Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

 In all my sixty nine years on this earth, I've never lived anywhere that had a septic system until we moved to Wasilla last year. I've lived on an end-time farm where we crapped in a fifty five gallon barrel and some unfortunate shmuck had to haul it away on a heavy metal sled driven by horses or tractor. Sometimes that schmuck was me. Not my favorite job. When I was in the navy, all the toilets flushed right into the very water that the ship was floating in. Fortunately the crap sank, unless someone had been eating a lot of really greasy food, but I don't even want to think about that. Everywhere else I lived, Ohio, Key West, Charleston, Hoonah, you went in, sat on the toilet, got relief and flushed all your troubles away, never to be seen or thought about again. However, in Wasilla, its a different story. I believe if you live in the city proper, you have a sewer system that flows through pipes and ultimately to a building where it's dealt with. However, we live on t...

 Years ago, actually, many years ago, when I was in my early teens, my best friend Don and I used to spend countless hours hanging out. Through no fault of our own, just the fact that we were teen boys, we seemed to find ourselves in unusual situations. Once we got punched in the ear down by a railroad round house by a couple of hillbillies, I guess just because we spent too much time staring at how many were packed in an old Buick. The fact that it was the day after Thanksgiving and there was snow on the ground and we were dressed like a couple of idiots, complete with tackle boxes and Fishing rods probably didn't help any. We had watched an episode of Gadabout Gaddis the flying fisherman and had an overwhelming desire to go fishing.  That's a story for another time though. On the particular day that this story is about, we were in our home town of Marion Ohio, underneath an overpass waiting on a train. I don't know why we were there, but we were. It was winter and there w...

  I recently submitted this poem to Fan Story. The writing prompt was What a Mess! I'm always surprised at what comes out of my mind. Apparently I've got dog crap on my mind because this is the second time I've written a poem about it. It seemed to fit the bill though. We went out for the day, my Mom, Dad and me My brother and sister, us kids we made three Dad wanted to drive, to get out of the house He wore his old shoes, Mom wore her new blouse Put Sparky on down in the basement" Dad said, "He can't come here with us, it's something I'd dread" So off to the basement with Sparky I went The floor down there's chilly, it's made of cement The washer's down there and the dryer as well It's cool, damp and musty and the room has a smell There are spiders down there and other bugs too When I have to go down there I get kind of blue I felt really bad for taking Sparky down there But he went down the stairs, with nary a care Maybe dogs are...