Author Archives: Mike K

Turned 66 in August of 2019, a little over a year into retirement. Now live on my farm in southern Missouri Ozarks. At this point I have 4 daughters and 8 grandchildren and 3 dogs.

Life’s Voyage

There are two ways to do something; the right way, and again.

Through life we sail an ocean vast, of depths we rarely sound,

Experience; the lonely mast to which our sails are bound.

To navigate this endless sea, no aid might chart convey,

Nor indeed will sextant be of help to find our way.

Essentials for life’s voyage long are few, but precious held;

An ear to hear the ocean’s song, an eye to see the swell.

A heart that learns to choose between the winding strait we know,

Or open sea with risk unseen where storm and wind may blow.

The distant isles great fortune hold, with ports of promise filled.

To winds of hope let sails unfold, with wisdom at the till.

ABE2 MK (Ship drawing by Camryn Axworthy)

Lofty Pastures

High up on the tops of the ridges, forest became lea.

Yesterday his sister called and said his water wasn’t working.  I was kind of busy, but as I’ve become accustomed, dropped everything and went over to see what needed to be done.  I’d already put a temperature-controlled heater in his pump house, but it’s not sufficient in extreme cold due to the gaps in the walls.  You’d have to see that collapsing old pump house to appreciate what it’s like to try and work in there, but we’ve had some -10F temps this winter, and a hydrant valve must have frozen and busted.  Now that it has warmed up, the thing was spraying, and had been for who knows how long.  Anyway, I had to make a trip into town and get a new faucet and put it on, and the job went smoothly enough.  Afterwards I reconciled myself, as always, to the obligatory visit in which to hear stories and anecdotes on how clueless all the young people are nowadays and hopefully hear some of his unparalleled stories of the old days.  I always listen – I enjoy listening to those tales, even the ones I’ve heard before, which by now is most all of them.  After doing the job in that wretched pump house, it was nice to be out and sit and talk with him.  I’ve also learned over the years that when it’s time to go home, it’s not necessarily impolite to leave him talking.  He doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, he doesn’t really seem to even notice.  There’s just no other way to go about it.  He doesn’t stop.  And as it’s so captivating to listen to him, if I don’t keep in mind that I have to go, I could get hooked for hours, and believe me, I have.

Old dilapidated pickup trucks and pieces of road maintenance equipment, some from the 1940s, silently sit in varying states of rust and decay, some hidden in the woods, others proudly rusting in the open sunshine of hay fields where beef cattle grazed not so long ago.  It’s almost as if they’re watching; waiting, but for what?

Many years ago, and for years, he cleared the hill tops of the hardwood forests that are prevalent in this part of the country.  Cleared timber and rocks to make hay fields and grazing pastures, and there are acres and acres of them.  Said his dad paid him ten cents a wagon load of rocks, long piles of which are still lying along the fence lines where he took them all those years ago.

Timberline Road in the Fall

There’s an old barn down the dirt road, Timberline Road, that he built with his own hands as an adult, but also many years ago.  Due to all of the cow fertilizer which accumulated there, and the fact that the cows are gone, weeds and vines are growing profusely all around it, winding up through rolls of used wove-wire fence, unidentifiable pieces and parts of farm equipment, and rusty gate sections.  Back in the days before he got into the beef cattle business, he ran dairy cows there and attended to all the labor-intensive operations of feeding, milking, delivering calves, and the numerous other duties required.  The fading and peeling white paint testifies to the many silent years gone by since the milk days.  He morphed from dairy to raising beef cattle somewhere along the line, but in the last few years, he sold off his herd – just got too old to work them anymore.  He sure has been lonesome there with all those old cows gone.  Sometimes in decent weather I go over and ride with him on his ATV, and we go over his property, just like we did when we rode around to see his cows, but now that they’re gone, he just stares wistfully across the lonely fields he spent so much of his life working. Sometimes I wonder if he still sees cows and hears them lowing out in those silent fields of yesterday.

The Old Milk Barn

I’ve been living here going on five years, sort of across and about a half-mile down the dirt road from his house, an ancient homemade hardwood mountain hovel with a rusty tin roof – all precariously perched on the east slope of the hollow.  I live in the bottom of the same hollow sort of on the west side.  Not long after I moved here, there was a big dead tree still standing on his side of the road and since I had already done some odd jobs for him (free of charge of course), he always wanted to pay me for helping him but I wouldn’t take any money, so I went over to his place and asked him if I could cut it – we could square up with firewood – the tree needed to be felled because eventually it would come down in a high wind and land on the road.  He okayed it and even grabbed his chain saw and showed up on his giant tractor to help.  I was impressed that a fellow his age could still get out there and sling a chain saw like he did.  Someone forgot to tell him he was too old to do that.  But alas, age has overtaken him now, and he couldn’t work firewood anymore.

In the years I’ve known him, I’ve spent many an hour listening to his stories of life here in the Ozarks – mostly stories from long ago.  A tough customer of a hardscrabble life in the Ozark hills, he’s suffered his share of accidents – once in a sawmill a piece of wood flew out of a saw and hit him in the left eye.  He had to go find a friend to take him to Springfield (about 75 miles away) to the doctor, but they couldn’t save the eye.  Years later as an old man with only one eye he can still see deer in the woods that most folks (including myself) don’t see.

He was working out in the woods cutting timber when he was younger, and felled a tree which came down in an unexpected way, and landed on his leg.  He called his friend who was working with him to help him and he got free and finished cutting wood and loading the truck.  It was only after he got back to the mill that he took off his boot and looked at his injury – his lower leg and ankle was broken in three places!  And he’d kept on working.  He tells another story of operating a tractor that flipped over backwards and trapped his foot under the steering wheel.  He said gasoline was pouring from the tank right next to him, and the engine was still running.  He had to cut his boot off to get free, and he did.  He never said whether the tractor burned up after he got away.  He was definitely a tough old codger.

He’s got a big buck cape mount covered with dust in the living room of his farm house.  It’s got a huge spread – one of the biggest racks I’ve seen in person, but he never had it scored.  I’m sure it would make book.  He relishes telling the story of how he got it.  Wasn’t even hunting.  He stepped out of the door of the farmhouse down the road where his sister now lives, and saw the giant buck about 75 yards away, and went back into the house and got his gun and stepped back out and bagged it.  There were family members in the house when he walked back in and told them he’d shot a big buck, they walked out in disbelief to see it.  Sure enough, a monster buck was on the ground out there.

There’s a lone walnut tree in the hay field south of his house, on a slope down to the road.  He tells me that’s where he wants to be buried – right under that tree.  The tree stands patiently waiting.  Maybe that’s what the old relic barns and vehicles scattered around are waiting for too.  Who knows?

He’s grown old now, and his health is failing.  Has diabetes, heart problems, arthritis or gout in his knees that hurts him so bad he can barely walk, and the good Lord only knows what else might be going on in that old carcass.  He has to use a cane to get around anymore.  His mind wanders and he has a lot of trouble remembering things.  We recently talked and he mentioned that he might be interested in a nursing home.  I encouraged him to do that, he is at a point where he can’t take care of himself.  Hopefully he will make that call, I’m sure he’d be better off, but this old neighborhood and those hay pastures will never be the same without him.

Ode to an Ozark Autumn

I mentioned in an earlier post that I lost all of my old site content. I found this one in an obscure document file and reconstituted it for the new and improved Folkpotpourri:

Reach with open hand and open heart; take hold, if you can, those delicious hues of autumn sunset draped in lonely north wind mingled with bedraggled cloud, soon to be brooding for times of verdant summer mist, already near lost in forgotten stories of yesterday.  Indeed, yesterday, the stately woodland rang with melodies of summer, orchestras of wild birds and breezes generously blown from tame southlands where it is easy to imagine such ambience is nurtured.  Yesterday, where shadowy vines of darkest green wound grandly in a tapestry of misty treetops, trains of scarlet now cling to amber and golden hickory crowns revealing they indeed claimed for their own the loftiest boughs of the wood, as indigo and silent winds increasingly and incessantly coax them into a cumulative slow dance to the autumn symphony.  The autumn stage is set, hasten to allow these scenes of nature’s marvel into your memory, do not ignore the accompanying sound – aggrieved rasps of black birds, lonely and whispery whine of the grey squirrel; cold, clear water from unseen woodland fountains trickling over limestone escarpments, soon to be immobilized by icy silence in bounds of copper and yellow leaves.  Every roadway becomes a wonderland.

A great oak stands sentinel, watching somberly, attentively, as the furnace of summer wanes once more among the last few cauldrons of October, now interrupted by nights of cool mist wafting about starlit glens of intruding autumn shadow and whispering threats of rime to brittle, fallow leaves.  His watch unbroken through countless seasons, has once more patiently awaited the gum tree and sumac to emerge from sylvan dressing halls where the Master adorned them with exquisite gowns of profound crimson; they drink from deep, unseen vessels to another celebration of inimitable woodland hues.  Hordes of squirrels secret away for winter scraps of wild provender breathlessly scavenged among leaves, rocks, and prostrate moss-covered sentinels of yesterday.

Raindrops bide, percolating in low-hanging, leaden billows, at last to wrestle free and pitch to a bleak arid earth and to darken streams of dry stones patiently awaiting; blessed raindrops, to soak desiccated trails through endless thirsty hollows. Cold, autumn raindrops, to silence the crusty blanket of new-fallen leaves in expectation of the stealthy white-tailed stag; soon he will need the silence of wet leaves as he busies himself dutifully tearing openings in the fallow carpet to provide irresistible earthen patches to be searched out by does, in obeisance to the ritual that makes them this year’s concubines.  A seasonal urge will soon take him and for weeks he will pursue his regal posture of golden but waning autumn and brook no interloper into his realm.  He has no choice; his role is assigned by the Master.

In the coolness of the October night, as a full moon assumes command of the celestial ocean above, coyotes gather to discuss in shrill voices those pertinent notions of interest only to themselves (and perhaps the bobcat), but in nocturnal earnest, as shadowy breezes drift over a moonlit landscape abundant with small prey lurking fearfully, silently, and most intently eavesdropping on the conversation.  Ignoring the crazed chorus of coyote howls, secretive night birds take notice of the changes in weather that are upon them.  Occasional hoots and rustles in cool oaken boughs hint of their disdain; indeed, some have, in fits of irremediable insult, even departed to spend winter in climes greener and more amenable. 

On most afternoons now, a murder of raucous crows stationed along the edges of the wood take up hurling insults and name-calling; not at all pleased with nature’s effrontery.   Through tears in the dark clouds, rays of silver sunlight reflect from black feathers, perhaps illuminating, perhaps illustrating their displeasure at the way of things.  Their antics and curses go unheeded however, by the autumn wind; it has chosen to stay and it will, mirth or grief of irascible birds notwithstanding.   

A Time of Unimaginable Sorrow is Upon Us

Image result for free pics of nuclear bomb exploding

It was a nice cool sunny morning with some blue birds soaking up the sun, all in a row on the high wire.  It took some time to figure out what happened.  There were a few low rumbles, they seemed to be coming from north of here.  We live on a farm out in the wooded hills of southern Missouri, and north would be up towards St Louis.  Soon as the booming sounds started the power went off.  At first, I didn’t pay much attention, but with all the military stirrings going on in the world these days, you just don’t know what to expect.

I went inside the house, but with the power off there’s no internet, so no way to find out what’s going on.  At least until the power comes back on, or until I get the generator started up.  More distant thunderous booms that echo now less like thunder and more like tremendous explosions – and I’m starting to get worried.  My kids are at work and the grandkids are in school.  I swear I‘m seeing sparks and smoke coming from under the hood of my car, but it’s not running.  Now the power line where those bluebirds were singing looks like it’s getting really hot and smoke is coming from the bucket transformer on the poles.  Wow! The transformer just blew up sending a shower of sparks and molten metal flying all around the pole!  I can hear blasts all over the countryside from more pole transformers exploding.  All the fences are sparking and smoking.  The woods around the power lines and transformers are starting to go up in extremely violent flames.  And the cars are now on fire – all of them!  Even the old broken-down ones out in people’s pastures.  Our emergency generators are smoking – I’ve got to get them away from the houses before they burn up.

Now I’ve got an idea of what’s happening, because I’ve heard of what an EMP event could do to electrical circuits.  Electromagnetic Pulse.  That’s what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes.  The only other thing I can think of that would do this is a coronal mass ejection from a solar flare.  It happened back in 1859 and it was named the Carrington Event.  Fortunately, the world did not have much electrical infrastructure back then, just telegraphs, and the induced currents caused the wires to catch fire – sort of like what’s happening to the power lines out here right now.  I don’t think it’s a solar event either, because the warmongers in Washington have been beating the nuclear drums for a while, and I’ve been afraid the Russians were going to get spooked and do a first strike.  I guess this is it.

A big problem for those of us who might survive a while because we live in areas that aren’t targets is that we lose all sources of information. We don’t have any way of knowing what’s happening.  Don’t know if it’s a first strike or a retaliatory strike.  Does Washington DC even exist anymore, or is it just a huge radioactive smoking crater?  Are those beautiful, magnificient buildings of the Kremlin still standing?

How many of our big cities are destroyed?  I remember seeing pictures of the devastation that was Nagasaki and Hiroshima when that monster Truman murdered all those Japanese civilians, and thinking that those bombs were tiny compared to what the psychopaths have in their arsenals today – the Russians have bombs that could literally flatten New York City and/or Houston.  I cannot, nor can anyone else, begin to fathom the destruction of a 10 or 20 megaton thermonuclear weapon could wreak on a major city.

Lights go off and then nothing.  No TV; no internet.  No football – the treasury department that writes all the government checks is gone.  Fear-crazed citizens make runs on Wal Marts and grocery stores and take everything they can.  No one tries to stop them; the store employees are in a panic to get home.  Problem is, with no operable vehicles, the only things people can take are what they can carry by hand.  Everyone has to walk, even the police are stranded out on the highways.  All troopers, city cops, and sheriff deputies are trying desperately to get home to their loved ones.  No cops on duty anymore.  No traffic moving anymore.  Just lots of people running, screaming, hoping they can just get home, and that there still is a home.   

Fires are blazing everywhere from the powerlines and transformers exploding.  All electrical substations in the country are smoldering and blazing chaos.  Forest fires are rampant and out of control all over the nation and there are no operable fire trucks.  No firefighting planes or helicopters are available to fight the fires.  Houses hundreds of miles away from the many ground zeros are burning both from the unchecked wildfires, and from EMP induced electrical shorts in home wiring.  Almost every building in every town is on fire with no way to put them out.  And these towns are far away from the targeted places where the bombs actually hit.  This is truly a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, the like of which has never been witnessed in all of human history. There will never be electricity in this country again.  Let that sink in.  Freezers will thaw out and food will ruin.   Untold thousands of people will perish, starting with those vaporized, then those being burned up in their homes, and there are no fire departments available to help anyone.  No hospitals; doctors and nurses are gone, understandably abandoning useless smoldering medical facilities.  No industry, no UPS deliveries, no more dog food for the pups.  If your house didn’t burn to the ground, at least you may (for a while) have a (dark) shelter from the elements.   

Huge blasts of radioactive winds blow hundreds of miles from the explosions, of which there have been many.  The first wave was intended to take out the military establishment.  No way of knowing, but there’s no reason to believe that anything remains of the pentagon, DC or Langley, Norfolk, San Diego, Chicago, Houston, or any of the coastal cities where there are refineries.  All cities with military infrastructure of any kind will be destroyed.  The joke that has been for years a missile defense system has been exposed. The sick joke that a nuclear war could be “winnable” has also been exposed.  The numbers of people succumbing to radiation sickness is beyond belief.   There will be no schools, no stores, no food, and no government services; no disaster relief will be forthcoming.  All banks will have ceased to function, so even if there is any money left, it won’t be worth anything. The bankers never were.

If you take medications to stay alive, you’d best have a good supply, because there won’t be any more.  All livestock will either be dead from radiation, burned to a crisp in the fires, or promptly slaughtered by starving survivors, and it doesn’t matter to whom they belonged.  Same with property.  People will no longer obey private property signs, they will go anywhere they think there might be resources, food, water, at the risk of their lives, which aren’t worth much right now anyway.  There will be no law!

Every military ship on and under the ocean, with the likely exception of a few submarines, will be sunk.  All of the nuclear-powered ships will go to the bottom with reactors likely damaged, spewing radioactive contamination.  Like dozens, maybe hundreds, of Fukushimas.  Even the reactors that aren’t damaged will undergo meltdowns with no controls. The bible says that something will kill all of the fishes in the oceans, maybe this is how that happens.   

The USSR detonated a bomb of around 50-megaton yield back in 1961.  It was called the Tsar Bomba.  The weapon had a 100-megaton capacity, but for safety they modified the yield.  Awe inspiring is just too mild of a description of what that looked like.  Since the bomb was so powerful, they calculated that the plane that dropped it had only a 50 percent chance of surviving – that is even after the plane released the weapon several thousand feet up in the air with a parachute to slow it down while the plane flew away from the scene at full speed.  It did almost destroy the plane – they said the blast wave overtook the plane some 45 miles from the explosion and it lost over a kilometer of altitude before the pilot, Andrey Durnovtsev, could regain control and keep it from crashing.  That thing made a mushroom cloud 37, yes 37 miles, (60 km) high!  An uninhabited village, Severny, 34 miles (55 km) from ground zero was obliterated, and buildings 100 miles away were damaged!  The blast would have caused third degree burns 62 miles (100 km) from the explosion.   I would expect if they still have these in their arsenal, they would use one on Cheyenne Mountain.  It would probably take out Denver and Amarillo, TX and certainly everything in between.  Instantly vaporized.  What are our “leaders” thinking?

It sounds crazy, but if this happens, I want to be at one of the ground zeros.  As bad as being vaporized sounds, it would be infinitely better than surviving into the nightmarish existence that would ensue.  There will be marauding gangs of survivors, undoubtedly armed, in various stages of hunger, disease, emaciation, and injury.  It will probably be a situation where anyone you encounter will be apt to kill you.  For one thing, they won’t know whether you are out to kill them too, or maybe you have something they want/need to survive.  A can of tuna or a bowl of beans might cost your life. 

The landscape will be nightmarish.  Imagine a few days or weeks after the event.  There will be burned out stumps on land that was beautiful forest, now riddled with stagnant pools of black muddy radioactive slime, full of human and animal bones, charred flesh, and entrails.  Few buildings will exist intact, and many will perish fighting over them.  There will be no light at night.  Light would attract unwanted guests.  No music.  No one will have any idea what’s going on.   There may be a few survivors in places like subway tunnels, abandoned train cars, or in remote wilderness areas, but such people will have resorted to the basest of behavior, including cannibalism, in short order.  Imagine!  Human beings who once inhabited a civilized nation and lived decent lives will have to worry about being killed and eaten by other human beings!  Zombie apocalypse, just with regular people, not zombies, although with burns and wounds, hair falling out and all out of sorts with radiation poisoning, they probably will look the part.

I have heard people talking like they plan to survive and stay healthy by hunting and foraging.  Well, if a nuclear winter follows a nuclear apocalypse, foraging is going to be slim pickings.  And the deer won’t last long if they manage to survive the bombs, radiation, and fires, there’ll probably only be a few very unhealthy specimens left, but if a gunshot rings out, I’m pretty sure it will attract whatever starving people hear it, so there might be more to deal with than just dressing a deer.

Bedraggled survivors will wander in shock around former cities in hopes of disaster relief which will never come.  Desperate people will offer anything – gold, jewelry, ammunition, their own bodies, for sustenance.  Helpless parents will watch in horror as their children starve, hoping against hope that they will awaken from this nightmare, but when this all comes down, it’ll be too late for them.

And we still won’t know what happened.  Who decided that a nuclear war would be a good idea? Who “won” the war?  Did any of our leaders survive to sign a surrender, and to whom?  Or did Russia or China surrender?  Will there be hordes of soldiers from some faraway land invading our country after the radiation dies down?

And what of the wealthy folk who built the magnificent bunkers filled with the necessities of life in which to wait out the nuclear winter?  Do they actually believe they will emerge into a second garden of Eden complete with succulent fruit trees and minstrels singing their praises?  First of all, the bible speaks of a great earthquake, such as has not occurred since people have been on earth, so I think a big part of those individuals will be entombed in those lavish bunkers.  So maybe a few do survive, and after some months, maybe a few years tucked away, they stumble blindly onto the surface, a hardly recognizable landscape littered with human skulls, burned out cars and buildings, and destroyed terrain.  When they went into the holes, they were wealthy, but after what has transpired, of the few commoners left, no one will be interested in their gold – and those old bank accounts?  Well the digital age has completely and utterly vanished, and all those millions or billions they had on their ledgers is now squat.  Even by this time, there will undoubtedly still be a few scroungy survivors, but instead of the fawning proles these rich folks were used to in the old world, those survivors will undoubtedly have a taste for some well-fed and plump upper crust brisket, so thanks for preserving some.  It won’t help their situation any when they discover that some of the survivors actually know they caused, or at least played a part in causing the disaster.  The scenario described does not take into account the likelihood that hapless survivors will undoubtedly spend their time searching for air vents to the bunkers in which to pour gasoline or whatever else they can find to upset living conditions in said refuges down below.  Any who survive this carnage will be on a mission and will not easily be placated!

Who knows what the final outcome will be.  How many millions, or hundreds of millions of people will be counted among the slain?  When this calamity happens, it will obviously involve the deaths of millions.  This destruction, I believe is prophesied as the destruction of the modern Babylon in Revelation 18, and most people I’ve heard seem to think (as I do) that the place named as Babylon is the United States, and it is utterly destroyed in the space of one hour, by fire!  Completely devastated to the point that (verse 22) “the music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters, will never be heard in you again,” and “no worker of any trade will ever be found in you again,” this decadent place will cease to be! According to scripture, it’s not a bad thing that this evil place is destroyed. “Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice apostles and prophets! For God has judged her with the judgement she imposed on you.”

Time will tell, but I’m afraid we don’t have much.

Eulogy for the Fallen Soldier

This post is somewhat different from the kind of things I normally write about. It’s more serious and maybe it comes from my views on war back in the 60s and 70s when Vietnam was going on. In the unlikely event y’all haven’t heard, there’s a terrible war happening right now in Europe, with staggering casualties, and my thoughts are with those boys on the battlefields. No matter which side they’re on. Hope it strikes home:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. 

Dare to stand and face the stoic reaper; he approaches, borne on a flight of burning metal shards blown nigh from the thunder of an unseen, faraway weapon.  He wears no smile.  He strikes. The rain of warm, scarlet droplets suddenly marking the persons of your companions comes from naught but your own torn and shattered body.  Perhaps you hear your own last agonized scream; perhaps you hear nothing.   

Your time to fall is come, to repose upon this melancholy swath of beleaguered, cratered pasture, a diminutive pitch of earth now coming soaked with dark and boding crimson.  Dare to release your temporal, mortal confine amid somber tendrils of pale cannon smoke wafting over the tracked steppe, as your final breath departs and so leaves the form silent and still forthwith and evermore.  The echo of cannon carries on; that morbid rumble – heard by your ears no longer; felt by your body no more.   

How your mother would grieve to hear the precious son she once nourished at her breast – lies mangled, broken; whose last thoughts wane ‘neath the startled flight of a thrush in his piteous effort to flee from the chaos you could not.  Now, as your form lies motionless upon the mournful, scarlet-spangled carpet of damp grass and ochre leaves, might there be left fleeting memories of wine and mirth and home, or the companionship of a dog or precious children joined for a warm and lighted supper in the aroma of fresh-baked bread?  Is a peaceful evening with your beloved under a canopy of silver starlight dimly woven among ebbing recollections ere your thoughts are completely taken?

Have angels appeared to bear your exhausted soul away from the carnage?  Has the vacant pallid body, waxing cold and mingled with mud, and for all of your short years the fortress of your soul, at last been left behind?   Have you only now come to realize it was never yours; nor was it ever you, and do you feel no loss for abandoning it? Do the anguished cries of your compatriots echo in the place to which you have since arrived?  Or has your spirit, no longer haunted with terror of the long dark stillness, finally come to that unimaginably serene and peaceful shore where angels sing unimaginably beautiful songs? 

You now realize love is the only thing you’ve brought with you. You’ve left love behind as well. It will remain and it will follow. Love takes many forms; perhaps now that this journey is over, you understand.  Or perhaps you simply sleep, at rest from the horrors you’ve endured.  Perhaps a tearful salutation from the heart of someone far away, blessed (or burdened) with compassion for youthful strangers fading in horror on cold, muddy, and blood-soaked fields among terrified and spiritually wounded companions – may serve to impart some notion of understanding; somewhere.  Of sympathy, both to you and to those who love you. Eternally, in God’s children of pure heart love endures, and it shall endure; for God is Love.

Fare thee well for now.  Rest in the peace with which you are blessed.

May you walk in paradise in the blessed company of the Lord Jesus Christ, young friend, forevermore.   

Site Construction November 22

Ya’ll please be patient, I’m in the process of reorganizing the whole site. The old posts are gone, but hopefully there’ll be plenty more nonsense to peruse on those cold winter days as the new categories get populated.

I’d like to keep posting things which are enjoyable and/or interesting, so please let me know in the comments what ya’ll would like to see more. Got a lot of fall pics from this past beautiful autumn, and I’ll be inserting them as often as I can.

Hope ya’ll enjoy the new and improved site…

Ignore Hillbilly Warnings at Your Peril

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a neighbor and somewhere in the conversation, as in all extended hillbilly conversations, the obligatory weather prognostications surfaced, and he volunteered that we were in fact about to experience an unusually cold winter. He’d noticed some things to which only an elder statesmen of the hills would pay attention, and among the ominous perturbations of nature that foretell extreme weather, most fur-bearing critters were sporting heavier coats than normal. Furthermore, and with a thoughtful gaze across the wooded hills as snuff spittle drooled down his chin, he expounded on the bases for his prediction – with regard to such nuances as migratory birds having left the environs somewhat earlier than usual and the lack of late summer rains, and any other such observations short of nuclear winter that might lend credence to his prediction, no matter how tenuous.

Of course, the locals around here invariably expect the worst of all possible eventualities, be it a horribly cold winter, wetter than normal spring, or unusually scant profits at the local flea market. Most folks here speak as though they have post-graduate degrees in pessimism. But you have to give them credit, they stay prepared for the worst. I once saw a local woman headed into Walmart with an umbrella tucked under her arm on a warm sunny day without a cloud in the sky. I’ve heard of some locals out here in the hills with ammo closets that would make most military armories blush, you know, just in case they might have to protect their property.

To make a long story short – as warm as the fall has been this year, and as ridiculous as the old hillbilly sounded talking about a super cold winter coming, well we just had one of the coldest November cold spells we’ve had since I’ve been in the Ozarks. The forecast looks like it’s gonna be very cold at least through Thanksgiving. As to the aforementioned umbrella incident, guess who the Walmart customer was that got to her car without being soaked from a sudden thunderstorm? And about the need for lots of ammo to protect property? We’re not there yet, thank goodness, but just to be safe, I’m thinking about stocking up.