Buffalo Gal

We have made a journey into the past for two days.  We had a logging and lumber camp at our place and I got to be the Camp Cook!    Buffaloguy, retired, but antsy to do projects, harvested several old, huge ash trees while the ice was still on the river in March.  Now my high school classmate, Bob, brought his portable Australian-made lumber mill to our farm and the past two days have been devoted to sawing the huge logs into a great stack of ash planks of various sizes.  There is a significant sawdust pile, seen mostly at the Rollag Thresher Grounds each September.  We have another trailer load of lumber scraps which will be put to good use in the part of my garden where I want to lay down black garden cloth to prevent weeds in my vine crop garden.

In the Paul Bunyan book of legends I loved in grade school, one story was about the two camp cooks in Paul’s lumber camps….Hotbiscuit Slim and Creampuff Fatty.  I played their roles for two days and refuse to identify with Creampuff Fatty….but I am not exactly Hotbiscuit SLIM either.  There is a Gary Paulsen book (MN author) called THE COOKCAMP; I might have to check it out and compare the experiences of the cook at the camp in Paulsen’s book for young adults.  It is set in Minnesota in the days of Paulsen’s youth spent mostly in the northern MN areas near Bemidji and a small town near it.(Becida)

It was a new experience and everyone involved is tired out by it….I feel like I need a day of total rest but there are things to do and tomatoes to be set out and garden cloth to be laid and lawn edges to be trimmed with the small mower and weeds to be chopped down..and on and on.   There is no real rest for the  "Retired" when you live on a farm and want to keep it up to snuff at all times.  I better abandon the day of rest idea and get on the garden outfit (second hand store seer sucker pull-on slacks, black socks (Buffalo Guy’s) old shoes,old T shirt under an old blue denim shirt, sun hat and bandana tied around the forehead to soak up the sweat of honest labor.  With a few squirts of Deep Woods "Off" to discourage the ever present Buffalo gnats, I should be ready for another day of "Garden and Lawn" camp…. but tomorrow I get to make the awaited June 1 journey to Bergeson’s Nursery…always a joy and a way to celebrate a good friend’s birthdate. 

  Flowery Edenic Paradise, here we come!!!

The news of an international traveler carrying a deadly form of tuberculosis being "quarantined" by the CDC is not only "newsy" but revealing.   Our culture, since the early 1960s when the last quarantine was issued, has progressively interpreted any form of quarantine for illnesses that are easily spread among the population as "politically incorrect" for the most part.   It has taken a deadly form of tuberculosis which is untreatable by the normal drugs used for this disease to re-employ the "quarantine" option.

Many of us can remember the "quarantine" signs on our own homes when we contracted measles, mumps or chickenpox as children.  It was a commonly used medical method before political incorrectness became such an influence in our nation and culture.  

Those with leprosy were put into "leper colonies" for centuries.  Tubercular patients were isolated in "sanitariums" for decades.   But when the deadly AIDS virus hit the scene in the early 1980s, quarantine was never considered as an option.  It might have prevented the spread of this disease that has killed so many in our own county and also world-wide.  But this was a "touch-me-not" disease due to its connection with homosexuals when it was first identified.  The political correctness kicked in and no AIDS patients were ever quarantined allowing this deadly disease to spread and proliferate among innocent patients who received tainted blood transfusions….a sure fire way to contract the deadly disease. I am still haunted by the deaths of people like Arthur Ashe and Ryan White.   I have often wondered, how many unnecessary deaths could have been avoided if a quarantine had been put in place for AIDS patients in the early 1980′s.  We will never know as it was never considered, it seems. 

Quarantine is not something that is socially unacceptable; it is medically necessity in the case of diseases that have no treatment available as was the case when AIDS was first identified.  It was a sure fire death sentence.  So was tuberculois and leprosy in the ages before treatments were developed.  Ditto with the childhood diseases prior to vaccines developed only recently.  Quarantine was a proven medical method to avoid the rampant spread of dangerous diseases.

Incidentally, the man who is being held in quarantine in Atlanta GA used all sorts of tricky ways to get himself into the US after being told NOT to travel on commercial aircraft.  His US passport had been "tagged" so he entered Canada and then drove through a crossing in northern Vermont to get into the US.  Now he is fussing and fuming because he is in "quarantine" with armed guards nearby in the hospital where he is being observed.  He takes no responsibility for his surrepticious entry, his flight on  commercial airlines where the enclosed atmosphere is a hotbed for spreading communicable disease and is saying that because he is a well-educated person, that somehow he is being persecuted. 

Bah Humbug!  Another blow for personal responsibility…which is all too common in our time.  

Being away from the blogsite for a couple of days has left me with a brain-ful of things I have to get off my mind!!!  I just heard a former public official say that the American people of more than one generation were willing to see to the finish "The Cold War" which spanned more than one Presidency and more than one generation.  Patience used to be a virtue but unfortunately we seem to have entered into a generation of Congress-people and their constituents who are not at all patient no matter what the issue is.  Witness the unwillingness to acknowledge that we are engaged in another "war" similar to the "cold" one…a war against terrorists who are set on destroying western civilization as has been built  over so many years.  One of the current candidates for the Presidency has even  gone so far as to suggest we should NOT refer any longer to "the war on terror".  Talk about denial!!!

News today reported Nancy Pelosi making another of her profound statements to the Press, this time regarding the fact that she had been to Greenland and had eyewitnessed, first hand, Global Warming.  I wonder what she saw?  The beginnings of Greenland getting "greener" again, as it did a few eons ago when global warming in a far-gone ancient time gave it its name because it WAS a green land when the ancient Vikings settled there due to its hospitable environs for farming and herding along the coasts.  That period of global warming was not brought about by any man-made  carbon emissionsm but the intrepid and ever omiscient (in her own eyes) Pelosi said that it was high time for President Bush (the root cause of everything bad and evil) to get busy and stop the world from putting out so many carbon emissions so that global warming can be reversed!!!    Another sign of our times:  the idea that we can control EVERYTHING on earth and elsewhere by our own actions.  Give me strength!!!

Then Cindy Sheehan has made her farewell to the war protest movement blaming everyone but especially the Democrats in power  for their failure to create "her Amercia" as sheenvisions it.   I think she has worn herself out due to less and less of the spotlight and fewer interviews with the "Media".  So now she says she is "going home to take care of her family".   It is probably a little late for that sort of "care" since she has twice divorced husbands and abandoned other  children in her desperate claim of "grieving" for her son Casey who volunteered for the military and was a casualty of the Iraq War.

Every parent grieves horribly for a son or daughter who is killed tragically in wars or accidents or illnesses that none of us can control.  Like Nancy Pelosi, Cindy Sheehan had the odd idea that by her "protests" and her continual traitorous statements and trips to places like Caesar Chavez’s dictatorship in Venezueala..that she could "control" the war, the government officials and anybody else she chose for her "activism".   I think of other parents who lost children in wars such as Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, or WW 2…parents who accepted their loss and grief and went on to remain solid citizens of the USA without having to blame and bad- mouth a President or others—public or military officials…for their childrens’ deaths.   At Memorial Day ceremonies all across our nation yesterday, those parents… or their descendants… visited the graves of their loved ones and honored them along with their communities in which they live.  Their quiet devotion to their childrens’ memories and their support of our nation— no matter who is the President….is a far greater and a far better testimony than Cindy Sheehan could ever hope to make with her foul-mouthed protests and constant publicity seeking.    She needs to go home, and hopefully, disappear from the public arena for the remainder of her life.

Cindy Sheehan’s "my America" is definitely NOT my vision of America!!

I have been away for the entire Memorial Day weekend; plus we made a trip to Itasca to deliver our RV to our youngest son and his family so they can use it during their weeklong stay in a beautiful state park.  Just driving into Itasca is a refreshing event even when one is worn out from a lot of miles already driven on the weekend plus a lot of activity at a granddaughter’s graduation celebration.   The shades of green the eyes take in at Itasca is so breathtaking!  Pale lime green leaves on the paper birches….the deep forest green of the stately white pines….baby oak leaves in another shade of pale green…and soft new pale green needles on the Old Giants…the red pines.  Preacher’s Grove always makes me feel like things are all right..there stand the old red pines like a gathering of evangelical preachers telling us the good news that  the creation is perfect in its conception and in its continuing testimony to a perfectly designed Minnesota "Garden of Eden".

Our first granddaughter’s (and the eldest of all the grandkids) graduation from Century High School in Bismarck was "amazing" and that is using a word to describe a most unusual occurrence at the graduation ceremony.  Thousands of us were seated in the Civic Center; the band  and orchestra had played a very professional – sounding prelude of several pieces of music;  the graduates entered to the stately strains of "Pomp and Circumstance";  the senior high choir sang a most harmonic rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" and we all sat down for the greeting from the class president.  But before the girl could rise to speak there was a small commotion and a conference between school administratiors also seated on the stage and another man wearing a dark suit like the school officials.  It turned out that the "other man" was the police liasson officer with Century High and the "conference" was because someone had phoned in a report of a man who had said to several eyewitnesses in the Kirkwood Mall that he was going to "blow everyone up over in the Civic Center."  One of the eyewitnesses immediately called police and the result was that before 5:30 p.m. all of us in the Center were making an orderly evacuation of the huge building so that a police bomb squad, complete with the specially trained search dogs, could "sweep the building."

What a horrible "sign of the times" in Bismarck ND!!!  Residents of our upper midwestern area do NOT expect such happenings in our domains… but we have already seen several false alarms in schools, in other public buildings and open air arenas in our regional vicinity.  Not that many years ago, when I was still teaching school, I was met at the door about 7:15 in the morning with the news that our little small town elementary school was going to be searched because of a bomb threat!   I thought of that incident on Sunday when I was at first so incredulous over the threat situation at the Civic Center.

By 6:00 the police had swept the Civic Center and of course there was no bomb.  We all trooped back inside and took our places once again.  It appeared that no one was absent…the seats were just as full as they were before our surprising evacuation.  Most of us walked to the parking lots and stood around talking or walked to the nearby Kirwwood Mall and patronized Starbucks or just sat down in the mall halls after the evacuation.  The red-robed graduates (all 350+ of them) took it in their stride, and went on to the most important event in their young lives….receiving their high school diplomas. As most graduates now do, these "kids" began to pass beachballs through their seated ranks before the ceremony was over til their ever-watchful Principal went into the rows of graduates and confiscated the beach balls…temporarily.  He threw them back after the last graduate was handed their diplomas and the Principal tossed the beach balls back to the grads where they went soaring again along with the red mortar boards.  I saw some silly string guns being employed also, as a few of the grads walked back to their seats.  What a huge difference now from the totally solemn and dignified graduation cermemony that my class participated in.  We would have never dreamed up anything like tossing beach balls….we would have embarrassed ourselves and our parents….the motivating behavior factor of my generation…do NOTHING, EVER, that would embarrass your parents.  That behavior motivation  seems to have gone by the wayside for more than one generation of teens already.

Other than the bomb scare on Sunday, we had a wonderful time celebrating our granddaughter’s graduation…..and with all the breathtaking and unexpected events surroundng the graduation ceremony, I did not need my crying towel!!!!

Somewhere in that tiny brain lobe where music and muscial information is stored, I am hearing a song sung, I think, by the King of Siam, in the musical "The King and I".  It had to do with the King being wrapped in a "puzzlement" and I think it was over the different ways of life in Siam and England, as told in the  musical play.

I have a few puzzlements also.  I think they are due to my being part of the older generation now. There was a time when I was younger than most everyone I knew but that has changed…I am the oldest generation in our family and I am also OLDER than most people I now know.

One puzzlement is how do grandchildren grow up so quickly?   We are going to our oldest grand daughter’s graduation celebrations and ceremony this weekend at Century High School in Bismarck and it only seems like a few weeks ago that this little 3 year old came to stay at the farm all by herself for the first time.  Can she possibly be 18 years old already???  I am going to need to take a towel along to her graduation ceremony because I feel like I am on the verge of shedding buckets of tears…not from being sad but….I don’t know why..I am a female and females cry for no good reasons a lot of the time.

Another puzzlement is why do people drive so fast and what price is gas going to have to climb to in order to make people slow down???  I drove to a big  supermarket this morning in  order to get some really nice fresh strawberries and blueberries for the asked-for fresh fruit compote at our granddaughter’s reception.  I have made up my mind since gas went over 3 dollars a gallon that I will no longer drive over 65 mph and today I set the cruise control to 60 mph in my personal quest to economize and get better mileage with the high priced gasoline.   I felt like I was crawling along which tells you something about driving before the gas prices rose.  Also, I was nearly being run over by other drivers who are paying the same price for gas but are still careening down the 65 mph speed limit highway at speeds well over 65 mph!   Another puzzlement is what will it take to get people to quit driving their extremely big gas-guzzlers?  We(Buffaloguy and I) have speculated on this puzzlement.  Will it take 6 dollar a gallon gas?   8 dollar a gallon gas?  Even higher than that? We know our relatives in Norway were paying 6 bucks in American dollars about 3 years ago and they thought our 1.99 gas (at that time) was the biggest bargain they had ever seen.

Another puzzlement:  are most people (other than me) so affluent they can afford to drive huge vehicles and pay huge prices not only for their regular driving but also for running big RVs and big speed boats?  Being on a fixed retirement income I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the obvious affluence among us…..or is it all going to credit card debt that cannot be paid up each month?

The last puzzlement that is rolling around like a bumnch of mind-marbles today is the concept of law and order.  After observing the race to where ever on the highway today, are there any people left who will obey speed laws?   And where are the enforcers as long as speed limits are posted?  They could just as well take down the speed limit signs and put up ones that say "Whatever!!"

Enough wondering:  I have to do some outside work before I start getting ready for my tearful graduation trip to Bismarck where the most wonderful girl is going to graduate on Sunday.  But then all my grandkids are wonderful and this is only the first time I am going to see this happen…if the Lord allows me to see all 8 of them get to this point.  I pray I will be able to see them all get that diploma.

There was an song from the 60′s I think that asked the question "where have all the flowers gone?" but I am asking seriously this spring:  "where have all the honeybees gone?"

I have read about the mysterious deaths of bee colonies in California and other areas where growing crops for food are a really big industry..especially the growing of fruits and nuts and now these crops are not being pollinated due to the deaths of many hives of honeybees. We might have to say goodbye to almonds as a food…also any fruits that needs to be pollinated and that is nearly all of it including citrus, apples, peaches, plums and berries.  Say good bye to melons we love?  Cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers?  Nice ripe tomatoes?  I get nearly sick thinking about the possibilities of crop losses.  Alfalfa and clover are also pollinated by bees…buckwheat and any other flowering grain crops….flax?  I get horrified just thinking about all the flowering crops I know.

We have not seen honeybees here at our place this spring.  I saw a lonely bumblebee but we had an apple tree in full bloom and did not see or hear the persistent buzz of honeybees in the branches.  Last summer we had very few raspberries and found few chokecherries in spite of massive blooms on many wild bushes.  Now we are wondering about the missing bee factor on that also.  I do not think life is worth living with out ripe garden tomatoes and ripe raspberries….this is serious.

On the other hand, my friend who lives in Detroit Lakes has reported lots of bees buzzing in the lilac bushes near her home.  Another friend who lives southwest of me by a number of miles on another farm has not seen bees this spring, either.  So it is distressing.  A beekeeper used to put out hives in an abondoned farmstead near us and now we wonder if those hives have died out and are not there any longer.

I googled honeybee deaths in the US yesterday and found some pretty alarming information. Bee deaths are worse than they have ever been although this has happened before on a smaller scale.  Some non-scientific types have blamed cell phones and cell phone towers; some blame global warming (there are people who blame EVERYTHING on global warming). The real scientists are looking for causes such as viruses or fungi and seem to be zeroing in on one or both of those causes.  The heavy use of pesticides is also suspected.  Wouldn’t that be the limit if, with our massive farming "technologies", we have killed off half of our own food supplies by killing honeybees???  I have always been horrified when I see spray planes spreading pesticides or herbicides all over the environment so we do not have to be bitten by mosquitoes or have weeds in our crops.   It may turn out to be shooting ourselves in our own feet by destroying natures’ pollinators.

I am not cheered up at all by reading the information on Google.

By the mid-1970s, both Had and Eddie were well into their own 7th decade.  Had suffered the loss of his beloved wife and had lived alone for several years.  Fortunately his daughter lived near him but he was lonely and sad.  Then another blow struck our family and a lot of other people who knew Had….he was diagnosed with incurable cancer and had a limited time left on this earth.  One of his cousins came to spend the last days living with Had in his home he had lived in most of his life after he got married and raised his famiy and conducted his poultry business in our little town.

My parents were especially saddened by this bad news.  Had’s family had been our neighbors for all the years we had lived in our house.  In fact, our whole block of older homes were occupied by the same families for decades, but slowly, the neighbors who were all older by this time, were dying, one by one, and the neighborhood would never be the same. Orville, the two Bills, Selmer, and Allan were already "gone".  Now we heard the sad news about Had.

It was Halloween night and I had brought our sons into town that evening for a little round of trick or treating in my parents’ neighborhood since living in the country did not provide many neighbors in our neck of the woods.   After the 3 small boys had returned to examine their "treasures" in Gramma and Grampa’s house, I got an idea…..why not go trick and treating over at Had’s house…dressed in costumes of course so he wouldn’t recognize us. My Dad lit up….he wanted to do things to cheer up Had and this was a rich idea!  Eddie donned one of my mother’s old dresses and hats….we pulled nylon stockings over our faces and twisted our faces into irregular and unrecognizable grotesque "masks".  I put on Eddie’s work overalls and other work clothing, including a floppy cap.  We grabbed our "bags" and set off across the darkened back yard, stumbling over objects still in the yard….we bumped into the clotheslines with our nylon faces hampering our vision.  We both had to re-adjust our head-wear a couple of times.  The plan was to hide in the bushes in the dark driveway of Had’s house and wait for a bunch of kids to arrive on the porch and then join them in the back of the pack.  We did not have to wait long.  Had always had his outdoor lights on for trick or treaters and a fairly large group of kids arrived just as we had hoped.  We took our places and waited for the door to open.  Had and his cousin appeared with a large bowl of candy bars and the "real" kids took one each when Had instructed them to take one, only. Had took a lot of teasing in his time about being "close" with his money. He was a true descendant of his Scottish ancestors and had thrived due to his thriftiness.  Now Eddie and I approached the door after the kids had all run off to another house.  Had squinted through his thick glasses and observed, "You kids are kind of big to be out trick or treating aren’t you?"   We said nothing but advanced into the entrance with Had backing away, looking a bit alarmed.  We put out our hands and proceeded to grab large handfuls of candy bars, still keeping silent.   "Hey! What do you think you are doing?" Had was getting upset.  Finally we could not contain ourselves any longer and pulled off our nylon stockings, revealing our identities.  Had broke into peals of laughter.  His cousin roared also.  We all had a great laugh and finally after a good bit of chit-chat, Eddie and I returned home via the treacherous back yard route.  We did not want anyone else to spot us in our costumes. We gave back most of the candy bars we had snatched but each of us were muching on a Snickers bar as we stumbled back to Eddie’s house.

It was the best Halloween either of us had ever had.

As I remember Had and Eddie, I realize that Eddie was often the one who pulled the wool over Had’s eyes…which were not strong ones.   Today’s recollection involves Had’s egg delivery truck…a small truck with a large wooden box on the back that would hold many dozens of the good homegrown eggs Had purchased from the farms near our small town.  No caged hen eggs in those days!!!  Had made a weekly or twice weekly trip to Moorhead and Fargo where he sold his eggs to business places..restaurants and at least one college cafeteria.  The truck had the name of Had’s business emblazoned on the side of the big wooden box but one morning—-again an early morning raid into Had’s yard while he still lay asleep in his comfortable home behind ours—- led to a new logo on Had’s egg truck.  Eddie brought some "shop chalk" in his pockets for this trick and crawled up on the hood of Had’s truck and scrawled on the FRONT of the truck box ( in huge white chalk letters)  "CHEAP JOHN….PEDDLER…NOTIONS, LOTIONS, PATENT MEDICINE, SEWING SUPPLIES, SALVES AND LINIMENTS….EVERYTHING CHEAP"     Eddie remembered the visits to his family’s farm in the early 1900s of a traveling Peddler-Man who called himself "Cheap John".  These traveling peddlers were the stock in trade of early farms before the farmer’s family made frequent trips to town.  The families relied on the Peddlers’ visits so they could buy a lot of things they needed…things that they could not raise or grow on their farms. (trips to the grocery stores were not necessary on those early farms…they provided much of their own food.)  The later peddlers that I remember were the "Raleigh Man" and the "Jewel-Tee man" whose visits to rural farms and small towns lingered into the 1960′s. I would give a lot for a taste of that good Raleigh liquid "nectar on a hot summer day.    I suppose the nearest thing now is the Schwanns’ trucks which visit neighborhoods and sell products.

But back to Eddie’s version of "Cheap John":  Had— who did not notice, of course, the new appellation on his egg truck— set off for Moorhead and Fargo with his load of fresh eggs. When he arrived back in our small town, people began to notice the "Cheap John" logo and asked Had about it.  When he saw the white chalk lettering he began to splutter and headed straight for Eddie’s shop, sure he knew who had done it.   Poor Had!   It took awhile to get over the embarassment of having driven all over Fargo Moorhead with the "new" business name chalked on his truck.

And then there was the snow shovel episode.  Had was so kind to our family when we got a new 1947 Ford; we did not have a garage and Had’s garage was big—two stalls which were almost unheard of at that time.  He offered one stall of his garage to us for our new Ford and we kept it there for many years til Eddie finally got around to affording and  building a garage for us. But in this time of sharing a garage, Had borrowed a snow shovel from Eddie and returned it to his own garage, forgetting to whom it belonged.   Finally, after several months, Eddie put a notice in the local newspaper which read something like this: "Will the person who BORROWED  my snowshovel a few months ago, please return it to my home so I do not have to press charges for thievery and malicious mischief."   Had came roaring over to our house with the shovel and a lot of choice words for Eddie!!!

The most touching and tearful time I had with Had and Eddie occurred on a Halloween night in the middle 1970s but that is another story for another time.

This is the second of the "Had and Eddie" stories I am currently blogging about.  The title is much longer on this one:  it should say "Eddie Paints the Town Orange And Had Suffers For It:  Another "Had and Eddie" Story That Is True…Unfortunately".

"Had"  had a reputation in our small town; he gave everyone a bad time when he stopped to chat on the street.  If you did not really know Had, you would be hurt or insulted by some of the things he said.  He used to stop me when I was downtown or if I went into his poultry store to buy eggs or chicken for my Mom and say things like "You poor kid!  You have to live with that rotten Dad you’ve got".   The first few times I was greatly disturbed by this "information" but I soon caught on and learned to give it back…somewhat.  I had been taught to respect my elders and I did not dare go too far with adults who razzed me , especially when it concerned my Dad.  It turned out, when I finally caught the true meaning of the local teasing and joking,  this was how the men showed each other great affection.  Instead of forthrightly saying, "I really treasure you as a good friend and I would do anything for you if you needed help" they would insult each other and play practical jokes on each other (as in the Martin House Escapade).

So one weekday, when Had was making his rounds downtown, he finally got to the north end of Main Street and began to go at it in my Dad’s blacksmith shop; everyone in there was a target but Had reserved his best jibes for Eddie who happened to be lying underneath a tractor at the time,  finishing up a repair job by re-applying some Allis-Chalmers orange paint.   Had was standing right next to where my Dad was reclining as he painted under the tractor and as Had revved up his insults and jokes about my Dad, my Dad reached out with his paint brush and painted one of Had’s workshoes orange.  Of course Had, with his poor eyesight did not see what had happened; he was also looking at the amused onlookers in the shop and entertaining them with his fictional accounts of how bad Eddie was at everything.   Finally finished and needing to go back to his own business, Had left and walked back down the entire Main Street with his one orange shoe on display.  I cannot remember when it was that he discovered what had happened in Eddie’s shop but I am quite sure he came roaring back to "give it" to Eddie for taking revenge on him.

 Had also got in trouble on another occasion when he had been taunting and teasing the owner of one of the lumber yards on Main Street at the time.  He must have gone a bit far,because when he finished with Van, the lumberyard owner, and began walking south on Main Street, Van stepped out of his busineness, took aim with his beebee gun and shot Had in the seat of his pants.  I bet Van ducked back inside his store rather swiftly and probably locked the doors for awhile til Had had cooled his jets…..and recovered from his sore rear end.

The next Had and Eddie story involves Had’s delivery truck that he used to drive to Fargo Moorhead on a weekly basis with egg deliveries to various eating places…plus the snowshovel story.

It is time once again to engage in a bit of storytelling about earlier lifetime people and good memories.  Each spring, at this time of the year, when I see Purple Martins returning to specially built martin birdhouses, I think about my Dad…Eddie..and I also think about our neighbor in our block, "Had", who was my dad’s good friend for so many years.  Had was short for "Harold"..nobody in our small town was sophisticated enough to have heard the nickname "Hal" so "Had" it was.

Both Had and Eddie were businessmen  in our small town.  My Dad was a blacksmith, welder, and repair-er of most things mechanical.  Had was a poultry man who had a small town business that sold poultry and eggs which were hand-candled in his back room.  Our family bought all our chicken products and eggs from Had’s place.

In the month of May, both Had and Eddie were on the lookout every day for the first signs of Purple Martins since both of them had built the birdhouses  Martins preferred. It was quite a ritual in the spring to get up on a ladder and clean out the winter sparrow messes before the Martins arrived.  Had and Eddie "argued" constantly about whose birdhouse was the best.  Eddie sneered at Had’s big 3- story "apartment building" and Had found fault with Eddie’s birdhouse as well. (Eddie’s birdhouse was a sure way to say "there goes the neighborhood!")  This went on every spring with much "Bee-Essing" between the backyards that separated us from each other.  

One May, Eddie hatched a great plot to put Had’s birdhouse out of business.  Very early  one morning, when Eddie knew Had was still asleep, he hauled his tall ladder and a big bed sheet to the grove of Blue Spruce trees where Had had put his Martin house up.  Eddie climbed the ladder and ever-so-carefully, draped Had’s birdhouse completely with the big white bedsheet.  Now Had was not blessed with good eyesight.  He had worn "coke-bottle" glasses all his life and he missed a lot of things—-especially he missed seeing the white sheet hanging down from his Martin house for quite a few days…and when he did discover what that white thing was, it was too late for Martin occupancy.  All the Martins in our neighborhood had moved into Eddie’s birdhouse.

Had never forgot Eddie’s treachery and Eddie never did it again.  He had enough fun that spring to last him the rest of his life….but that was not all those two "friends" did to each other…. but that is another story for later.