Laugh Tracks in the Dust
By Milo Yield
Well, nuthin’ really newsworthy happened to me this week, except that I got outfished both times I went fishin’.
First, my Colorado retired carpenter buddy, ol’ Sawyer Bord, stopped by to fish with me last Saturday. I took him to a nice pond that I’d chemically cleaned of a glut of moss and algae a month ago. I wuz pleasantly surprised at how fine a job my effort had been. The water was perfect for fishin’, and Sawyer proved it by catching a six-pound bass on his second cast of the day. Being the conservationist at heart that he it, ol’ Sawyer let the big bass go and promised to come back again some day and catch him when it weighs seven or eight pounds.
Later in the day, Sawyer hooked an equally big bass and it flopped off the lure at the bank. But, I saw it clearly and it wuz big.
My only complaint with Sawyer as a fishin’ buddy is that he wanted to make a $20 bet on who’d catch the biggest fish of the day — AFTER he’d caught and weighed his six-pounder. I told him I wuzn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I wuzn’t that dull. 😉
Then on Monday I took my neighbors, the Torrid brothers, Kanby and U. Sully, fishin’ at a nice pond five miles away that I had permission to treat chemically for unwanted pond vegetation and slime algae.
Well, both of the Torrid brothers are way younger and more nimble than me, so before I could get settled in to fish in comfort, they both yelled from the other side of the pond that the fish were biting. They weren’t wrong. Kanby stood on one limestone ledge at the pond edge the entire time we were there and caught three nice bass — a 6-pounder, 4-pounder, and 3-pounder. Sully put together a nice stringer of filleting-size bass and crappie.
And, in getting outfished both days, all I contributed were a few bass, crappie and bluegills in my fish basket.
However, I did get the 2nd pond treated, but almost got bogged down in a swampy area while doing it. Thankfully, I wuz wearing my normal gum boots and I wuz able to extract myself from the near-quicksand.
All in all, I had two fun days with fine friends in the intrepid Flint Hills of Kansas.
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Ol’ Nevah and I are really anticipating next week. Our daughter and three granddaughters from Tennessee are coming for a 4-day visit. It’s been quite awhile since we’ve seen the entire group together.
It will be good to catch up on all the youngin’s doings in school and life. The eldest granddaughter is getting married in six weeks. Another one just graduated from high school and will attend the University of Alabama next fall, Covid not intervening. Our third Tennessean granddaughter will be a junior in high school next fall.
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My gardens look as good as they’ll look all summer. Last week, I rained about every day and then it stopped and the ground immediately turned to concrete. It’s a good thing most of my garden this year is in raised beds.
We’re having a flush of radishes and leaf lettuce to eat and I betcha I can find some new spuds to eat next week if I look hard enough. One of my neighbors let me pick a nice mess of fresh peas from his garden. New peas and new potatoes are a hard dish to beat.
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The national news is so sickening this week that I almost don’t have the stomach to watch the news on TV. I’ve lived through a lot of national crises during my lifetime, but I can’t recall dealing with more than one crisis at a time.
If we all treated each other as equals and with respect it would go a long way. And, we all need to remember that we’re only guaranteed “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our Constitution.” Too many folks seem to have confused “pursuit of happiness” with “guarantee of happiness.” Otherwise, why loot the property of innocent folks?
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Ol’ buddy Jay Esse of Lakewood, Colo., sent me this:
A farm wife of several years asked her hubby as she stepped out of the shower, “What do you like about me best? My pretty face of my pretty body?”
To which her hubby replied, “I admire your sense of humor.”
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Also, from Jay: A newly married farm guy asked his new thoroughly urbanized wife, “Would you have married me if my Dad hadn’t left me a huge farm and a big fortune?”
To which his wife sweetly replied, “I’d have married you regardless of who left you your farm and fortune.”
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Jay’s words of wisdom for the week: “I never planned to get this old. It just sort of slipped up on me.”
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And, here’re my original wise words for the week: “In retirement, anything that disrupts doing nothing is an aggravation.”
Have a good ‘un.
