Faith, Family, Hobbies, Humor, Pets

City Chickens

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A quiet young man at work calls himself a “city boy” by birth, but is becoming more “countrified” every day.  He bought a small chicken coop and put it in his backyard several months ago so he could have “fresh eggs”.

He lives slap dab in the middle of town and the four Rhode Island Red chicks he bought turned out to be roosters.  Roosters don’t lay eggs, so in quiet frustration, he told me he was starting over this weekend with four pullet chicks from another distributor.

The roosters?

“Well”, sounding more like a tired old farmer than a young city guy learning the basics, “I think I’m gonna have some fresh grilled chicken.”

Have you slaughtered chickens before?

“Well, no. But I went dove hunting once, and it’s probably about the same.”

He hadn’t decided if he was going to chop off their heads or wring their necks.  I smiled at his conundrum, and a brain wrinkled memory flashed back.

Continue reading City Chickens →

Faith, Family, Firetrucks, grandchildren, Grandparents, Hope, Playground

Fires of Life

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Janet and I have eleven children between the two of us, and the count’s at 9 on grandchildren. We’re thinking there’s plenty more to come, especially since 5 of the kids aren’t married yet.

We bought a place last year that was right for family and grandchildren.  I built a standard wooden swing set from a hardware kit.  Easy peasy. But it needed more!

We looked at playground ideas and my imagination ran as wild as an East Texas roadrunner.

Then a blast from the past popped up on Pinterest, a firetruck.  I grew up around that!  My dad was a volunteer fireman for years, and two of those years I was the official “mascot” of the fire department. That’s pretty cool for an elementary age kid!

I knew about an old fire truck which had been sitting in a field rusting the last 22 years. I got permission and scavenged pieces and parts.  Continue reading Fires of Life →

Cochlear Implant, Deaf, Faith, Family, Hope

Ba,Ba,Ba,Ba,Ba

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Jared, my second son, was diagnosed as severely deaf in one ear and profoundly deaf in the other when he was two years old. He grew up with multiple ear infections, hearing aids and speech therapy. He could, and did, what every other kid did, but it was harder for him, like soccer, for instance.

Jared would be on a dead run dribbling the ball down field while simultaneously adjusting his hearing aid so it wouldn’t fall off.  When the whistle blew, he kept playing until other players stopped.

Crowded rooms with multiple conversations made focusing on a single voice or sound impossible. Jared never complained, and despite everything, even learned how to play the guitar. Amazing!

When he was twelve, Jared had a cochlear implant. The surgery wasn’t covered by insurance, so a home equity loan, negotiated cash prices with the hospital, surgeon, anesthesiologist and provider for the device put the price tag just below $50,000.

Part of his skull was drilled out behind his ear and a computer device the size of a quarter was implanted in the crevice behind his ear. A wire implanted in his skull runs into the cochlea where it stimulates the auditory nerve going to the brain.

His only disappointment? He couldn’t head a soccer ball anymore because it might knock the implant loose.  Otherwise, everything was a plus and the possibilities were all butterflies and roses. Continue reading Ba,Ba,Ba,Ba,Ba →

Babysitting, children, Family, grandchildren, Grandparents, Humor, story

Nightmare at Bedtime

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Our granddaughter, Claira, is 15 months old. She was spending the night with us, along with her brother and sister, ages 5 and 3.

Claira has a sweet, happy personality, but she’s also semi-strong willed.

She was all rainbows and unicorns! She even had them on her pajamas, but then it was…bedtime.  Claira had been laughing, cooing, and cawing until JJ (my wife Janet) and PawPaw (me) had the audacity to lay her down in the baby bed.

As JJ carefully laid her down, Claira immediately let it be known that she thought we were completely incompetent to try to put her down to go to sleep!

We talked softly to her, patted her back, patted her diapered bottom, rubbed her head, nothing at all made her happy.

She spit out her pacifier like it was a poisonous trick, pulled off the baby blanket, and screamed even louder when the door closed. We figured she’d quickly settle in for a long night of restful sleep.

Nope!

The unicorns turned red and grew multiple horns, and the rainbows became a Class 5 hurricane.  She started to wail, not whimper, not cry, wail.

Continue reading Nightmare at Bedtime →

Cats, children, country, Family, Grandparents, Humor, story

Carl, The Killer

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Carl, the cat, did again.

A mama sparrow built a nest in the most unlikely place, in a flower arrangement hanging on our front door.  We didn’t even know a nest was there until I was going in the front door and the mama sparrow flew right at my face. That’ll make your ticker skip a beat!

I watched it several days and when the eggs hatched, she had a half a dozen naked chicks.  A few nights later, two of the grandkids spent the night with us and saw the now lightly feathered baby birds in the nest by porch light.

Carl, our big, orange, worthless cat must have been watching Mama fly back and forth. Or maybe he heard the chicks chirping, or figured out from the grandkid’s interest that there was something in that flower arrangement on the front door.

Regardless, the next morning my wife, Janet, heard the Mama sparrow feverishly chirping over and over.  She opened the front door with one of the grandsons in tow and the flowers were all on the porch by Carl.  All that was left of the baby birds was a little pile of bird feet and feathers while Carl scarfed down the last baby bird innards!  The grandson was horrified!! Continue reading Carl, The Killer →

country, Family, Fishing, Humor

Fish Story

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Some of the best characters are real live people….and so it was at lunch time. While eating lunch in a grocery store “deli”, an old gentleman was sitting at a table staring down the aisles. He looked tired, but content.

We exchanged head nods when I sat at the table near him, which in body language means, “I see you. I acknowledge you. I’m going sit here, but we won’t talk and ruin this quiet.”

Two minutes later, a heavy set man in his late 50’s walked by and spoke to the elderly gentleman who he obviously knew.

“Hey! You gettin’ yourself a lunch here?”

The old man responded, “No. My wife’s shopping so I’m waiting.”

“Well”, the big man said, “I’s gonna get me a lunch, but the line’s long right now. I’m not real hungry anyway. I microwaved a chicken pot pie for breakfast. You’re lookin’ like you’re feelin’ better”. Continue reading Fish Story →

country, cowboys, Family, Hope, inspiration, loneliness

Help Wanted

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The man sat on the bench in front of the Wal-Mart checkout lanes.  I thought he was waiting on someone, but he wasn’t.  He was just sitting and watching for a minute.

He was obviously a working man, about 65ish, and had a day-old shave.  He was a bit chubby, but not flat out fat.  He had draped a couple of plastic bags of items he just bought over his blue jeans.  He wore work cowboy boots and a free blood donation T-shirt.

His face was confident, like he knew he could pretty much handle anything that happened on the outside.  His eyes, however, looked like his heart had been, or maybe still was, wounded.  His eyes looked like muddy, shallow puddles instead of a deep, free flowing fresh water wells.

He got up and started for the exit limping with a distinct, weathered limp. Who knows why, but I suspect his limp was from a rugged injury such as a car accident, oilfield work injury, or getting his leg pinned against a chute while dealing with cows. Continue reading Help Wanted →

Alligators, country, Family, fathers, Fishing, Humor, hunting, story

Little Bitty Human

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I posted Little Bitty Gator several days ago and, as crazy as it sounds, it’s an absolutely true post! A blogging friend, Judy at (theprojectbyjudy.wordpress.com) suggested a fictional follow-up story from the alligator’s point of view! Thanks Judy! This post is fictional…just in case you wonder…  Here goes:

Weird things happened to Buck. He’s an 8 foot long, adult alligator that lives on the Texas Gulf Coast near the Louisiana border.

When he first popped out of the egg, Papa Gator immediately noticed his teeth were all messed up. All the other hatchlings had nice, straight teeth. In a fit of anger he told Mama Gator, “That buck toothed, crooked smile, cross-eyed thing can’t be my son!”  Papa called him Buck from then on.

Papa and Mama Gator had it out more than once over Buck! Papa Gator accused her of going several miles over and visiting one of the Louisiana riff raff gators when Papa and some of his buddies were on vacation one week trolling for house cats in golf course ponds. Continue reading Little Bitty Human →

camping, country, Family, fathers, Fishing, Humor, hunting, sons, story

Little Bitty Gator

30 Comments

He’s says it was on his bucket list, but most people don’t have jumping on the back a wild alligator in water over their head on their bucket list.  Yet, he did.

Two of my sons, Blake, who was 24 at the time, and Todd, who was 21, were night fishing in a Gulf Coast bayou. They noticed the red glare of eyes near their 15 foot flat bottom boat. The fish weren’t biting, so they started trolling up to and around the glaring eyes that belonged to different sizes of alligators.

Todd, we call him Einstein for short, decided he needed to bare handed catch and release an alligator, but not a ten foot or bigger one, because that would be foolish, right? And not a four foot or smaller one, because that would be too easy.  Uh huh, yeah. Continue reading Little Bitty Gator →

beauty, Faith, Family, grace, Gratitude, Hope, INFJ, inspiration, Jesus, kindness, Truth

No More Angel Tears

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When the heart’s tap root hits pain, angels cry. Do you feel it?  Do you feel them, something, somewhere, swirling, moving, circling the soul as the root draws up pain watering the heart making it swarthy and bruised?

Some people, some personalities cannot get away from the pain. It’s not that they don’t deal with their own. They do. It’s that some can’t get away from other’s pain.

Sometimes out of the blue it can hit you, in the store, watching TV, hearing a story, understanding what has happened.  The person’s pain, both shown, and even more intense, the hidden pain, grabs hold with a dry ice-cold grip burning the very beats of one’s own heart.

It can’t be explained with words, for words don’t express it. Letters can’t convey it, and the alphabet becomes nothing more than scissors on the tongue.  You can’t get out what has gone in. Continue reading No More Angel Tears →

Stories about family, faith, friends and funnies. Pull up a chair. Grab a cup of coffee and laugh, cry, ponder and inspire about ordinary events of this wonderful, ever changing, bubbling pot that we call "every day life".