Posted on 04/01/2017 10:32:33 AM PDT by blueunicorn6
"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
Young men spend a lot of time thinking of love. I sure did when I was a young man. Spring would come with Daffodils and Robins and me having thoughts of love. Of course, I was having thoughts of love in Summer, Fall and Winter, too, but Spring really seemed to bring out the thoughts of love in me. I grew up in the 70s and the girls wore Hot Pants. Hot Pants seemed to bring out the thoughts of love in me, too. I'd like to see Tennyson write a poem about Hot Pants. I did. I submitted it to our school's literary magazine. They sent it back and the Advisor wrote a note on it saying they didn't publish porn. How I have suffered for art.
In the Spring an old man's fancy turns to thoughts of garbage. It's time for that Spring lawn cleanup. My wife went from wearing Hot Pants in the Spring to wearing flannel shirts and boots and supervising my yard work. I think she could still get by wearing Hot Pants, but the branches would scratch her legs.
Don't get me wrong. I like things to be tidy. Lord knows the Drill Sergeant made me like tidiness.
"Your socks aren't folded the same length!"
He measured my socks with a ruler. This led to my footlocker being turned over and dumped into the middle of the barracks floor.
I tried explaining this concept to my wife after we were married. I measured her socks. She asked me for the ruler. She hit me with the ruler. The Sergeant probably hit me with the ruler, too. We didn't kiss and make up afterwards. Me and the Sergeant, that is. His loss.
I had to trim the Lilac bushes and the Apple tree for Spring cleanup. I know how to trim bushes and trees. I was a professional at that with The United States Forest Service. That and standing on a hill holding my hose. I was fighting a forest fire. They told me to get up the hill and grab the hose and spray the trees. The little water pump could only pump the water about thirty feet up the hill. I stood there with my limp hose watching a forest fire come roaring at me like college students going to the beach on Spring Break. I maintained my family tradition and ran like a chicken. But I digress.
I trimmed down the Lilac bush and the Apple tree. I probably should have just cut them both down, but my wife likes the Lilacs and the squirrels like the apple tree. I'm not a big fan of squirrels but they tease the dogs almost as much as I do, so I feel a kindred spirit with them.
The branches and limbs have to go somewhere, so I load them into the back of the pickup. I love pickups. Some of my best Spring thoughts of love were in pickups with my high school girlfriend. Her Dad was not a "thoughts of love" kind of guy. He was more of a "thoughts of shooting young Romeos" kind of guy. Those kinds of guys read Field And Stream and not poetry. His loss.
I drove the pickup to our small city's dump. They have rules at the dump. They have those rules posted in big letters on a sign right when you enter the dump. I was kind of surprised that there are so many rules at a dump. You would think you just go to the dump and throw out the branches and be gone. There have evidently been belligerent people who have come to this dump in the past.
Bad dump people.
I like to get along with my fellow man so I read the rules and attempted to live my life at the dump in such a way that the employees would consider me to be a Golden Dumper. You know, someone they are happy to see at the dump.
I drove the pickup over to the special spot in the dump for limbs. That's right. The dump has special spots for different garbage. There was a special spot for refrigerators. And God help you if you don't remove the door from a refrigerator before putting it in the dump. They will throw you in dump jail if you don't remove that refrigerator door. And there are Seagulls in dump jail. Mean Seagulls. Mean Seagulls carrying shanks and shivs. I had to put shanks and shivs because I got a lecture once on Free Republic about the technical differences between a shank and a shiv. FReepers sure do know a lot about some things in life that might surprise you.
I managed to find the right spot to dump my limbs and branches. I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to load branches and limbs into the back of the pickup. Evidently, there is a science to this. Tim the dump guy gave me the benefit of his experience with loading limbs. He didn't give me the benefit of his help, he gave me the benefit of his words.
Limbs have some suppleness to them. By this I mean that they can bend. When they bend, they can snap back and hit you in the face. This is known as "The Limb Slap". At least that's what Tim told me. I told Tim a few things.
Turns out I hadn't read the dump rules close enough. They have a rule against swearing. Tim was a dump-narc and ran right to his boss to tattle on me.
The boss came over and proceeded to tell me the possible punishments for using filthy language at the filthy dump. I could get a timeout. I got one of those once at Free Republic for swearing. I swore at those ISIS rats. I swore A LOT at those ISIS rats. I deserved my timeout and contemplated my sins while sitting in the Free Republic penalty box.
They could ban me from the dump. Well, I'm already banned from Yemen and Peoria and I didn't really want to be excluded from more places, so I asked him not to ban me.
He made me apologize for swearing at Tim. I apologized most sincerely to Tim. I got back into my pickup, properly shamed and remorseful.
I flipped them the Double Chicken.
I only go to the dump once a year anyway.
I can have my wife go if we need to go sooner. She could wear her Hot Pants. They'd probably let her swear then. She can beat the snot out of seagulls anyway.
“Please be sure to “break down” your cardboard boxes.”
Hahaha! NEVER.
This used to work well during blizzards to get your drive way plowed by the city, one fifth of booze put on an agreed place. Worked well during the Blizzard of 78.
Very witty. Thanks for the laughs!
I am having trouble that I fear is going to follow me to
the dump.- I’ve been trying to get shed of all dishes
that have LEAD GLAZE. - I test them by placing them in the
microwave & turning it on. If the dish starts spitting
sparks & maybe causing problems with weird noises; into
the trash it goes. Only, those plates are HEAVY. I’ve
managed to toss about 3 or them; but there are still about
five or six left to go. They make the garbage bag really
heavy as lead. - So. I persevere. I do not want to send
them to the thrift store as that isn’t nice. I won’t wish
anything I find unhealthy for me off on anyone else. I
keep on keeping on. :o/
LOL — well put. You’ve written some other good ones in the past.
Two things, many of those plates are collectible and there are people weeping to hear that you are throwing them away when they would give you money so they could put them in their display case.
The second thing is that it is not just lead that causes sparks but any metal.
So if there is any gold or silver in the pattern you will get sparks.
See, this is what I like about Free Republic.
You can learn so much stuff here.
“A short dog of wine”
I had no idea what that was.
I had to look it up.
I thought it was a drunken dashhound or something.
Now, in order for me to remember it, I will have to find a way to use it in my conversation five times today.
“Hey, Honey! The kitchen faucet is leaking like a short dog of wine.”
Nawwwww.....that ain’t right.
“Honey! I’m going out to get the mail and a short dog of wine.”
Still not good.
Can you use “short dog” with other stuff or just wine?
I mean, could you like say, “A short dog of peanut butter” or “A short dog of shotgun shells”?
And if you can say that, can you say it three times fast?
I can’t.
Well, if you’re going to throw stuff into the trash because it spits sparks and makes funny noises when you put it in the microwave, then I’m not coming over to your house for dinner because I spit sparks and make funny noises when somebody puts me in a microwave.
And for goodness sakes people. No jokes about drying cats in the microwave. Some people get really ticked off about that.
Besides, you dry cats in the clothes dryer.
My Dad always said, “Use the proper tool for the job.”
I think my Hot Pants poem is in that book.
If not, it probably should be.
I place my empty pizza box with grease stains in the recycle bin with the other paper. It’s a sin according to the recycling brochure but I defy the rule makers and I feel deep guilt for doing it.
So much guilt has built up in me that I’ve increased my pizza intake to twice a week to try to assuage the psychological harm the recycling brochure has caused me.
Oh, that is good.
Dang, that was funny..!
Coming of age in the early 1970s, I got to the hot pants part and became lost in reverie.
Hope the rest of the article was good......
lol great story, thanks for sharing
1. Guinea Red. Undrinkable Italian wine.
2, Christian Brothers and their knockoffs, serious wino stuff.
3. Some very poor Frog and Kali wines you used to impress you main squeeze.
I was lost in reverie, once. There are some bad parts of town in reverie. Parts of town where they jaywalk and stuff.
You better know where you’re going in reverie.
Yes, I remember Hot Pants.
There was this girl who sat in front of me in Algebra class.
She was the best thing in that Algebra class. She’s about the only thing I remember from that Algebra class.
That and letters are numbers.
Still haven’t figured that one out.
“A = 7”
OK.
9 = Rutabaga
Prove it doesn’t.
Yep.
In college, I took this girl to a fancy restaurant.
I ordered some wine.
They had this guy come over and open the bottle of wine for me. Usually, I’d just crack the neck of the bottle against the side of the table to open it, but, this was a fancy place. No sporks or nothing.
Turns out this guy was a sum-a-liar or something like that and he was some kind of wine expert. So was my Uncle Dave.
He pulls the cork on the bottle and hands it to me.
I says, “What do I look like....a garbage can?”
I threw the cork at him. Hit him right in the eye.
He’s standing there all teary-eyed telling me I’m supposed to sniff the cork.
Well, I know that in big cities they sniff stuff, but I wasn’t going to go to jail.
I told him to sniff his own dang cork.
He just shook his head and put the bottle of wine on the table and walked away mumbling something about “uncultured jackasses” or something.
Wasn’t a bad bottle of wine.
I asked them to put some 7-Up in it.
All the employees came out to see who ordered that.
I was pretty famous there for awhile.
What?! No Boone’s Farm?
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