Cajuns, just to be clear, are former French Canadians, from the Acadia region, who were booted out of Canada in the mid-1700s when the British came to power. Some of the exiled Acadians resettled in Louisiana and parts of Southeast Texas. Cajun is a corruption of Acadian.

The origin of coonass isn’t so clear. When it first appeared, the term was considered insulting and degrading, especially when used by non-Cajuns.

But in the same way that the term redneck was appropriated by the rednecks themselves, many working-class Cajuns began to use the term coonass as a badge of ethnic pride.

Hold that thought for a moment while I switch to another track in my story.

Last month, I stopped in Apple Valley, a small community north of Jefferson, to check out a new thrift store. I wanted to see the place because not all junk stores are created equal. Some have really neat stuff.

The new store is called The Picky Peddler.

The selection there is pretty interesting. The owners are into old cameras, projectors, and record players, and they have quite a few for sale. The store also features more antiques than I expected.

But the PP is fundamentally a thrift store, so the display shelves are loaded with old clothes, used books, pots and pans, glassware, tools, dusty CDs and VHS tapes, and assorted tacky knick-knacks. I even saw couple of Chevy hubcaps.

I learned later that Wendy, the proprietor, is a designer as well as a shop owner. That accounts for the scattering of hand-made craft items amid the clutter.

What caught my eye and took my breath away when I walked in, however, was a beautiful pair of red and blue clown shoes.

They were magnificent. They sat casually on the floor near the entrance, impossible to miss.

I stood there looking down at them, admiring the spectacular, clean lines and the fine quality of the leather. These were genuine, adult-size clown shoes, clearly meant to be worn for real.

“Them shoes are beauties, aren’t they?” said a man behind me. I turned to see a 40-ish fellow with a short red beard. Whether he was an employee or a customer, I couldn’t tell.

“They’re beautiful for sure,” I said. “I was thinking they’d make a great Christmas gift for one of my sons, but I can’t decide which one.”

“Well, save your energy,” said the woman behind the counter. “They’re not for sale. I’m amazed at how many people want to buy those shoes.”

That was Wendy. The shoes, she explained, are her personal clown shoes. In addition to being a designer and a shop owner, Wendy dresses up and does clown gigs at local festivals and events.

“Those shoes are the real thing,” she said. “Inside, they’re regular shoes, in my size.”

She smiled proudly. “I could run a 5K in ‘em.”

We chatted for a minute about the clown profession — of which I know nothing, mind you. Then, smoothly, Wendy transitioned into relating a capsule summary of her life so far, starting with growing up not far from Atlanta.

I learned that she spent the past year working in New Orleans, and now she lives in Apple Valley with her husband and kids.

She and her husband, the red-bearded fellow, renovated an old store, and the Picky Peddler was born.

While she and I talked, her husband tended to the other customers. One of them, a small elderly white-haired woman, apparently overheard Wendy mention New Orleans. She approached the front counter.

She was a typical small-town Southern lady — formal, proper, old-fashioned. Her attire was simple and clean, suitable for church.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, “I grew up in New Orleans. Are you from there, too?”

Wendy was about to answer when her husband interrupted.

“No, ma’am, she ain’t,” he said. “Wendy’s a Georgia gal! I’m the coonass around here!”

The white-haired lady looked away in obvious alarm, clutching her purse tightly to her midsection. Her eyes were wide and her lips tight, as if she had just sucked on a lemon.

“I was born and raised in Jefferson Parish,” the husband continued loudly. “I’m as coonass as you get!”

The lady regained her composure a bit, but clearly she wanted to be somewhere else. I wondered whether she understood the meaning of coonass, or if she merely took offense at the word itself.

For the next few minutes, the husband engaged the disconcerted lady in a conversation about New Orleans. She responded, but tersely and reluctantly. He didn’t seem to notice. Neither did Wendy, who resumed her life story.

As Wendy proceeded, the white-haired lady edged toward the exit. The husband stayed with her, reminiscing about New Orleans and its many virtues, all the way to the front door. Fortunately, he refrained from using the term coonass again.

That day, I went home with a handsome white wicker mirror and a small figurine of a mouse eating a peanut.

Alas, what I really wanted was those clown shoes.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Months of phone calls and correspondence failed to stop the proceedings. Ultimately, the couple went to court and won. The bank was ordered to stop the foreclosure and directed to pay the couple $2,534 in attorney fees.

For months, Bank of America ignored the judgment for attorney fees, so the Nyerges’ attorney went back to court and obtained a seizure order. In June 2011, he arrived at a local Bank of America branch with two sheriff’s deputies and a moving truck, authorized to haul away $2,534 worth of furniture and computer equipment from the bank’s offices.

The bank manager, “visibly shaken,” got on the phone to his bosses. About an hour later, he handed over a check for $2,534.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Frances Ragusa, 75, went to court to claim child support she said was never paid by husband Philip Ragusa, 77, in their divorce settlement 33 years ago. With interest, the $14,000 judgment had grown to about $100,000.

Frances told the New York Post that she called Philip to discuss the amount, and he began to cry.

She recalled telling him, “If you think I’m going to forget it, Phil, you’re stuck on stupid.”

MORO, OREGON — A 32-year-old man was arrested and charged with drug possession after a sock containing marijuana and hashish flew from the window of his truck.

The man said he saw a sheriff’s deputy ahead at the side of the road, and he quickly hid his alleged drug stash in a sock. However, his dog grabbed one end of the sock and began an impromptu game of tug of war.

While under tension, the sock slipped, sailed through the vehicle’s window, and landed at the deputy’s feet.

“I wish everyone traveled with their own personal drug dog,” the county sheriff said.

– David Russell

###

A wasted life is the greatest sin.

– Ralph McGill

###

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.

– Italian proverb

###

I don’t guess they make numbers that damn long.

– Former moonshiner Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, when asked how many pints he distilled in his career.

Russell

Sutton

Living things need energy. Animals get energy from food, plants get energy through photosynthesis.

A food chain among a given set of critters shows the order in which they get eaten. Essentially, it describes how energy is passed upward until it stops. (Well, the energy gets recycled repeatedly, but let’s keep it simple.)

For example, a blade of grass is eaten by a grasshopper, which is eaten by a mouse, which is eaten by a snake, which is eaten by a hawk. In that situation, the grass is at the bottom of the food chain, and the hawk is at the top.

Okay, on with the story.

During the school holiday break, my granddaughters Kelsey and Katie (twins, age 11) came to my house for a visit, chauffeured by their grandma Deanna.

These are the granddaughters who live about an hour away. The other two, Maddie and Sarah, live here in Jefferson.

Katie and Kelsey walked into the kitchen, and as usual, stopped to check for new refrigerator magnets. All four of the girls do that. They can spot a new addition within seconds. It’s uncanny.

Naturally, I want to make sure they aren’t disappointed, so I add new magnets regularly. I have the tackiest refrigerator anywhere, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.

The girls had not been to my place for a couple of weeks, but they quickly and simultaneously found the newest magnet — a small yellow plastic wedge of pie.

“It looks like custard pie,” said Kelsey.

“I think it’s apple,” said Katie. “See? It has a crust.”

Leaving the girls to peruse the door of the fridge, I went into the living room to join Deanna. As we sat and talked, Katie and Kelsey remained in the kitchen, whispering and giggling.

Before long, it struck me that their chatter had a conspiratorial tone to it.

“You guys are up to something,” I called out. “What’s going on?”

“We’re building a food chain!”

“We’re making a food chain out of refrigerator magnets!”

Okay, I thought, they probably learned about food chains in school. Deanna and I looked at each other, then got up and went into the kitchen.

There on the refrigerator door was the girls’ food chain. They had collected all of the animal and vegetable magnets (except one photo magnet of my sister and my dog) and arranged them in a long column. This is it:

At the top of the column was Uga the bulldog, the University of Georgia mascot. Below him was a wooden bear.

“The Georgia bulldog is at the top of the food chain, above the bear?” I said.

“We know that isn’t right,” said Katie. “But we decided to do it anyway — since this is Bulldog Country.” Kelsey nodded in agreement.

Below the bear was a moose. Below the moose was a plastic wedge of cheese. So far, so good, if you accept the bulldog’s honorary position.

After the cheese, however, came the slice of custard/apple pie, which derailed their logic.

Below the pie was a lobster, followed by a mug of beer, a Hershey’s miniature chocolate bar, another beer, a fabric fish, and a wooden chili pepper.

I stood there for a moment studying the magnets. I wasn’t sure how beer and chocolate fit into any food chain, but still, their handiwork had a certain je ne sais quoi.

“Excellent work,” I told them, “But I don’t think it’s completely accurate. Technically, that is.”

“We know.”

“– We like it this way.”

“– And Maddie and Sarah will probably change it anyway.”

Good point.

Raphael Aloysius Lafferty, who described himself as “a cranky old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma,” isn’t widely know or appreciated — maybe because his tales are so non-standard and unexpected.

Lafferty stories unfold at a rapid pace, often with fractured logic; one critic compared them to a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Keep that in mind as you read the short story below.

—————

Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas

By R. A. Lafferty
Published in Galaxy Magazine, December 1962

Manuel shouldn’t have been employed as a census taker. He wasn’t qualified. He couldn’t read a map. He didn’t know what a map was. He only grinned when they told him that North was at the top.

He knew better.

But he did write a nice round hand, like a boy’s hand. He knew Spanish, and enough English. For the sector that was assigned to him he would not need a map. He knew it better than anyone else, certainly better than any mapmaker. Besides, he was poor and needed the money.

They instructed him and sent him out. Or they thought that they had instructed him. They couldn’t be sure.

“Count everyone? All right. Fill in everyone? I need more papers.”

“We will give you more if you need more. But there aren’t so many in your sector.”

“Lots of them. Lobos, tejones, zorros, even people.”

“Only the people, Manuel! Do not take the animals. How would you write up the animals? They have no names.”

“Oh, yes. All have names. Might as well take them all.”

“Only people, Manuel.”

“Mulos?”

“No.”

“Conejos?”

“No, Manuel, no. Only the people.”

“No trouble. Might as well take them all.”

“Only people — God give me strength! — only people, Manuel.”

“How about little people?”

“Children, yes. That has been explained to you.”

“Little people. Not children, little people.”

“If they are people, take them.”

“How big they have to be?”

“It doesn’t make any difference how big they are. If they are people, take them.”

That is where the damage was done.

The official had given a snap judgment, and it led to disaster. It was not his fault. The instructions are not clear. Nowhere in all the verbiage does it say how big they have to be to be counted as people.

Manuel took Mula and went to work. His sector was the Santa Magdalena, a scrap of bald-headed and desolate mountains, steep but not high, and so torrid in the afternoons that it was said that the old lava sometimes began to writhe and flow again from the sun’s heat alone.

In the center valley there were five thousand acres of slag and vitrified rock from some forgotten old blast that had melted the hills and destroyed their mantle, reducing all to a terrible flatness. This was called Sodom. It was strewn with low-lying ghosts as of people and objects, formed when the granite bubbled like water.

Away from the dead center the ravines were body-deep in chaparral, and the hillsides stood gray-green with old cactus. The stunted trees were lower than the giant bushes and yucca.

Manuel went with Mula, a round easy man and a sparse gaunt mule. Mula was a mule, but there were other inhabitants of the Santa Magdalena of a genus less certain.

Yet even about Mula there was an oddity in her ancestry. Her paternal grandfather had been a goat. Manuel once told Mr. Marshal about this, but Mr. Marshal had not accepted it.

“She is a mule. Therefore, her father was a jack. Therefore his father was also a jack, a donkey. It could not be any other way.”

Manuel often wondered about that, for he had raised the whole strain of animals, and he remembered who had been with whom.

“A donkey! A jack! Two feet tall and with a beard and horns. I always thought that he was a goat.”

Manuel and Mula stopped at noon on Lost Soul Creek. There would be no travel in the hot afternoon. But Manuel had a job to do, and he did it. He took the forms from one of the packs that he had unslung from Mula, and counted out nine of them. He wrote down all the data on nine people. He knew all there was to know about them, their nativities and their antecedents. He knew that there were only nine regular people in the nine hundred square miles of the Santa Magdalena.

But he was systematic, so he checked the list over again and again. There seemed to be somebody missing. Oh, yes, himself. He got another form and filled out all the data on himself.

Now, in one way of looking at it, his part in the census was finished. If only he had looked at it that way, he would have saved worry and trouble for everyone, and also ten thousand lives. But the instructions they had given him were ambiguous, for all that they had tried to make them clear.

So very early the next morning he rose and cooked beans, and said, “Might as well take them all.”

He called Mula from the thorn patch where she was grazing, gave her salt and loaded her again. Then they went to take the rest of the census, but in fear. There was a clear duty to get the job done, but there was also a dread of it that his superiors did not understand. There was reason also why Mula was loaded so she could hardly walk with packs of census forms.

Manuel prayed out loud as they climbed the purgatorial scarp above Lost Souls Creek, “ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora –” the very gulches stood angry and stark in the early morning — “y en la hora de neustra muerte.”

Three days later an incredible dwarf staggered into the outskirts of High Plains, Texas, followed by a dying wolf-sized animal that did not look like a wolf.

A lady called the police to save the pair from rock-throwing kids who might have killed them, and the two as yet unclassified things were taken to the station house.

The dwarf was three foot high, a skeleton stretched over with brown-burnt leather. The other was an un-canine looking dog-sized beast, so full of burrs and thorns that it might have been a porcupine. It was a nightmare replica of a shrunken mule.

The midget was mad. The animal had more presence of mind: she lay down quietly and died, which was the best she could do, considering the state that she was in.

“Who is census chief now?” asked the mad midget. “Is Mr. Marshal’s boy the census chief?”

“Mr. Marshal is, yes. Who are you? How do you know Marshal? And what is that which you are pulling out of your pants, if they are pants?”

“Census list. Names of everybody in the Santa Magdalena. I had to steal it.”

“It looks like microfilm, the writing is so small. And the roll goes on and on. There must be a million names here.”

“Little bit more, little bit more. I get two bits a name.”

They got Marshal there. He was very busy, but he came. He had been given a deadline by the mayor and the citizen’s group. He had to produce a population of ten thousand people for High Plains, Texas; and this was difficult, for there weren’t that many people in the town. He had been working hard on it, though; but he came when the police called him.

“You Marshal’s little boy? You look just like your father,” said the midget.

“That voice, I should know that voice even if it’s cracked to pieces. That has to be Manuel’s voice.”

“Sure, I’m Manuel. Just like I left, thirty-five years ago.”

“You can’t be Manuel, shrunk three feet and two hundred pounds and aged a million.”

“You look here at my census slip. It says I’m Manuel. And here are nine more of the regular people, and one million of the little people. I couldn’t get them on the right forms, though. I had to steal their list.”

“You can’t be Manuel,” said Marshal.

“He can’t be Manuel,” said the big policemen and the little policeman.

“Maybe not, then,” the dwarf conceded. “I thought I was, but I wasn’t sure. Who am I then? Let’s look at the other papers and see which one I am.”

“No, you can’t be any of them either, Manuel. And you surely can’t be Manuel.”

“Give him a name anyhow and get him counted. We got to get to that ten thousand mark.”

“Tell us what happened, Manuel — if you are. Which you aren’t. But tell us.”

“After I counted the regular people I went to count the little people. I took a spade and spaded off the top of their town to get in. But they put an encanto on me, and made me and Mula run a treadmill for thirty-five years.”

“Where was this?”

“At the little people town. Nuevo Danae. But after thirty-five years the encanto wore off and Mula and I stole the list of names and ran away.”

“But where did you really get this list of so many names written so small?”

“Suffering saddle sores, Marshal, don’t ask the little bug so many questions. You got a million names in your hand. Certify them! Send them in! There’s enough of us here right now. We declare that place annexed forthwith. This will make High Plains the biggest town in the whole state of Texas.”

So Marshal certified them and sent them into Washington. This gave High Plains the largest percentage increase of any city in the nation, but it was challenged. There were some soreheads in Houston who said that it wasn’t possible. They said High Plains had nowhere near that many people and there must have been a miscount.

And in the days that the argument was going on, they cleaned up and fed Manuel, if it were he, and tried to get from him a cogent story.

“How do you know it was thirty-five years you were on the treadmill, Manuel?”

“Well, it seemed like thirty-five years.”

“It could have only been about three days.”

“Then how come I’m so old?”

“We don’t know that, Manuel, we sure don’t know that. How big were these people?”

“Who knows? A finger long, maybe two?”

“And what is their town?”

“It is an old prairie-dog town that they fixed up. You have to dig down with a spade to get to the streets.”

“Maybe they were really all prairie dogs, Manuel. Maybe the heat got you and you only dreamed that they were little people.”

“Prairie dogs can’t write as good as on that list. Prairie dogs can’t write hardly at all.”

“That’s true. The list is hard to explain. And such odd names on it too.”

“Where is Mula? I don’t see Mula since I came back.”

“Mula just lay down and died, Manuel.”

“Gave me the slip. Why didn’t I think of that? Well, I’ll do it too. I’m too worn out for anything else.”

“Before you do, Manuel, just a couple of last questions.”

“Make them real fast then. I’m on my way.”

“Did you know these little people were there before?”

“Oh, sure. There a long time.”

“Did anybody else ever see them?”

“Oh, sure. Everybody in the Santa Magdalena see them. Eight, nine people see them.”

“And Manuel, how do we get to the place? Can you show us on a map?”

Manuel made a grimace, and died quietly as Mula had done. He didn’t understand those maps at all, and took the easy way out.

They buried him, not knowing for sure whether he was Manuel come back, or what he was.

There wasn’t much of him to bury.

It was the same night, very late and after he had been asleep, that Marshal was awakened by the ring of an authoritative voice. He was being harangued by a four-inch tall man on his bedside table, a man of dominating presence and acid voice.

“Come out of that cot, you clown! Give me your name and station!”

“I’m Marshal, and I suspect that you are a late pig sandwich, or caused by one. I shouldn’t eat so late.”

“Say ‘sir’ when you reply to me. I am no pig sandwich and I do not commonly call on fools. Get on your feet, you clod.”

And wonderingly Marshal did.

“I want the list that was stolen. Don’t gape! Get it!”

“What list?”

“Don’t stall, don’t stutter. Get me our tax list that was stolen. It isn’t words that I want from you.”

“Listen, you cicada, I’ll take you and –”

“You will not. You will notice that you are paralyzed from the neck down. I suspect that you were always so from there up. Where is the list?”

“S-sent it to Washington.”

“You bug-eyed behemoth! Do you realize what a trip that will be? You grandfather of inanities, it will be a pleasure to destroy you!”

“I don’t know what you are, or if you are really. I don’t believe that you even belong on the world.”

“Not belong on the world! We own the world. We can show written title to the world. Can you?”

“I doubt it. Where did you get the title?”

“None of your business. I’d rather not say. Oh, well, we got it from a promoter of sorts. A con man, really. I’ll have to admit that we were taken, but we were in a spot and needed a world. He said that the larger bifurcates were too stupid to be a nuisance. We should have known that the stupider a creature, the more of a nuisance it is.”

“I had about decided the same thing about the smaller a creature. We may have to fumigate that old mountain mess.”

“Oh, you can’t harm us. We’re too powerful. But we can obliterate you in an instant.”

“Hah!”

“Say ‘Hah, sir’ when you address me. Do you know the place in the mountain that is called Sodom?”

“I know the place. It was caused by a large meteor.”

“It was caused by one of these.”

What he held up was the size of a grain of sand. Marshal could not see it in detail.

“There was another city of you bug-eyed beasts there,” said the small martinet. “You wouldn’t know about it. It’s been a few hundred years. We decided it was too close. Now I have decided that you are too close.”

“A thing that size couldn’t crack a walnut.”

“You floundering fop, it will blast this town flat!”

“What will happen to you?”

“Nothing. I don’t even blink for things like that.”

“How do you trigger it off.”

“You gaping goof, I don’t have time to explain that to you. I have to get to Washington.”

It may be that Marshal did not believe himself quite awake. He certainly did not take the threat seriously enough. For the little man did trigger it off.

When the final count was in, High Plains did not have the highest percentage gain in population in the nation. Actually it showed the sharpest decline, from 7313 to nothing.

They were going to make a forest preserve out of the place, except that it has no trees worthy of the name. Now it is proposed to make it the Sodom and Gomorrah State Park from the two mysterious scenes of desolation there, just seven miles apart.

It is an interesting place, as wild a region as you will ever find, and is recommended for the man who has seen everything.

Original illustration from Galaxy Magazine by Bob Ritter.

Carroll never achieved huge fame, but he was one talented dude. Jack Kerouac said, “At 13 years of age, Jim Carroll writes better prose than 89 percent of the novelists working today.” William S. Burroughs called him a born writer. Patti Smith nudged him into a parallel career he never anticipated: front man for a punk rock band.

Carroll won accolades as a poet at age 13, and he also became a heroin addict. Through the 1960s, he was a fixture of the New York art and drug scene. He hung out with people like Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed.

In the early 70s, Carroll moved to California to kick his drug habit. In 1978, he published “The Basketball Diaries,” an autobiography about his teen years in New York, when he was a sports star while simultaneously immersed in the drug culture.

In 1980, The Jim Carroll Band released its first album, “Catholic Boy.” On it was “People Who Died,” his best-known single.

Carroll continued to perform with the band and to write extensively. In 2009, at age 60, he died of a heart attack while working at his desk in Manhattan.

For a long time, I thought “People Who Died” was fictional — just a punk band using death, suicide, and drug references to sound hip.

But then I learned more about the life of Jim Carroll. Maybe the song isn’t fiction after all.

People Who Died

By The Jim Carroll Band, 1980
Written by Jim Carroll

Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old,
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine.
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug.
26 reds and a bottle of wine.
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old.
He looked like 65 when he died.
He was a friend of mine.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten,
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan.
Sly in Vietnam: bullet in the head.
Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed.
They were two more friends of mine –
Two more friends that died.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room.
Bobby hung himself from a cell in The Tombs.
Judy jumped in front of a subway train.
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein.
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others.
And I salute you, brother!

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys’ Club roof.
Tony thought that his rage was just some goof.
But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchin’ proof.
“Hey,” Herbie said, “Tony, can you fly?”
But Tony couldn’t fly — Tony died.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

Brian got busted on a narco rap.
He beat the rap by rattin’ on some bikers.
He said, “Hey, I know it’s dangerous,
But it sure beats Riker’s.”
But the next day, he got offed
By the very same bikers.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old,
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine.
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine.
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old.
He looked like 65 when he died.
He was a friend of mine.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten,
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan.
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head.
Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed.
They were two more friends of mine.
I miss ‘em. They died.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room.
Bobby hung himself from a cell in The Tombs.
Judy jumped in front of a subway train,
And Eddie got slit in the jugular vein.
Eddie, I miss you more than all the others.
This song is for you, my brother.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
Those are people who died, died.
They were all my friends, and they died.

No problem. Deanna and I have been divorced for 20 years. We get along fine. Everyone in the family, including me, knew that returning to Georgia was the right thing for her to do.

In fact, it became inevitable when our other son Britt and his family moved from Los Angeles back to Atlanta, too.

That did it. Deanna packed up and moved east. She is now settled in and playing grandma at every opportunity.

Just before Christmas, I stopped at Deanna’s place to say hello to the Jefferson granddaughters, Maddie and Sarah, ages four and seven, who were spending the day there. When I walked in, the girls were sitting down at the kitchen table to eat lunch.

Lunch that day was Swedish meatballs with pasta, one of Maddie’s favorites. Sarah had never tried it, and she was balking.

“I don’t like it,” she said with a sour expression.

“Try it,” Deanna told her. “It’s really good. You’ll see.”

“No thanks, I don’t like it,” Sarah insisted, pushing away the plate.

“Don’t be silly, Sarah,” I chimed in. “You won’t know whether it tastes good or bad until you take a bite.”

“I already know what it tastes like.”

As a responsible adult, I felt compelled to apply logic to the situation. “Okay, I admit it isn’t pretty,” I said, “But if you haven’t tried it, you can’t tell what it tastes like.”

Sarah glared at me. “I already know what it tastes like,” she insisted.

“Baloney,” I said. “How can you possibly know?”

“Because I can taste with my eyes.”

That ended the conversation. She got up from the table and wandered off. Sarah is a light eater anyway.

Whether she tastes with her eyes literally or figuratively, we weren’t able to determine.

Swedish meatballs. I can almost taste ‘em.

1. In 1970, for a single concert in Copenhagen, the British rock band Led Zeppelin went on stage as The Nobs. Why?

2. Speaking of Denmark, the Danes celebrate the new year with an unusual tradition. What is it?

3. In 1892, a Connecticut dentist introduced toothpaste in squeeze tubes. This concept dramatically changed the tooth-brushing ritual. Before 1892, how was toothpaste stored and dispensed?

4. Would you want to visit a vespiary?

5. On his second expedition to the South Pole in 1934, Admiral Richard Byrd took along 2.5 tons of a certain candy treat for his men. What was it?

The Answers…

1. They performed as The Nobs because a descendant of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had filed a lawsuit threatening to stop the concert. The suit claimed that one of the band’s album covers, a photo of the zeppelin Hindenburg crashing in flames, dishonored the family name. By performing as The Nobs, the band dodged the lawsuit.

2. All year long, the Danes save old dishes. On New Year’s Eve, they smash the dishes against the front doors of their friends’ houses. The bigger the pile of broken dishes on your front porch, the more friends you’re said to have.

3. Before squeeze tubes were invented, toothpaste came in jars, like Vaseline. All family members simply dipped their toothbrushes into the jar. Yikes!

4. Probably not. A vespiary is a nest of wasps or hornets.

5. Necco Wafers. During the two-year expedition, Byrd’s men consumed an average of one pound per man per week of the little pastel goodies.

My life of indolence is well-earned, mind you. I paid my dues — all those years as a wage slave, commuter, taxpayer, husband, and father. Today, as I go through life piddling around and enjoying the scenery, I feel no remorse.

Of course, I do sympathize with folks who are still on the treadmill. Both of my sons, for example, work very hard at life. Ah, yes, I remember it well.

When you think about it, life on the treadmill is the norm everywhere, for all creatures. A minor percentage of lucky humans can “retire,” but the rest of creation works hard every day to survive. They do it all their lives.

Consider the example of a certain hawk I see each time I drive to Athens.

The main road from my fair city, Jefferson, to the nearest metropolis, Athens, is U.S. 129. It is a divided four-lane highway, fine and scenic, lightly traveled, always a pleasant drive.

About halfway between Jefferson and Athens is the unincorporated community of Redstone. In that area, on the west side of the highway, the pine/hardwood forest gives way to vast open fields that go on for several miles.

This is where the hawk perches on a powerline, the perfect vantage point to scan the open fields for prey.

I see the hawk virtually every time I drive through Redstone. He is always perched somewhere along the powerline. He is, I assume, focused intently on the field below, alert for movement in the grass.

This is the hawk’s treadmill. He has done this, and will continue to do it, for as long as he lives.

About six months ago, after the presence of the hawk in hunting mode got my attention, I began to look for him. Spotting the hawk became a routine part of my trips to Athens.

On the rare days when I didn’t see him, I was deeply disappointed. But on most trips, there he was, perched motionless on the wire, on duty.

Eventually, it occurred to me that I had seen the hawk in that familiar pose dozens of times, but I had never seen him in pursuit of prey. In truth, I only see him for about 20 seconds at a time. The odds of being able to watch the hunter go hunting are against me.

But last week, the odds broke in my favor.

On my way to Athens one morning, I spotted the hawk up ahead in his customary pose on the powerline. Suddenly, as I drew alongside, he took flight.

He launched himself from the powerline — more accurately, he dropped from the line — and soared in a straight, graceful trajectory toward a spot in the field.

Like an airplane coming in for a landing, he approached the target. Based on his glide path, I could identify the location of the prey ahead of time.

Then, with delicate precision, he extended his talons and picked up a small grayish something from the floor of the meadow.

With the prey secured, the hawk rose into the air again, wings flapping powerfully.

Before I rounded a curve and lost sight of him, he was flying toward a bank of trees in the distance, his lunch dangling from one talon.