“Laugh Tracks in the Dust: Fantastic Weather and Fair Premiums

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Fantastic! That’s the only word to adequately describe the weather we’ve had here in the Flint Hills the first half of August. After a stretch of hot, muggy drought for our weather, the Weather Gods switched to rainy, cool, and low humidity.

In the past week, I’ve recorded rains or showers of 4.3-inches, 0.35-inches, and l.3-inches and most days have been in the high 70s or low 80s, with only yesterday hitting 90 with uncomfortable humidity. That changed last evening when we got the last rain. Other than waking the weeds up everywhere and having to mow the grass again, I’ve only accolades for the weather.

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Ol’ Canby and May Bea Handy, our friends from Platte City, Mo., drove down for a purposeful visit this week. Their purpose wuz to take home firewood from the big ol’ hackberry tree that blowed down in a storm two months ago. Canby and I fired up our chainsaws and made short work of the tree and filled bed of his “pickemup” truck to the brim with good firewood for the winter.

While Canby wuz here, he stayed over to help with the Saffordville Old Boars’ Club weekly breakfast on Wednesday morning. Of course, he got to visitin’ with his old and new acquaintances and he mostly helped eat the breakfast of German sausages, scrambled eggs, home fried new potatoes from my garden, homegrown muskmelon from my friend Mocephus, fresh sliced tomatoes from another member’s garden, and toast and jelly. The word must have gotten out about that hearty breakfast becuz we had a record 22-folks who stopped by to shoot the bull and shovel in the grub.

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Might as well mention that I’m in hog heaven in new wealth, too. The check arrived for all the premium money I earned at our county fair — all eight hundred and twenty-five cents of it. Naturally, ol’ Nevah put me in her hindsight by earning three thousand, one hundred and fifty cents worth of premiums and merchant prize money. Guess we’ll use all that new income to take a few hours vacation somewhere on our 53rd wedding anniversary Aug. 16.

While I’m on the subject of marriage, we’ve had a couple of notable events in the Yield family the past month. First, our oldest grand-daughter and her fiancé made short work their engagement and marriage last week while on a family vacation four-wheeling in Colorado. Her fiancé gave her a ring on Tuesday while high on a mountain pass and then the happy couple surprised the whole group and tied the knot Thursday evening by taking advantage of Colorado’s easy marriage requirements and simply saying their vows to each other. After that, it wuz a done deal. I guess I’d call it as close to an elopement as possible without really bring one.

When the happy newlyweds called Nevah and me about their marriage, we congratulated them and I laughed and thanked our granddaughter from sparing me the ordeal of wearing a tuxedo.

In addition to that marriage, our oldest grandson proposed marriage to his girlfriend a few weeks earlier and, of course, she accepted. They are planning a more formal wedding in September, 2018. I doubt that I can escape the tuxedo for that marriage.

All in all, a pretty exciting week.

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I don’t make pets out of my chickens, but I can’t help but have a few favorites in the flock. In my 21 new chickens getting close to start laying eggs, my favorite wuz a Blue Cochin. Naturally, Murphy’s Law of Chickens went into effect and the first chicken I lost to a predator wuz the Blue Cochin. I don’t think the two feral dogs that run the community were to blame or there’d been a total massacre. I suspect it wuz a winged predator — owl or hawk.

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We’re running over with tomatoes. We’ve canned 40 quarts of tomato juice and I’ve given away more than two bushels of tomatoes to neighbors and friends. Despite the plethora of tomatoes, I still love to eat ‘em.

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Here’s a groaner for you. The oldest computer can be traced back to Adam and Eve. Surprise!  It was an Apple — but with extremely limited memory. Just 1 byte. Then everything crashed.

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            Got a message from Luke Warmwater at Sycamore, Kan. Here’s it is:

“Milo, I got a new lawn mower. A zero turn mower that saves time. One that has handle bars. It works real good and saves time. But I have a big problem with it. We have a pasture by our house and we mow the roadway. I like waving at the neighbor ladies that drive by. But, when I take my hands off the handle bars, I end up tangled up in the barbed wire. I think I’ll see about getting my old lawn mower back.”

Then, Luke added this story: “A retired minister decided he wasn’t finished with the Lord’s work. He decided to do some revivals. After doing several, he asked his wife how he was doing. She told him he was always exaggerating. He didn’t think he was and told her the next time she thought he was exaggerating to pull on his suit jacket. She always set behind him when he preached. That night he was at a rural church with mostly farmers. He told them that in heaven there was a barn 50,000 feet wide, 100,000 feet long. His wife gave his jacket a hard yank and about pulled the poor preacher over. He grabbed the pulpit and pulled himself up and said ‘and just two foot high!’”

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And, here’s a final column-closing political limerick just for us aggies.

New Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue,

Says what he’s gonna do.

Is reorganize

And, re-energize,

USDA because it’s long over-due.

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Gone on too long. Have a good ‘un.

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