Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  I recently read a book by a first time author, Richard Ratay. It's titled,  Don't Make Me Pull Over!   Talk about an eye-catching title. I knew I had to read it, and I wasn't disappointed. The subtitle is,  An Informal History of the Family Road Trip. He starts off with a memory of being seven years old in 1976. He has a blurry recollection of being hauled out of bed in the middle of the night by his father, and being tossed across the laps of his two older brothers in the back seat of the family station wagon. The next thing he knows, he's rudely awakened by landing with a thud on the floor with a rug burn on his cheek from the carpet, and the hump from the transmission in the middle pressing on his stomach. He's surrounded by empty Styrofoam cups, eight track tapes and stuffed animals. He discovers that the cause of the discomfort is that the car has slid on an icy highway in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana and has come to an abrupt stop in a snow bank. As he des...

   Last week my sister-in-law called with the news that Dr. Charles Stanley had passed away. It was news that I knew I would some day hear, but never wanted to. He died on April 18 at the age of 90. By any standard, he lived a long and productive life. Frankly, I was surprised that I didn't hear anything about his death on any of the networks, which I found surprising, considering he had an impact on millions of people around the world. I know that he certainly made an impression on me. I'm going to copy what I found on his home page. I think his words are profound. Life goes by quickly-very quickly. And many people today who are in heaven or hell intended to live a lot longer than they did. They didn't make any plans to die. They only had plans to live and enjoy themselves. So I want to ask you: What are you living for? What's your goal in life? Do you have any real purpose for living? God says we ought to be living to worship and to serve him. Because that, my friend,...

  Jan asked me to vacuum the living room carpet a few minutes ago, she said she can't do it. Really? You can't vacuum the carpet? I know she's on the weak side, but this is ridiculous. I soon found that she wasn't kidding. I started pushing the vacuum and was breaking out in a sweat. I was about ready to hire a dog sled team to clean our floor. Last year we installed carpet in the living room. We opted for the really good pad, I guess extra thick or something, not realizing that for as comfortable as it may be to walk around on, cleaning it was going to take two men and a boy. Holy cats. I damn near got a hernia. I can imagine going to the doctor and when he asked what I was doing that was so strenuous I had to explain that I was vacuuming my carpet. I'd probably be laughed right out of the office.  I think that a new sport should be introduced for the Olympics- carpet cleaning. It would really separate the men from the boys. If you got a gold medal in vacuuming, yo...

  Prior to moving to Wasilla, I'd never had too many dealings with moose. When I was living at the farm many years ago, we were all outside on the beach doing a "family" project. That was where most of the people came out to do something that would benefit the whole camp, in this case chopping firewood. Of course, there were always those who had some reason or another not to be doing the lowly manual labor that the rest of us were required to do, but it's a moot point. While were were all out there sawing the logs  and chopping the rounds, one of the fellows named Wayne Bender suddenly stopped what he was doing and pointed across the mud flats to the wooded area. "A moose! A moose! " he declared. Sure enough, there was a moose, hightailing it on the edge of the flats, headed to the point. Moose don't live on Chichagof Island as a rule. They periodically would swim across from the mainland. They are really good swimmers apparently, because its at least fo...

One look at the ingredients in the two bowls, and most people will say something like, "surely you aren't going to eat that." Or, "choose one or the other." Not me though. Oh no, Brainiac looks at them and says, "Yum!"  It's not until about  half way through, when I've had a chance to think about the consequences of my actions, that I start to worry that I may have made a mistake.  For those that can't see what I've taken a picture of, one container has sauerkraut and pork and the other has ham and bean soup. Either one can produce enough gas to power a Ford 150 truck three miles down the road at sixty miles an hour. Combined, its like adding dynamite to nitro glycerin. Did that stop me though? Of course not. Do mad scientists every stop to think about the consequences? If they did, they might not be considered mad. While I was still spooning the soup up to my mouth I was wondering how bad it was going to be. Of course I didn't even...

  As a member of Fan Story, the writing web site,  I'm privy to all manner of delightful prose and poems. Because I didn't have anything that was anywhere nearly as informative as this waiting in the wings, I asked my friend Judi, who goes by the name Judiverse on Fan Story, if I could use her post for a blog. She generously said I could, so here is a rather interesting story of the origin of peanut butter, something that almost every home in America most likely has. I hope you enjoy this as much I do. Woah-oh, Peanut Butter! by  judiverse Please Note:  This is a follow-up to my article "Peanut Pioneer" about George Washington Carver and his contributions to peanut farming. My dad loved peanut butter.  He carried peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches to work in his lunch pail every day and sang this little ditty about his favorite snack: A   peanut sat on a railroad track, His heart was all a-flutter. Around the bend came a choo-choo train, Woah oh, pea...

                  When I was young, I used to look at some of the guys with grey hair and big guts and be happy that I didn't look like that. Now that I'm one of those guys, I'm kind of trying not to get as fat as some of the other old guys I see around. Of course I' m not trying too hard. I still indulge in my cheese and crackers with Pace Picante Sauce. Tonight Jan made chicken burritos, which by their very nature require a dollop of sour cream and of course some Pace. We have some of our grand children over for supper, so we had to make dessert. I was planning on making some healthier blueberry muffins. While they may not be especially healthy, they're probably healthier than the brownies that we had instead. I had to go help the pastor with a job at the church, so the muffins were out. My granddaughter wanted to know if we could make them for breakfast, but I think I'll put my foot down and insist that we finish the brownies instead....