Mitchell Way
From the top of a tree, we clung to the remaining trunk which we could wrap our hands around.
Standing on branches below us which strained under our weight, we looked out over the forest treetops. We were at the same height as the giants. We were one of them.
From the laundry room came a piercing scream … “My delicate underwear is completely tangled with your Velcro helmet liner! How many times have I told you…”?
I tried calming the situation by assuring her, “Don’t worry dear, good commercial grade Velcro is hard to damage.”
I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast as Cheryl entered with a large ball of fabric just taken from the dryer. I could tell by the look on her face that I would be buying new underwear when suddenly she looked out the back window and realized she had left the porch umbrella up all night.
“Oh crumb! Look at the umbrella rocking back and forth in the wind. I’d better go out there and collapse it before it gets torn to shreds.”
“Don’t go off half-cocked!”
Have you ever wondered what that means?
Elwood K was the old man who lived in a small self-made home behind our house when I was growing up. I never had a grandpa after I was four so I adopted him. Everyone knew him as “Swede” which was interesting since the name is Scottish and English. He was known by the white Popeye cap he always wore. His house was full of them. Taking his lead, I wear a black Army Ranger cap which my house is also full of.
Swede was fond of four things: guns, Canadian Mist whiskey, both of which he had hidden all over his house, his yellow half ton Dodge Ram pickup and his mutt dog Digger Odell. Several times a week you could see his old Dodge driving ten miles under the speed limit using both sides of the road. Old Swede was returning from a trip to the liquor store to get his “medicine”. On the seat beside him would sit Digger, head and tongue hanging out the open window. Sometimes Digger was the designated passenger and sometimes he was the designated driver; it all depended on how Swede was feeling.
It was a time after the Vietnam War but before Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt by Delta Force to end the Iran hostage crisis. The years 1974 through 1978 when the average American thought the wars were over, but wars are never over. It was a time that at an undisclosed, seemingly insignificant spot in Washington I was trained to fly high risk helicopter missions and was considered by the US Government to have a license to kill. And though, some 40 years later I can now talk about it, it still haunts me of the death and destruction I caused.
I was just out in my tool shed looking through some old cottage cheese containers which I use to hold nails, nuts, washers, bolts, and screws etc. I learned of this storage technique from the old man who lived behind me named Swede. He was a course speaking old man with a temper, but I was the only person he had for a son, so he put up with me. Swede taught me many things about hunting, fishing, bee keeping, and gardening, and he kept every spare nut, bolt, and washer in cottage cheese containers in his shed. I inherited them when he died. My only complaint was that he never would wash out the containers before he would fill them with stuff and today, I am trying to find one 3/8-16 x 3.5” bolt as I hold my breath while rummaging through one rancid cottage cheese container after another.
I met a man sitting on a sidewalk bench in Lynden the other day. He had a heavy Chicago Bears sweatshirt on, and it was obvious to me that he wasn’t a local.
I had a nudge from my inner self to say “hi”. He was a nice guy, but it was hard for me to understand the inner city slang he was using. Basically, I understood that he was in the county visiting a brother who had moved out from Chicago. The brother was encouraging him to move out before he got shot in the streets.
“Hello. My name is Marty. And your name is. . .”
I leaned forward and squinted to see the name on her identification badge.
“Angus. Nice to meet you, Angus.”
“It’s Agnus, you insulting twit!” she barked as she spun around and walked away.
Cheryl and I have visited four of the Hawaiian islands: Oahu, Kauai, The Big Island, and Maui.
I would rate them as #1 Kauai, #2 The Big Island, #3 Maui, and #4 Oahu. This is based on things that interest me.
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.
For the longest time he had no name. Perhaps if he had not made a simple mistake, we never would have known his true identity.
As far as I can tell, there are two groups of boys in high school: those who are comfortable with girls and those who are terrified of them. I personally, though not being afraid of girls, was still of the elementary school mindset that they were icky. As far as I was concerned, life in high school would have been far less stressful without two of the annual school sanctioned activities: Prom and Tolo.
“Seat belts on; Doors locked; Brakes set; Circuit breakers in; Fuel selector valve on both.”
Four of us were sitting in a Cessna 172 at the parking area of the Roche Harbor Resort airstrip preparing to depart.
Thou shalt not sit down on T- Bars
For you first time users, T-Bars like rope tows are a means of pulling you to the top of the hill. You must first stand in an interminable line of skiers watching the skiers at the head of the line move into position where the attendant slaps them on the rear end with a T-bar as it comes around. To the first-timer watching the process, it all seems very straight forward. The cable with the T-bar comes around the bullwheel, the attendant slaps you in the hips with the bar and up the hill you go. What you may not know is that the T-bar cable is on a retractable reel and must feed all the way out before it catches and starts pulling you up the slope. It came as a bit of a surprise to me, a first-timer, when I skied into position. I felt the attendant slap my hips with the bar, which I assumed I could sit on. The result was a rather unglamorous flop onto my back in the snow as the cable continued to feed out of the retractable reel. Then, when the full length of cable had retracted, the T-bar shot up the hill, raking down the back of my legs, slapping the skis off my boots and causing raucous laughter from the interminable line of skiers behind me.
Sometimes the best laid plans work too well.
The Screech Owl- Scientific name: Megascops asio. We had many of these smaller owls in our neighborhood. The first 30 years of my life I lived in a house close to the main railroad tracks which stretched from Vancouver, B.C. down the west coast of the United States. We had so many trains travel by daily that we didn’t even notice the noise anymore. The tracks followed the top of a cliff which dropped 100+ feet down to Bellingham Bay. The sides of the cliff had layers of sand and clay. During the summer months, the Angel boys across the street (Craig and Doug) and my brother and I would spend endless hours climbing the cliffs, jumping from the cliffs, and using trails on the cliffs as the shortest distance to travel to explore the beach itself.
Never, never, ever use Rogaine ™ that has gone beyond its expiration date.
