CHRISTMAS TIME IS COMING- DEC 7, 2008

Christmas time is coming. Ain’t no doubt about it. Spell check says that is a double negative. Fat chance. I remember all of the years in grade school when the teachers said that ain’t ain’t no word atoll. Now I got a triple negative. It is a fiber optics tree with the lights built in. The first tree that I have used in years that was not real. Last year the girls put the fiber optics tree back in the house trailer office.

Last year we went to a Christmas tree farm and cut our own. After a few days, my lips got swollen up as big as a balloon.  Aaron, the now 12 year old said it was the tree that made my lips swell, my nose run, and my throat back up. We took the tree out on the back porch and- well he wants to be a doctor- and not a Doctor Pepper. Either a doctor or a lawyer- he is real smart unlike me or Forrest Gump. I ain’t a smart man, but I know what love is. I could have been a candle stick maker. His smartness comes with an attitude that the teachers dislike. I guess it is bad to realize your student is smarter than you are. They pick on him and he is already self conscious about being so short for his age. He wants hormone injections and I guess I should look into the side affects.

We put a Christmas toy train around the Christmas tree. It goes around and around and makes the whistle blow and plays music to Christmas carols. The light on the front of the train shines out across the room in the darkness. It reminds me of all of my Christmases when I was a boy and all of the electric trains we got every year. It reminds me of watching my daddy kneel down on the floor and put up the western town and Indian tee pees along the track; kneeling there in his black police uniform the badge shining, the leather holster creaking, the 38 on his hip, and the smell of Old Spice.

Last week we did our last smoke schools for the year in Atmore Alabama and Chalmette Louisiana. They went well. The new guy we may hire from North Carolina showed up and he worked out well. He will need to move here and he said it was not a problem. If he does, we can put 3 crews back on the road because he has experience working for one of our competitors. I want to go into Main and Delaware, the other few states we are not yet in east of the Mississippi. Then I would like to start in Oklahoma and cross the country into California. This spring I would love to make my first trip to a dude ranch and sleep in the mountains on my saddle bags. Enough about work.

I have wanted to go deer hunting or duck hunting, but I don’t have any place to go. Don’t really have the time either. We purchased total of 5 horses and we need to build a pin for them, move a storage shed, and build some sort of a barn or something.

I would like to go to the Christmas play down at the mall tomorrow. I would love to go see the Christmas lights in Natchitoches where Dolly Parton filmed Steel Magnolias.  When school is out in a couple of weeks, we are going to Indiana and see Angie’s daddy Joe, my daughter Heather and my granddaughter Keyda. That will be good. For some reason I have the blues for Christmas; me and Elvis. It will be cold and probably snowing. It will be a white Christmas and my bones will hurt. But it will be nice to hug them all. And that is the way it is.

Click here to see a video of the train going around and around the Christmas tree

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