I thought I’d begin with a quote from a classic Tennessee Ernie Ford song, Sixteen Tons: “Another day older and deeper in debt,” which is applicable to just about all of us here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.. Me especially, since I’m tapping this blurb out on my birthday and increasing my electric bill. If I should tend to repeat myself, please ignore it. The repetition shows up because of my rapidly deteriorating memory function. Did I mention that I’m tapping this blurb out on my birthday?
The ship of the orange fathead, that is Donald Trump, is rapidly sinking because of all the holes blown into it by him. He has no one to blame but his addle-brained self as much as he tries to push it off on others, many of whom are deficient enough in the self-image department to let him do it. You’ve undoubtedly heard all of the news related to this sinking ship, so I won’t rehash it here. I have my own stuff to worry about. If I should tend to repeat myself, please ignore it.
One bit of my stuff to worry about is my backyard sundial. It’s still losing a few minutes a day and I’m getting tired of resetting it. A bit of advice: Never buy a sundial engraved with a likeness of Chairman Mao Zedong, former Chinese communist leader and founder of the People’s Republic of China.
I believe my sister’s day ran by one of those Chinese timepieces, because as we came of age, she was always late for something, especially her job. Even if she awoke four hours ahead of the time to be at her desk at starting time, she ended up rushing out the door at least 10 minutes past the time she should have left, and then had to cruise local streets at (and this is true, folks) 60 to 80 miles per hour. She owned a brand new Mustang convertible and by the time it logged 28,000 miles on the odometer, it needed all new front end parts, ball joints, A-frames, etc., as well as shocks.
She drove me to work one morning when my car was D.O.A.. I lost track of how many times my head connected with the canvas top. She hit one set of railroad tracks doing nearly 80 that launched the car into the air. It touched asphalt again well past the crossing.
Another morning she called from a pay phone asking if I could get her car so she could make it to work. I picked her up and we drove to the neighborhood where her broken Mustang rested on a large rock at the bottom of a concrete stairway entrance to someone’s bungalow. She had apparently been driving too fast, missed the turn, bounced over the curb, crossed the front lawn and negotiated a resting place on the rock. It was fairly early, so no one inside was awake yet. We managed to get the car off the rock and push it back into the street. She asked me if I could fix her wheel, the front one on the passenger side that was bent and sticking out sideways at a 42 degree angle to the fender. I told her I didn’t have my tools (she missed the sarcasm) and she’d have to get it towed.
It’s too bad that I don’t have more room for examples of her driving prowess such as driving down barricaded roads, the wrong way down one way streets, nearly killing a state trooper on the Eisenhower, etc.. I have enough material for a short story, maybe even a novel. I’ll get to that down the road. But if I should tend to repeat myself, please ignore it because I’m another day older and deeper in debt.