When attempting to predict legislative moves by a politician, never be misled by what he says; instead, watch what he does.

good morning, ole sun rolling across the hills of Mexico:
will you be around long enough to view my past?
i’m not asking you to stay around to see my future;
i don’t really wish to see how it all shall end;
so, roll across the Southwest sky,
finally fade beyond the Pacific;
i shall follow you there by and by.

Back in my old home town,
i passed an old haunt of mine;
went there most evenings
when i had nothing to do;
it was shuttered;
plywood covered the windows,
windows out of which i peered,
saw a ten-point buck
in the side yard one night
i parked in the weeds overtaking the lot
in the back and walked through knee-high grass
to the un-boarded main entrance;
peering in, i saw dust and cobwebs,
pieces of furniture strewn about,
the shuffleboard table gone;
i turned toward the road:
cars and pickups hurdling past
on the four-lane road
rather than the occasional pickup,
which back then, didn’t hurdle anywhere,
that passed on the two-lane road
when i lingered here;
a sign by the door
announced it would be soon torn down
to make way with a strip mall,
anchored by a convenience store,
including a cleaners, a franchised burger place,
a liquor store, a hair salon, and several more.
i returned to my car;
sitting there for a moment.

i realized that old haunt of mine
was a lot like me, a lot like me:
we were dilapidated, past our time,
lost in a world that passed us by;
i had a lot of dust on eighty years,
cobwebs of memories in my head,
not much more;
my world is filled with weeds,
not manicured lawns,
certainly not fake lawns;
i will be replaced by folks
glued to their phones,
buying the latest fad,
hurdling by in their electric automobiles,
ignoring the past.

that old haunt doesn’t fit in today:
it was too comfortable for today;
not much plastic, only a juke box
in the corner playing country called oldies;
i am comfortable but
certainly not plastic,
playing a lot of oldies,
waiting to be replaced by convenience.

i wrote this over several days past. i do not know if i have finished it or not or if it will end up in the round file. It is one of my few attempts to create something in the “farcical” genre of writing. i just wanted to share it this morning.

Romulus Stevenson saw the light. The light was a gleam over the horizon, nothing more. He heard the muffled boom, boom, boom. He could not discern from whence it came. He laughed into the wind and wondered how his horse was doing on the farm now surrounded by housing developments.

Moby Dick was not a whale of a lot better off. He waited with Romulus and the wolf beside him (or was he a wolf, too?) as the sun hid below the horizon but near enough to see the horizon and shoot a falling star with the sextant old Romy’s mama had given him for his first birthday, along with the horse, of course.

From deep in the woods came the observation from Midnight the Cat that it was “Nice” in the falsetto voice while someone, perhaps Andy, demanded in a deep bass voice of Froggy (in the pond, of course) “Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy,” which he did, and in his deep gravelly voice would emit the salutation, “Hi ‘ya, kids, hi ‘ya!” Or was that Andy Devine on the horse he rode in on with Wild Bill Hickok, and Andy was Jingles, and just exactly who was the side kick? Or was it Red Ryder’s Little Beaver who outshone Jay Silverheels who was more to like Tonto than Johnny Depp, and Clayton Moore showed who actually wore that mask and shot with the silver bullet. Or was that a train?

And was Phineas T. Bluster really Spiro Agnew hiding as a puppet. Now he would be a pocket of sanity in politics compared to the 21^st Century, but no in these woods where a ship lies off the coast and Romulus wonders about the light just beyond the horizon he can’t see. The horse surrounded by newly sprung ticky-tacky houses all in rows, neighed in sadness. The boom, boom, boom was another war to wipe out people, not countries, or fireworks to celebrate something that needed some respect from those who did not see the falling star like Moby, Romulus, and wolf saw before they shot it with a sextant.

Andy’s gang lived in reruns if one could find them along with Roy and Trigger and Bullet, Dale, and of course Nelly Belle without Pat Buttram who had run away with Gene and Champion while the many masks of the Lone Ranger rode away with only one and it was Jay Silverheels’ Tonto whom he had met in The Philosopher’s Club in San Franciso.

If only it was just a dream…

Folks are gathered in numbers at parks and on city streets. Families are picnicking in a variety of places. Tonight, the air will be inundated with booms and the sky will be composed of flares and other spectacular fireworks.

After all, it is Independence Day.

I have written of my previous Independence Days back home; here in the Southwest corner; at sea; in Newport, Rhode Island; on Coronado Island; in East Sound on Orcas Island; and at the Sonoma Plaza.

This Independence Day, after brunch with Maureen’s sister Patsy, we will be at home, just the two of us. My siblings are with their families in Queechee, Vermont, and Signal Mountain, Tennessee. My first daughter, grandson, and son-in-law are in Chicago on their summer vacation. My second daughter is with her husband and his family in Las Vegas.

i am happy for all of them and happy for us.

i will not go into my wailing about commercialism or missing the meaning. i will not judge.

But i will quote from the document that got all of this started, not berating the founders for their faults, i am thankful to them for creating such a profound document. i will not attack those who want “justice just as long as they get theirs first” (thanks, Mose Allison for those words).

There is not a government nor a document stating the purpose of such a government that is perfect. They were created by humans. But “The Declaration of Independence” comes about as close as any could get to being perfect. It’s beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…

And i consider those words with the words of Major Kenneth Morgan, my Latin professor at Castle Heights Military Academy: “Freedom is the ability to do anything you want to do as long as it doesn’t interfere with someone else’s freedom.”

Blessed be our independence.