Petting the elk

   Wow, talk about communing with nature! Today was a last minute day trip up the road about forty-five minutes, an hour, maybe, to a little place called Lake Tobias, a wildlife preserve featuring some 700 creatures of every stripe and feather. I'd heard of it before, of course, one of my nieces on a school outing had a close encounter with a long-horned bull on one of the safari bus rides, yow, and had the pictures to prove it. So, when the subject came up in conversation with some friends last night and the invitation to join the fun followed, we promptly gathered our wits and picnic basket for the day's adventure.

   I'll post my handful of pics ASAP- I've got to break down and spring for a memory card for the camera, the internal memory is far too limited to record such an experience! -of the emu, capybaras, crocodiles, bears, tigers, elk- if you could manage to choose a highlight of the day when confronted with such a variety of creatures it might just be hand feeding these giants. Very docile and very, very large, they came right up to the sides of the safari bus and lapped popcorn and crackers right outta your hand, stood still for some petting and ear scratching, but, whoa!, watch out for those giant fuzzy antlers swingin' around. What a treat that was! -monkeys, peacocks, zebra, deer, watusi, bison- another giant creature, they were just breathtaking up close with their huge fuzzy noggins which seemed outsized for their also giant shoulders... -llamas, puma, coatimundi, bobcat and the list goes on.

   After the safari bus ride, our picnic lunch under the pavilion wasn't spoiled at all by a drenching downpour, the dozen or so kids with our little group loved splashing about in the puddles and wet play equipment like kids are wont to do. The folks who were in the middle of the open-top safari bus ride were, I imagine, somewhat less enthused by the sudden precipitation. Somehow when you pass a certain age, slogging about for an afternoon in soaking wet shoes and underwear becomes significantly less delightful and something to be avoided rather than an opportunity for revelry. Plus we're more concerned about how our hair looks...

   But the rain cleared up, more or less, leaving the afternoon to browse the enclosures featuring those creatures which, alas, one cannot domesticate quiteso readily; the tigers and the bears and the mountain lions. The tigers seemed especially playful even while separated by wire and glass and a few feet of moat and rocks and then another fence. While one lazed in a corner, inviting the admiring gaze of onlookers, the other paced the perimeter of the enclosure following a small boy with a bright red backpack. When the boy realized he was being stalked he sped up with the tiger loping along in mock pursuit. This game lasted a few rounds and was quite amusing to the two-legged spectators anyway. The tiger, however, seemed somewhat more serious about the chase. My son was pretty sure it was the red backpack- matching the color of a big rubber play ball inside the cage -that attracted the feline. But I was reminded of a line from The Jungle Book- when asked by a soldier why Mowgli's panther pal eyed him continually, Mowgli replies, 'Because to him... you... are food.'

   There was also a reptile show which some attended but we ditched in favor of the monkeys and parrots and ring-tailed lemurs and a quick pass through the petting zoo where, in our haste to goggle the first monkeys we spied, we missed the uppermost end of that enclosure which was adjacent to the camel pen! A real live camel, I say! Oh, my...

   Suffice to say, it was an experience not to be missed and given only half the coverage it deserves here. Hopefully we can return ere long with a full load of digital memory and even more popcorn, prepared to see what we missed this time and pet the elk again. Now if only we could pet the tigers, that would be something else again...  >sigh<...

RRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr

     Rrrrrrrrrrrr... That's the sound of the Grasshopper today. The lawn mower, that is. Two hours of pure motorized meditative zero-turn-radius back-and-forth bliss. Mow and sing. Mow and think. Mow, mow, mow. I keep threatening to bring the camera along and get some shots overlooking the valley south of the property, maybe next week. It really is a great view. Or maybe I just enjoy looking out over the hills and far away. There's a golf course to see and the I-83 and other roads leading south out of South York. And a big ol' shopping plaza across the way. At any rate, there are always some birds flitting about to watch as well, mockingbirds and barn swallows. Sometimes the folks next door have the kids out in the pool. Last week I picked a handful of red raspberries at the border of the property, after okaying it with the lady of the house, of course. This week she kindly left a note inviting me to help myself to a squash from the garden, which I did, replying in kind 'Thanks very much!'. It's a big ol' yellow gourd and will be positively double yummy when it's sliced up and grilled al fresco, mmmmm.

   Yesterday was a Jimmy Rave day. Big Jim called the day before and asked if I could break away from work while he was on vacation this week. I had to laugh, 'break away', yeah. My schedule is a real killer...! Anyway, between confabbing with my doll clothes sewing lady in the AM and heading for the garage/studio in the afternoon, he and I had some breakfast at the Stony Brook Diner- used to be a regular haunt, the jumping off place when leaving town on family vacations and such, in the 'before time', alas, no mas -and made ourselves at home for an hour or so yakking about world-shaking events in our respective lives and general perspectives on history and time passing. We pretty much agreed that it's a drag feeling twenty-two while living life as forty-somethings. I would have said 'responsible forty-somethings' but, really, only one of us is pursuing what onlookers would call a practical course of life. We also concluded that people in general care too little about history; or rather about the people who are what history is all about, after all. Not dates and events so much but people like us but born years and years ago and maybe living half a world away but the same nevertheless. Who maybe found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. Or not.

   Afterward we made ourselves at home at his homestead, yakking some more while I showed him showing my latest creations, and finally wound up by making a little stringed instrument noise, naturally, in the basement where Jim keeps his basses and big ol' bass cabinet and my SG copy guitar. He kindly offered to host my Crate half stack and other guitars(which currently reside at Mom's basement rooms)knowing space is at a premium in my new digs. I may take him up on it, it would give us an excuse to get together more often and rock out. When his wife's not home, of course.

   Later I hung around Mom's yakking late enough in the afternoon to see my cousin Ronnie's wife and boy, the boy came over to work in the yard, earn a coupla clams for his thirteen-year-old pocket. As much time as we spent together as kids' I hardly know Ronnie's family but I hear the boy is a regular mandolin prodigy. In fact, a fellow named Mark Seitz- who used to come hang out twenty years ago when I played in a fledgling garage band with the Smith Brothers, Craig and Kurt. They made fun of his guitar playing calling his unusual fingerings 'Seitz chords'. Apparently his fingerings were mandolin chords and now he's recognized as one of the hottest mando players on the East Coast. Cool. -but Mark gave the boy lessons for  a while and says he has real talent and should stick with it. It's not too surprising, theirs is a musical family. I remember Ronnie's uncles gathering around the kitchen table at Uncle John and Aunt Jeanne's place, playing old-timey bluegrass music. Lynn played guitar and sang, Rick played mandolin, John- Ronnie's dad -played banjo. I don't remember if Tim or Mark played or just came along for moral support. In other words, for the beer and to make bawdy lyrics fit the gospel songs they played, yow. I didn't appreciate their homespun music at the time; in fact, bluegrass was about the farthest from what I called music then. The Monkees. The Archies. The Partridge Family. Anyway, maybe I can get some mandolin lessons from the boy one day soon.

   Man, it's two in the morning already. Time to close up shop. Friday's a big day- scout some yard sales, check things out at the Hilltop Emporium, mail some Plastick, do the banking for the weekend and make some more rubber goods. Got a figure set or two to hang together and plenty of pieces and parts to work up too. Hey, BTW there's a drawing job on the horizontoo. Preliminary to presentation for animation something or other for a fellow toy aficianado who's also got me working on a swingin' custom figure character for him. Gotta crack my knuckles and see if I can still draw a decent cartoony face and figure! If it turns out to be worth a look I'll be sure to include it in the Bittersweet Yahoo! Photo Archive. Yahooo-oo-oo-oooo!

Joke-O-Rama

On the way to the Buck the other week for the tractor pulls...

   What an unimaginably rednecked motorized spectacle that was! Tractors and trucks with these giant tires and engines dragging a big ol' weighted sled down a dirt track a coupla hundred feet before the weight stops 'em dead in their tracks, wheels spinnin', dirt flyin', smoke belchin'... Yow! There was even a class that you could hardly call tractors anymore as they were outfitted with not one but several helicopter turbine engines! I imagine if that sled left go those things'd leave the ground and speed all the way to Lancaster before they got stopped... I've got a coupla pictures, before the natural light began to fail and I tried the video feature and thereby drained the battery before the jet engine class started up, drat it all. I'll post those over in my Yahoo! Photo Albums on of these days. The friends who invited us with go a few times every summer, my son's been with them once or twice, this was the first time for my wyfe, I hadn't been since twenty years probably. I recollect that event largely because I learned to eat hot dogs with sauerkraut there and have eaten them that way ever since when I have a choice.

 ...but on the way I swapped jokes with the thirteen-year-old son of a friend. He had a handful to relate; of course, I remember none of them. But I was able to share exactly four jokes I can always remember of the hundreds or more I've been told over the course of the years(one of which, about the Lone Ranger and overheated Silver I've recorded herein previously), here's another one:

  Salesman is driving his route along a country road. Cruising along at a leisurely forty or so when he glances off to the side of the road and there's a chicken running along the side of the road. It's keeping up with the car, doesn't even seem to be breathing hard! So the guy presses the gas pedal, now he's doing fifty, then fifty-five, sixty miles per hour! And the chicken is running right alongside, it's legs a blur, feathers flying!

  Finally, the bird veers off down a farm lane and the salesman screeches to a stop, turns around and follows, determined to see where this speedy chicken came from. As he pulls down the lane and up to the farmhouse he sees the yard full of chickens... and they all have three legs! Three legs! Unbelieveable!

   The farmer comes around the corner of the house and the goggly-eyed salesman sputters, 'Mister! Your chickens all have three legs! Why, I've never seen anything like it...!' 'Ah, yeah, tha's right,' says the farmer. 'We bred them that way because everybody in the family loooooves drumsticks. We figured this way there'd always be enough drumsticks t' go 'round.'

   'Incredible! You could make a fortune from a chicken like that!', says the salesman. 'How do they taste?'

   'I don't know,' says the farmer, 'We've never caught one.'

Slacker

That's me! Been over a week since I've been over here and the silence is deafening, ain't it? Oh, well, it's a quiet venue anyway...

    Adventures in the last week included a trip to the famous Buck Tractor Pulls(photos coming soon!) and a short road trip to Bel Air MD to pick up a guitar case for the Charvel including a swell picnic lunch at Rocks State Park on the way back. Today's agenda is breakfast at the famous Dover Diner and then a mail run to the York Post Office. Wheee!

More later...

More from the archives

   My wyfe has been sorting through the shoeboxes and assorted small Rubbermaid totes that contain the photographic mementos of the days of our lives lately and as she does I've been shuffling just a few out for inclusion in the Yahoo! Family Album. Which, if I failed to mention previously and I probably did, has been split or, more correctly, appended with a second file or album as the first set was becoming more than a little unwieldly to view and sort. For me with my Flintstones-era pc anyway.

  The first album I tried to arrange more or less chronologically as I added photos so I suppose I'll do the same with the second. Although I'm not sure it makes sense because if you look at one, scrolling down to the latest, and then click over to the other... well, it'll be all out of order with the first one... Anyway, they're up there and that's that. If it's a little more diverting than confusing, all well and good. McCue Family Album Part Two

TV Geek Certification

    In keeping with the milieu of the last entry: Where do I apply for my official 'TV Geek' license? Because I am soooo geeked out right now on the old shows. To wit, watching a few more episodes from season one of The Big Valley. In particular a show entitled 'The Way To Kill A Killer'(said killer is an outbreak of anthrax which threatens the Barkleys prize bull...). Not only does it feature Martin Landau- seen recently as Jack's dementia stricken dad in Without A Trace -in another turn as a Mexican- I know I've seen him play the same ethinicity on Bonanza with his skin darkened and a very fake looking mustache to say nothing of his, uh, accent. Which is weird, because there are real Hispanic people in evidence in the episode yet Landau is cast as the primary antagonist. Who else has played Spanish but ain't? John Saxon, for one. How about Eli Wallach? Yeah, sure, in The Magnificent Seven. Pretty standard procedure in the days before political correctness and affirmative action for Anglos to portray not only Mexican but Native American too. Was white America so gullible, d'you suppose? Or averse to presenting real ethnic types on the broadcast medium, more likely -but one scene with a group of cowhands- or more correctly, since they are Mexicans, vaqueros, the Spanish term for cowboys which eventually got mangled into the word 'buckaroo' -I'd swear one fellow is wearing the orange speckled camiso(shirt) and another the distinctively decorated suede pantalones(pants) which once belonged to The Cisco Kid's sidekick, dear ol' Pancho Miguel Bernardo Gonzalez de Conejo.

   Hahaha, I had to rewind several times to get a good look, talk about your pure viewing satisfaction. Now, is that a sure sign of TV geek-ness or what?

Faces

   Ford Rainey. Mort Mills. Gene Evans. Jason Evers. John Anderson. Just a few of the familiar folks to be seen in the aforementioned Big Valley DVD. One of the cool things about these vintage shows collected is seeing folks like these, faces you know if you watch enough TV Land; if you're an aficianado like meself you start to learn and remember some of their names. They made the rounds of so many shows; Bonanza, Star Trek, Gunsmoke. Y'know, the only one I've ever seen lauded as an 'Unsung Hero of TV Land'- I think that's what they called it, people whose faces you know from a hundred shows but never as the star -was ol' Burt Mustin. Best remembered as Gus the ancient fireman on Leave It To Beaver and a familiar presence on a slew of 50s - early 60s shows.

    There's Bing Russell. Kurt Russell's dad: Sheriff Clem Foster on Bonanza. One of two traveling salesmen in The Magnificent Seven. Which, of course, starred Charles Bronson who shows up everywhere, making the rounds as a saddle tramp / ne'er-do-wel / misfit, long before he became a big 70s movie star. And Robert Walker, Jr. who seems to be playing much the same off-center wacko that he essayed on Star Trek, Charlie X, though a much less empathetic character here. And Dick Farnsworth, recently reknowned at the twilight of his long career as the aged farmer who rides his lawn tractor cross country to see his estranged brother, quick, what was that movie called? The Straight Story, right. In The Cowboys, when John Wayne's juvenile hands set out to recapture the stolen herd from Bruce Dern and his gang of baddies, Dick Farnsworth is the first of the rustlers to get his just desserts.

   At any rate, it reinforces the sense of familiarity of the television landscape. If TV unreality can be considered familiar that is. And if you can believe the same guy can be sheriff of Viriginia City one week and desperado in Dodge the next. Whoa, boy! 'Reality'. That's a slippery slope. I better call my pal Hoss and see what he thinks. Or better yet Mr. Spock. He'll have some highbrow exposition regarding the psychological ramifications of fantasy immersion and the maturation processes of the human male. Now,where's my communicator?