January 1, 2009

Now: HAPPY NEW YEAR! Today was a day off, naturally, so my lovely Bride and I drove to Branson, MO to have lunch and do some shopping. With the exception of being VERY cold, it was a beautiful day in the Ozarks. The sky was clear and the sun was shinning and bright. It looked every bit like a good day for a motorcycle ride until you opened the door. We did see one poor misdirected soul ( a good phrase when you don't want to call someone an idiot) riding an old school chopper.

One of my favorite sights in the winter is the icicles. When it is very cold, as it has been recently, you often see HUGE icicles on the face of the bluffs. As water runs out of the ground and the cracks in the bluff it freezes quickly and forms majestic ice columns. It is not unusual to see thirty to forty foot formations of ice with another one forming on the ground below growing UP to meet the hanging one. If only I had been ready with a camera to snap a picture for you!?!


Then: Another memory from the Hunky Place comes to mind. This was in the fall of my seventh year. I know this because my Mother was in the hospital having a baby. My Grandmother had come to stay with me on the farm while Mother was out of pocket. It was a warm sunny day and I was playing outside. The farm had very large trees which dropped a lot of limbs. I was walking around the yard stomping on these old dry branches and making a marvelous "popping" sound as they broke. "Why" you might ask? Who knows. Ask a little boy why he does most anything he does and you will get the same answer you get from an adult when asked the same question. "I don't know!" :-)

At any rate, I was leaping from stick to stick with great flourish when I landed on one stick that did not reward me with the resounding "crack" I was looking for. This stick bent under the weight of my foot and began to wrap around my leg! This was my first encounter with a black snake. As an adult, I realize black snakes are good and will not hurt you. They might bite you as a last resort to defend themselves but otherwise they are pretty harmless. As a seven year old, I thought I was going to be eaten whole by this huge creature! I recall screaming like a little girl and running toward the house with a snake that was probably almost as scared as I dragging along for the ride. The poor reptile finally fell free as Grandmother came to see what the commotion was all about. Over the years that followed, my Grandmother enjoyed telling this story because she said I was so frightened the word "snake" actually came out "SNEEK"! She found the offending beast and removed it, thus saving my life. Aren't Grandmothers wonderful?