Give 'em What They Want

Laymore Witts was telling the barbershop gang this morning about his kids badgering him for a TV in their rooms. He has a son and two daughters. He decided he would give them each a TV set (of a sort.)
Laymore went down to B & B TV repair and found three old TV sets (not the flat kind but the ones that were big because they needed tubes to make 'em work.) He took out all the innards and threw the tubes and wires away. Then he build a nice book shelf that would just fit in the frame. Next, he contacted the English teacher for each of his children and got a list of the recommended books for summer reading. He ordered these online and when they came in placed them in the appropriate TV frame. While the children were at school, Laymore and his wife, Lurleen, installed the sets in their children's rooms. That was two weeks ago. Laymore told us this morning, that he has not heard one word from any of his kids about his nice surprise.

An Alarm That Works

Ledlowe Bunches is a kinda inventor. Nothing big, just little things that make life simplier for himself and his family. His latest is a real special alarm clock designed especially for his wife, Maudelle. Now the way Ledlowe works is that he looks at a problem, studies it thoroughly, and then comes up with a solution. It seems his wife was having a hard time waking up in the morning and they tried every kind of alarm clock available on the market. Everything from foghorn loud to flashing lights. Nothing would rouse old Maudelle and Ledlowe who slept upstairs would hear the alarm and have to come down and get his wife up on a daily basis. Ludlowe come up with the idea that based on the fact that the reason he was sleeping upstairs in the first place was because his snoring kept his wife up at night. So, he invented this alarm that made a sound just like a man's snoring. He never tells how his stuff works it just does. And work it did. Maudelle was up and running at the first snore, but not before letting out a stream of cuss words all directed at her husband for the atrocious noise he was making. I asked Ledlowe, "With all your inventive skills, why didn't you just come up with something to stop your snoring." He said, "I may be good, but I ain't that good."

If It Ain't Broke....

Lem Bedweather came into the barbershop this morning with dirty pants and muddy boots. One of the fellows asked if he had been wallowing with his pigs.

Lem said, "No, I ain't been in the sty. I been moving my satellite dish back into the front yard where it sat for twenty years. My wife has been after me for nineteen and a half years to move it to the back. I asked her if she hadn't heard about New Coke and told her 'If it ain't broke I ain't gonna fix it.'  But last week I weakened and did dig it up and moved it. The conception warn't no good back there and my wife's stories, you know that come on right after noontime kept getting interrupted with snow, kinda like when we first got the TV, doncha know? What broke the camel's back was a blackout just when they announced whether or not this guy, Tom, was the daddy of Susan's baby. That sent Mary Leigh into a stream of tears like I ain't never seen before. Anyway, it just warn't working. So I moved it back where it belonged."

Just so y'all understand, Lem's satellite ain't one of the new, smaller versions but a great big one, like the ones NASA reaches out into space trying to receive communications from other life out in the universe. It is an eyesore, but it is on his property. I long since accepted it and consider it one of the seven wonders of Harper County, right up there with Bernard Biggs leaning silo and Billy Joe Berkson's two acre plot of weeping willow trees.

Where To Sweep First

This morning I read this quote of the day: "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy

It got me to thinking about something my grandmother used to say a lot: "Sweep around your own doorstep first." I'll have to admit I got tired of hearing her say this, I reckon because sometime it came too close to home. She usually said this when I was criticizing some friend or family member.

 I can remember using this expression only once myself, on my second wife. I am convinced that woman only married me as a project to change me. She woke up correcting my behavior and the last thing she had to say at night was about her observations of my actions during the day. Lord knows I needed remediation in several areas, but her methods did nothing to change me and provoked a passive aggressive (I think that's what you call it) response to her prodding. I decided one day to give her a dose of her own medicine and boy did that backfire. I simply mentioned that when she finished cooking, her kitchen looked like an L.A. street gang had spent the night there. She cried for three days, didn't speak to me for a week, and installed a barbwire fence down the middle of our bed. A week later she broke the cold war when she noticed a dirty sock I had left just under the bed.

After she was hit and killed by that streetcar in New Orleans, I did mourn her loss. There were many things about her I missed. Her constant badgering was not among them.

My Cousin's Book

My Atlanta cousin has a new book out. The title is Tales of Harper (he heard a lot of the stories from me, the good ones) and is available on www.xlibris.com and through other major outlets. And that's all I got to say about that.

Shocking Treatment

When Billy Jack Jentz explained to Fred Barnweight the difficulty he was having with that wild horse he brought home from Louisiana, Fred got to thinking. He told Billy Jack he might be able to help him. It seems Fred's brother had been treated for a very similar condition, he would fight anybody any time for any reason. Things got so bad he was institutionalized and the ultimate treatment was shock therapy. The brother returned home a new man and for the last twenty or so years has led a sedate and productive life. Fred could see no reason why shock treatment would not work on the wild horse. He showed up the next morning with a couple of Sears Die Hard batteries and a large jar of vaseline. His brother had told him about the vaseline. The hard part was getting the horse wired up but with the help of four or five farm hand they finally succeeded. Fred told everybody to get out of the way while he made the final connection to the double battery set up. It was all over in five seconds. The corral was destroyed and the horse hasn't been seen since. Fred tried to get out of the path of the fury but was less than successful. Folks who went to visit him in the hospital said they could not recognize him even after the head to toe bandages were removed. He told one of his visitors that he had learned his lesson. He said next time he would only use one battery.

How Not to Tame a Wild Horse

We ain't got no real cowboys here in Harper. But that don't keep some folks for thinking they are. Billy Jack Jentz decided he wanted to get a real wild horse and train him just like they do in the movies. So he went to a horse show and asked the fellow running it for such an animal. He was told they didn't have nothing like that to sell but the there was a guy who lived out from Baton Rouge who had a horse he was trying to get rid of. He didn't have the heart to shoot it but in all reality it needed to be shot. That horse wouldn't let anyone within ten feet of him and had injured at least a half a dozen of family members and farm workers. Jack drove down with his horse trailer and came back with the animal. His story of how they got the horse in the trailer is a good one, but since it involves shooting the animal with some kind of stun gun and sticking it with sedatives I won't tell it. Anyway he brought it home and put it in a reinforced corral down by the barn. For weeks he tried to get close to that horse and was about to give up when Fred Barnweight happened to come by on a mission from his wife to buy some eggs from Billy Jack's wife. Fred had a solution that I will tell about tomorrow.