GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A Rememberamble for Thursday, August 28, 2025 ..... Good morning friends, well, here we are again, I do love seeing you here once more. I hope I never take you for granted, and hope the Lord keeps me mindful of what a blessing it is to have this friendship and kinship with you, our GF&FL family. Our annual Gathering is only a little more than two weeks away, it will be here before you know it. Each year, I get a bit worried that no one will come! I suppose itis because so many of our members send their regrets, and it seems none are coming.

Each year I am pleasantly surprised when we have a good crowd. I hope it is such, this time too. Again, let me remind you that we are looking for a few of you to tell and share a funny story with us at this, our first Story Revival which is part of our Gathering this time. If you are a good story teller and want to participate, message me as soon as you can so we can place you on the list for the event. I look forward to it all, and pray you may join us. Yesterday afternoon, the boyz and I were lazing about, and since they are repaving our road, the Canoochee Garfield Road, there was the sound of paving machinery and dump trucks, plenty of backup horns, and the like.

It did not interrupt my napping, but now and then the boyz would launch into low-earth orbit over some slight noise out at the road, and bark as if the Martians were attacking us again. The center pivot was running in the field on the Garfield side of us here, and the power went out for a second, but came back on, thankfully. I got up from the headquarters of the Georgia Folk and Farm Life Facebook group, and Georgia Folk and Farm Life.com website, and peered out the kitchen door to see if I could discern what had made the lights dim out.

The center pivot, which is an electric well pump, was still emitting some water but it was obviously shutting down. the workers out at the road did not seem alarmed, and were milling around as usual. So, using my Sherlock Homes-like amazing mental skills, I deduced the possibility of the powerful jet of water from the end gun had hit one of the light pole's wires in the field, and short circuited it. The gun was right there spraying a pole's wires when the problem occurred, the only other thing it could have been was one of the dump trucks raised up and hit a wire.

But there was no indication that it had been a dump truck. Some may be skeptical of a pivot's end gun jet of water causing an electrical problem, but it has happened before. If it was that, I wonder why it had not happened before as the pivot covers the same footprint always. I do not know. After a while, a couple of Georgia Power Company trucks arrived, drove through the cotton and out to a pole in the field not far from the house. From 7:20-8:44pm the power was off as they worked to restore it. It is still a mystery to me, as to why it flickered but stayed on for more than an hour before going off, I reckon they might have turned it off to fix something related to the initial glitch an hour or so before.

Electricity is a funny thing. Yesterday morning I was on the subject of how we coped with the heat and humidity and promised to revisit the topic this morning. A sidenote, folks always say, "it ain't heat, it's the humidity," but I say, "it ain't the heat, it's the stupidity." I digress, Yessir, back in the those hot, hot days of summer before a/c, it was well, uhm, it was hot. It was hot a lot. The old houses generally had "tin" roofs, as we say, although they were sheet steel with a tin or galvanized coating. As the day's sun bore down upon the roof and everything else in our world, the roofs would expand and pop, then "of an" evening as the sun waned they popped loudly now and then as they contracted.

The chickens would drop their wings and hassle to get rid of body heat. The return home for dinner at midday, was longed for by all. A good dinner was followed by about an hour's nap by all, not in beds, no, not when they had been toiling in the sun. They lay scattered about on the floor or the porches. The hogs lay in the mud cheek to jowl, and grunted and fussed in displeasure now and again. Farm families who worked out in the sun, knew to cover up to minimize sun damage to their skin, and wore long-sleeve shirts, long dresses or britches, and a hat or bonnet on their head. This caused them to sweat, which evaporated and cooled them a bit. I recall those days with certain smells that come to mind.

There seemed to be chinaberry trees shading much of an old farmplace, and as they fell on the ground, yellow and overripe, they had a sour smell like nothing else, not bad smell, just a distinct smell. The chinaberries mingled with the hog pen's mud and added themselves together. Yard chickens and guineas dropped their droppings, so to speak, and their aroma added to the pungency, there were other contributors, such as insecticides and pesticides used and stored. Old corncobs, dried manure, an outhouse, sour hog-slops, the smell of dog fennels, and hot heart pine and many more things contributed to the recipe aroma that lingers yet in my mind, as the Georgia sun heated it all and made it one forever.

I will leave now, and rest a bit more, me and the boyz, and we thank you for coming. Numbers 6: 24-26 KJV ..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me