Advice From Will Rogers

An onion can make
you cry but there's
no vegetable that
can make you
laugh.

Kid Days

Lately my thoughts have drifted back to my pre-teen years on that farm seven miles west of Grants Pass where my best pals were the Wardrip brothers, Bob and Lee; Bob my age and Lee two years older. Yeah, the ones with whom I went on that spelunking fiasco.

One time we started playing with hoops, using those metal rings barrel makers used to hold the barrel's staves in place. We would cut a three foot long stick from a board and then nail a piece of lath about five inches long crosswise to the end of the stick making it a T-device for driving the hoop as we ran behind it. We drove those hoops for miles.

One day we went hooping with some beer bottles to the Applegate Tavern where each one would net us a nickel which we would immediately spend on candy bars carried by the tavern. It was necessary to cross a narrow highway bridge over the Applegate River to get to the tavern so driving the hoops over the bridge was too dangerous. There was a high bank at the entrance to the bridge and we would throw our hoops up to the top of the bank and then walk across the bridge. This time Lee and I were successful in getting our hoops to the top of the bank, but Bob didn't release his in time and it went flying back over his head right into the windshield of a farm truck approaching the bridge. Loud sound of shattering glass.

The driver couldn't stop on the bridge but he pulled off on the other end and came running back shouting as us. He was using adult language. We knew it was in our best self-interest to not discuss what happened with an angry farmer, so we scrambled up the bank and went running through the woods to escape his vengeful justice. We did feel guilty about the unfortunate accident but considered the loss of our beer bottles and the consequent loss of the Mounds chocolate bars to be payment for our sins.

The whole thing pretty well cooled our enthusiasm for hooping and we never went back to it.

Robert W. Service, Yukon Gold

I know, I know. His critics say his stuff is not poetry.  They call it doggerel and even Robert W. Service himself said he wrote verse, not poetry. So, whatever you call it, its lowbrow.  And I love it. So it rhymes.  So what?  From The Cremation of Sam McGee:  "...He turns to me and Cap, says he, I'll cash in this trip I guess and if I do, I'm asking you won't refuse my last request. Well, he seemed so low I couldn't say no, then he says with sort of  moan: yet 'taint being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains..."

That's from memory...a few words may be wrong.  Anyway, I consider Service to be someone I envy for his talent in making his own kind of music, critics be damned.  So I let RWS's spirit guide my fingers on the keys when I write lowbrow stuff.  Like this unfinished country western song (Netarts is a small community west of Tillamook, Oregon).

My sweetheart's in Netarts and I'm in the slam,

I shouldna done what I did.

With smokin' and drinkin' and now here I am

From actin' like some half-ass kid.

(to be continued)

Once I complete the libretto I will have to find somebody to compose the music or maybe find something in the public domain so no royalty issues would be involved.  I considered the Star Spangled Banner but it just didn't feel right.  So that goes into the ToDo bucket.

My Russellville home is celebrating April's poetry month and has invited contributions from the inmates. Here is my submission:

Save the Rose Garden

We've lived year by year with terrible fear

Of bombs raining down from the sky

But now the real fear, it seems to appear

Is breath from that next to us guy.

We slink to our rooms and stare at the walls

The TV feeds unending gloom

Loop after loop, walking the halls

So it seems our future is doom.

Our years we are told, suggest we are old

In truth that is hard to deny

But hear what we say before we go cold

We're still here, we're not dead, watch us fly.

Hey, some of Shakespeare's early stuff wasn't all that grand either.  Of course, he was only three.

Scotty Drops His Wrench

In one of my father's episodes of syncopation (irregular movement from bar to bar), he met the big Scotsman with whom he shared an adventure when they both wore a younger man's clothes. Although they never crossed paths at the time, they were both soldiers in the army of the United States fighting the Moros in the Philippine Insurrection of 1902.  That formed a bond between the two old vets so when it turned out we needed some plumbing work done, the man my father called was his old comrade in arms, Scotty the plumber.

The plumbing issue was under the floor of the house that required going into the crawl space, which had only about two feet of clearance.  Scotty said that was no problem and he crawled in on his back dragging an extension cord with a light fixture and his pipe wrench.  My father and I were crouched down outside the access hole, ready to give any assistance that might be needed.

Scotty had just started work when he suddenly started screaming and shrieking extreme curse words as he began a violent back-crawling to the exit hole.  When finally making it out he leapt to his feet, clutching his crotch with his right hand.

A rat had crawled up his pants leg and when the plumber felt the rodent moving he started screaming (wouldn't you?) and clutched the invader just as it reached the jewel box. One thing Scotty would not do is release his hold on the rat. But one thing he would do is get the hell out of there using his left arm and both legs and his butt-lifts to make that happen. All the while screaming and cursing and banging his head.

Once out of the hole Scotty yelled at my father to unhook his overalls and pull them down while he still clutched the rodent. But the rat was done for, sent to its after-life reward by the pressure of Scotty's grip.  The plumber told my father that was it for the day so they talked me into retrieving  Scotty's wrench that was still under the house.

He should have worn his kilt.

The King and I

My son, who lives in Thailand emailed me a clip from an international news source about that country's 67-year-old King checking in to a luxury hotel in Germany with 20 attractive young lady companions. He noted the story would not run in any  newspaper in Thailand. The clip triggered a memory of an event long ago where I was involved with the current King's father (who did not keep companions), a man revered by the Thai citizens.

In the early 1960s the University of Oregon and Chulalongkorn University in Siam (now Thailand) formed a sister university program for an exchange of students and faculty. This was a big deal that brought about the visit of the King of Siam to the University of Oregon to celebrate the arrangement with the Oregon University president. And this brought in the US State Department to direct the protocol for dealing with a foreign head of state.  In the master plan I, as assistant director of the Student Union where the banquet would be held in the second floor ballroom, had a key assignment: I would operate the elevator that would lift the King and his entourage from the lobby to the ballroom.  Kings don't do stairs.  Also, Kings are last to enter the elevator so they are first out and look at nobody's back.

At my post in the elevator I see the King's entourage approaching and spot an immediate problem: way too many people for this small car.  But nobody volunteers to take the stairs so we cram everybody into the elevator with the King now center front in a badly overloaded lift.  The doors slowly close with the King's nose barely escaping a severe pinching. It's a jerky start but the brave little Otis digs deep and moves upward and then it doesn't.

Arrggghh! I neglected to lock off the mezzanine and as the doors slowly open we see the King of Siam standing nose to nose with our custodian in his soiled uniform and his large wheel-container of garbage.  The King is cool.  He stares straight ahead, tuning out the custodian and his vile load.
I'm frantically pounding the 2 button while the President of the University of Oregon is giving me the stink-eye.  Dead silence in the car as the doors slowly close in front of the King of Siam and our custodian who never moved in his determination to get his crap container to the loading dock.

Hey, it wasn't as bad as Bush throwing up on the Emperor of Japan.

John Day's Bad Day

Time for some Oregon history about an early 1800s hunter and trapper named John Day who had his name attached to two towns (John Day and Daysville) two rivers (the big one in Grant County, the little one in Clatsop County), a Columbia River dam and the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Not bad for a guy who was kind of feckless and was never connected to any grand deeds or significant discoveries.

His one claim to fame came from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Day had signed on with an expedition that was leaving from St. Louis to travel to Fort Vancouver, (now Astoria) where they would hunt and trap fur-bearing animals. Near the mouth of the river that would bear his name he became ill and could not keep up with the others and so was left behind.  Ramsay Crooks stayed with him to help until he could continue on.

Soon after the others had left, Day and Crooks were captured by a war party of Indians seeking revenge for the murder of one of their tribesmen. They didn't kill the trappers but they stole their weapons, their packs, and their clothing leaving them bare-ass naked and bootless on the bank of the Columbia River.

Although still alive, John and Ramsay were having a bad day.

They elected to go up that Columbia River tributary in hopes of finding help, the best of all bad options because they knew they couldn't survive trying to reach the distant Fort Vancouver.  The great Northwest in the early 1800s was no place for sissies, with or without clothing and boots.

The decision they made was a good one because a number of miles up the river they did find a party of trappers who saved their lives.  And when the story of the naked trappers spread, John Day was the name given to the river where it all happened.  Crooks returned to St. Louis but John Day lived out his life in the Oregon territory, killing furry creatures and marking sites with his fame.

Nursery song

Somewhere out there in our Coronavirus ravaged land there are still little kiddies who need to be comforted with nursery rhymes.  Who better to do that than the Grands and the Great-Grands who comprise the major share of my audience.

So in this time of need, I contribute this little ditty that my father sang to my sisters and me when we were crawlers and toddlers.  The fact that I can still remember the words after almost a century proves that it still has legs (any tune you make up will work):

I went to the animal fair

The birds and the beasts were there

A big baboon by the light of the moon

Was combing his auburn hair

The monkey, he got drunk

Then fell on the elephant's trunk

The elephant sneezed

and fell to his knees

And that was the end of the 

Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monk.

The second verse is just like the first verse and the third verse is just like the second verse so get out there, Pilgrims, and comfort those little modern-day creepers and wobblers.