I filled up my CNG powered Ford pickup today. It cost me nine dollars. NINE DOLLARS! I went from having less than a quarter of a tank to a full tank for nine dollars. I still can’t believe it. CNG is 120 octane and my truck is tuned to burn it so it runs pretty darn good. I can get some good scratch out of the back tires if I wish. Not that I wish. I just bought it. It’s not a race car and I’m too old to think it’s cool to waste rubber so blatantly. Although I could if I wanted. I may, now that a full tank of fuel is costing less than meal at a restaurant. I may want to cruise town a little. I be rollin’ cleany. Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’, I be rollin’ cleany. My truck doesn’t pollute as much as a gasoline motor so I can feel good about myself. I drive a truck so no one will accuse me of being a tree hugging terrorist. Because of my clean burning vehicle the bullfrogs can sing my praises. They can sit in nice clean pond water and rejoice.
I’m still having trouble with that first part. Nine dollars is insane. I’ve been conditioned to pay a lot more for fuel over the last decade. It became normal to shell out the more lonely presidents for a full tank. I mean old honest Abe isn’t lonely, there’s lots of him floating around. Hamilton is only slightly lonely but he gets out some. Old Andy Jackson gets out ever so often and we don’t mind much. Andy needs the air. Old Benji however, he’s the most lonely and he needs to stay that way. I do not like letting Franklin out. He runs off faster than any of the presidents. He must have been a track star or something. His picture sure doesn’t look like it but he must have been blazing fast. Of course this would have been looked over due to his other traits. It’s completely understandable. They didn’t value athletic ability back then as we do now. Thanks to this new truck though, he better just grab a good seat somewhere way back in my wallet. He ain’t coming out for a good long while.
Because fuel is so cheap I feel like driving a little now. I may slick back my hair and take my best girl for a little cruise. My best girl is my wife. I felt the need to clarify that all of a sudden. My only girl I should say. Yes, if she’s reading this then “my best girl” was used to create a certain feeling for the nineteen fifties and was not a reference to me having more than one girl of which I do not. However, and so on, ahem, I feel a cruise down the middle of town on a Saturday night might be in order. I could pull up to other adults and have them roll their window down and ask them how much they payed for fuel. I could then rev up my truck and say ” want to race to the next filling station?” Their answer would most assuredly would be “hell no.” “I want to coast this thing home on a thimble full.” I could then peel out and play the sound track to Grease all through town. I’m rolling cleany. It’s a win win. I get to pull my boat and go fishing without having to pawn all my rods and reals to buy gas to get home and I’m saving the environment unless of course the fracking process goes awry and poisons things beyond repair. I choose not to think of that at this time. Right now the bullfrogs are singing and Benji is safe and snug in his cage.

The Garden was Eden wasn’t a vegetable garden I guarantee.  Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had to worry about getting into trouble.  They’d have been too tired.  Nakedness would have been a non-issue.  Instead of temptation both would have gotten to hoe, weed, till, spray, water, plow, pick, and  tend.  After doing all that in a day you tell me if them knowing they were naked would have made any difference.  They would have sunburned, aching backs.  Old Satan, or “S money” as they called him back then, could have whispered to Eve all night and the answer would have always been “would you rub my back please S money? The garden of Eden had to be a flower garden with mature fruit trees planted around.  That’s all I can come up with.  With Adam and Eve laying around a flower garden all day eating fruit it’s no wonder they got into trouble.  They needed a garden like the one my family used to have.  Then needed a Garden of Newt to keep them busy.  It was huge back then.  Big enough support the vegetable and melon needs of three families.  It was a lot of work.  The garden I’ve been doing for the last four years doesn’t pay sufficient homage to the magnificent historical gardens of Newt, but it does make an attempt.
The traditional garden of Newt when I was growing up utilized the entire allotment of land allocated for gardening.  It stretched fence to fence with rows of corn, beans, watermelon, peppers, onions, tomatoes— I could go on and on but I’ll stop here.  You get the picture.  This garden was carefully laid out and attended to constantly during the growing season.  Early in the spring my dad prepared the soil for planting.  He had an old fashioned steel wheeled plow.  I think it was meant to be pulled by a horse even though it was small, but the days of having that kind of work horse around had long passed.  When me and my brother got old enough to do real work in the garden Dad hitched us up to the little steel wheeled plow.  He took a lariat rope and harnessed us to it.  We pulled and he guided.  It worked pretty well.  We only did that a couple of years.  The other way of laying rows was much easier. We would just take a hoe and walk along pulling it through the dirt by hand.  It made a nice row and you could have as many people as you had hoes working at a time.  I never asked him why he had me and my brother pull that plow.  It’s a great memory and I bet it made us stronger.  I don’t know if he thought it really was good idea to try or if he wanted to work me and my brother hard.  I remember seeing a grin across his face when I would look back as I struggled against the weight.  If I can find the thing, I may hook my kid up to it next year.  When we got the rows laid the planting started.  It looked good.  Straight lines with equal distances between each one made for a pleasing site.  The work was just beginning.  The tending to the garden was the most time consuming thing.
I can remember my grandfather sitting on the porch in his wooden chair.  He’d have his hoe leaning there gleaming in the sun.  He’d sharpen that thing until the wind off of it would cut a weed.  He sharpened it everyday after using it.  He also had a single shot twenty two rifle leaned next to him.  If some varmit came into his garden it paid the ultimate price.  He shot and his dog “Cracker Jack” would fetch whatever he hit, and he hit most every time.   He and my grandmother would get up before daylight and have breakfast.  My grandfather would be hoeing in the garden at the first twinkle of sunlight.  My grandmother would be doing any number of garden tasks.  She would hoe, weed and pick in the garden until it was putting up time.  Then she would be in the kitchen with all kinds of pots and bowls preparing to cook, clean, cut, boil or whatever was necessary to the process that day.  She was a whirlwind of activity.  We all worked hard hoeing and picking and were rewarded with vegetables aplenty.  Enough to last through the winter and beyond if need be.  The Garden of Newt was immaculate.  There were no weeds or grass.   The work started before daylight and went on until things were done.  The garden I do isn’t quite of the same caliber.   I do not get up before the sun rises and work in the garden.  I will get up that early to go fishing, but never to garden.  I don’t shoot anything that comes into the garden.  I take a lasse faire approach to garden security.  My dog will only fetch stuff I don’t want him to.  I sharpened the hoe and it cuts worse now.  I think I sharpened the wrong side.  Neither my wife nor my mother are whirlwinds of activity.  Nonetheless the garden gets done.  It gets a little weedy sometimes.  It gets a lot weedy sometimes.  It gets so weedy sometimes I can’t tell it’s a garden.  It gets done though.  We are getting better.  We would have certainly starved last year if all  we had to eat over the winter was the stuff out of our garden but we did get enough stuff grown, picked and put up to last a week or so.  That’s a start.  This year I have vowed to do better.  We may never have another Garden of Newt of historical proportions.  We will  have one this year that will keep us alive for two weeks if it comes to that.  That’s a whole week longer to live.  That’s a start.

Rain is important.  This is what I’ve been taught.  I believe it.  Recently, and by recently I mean months,  the rain clouds bring disappointment rather than life-giving water.  I’m not griping… yet.  We still have plenty of time for things to turn around.  If it doesn’t start raining soon I have devised a plan to make it rain.  We all know that mother nature is behind this.  If it doesn’t rain she is punishing us for some transgression.  My plan will be to figure out this transgression and resolve it.
If it doesn’t rain soon we must assume that mother nature is pissed at us.  Being that she is a woman we must ascertain what we’ve done to her without actually asking  her.  We all  know that asking makes it much worse.  So we must drop hints and see what happens.  For instance, one of us could be outside and make a simple remark such as “I sure hope Mother Nature knows that I wasn’t looking at Lady Luck the other day.  I was simply looking somewhere she just happened to be standing.”  If it starts to cloud up or sprinkle we’ll know we’re on the right track.  We can continue on explaining ourselves and apologizing until the clouds burst forth and we are drenched.
If nothing happens after the first statement we must assume we’ve forgotten some special event.  One must be careful in this area.  If we say the wrong event we’re doomed to have this drought for a while.  I suggest we quietly hum the happy birthday song when we’re around mother nature.  If nothing happens then we can go to humming the wedding march.  If we get nothing then we must try something drastic.  We must get her something and present it to her.  When she asks what’s this for we must say “you know, silly”.  This is a last ditch effort.  I hope she tears up and let’s loose a torrent of water .  All will be forgiven.  She will be happy and we’ll make hay and gardens while prancing amoungst the daffodils.  She is a good old gal just not when she’s angry.  She’s pre-menopausal now.  We better be good.
The very last thing we might try if all else fails is the most dangerous.  I shudder to even think of it.  Desperate times mean desperate measures.  If we can’t appease her by employing the previous plans then we must make her mad.  Mad enough to cry.  Yes you heard me right.  I can’t believe I’m saying it either.  We will have to make statements about her appearance.  We all know how touchy she’s become.   We’ve seen the eroding of her magnificent humps over the years.  The grand canyon ain’t looking any smaller.  She’s got sink holes now  in odd places and her breath, sometimes…my god her breath.  We’ll have to say these things in a way that seems like we’re just trying to help her.  We want her mad enough to cry, not mad enough to leave us.  Even though her best days are behind her I’m sure there’s a sun out there that would be more than willing to hook up with her.  We can’t have that.  We’ve got  all this work in on her.   I don’t think we can afford to lose half our stuff either.  If it comes to that I’m staying  with this sun.  He’s always been warm.  The new one might not be as warm.  I’m accustomed to this amount of warmth and I’m staying put.

Kids will surprise you.  They can be very industrious at a very early age.  It’s amazing how much knowledge they can retain so quickly.   We get used to being amazed and proud of our children.  It’s what parents do best.  We see something in our own kids that nobody else sees.  We are adept at seeing potential when perhaps none is evident.  It’s shakes us up a little when our children do not live up to our high expectations.
Last year my seven year old son was in the house alone.  I was in the shop working on my boat.  I realized it was getting time to eat something but I was just about finished with what I was working on.  I got into the house about an hour later than we usually eat supper.  I  walk through the door to see my son setting alone at the Kitchen table.  He had gotten out everything which is needed to make pancakes.  He had arranged them on the table in front of him.  He had a mixing bowl and spoon, measuring cups, pancake mix, eggs, milk, and syrup all sitting before him.  He had placed a skillet on the stove with a spatula resting beside it.  He hadn’t turned anything on.  He was patiently waiting for me.  I was very proud of him.  He hadn’t broken any rules.  He had shown planning and organization skills.  He knew what he wanted and had endeavored to get it.  He got a good result from it, pancakes. This week however, we went to the opposite end of the spectrum.
It’s spring time.  Around here that means crappie fishing, stock car racing, and getting the garden ready.  Tilling the garden was the task at hand last week.  I tilled the garden with my dad when I was young.  I was very proud to see my son out there with  me as we work.  I let him guide the tiller for a bit with me standing at the ready in case it got away from him.  Things were good.  It’s always nice to do things with your kids that your parents did with you.  I feel a certain amount of connectedness to my ancestors when this happens.  He got tired of this before long and I let him go into the house to watch cartoons.  I had been tilling for a good  long while when I realized the time.  It was a good two hours past lunch.  I shut off the tiller and walked to the house.  My nephew had shown up and was walking quickly to me with my son.  What he said next took my by surprise.  He told me that when he drove up he said hi to my son who was just walking out of the house.  He said he noticed he was chewing on something and asked him what it was.  My son replied “raw bacon.”  I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve always heard raw pork is dangerous.  They way I understood things the equivalent of eating raw pork was eating human waist straight out of a soiled hospital bed pan with a fork made out of used hypodermic needles from the drug clinic.  My grandmother was so paranoid about raw pork she would cook bacon until it was so done it was like trying to eat glass.  It would shatter in your teeth.  Raw bacon is bad right?  I freaked out a bit and then I googled “what happens when you eat raw bacon.”  It turns out bacon is cured so the chances of getting some nasty bacteria is slim.  I am relieved.  I ask my son the age old parental question, Why?  He tells me the package said not to eat uncooked bacon.  He was eating raw bacon.  He saw a distinction between the two.  I explained to him that raw and uncooked mean the same thing.  He’s got the idea now.  Maybe the uncooked turkey in the deep freeze is safe until thanksgiving.
Raw bacon is bad but my niece had the all time worst eating related mishap.  She was maybe two or three years old at the time.  We were sitting on the porch when one of  my dad’s coon dogs hopped up.  I wasn’t paying her much attention.  I was young and my mind was on other things.  I was supposed to be watching her so she wouldn’t fall off the porch, but she was safe in the middle petting the dog.  My mom walked outside and asked me what I had given her to eat.  I told her I had given her nothing.  My mom immediately dug the remnants of a big gray dog tick out of my nieces little mouth.  Mom made her spit what was left of the red tick juice out.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been so queasy.  I’ve been thinking about which one I’d rather eat; a dog tick or raw bacon.  I gotta go with the raw bacon.  I just can’t make a case for the dog tick.