. Heck I don’t have a dining room.

No, I’m more down to earth as they say. Who says? They!

I can tell you what the “top 10 pizzas” I made last year were, and I can tell you the “top 10 most satisfying toilet cleanings” I accomplished.  I’ll not get more personal about bowel habits and hair cuts, eyebrow plucking, and toenail clipping artistry. I’ll leave all that to your imagination.

The Contrarian has quite a list of his own. His “top 10 wood cart stacks” would rival anyones I promise you, and his thumbwork has been dazzling on the remote on at least 10 remarkable occasions.

We 99%’ers have plenty to crow about in the Top 10 category to be sure. How about “top 10 jobs I didn’t get” or “top 10 lines at the unemployment office I stood in”? Or there is “top 10 best protest demonstrations” I went to and/or got arrested at.

Yes, it’s been a top 10 year.

Hey, we could have adopted the Babylonian base 60 system, and this could have taken a whole lot longer. So consider yourself lucky.

 

Related articles

• Top 10 Reasons Top 10 Lists Suck (feld.com)
• Top 10 Classic Sitcom Christmases (wcbsfm.radio.com)
• Top 10 Yoga Blogs of the Week. (elephantjournal.com)
• Top 10 Trailers of 2011 (collider.com)

Crossing the Finish Line: Let the Party Begin!

Tags

Christmas, Humor, Nutcracker, short stories

Listen up ladies! Guys, go back to your nap.

Everyone knows who does the work at these holiday things.

Men yawn with pretty much satisfied grins when they have managed to erect a tree in the living room and taken the last-minute but obligatory trip to Walgreens and had some teen-aged clerk pick out a suitable bottle of bubble bath and that thing that “makes perfect scrambled eggs every time.”

Women spend days if not weeks, planning and baking, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and ordering, mixing and matching, writing, and wrapping until they are ready to drop dead of exhaustion.

On Christmas morning while everyone is playing with the new gadgets, women are in the kitchen getting the ham or turkey or whatever into its pan, and putting together seventeen side dishes, with relish trays, and rolls. Then comes the china, all washed days before. And the silver, polished and shined. Beds made, people properly dressed for company (no you can’t wear your frayed and holey old sweater today!).

And they, the men,  have no duties at all on THE day, except that pretense that they know anything about carving the roast, turkey,  or ham. And then, they eat like ravenous wolves, barely stopping to stay that “this is a wonderful brussels sprouts dish darling” before they are back in the lazyboy moaning and listing to the left as they nap. While you, of course, attend to the train wreck that is your kitchen.

And then, insults of insults, there is a freakin’ FOOTBALL GAME ON THE WHOLE NIGHT LONG, BUT THE PRE-GAME STARTS AT 3 IN THE AFTERNOON, AND GUESS WHAT? THERE IS GOING TO BE A 24-HOUR CABLE SPORTS SHOW ON STARTING IN JANUARY, JUST KILL ME NOW.

And all I ask for, all I ask for is one little two-hour stretch on Christmas Eve, to sit and watch something cultural, something of beauty and art. And what do I get?

Ridicule! Moaning!

Some history is in order.

Last year, my dear Contrarian recorded Balanchine’s NYCB (New York City Ballet) rendition of The Nutcracker. Said ballet has been done for about sixty years. It is a classic, and a wonderful, beautiful delight.

Even though he HATES ballet, he did this for me.

And I loved him for it.

But then . . . There is always a then.

It came on, and we watched it. Or at least I watched it. He fell asleep.

And at the intermission, I got up to do the things one does during intermission.

And I came back, and he was awake.

And he asked: “Well what do you want to watch now?”

“The rest of the Nutcracker, of course.”

He looks at me in bewilderment.

“The rest?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought it was over–there was no more dancing.”

“It’s just intermission, before the second act.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I deleted it. I thought it was over.”

So, THAT my friends was the state of my Nutcrackery enjoyment as of last year.

So this year of course, he carefully recorded it. And Saturday afternoon, he called out to me from the other room:

“How many groans am I allowed during this ballet thing?”

I sighed.

“TWO!” I yelled

“And how many sighs?”

“ONE!” I bellowed.

And so I watched it, and he sighed once, and only groaned once, and that was during the ballet mistress’s explanation of how she trains the children. The groan was accompanied by something that sounded a lot like “Biotch.”

And I enjoyed it.

I did.

And I have the last revenge.

Because my freakin’ holiday begins today. I made enough food to feed an army for a month. Don’t talk to me about cooking until a week from today. If you are hungry, open the fridge and dig in. Don’t bother me about warming anything up. And wash your own dishes, and feed the dog.

I’m on vacation.

And NO, we are not watching any JOHN WAYNE marathon. NO, NO, NO.

 

 

Learning Christmas Charity the Hard Way

Tags

Humor, Iowa, life in the meadow, short stories

You may have a place like this near where you live. Let’s hope not, but chances are, statistically speaking, you probably do.

Ours, here in Northeast Iowa is called Muckersville.

It’s not all that far down the road from where we live. My husband, back before he was such, took me there one afternoon. Looking back, I’m unclear what his motives were, but I’d like to think he just wanted me to see the underside all sides of the state.

Muckersville is entered by turning off a nondescript black top onto what might be termed a dirt road. Except it is nothing but tire tracks with plenty of stubborn grass growing down the center. In the near distance, you can see trees, but they are not the trees that line your friendly neighborhood on Pine Street, USA. No, they are evil trees.

They are some sort of oak, but they are the type you would find in Mordor. The limbs, when finding themselves growing close to another limb, withdraw in violent twisting and turning, so that when denuded by oncoming winter, the tree looks grotesque and genetically misfit.

Such trees, if one can call them that, survive from their own sheer evil will. No inhabitant of Muckersville would water them, and they grow on whatever water they leech from the ground and from animal and humans who relief themselves while walking about.

There are no homes in Muckersville as such. There are various constructs used as such. A shack would be the most generous of descriptions, with cobbled trailers of all sorts and filched lumber comprising the rest.  Here and there a partial aluminum siding is apparent, but only partial.There are plenty of out-buildings but frankly it is hard to define those where humans live  from ones used to store a lone pig or a broken down dryer.

The roads (using that term exceedingly liberally) wind this way and that, and come to abrupt endings, since there has never been any planning intended or executed. Nothing is more unsettling than to end up at a dead-end, in someone’s “front yard”. There is no obvious place to turn around, and one always fears trampling upon something of value, though that idea is perhaps an oxymoron.

The yards, have no beginning or end, and are littered with what one would expect. Parts of things—cars, trailers, wagons, partially built whatnots, broken toys, are but a partial list. What will not be found is anything that resembles a flower, wild or cultured.  The one thing found in abundance are the remains of alcoholic consumption. All manner of cans and bottles litter the landscape, in groups or in singles under virtually every weedy bush and alongside each shanty.

There are no people about, at least as you can see. I think they seldom come out before sun down. No one peers from a window, no baby cries, and no dog howls. It is as if even the wind is afraid to make a sound.  But if one was to venture around in the blackness of night, all manner of hooting and crashing can be heard, as people lurch from abode to abode, seeking relief from their thirst. 

There is no community dump, but each fashions he or her own area of “dumpage”. Here and there, someone has thought to use an actual garbage can, but mostly it’s just a heap on the ground. It is burned every so often, at least those parts that will burn.

People move to Muckersville to get lost. Lost to ex-wives, ex-boyfriends, sheriffs, and military police. No one pays taxes, no one votes, no one fills out a census. No one sells magazines, and even the Jehovah’s Witnesses prefer to avoid proselytizing here.

Most everyone who lives there is devoted to the work of not working. No one draws a paycheck as such, and no one punches a time clock. There is a profession that is top here. That is the profession of rousting a buck out of anything that happens along. Remove a downed tree, hustle a dead car for iron, spot some old copper tubing? Hustling a buck is the way of life here.

And Muckervillians don’t mix with other folks. . . .Much. At least I never thought they did.

Until. Until today.

We were in Cedar Rapids, where we had to stop at the local Wal-Mart to finish our Holiday preparations. Now we don’t shop much there any more, since we object to their policies. But some things, only they seem to have.  So fate placed me there.

I told the Contrarian that I was going to see if they had any bone-in hams. I didn’t want to take a chance that the local HY-VEE might not have them.  He headed for other the manly end of the store.

They, the hams that is,  were located in a large open cooler in mid-aisle.  I looked down, and soon spotted what looked to be one. A rather large woman, dressed in camouflage, with a YOOPER hat on, and steel-toed boots, was just throwing one into her cart with a rather loud BANG! I noted that she had two of these half-hams in her cart now, and thought, “my, she must be having a crowd for Christmas.”

I had just fingered the little mesh loop that one uses to pick up the ham. It was the last one in the cooler.  I felt a strange tug. I looked up, and saw, the above described woman, now will a snarlish grin upon her face; a grin which allowed me to see that the poor thing was missing about half of her bridgework. I felt a more insistent tug.

“I’m sorry, but I have this one, “I smiled.

“No you don’t missy. It’s mine.” She grinned rather toothlessly.

“But you have two already, and there are no more left.” I responded with what anyone would conclude was a reasonable statement.

“Don’t matter how many I have. I claimed three of ‘em, and this is the (she stopped to count), THIRD one!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I claimed it first.”

A noted that two or three people had stopped and were looking on.

I looked at my adversary, and noted with some mild alarm that her eyes had taken on a certain steely coldness and her lips drew tight.

“Iff’in you want to play that way, missy,” she hissed.

From her pants pocket, she produced a whistle. To her lips it went and a piercing screech came forth, which caused all within few dozen feet to cover their ears.

I just stood there in dumb incredulity, not having a clue what was going to happen next.

Suddenly, I heard a crashing of carts careening from opposite sides’ aisles and two bigger than shit youngish men with hair everywhere and dressed like the woman, explode on the scene.

“What’s wrong Ma?” one crowed.

Lord, I thought, teeth are a scarce commodity in this family.

The other, wiped some spittle from his chin hairs and flexed and unflexed his hands.

I was now in serious fear. A quick look about made it clear I could look for no help to the patrons about, most of who were moving back out of the way.

“This here Uptowner don’t want us to have our ham this Christmas,” Ma declared.

“But you have two,” I whimpered.

“Yep, we have one for Pa and me, and one for Billy there with the forehead tat, and you don’t want Willard to have none, as I see it.”

The one known as Willard eyed me menacingly. Now Willard could have probably gone a full month without eating with no ill effects, but  as he face began to redden, and his forehead tattoo began to throb visibly, I knew I was beat.

I dropped the ham.

Ma retrieved it, cackled, and slammed her cart against mine as she wheeled away with her DNA-mutant spawn following along.

 I learned two things today. Muckersville folk do venture out during the day. . .

And , I learned that pork chops can make a fine Christmas meal.

WISHING YOU AND YOURS THE BEST OF HOLIDAYS!!