by Pa Rock
Crabby Old Man
This morning I was up well before dawn cracked, and was on the road to Springfield, Missouri, for a doctor's appointment just as the night was beginning to change to day. Springfield is one hundred miles - exactly - from where I live. I had an appointment for lab work at 8:05 a.m. and then had to sit around for a visit with the doctor's assistant at 10:30, so I managed to get in some reading while I waited.
The labs were "fasting" which meant that I drove that hundred miles on an empty stomach without my usual wake-up iced tea, but the lab tech gave me a couple of graham crackers and a small can of apple juice after she took my blood and urine - because I had been such a good boy!
The only thing of significance that I saw on the drive over to the big city were three separate buckboards of Amish near Diggins, Missouri. One had three adults in the buckboard seat, another had two older ladies, and the third had a young couple with a pre-adolescent girl sitting in the back of the buckboard facing on-coming traffic. All were dressed in their traditional black attire, including wide brimmed straw hats for the men and bonnets for the women. Even though the Amish keep their buckboards off of the actual road itself, almost all car and truck drivers are exceedingly careful and shift to the inside lane when they see that they are coming up on a horse-drawn conveyance along the side of the road.
Weather reports started to get serious as I got close to Springfield, and the sky began to darken. I arrived at the medical complex just as big drops of rain started to hit the windshield. By the time I had spent the morning inside of the building and came back out, the storm was over and the heat and humidity were rising. Now West Plains is under a tornado watch until 7:00 p.m. (I have an exceptionally good basement - however, if one of the fifty-foot pines in my back yard were to blow over onto the house, it might take awhile before I could dig my way out. But as Gilda Radner used to say, "It's always something!")
Any regular readers of "Pa Rock's Ramble," and there are a few, might want to be sure and check in tomorrow when I anticipate sharing some special news.
Until then . . . share the road and keep some food and water in the basement!
1 comment:
Keep an axe and a saw in your basement, along with a flashlight. Or just a bottle of whiskey.
Unfortunately, I don't have a basement here at this house. However, at my previous old farmhouse, I put a trap door in the closet floor for access to the old fruit cellar. I had fixed it up with some emergency supplies and a couple of chairs. One night after being ordered to get to cover by the weather guy, Ron Hearst, we put the two cats into their pet carriers, gathered up the dog and his doggy bed, a chest of ice, two glasses, and a bottle of Canadian blended whiskey, and brought all of that down into the cellar. Everyone was happy ... except the cats.
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