DEMOLITION MARATHON

 I got this photo from the Internet, but it looks very similar to my garage

Remember the blog post entitled Lights Out in Hickville that I wrote over a week ago? Big storm. Power outage. 

Well, we had another storm - exactly the same - this past weekend. Only it was bigger, longer, and more annoying. And, of course, there was a power outage.

Today started out sunny - - which literally shocked my sun-starved senses - - but, in true Tennessee fashion, another huge thunderstorm rolled in this afternoon.
Dry days don't exist.

Lately, I've been desperately trying to clean up the garage - which is something I should have done when I first moved here, but it was in such appalling shape that I finally gave up.

There were over three hundred empty cardboard boxes piled up. No, I'm not exaggerating. I counted them. And I had absolutely no way to get rid of them.

When I lived in Texas I had a big pickup truck. I lived two miles from the dump. And the small town where I lived had a cardboard recycling center. Ditching boxes was easy.

Here in Hickville I only have a small Toyota. I live a zillion miles from town and have to haul my trash to the tiny town garbage place (I don't know what the hell they call it).
Bringing three hundred huge boxes would be somewhat of a slight challenge.

For two years I've been devising ways to destroy these boxes. 
I thought of burning them, but I don't have a burning permit. And since I have no pyromaniac tendencies, I'd probably fail miserably. Besides, it rains so much here that it would be completely impossible to keep a fire going. Or to even light one.

So, I scanned the Internet to see if I could discover some way of eliminating cardboard boxes.

The information I came up with was so infuriatingly lame that my blood pressure soared to comatose levels.
Who the hell writes these worthless jackass articles??

One woman wrote an article that encouraged us to use the boxes for our children to play in.
"You can build a fort out of the boxes", she suggested, "Which will give your children hours of pleasure."

Is she out of her frickin' mind????
If I had some firewood and a match (and a dry day) I would personally like to burn her at a stake.

Yea, lady. I'll build a fort to keep the Indians out.
Or are they Native Americans?

Another woman, in another online article, suggested to sell the cardboard boxes.

Yea, right. I'll put up a sign in the forest that says:
Three hundred damp, spider-infested, disassembled cardboard boxes for sale.

With the money I make I'll move to Monte Carlo.

Someone else said to "donate the boxes to a charity."

Great idea, Bucko. I'll donate them to the Hillbilly Debutante Society. Maybe they can use them for box lunches at an afternoon tea.

Completely at my wits end, I decided it was time to devise my own method of destruction. I did it the Old Fashioned Way.

Armed with work gloves and a generous supply of bug spray, I went in the garage and proceeded to tear up every one of the freaking three hundred boxes into small pieces and stuff the shreds into big trash bags.

It was a Demolition Marathon that took several weeks to complete. Tearing up heavy cardboard moving boxes is bad enough. Getting the packing tape off them is even worse.

I still have about twenty boxes to go, but I consider my efforts to be a major step toward progress.

A LONE VOICE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS

I wrote a dynamic Memorial Day post that would have blown you out of your seats. Unfortunately, it would have also extracted all of the hateful trolls from their hiding places.

So, I put my literary masterpiece on a back shelf and will save it for another time.
I'm not a coward. I'm simply not in the mood to go through any unnecessary crap. So much for free speech.

I have no doubt that the courageous members of the armed forces who gave their lives for our freedom would be appalled to see how far our country has disintegrated and how quickly our values are eroding.

I think they would share my fury and absolute disgust at all of the intense hate and division.

There is no doubt that - considering past experience - I am a lone voice in the wilderness here in Blogland.
Despite that fact, today I'm emerging from the political closet and announcing that:

I am proud of our country and fully support our President.

Take it or leave it. 

And have a pleasant Memorial Day.

LIGHTS OUT IN HICKVILLE

Summer has unofficially arrived. Nearly 90 humid degrees yesterday (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in Scandinavia). By late afternoon the house was hotter than a Coney Island hoochie dancer.
My knack for spontaneous imagery amazes me.

Irritable and exhausted from my usual lack of sleep, I opted for a nap just after dusk.

About an hour later, a gigantic clap of thunder jolted me out of Dreamland. Lightning flashed menacingly. My desktop computer (which was turned off) inexplicably beeped (yes, beeped) and turned on by itself. No lie.

The lights in the house blinked on, off, on......off..... 
Bingo! Another power failure. I lit a few candles while stumbling over an annoying trio of wayward cats.

There's not much one can do in the dark (when one is alone). I couldn't read. Couldn't write. Couldn't mess with the computer. So I located a transistor radio and took it to bed.

It's tricky trying to get any decent radio reception here in the Daniel Boone boonies. In order to pick up the "local" station I have to conduct a complex series of strategic maneuvers:

Keep my left hand on the Volume dial, with index finger firmly pressed against the AM switch.

Hold the antenna with my right hand in order to generate reception.

Point the radio south-east in the exact direction of where the town is located.

And pray. Pray for reception to be generated - -
and pray that lightning won't strike the antenna while I'm holding it. 

These maneuvers eventually allow me to pick up the "local" station, which is in the process of having a bluegrass fest. That's okay. I like bluegrass. Soon they switch to playing hymns.

Hell, I like hymns, too - but it's slightly unnerving listening to songs about dying and meeting my maker during a severe thunderstorm with intense lightning when you're holding an antenna.

Seems like everybody's going to heaven. It must be damn crowded up there. Kinda like Atlantic City on the 4th of July. I personally want no part of it.

After the hymns, they start reading the local obituaries. 
I've mentioned this before and I'll say it again. These hillbillies are obsessed with death. Every time I turn on the radio, somebody's reading a casualty list. They must have more stiffs here than London did during the Black Plague. Or was it the Red Plague?
Heck, I can hardly remember my own name, let alone the colors of plagues.

Anyway, the power came back on around midnight.....
.......and went off again around 3:00 a.m.
I've never seen a darker night. The rain stopped. The storm was gone. It was completely quiet and still. The only discernable light came from a few random fireflies drifting in the dark.
Power was restored - again - this morning.



Change of subject:
I thought my previous post would generate more attention, but it fizzled like a damp firecracker. The title - Music From the Civil War - was probably a turn-off. Perhaps I should have called it Naked Civil War Soldiers.....

One of my old blog posts, entitled Elizabeth Taylor's Pussy, got over 7,000 hits. Don't panic. I merely posted some photos of Liz with her cats. 
Another post entitled  Gay Hollywood Hunks (on my other blog) got 5,000 hits.

So what's my point?
People don't want intelligent blog posts. They don't give a rat's ass about my piano music.
They want sleaze.
 

MUSIC FROM THE CIVIL WAR

When I moved away from California I went to the Missouri Ozarks (for reasons I won't bother to disclose here). I lived very close to Wilson's Creek National Battlefield, which is near Springfield.

Wilson's Creek was the site of a Civil War battle that took place in 1861. It's an impressive and haunting place, where I used to spend endless hours wandering around in a solitude that seems to be populated by spirits of the past.

Around this same time, I was intrigued by the Civil War documentary by Ken Burns which had originally aired on PBS - and, as a musician, I was especially inspired by the music. I extracted some of my favorite tunes and arranged them for piano solo. 

A few days ago I decided to make a Civil War video using original photos from that era and my piano music as an accompaniment.

The video is rather long - ten minutes - but it contains seven selections. The fifth song is a sentimental waltz, the Ashokan Farewell. It was used in the Ken Burns documentary, but it's not an original Civil War song. It was composed by folk musician Jay Ungar in 1982. I thought it was too lovely to omit.

I turned the last song - Johnny Comes Marching Home - into a series of variations (which I think is neat!).

I took lots of photos at Wilson's Creek, but they're presently in a Dropbox file and I'm not in the mood to go on a scavenger hunt. These are the only two I have at hand.

 That's me - firing at nobody in particular.

WET DAYS, DRY CAMELS, AND WRITING

I removed my most recent post solely because I didn't like it. 
Sometimes I say so much of nothing that I annoy myself. I didn't delete it - I reverted it to a draft and kept the comments (Myra, Paula, LadyHawthorne).

It's pouring rain. Again. And again and again....Once in awhile I Google pictures of the sun just to remember what it looks like. That was lame, but I'm not in a funny mood.

I'm considering moving to Saudi Arabia. Sure, they get occasional rain but I've never seen a wet camel.....and I've never seen fifteen-foot-high weeds in the Rub al Khali (like they are in my yard).

I'm used to dust storms and Haboobs. Heck, I lived in West Texas.
And I feel comfortable in sheik garb.

Don't laugh. I'm an old man. I looked a helluva lot better twenty years ago. Okay, maybe forty.
By the way, I'm the one on the right.

Remember that children's book I wrote last autumn? I put it in a drawer and forgot about it. Last night I re-read it and it's surprisingly good. I'm sending it to some publishers.

I just started writing the book about the 1906 murder in New Jersey and my great-uncle who was hanged for the crime (mentioned in one of my previous posts).
I researched that story for several years, published an article on it, and have a surplus of information. Yet, I'm still finding new information that I never knew (via the Internet). I'm amazed.

After careful consideration and major trepidation, I'm also finally writing my memoirs. 
I used to jokingly say that I'm the most interesting person I know -  but sometimes I almost believe it.

I figure it's better to write it now before senility sets in - if it hasn't already.

There's a trend with bloggers lately - especially popular bloggers (which I'm very definitely not): 
they're all writing memoirs. I've read some of them on Amazon - and most are blase. Nothing interesting happened in their lives.

I endured one extremely long chapter about a 1963 trip to the drive-in movies. And I read several chapters about a quirky uncle who drank beer while watching Bowling for Dollars in his underwear.
ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I don't really give a flying fig.

Trouble is - writing truthfully about oneself is extremely difficult. Revealing all is even more difficult. Not to mention humiliating.

My life has definitely been unique. And colorful. There were many incredibly good times, but even many more brutally bad ones - the ravages of which devastated me emotionally. I never fully recovered.

I could easily write two books: my innocent childhood and my recklessly wild adulthood of destruction and debauchery.
I have an incredible memory. I can remember things from when I was only a few months old. 

Well, this blog post turned out to be even longer and more crappy than my previous one was.

It's far too late to quit while I'm ahead.