MISSIVES FROM THE ENDLESS LOCKDOWN

Lockdown Humor, Larson

THE LITTLE YIPPY DOG

Recorded “COVID-19 boredom” fictional accounts based on Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons...none of this really happened to me...it's all about the little yippy dog.

MISSIVES FROM THE ENDLESS LOCKDOWN 

Day 333. I was absentmindedly riding my stationary bike in the man cave this morning when an unknown little spotted dog came out of nowhere yipping and nipping me on the ankle and then he vanished as quickly as he appeared...

MISSIVES FROM THE ENDLESS LOCKDOWN 

Day 334.  The strange little yippy dog appeared once again while I was in my home office, stood frozen in place and stared at the closet door.  I wasn’t too alarmed at first, but suddenly a folded paper began to emerge from under the door...

MISSIVES FROM THE ENDLESS LOCKDOWN 

Day 335.  I heard the garage door opening as I sat in the family room deciding where to go on my Saturday morning drive to nowhere in particular.  Then I heard the familiar sound of my vehicle starting and rushed to the front door. It was the little yippy dog rapidly driving off with a buddy happily sniffing the cold winter air!  My plan for a temporary escape from the lockdown was dashed as I read the note they left behind to “Stay home!”

MISSIVES FROM THE ENDLESS LOCKDOWN 

Day 336.  Well, the hyper little yippy dog showed up today to return my vehicle for what should thankfully be the last time.  He hopped into the back seat of my vehicle just as I was backing out of the driveway for a much needed carintining escape from the house.  I told him if he would settle down he could ride with me to the drugstore for my “liberating” Moderna booster shot and drop off some Get Well cards at the post office.  Then I would take him to the vets to be tutored.  He may have misunderstood that last stop...

JUMPING THE LINE

 

Waiting in Line, Internet Domain

Jumping the line!  When is it OK to cut in?

Perhaps when approached by a parent with small children, disabled, pregnant women, someone with an emergency, or someone with just a few items and your cart is full—but probably not trying the reverse!

Line cutters are the same people that cut you off in traffic or wait until the last minute to merge out of a closed lane.  It isn’t worth a confrontation with someone who’s obviously got something going on in their life that you don’t want to get into.  And it isn’t worth the few minutes of extra wait time to let them get into your head.  

Plus it’s best to keep them in front so you can keep an eye on them.

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS

Hour of Splendor in the Grass, Emporia, KS

I’ve spent the better part of the past four weeks editing all the stored material stuff, documents and photos that my wife Karen and I had accumulated and held onto for the better part of our lives.  It was an emotional roller coaster at times which is why it has taken me this long to finally tackle the job.  But what better time to do this than during a fading pandemic as I am scheduled to receive my two Covid-19 vaccine shots in the next four weeks.

As I neared completion of the project which involved many trips to donate useful but unneeded objects and the casting off of literally hundreds of pounds of no longer useful paperwork, one long-dormant poem surfaced in my mind—the classic Ode of William Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality and the more recognized segment known as Splendor in the Grass.  This is the poem we hear Natalie Wood recite in the 1961 movie of the same name.

The Ode begins with recollections of the divine vision of youth:

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

the earth, and every common sight,

to me did seem

apparelled in celestial light,

the glory and the freshness of a dream.”

 

This is followed by a discussion of death, loss of innocence and even loss of the divine sensed in nature.  And as we near the end of the Ode, we see how a youth’s incomprehension of mortality allows us to see what is unseen by more worldly adults.  But the adult imagination and ability to ponder the future allows us to intimate immortality:

“Though nothing can bring back the hour

of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower:

We will grieve not, rather find

strength in what remains behind.”

 

The poem concludes that in spite of the trials and tribulations of adulthood, we can return to our understanding of youth:

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

to me the meanest flower that blows can give

thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

AFTERMATH OF A KANSAS TWISTER

Supercell, Leoti, KS by @markokorosecnet

Auto, House, Apartments, Shopping Center, Emporia, KS

NO SUNNY KODACHROME DAY

I recently shared a Facebook photo by @markokorosecnet of one of those impressive Midwestern Supercell formations that had erupted over Leoti, Kansas.  Since my neighbor Becky replied that she saw a blog post in this, I felt compelled to respond.  As fate would have it, I was also still in the midst of sorting decades of material stuff that we’d accumulated including a trove of photographs.  I recently included some picture frames in a box of donations and was told that they really had no use for them, even at the bargain price of free.  Everyone these days has gone digital!  And believe me, I’m finding that digital images are a lot easier to store and access.  I hadn’t seen most of these images for years since they were stored in totes, but I can turn on my digital devices and immediately go to a year and month the images were taken.

And then I stumbled across what must have been a developed roll of Kodachrome film printed on Kodak paper.  Remember the old Paul Simon hit of the 70’s?

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama, don't take my Kodachrome away.

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
My sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white.

The photos were scenes of devastation that occurred in Emporia, Kansas on June 8, 1974 which I took the weekend after an F4 tornado touched down that was up to a half mile wide and tracked for nearly 38 miles.  This central Kansas town had been purposely located between the Neosho and Cottonwood rivers in the belief that a tornado never descended between two rivers.  The killer tornado dispelled that legend and forever validated that dog don’t hunt!

I texted the photos to my family in Emporia and got the following responses as we all recalled the traumatic event of 46 years ago.

The tornado dropped out of a violent storm front that spawned 36 tornados and 115 MPH straight line winds in Oklahoma and Kansas which killed six and injured 200 in Emporia alone.  It left little time for sirens when it touched down directly over a bakery plant, a shopping center, an apartment complex, a residential area and a trailer park that was leveled. 

My sister’s family was preparing a chili supper when my brother-in-law arrived home around 6:00 with my nephew, noticed the threating storm approaching and ordered everyone to the shelter of their basement!  They crowded under a pool table in the game room while he quickly peered out a basement window well which was soon blown out, followed by a stream of landscape bark.  The twister destroyed a neighboring house where the family had been celebrating a birthday.  Their home was leveled with only one thing left standing—their kitchen counter with cake, plates, and silverware untouched. 

The twister moved through the area quickly and the family emerged to survey the surrounding damage.  One house had been released from its foundation and returned at an angle so that you could see into their finished basement.  My niece had to stop near the house and pull a nail out of her foot.  A 2 x 4 was lodged into a utility pole.  A 4 x 8 sheet of plywood had sliced halfway through a living room wall and was protruding outside.  Any tree left standing was stripped of leaves and branches.  Cars in the shopping parking lot were scattered and a car by the apartments was literally crushed by a flying bathtub.  Fortunately, the stores had just closed.  My nephew and brother-in-law walked over to the damaged shopping center and nearby apartment complex where they heard people calling under the rubble. They dug a dazed man out who exclaimed that they needed to find his gun collection.  Police and firefighters arrived and ordered volunteers to clear the area as the smell of natural gas permeated the humid air.  They quickly rescued the man’s wife out from under a refrigerator.  My mother and younger brother knew the tornado had made landfall in the neighborhood and soon arrived before the area was blocked off.  After walking the neighborhood in a new pair of red Converse shoes, he returned to their relatively unscathed home, took off his soaked red shoes, and scared our mother who noticed his feet had turned into an intense bloody red!   

Later, a second round of air raid sirens pierced the summer twilight as the sky turned an ominous green, an uncommon but significant warning sign that an extremely tall thunderhead laden with moisture and hail is overhead.  When the setting sun lowers on the horizon, the light spectrum shifts from blue to red, yellow and orange.  This light penetrating a massive cloud of water droplets and ice particles results in a green sky.  I’ve only witnessed this phenomenon once as a kid growing up in Kansas.  The wind had stilled and the loss of electricity darkened the landscape.  No second tornado developed but the recovery had only begun and the memory had been seared forever.

During those fateful minutes, there were no bright colors as the day faded to black, no greens of summer except a menacing Supercell overhead and no sunny, Kodachrome day as the sun was obscured from everyone’s sight while the monster twister roared through the heartland.  And everything looks worse in black and white.

AUTOCORRECT DOESN’T LIKE COUNTRY SAYIN’S

Abandoned Country Farm, NC

HAPPY COUNTRY NEW YEAR!

I grew up in central Kansas and was the first generation to be raised in town.  So, I grew up around a lot of sayings from my surrounding family that had obvious roots in the declining agriculture society that was being overtaken by the industrial and information age.   Many of these sayings were simply part of the nomenclature and now that I’m rooted in a slightly more southern culture, I’ve discovered that there are many shared expressions.  Sadly, many folks of the current generation give you a blank stare when you use some of these because they have no reference to the world where they sprung up.

A euphemism is considered to be a less direct word or phrase for one considered to be offensive.  I guess this colorful Americana language might be considered to be just the opposite!

I compartmentalized some of my favorites as having their roots in either emotion, nature or observations.  And I especially like those that have a rhythm to them, many from mother to child, such as “you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit” and “don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!”  And if your mama catches you being ornery, “I’m fixin’ to go off on your backside!”  Or speaking of backsides when someone is impressed with something, “well butter my butt and call me a biscuit!”   Or speaking of biscuits “Just cuz the cat has kittens in the oven don’t make them biscuits.”

Actually, the derriere seems to be the butt of a lot of old sayings related to working out in nature if you’ll excuse the **’s.  One of my many favorite sayings attributed to my brother-in-law that grew up on a farm and then successfully transitioned to the urban life is “a clearing up shower is one that rains until it’s clear up to your a**!”  And “it’s snowing up to the a** of a tall cow.”  A storm’s imminent if “it’s comin’ up a cloud.”

Since my blog is primarily based on observations, many sayings about some folks tweak my attention such as “if common sense were lard, most folks couldn’t grease a pan.”  Or “common sense ain’t so common.”  Bless his heart, but “he’s dumber than a fence post or a bucket of rocks”.  He’s “happy as a dead pig in the sunshine” but “ugly enough to make a freight train take a dirt road.”  He said he was “finer than a frog’s hair split three ways”.   

Hopefully, 2021 will be a better year, God willin’ and the creeks don’t rise!