STILL PLUGGED IN TO GRANDMA

PART l
Poem for Panel Ponder

Reeking walls of rotted stone
like webs across the ground

Paint pictures of a human crime
and I'll plot out the sounds.

A man is inside sitting,
He's all but half his mind.

His bodies scarred from hunger.
He's slowly going blind.

Who could stand to see him suffer,
a single minute more.

If you've any heart at all,

you'll help me "close his door"

Moody Blues------------overture----------something like that

PART ll

FAITH OF A MUSTARD SEED

My Grandmother taught me that God had fashioned life to succeed with the simple faith found in a mustard seed. A mustard seed is very very small, in fact you need hundreds of them cupped in your hand before you can feel them.

Grandma told me when she was young, to gather all the faith she might need for a lifetime, she ran though her fathers fields of mustard seed to collect, in the folds of her skirts and apron, enough faith to forever sustain her.

I have maintained this simple faith, first lent to me, then inherited, from her collection. Despite great intellectual turmoil I endure endless contradictions of my own simple perceptions of God and this great creation with continuing faith even to this very moment supplied to me by Grandma.

My Grandmother was tending her garden and canning fruits and vegetables and making apple pies and freezing for winter one day and then in a long moment she died.

My sister and I were with her the very short 36 hours before her end on earth.

At first we prayed for her recovery. We looked in the "good book" there by her hospital bed for some pointers to get her better and to give us some comfort.

It seemed to work too, she stayed alive and then stayed alive some more despite a couple of strokes while there in her bed. When the doctor came to call she rallied the best she could though at all other times she was seemingly falling into a deeper and deeper coma.

Earlier she responded to our loving but frightened voices with calm. Now, her eyes flitted back and forth beneath her tightly closed lids as if she was viewing great adventures from her past. We thought because she had survived great calamities in the past she would get past this one too. Despite her advanced age of 94 we still knew she was strong and God willing we would see her through till she was again well.

The nurses came and went through many shift changes doing all the professional things they had developed skills to do. Till one, named Angel, came in who had a gift to give beyond her ability to deliver care. The one called Angel asked if the doctor had briefed us lately as to the ultimate condition of our Grandmother. At that moment we both knew. I said "she isn't going to make it is she" Angel shook her head and went on to comfort us and explain that Grandma was holding on so as not to let us down.

She suggested we take a break and go somewhere for awhile outside the hospital.

We picked the destination of Bald Peak, a place that we had picnicked with Grandma and Grandpa in the past. It was not far away, maybe 12 miles in all, from the hospital parking lot to the top of the hill.

It was a terrible foggy Oregon day with rain falling and then misting lighter then again another downpour and so on. About twenty minutes went by and the clouds parted in one little section allowing the sun to beam from its location in the great beyond down the hill toward the hospital in Hillsboro where Grandma lay all alone. We quickly had a horrible realization. I jumped back in the car, turned the ignition key on and the radio started playing. The arteries supplying blood for oxygen to my brain strained as I tried to interpret the words of this song and the message that faithfully resides in me now.

Once upon a time

Once when you were nine.

I remember skies.

The universal eye.

I wonder where you are?

I wonder if you'll still remember

once upon a time in your wildest

faithful dreams.

Once the world was new

and all I loved in you

Love was all you knew

and all I knew was you

I wonder if you know

I wonder if you think about it

Once upon a time in your

wildest faithful dreams---------------------------------

When we returned to the hospital room Nurse Angel was gone and so was my Grandmother!

Moody Blues-------------------The End--------Or something like that

GENERAL CHOW brings us this weeks article without comment beyond that "Life is never at end"

Why not celebrate it privately with a bowl of our very fine food product?

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE JUST A LITTLE BIT BEFORE THE INTERNET

If you have ever been up out of Fidalgo Bay from Anacortes, Washington you'll know one must be very mindful of the strange but useful currents found there. If you watch the tides you can "haul ass" on a flood from the Georgia Straits, into Rosario Stait. You go through tight little passages avoiding the ferry like you're heading toward Haro, and if you want to, you can shoot out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca without even spinning the motor. If you keep going you pass Barkley Sound which leads you on a path to the great Pacific Ocean which can get you anywhere in the world!

Well, my friend Mike and I were up that way on a great adventure. We had pretty good provisions on board, Wesson oil for deep frying fish that we would catch along the way, and some beer to go with it. Quite a bit of beer actually. We had some bread and some cheese and some wine to go with it. Quite a bit of wine actually, white wine, and red we made no pretense as to our preference. We never read a label or knew a vintner.

Now for libation, we had whiskey. We had two big glass bottles of whiskey. The kind of bottles you get from across the border at Portland Island where you don't have to pay tax on the good stuff like in America. Canadians really like their whiskey and they don't mess with the fanciful. I think in Canada you only pay taxes if you vote to pay taxes. They are sensible people who drink whiskey straight from the bottle, and we did too.

Mike calculated a heading and set the sails up on a perfect broad reach. Mike and I settled back on an afternoon flood from Georgia, and started drinking whiskey. Nether one of us could come up with much of a good reason not to, after all, Friday Harbor would be in our sights by late afternoon where we would cruise the seaport bars for adventure.

A---lo---sailor!

"Well, we got drunk"--- pretty damn shootin, tootin, high falootin, good and God knows drunk that late afternoon, heading into the wean hours. Might have been close to dawn when we bunked back up.

The next day we lay face down in our berths with awful hangovers. The kind of terrible death type hangovers where you know you would be better of if you could just stand up, flop over the gunwales and drown yourself!

You can't because you are too hung over to make that much of a move.

We were hung over!

Well along about 15:30 or so I got up and went to the galley for some tomato juice and beer when I got the crazy notion that maybe a little "hair of the dog" would cure us up earlier than the red beer would. I started looking for that other bottle of whiskey.

The boat had been heeled over to port from the reach we had been on all the day before. I had a vague recollection of that other bottle of whiskey rolling back and forth, bouncing sometimes mighty close to getting over the edge of the false floor and into the bilge where it would be damn hard to reclaim. I looked and looked between red beers for about two hours. Mike finally came alive and searched down there with his face real close to the rails for maybe three hours or more. No whiskey bottle was ever found. It was either way down in the bottom of the boat, cattywompus in the bilge, or over board all together.

Damn it to hell anyway.

I got out a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote a quick demand for more whiskey. I rolled up the note, stuck it in the empty whiskey bottle, corked the neck tight and heaved it over board.

"We are the pleasure craft TJ". "We have fallen on rough times, and are even out of whiskey. "When you find this please, for all that is righteous and good in this world, would you please send us more whiskey!"

Two days later we found ourselves clear around the back of Orcas Island and had Sucia and Matia in our view. We had been on a hard tack with wind from starboard for 34 hours. She had been on a beat and bucked hard till; I'll be dammed if that whiskey bottle didn't bust loose from below and float right up to where I could grab it without leaving the tiller for not more than a second or two.

Well, it wasn't long and Mike caught me sipping from the new bottle regular and proceeded to catch up to me as briskly as possible. It was the right thing to do. You can't let a guy get drunked up alone. Especially if he is at the helm! The day unfolded quite well I might say. We managed to put down the hook in a good holding anchorage. We set out to make a meal up, but we found that we had eaten all the bread and cheese, boiled all the fish, and were down to just the beer and wine and what was left of the whiskey.

"Well we got drunk' I mean we got good and drunk. I felt a great tremulation in my nervous system. I wanted to do something! I wanted to drive fast, get high, shoot my teacher! I wanted to be somebody, I wanted to save the world! I figured I'd jump over the side of the boat in the 35 degree water and swim to shore to see if there were girls at harbor. I wanted to live a little.--------- "SHAZXAM"

Well, the next day we had hangovers. Mike and I, we lay there, face down in the bottom of the boat. I did not ever want to drink whiskey, ever again!
I prayed to God to forgive me everything, if I gave it up, that awful stuff.

I did just once reach down to retrieve that empty bottle though. I penciled a note, the best I could, and placed it inside, secured the cork and dispatched the bottle overboard.

It Read simply PLEASE DISREGARD EARLIER MESSAGE

This week our story is brought to you by that elusive world wide adventurer "HOT DOG TRAVELER"

Please remember you can e-mail your order today for a delivery right away!

WHAT'S IN A NAME CALLING

I had an Uncle Helmer in my early life and he married a lady we called Clara. Helmer and Clara named all their forthcoming sons Helmer and all the daughters Clara. Now presumably to keep the tradition alive all of those upper branches of the family tree honored the earlier tradition and did the same. I think now there are a considerable number of folks out there in the world named Helmer or Clara.

There's story's about some of them.

The plains of the Dakota offers up beautiful farmland to plant crops. Almost anything will grow in the rich black moist soil found there. The first settlers almost jumped from their britches as they leaped from the wagon seats to stake out property lines and claim homesteads.

There were a few draw backs though. Gophers!

Whole villages full of pocket gophers. Prairie Dog towns raised holy hell with the stability of the soil and the crops that grew near them. You could not canter at speed across a field on your horse, heading home for supper, for fear of the poor animal going down with a turned ankle, or worse, from sticking a foot into a hole or tripping on a gopher mound.

Helmer had one name for them, "SONS OF BITCHES" He never referred to them by any other name but "SONS OF BITCHES"

In those days folks would come out from the city for sport and shoot gophers. It was like a family outing. The farmers out on the homestead liked it because it got rid of some of the pesky critters without wasting any time or money.

What you do is after Sunday school and church you take along some fried chicken and water melon and baked beans and a pitcher full of lemonade, if you could get it, and go out to the country, eat a little something, and then shoot gophers. The women cleaned up and chatted about whoever had not showed up for church or wouldn't speak up for a volunteer project at the Sunshine Club. The men would go off on the prairies and farmers fields with their sons and their Remington bolt action single shots loaded with rounds of long rifle rim fires and shoot gophers. Yep! Shot gophers to while away Gods given day of rest and peace.


The poor little gophers didn't have much of an idea how miserable they had made it for others. They were just doing, they thought, what the good lord intended them to do. That which it was, to eat regular, sleep in little holes they dug for themselves for homes, and sun themselves after lunch on top of their mounds and live like proper little gophers. They sit straight up on their hind legs as look outs for big gopher snakes on the prowl, and hungry prairies chickens, and hawks in the sky. The little "SON OF BITCHES" couldn't know how easy a target they made sitting straight up on top of their mounds like that.

They did this duty as good citizens and solders of Prairie Dog town so the older gophers who needed to rest longer after eating could do so in peace. It was an honorable thing to do and a good life to live. Prospering, sharing and looking out for one another, and in that security enjoying the singular sweet joy of this here life!



We were from the west coast and thought the little prairie dogs were really cute sweet soft cuddly things like a hamster or a squirrel or Buttons the guinea pig.
We drove clear across those plains heading east and began to see the little guys along about western Montana. We were eager to meet our cousins who lived out on the original family homestead.

We always had little pets, and were taught in church to love and respect all living things, and to respect our elders and the ways of others, to be tolerant and speak politely with manners and such.

Imagine for just a moment our shock and curiosity when we were greeted by a little fellow in the open ground by the hand pump between the barn and the farmhouse with these words.

Hello, I am Helmer. Are you the folks that are coming out to shoot some of our "SONS OF BITCHES"?

And now a few words from our sponsor-------- GENERAL CHOW

Whether they call you a commie or a Jew or a liberal or a capitalist pig or a neo con or a christian or an agnostic or a jar head or a towel head or a dumb Norwegian ---------YOU ALL GOT TO EAT THE SAME STUFF!

Why not just get a big old bowl and dish out a portion of our

"very fine food product"-------- today