Skip to main content

Hoppy Days are Here Again

It was time, I thought, to take control of my life, after a medical fiend sawed off my hip bone and inserted a death-defying, vacation-providing metal and plastic substitute.  So after a trip to the lawn tractor repair shop,  I took control of my life and went to Granite City, our nearest brew pub and restaurant.  There is nothing quite like an Indian Pale Ale and some buffalo shrimp to pull a shredded life together and give it eternal hope!

While I was restoring my soul, I listened to the two guys to my left, at the bar.  They ate soup, and salad, and sandwiches, and then decided to have another order of soup, and salad, and sandwiches, all the while entertaining the very professional and attractive bartender.  (I don't know how professional and attractive bartenders  endure it, and smile!)

One of the guys owned a business of some sort, and he was irate about his new tax bill.  His business was on the edge, he said, and his taxes were going up 5%.  G-- D---ed government, and all that!  There was no recognition that the reason his local tax bill was going up was because federal and state grants to local governments were going down because they were broke, too.  He thought that cutting taxes some more ought to do the trick.

About the time their second order came, he told his friend about having been roped into a committee to work with their "teen ministry".  The G-- D---ed women on the committee never stopped talking!  After a couple of meetings, he discovered that a couple of the G-- D---ed women actually were doing something, but he couldn't even tell them so because of Political Correctness; you know, just patting them and telling them how he felt.

The other guy finally had his chance, and he told how he had gone to his first meeting at the gun club in his neighborhood, and how everybody had his head up his anatomy somewhere--that is not precisely how he phrased it, but political correctness deters me from using a direct quote--so he finally found out who was in charge, and brought his own skid loader and backhoe out to the range and drained the swamp to get rid of the crocodiles, or whatever the problem was.  Him!  The newest member!  He was tired, after just one meeting, of the women members who just talked and talked.

Just two take-charge guys!  Two thinkers, who weren't even allowed to say what they really thought, because of those G-- D---ed political correctness laws.

I think it was the medicinal properties of the India Pale ale, but after a while my hip did not hurt so much.  Almost a relief!   It was probably the hops.

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

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...
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. ...
Post a Comment
Read more