Lighten Up a Little

Just thought I'd inject some humor into the blog today with a few thoughts. It's a slow news day except for constant bantering about how freakin' hot it is. So it's hot. If you have a computer, you probably have air conditioning. If you don't have A/C, either sell or pawn your computer and get a small window unit to cool yourself down, or go to Walmart and use theirs for a couple of hours. For my friends in OZ, it's Winter? I don't believe it!

So, the kids were watching something on TV the other day. Actually, it was Anna, the 14 year old. She knows everything you know? She had the closed captioning on. I guess it was just too loud and noisy having other people in the room talking, so she used that feature that allows the words the actors are speaking to be printed at the bottom of the screen.

I have trouble with some words and letters because of astigmatism. I told her to turn it up a little. She responded, "There is no sound, I'm using closed captioning."

I said, "I know, but don't the letters get bigger on the captions if you turn the sound up?"

I think it's a good idea if they don't have that function to invent it. Like large print books or large print keyboards. In fact, I think they should bring back the old analog phones with the big-as-yer-thumbprint numbers so I can see them to dial. (I don't think we 'dial' anymore, just like the cell phone doesn't 'ring'. Some things need to be changed.) Also big enough for my island sized paws to press down on a letter to send a text.

Example of a text I sent the other day:

Plz c if amma cam done over, i neerd tp asl her a question. thz

Talk about the fat fingered mambo on the keypad, I had a hard tome fit]guring out what I chad tried to say when my daughter asked me to interpret the message!

Another idea that came to mind is a new design for a plastic pitcher. You know how the person that takes the last slug from the lemonade leaves about a 1/2 ounce in the bottom of the pitcher, then puts it back into the refrigerator? Well, the one I'm inventing has a false bottom. It looks like there is an inch of liquid when the pitcher is empty. So, the last person to pick it up has to fill it and can't put it back into the fridge with 1/2 ounce left.

"How do we police this?" you ask. Well, it's simple. The pitcher has a hangman sign on the side of it to remind the user that if they put it back into the fridge empty, they will hang from the yard arm. (Might as well infuse some of the Pirate lore into the household, Aurghhhg Matey)

Lastly, I was talking with some folks the other day and the subject of kilts came up. You known the Scottish with their bag pipes, kilts, single malt whiskey and aptitude for being thrifty? Well, each year at the Triumph Motorcycle Rally in Taos, there are a couple of mates that wear a traditional kilt to the Saturday night Meet and Greet BBQ. The connection of Scotland and the British made Triumph brand and all.

So, I heard about some working man's kilts, similar to the rugged heavy cotton twill of tough wearing Carhartt work jeans. I looked it up and found this great site that sells Made in America kilts for any occasion, but does indeed cater to the working man, (or woman), with work wear kilts.

I am definitely going to order a pair of these to wear at the rally in September. The hardest decision will be to decide whether or not I will go commando or not. I say yes, what do you think? If not commando, my red micro-fiber breathable boxer briefs might do the trick in the event of the cooler weather that sometimes appears up in the mountains that time of year.

There you have it. My mid-week thoughts and reflections. "Hot", you say? ( Not the kilts, I know I'd look HOT wearing them, I'm talking about the stupid weather we're having.) Just maybe a tad. Might be frying my brain. Why else would I think up stuff like this?

Peace to all.

Marigolds on the Front Porch

Haiku My Heart

July 13, 2012

See more Haiku at recuerda mi corazón, where we meet weekly to share stories, photos, art, haiku and wonderful conversation.

Flowering front porch

Sweet marigolds on parade

Spadoville beauties

Bought colorful Mexican pottery planters on the March trip down to Santa Fe.

Bought flowery plants and set them in the planters, watered them and watched them bear flower gifts.

Bought more planters at the local hardware store.

Got a bunch of nutrient rich composted soil.

Bought a half dozen small pots of marigolds, cultivated by a neighbor, at our local Farmer’s Market.

Played in the dirt, planting the golden flowers.

Took photos of the Spadoville front porch.

Wrote Haiku poetry to acknowledge Mother Natures efforts.

I remember that my first name, Joseph, means "Sower of seeds". I used to garden extensively. Making soil from compost, planting, cultivating, canning vegetables, hanging flowers to dry them. Totally working the soil between multiple jobs along with raising cattle, chickens and children.

I lost the desire some time ago, well, not the desire, I lost the will as getting down on my hands and knees and handling a large tiller became impossible. It was with great enthusiasm that I bought this flat of marigolds, and planters to put them in, and planted them.

Every day this Summer, I see the beautiful flowers and marvel at the colors. Makes me feel good that I planted something. 

Feel Peace

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Yesterday, we celebrated my oldest Grand daughter’s fourteenth birthday. It was a nice party. Family gathered together. Anna had her best friend hanging around all day. My youngest daughter, the one that lives in St. Paul and is single, was being visited by her boyfriend’s parents. They were told they’d be welcome to drop by and accepted the dinner invite. Her boyfriend had his three children along as well. Safe to say, we had a houseful. It was a good time.

Fourteen isn’t an exceptional right-of-passage age like becoming a teenager at thirteen or the age of maturity, eighteen. No special acknowledgement for fourteen as far as I know. Just more of the crap attitude and thinking they know everything, which is the case with Anna and her up and coming twelve year old Brother.

Yet when I need to express an observation, she will sit and listen. Maybe it’s the way I can tell a story that allows her to silently listen to the tale. She’ll ask questions after I’ve said my piece. She’ll transfer the experience of my youth to someone she knows from school and how the same type of thing might have happened to them. She’ll see the wisdom.

That is not any kind of guarantee that she will heed said advice or change her mind about anything, but she does listen. I guess it would be too good to be true to believe she’ll become Marsha Brady and do the right thing.

Funny though, to watch them growing up. I’m telling her I hope I’m around to see her driving at 16 and that maybe she can take another road trip with me where she can do some of the driving. She likes that idea a lot, and so do I.

This week at Spadoville we will have some accessory parts delivered for the new motorcycle. I’ll install them and take some photos. New saddlebags and a luggage rack along with a couple of small screws and things you’d never notice if I didn’t tell you they were there.

No appointments at the VA. Continued work, as health and heat indexes permit, on the projects that are started here at home. Loading my bike and my friend’s bike on the trailer Thursday and leaving crack of dawn Friday for Elkader, Iowa and the Moto Guzzi Motorcycle Rally.

We’ll spend the weekend there with other motorcycle enthusiasts, sharing stories, taking short rides into the beautiful countryside and stopping at out-of-the-way eating establishments that someone found a long time ago to be good enough for a yearly sabbatical.

So, looks like an easy going week ahead, and I’ll get started on it with a trip to the Dish and the Spoon Cafe for some morning Java and conversation as soon as I click the “post” for this short update. Of course, things can change rapidly. We’ll take it as it comes and roll with it if it does.

In the meantime, take care and be well. Be nice to each other.

Peace

Something's Happening Here

Postcards From Paradise

July 8, 2012

More "postcards" at recuerda mi corazón.

Nui Ba Den, The Black Virgin Mountain, Republic of Vietnam, 1969

Hard to explain how this crooked photo of a mountain in war torn Republic of Vietnam in 1969 during the monsoon season can be a postcard from paradise, but it is. This volcanic mound, jutting from the vast flatness of the rice paddys Northwest of Saigon, had an almost hollow interior formed by a series of tunnels that were a stronghold for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The Americans and South Vietnamese forces controlled the top and bottom of the mountain on the outside. A visual memory from the time I spent there.

Let me explain why this is paradise. Something fantastic has happened over the past couple of weeks. Something I haven’t even mentioned until today. I haven’t felt like writing anything for a while, but now I do. Like someone told me "It's okay" or like a freight train that sits on a siding, waiting for a faster train to pass, then, all of a sudden, starts up and moves along on its way.

I got an e-mail from a guy I served with in Vietnam. I knew him. I remembered knowing him when I was there, yet when I would see his picture, my mind drew a blank and I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, and no one else of the few guys I am in contact with, could remember it either.

The e-mail was simple. It just said that this was the third e-mail address he had found for me and wondered if I was still alive. He also told me that he was in one of the pictures I posted on the Triple Deuce website where I said I couldn’t remember his name. 

As soon as I saw the name as the sender, I remembered the guy in the photos and remembered his name.

I told him that he had found me and that I remembered him and his name. We’ve been going back and forth for a while now, every e-mail longer and longer in each direction. Reliving the fact that we do, indeed, know each other and were there together in that rice patty hell hole called Vietnam.

That's me holding Buddy on my shoulders as Howard, the guy that sent me the e-mail, looks on from the turret of an Amoured Personal Carrier. We called these 22 ton behemoths "Tracks" or APC's. Howard is from Washington State, it says so on the side of the track

Don’t get me wrong. Vietnam is as beautiful a place as anywhere else, physically. It was the circumstances that put us there that made it a hell hole. We recalled a few incidents, not in detail, just a mere mention of “That night” or names of places like Ben Cui, Nui Ba Den, Tay Ninh or simply saying “The rubber”. One of the names that keeps popping up is Sergeant Jacobs. We all knew him as “Jake”.

Then, even more talk about life after the war. We are finding we walked similar paths since we returned home way back 43 years ago. We have both mentioned the wonderment of our own existence by muttering words questioning our own survival, not only while there dodging bullets, but here at home, through the addictive drug and alcohol abuse, health issues, changing jobs, anger, depression and other PTSD behavioral symptoms. We both honor and respect the women in our lives. 

Yours truly, as the driver of the APC. The new guy always had the job as the driver because the threat of hitting a mine was great on the roads and the guys with more time in country would pass on the dangerous driving task to the new guy.

The women are called the life givers because of their unique ability to bear human life. Yet women are so much more, as in our cases, as they have kept us alive and saved us from ourselves and certain death of not only our lives, but if our spirit.

It has been good to connect. He says so too. We will talk soon on the phone. A visit to see each other must be made. And of course you know that it doesn’t take too much to have me start planning a road trip. 

I tell you, we picked up automatically, like we just experienced the war last week.

I’ve sent some photos, so Howard can tell me who some other guys, whose names I forgot, are. He already told me the name of one guy who I was frantically trying to remember his name.

Jennings, Spadoman, Duke, Buddy and Howard showing off eating the steak we stole from a visit to the base camp

Not sure what will happen next. Encounters like this can be strange as they dig up so much dirt. Let’s face it, the experiences of combat infantry soldiers can be quite brutal. Even if we don’t recall details, and we don’t, the memory lives in our heads and we recall it in our dreams and even conscious thoughts. We cry. We feel sorry. We feel guilt, we feel so many emotions. I don’t expect you to understand.

But I understand. And we both agree, so far, that the experience made us who we are and there is no way to forget it. In my own case, I don’t think I want to forget it, although there are parts of it that I don’t want to see anymore. And we do see these things. We see them often, relive them. Hard to imagine, I would wager, that simple decisions now can make me feel like I am in a war zone fighting for my very life. Something as simple as "What would you like for dinner, honey?" See, I told you, you wouldn't understand.

Interacting with the locals

That’s the thing about PTSD. We have learned to accept these thoughts, these memories. We hold them for our eternity, and when another Veteran Brother comes along, like Howard, all we need do is say a word or look into the eyes and know it’s true and we lived it and came out the other side.

Howard is going to try to get the the reunion of our Triple Deuce Vietnam group in Colorado Springs in September. If he can’t make it, I’ll be headed to Seattle at some point. When you’ve made it this far and have had a few health experiences like heart attacks and such, I get antsy and don’t think I should, or could, wait until next year. In my mind, tomorrow will never come, so I need to do what I need to do today.

The squad leader, Jennings, and me, showing off a captured Russian made Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher

Howard signs off every e-mail with the word “Peace” and a wish for Peace to me and my family. Can you believe that? Can you believe that we hardened off Warriors still seek Peace and have since we set foot in country. Good to know I am not alone anymore.

Having Howard step back in to my life is like a healing, a cleansing. It tells me it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be sad and it’s okay to laugh, at the war, and at ourselves.

If this hearing and remembering my friend Howard isn’t a postcard from paradise, I don’t know what is.

Peace

More Gifts

Haiku My Heart

July 6, 2012

Haiku My Heart already! Must be Friday. I look forward to the blog today as friends meet and share their photos, their stories and their Haiku. All of this and more can be found at Rebecca’s recuerda mi corazon. May I also mention that This Link will show  and tell you how you can win a beautiful piece of artwork for your very own simply by making a small donation to help others. Enjoy the day.

God remains alive

In the shadow of Mary

Words painted on wood

Favorite colors

Strikingly beautiful art

Patterns to gaze at

Last week, I wrote Haiku about a gift I received in the mail from a blogger friend. A beautiful hand made book. This week, I will do the same. Two more Haiku for two more gifts.

One was a piece that was to be given away as a contest. I entered and was notified that I won. I received the small painting on wood block in the mail. The artist is Lisa DiNunzio and she posts on her blog, Priti Studio. As Lisa explains on her side bar, “Priti is a Sanscrit word meaning satisfaction from creating beauty and joy.”

I don’t remember where and how I met Lisa, but it was on the blogs. She posted her last name and it is pure Italian. That endured me to her immediately because of our shared Italian heritage. Besides, she is pretty, or priti, beautiful in fact, and so is her art.

The faces come alive. I see expressions of all kinds when I look into the eyes. I especially love her Frida Kahlo interpretations as well as her devotion to Mary.

I have a Mary collection in my home. I love the way different artists depict the Blessed Virgin and started collection images, mostly of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Priti studio announced a contest to do something like enter a comment and have the possibility of your name being drawn to win this smart little, about 4” X 7” Mary, painted on a wooden block. I won.

I’ve added this portrait to my Los Dias de Los Muertos, The Days of the Dead, permanent altar because of the skeleton in the upper left corner of the piece. I used the words printed on the painting as part of my Haiku. It seemed natural when I counted the syllables.

Our permanent Los Dias de Los Muertos altar at Spadoville

This next piece is a simple gift sent to me by Cheryl Ford who pens the Cheryl’s Excellent Adventure blog. I don’t know a lot about Cheryl, but I know she loves photography and is quite good at capturing images as well as collage art and painting. She is very active in her community art circles and promotes art in the Pacific Northwest where she resides. Her enthusiasm and wonderful smile show through all of her creations.

Cheryl had a series of paintings she showcased some time ago. She explained what the abstract random lines might be as “A bridge over troubled waters.” I saw something totally different and told her about my interpretation of Pirate ship masts with skeletons, swords and ghostly images.

What drew me to the paintings at first were the color combinations as I love the use of yellows and golds with red. I honestly love the series from her blog and I am trying to purchase it. 

In the meantime, Cheryl painted a smaller canvas and sent it to me as a gift. I love the patterns. I love the colors. Earlier in our lives, Cheryl and I traded art. I think it was last year when I made her a small Dream Catcher and she sent me some art cards that I had admired. I sincerely appreciate this gift from my friend.

Each of these artists have an Etsy shop. Peruse their blog posts to see more of their artwork, then go to their shop and check out the offerings.

Priti Lisa’s is Priti Studio Etsy Shop

Or, there is a link to Priti Art For Sale right on her blog just below the header.

I thank Lisa for sending this to me and for being a friend in Blogland.

Here is Cheryl’s Etsy Shop.

I sincerely thank Cheryl for thinking of me and sending me this original piece of her artwork.

I’ll leave you with one more haiku today. This sums up the feelings I get from giving and receiving not only the artwork, but the words spoken to each other through the blog world postings.

Gifts, from near and far

Soothing the savage heartbeat

Knowing we are loved

Peace to all

Wednesday Morning Thoughts

Man, it's hot! At least here where I live it is. I'm sure somewhere around the world there is some less oppressive weather. Don't get me wrong. I purposely didn't say "bad" weather or "good" weather. That's all relative to where, who, what, how and why. In my condition, it's hot and my activity is limited in as far as exertion outside is concerned. I'll leave it at that.

A couple of weeks ago, I get this e-mail from a guy I served with in Vietnam in 1969.  He saw some photos I posted on the website of the Triple Deuce Vietnam, the army unit we were attached to. In one of the photos, there were five of us standing there. I named four of the five. The one I couldn't remember the name for was him. As soon as I saw his name, I totally recalled our relationship. I wrote him back immediately and we exchanged a few e-mails catching up the last 40 plus years.

This morning, I get an e-mail from him and I was all excited that I had heard from him again. Then, I see it was politically motivated and leaning to the side of the aisle that I don't lean towards. I asked him to keep politics out of our contact and that I would do the same. I didn't care back then and I don't care now what he thinks. We are Brothers, pure and simple. I hope he understands.

So, it's the fourth of July today. Birthday of America, Independence Day. I don't care. Little stands are hawking fireworks, made in China, for us to celebrate our independence. I don't know about others, but I do know that I don't like loud explosions, especially the ones that I don't know are coming. They call it startle response.

Ever see a dog that cowers when there is a gunshot or a car backfire? Maybe it's thunder or the vacuum cleaner? That's how I feel about fireworks. Now I did work in Special Effects in motion picture production and have made loud pyrotechnics displays when blowing up cars and things, but I was the guy pulling the trigger or setting up the gag, so I knew it was coming. Here I'm driving to my home, on the street where I live. The window is down and I see some kids.  BANG! right next to my ear as I pass. Scared the crap out of me. No, I don't care for it at all and will be glad when it's over.

I get a kick out of the people that expect everyone to spend the day loving America. It's funny how others think they know what you're thinking because you did or didn't do this or that. I can love my country any way I want to, or hate it for that matter. Isn't that what freedom really is?

It's like Memorial Day or Veterans Day or any other man-made Day. I think of the men and women who serve and who died and who were wounded every day, not just on these "holidays". It's the loud bombs and explosions that killed the heroes. How about some peace and quiet to honor the dead? Just saying'.

They call me unpatriotic because of my attitude about July 4th. Wasn't going to war, shedding blood, watching destruction and learning how to kill people enough for them? I have to wave the flag and agree that war is good before I can be an American? Sorry folks, but it is none of my business what you think of me.

Andy Griffiths passed away. Mayberry's town sheriff. Mr. Griffiths was a good actor and had a long career in show business. May he rest in peace. My friend Nick was going to a funeral yesterday for a guy that died when he went to the hospital for a simple operation. It wasn't the hospital that caused the death, it just happened when he was in the hospital. Natural causes. May he rest in peace as well as Andy.

Well, I thought I'd write something. I've been up since three freakin' AM. I don't have much to say lately I guess. I see that no one wants to touch the story about smoking' pot. Too racy for the masses. Well, it's part of the blog. "The Truth is Spoken Here". I told the truth. So now you know. Big deal.

Some bitter taste in my mouth this morning. Maybe it's the uneasiness from that dream I had. I should try to get a little more sleep. But it's light out, the birds are singing. Think I'll drink some coffee and go play on Facebook. I'll see who might be up for some useless mundane conversation.

I read a passage on the blog of a friend that had some advice about the times when you're feeling low. Said to think of the blessings we have. I do, once in a while when I remember to do so. I do have a lot of blessings. One of the good things in life is to be able to get rid of the crap like the stuff in this post by writing it out. Like putting it in the proverbial bubble and sending it away. See, now it's gone. I'll begin the day with a prayer.

Grandfather, I thank you for the light of day, another day, this new day.
I thank you for the rest you've given me. I thank you for the warmth that gives me comfort from the cold and the coolness that gives me comfort from the heat.
I thank you for the Sacred Circle that this creates and for bringing my life into this Sacred Circle.
I thank you for listening to the prayers of the people and to my prayers today.
I say my prayers for the Veterans, the Addicts, the Sick, the Elders, the Hungry, the Children, the Families and the Relationships.
I ask that you bring health and happiness to all people, and I pray for the well-being of my friends that are at the Sundance and sacrificing themselves as they pray for the rest of us.
May Peace prevail on the Sacred Earth Mother

Peace to all. No, I mean it. I say it every day.Peace to you and all you hold dear.

Escapades of My Youth

Looking through the crystal ball, recalling old memories

Reefer Madness, the 1936 American propaganda exploitation film, made me laugh when we saw it at the movie theater sometime in the 1970's. In fact, it was early in the 1970’s when we had just moved from Chicago to Minnesota. After we tried the rural life and found it too hard to just jump into, we moved back to the city. St. Paul, to be exact, and rented a place. We had one daughter back then. Numbers two and three hadn’t arrived yet.

There was a young couple, unmarried, co-habitating hippies, living above us. I guess we were living the hippie doctrine as well, we were married though. Howie and Paula, the folks upstairs, were nice people. Back in those days, at least for us, we had no extra money and never strayed too far from home and the macaroni and cheese. Neither did Howie and Paula.

We shared a lot of dinners with those guys. Paula worked for the University of Minnesota at one of their research farms. She was working on a project that had to do with turkeys.  She’d bring home flats of fresh turkey eggs and we’d scramble a bunch or make these surrealistic oversized deviled eggs and omelets the size of your head!

7.5 Gallon cooking Pot

Due to our vice habits of smoking way too much pot, the large turkey eggs and copious quantities of anything we made for dinner was suitable. Seems like we always had enough money for a little reefer. If we didn’t, then one of our friends did. This was the social life of just about everyone we knew. Go to work and come home and sit around and smoke pot. We’d eat, then crash and do it again the next day. On weekends we’d just skip the work part and get high all day. Oh, and listen to a large, loud, blasting stereo playing the Allman Brothers or “Inagodadivita”.

Howie and Paula were from a small town called Spooner, Wisconsin. Howie was working for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and was transferred to St. Paul from Wisconsin. They both still had family and friends back home. These friends would come and visit once in a while and their friends became our friends quickly, mostly because of our pastime. We were very kind and happy people back then, and I like to think we are still very kind, mostly happy and caring people, sans the pot, in todays scheme of things.

Japanese hot Pot

These folks from Wisconsin also worked on the railroad. One of them found that there was a plethora of Cannabis Sativa growing all along the railroad tracks. They called it ditch weed and it was ripe for the plucking. Another friend, Steve, picked bags full of this ditch weed and dried it out to get it into usable condition. 

"Ditch weed," is a term the government agency that enforces the burning of seized pot uses to define "Wild, scattered marijuana plants with no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending." 

Unlike cultivated marijuana, ditch weed contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in pot, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade. The reason there is so much ditch weed along the railroad tracks is said to be that trains hauled the hemp plants that were used in the making of manila, or hemp, rope during WWII. The seeds fell from the train and flourished, unattended, along the tracks, in the ditch.

Ditch weed, growing in Kansas

Try as we might, we smoked and smoked and never got the tiniest sense of a buzz from the ditch weed. That was too bad. For we had enough of that stuff to keep us in tall clover for a long time and even the possibility to make a few bucks in the process. But from resourcefulness came an even better idea.

Curry hot Pot

Steve’s girlfriend, Laurie, took some of the ditch weed and ground it up in a blender and made it into a powder that had the consistency close to that of flour. She added this “flour” into a chocolate chip cookie recipe and fed them to the hungry mouths of the munchie driven masses.

Low and behold, the ditch weed worked wonders when baked and the results were an everlasting blast of euphoria which came on exactly one and one-half hours after swallowing the first bite. We used that green flour in everything. Cookies, cake, mashed potatoes and the ever popular chocolate fudge walnut laden brownies sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Flower Pot

One time I was on the road working as an over-the-road truck driver and brought a batch of these cookies with me. I was laid up in Walla Walla, Washington and spent some time late into the night in a place called the Zodiac Bar. I met some folks over cold beer and the conversation led to the ditch weed and the fact that I had some of these magic cookies.

Pot

I left town in the morning, but not before dropping off a few of the baked morsels to my new found friends. I told them to call me sometime and tell me what they thought of the cookies. When I returned home from a west coast run, I had gotten a phone call and this fellow tells me how much he enjoyed the ditch weed delights.

You gotta remember, this is in 1976 and there were no cell phones and long distance was still expensive. This guy was so impressed he made the high buck long distance call to thank me and wanted me to mail him some more cookies.

More Pot

Another time, when Howie and Paula decided to tie the knot and get married, we went to the wedding which was held in Paula’s Mom and Dad’s back yard back in Spooner, a beautiful place on the banks of the Yellow River. The dinner, if you will, was a keg of beer and these beautiful loaves of cranberry orange nut bread made with locally grown Wisconsin cranberries. A tub of butter for slatherin’ was on each and every table. These loaves of bread were thickly laced with the ditch weed flour.

We ate and ate this bread and drank and drank the beer and nothing happened. I guess the recipe, being different from the cookies and brownies, made the impact time longer. We ate so much of that sweetbread that by the time the high kicked in, we had ingested enough to keep us high for a week.

We partied all night, slept eight hours, got up, ate breakfast and lunch and found ourselves still holding the buzz. It was so out of control that we just decided to smoke one because we couldn’t wait any longer to come down from the cranberry orange nut bread fiasco.

Pot brownie?

Well, the ditch weed cookie craze went out of favor after a while and we went back to good old pot smoking again. Time went on and many years and many a joint later, I happen to be on an Amtrak with a very good friend. I was older now and had more sense. Well, maybe just older.

I got a hold of some pot and baked a half dozen cookies. Since we couldn’t smoke pot on the train, (actually, there was no smoking of any kind in any car on that particular train. People with cigarette habits waited until a station stop would allow enough time to get off the train and grab a quick smoke on the platform), we ate them cookies and drank good gourmet coffee that we had brought from home and brewed in the snack car, getting free hot water from the attendant.

We sat in the scenic vista car as we rode the tracks through the Rocky Mountains, all the world taking on a new light. Each of us giggled and laughed like the old days and we talked of the memories of those days of our lives. 

I guess now, as I approach geezerhood, it might seem a bit odd to divulge to you, my readers, escapades of my youth that were illegal and to some of you, immoral. But I’m just taking the advice from a friend that says I need to laugh at least once everyday while I go through life’s progressions. 

Recalling bits and pieces of the pot head days made me laugh and brought back the pleasant thoughts of old friends.

A couple of years ago, around summertime, we were at a Pow Wow near Spooner, WI. A lady sat behind us and recognized us by my voice and she tapped me on the shoulder. It was Paula. We hadn’t seen each other in some 35 years. We sat and laughed about our antics. And more recent than that, I just said, "See you later", to one of my best friends in the world. Someone who has shared all the triumphs and heartaches, the birthing' and the buryin', right along with me.

It was a good visit, both when I was out in California and when he was here in Wisconsin. We also traveled all the way here and half way back together as well as spent time riding our motorcycles, working on the house, building and remodeling and having numerous jam sessions in the newly formed downstairs studio.

The rest of the Summer will be spent finishing the home projects, riding the new Triumph motorcycle and taking the Grandkids to the local swimming hole. If you had asked me back in the pot head days, many years ago, how I’d want my future to be, I’d have expressed a scenario just like the one I have, sans the heart attacks and the loss of my oldest daughter.

So, laugh often. Enjoy every day you can. Take those trips. Visit old friends. See the family members that live far away. Old memories may be good or bad, but seems like the funny ones are easier to share, especially with the people you went through them with.

Peace