Limbs Falling From Cedars

Okay, I'll give you something fresh today. I'll give you an unrecycled story, fresh off the vine. And while you're at it, have a heapin' helping of these round red tomatoes. Or perhaps you would prefer the roma or plum tomatoes. Dig in. Don't cost nothin'. I won't be using them. I'm off my tomato feed lately. Don't think they're from my garden. Ever since the deer ate the baby watermelons, and a giant hornworm ate half of each tender tomato on the vines, we have refused to plant a garden. (There's 3 pictures linked there, people. Be sure to check them out. None of them are my personal hornworm. HH caught him and squeezed him to death until a gush of tomato-seedy slimy poop squirted out of him. That would have been a feast for Bear Grylls. Don't tell PETA, OK?)

Around 11:00 this morning, at the end of a TBS ER episode where Benton breathed a sigh of relief because he didn't really kill the Herlihy baby, I saw a big orange vehicle driving up the gravel road through the prisms of the cut-glassy door-framing tall windows. That's not a very good sentence. It kind of sounds like 'HH shot a possum eating dogfood in his pajamas' kind of sentence. Which is silly, really, because HH doesn't wear pajamas. But anyway, I told The Pony to look out and see what was going on. He reported that it went by the house, and it looked like a highway truck.

As we gathered up our various electronic gadgets that we have to take with us as pacifiers on the 10-minute ride to town, The Pony went back to the door. He heard the dog's tail beating on the front door. When he opened it (the door, not the dog's tail, but don't think that act hasn't crossed his mind), I heard a man say, "Is your mom or dad home?" The Pony came in, all a-fluster, and said, "There's a MAN out there. I thought he was the dog." The man wasn't actually ON the porch, but at the bottom of the steps. He must not have brought his dog-club. C'mon, people. Don't think those fellas don't carry a dog-club. My brother-in-law-the-mayor used to be a meter reader for Union Electric. You can bet HE had a dog-club, and it saved him from a-biting several times. Anyhoo, now that I am being hotlined to PETA, I must pick up the pace of my little story.

The guy was with AmerenUE, the only electric company in town. (I'm being facetious--my dad made a career of working with Southwestern Bell, back in the day, before the telephone business was deregulated, and they had a catchy saying: We May Be The Only Phone Company In Town, But We Try Not To Act Like It. They even had caps and jackets with WMBTOPCITBWTNTALI on them. I can't really complain. That company put food in my mouth and bought me a new color TV to watch One Life to Live when the old one broke and made sure I had a CPO jacket so I was stylish and wouldn't freeze.) So much for making my long story short.

The dude looked kind of like that Hugh guy from Ice Road Truckers, kinda scraggly and red-necky, but without the 'aboot' and 'don't cha know' accent. He said they were wanting to trim some limbs so they don't fall on the lines in the winter. I told him to hack away at the cedars that were already sporting broken limbs. Cedars are the worst, you know. They soak up snow and rain and when it freezes, they can't hold their water. The #1 son had to get the keys and move HH's Ford F250 Extended Cab Long Bed Off-Road-Packaged piece of crap. He drives his Mercedes piece of crap to work, due to the price of gas and the meager allowance that I allow him. He parks his truck in the gravel he poured between the Mansion and the BARn. Not in the garage, because the truck is too long for the garage after HH built in a shelf. Not in the driveway, where HH's pimpin' 1980 copper-colored Olds Toronado sits. No, HH drives his truck through the front yard to park in our little shady patch of woods that the electric line runs through.

That was the excitement for the day. It gave me a flashback to the book salesman. I must be psychic. I picked that intruder story that wasn't even a good story out of the blue, to put on my brand-new blog. And now this. I'm thinkin' I might rerun the Devil post again. You know, the one where I woke up to find the Devil on my front porch? If there are any other stories you would like to share with me while we reminisce in rockers on the front porch while smoking our corn-cob pipes, let me know.

I'm taking requests.