GOOD MORNING, FRIENDS

A REMEMBERAMBLE FOR SEPTEMBER 29, 2025

I can hear the Mamas and Papas singing Monday, Monday, in the background. Tomorrow morning maybe my mind will conjure the Moody Blues singing, "Tuesday Afternoon!" Oh, if you are from Kite or Meeks, you can listen to it at anytime of the day, you do not have to wait until the afternoon. The Moody Blues' songs are among the most beautiful ever performed and recorded, to me. I don't mind if you do not like them, that leaves more for me!

Yeah, well, you know I must toss a bit of nonsense in the mix to get your noggin warmed up for the day, like the old televisions used to require. We had a bit'o rain Friday and Saturday, and it was welcomed with open arms. It seems the tropical storm that was expected to bring heavy rains to our coastal states is going to be dragged to the east by the hurricane that will "edge up with it," grab its ear and tug it along as it goes.

Sort of how the dreaded V.E. Glenn who was Swainsboro's school principal when was a boy. I don't think I would have these unsightly jug-ears if that old bald-headed, walking buzzard skeleton, had not dragged me by the ears down those hallowed halls so many times! Oops, I did not really mean to disparage the cadaverous old coot. He may have actually produced an egg-sack of spawn and I would not want to hurt his great-great-great-grand-hatchlings' feelings.

Arachnids are people too, ya know. Speaking of school, how about those great long-gone school smells of yore? The green, regurgitated snot-looking liquid soap from those old soap sconces in the bathrooms, or the white powder they used at times, I can still smell them, along with those brown-islamic paper towels, that somehow still smelled like pulpwood. There was the aroma of sweeping compound, cherry or vanilla, no, wait, that was the "School Janitor, Commercial Lysol," heavy-duty school spray.

The sweeping compounds came in two flavors, one green and the other was red, the red smelled like the green and green smelled like the red, which were red and green wintergreen, the same but different. Oh, yeah, chalk dust, chalk dust was in a class by itself, like the boy from Norristown with B.O.. Ooh, there was the mimeograph machine whiskey, that was really 200 proof Everclear Grain Alcohol, that simply smelling it, put some of us upon a life's course for chronic alcoholism.

Let's round this out with good old puddles of school bus vomit, yep, somehow school buses encouraged some kids to upchuck regularly, as if on cue, and it smelled unique on the floor of a school bus, as it got tracked back and forth. Okay, a last minute addition that just came to me, the highly condensed cloud of cigarette smoke that crawled from under the gap between floor and door to the teacher's lounge, as it tried to escape and catch its breath.

Okay, as I posted about the man who was killed in the smokehouse by lightning, witnessed by my grandfather in the "nineteen-teens," I wanted to balance that terrible story with a funny, old time thunderstorm story told to me by my great-uncle Ernest Townsend, 1901-1988. Uncle Ernest was a teenager, and had gone to spend the weekend with a schoolmate and his family between the Norristown Community in Emanuel County, and Hodo Community in Johnson.

The family was a strange one, led by a father who admirably filled the shoes of one who led by peculiar example. Uncle Ernest said the family was a large one, and not wealthy, but well off, and ate very well. It was one reason he liked to go spend a weekend there now and again. The mama and older sisters put a huge spread out at every meal. The old man stressed politeness, and required any youngun reaching to grab or stab any food from the platters or bowls, to "name it," and be thankful for it.

Once the old man said grace, uncle Ernest said it was just a cacophony (yes, uncle Ernest was well educated and said cacophony) and melee of hands from all directions "grabbing'n "stobbing," amidst a chorus of , "thanky fer a chicken back," thanky fer a chicken wang," thanky fer a biskit," thanky fer some taters," etc.. Uncle Ernest was always delighted to eat good food and watch that bunch in action. The old man had other peculiarities, for example, what he did when a storm came up.

They lived in a nice, solid, well built farmhouse, and had a smokehouse out back, that like most smokehouses of the day, was the most precarious edifice on the place. Rather than stay in the house when bad weather came, he insisted they all go to the smokehouse. You may recall from the other story of the man dying in the smokehouse from lightning, had his hands go to the smokehouse in dangerous weather.

I do not know what the attraction to riding out storms in a smokehouse was, but it seems it was done back then. One day when the whole family was busy all around the place doing afternoon work, a severe storm rolled in upon them, and they all dropped what they were doing, and ran to the smokehouse, even the ones safely ensconced inside the house ran to join them out there. There was a hole in the door for the chain that was nailed on the outside to be fed through to keep the door closed.

Of course, it could only be placed through and secure the door from the outside. The father had long bony fingers, and had an index finger poked through that chain hole and was trying to hold it shut even as the storm raged and good sized hail clattered down on the smokehouse. Uncle Ernest had lagged back and came out behind them onto the back porch, and had no intention of leaving the house for the smokehouse.

Instead, he stayed inside the house and watched it all from the screened door to the porch, as he stood in the kitchen. The old man and his wife were keening prayers loudly, beseeching mercy from on high, as he held the door shut with great effort, when the very last of the brood, a teenage girl, almost marryin' size, so to speak, came late and was running to join the clan in the rickety abode of the smokehouse.

She was soaked, bruised by the hail, and was running for her life, her daddy saw through the cracks in the door, and stood ready to fling the door open and pull her to "safety," when she was close enough. As she passed between uncle Ernest's delighted eyes, and her old daddy's fearful ones, a huge pecan limb "turn't" loose, and fell right behind her, she dropped immediately to her knees in the rain, wind and hail, clasped her hands together, then threw them straight up in the air, and hollered, "OH SPEAK SOFTLY TO ME, SWEET JESUS!"

She got up, and her daddy threw the door open, snatched her inside, closed the door as quickly as he could, and thrust that bony finger out through the hole once more to hold it shut. Whereupon he joined the rest of the family as they prayed loudly. A right nice size hail stone struck the old man's arthritic knuckle, and he hollered "son o-of-a-b****!" And the prayers stopped abruptly. The storm left as quickly as it had come.

Uncle Ernest said he would not have missed any of that show for "love nor money." I have gone a bit long, but I hope you enjoyed it, as I like to get you started with a laugh on Mondays. Bless you, and know we love ya.

NUMBERS 6: 24-26 KJV

..... we boyz three, babee conway, lil merle, & me