YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and first things first. I need to apologize for an error in last week’s “Mine Creek Revelations” column. I wrote that President Trump was wearing his trademark red MAGA cap during the military parade which made the event a political campaign activity in my opinion.
I was wrong. He was not wearing the cap. He wore no cap at all.
I was confusing the parade memory with one of him wearing that cap just a few days earlier in a rally at Ft. Blagg, N.C.
I still think the military parade was merely to kiss his ego. It was just coincidence that it occurred on his birthday.
I guess his famous bone spurs didn’t keep him from presiding over the Army’s parade. You know — the same bone spurs that got him deferments from the draft five times during Vietnam.
Lordy I hope he is right about Iran’s nuclear development.
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SOMETHING REVEALED.
I love music. Most music, at least. This dates back to when I was in the Scrapper band.
I still regard myself as the Third Greatest Scrapper Band Trombone Player of All Time.
That’s unofficial, sadly.
Unofficial, the same way that I am the Unofficial Downtown J-Turn Enforcement Officer.
And Unofficial Administrator of the hospital’s Senior Citizens Nose and Ear Hair Clinic.
But I digress from an important message about listening to music.
A couple of years ago I decided to listen to Cajun music.
It made me wish I understood Louisiana French.
Then I decided to listen to Salsa.
It made me wish I understood Puerto Rico Spanish.
Then I decided to listen to Rock ‘n Roll.
It made me wish I understood Otis Redding English.
Then I decided to listen to Mariachi.
It made me wish I understood Mexican Spanish.
Then I decided to listen to Opera.
It made me wish I understood Italian Italian and French French.
Then I decided to listen to Rap.
It made me wish I understood Mystery English.
Then I decided to listen to Country & Western.
It made me wish I understood Honky Tonk English.
I was in the Scrapper band the year we played for Bearden’s homecoming because Bearden didn’t have a band.
It was cold and I was wearing my warm blue and white cowboy pajamas in lieu of longjohns underneath the thin old band uniform.
While the band was on the field the uniform’s belt buckle snapped and the oversized uniform pants fell down clearly revealing the aforementioned blue and white cowboy pajamas.
The officiating was so bad that night that the school board president went to the sidelines and told the coach to take the team off the field.
The record still shows Bearden 7, Nashville 6. It was so cold that the slide on my trombone kept freezing. Why couldn’t the uniform belt buckle have frozen instead?
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. Several years ago some dear friends gave me a monocular. Like a binocular only with just one viewing channel. This was before I lost my left eye.
I used the monocular only occasionally then. After I lost the eye I dug out the lost monocular (it was hiding in plain sight).
I keep it on my patio now so I have easy access during my morning coffee reflection.
I can keep up with my Bluebirds. I know where the Mockingbird’s nest is.
I watch the Grosbeaks and Sparrows and Cardinals at the feeder and I keep the feeder full of birdseed.
I get to watch the Bluejays compete for in-shell peanuts on the patio table. I am amazed at how they peck apart the shell to get to that morsel inside.
How many peanuts does it take to fuel a full-grown Bluejay for a whole day. I see some fly off with a peanut clutched in the beak. Are they taking them ‘home’ to chicks or to a nesting mate?
Next time I want an Alexa monocular that will answer all of my bird questions.
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MORE THINGS I LEARNED from the Universal Classroom of Life: “To the paranoid people who check behind their shower curtains for murderers. If you do find one, what’s your plan?”
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WORD GAMES. I do love oxymorons.
For example: “After listening to that ‘rap artist,’ the following ‘deafening silence’ sounded ‘awfully good.’ Three oxymorons.
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HE SAID: “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.” Walt Whitman, poet and journalist
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SHE SAID: “What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.” Margaret Mead, anthropologist and author
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
