Everywhere is Somewhere

Back in the Middle Ages, when I was 7 years old someone gave me a diary for Christmas, brown leather (or leatherette) with a lock and a tiny key, the kind that is always lost.

I lived in Northeastern Colorado, that vast anonymous space that just received a sh__load of snow. That year we had a New Year's blizzard as well, but the most terrible thing was that our neighbor's twenty-something son was killed at a railroad grade crossing in the country. My first entry was "Bruce L. Hxxxxxx killed last night."

Poor Mrs. Hxxxxx who lived next door had nothing but bad luck. Her husband had been killed by lightning several years before. Her youngest daughter, my playmate had had a (fortunately mild) case of polio. Deedee had an older sister who became a "bad" girl, as we said back then, the word slut not being in vogue. Mrs. Hxxxxx worked at a dry cleaners. I think she rented out an apartment in her house. Who knows how she survived to raise those daughters?
My mom thought the house smelled bad and was dirty and wouldn't let me eat there.

There was a dog, Teddy, an amiable mutt who mated with the neighbor's cocker spaniel in front of a large group of children. The adults came out and tried to console poor Deedee who was screaming because the dogs were "stuck together."

The blizzard was so bad that the road between our town and the next was a canyon with ten feet of snow on either side. The temperature went below zero and my dad drove me to school, only three blocks away, a first, last and only
time. And better yet, school was cancelled for a few days, because the town couldn't bus the farm kids to school yet.

The newspaper dateline is always Denver, and there's never any mention of the little towns that are buried. Finally today I saw "Salina, Kansas," but no mention of the specific places between Denver and Salina which must be at least 500 miles of high plaines and wheat farming. The middle of nowhere. But at my young friend likes to say, "everywhere is somewhere." How cool is that for six year old wisdom?

For the first time ever I watched television and saw the ball drop in Times Square in New York. How do people get so worked up over such a made up non-event? New Year's Eve is perhaps the most overrated evening of the year. I do recall a few good parties over the years. That's really all you need. A few good parties, a few memories, of which watching the ball drop will not be one.

Resolutions:

The perrenial one, i.e. lose 15 pounds. Last year I lost five, kept them off, and did not gain over the holidays. But I have a big high school reunion in August. Those folks remember a 100 pound Grapeshot. Zowie!

Redo my websit myself

Finish Festival Madness

Find a publisher/agent for World of Mirrors and Promiscuous Mode

Start new 1928 California book

The 15 pounds and the agent/publisher will be the hardest. The weight is under my control. Nice to know something is. Here's to salad and small portions. Less cheese, and more veggies. Good lord, this will involve sucking it up some more.

By the way, some of those little buried in snow towns are Hudson, Wiggins, Weldona, Fort Morgan, Brush, Akron, Sterling, Yuma, Russell, Oakley and Great Bend and Hayes, the boyhood home of Walter P. Chrysler.

Happy New Year


Grapeshot