Mitchell Way
“I am married to a chimpanzee.”
I could never decide if Cheryl was proud of her choice or disgusted.
Apparently, because of my impatience with reading fine print, I have caused occasional dissension in our marriage.
“Do you remember what we promised in our wedding vows?” she asked in frustration.
“Can I see a copy? I wasn’t really listening to what I said.”
I’m not proud of it, but up until a few years ago I suffered from trypanophobia. It could have started from watching my Nana run a line of stitches up her hand while she was running her treadle sewing machine. I can remember hearing her scream as she attempted to pull her hand free. It was, by the way, the same hand that she regularly got caught in the washing machine wringer. Being a Nana was obviously a dangerous business.
I am from the United States of America. I have a house, a car, a digital television with high speed 5g Wi-Fi, and basically anything I want or need.
Love is a burnin’ thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire
I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire. (June Carter Cash, Merle Kilgore)
It was not long after we moved onto our property in 1987 that I started to plant fruit trees. Living on an old homestead in a house built in 1897, the square acre was fenced in half with one half for the house and the other for the cows. Since we did not want cows or horses, we chose to plant fruits. This was because fruit trees do not need a veterinarian and they very rarely break out of the fencing and wander down the road.
I kid you not! Some of the most embarrassing moments in my life have happened when I was in possession of a watermelon.
Great Men, the ones that are few and far between. The ones that inspire you to greatness. The ones you want to emulate. How can I best honor them when they are gone?
Listen my children and you shall hear of the afternoon ride of Bucky the Deer. Do not turn aside and say, “Grampa is aged,” for I’ve heard that enough from my Progressive agent. Think of this tale and the facts thereof, as a warning to the perils of being in love. . .
In the early 1920s a phrase was coined which stated, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That being the case I started thinking, “Maybe my audience includes story writers who don’t know they can write stories.” So here is my idea, I’ll post some photos and you make up your own stories of what you think happened in each photo. Then I will tell you the real story behind the photo. We’ll compare your creativity with the truth. This will save me a great deal of time that I would otherwise have had to put out for this week’s blog post. It seems like a simple exercise; let’s try it.
Going solo can either be a moment of triumph or of terror. It all depends on how prepared you are when it happens.
My wife, Cheryl, once retired, decided after a period of time that she would like to have extra spending money. Though there were other options for jobs, we would notice that every time we drove into town there would be a school bus parked on the lawn of the middle school with a banner hung on its side saying, School Bus Drivers Needed, Will Train.
My saddle bags were full as I rode slowly down the graveled lane. Beneath me I could hear the ever-present clip, clip, clip, clip. The old girl was due for a check-up.
This was the area of the ambushes. They were happening almost daily now. I lowered my hand and felt the cold steel of my gun butt. It gave me little confidence.
My daughter, Kalene, got me started walking the Hovander Dog Park. It follows the dike of the Nooksack River as it flows through Ferndale. I have lived in Ferndale for 37 years and have visited the large Hovander farm off and on but never walked the dog area until her dog, Milton Barry, came into my life.
“Ok. More to the left. Little more. Little more. Now go up two inches. There! Put the nail there.”
We were hanging pictures in the living room at my mom’s house, and she was sitting on the other side of the room directing me.
I take a nail, tap it into the sheetrock wall and hang the frame.
“Hmmm. It doesn’t look right. It needs to go up another inch.”
“Aarg, frakin, flip!” My blood pressure is climbing, and my right eye is twitching uncontrollably again.
“You know, every wrong hole I knock in the wall is another one I will have to fix later,” I groused.
What were you thinking, dad? I don’t want to read about your untimely demise in the Herald obituaries. You’re not 35 years old anymore. I could almost hear my daughter Kalene yelling at me through the text.
They called it the infamous Alumi-bob. It was an aluminum, steerable, seven-foot-long bobsled. It once slid the roads around Anacortes, Washington. Now it is hidden deep in the woods, laying low, far from passing eyes in the local patrol cars.