One year ago today: March 13, 2016, on the road again.
Five years ago today: March 13, 2012, not one Wiki.
Nine years ago today: March 13, 2008, pure editorial material.
Random years ago today: March 13, 2010, the police drive faster than Amtrak.
My lack of chrysanthemums is verification I don’t know enough about flowers. If want a pretty yard a bit down the road, I’d best start learning now. I sketched out my circular driveway to take up nearly half the front yard. There is plenty of green space in the back. The driveway would be luxurious, with a 22 foot radius centered on the mailbox and MarionOak along the front street. I also hung a small rope over the side of the new birdbath, a pigtail to slowly drain the water by capillary action. So the skeeters can’t take advantage. What? You say the rope looks an awful lot like the same kind I use to repair the pulleys in the windows. Son-of-a-gun, you’re got a point.
Last month in Winter Haven, I noted that the old Nell’s Diner has been re-opened, so look what I got for breakfast. Alas, the atmosphere is gone. And this bite to eat set me back $8.50 plus the tip. If you’ve ever noticed most franchises have a certain sterile quality when you first walk in, I’ve always attributed that to the management having taken some best-practices course at a restaurant college.
I compare it to Mount Sinai Hospital. Everything is there and done right, but somebody has analyzed which procedures produce a profit. Gradually that aspect takes over and in the restaurant biz, it is apparent immediately. The staff behaves a certain way, the menu is unbundled, the specials aren’t special, and absolutely anything that doesn’t contribute money is not eliminated, but more like side-stepped. And courtesy is the first to suffer. That’s where the waitress comes around with the refill not when you want one, but when her busy schedule permits.
I’ve already learned to monitor the temperature. The wild sunflowers are now about 15” high and stopped growing. The manure sure makes the soil look better and it attracts those pigeon-like birds. I thought they flocked, but not these two. They peck around right after any rain and don’t let anybody share.
Trivia. Just now I said son-of-a-gun. That comes from the old days when the British Navy allowed married men to take their wives on long voyages. Any children born on the passage were literally born under the guns. Hmmm, you imagine a woman both seasick and morning sick? Anyway, later the term came to apply to anyone born on a ship and not always to anybody’s wife.
Ah, you like trivia today, do you? Okay, what does it means when somebody toasts you saying here’s mud in your eye? It means he hopes you lose the race. It’s a horse-racing term, where the losing jockey gets mud in his eye from the hooves of the leading horse.
British Navy Gatling gun.
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Getting an early start left me some time to drive around Winter Haven. I found the famous old Ritz Theater, but it looked closed. It can’t be, I’ve seen current advertising. But of course, there was some local in a hurry riding my bumper, so I couldn’t stop to see. I drove around one of the many lakes in the city.
Later, I attended a book reading. Don’t confuse this with a poetry reading, which I’ve only been to a few times. Not only is the poetry consistently bad, the women that attend these things are even worse. Total write-offs seeking shortcuts to a little class. But the book reading was right on. It started slow because the orator was not the author, but the author’s son who has the same name. After the first half hour, I began to recognize some of the works. I may have read them. And when the show mentioned other books, such as “Forever Island”, was that not a specific book mentioned and reviewed here years ago? The one where the archeology students dig up the wrong things? And the Indian is so kewl they had to formally apologize to Patrick Swayze's family.
The presentation was a one hour video of the characters and times of early Florida. It is similar to Michener’s work where the events are historical but the people are fictional. The distinction gets blurred down the line. This new author has that subtle sense of humor Michener never found, like admitting he went to college just to get away from milking the cow twice a day. At that moment, the book had my attention. My parents would have run out and bought a cow if they thought that would stop me going to college. It also means the impression I got from the show was how even the tiniest financial help from one’s parents could be manipulated into a life of ease.
Here was the son of a mediocre author, speaking with a smoothness that exposes he’s never worked a day in his life. The only thing being milked was his father’s reputation, and he was doing a commendable job of it. The claim could be made that being super nice to rich old relatives is in itself hard work, but that is an almost a universal illusion amongst lucky heirs. One could point out that he had published a booklet of short stories from the masses of material his father left behind, but dude, that hardly compares to anything like real work—and I know a thing or two about writing. Laboring underground and owning the goldmine are polar opposites, job-wise.
[Author’s note: don’t get me wrong, I’m not jealous, but covetousness I have aplenty. He’s gotten at least half as good at it as I would if I’d been handed but a fraction of such unimaginable power and resources. Ponder for a moment, rather than grinding away your youth manning the trenches, you get to lounge around reading daddy’s memoirs and speed-dialing his established publishing contacts. That’s the life, touring around the country, cashing in.
Never underestimate what is required. It just isn’t a drawer-full of dad’s old scribbling found in the attic. You need a secure home base, lack of interruptions, a guaranteed food and fuel supply, equipment to completely finish the job (half-way don’t count), no deadlines, a way to store and protect your material, and most importantly the leisure time to sift through it all. Hell, plebian notions like ambition and motivation don’t even rank in the top twenty.
True, eight hours of that per day is probably the equivalent of a half-hour of real work, but don’t go thinking these guys actually put in an eight hour day. When you have a comfy little cedar den in the old family estate on the California coast, two hours twice a week is considered full-time. And then, there is all that travel to contend with. Thank god you get to choose your own schedule. Bartow is nice in the wintertime.]
This was a presentation for a series of twelve books focused from the 1920s to the 1960s (although others in the same series were about the Civil War). Anyone who lives here understands the old Florida is gone since the federal government polluted the place beyond redemption in so many ways. You can’t re-institute good character to a people any more than you can un-drain a swamp. The show was first class for a book-reading but the plots were so familiar, I could not justify spending $140 on the set.
Plus, a cursory glance around the room tells that most of the buyers would never read any of it. They were after the autographs, I remind you again, the signature is the same name, but it belongs to the son, not the author. Of the 80 people present, an impressive turnout, there was but one good-looking woman. A slim brunette in a form-fitting striped top and no shadows where they didn’t belong. Sadly sitting far too close to her mother.
[Author’s note: in case you see it in these books, in the old south, the Civil War is known by another name. It is referred to as The War of Northern Aggression. While the victors can re-write the history books and dictate what is taught in the schools, they can’t control popular speaking, though Google and Facebook are working on it for them. It would be prudent to remember that Lincoln only latched on to the anti-slavery theme late in the war when he needed a new cause. The old cause wasn’t working.
Ah, what was that old cause? It was in the wording of the preamble to the Constitution, although it is doubtful anyone who wrote the document would have agreed with such an interpretation. The states joined in order to form a more perfect union. Therefore, if a state withdrew, said Honest Abe, it would make the union less perfect. So they must be invaded and subjugated. Pretty feeble there, Abraham.
He tried several angles before adopting the anti-slavery stance. It was felt at the time the south was proving so damn difficult to defeat because they had slaves building war materials, while the north had to pay their workers. At no point back then was the slave’s actual freedom an issue, but it made for grand newspaper headlines.]
“Here’s a little number that I wrote: 3-1/2.”
Needing a serious planning session, I took my rulers and protractor out for quiet beer. Drive down to Bartow, that is the only kind of beer you can have there. I chanced upon a troop of rednecks playing country on the jukebox. Not really meaning to, my uncanny ability to mimic that machine caught their attention. I can match the original so seamlessly that at first many people think the juke box has simply gotten better. Before long I had the whole room singing along. I wound up there for two hours. After that, I want to get paid.
In other news, the string I put in the bird bath works fine for keeping the water from stagnating, but overnight, something is pulling it down. Time to fix it in place or maybe attach a weight. I’m curious what sort of animal is doing it. Unless it’s a good jumper, it would have to be able to reach up 18” to reach the rope end. And a critter that big leaves tracks. There aren’t any, even in my fresh-as-spring cow crud raked so expertly into the surface.
How’s the birdbath doing? Don’t know. It clouded over the afternoon I placed it and there has not been a sunny day since. I’ve only seen birds splashing in water in the sun on hot days. It’s too conspicuous, so let’s give it a while. There is also a new visitor, the larger blue bird I’ve pointed at. I knew I’d seen it before. It is the illustration on the front cover of my bird book. We have ourselves a blue jay. Maybe time for a separate feeder. I heard blue jays will eat anything. It says here they will attack cats. Tell me more.
ADDENDUM
Chrysanthemums are an important perennial belonging to the daisy family. The blossoms vary greatly in size and color. Good for borders, flower beds, and meadows. Colors include white, yellow, pink, orange, red, bronze, purple, and lavender. The leaves are oval and have a strong aromatic scent. Should be grown in full sun but will tolerate partial shade. Start indoors, allowing 15 days to germinate. When plants are 4” high, plant out spacing 1-1/2 feet apart.
Next, the daisies and foxgloves. I need to know. For reasons. See photo, I always wondered what these tubes of flowers were called. Mind you, I’m familiar with flower names, you can find a list of 150 of them if you look back far enough in this blog. I used them to track the repayment of a loan. Except they were not taken from a list of flowers, but the names of a class of British warships called corvettes.
Since the south facing bedroom window seems to be an ideal incubation setting, I’m going to start another 36 flowers, timing it so they will be sprouts by the time I return from my journey. Here’s one you’ve not seen in the botany books. My view out the front window (soon to become a posh bedroom, possibly with oak wainscoting) shows that a single leaf falls from the camphor trees each average of 380 seconds. I can rake the flower area and next day tell you there will be 56 or 57 new leaves on that spot. It is 25% of the yard, for a total of 227 new fallen leaves. Like clockwork.
Last Laugh
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