Have I mentioned that I live way out in the country? I have? Okay.
It’s an interesting life, being in the country. There are trade-offs, as with everything in life. For instance, I can’t just hop in the car and go get a quickie meal at a drive-thru. But, the up-side is, I can bury a corpse in solitude. You just can’t do that in the city! Also, out in the country, there aren’t a lot of neighborhood kids for our children to play with, but we do have rattlesnakes and groundhogs and dirt clods and abandoned farm implements to keep them occupied. In the city, there’s culture and sophistication and cosmopolitan people. We don’t have all that, but at least we’re able to grow our own pot.
We got folks by the name o’ Horace, Wilbur, Aunt Phyl (pronounced ain’t, not ant), Uncle Clete, Jasper Jenkins, Pa Noaks, Old Lady Durfee, and The Widow Hensley. In the country, there’s no such a thing as a new building… Everything’s old and beat up. And our livestock come right up in the yard. ( I think Myst posted about it once.)
We don’t lease no cars; we drive ‘em ‘til they’re 40 years old. We believe in God even if we don’t (or, at least, we give that appearance for the neighbors). We keep creases in our jeans. Animal feces isn’t considered something to shriek about, even when it’s all over our hands. We refer to things, not by their actual name, but by what they do or what they’re used for: wash rag, mud dobber, ne’er-do-well, sewin’ needle, rain cloud, bug zapper, weed trimmer…. “Rondell, Jr…. bring me my cannin’ stool, will ya?”
There’s brown, meandering stains running transverse along the sides of many pickups. If you live in the country, you know what this stain is, and you don’t think twicet about it. Old people wear checkered or plaid clothes; young’uns wear solids. Boys don’t wear short pants, but the girls do. We pour salt on slugs for after-dinner entertainment. Or just sit by the bug zapper. We know the man who checks our meter.
Okay, that there’s the stereotype…. It ain’t all such as that, though. Some of it is, some of it ain’t. You’ll just have to come visit to know if I’m pullin’ your leg.
In the real world of country livin’, Myst and I are working on the house and yard tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that. We’ve got to get cleaned up and “presentable” for company coming over on Saturday. (I hope it don’t get out of hand.) We’re hosting a get-together/family business type of gathering, and we’re and we’re rarin’ to have a good time with kids running around lickspittle and scrounging for plastic eggs full o’ goodies. So, this evening, we’ll work like mad, we’ll bathe and bottle and bed down the L’il Man (okay, we’ll sit him at the table and he can eat with actual implements of destruction – sheese, you people can sure ruin an analogy!), then we’ll concentrate on the bottle for grown-ups. We’ve still got part of a bottle of vodka in the freezer, and three flavors of “Crush” to mix it with. So we’ll probably sit on the porch and talk one another’s ears off and just be plumb jittery. (I hope it don’t get out of hand.) There’ll be bugs to swat, and cigarettes to smoke, and worries to pull out of hiding and go over. It may not actually solve anything, but oft-times, it is the motions that you go through that comfort you sometimes, when you can’t do anything about the problem in the first place. We’ll get by, my Myst and I – we have each other, and the Pookster, and L’il Man, the little blue house – and really, when it comes right down to it – what more do you need?
Have a super weekend ever’body, it will get here before you know it . . . . Remember: corn snakes don’t eat corn and horny toads ain’t horny, but a spit fish will get ya every time.
Tíoraídh!
