THURSDAY, APRIL, 09/2026 ..... wade

Okay, there you are, I was looking all over for you, hadn't seen hide nor hair of you. I was thinking about how tough we had it growing up, you know, the hardships that were part and parcel of our daily lives. We suffered through things back then, it was our lot in life, so we bore up under it with no complaint...well, maybe some complaint...okay, okay, we squalled, pouted, rolled our eyes, and stomped off! And yes, something hard and heavy usually hit us in the back of the head as we did so. Yeah, old folks really hated to let a youngun by with eye rolling and "slumping off!" "Don't you roll yore eyes and slump off from me, I'll give you something to cry about!" Yep, nope, and no mama or daddy we ever knew said, "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you." I know you understood my use of, "yep, nope," together as a unit of speech. Verily, verily, I tell you that we suffered hardships and indignities galore. I will admit, suffering was generally dealt out by life to young and old alike. Deprivation and hard labor was common as gnats on a summer-time dog's butt. Y'all are laughably soft today, you never lived with ketchup in glass bottles, ketchup they even wrote songs about the anticipation of. It took the whole family and some borderline cuss words just to get the "iron" lid from the bottle of ketchup, because ketchup was what scientists call a "catalyst," that precipitated the formation of chemical weld-like bonds between the glass bottle and the lid. Ice? No, not ICE, I mean ice, for ya glass of tea, if you wanted it, you arm-wrassled one of those aluminum ice trays with the "easy-lever," gizmo that shattered your ice, most of which broke camp and landed astray all about the kitchen, and you had to search the pieces out, pick them up from the floor and check for hair or other impurities before putting it in your glass. We answered phones, with no clue as to who was calling, we blundered along just answering phones willy-nilly like idiots. We had to slick shine and polish our shoes, yep, sit right on the floor working on them like ignernt little leprechauns. We were like small dogs milling about underneath the dining table waiting for someone to drop a morsel, as we waited for a grown-up to let us have the funny paper, when and only when they had read it from corner to corner. We were like junior businessmen/hobos walking the roads looking for Co-Colar bottles of all brands and flavors...(yep, you know we called them all Co-Colars)...to take "to the store," and nobody drove us there, we hoofed it the whole way. We ate dirt and we loved it. Alright, enough sweet nostalgia about the good old days, let's move along, friends.

There do be a difference in these bees...

Okay, let's finish with a brief mention of carpenter bees, and mortar/mason bees. We are all familiar with those large, slow moving, loud buzzing, carpenter bees, but have you ever seen mortar bees? They are smaller and bore holes in mortar between bricks, and especially like to bore into chimneys, it seems. It was said in the days of stick and mud chimneys, mason bees bored so many holes in them that smoke poured from scores of holes while in use. Alright I have to leave now and go do some important stuff. Nap, yep, nap...

Numbers 6: 24-26, KJV

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