Posted on

It’s hard to think about ….

It’s hard to think about …. It’s hard to think about ….

It’s hard to think about writing on a full stomach. Worse than that, my refrigerator is jammed with lots of tasty left-overs. For sure I can say it was a wonderful Thanksgiving. Pretty simple but nice. I went out to eat my noon meal with Jackie and just before we got ready to eat, Rupe popped in the door. So there were three of us. Unless you want to count the deer that wandered out in the field just north of their house. They seemed to sense the mighty hunter was inside filling his tummy, so why shouldn’t they.

ÓÓÓÓÓ

Here we are. The date on the paper is Dec. 2, which indicates there are four more issues this month. The last just happens to be the 53rd issue this year, so just consider it a bonus when it comes. Some weather people like to think the seasons change on the first day of the month, not the 20th or 2lst as we are accustomed to. Actually I guess it makes sense as our days will start gaining a minute of extra daylight by mid-month. It may seem like winter is long, but if you have been reading the legal notices in the paper the last couple of weeks, there is something called “spring elections” which will happen on the sixth of April. So there is a reminder that winter will end and we can look forward to spring. The space in the middle still leaves lots of questions to answer about how cold it will get and how much snow will fall. For sure we can be thankful for the nice weather now and into the future as I look ahead.

ÓÓÓÓÓ

Do you have the same problem I do? I get something in my head and when I go to bed it just keeps spinning around and never with any end in sight. That happened to me a few nights ago. I can tell you my garage is getting full of bags of cans I’ve been saving for a long time. The plan is to take them up to the Clark County Rehab and Living Center. They have had a crew that keeps busy crushing cans and the money made from them is used to provide a little spending money for the crew. Years ago I used to crush them myself and collect a few bucks whenever the truck came around. Then about that time, the Rehab Center got into the program and would you guess, Shelly was one of the workers. She kept bugging me about bringing my cans up there, so I finally did. Now I just want to make sure they are still doing it and need to call first. The idea behind it was to provide an activity for those residents who are able and it has worked so well. I recall years ago we had a young man in Loyal who was confined to a wheelchair. In fact, he was pretty well immobile. In fact, almost to the point of not able to do anything. The key word here is “almost” and they rigged up a table on his wheelchair. Someone would crush a can, then put it on his little table. He was then able to push it off and into a box on the floor. I remember how excited he was to tell his mother he now had a job and was making money at it.

ÓÓÓÓÓ

So that is on my agenda for next week, but the thought of recycling brought a thought about what we did before we had recycling. I guess many of you well remember the old dumps, as we called them and how I made a weekly trip there just to get rid of stuff. The idea of centralizing our garbage dumps and closing all the little ones did not win my approval at first. But as I caught on I became a collector of all kinds of items that used to just end up in the dump. Of course I had to learn these little dumps were helping to pollute our drinking water and from there it was, let’s go for it. I think it is simply amazing every Wednesday, when the garbage truck comes by, how much of their load has been separated for them. Items like old newspapers, cardboard and plastic bottles, along with cans if you are already saving them and turned them into a recycling center.

ÓÓÓÓÓ

Like I said, it was different years ago. I had a brother who apparently made the rounds of dumps to see what he and a friend could find. It got so bad that I quit asking him where he had gotten a different jacket or pair of boots. The answer was always the same, “at the dump”. Then his friend decided one time to order a new pickup truck. What was different about it, he ordered it without wheels or tires. He had a big assortment he thought would work well. I think he even left out the heater, but that was a major problem. It also meant there was no defroster for the windshield. I don’t recall what he did, but I suppose it was like the old days when I recall my Dad driving with one hand while he used the other to wipe the frost on the windows.

ÓÓÓÓÓ

Things are kind of at a standstill now on the political scene. One of the stories that has come out of it is how the news channels seem to have been hurt by the stalemate. It is one of my pet peeves. When something big happens they seem to just focus on that and nothing else. As if there isn’t anything going on in the world. They claim they have to keep telling the same story since someone might have missed it before. But how many times can you tell the same story, but make it different, especially when it is well apparent there is not going to be any change in the story for at least a day or so.

LATEST NEWS