Sunday, August 18, 2013

"Who reads it?" © By Abraham Lincoln

Five hundred words each week doesn’t sound like a lot of work but it is something to think about if anybody is reading them. Each word was chosen for some reason that seemed good enough at the time it was stuck in a sentence; and then you read it and all the other words and know as much as I do about the story.

I was disappointed with the heat and drought last summer. Brookville was not the best place to be on many days when there seemed no relief outside. My wife and I talked about Vectren’s board meetings and how they must sit around a big walnut conference table and rub their hands together, in glee, at us turning the air conditioners down to cool off.

About the time we had it made and summer heat and humidity under control, the weather in Brookville changed and our air conditioner was turned off and the furnace was turned on. Somebody likes to see spikes in utility bills—not the homeowner but surely the utility company is happy about changes in weather. It happens so fast that we didn’t have time to call anybody in to check out our heating system to make sure it was up to par for the oncoming heating season.

I bought an Old Farmer’s Almanac for 2013. I really don’t have much faith in predicting the weather a year or two in advance and have even less faith in the evening television news when the weatherman or weather-woman stands there telling us what we can expect.

Today it is cold and the air is dry. That means very cool nights here and some plants, like ragweed, might think it is time to increase their pollen count and send you off into migraine land at the doctor’s office—can I get something for this headache?

My old neighbor lady used to plant her garden seeds and onion plants and tomato plants when the time was right. I never seemed to be able to get it right as she would catch me planting some seeds in my garden and she’d tell me it was either too early or too late and remind me to do as she does if I expected to grow enough to eat and have some left over to can for winter.

But she never had any luck growing rhubarb and I had a patch of it on my side of the rusty old fence. Her head ached because she couldn’t will my rhubarb patch to move itself onto her side of the fence. She’d sneak over when she thought we were gone and cut off several big rhubarb stems. I’d offer her all she wanted if she asked first but she seemed to prefer sneaking over to get it.

I managed to get my stiff fingers thawed out enough to type this story for the Brookville Star newspaper. It looks like we will continue to have some cool days and nights for the rest of the week. Does this cool weather remind me of fall?

Brookville is not on any of those lists on Facebook that shows the 10 best places to live in American but I wonder if anybody should tell them about our town?

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