My Ornery Wife

A post on Facebook reminded Tami of an funny incident that happened years ago.  I will relate it here on my blog so every one can have a good chuckle...at my expense...

Mom wanted her new outside thermometer put on an old bird-house post in her back yard...so...on a hot dry, summer day, I commenced with the project.  First of all, this was no ordinary thermometer...it was the kind that the NASA astronauts can read from the Space Station.  And as such...it required more that just hand tools to mount it to the post.  There were no outside plugins so I plugged the extension cord in the house, ran it out the back door and across the yard to the post.  I got Mom's electric drill and the attachments I needed.  Mom was showing me how and where on the post she wanted the thermometer and I marked the spots for drilling.  When I started drilling the holes, the drill worked real good for about five seconds...and then it just quit.  I took it down, looked it over, shook it a little, squeezed the trigger and...it worked!  Back to drilling and a few seconds later, it quit again.  I took it down, Mom and I looked it over, I wiggled the cord, squeezed the trigger and wah-lah!...it worked!  Back to drilling...same thing...this time I checked the drill cord to see if it was connected good...and it was...I wiggled the cord some more, tapped the drill on the post (this usually helps) and after all this...it starts working.  Back to the drilling!   Wouldn't you know it?...after a few seconds, it quit again!  I was getting frustrated by this time because it was hot, I was sweating, this was supposed to be a ten-minute job and THE AGGERVATIN' DRILL WASN'T WORKING!!!

About this time, I just happened to glance back toward Mom's house...Did I mention that Tami was with me that day and... Mrs. "Don't Want To Get All Hot And Sweaty" stayed inside in the air conditioning?...where the extension cord was plugged in?......My glance back at the house revealed her at the kitchen window, laughing and giving me a "little kiddie" wave!  The reason the drill wouldn't work?...she was unplugging the cottonpickin' cord!!  OK...what could we do but laugh with her?!  If the roles were reversed, I would have done the same thing!!  Mom and I went inside, had a laugh with Tami...and a glass of iced tea...and went and put up the thermometer without any further "interruptions"!

Brooklyn Pizza

Sometimes I find coolest places to eat.  If you read online reviews and take a chance every now and then, you can have some unique dining experiences.  I was working recently in Sturgeon, Missouri and had to spend the night in Kingdom City, near Fulton.  I read the reviews of Brooklyn Pizza and decided to try it.  It is on the northwest corner of courthouse square in Fulton and is relatively small.

There's nothing small about the pizza though!  Their only pizza is a 16"!  I ordered pepperoni, ham and black olives and it was scrumptious!

And then there was the live music...The band for the night was a Jazz band and since I am basically an eclectic music listener, I just sat back, munched pizza and enjoyed it!

Here is a couple of samples of the music.  These dudes were really getting into it and I had a front row seat!

If you ever find yourself in Fulton, in the evening, wanting something different for dinner...Check this place out!

Ever had the "Thumps"?

On Thursday night, Tami fixed spaghetti for supper and here's the deal.  It has to be Ragu sauce with my Mom's secret additives (which includes brown sugar).  It was absolutely delicious so...I ate three platefuls!  This may or may not have been the reason for the weird dreams I had, but I do know it was responsible for my indigestion.  When I sat up on the edge of the bed Friday morning, Tami woke up and asked the usual question "How are you this morning?"  This reply just popped into my head..."I think I had the Spaghetti Thumps."

It was a great privilege to grow up in the Ozarks and have the family that I had.  Every region and family has their own expressions, phrases, and idioms but I was especially blessed!  For some time now, I have been collecting the phrases that my Mom and Dad used.  When Dad had a minor discomfort, whether intestinal or otherwise, he would say "I guess I just have the Thumps."

You may not realize it but there is a medical condition called "Thumps".  In 1831 it was first diagnosed by a veterinarian...in a horse.  We call them hiccups but veterinarians call them "Thumps".  I don't think hiccups was what my Dad was referring to.

If you look up the etymology and translations of the word "Thump", things get mighty interesting.  It originated in the 1530's with the verb definition "to strike hard" and in the 1550's with the noun definition "a dull, heavy sound."  In Danish the word is "Dunk", in Catalan - "Volta", in Hungarian -"Puffanas", in Icelandic - "Thump"...   However, in the Swedish dialect the word is "dumpa"...hmmmmm.  We may be on to something here!

These are the times I wish I could just call up my Dad and say "Why did you call it the Thumps??"  All I know is this - I had the "Thumps" but all is well now since Tami just brought me a warm, homemade, slightly doughy, gingersnap cookie!  The "Thumps" are gone!!!

The Corner Post

The corner post stands on the north of the road,
Stained with the passage of time.
It is strange to mull over, consider and ponder, 
That the hands that helped form it were mine.

In 1969 we moved to the Conklin house just north of the Junction Hill Church.  Dad had also bought what we called "The Six Acres" just west of the church and across the dirt road.  As I recall, there was no fence or a very poor fence around "The Six Acres", where the roads were, on the east and south sides.  For some reason or other, Dad abandoned the normal process of large wooden corner posts and decided to put in large concrete corner posts.  To be more precise and technical, these were ginormous, colossal, honkin' big, monstrositous corner posts.  And here's the "skinny" on how they were put in.

Dad built some forms out of corrugated steel pipes or as he called them..."Whistles".  These are the pipes that you put in a road ditch and cover with gravel so you can drive across it and the water in the ditch goes through the pipe.  He took a piece of the pipe about six foot long and fourteen inches in diameter and cut it in half lengthwise.  Then he bolted angle iron to the edges of each piece where he could put the pipe back together by bolting the angle irons on each piece together.  We would set the form over a post hole that was slightly bigger than the pipe in diameter and about three to four feet deep.  I'm not sure how Dad braced the pipe to keep it from falling in the hole but he did and then leveled it where the post would be straight.

The post hole?...Yes....the post hole.  How do you dig a post hole?  Dad started with a spud bar.  Now some people, I have learned, call it a crow bar, a pry bar or even a punch bar but I'll just stick with spud bar since I'm spinnin' this yarn.  It was a solid steel bar, usually five to six feet long with the handle end about an inch diameter and the business end a couple of inches in diameter and I'd say it weighed in at twelve to fifteen pounds.  The business end had a chisel point and you used it to break up the dirt (and rocks...and more rocks.....and even more rocks) so they could be dipped out with the post hole diggers (affectionately called PHD's).

The PHD's had two handles that were attached by a hinge to curved metal blades that kinda had the appearance of crawdad pinchers (that's crayfish for all y'all north of the Mason/Dixon).  You squeezed the handles together, which held the pinchers apart and jammed them into dirt and rocks that were broken up with the spud bar. Then, you pulled the handles apart (which squeezed the dirt in the pinchers), lifted the dirt "load" out of the post hole and set it where you wanted to pile the dirt, squeezed the handles back together, the dirt fell out on the pile and you went back for another "load"!  I know this is real complicated for some of y'all but try to stay with me here...  After you got all the dirt out that you could with the PHD's, you stepped back and let the "Spudder" spud for awhile, then used the PHD's, then the spud bar, then the PHD's until you got the post hole big and deep enough.

After the pipe form was set over the post hole and braced, it was time for the concrete.  I asked Ralph about this but he didn't remember either..."Did we mix the concrete to fill the posts?  I did some ciphering and come up with a half to three-quarters of a yard of concrete per post.  Now this was doable with a portable mixer but it seems like I remember Dad having two sets of forms and if he did, a concrete truck would make a trip for that much concrete.

After the concrete set up, we pulled the forms off and you had a concrete post, in the shape of the pipe that was solid in the ground!

We didn't put anything in the concrete to tie fencing to, so the barb wire was just wrapped around the post and stretched to the next corner post or line brace.

If my memory serves me right, Dad put in at least seven of these concrete posts around "The Six Acres".  Now Folks!...that weren't no small task!

If you drive west, past the Junction Hill Church, through the crossroad, about two or three hundred feet past, you'll see the corner post pictured above on the right or north side of the road.  If you take a right at the crossroad, go up the little hill, there will be a couple of these corner posts on your left or west.