Month: May 2016

Yazoo City, Mississippi

Studly Doright and I ventured well off the interstates yesterday and found ourselves in Yazoo City around 10:30 last night. We stayed at a nice Hampton Inn where I slept like a champion. I guess 13 hours in a car was conducive to a good night’s rest.

  
Studly just knew there’d be a great little mom and pop diner in Yazoo City, after all, it’s the hometown of country humorist Jerry Clower. Boy, was Studly wrong. We ended up eating at an Iron Skillet restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, many miles down the road. It was well worth the wait. 

I tried to talk Studly into shopping:

  
He decided he didn’t need a new suit. But my, what a bargain!

Now we’re heading southeast on highway 49. Rolling hills and kudzu covered trees are broken up by small towns with odd names like Little Yazoo and Mish and Seminary. 

After a week of vacation we are both getting anxious to be home. According to the GPS we have another five hours. I’m glad we chose to drive, but if we’d flown we would be home by now.

Peace people!

Window Tripping

I’ve been vacationing in Texas this week and haven’t had an opportunity to do any writing. On a portion of our drive across the state of my birth I began snapping pictures of random sights. 

Carnival rides move from town to town during the summer months. At least I hope that’s what these are.

 Cows. No trees.
 
A working pump jack.

  
Note the trees–a rarity here.

This building was painted like a Holstein cow.    
Quanah, Texas, was named for the great chief Quanah Parker to whom we might or might not be related through Studly Doright’s mother Saint Helen.

Studly’s arm with the American and Texas flags in the background.
   
Railroad ties.


A pair of Harleys. 

Abandoned homes like this dot the panhandle of Texas.  

I liked the name of this business: Faux Pants. I believe this was in Memphis, TX.  

A truck was hauling these unknown objects.     
Small town water tower.

 

The colorful tarp below is most likely a deflated bouncy house.
   
My feet. 
   
This motel was out in the middle of nowhere.

 
A grain elevator.  
  

Prairie with wind turbines in the distance.

  
A close up of a turbine.

  And its antique counterpart:

  
The loop to bypass Amarillo–a sure sign we’ve neared our destination.


 

Note the dried mud on the tailgate of the pickup truck. Clean cars are as rare as trees out here.

Dumas, Arkansas

  
Studly Doright and I are traveling a new route through Arkansas on our way home from Hereford, Texas. We passed a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Dumas, Arkansas, and I snapped a quick photo. Our romance began in a Piggly Wiggly store in Dumas, Texas, over 42 years ago. 

The Luxury of Hurt Feelings

crystal ball toting gypsies
cry cataclysm and none heed
as cassandra nods in ardent
sympathy and odd redemption.

call it age or wisdom
chalk it up to experience,
but I know what I know and
that I cannot know it all.

i threw away my soothsayer’s
tools, seeing clearly that
in your pride you’ll gladly
wallow in the dread luxury

throw us all under a red
double decker for the sake
of trampled feelings; an
injury we can not indulge

grow up, grow a pair, this
election is ours to lose
with ramifications beyond
our meager lifespans.

  

A Poem for Helen

Some people light up the world. Not in a showy, boastful way, or a flashy, sassy way,

But in a deep down, soul-satisfying, love you with every beat of my heart kind of way.

Their spirits are so infused with goodness and grace that they make everyone around

Them feel important and valued and loved. My mother-in-law, Helen is one of these

Extraordinary people who can erase your fears with only words and a calming touch,

Whose faith and spirit make you glad to be alive and in her presence. Today we 

Celebrate her being on this earth for eighty glorious years, and we hope for many

Many more. 

What’s Your Function?

In the latter part of my fifth decade on this earth I learn of the existence of Functional Water. I sincerely hope I haven’t fallen prey to the non-functional variety of H2O all these years.  
And I don’t even want to dwell on the ramifications of New Age Beverages. Do such drinks strike yoga poses when no one’s observing them? Are they into transcendental meditation?

I must explore this grocery aisle again one day soon. The secret to inner peace undoubtedly lies on 6b somewhere between the mundane offerings of bottled tea and soft drinks. Ommmmm.

Peace and functionality, people!

Gain

I gain weight just thinking about food:
cheesecake
clam bake
cheese steak
for pete’s sake!

Where once I was skinny, pitifully so,
now I have ample hips and my bosom doth grow.

Bring me pizza and fried shrimp, pasta and fries, if I’m going to be fat I’ll feast on cream pies.

A size two times larger than last year’s clothes, I’m singing the blues and striking a pose.

Why in all other aspects is bigger deemed great, but a gain in weight is a terrible fate?

  

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