Mondays Missives

• I've ridden both an elephant and camel. It was hard to stay up on the camels hump and I kept sliding down its neck which got on the camels nerves and he would turn and bellow trying to reach me with its head. I was terrified and screamed,"It's trying to bite me!" to my dad. He laughed until he was in tears saying,"That thing isn't going to bite you" and made me stay on it until he got tired of it.




• He was a lot of fun that way.




• He was a plumber and would let me work the pipe snake sometimes to break up clogged pipes while he was visiting in the customers house. Based on my age when he died my educated guess would be I was about ten years old when that would happen.




• He did the plumbing for the Waggoner Mansion in Decatur and ticked me off thoroughly by not taking me when he went. He said it was, "wet and musty like being in a cellar"




• I usually demand even adult nieces and nephews call me uncle.




• Had the best dry rubbed ribs ever at Chilis today and I lived for over 2 years in Tennessee.




• Things that surprise me in the world we live in today: Americans that think the postal service is taxpayer funded. In Africa albinos live in terror of having there limbs cut off for there magical properties.


• I took the above picture of that boat near lake Habbaniyah in Iraq. I made me think of how you can't tell if anything over there is new or ancient- everything is varying shades of brown and technologies have changed little over centuries.