My head hurts, my feet stink, and
I don't love Jesus (oh my lordy it's that...)
It's that kind of mornin'
Really was that kind of night
Tryin' to tell myself that my condition
is improvin'
And if I don't die by Thursday
I'll be roarin' Friday night
- Jimmy Buffett, 1975
Yeah, my Buffett disks came in. And it's Sunday morning, the Braves just beat the hapless Padres 12-2 at ole Jack Murphy (actually it's Qualcomn now... but it might as well be Enron Stadium or something) and the 10-hour left coast difference doesn't matter cause I'm Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season (Buffett, 1974). The Padres like Enron are bankrupt and have "headed south". Just fired pitching coach Booker before the game who responded by saying "You can get a donkey ready for the Preakness, but he probably wouldn't run too good" or something like that. This on the day a gelding by the name of Funny Cide won the second leg of The Triple Crown (concerning horse races and not rugby matches) by 9 and half lengths.
Jimmy loves manatees. But I don't think he's really being politically correct and seeing as how I have it on good authority that he's fought his share of billfish I know he's no candidate for PETA membership. And I'm not feeling PC this morning either. Come to think of it, didn't feel that way yesterday either, or the day before, or the day before forever either.
So, continuing with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution sports pages this Sunday I see that former baseball player Billy Bean is at a bookstore promoting his new book "Loving the Other Way" about his struggles with baseball and his other self or something (sexual). I struggled with baseball too. I remember picking up a perfect double play ball once. I lost the handle in my flip to the shortstop covering second base and then couldn't find the damn thing. Despite numerous prayers to God and knowing it had to be somewhere between 1st, 2nd and the outfield grass it had disappeared from my universe. When finally found by the right fielder two runs had scored and the hitter was on 3rd and I had remembered that God's surname was Damn F**k (admittedly not my first or last error or doubts of the Creator's receptiveness to my entreaties).
As to Billy Bean I think I prefer closets. You know, the kind once inhabited by many who now seem to want to tell us all about themselves. And I'm (for some reason not wholly understood) reminded of the old cliche "I like - insert blacks, Jews... other -. Some of my best friends are - insert -. I just wouldn't want my daughter to marry one." Actually my own insert above used to be Yankees. But then both my daughters married that way. Talk about irony (and the Creator's special dislike for me too).
Funny thing about my daughters' husbands. Neither thinks he's a Yankee. One's from KC. Missouri or Kansas (I don't know which). Another was raised in Atlanta but was born somewhere past Tennessee and his parents are from up there. They have no understanding. You have to be born and raised in one of the Big Eleven (...sounds like a football conference minus one). Nothing else counts. And my apologies to those good people from Kentucky and parts of Maryland and West Virginia. But it's just so. Sorry. (I get nervous when folks say they're from North Carolina if the Carolina isn't said fast enough.)
I mentioned PETA. I don't think a real Southerner could be a member of an organization like that. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? Ethical? What's ethics got to do with a coonhound and the coon? These people don't have the sense God (that word again) gave a dirt dauber. Actually that's dirt "dobber" spelled like the bulb-like thing attached to the fishing line above the hook and the weights and before one gets to the tip of the cane pole. I think dauber may be the French spelling. But I'll be dictionary correct even if I don't know PC from shinola.
Those PETA people are probably against guns too. Well, you can't register a Southerner's guns or his coon dogs.
S'cuse... music coming in...
Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall
You've seen it all, you've seen it all
Watched the men who rode you switch from sails to steam
And in your belly you hold the treasures few have ever seen
Most of 'em dream, most of 'em dream
Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothin' to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late
I've done a bit of smugglin', I've run my share of grass
I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast
Never meant to last, never meant to last
And I have been drunk now for over two weeks
I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks
But I got stop wishin', got to go fishin'
Down to rock bottom again
Just a few friends, just a few friends
I go for younger women, lived with several awhile
Though I ran 'em away, they'd come back one day
Still could manage to smile
Just takes a while, just takes a while
Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I've found
My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around
I feel like I've drowned, gonna head uptown
(Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Forty, 1974)
The heck with it...PETA can get jived later... but once my Uncle, George Junior, had a game warden, new of course, who got on to some of the boys about shooting deer out of season...they were on the Bradley Plantation and had permission from the Bradley's overseer...so the game warden got himself shot...wounded only George Junior says...and it wasn't his gun did the firing...but the new, new game warden didn't come much to the Bradley Plantation...don't know how the PETA people would think about this. Don't reckon George Junior would care.
Now I've entered my sixth year of living in Ukraine and in spite of the commonality of the rich black soil found in much of it, I feel a long way from my Mississippi Delta. And even further away from my Mississippi hills, my North Georgia mountains, the pearly, white sand beaches of South Alabama and the Florida Panhandle and from Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta. Still, I like it here. Kyiv is a good place to be and to call home and I like L'viv, the Hutsul populated Carpathians, Krim and Odessa and I've much more to see and learn. I speak of only the places I've been so far. I like the people of Ukraine.
In the above, I sound like the American author of our UO article: Top Ten Reasons Why Ukraine is a Better Place to Live than the United States included in this issue. But, I can't as yet (not by a damned sight) agree with the young writer. For lack of column space I go to only his first reason, "Ukraine has a better public transportation system". Yeah well, we have one heck of a lot of space. And some damn fine road hogs (forget superior German engineering and Japanese quality for a moment). Think riding, gliding comfort and think big. And back to being Southern. Think of Junior Johnson and the ghosts of Fireball and Dale. (Schumacher who?) And Petty (all of them) and "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville" and... and... stop. Wanna ride a bus or haul white lightnin'?
Besides, I like my brand new Russian jeep. Opening the door reminds of opening a pop-top and finding no Budweiser... but it is a car. And there is more of Ukraine to visit soon as I figure how to put a gun rack on the beer can. Ride in a bus? Nope.
So, I'm here in Ukraine. All prejudices intact. Also some (prejudices) that comes from a thing called the 14th Amendment, which says something about "due process" and "equal protection". Talking about law, I guess. Not Ukraine. But it trumps 10 reasons, I reckon.
Well I've rambled and covered God, gays and Yankees. But the title above also says "Lawyers are okay -". So I must have intended to add something good about lawyers. But I disremember what.
|
