TRAVELIN' TUESDAY

In the "olden days" we didn't have 4 lane, divided, super highways to zoom us  across America like there is today!

We had narrow, undivided, two lane highways that went through every little town along the route.

Route 67, for example.

When we drove from St.Louis to my Grandpa's farm near Silva, Missouri (not far from Piedmont, if that helps), we had the pleasure of going through Fredricktown, Farmington, Bonne Terre (Good Earth), and even Lodi Missouri.

Well, Bonne Terre was actually off the old route 67, but we could see the lead mine chat mounds, or whatever they were called.

The area always looked all dry and desert-like to me.

Lodi was so small I shouldn't be counting that either.

The 2012 Lodi (zip 63950), MO, population is 53. There are 6 people per square mile (population density). 
Families of Lodi
The median age is 47.3. The US median is 37.3. 58.54% of people in Lodi (zip 63950), MO, are married. 11.36% are divorced.
The average household size is 2.36 people. 20.00% of people are married, with children. 13.33% have children, but are single.

Race in Lodi 

98.11% of people are white, 0.00% are black, 0.00% are asian, 0.00% are native american, and 0.00% claim 'Other'.
50.15% of the people in Lodi claim hispanic (meaning 49.85% are non-hispanic).

Now, I may be all wrong about the towns we went through on route 67, if it REALLY was route 67, and if Bonne Terre even had lead mines, but that's the way I clearly remember it.

We would always see the BURMA SHAVE signs that were witty and funny.

For instance: If it's music...you do crave...get a tuba...BURMA SHAVE!

Not Missouri, but the best Burma Shave sign picture I could find.

I'm so glad we are finally to the part where we hit the country roads!

That's what I liked best!

When we got to Silva we started driving down the almost one lane, reddish clay, gravel roads that actually had creeks running over the road in places!

At dry times there would only be a trickle of water running across the road, but in rainy times it would be wide, and deep with water, and dad had to be careful not to stall the car out in the middle of the raging torrent!

Very cool, indeed!

If another car came the other way, we had to pull as far over as we could to let him go by, and everybody would wave to each other! 

That's what they did down there.

We couldn't really wave to everybody in St. Louis, because there were too many people,

and we would have been arrested, I think.

This story is really cool! 

My Grandpa was not known for being the sweetest man on earth, but one time we went down to his farm in the spring, he hooked a little wooden trailer to his tractor, and he took all of us kids around to see the newborn baby pigs, calves, and other creatures that doth did dwell upon his 900 acres of farm and timber land.

I kept asking why the bull was playing piggy-back with the cows, but no one seemed to know the answer.

Maness Music Mondays

Everybody knows a Bryant Oden song!
http://www.songdrops.com/

He has over 250 million views on YouTube!

The most famous is "The Duck Song"/ "Got Any Grapes?"

I also love his "B.F.F. Song," "Bob The Snail," "Before I Could Rhyme" and almost everything he does!

No! His songs are not just for kids!

They are for old, demented dudes like me, too!

Bryant Oden brings out the child in me with his whimsical wordplay and masterful melodies that sometimes touch my heart and oft times tickle me funny bone! Now, where's my cock-a-doodie medication!

Anyway, I love his work so much, I did a tribute song for him, and when he contacted me, I wrote another one!

Here they are! YAY!!!!

ST. LOUIS SUNDAY

The Admiral boat has nothing to do with my blog today, so I'm not really sure why I includrd this picture.  Maybe just because it's SLS. In fact, I'm still bitter because I never got to go on her!

My backyard was not very big, but so much happened there it seemed bigger.

(Like John Dalton in Roadhouse..."I thought you would be bigger!")

The garage took up a lot of room, and I spent a heck of a lot of tom in that place. (Who's Tom?)

The garage was made of oak, and you could not drive a nail into it! In fact, you could hardly stick a dart in the wood! (We had a dart board hanging on a nail that was already sticking out of the wood when we moved there.)

They darts would usually just bounce off the wall!

Then how did they build the sucker?

Someone said the wood must have been green when they nailed it together, and then it got harder when it cured.

Picture of my mom, fluffy's head at bottom left...garage in back.

I personally believe there was an invisible force field lining the inside of the garage, created by an ancient alien race of creatures called Glirkazoids.

We had an old, beat up, worn out pool table that my dad had picked up somewhere. 

It was real cheaply made with a micro-thin, felt surface where the balls rolled around,  and the bottom would drop out of the ball retrieval chute after a few games, and they would roll all over the garage floor.

We could not afford a real cue stick, so my brother Dick made a homemade pool stick that had a roughed up tip that made it super easy to miscue and send the ball careening through the hot, humid, July, St. Louis garage air.

My  most memorable moment in the garage was when Doug Deubel and me were playing pool, minding our own business, and this music came on the radio that was unlike anything we had ever heard!

The sound did not simply reach my ears, it went way down to my heart and soul, and stimulated my imagination!

So here we were playing pool and singing to a song that we really didn't know the words to yet, and feeling like the future was gonna be way cool!

The song was "I Want To Hold Your Hand."

My second most memorable time from the annals of the garage was when I was younger. Maybe 7 or 8.

My dad had an old electrical cord hanging on one of those peg board type thingys above his work bench.

It had an electrical plug on one end and two bare wires on the other end.

I wondered what would happen if I 

plugged the plug into the top holes of the socket, and then stick the two bare wires on the other end into the bottom holes of the socket.

You guys know what an arc welder sounds like, don't you?

I was so surprised when my dad came running out there and didn't even yell at me like he usually did when I did something stupid!

I think he was expecting me to be dead, so almost getting killed saved my life!

One of our favorite things to do (me and my buddies) was to climb up on the garage roof at night, to get a "birds eye view" of all the cool "happenings" going on in the neighborhood.

We loved to watch the next door neighbor guy come home drunk every night, the fancy people who lived behind us having yard parties and such,  the kennel of prize winning beagle dogs owned by the neighbors on the other side of the yard (that our dog Fluffy would violate by climbing the fence), and needless to say, we would have fun making weird sounds, doing bird calls, barking, meowing, anything to confuse and tick off our neighbors from our unseen spot on the garage roof.

I almost forgot about the backyard!

It was about 90 feet long and 60 feet wide.

I'm not sure, my sister Dee-Dee can correct me on this, she remembers everything.

Anyway, it was long and narrow. Great for playing catch with my dad!

My dad was such a great baseball player he could have been on the Cardinals team...but that's a long story.

He could throw a baseball straight up in the air, so high it looked like a marble, and make it come down in the exact same spot he threw it.

That gave me a lot of practice in catching fly balls when I played baseball.

He could throw the ball so hard that it was a little scary playing catch with him, and when he threw his knuckle ball, where it looked like it was moving in slow motion, and you could see the stitches on the ball like it was standing still, it was super frightening!

I would also play fetch with Fluffy for hours on end in the backyard, dad would grill out back there (with his grill made from a 55 gallon drum), we had water fights, washed the cars, wrestled...back then it seemed so ordinary, and even mundane at times.

It is only now that I realize what a paradise we had..uh..right...in...our...own...backyard.

SATURDAY MORNING POST

IRS AND NSA WILL START HIRING PEEPING TOMS AS NEW AGENTS

JAMES GANDOLFINI GREETED IN AFTERLIFE  BY HUMPHREY BOGART, JAMES CAGNEY, AND EDWARD G. ROBINSON TO PLAN HOW THEY'RE GONNA "WHACK" THE DEVIL

TTIGER WOODS, BILL CLINTON, AND ANTHONY WIENER APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA TO INSPECT WOMEN'S COLLEGES...ALL 3 PROMISE TRANSPARENCY

DOCTOR OZ FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY BEHIND KRISPY KREME DONUT SHOP... HE DIED OF SUGAR SHOCK  FROM INGESTING 2 DOZEN GLAZED DONUTS AND 2 CASES OF COKE

U.S. GOVERNMENT PROMISES TO FINALLY FINISH FENCE ALONG MEXICAN BORDER...AFTER THEY RELEASE THE INFO ON AREA 51, TELL US WHO REALLY SHOT J.F.K., AND REVEAL HOW THEY FAKED THE MOON LANDINGS

THE LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA IN COLORADO AND WASHINGTON STATE HAS NOT HAD ANY NEGATIVE EFFECTS UPON THE PART OF THE POPULATION WHO DO NOT CARE TO WORK, DRIVE, STAY ON A DIET, CONCENTRATE, FOCUS, STUDY, OR DO ANYTHING FAST

I love people who are real,

Who would never steal,

Who look you in the eye,

And are not afraid to cry.

People who are not phony,

Who don't throw you baloney,

Who don't say they're coming at 7,

And then show up at 11.

Who keep the promises they've made,

And don't relax in the shade,

While I'm working hard outdoors,

And they're in the land of snores.

Who pay back money they owe,

That they begged for years ago,

Now they act like I'm stealing from them,

When I ask for it back, again.

People who listen when I talk,

And are not looking 'round  to gawk,
At everyone who passes by,
Cause I am such a boring guy.

Who never need to top my stories,
With all their fortune, fame and glories,
Who treat me as an equal guy,
Instead of looking down their eye.

I know it's an impossible dream,
But things aren't always as they seem,
Impossible dreams sometimes come true,
Because I have found this friend in you!

THOUGHTFUL THURSDAY

Since it is Thoughtful Thursday I want to share a few instances when people were very thoughtful towards me, and showed me so much kindness that I'll never forget them!

The first thing that comes to mind is when I started riding the buses through St. Louis back in the 60's in my early teens.

I did  not know how to get to the places I wanted to go, did not know how to use the transfers, where to change buses, or when to get on and off.

There were certain bus drivers that were especially patient and kind to me, and would overlook the times I lost my transfer or didn't have enough change to put in the cool change thingy.

They always seemed to be the ones that were dressed sharply, who were polite, helpful and smiling to everybody.

I looked up to them, and respected them as I would a Cardinals baseball player, or an airplane pilot.

I was on the varsity wrestling team when I was a sophomore in high school.

I wrestled in the 180 pound weight class, and so did Art.

Art was a magnificent athlete with a perfect body for wrestling that was lean, muscular and fast.

I was strong, but not half the wrestler as Art.

We came to be great friends and he loved singing, like me, and we would sing our hearts out on the bus, on our way to and from wrestling meets.

At practice, he was so fast and smart that I never, ever had a chance of beating him.

Then came the day we had to wrestle each other to see who would go to the state championship to represent our school.

I had wrestled Art many times, and I knew I would be pinned in a couple of minutes, as usual, but now, it would be in front of a lot of spectators, and the love of my life at the time, Barbara Branneky, the cute wrestling manager.

Not actually Barbara Branneky, but you get the idea!

So I start wrestling Art, and to my amazement, I'm doing pretty good!

It's been 2 minutes and he hasn't pinned me yet?!

I actually get 1 point against him,

 and he only beats me 3 to 1!

The crowd went wild!

I lost, but no one expected me to do so well against Art, who, by the way, went on to win 2nd place in the whole state!

Okay...you know how you can always tell when a close friend is lying to you?

It didn't take long for me to figure out that Art allowed me to do so well against him, because he was just a nice guy. 

That was very cool, indeed!

My last experience that I'd like to share is of the time me and Doug started sinking in the soft mud on the banks of the Missouri River.

We were scared! We kept sinking down, down to our chests, and we thought we were goners, for sure!

Then, out of nowhere, comes this dude, dragging a big log with him!

He manages to push this heavy log over to us, close enough for us to pull ourselves out of the mud!

How thankful we were to this wonderful, thoughtful, caring man!

These events helped to shape my attitude in a way that I have really not made clear yet.

All of the kind, caring, thoughtful, helpful, beautiful souls I just mentioned, that took the time to look out for me in my youth...

were black men.

OUT OF THIS WORLD WEDNESDAY

All the Glirkazoids were gleed,

As they paid the tickitran,

They couldn't wait to plotter-read,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

The childrets made a sound of wee,

When they heard the beatlebland,

They knew that very soon they'd be,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

Their violet hearts beat rumpumpump,

When the spacedisk touched on land,

With a whoosh, a spin and a little bump,

For the voyage to Ashkalan.

Glip wiggled up the silver ramp,

He recalled his travel plan,

To take a lot of picturoos,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

The scenery is wonderment,

He was told by his sweet Gran,

Magnicular, Spectacficent,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

Glip's sister, Glo, was only two,

And did not understand,

How grantasticle it all would be,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

With the speed of light they zoomed up high,

Past the worlds of Gliberzan,

The thrill, the joy, oh me, oh my,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

Food was served in a New Glork nuck,

Gleetza in a pan,

With glushrooms from the caves of Hut,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

 Glizzard and his wife Glajune,

Saw the pyramids of Geerstan,

On their 14th second honeymoon,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

Peace and harmony still reign,

For every creature small and grand,

On the greatest trip to fantasy,

On the voyage to Ashkalan.

BURMA SHAVE