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The End of the World on Saturday at Six

Harold says the world is going to end this coming Saturday:  May 21, 2011.  How does Harold know?  He has been reading the Bible for about a hundred years.  Actually, Harold is not quite 90, but he has worn out half a dozen Bibles getting this right.  Six P.M., he says. Somewhere.  There will be an earthquake. Somewhere.  


I forgot to cancel my subscription to the New York Times.  They will probably hound me for the money.  I suppose I could designate that they give the papers to the schools, but that is rather a waste.  I don't think kids read the New York Times, except for maybe the Science Section when they show pictures of people like Harold riding dinosaurs in front of the Ark.  


Harold and I are pretty much the same age:  he is a little older.  That is to say, I have been wondering who saddled up that first dinosaur.  When I was young and green, Sally used to scare the heck (I guess under these circumstances--end of the world, and all--that I can say "hell") out of me.  Dad would tell me to harness Sally.  Sally did not take kindly to being harnessed, especially that little strap that was supposed to slip under the tail to keep the harness from hitching forward when Sally backed up.  She was protective of her modesty, that Sally!


She was also big!  A Percheron.  Sally's solution for moving anything was to lunge.  She remodeled a lot of gateposts.  Things got caught, but Sally freed them up:  Heave!


But I am reminiscing!  The threat of imminent death and destruction will do that to you!   I especially remember Sally's eyes.  They were most amazing pools of brown kindness, so long as harnesses and gateposts were not involved.  


Still, I cannot but think of Harold and Sally and those dinosaurs that Noah and his family rode the first time the world ended, not with a quake but with a rainstorm.  Who in the heck first proposed to put a saddle on a dinosaur?  He was some tough cookie!  No wonder he thought the world was going to end!


Sally used to make me be a believer, too.


I will probably be one of the first to go, on Saturday.  If you are in the neighborhood, I have no objection if you want to take the New York Times.  Unless, of course, Harold has gotten the date wrong, in which case I would rather keep the paper.  
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