Skip to main content

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.  
.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more