Photo Friday

The hot and dry weather brings out the color on the bougainvillea in my back yard.

Tales of the Kitty

Chapter One: Felinecide

Carlotta thought she had taken care of everything. The old broad, Amanda, was easy. A slight overdose of catnip, and her twenty something year old body couldn't take it, she was gone within months. Nina, the younger one took some doing, a slow drip, drip, of rat poison in her food did her in. It took a few years for it to kill her, but at last Nina also was out of her life. Carlotta had wormed her way into this house with a virtuoso display of cuteness in a restaurant parking lot, but once she was in, sharing was not on her mind. She wanted the whole house to herself. She wanted to be an 'only kitty'. Now her last challenge lay ahead, that tough old calico, Marlena.

Marlena was different, she had been brought up on the mean streets. She knew how to survive. Living on garbage and the occasional handout, Marlena had lived for years without a home. When she finally found her way into this house, she knew she had made it and no little upstart kitten was going to take it away. Carlotta, however would give it her best.

When the tricks she had tried on Amanda and Nina failed, Carlotta had to come up with a plan that hadn't been tried before. It couldn't be obvious, like stabbing her in her sleep. Choking her was out of the question, because Carlotta knew she'd be on the losing end of any physical combat with Marlena. It was when that big, dumb, black dog, Molly moved in that she figured out what to do.

Slowly over a period of time, Carlotta gathered a quantity of gravy that she would garner from the left over dishes that the human, Mark, would leave in the sink every night. When she had enough gravy she began her plan. After the house fell silent and dark every night, she would sneak out her stash of gravy and drip a bit on the sleeping Marlena's neck. The smell of the gravy would waft through the house until it drifted under Molly's nose, awakening her. Over a period of time, Marlena's neck became denuded of fur as night after night, Molly licked the gravy off, taking a bit of gravy flavored fur with each lick.

Marlena awakened every morning in a fowl mood, her sleep interrupted in the middle of the night by the beast licking her fur off. To the humans it looked like some kind of a disease, mange or some such thing. Yet, after numerous trips to the veterinarian no solution was found, and with each passing day Marlena's health seemed to deteriorate. Finally after she seemed to be near death, it was decided that Marlena would be sent away to live out her life at 'The old cats home', a place the humans called 'Garet's House'.

No My Name is Not Dorthy, and Molly Isn't ToTo.

After hurricane Wilma blew through here in October of 2005, my yard was left in a mess. We had our neighbors shed blown into our swimming pool, along with a large tree. Huge tree branches lay across our roof, also courtesy of the neighbor. Along the western edge of the property, the entire fence lay flat on the ground, exposing our pool and yard. Thanks to the help of my brother and his wife, who came down to help me in my time of need, everything was put back in order. The only problem is that my brother and I put the battered fence back up temporarily with just a few screws and nails that we could scrounge up. I totally intended to replace the fence, yet here it is two and a half years later, and the thing is still hanging on by a hair. In an effort to at least make the fence look presentable from our side of the property line, Mark stapled some lovely reed curtains to the rotting fence carcass.

We are coming up on my least favorite time of the year again, hurricane season, and though we haven't had a storm for the last two years, just the chance of one makes me nervous. The only good thing I can say about hurricanes is that unlike tornados, you have plenty of warning.

Back in 1956 we didn't have tornado warnings like they do now. In August of that year, I was six years old and watching my brother and his friends play baseball in the park. While sitting there I noticed a strange cloud formation that stretched from high in the sky all the way down to the ground. I was fascinated by the way it moved and the way all kinds of junk seemed to fly up where ever it went. It was a tornado, and it was ripping through our town of just three blocks from where we were sitting. After a few moments of quietly watching it I finally said to my brother, "What is that?".

All I remember from that point on is flying through the air. Not because the tornado had picked me up, but because my older brother had grabbed me and was running full speed towards our house a full two blocks away. My brother apparently understood the danger of what was happening, because he didn't take the long way home. He cut straight through yards and over fences, with me firmly in his grasp. Honestly I don't think my feet touched the ground once until we arrived at our house and we were all safely in the basement.

I don't think anyone was killed in that tornado, but I do know from that point on I learned to respect the power of nature. These days there are people who go on tornado hunting vacations, where a guide takes them across the Great Plains of the U.S.A. hoping to see a tornado. All I have to say about that is, what the hell is wrong with those people? Don't they know, all they have to do is buy a mobile home, park it near a corn field in Oklahoma, and wait.

Nyuk, Nyuk

The other day, WGN the 'Super Station' from Chicago, had a retrospective of their sixty years on the air. I am fifty eight years old, so that means I have watched that television station for most of it's existence. In my mind WGN had some of the best shows on television when I was a child, so it was with great anticipation that I tuned in to watch their special. Unfortunately, all the special did was shatter my memories. Every single television show that I remembered, seemed extremely lame on second viewing. Garfield Goose, was no more than a sock with a plastic beak sewn onto it, and Frazier Thomas, the shows host was just a fat man who talked while the sock puppet, made a clacking noise back. My favorite show, 'The Three Stooges', was hosted by an old guy named Andy Starr, and I remembered that he was almost as funny as the Stooges themselves. When viewed again as an adult he seemed lame, in fact the Three Stooges viewed as an adult seem lame. Probably the reason I considered those shows to be so entertaining is that I was only a kid and easily amused.

It makes me wonder what kids are watching now. Is their television vastly superior to what I watched? Spongebob Squarepants, Snork, and Squirrel boy don't sound all that entertaining, but I guess when your brain is still ninety percent silly putty, they seem brilliant.

It is gratifying to know that when you grow into adulthood your tastes become so much more refined. We have 'Turner Classic' Movies, 'The Fine Living Channel' and other informative and uplifting television to turn to now. I can spend my television viewing time learning from the 'History Channel', or the 'DIY' (Do It Yourself) channel. The list is long of available, decent, intelligent programming. In fact I think I'll go watch some right now. If I hurry I can still catch the last half hour of Ren and Stimpy.

Oh, Oh SpaghettiOs®

Back in 1975 I bought an old dilapidated building on the north side of Chicago. It was built around 1915 and hadn't been upgraded much during the ensuing years. Among the problems it had were termites, pipes that froze solid in the winter, and uneven floors that rolled like waves across the ocean surface.

After a few months of home ownership, I discovered that my shower and sinks wouldn't drain properly. My brother came over and diagnosed the problem as a full 'catch basin'. A 'catch basin' is a large tank that is placed underground, in your drain line to the sewer. It's purpose is to catch all the crap that is flushed down the drain, that the city doesn't want in their sewer. Now the proper way to clean out this tank is to bring in a truck with a pump, and suck all the gunk out into their tank, which they then take away and out of your life.

What we did was to get two fifty five gallon drums, and with buckets, scoop out the slop, fill the drums, then roll them out to the alley for the garbage men to pick up. One interesting thing we found out is that the people who lived in this house before me ate large quantities of SpaghettiOs®. It wasn't just a few SpaghettiOs® floating on top of the slop, it seemed that the bulk of the waste in the catch basin consisted of SpaghettiOs®.

We proceeded to fill one drum with the slop/SpaghettiOs® and managed to get it out to the alley. It was when we were trying to wrestle the second drum, heavy with slop/SpaghettiOs® out to the alley that it all went wrong. As my brother and I pushed and pulled the drum towards the alley, one of us got out of sync. The slop sloshed against the side of the drum like a wave against the shore, and flew straight up and out at me. It happened so fast, I didn't have time to cover my face or even close my eyes. In seconds I was tasting the SpaghettiOs® of the previous residents. It was all over me, in my hair, on my clothes, in my face, and I stood there screaming in disgust, with slop and SpaghettiOs® dripping off me.

To this day, a can of SpaghettiOs® on the shelf at the supermarket can trigger my gag reflex. It could of course been much worse. At least it wasn't something that I liked. Imagine if that 'catch basin' was loaded with old shrimp, French fries, or steak, or even worse, little vodka bottles.

Photo Friday

In 1976 I had a job as a delivery driver, so I decided to bring along my cheap little Kodak Instamtic camera. I wish I had been smart enough to get a quality camera, but I still like these grainy old photo's from my youth.

Skyline of Chicago from the planetarium 1976.

Fire at Lincoln and Wellington behind my old house 1976.

Rail bridge, somewhere west of the loop, Chicago 1976.

House of Filth

Once again I found myself sitting in front of the television with Doctor Phil involuntarily thrust upon me because I dropped my guard and let Mark get control of the remote. His show was about some woman who hoarded things, all sorts of things. She had eleven refrigerators full of rotting food, mounds of boxes and bags, there were plastic containers scattered everywhere. It was so bad, that her children only had a small space on the living room sofa for sleeping. I agree that the woman was mentally ill, but I don't think that the 'Hillbilly Shrink', Doctor Phil, is necessarily the guy to straighten her out.

I of course, took this opportunity to drive home the point to Mark, that he isn't really so far away from her condition. For instance, Mark has at least two hundred cook books ranging from gourmet, to backyard grilling, to recreating fast food in your own home. He also collects gadgets for the kitchen whose purpose I often haven't a clue. If I look deep enough in his gadget drawer, I can find five different ways to open a bottle of wine. Other times I can go through five different can openers before I find one that is simple enough for me to successfully operate. Every single shelf and counter in the kitchen is crammed with crap and bric-a-brac of all kinds.

Now I know that books and gadgets aren't the same as trash piled up around the house, but to a man who is half blind (me), less is more. The less clutter, the better I can see what I'm doing, it's that simple.One place that I seem to have made some progress is Mark's mop collection. Yes, he buys a new mop every time they come up with a new gimmick. At one point we had about twenty mops out on the back porch, because Mark would use one and put it out to dry, never to be used again. Over the last few months I have been putting one a week in the garbage can. At the present time there are only three mops left, and Mark hasn't even asked what happened to the rest of them. I think we'll be relatively mop free for awhile, that is until BILLY MAYS comes up with another breakthrough in mop technology.