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"

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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"?

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Almost Everything About this Story is Pretty Much True

My Uncle Helmer and Aunt Clara were married in South Dakota and honeymooned somewhere out in western Montana.

The first night of their married life was spent at a little motel near Red Deer out of town some where near a little creek and a grove of trees.

This is a story about value and how to get it.

A long time later maybe twenty-thirty years or so they had a chance to travel back through that area and longed to find that wonderful little cottage like motel room where they first played house and gained adulthood knowledge of loving one another, in the altogether.

They had a brand new fancy 1956 Chevrolet Bel Aire Green on Dark Green colored automobile with bench seats that were so comfortable you could go halfway across the United States of America in it without getting too tired to drive.

Well; they did that, and looked high and low on every side of that town of Red Deer, or maybe it was Deer Lodge, for that little slice of paradise with that little creek running whole and holy and that grove of trees that stood proud. They were bound and determined to find it and re-live, for just a moment, that wonderful first night of their happy marriage together.

It was dusk 9:00 PM pretty late! when they came over a rise and saw, though very run down, what must just have been the sight of the loveliest little motel anyone has ever laid eyes on! Paradise Motel. Why couldn't they have remembered that name?

The office door was open 6 inches to let a little cool air in for the night. The spring on the screen door was all stretched out to where it couldn't do much good. A bare bulb was on in the back room streaming light on to the front porch. The vacancy neon sign outside buzzed on and off like a bug zapper at fly time.

Ole Helmer stuck his head inside and yelled his inquiry. Is anyone to home?
The lady came out in her summer house dress. Might have been the very same one she wore so many years before.
Helmer said I see you still have vacancies! "We stayed here years ago" and have been looking for your place for hours now, nye on to a day!

"Well we only have two rooms left here at Paradise" she said.
The Juniper Room and The Sagebrush Palace. Well, how much are they Helmer wanted to know?

The Juniper is $20.00 and the Palace is $22.00 bucks a night. "You get coffee and toast, and what have you, right here at the office for breakfast. If you're up early enough!

Helmer asked "well, what's the difference?"

She held up two fingers kind of like a victory sign and replied

"two bucks!"

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AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY-------------------------------"D-I-Y"----------------

Every year on the fourth of July Some Americans that really get it celebrate "DO IT YOUR SELF DAY"

By the mid 1700s, the 13 colonies that would become the United States of America were finding it difficult to be ruled by a King George the Third. They were tired of the taxes imposed upon them. But, Independence was a gradual and painful process. People then as today were accustomed to the expression and practice of "Let George Do It". The colonists could not forget that they were British citizens and that they owed allegiance to King George III.

When George Washington became President many people still didn't get it and asked; is he the new King then? NO! he is the president who presides over a "DO IT YOURSELF" government!

Think of it like a giant Home Depot that makes products, services and information available to the do it yourselfer. You don't hire Home Depot to do it for you if you can help it! You will get a poor job, pay too much and have no recourse for a fair remedy of deficiencies. Use the tools the founding fathers gave you to "DO IT YOURSELF"

Still today many people do not appreciate their Independence to decide for themselves. "Let George do it" still resounds in the minds of these simple little thinkers. "Let George do it"; King George, George Washington, George S Patton, George Bush Sr, George Soros, George Bush Jr, George Carlin, George of the Jungle the list could go on and on.

Part of

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Do this: Not just today, but everyday, to celebrate your Independence. Continue to reform your government by self determination. Make yourself better, faster smarter than you were the day before. When you are at work at Nike, or the Food Mart, or in a government position, or in a factory somewhere, think of the service you are providing, and if that service could be contracted to the company instead of being done by your employment there. Be a free thinker. Be your own decider. Be your own business. Pursue your own brand of happiness. Operate your own government. Be your own boss. If you're worried about being layed off, but you are very sure you are actually contributing to the success of the operation think of how you could contract the service you provide at a reduced cost to the company and at a better profit to you the provider.

This is the day to remember you have a right and a duty to yourself to do that!

Here is a real simple and true example. In the pre-manufactured roof truss business there is a factory that provides 2x4x22 7/16" precut blocks that fit between trusses or rafters as they are installed in buildings. These stupid little pieces of scrape wood are provided cheaper faster better than companies can provide for themselves! These are companies that cut dimensional lumber in mass quantities yet still can not make little blocks of lumber cheaper than this one guy can make and ship them all over the country and profit on them as well. The individual that decided he could make these blocks at a profit was not a "let George do it" kind of a guy. Celebrate that!

I guess we need government as a necessary overhead to do somethings I suppose; standing army, law enforcement, roads, bridges, water reservoirs, space program etc.
Wait!----- --didn't Bill Clinton decide that contractors at Haliburton run by Dick Cheney could provide for the troops in Iraq better than the traditional army?

Hey wait a minute! ---------Why does the government hire private contractors like Black Water to provide security.
Hold on a bit longer ---------didn't some independent guy Paul Allen shoot a rocket into outer space faster cheaper better and more fun than the government?

I heard Sir Richard Branson was going to ship folks for a fee into outer space as a profitable amusement. English guy, heard about America and it's ability to have it's citizens think independent. Celebrate that.


Hot Dog Traveller asks you to have a safe and sane holiday that does not include blowing off hands and feet.

DH ( heeez govmint man ) I know what you're saying that people just don't want to hear it. But, we at HOT DOG TRAVELLER are helpless to desist. We simply must amble on with the dismal acknowledgement it may not be the message but the inept way in which it is delivered.

Our hopefull mission is after we are shed of this decision to take federal help has been routed and we again are at "liberty" to pusue our own ambitions we pray we will have been blessed with the wisdom to help change the things that can be changed and the wisdom to see the difference. HDT (heezme)

PERSIAN CAT FIGHT

Every body knows you don't try to break up a "cat fight".

When something like that gets started you don't just jump in and stop it! Especially, if they start out the fight fully garbed and are not in the mood to quit till someone is expossed> For GOD'S SAKE!

Everybody, that is, except the military mind of Americans like John McCain. What in the hell is he thinking about!

I live in a house with two women. They squabble all the time. When I finally have had enough and I think I can gain some ground as to one point or another I stick my nose in only to have both of them gang up on me and hand me back a big hunk of my ass!

For Gods sake John let the women have it out.
We need the diversion anyway and what ever they come out with has got to be better than how the menfolk are operating it now.





This weeks SWINE article proudly brought to you by "HOT DOG TRAVELER"
It seems our sales rep for the Hot Dog Traveler has been on sabbatical in Papua, New Guinea then on to Borneo and then all of Micronesia.
He has brought with him some mighty fine ideas on how to define and improve his controversial product line. Be sure to look for Hot Dog Traveler in all department stores this summer. Employees at Hot Dog Traveler are happy to announce no government funding from any foreign country will be accepted and that only cash infusion from TARP via the United States of America will be accepted. A plan to renew the business has been accepted by the top thinkers who make up our heads of state in both the House and the Senate and funds to rebuild the failing company will begin immediately.

HOOKLESS MYSTERY BARB

PROLOGUE

Graduation night in Washington County, Oregon is usually followed shortly after by a trip to the Wilson River where the most drunken and courageous diploma holders jump off the Jordan Creek Bridge. Depending on the time of the year the surface of the river can be low enough where you can fall anywhere from 45 to 55 feet. It's far enough to have two or three regrets race through your head as you descend. You have to keep your arms and legs tight to your body and your entry pretty straight or you will thrash around under the water like you're in a washing machine spin cycle. It is hard to do when your belly is full of OC Henry's Warm Rhubarb Wine and your heart is filled with youth and false bravado.

"Smokin" Jimmy Johnson graduated High School in 1966, and had a class ring to prove it. Not a lot of guys could afford a class ring in those days, what with the strawberry picking jobs on the wain cause of some guy by the name of Mark Hatfield down at the Oregon State Capital in Salem. "Smoken" Jimmy had his ring though. He worked all summer at the gas station, there in Hillsboro, and saved up for it. He was planning to wear it proudly on the next coming Monday to his induction into the armed services.

It was the time of the Vietnam war. If you didn't have the conviction to find a way out of the war altogether you were going to be drafted into a grunt infantryman's job. The best thing you could do, in that awful circumstance, to save yourself, and the enemy from you was to volunteer. Everybody figured if you volunteered, the Army would know you were probably a pretty smart guy who could be trained for a technical job somewhere in Europe or maybe even Germany. There you could work a full 8 hour shift then go drink that dark beer they have over there.

Well, Jimmy fell for it. Just like falling off a bridge he unexpectedly landed straight from the Wilson River Jordan Creek bridge through a Coors Light and Henry's Rhubarb hangover and found himself on the ground in Vietnam.

"Well the hills were a burning and the bullets were a whirling and it looked like the fourth of July." The battle was churning and he was just a learning that he was probably soon going to die.

Jimmy raised up his hand to protect himself as he ran out from the bush into the open to get away. Just as he did, he saw a piece of a slow moving bullet cut off his ring finger right at the base. His finger spun in slow motion about itself while his brain, operating at light speed, wondered if the ring that he lost graduation night would have deflected this stray bullet that was about to enter his brain through his right eye.

EPILOGUE

Four years later almost to the day Joe was invited by some of his graduation buddies to go fishing down at the Wilson. Some one had made a little fishing dock where you could fish if you had a handicap of some kind. Lots of guys needed that kind of help after the war.

Jimmy let out a pretty fair cast with his brand new 9' Fenwick rod and his level wind Abu Garcia 5001C left hand drive Ambassador reel. The thing about a level wind reel is you have more control over the line than you do with the spinning reel your Dad taught you to fish with. More like the casting reels your Grandpa fished with but a whole lot better. Besides a one eyed short fingered Vietnam veteran fisherman deserved all the best you could buy.

The water was full of fresh ocean going rainbow trout; up there in Washington County they call them "Steelhead".

Jimmy nailed one on his fourth cast with a purple rooster tail and put him on the sandy beach just up river from the bridge. The bridge he has jumped off from so many times before, in his youth-------- just four years ago.

His high school buddies helped clean the fish to make it ready for an Indian tepee smoker made out of alder branches when somebody noticed a bright golden glint in the fishes gut.

They found a graduation ring in there with the letters "JJ" on one side of the big ruby red center stone and the numbers "66" on the other!

This summer please be sure to throw a case of GENERAL CHOW into your instant camp set up. It isn't exactly first class living with out it!