I was listening to the song, "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton the other day.  Actually, I like the version with Eddy Albert singing better, but Mr. Horton was a history teacher and wrote several songs (Does anyone have his album?) like this including "The Sinking of the Bismarck" and others.  Then I heard "The Ballad of the Green Beret" later on.  This was Memorial Day, of course.  I can hear snatches of the tunes in my head, "Fighting soldiers, from the sky..." "We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin' but there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago..."

These are songs about Americans and the American Spirit.  Americans are a peculiar bunch, to say the least and fighters and explorers and leaders.  (Who has time to talk about Texans individually?  Besides, Texans are Americans.)  I guess I was thinking about the kind of people that came here in the first place.  If you think there is intolerance now, try being burned at the stake for what you believe.  "Very well, if you heretics want to have your own little beliefs and teach new things, then go on over to the New World.  Get out, don't come back or we'll burn more of you at the stake."  I hope it is obvious that I am trying to capture the spirit of the thing, not the accurate historical record.

These are some desperate folks.  Okay.  Let's get on a rat-infested, disease-ridden rickety sailing ship and go, then.  We know what we believe in is true.  September 16, 1620 they left and arrived November 21 to a New England winter.

Desperate folks, that love being able to worship as they will and basically free (as free as the social mores of the time allowed) to do what they pleased.  They loved Freedom.

What sort of desperate man would stand up in the face of the strongest empire in the world and say things like, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third-may profit by their example." And "The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; but to the vigilant, the active, the brave...There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery!  Our chains are forged!  It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter.  Gentlemen may cry peace-but there is no peace...What is it that gentlemen wish?  What would they have?  Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, Almighty God!  I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

What a radical madman!  Too bad the founding fathers didn't know about Ritalin or Prozac.  What bunch of lunatics would come up with:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

As a sidenote, when a local newspaper showed the sentence, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..." to people at a mall and asked them if they would sign it, they freaked out.  Most people thought this was a radical plot!  Well, I guess it was, huh?

I cannot tell all about what kind of people are here.  My German Great-Grandfather, serving in the German Army but disagreeing with the Kaiser's politics.  Saving every bit of money he had, when it came time to go on leave, he booked passage on a sailing ship and came here.  What if he'd been caught?  Why would he take such a risk?  We are a nation of risk takers.  My Irish Great-Great-Great (I think) leaving a starving land.

I have made kind of a hatchet job this morning of what I meant to be a tribute to the American Spirit.  But let us suffice it to say that we are a fiercely independent, fearless lot that believes in democracy and freedom from oppression for all people.  We believe in standing up for what is right even though everything may be against us.

Brave men down through our history, even to today, have given all.  They have bought for us all and for people that need our help, the God-given rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Good Book says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Unless you are a fan of the Doctor Demento Show you have probably never heard a song that says, "Rental cars are really great/driving over speed bumps at a hundred and eight.../you can crash it/you can smash it/'cause it's only a rental car."  We had to rent a car since all we ever do is drive, and try to do it without a credit card or worse yet, with cold, hard cash!  There is a place in town here that will do it, called AA Auto Rental.  Very nice people to do business with and they took the debit card with no problem.  The problem came in because I had asked for the cheapest car they had.

This would be a 2001 Suzuki Swift.  Well, let me tell you one thing I have discovered.  The Suzuki Swift might be very good on gas and have nice, comfortable seats, but there is one thing it lacks.  It is not a family car.  Try fitting 3 adults and 2 teenagers in one.  The only thing worse than getting everybody in is getting them out.  It looks like the circus where all the clowns get out of the little car.

So, we set out for church.  Grandma's new walker, the one I call the "Hugo Hotrod" will not fit by any stretch, so she has to use the old one that has the worn-out tennis balls on the bottom so it makes a lovely screeching sound on the tile.  She has to sit up front.  We get to church and it is going to be an awards ceremony for our Christian school.  That's nice.  Until someone comes out with a dozen roses and there are flowers, roses, all over the church.

"Why, that must have smelled beautiful!" you say.  Oh sure, that may be true enough, except for one small detail.  Margaret is deathly allergic to them.  She has always been allergic to roses, but the last several years her asthma has gotten worse and she goes into a killer asthma attack.  'Tis the season for allergy related asthma and she has had two attacks already this week, one involved calling an ambulance.  Thus, here I am at home, waiting to see what happens next, although the way it stands now, the inhaler is working just fine.

Some people use perfumes and sprays and don't really think that there is a possibility that someone may not appreciate the gallon-and-a-half of perfume they wear because they are too lazy to bathe...oops.  Did I say that?  What I meant was that, er, while you may have a nice smelling perfume, aftershave, cologne remember, a lot of times little is much.  Just because you can't smell it a mile away doesn't mean that the rest of us can't.  Remember, perfumes and colognes are actually meant to be a little more intimate, to draw another person closer, and do not need to be smelled from a half mile away.  Actually, besides triggering people's allergies you can, in fact, make people want to stay a little more than a half a mile away.

Every guy in the country, possibly the world, is suddenly going, in guy-like delayed reaction style, "Whoa!  Wait a minute!  What do you mean your wife is allergic to roses?  What do you do when there's a special occasion, like an anniversary or birthday or forgotten anniversary or forgotten birthday?"  Well, fellers, I save a bundle of money, just like in the car insurance commercial.

Gals, if you think I sound unromantic you will just have to talk to Margaret and see if she thinks I am.

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It appears that the inhaler has worked.

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Remember, the Good Book says, "To every silver lining there's a cloud."

Arrrggggghhhhh!  Thanks for all the well-wishes for me to have something to write about.  There I go, first thing I am ending a sentence with a preposition which everyone knows you are not supposed to end a sentence with.

I cannot tell you all about everything that has gone on in the last several days and weeks but here is a sample.

The transmission on the van went out yesterday.  Now, I had not been to the mechanic's shop for several months and I go to the same guy all the time.  He is, if you can believe it, an honest mechanic, plus he will let us pay him in increments, which is a big help.  Well, I am taking the middle daughter across town to finish getting her permit and the tranny, which has been leaking about 5 quarts of fluid (don't know how familiar you might be with cars so for perspective a normal car should take a half-pint to a pint every several months or so) every couple of days.  So it was just a matter of when the thing would give.  And where.  Can we say, "Rush hour traffic on Academy Blvd?"  Woohoo!  So, call the tow truck, the first one I call the gal tells me, "I'm sorry sir, we're all booked up for the rest of the day."  Well, !?!?!?!?!?  So I call Walt's towing, be there in a half-hour.  Turned out to be 10 minutes.

Tow it to the mechanic and the first thing he says when he sees me is, "I was just thinking about you, this morning and here you are."  "Well, don't think about me anymore."  So, if the tranny can be rebuilt the labor alone will be a mere $800!

I am going to work more on my serious writing nowadays.  I will still blog, but it may become more sporadic, although not as sporadic as Carter's http://carterking.blogspot.com/ .  I may just go back to the Nifty Three Fifty rule, too. This would mean shorter entries but more consistent.  Even with writer's block (miserable comforters are ye all) I should be able to do that much.

Remember, the Good Book says, "Feel sorry for those who have writer's block."

Well, it should.

So, if you sit down at your typewriter (I use the term colloquially, of course and in agreement with Kelly that typewriters are of the devil) and don't have any ideas, then what?  What can you do?  I like to put out something that is interesting and fun to read but I don't always have ideas.  Or at least not ideas I can articulate.  So what then?

I guess you get a similar effect to doodling.  No great work of art by itself (tell Sergio Aragones of Mad magazine, that though, huh?), but interesting and often artistic in its own right.

Little thoughts that I think.

Like why are young people so hung up on looks?  Looks are the exactly worst way to judge, but they spend bazillions of dollars at the mall each year.  They are all participating in a traditional generational exercise.  They are trying to find their "look."  They are trying to be, different, unique from the others.  That's why they all wear the same clothes.  It happened in my generation, and the one before, etc, etc.  Then they hold onto that style (in the case of the goofy pants that look like your dad's, they have to hold onto them) and when their children go shopping they will say, "Why can't you kids buy normal looking clothes.  What's wrong with looking like the Saggy Baggy Elephant?  You aren't supposed to wear jeans that are the right size?  I don't know what's the matter with the young people in this country...Why, I remember back in the day..."

The silliest thing I have ever heard was when a 14 year old told me how things was "back in the day..."  I laughed so hard my prune juice went out my nose.  Oh, and can someone please DUMP that phrase anyway?  The correct terminology is, "Back in the good old days..."

I Posted some pics to the gallery of Carter getting his E-6.  If there was ever a guy who was a sergeant it's him.  Seriously, Carter is a good Cavalry soldier and we civilians can sit at home in our ease with guys like him taking care of the country's business.  I also found an old picture of me and him from back in the day, er, back in the good old days.  While he was in the Army I used to set his picture in a little frame next to me on the bar and order him a beer when I had one.  He was a real drinker back then, too.

I will post some pics of the Savannah Melody if it does okay.  I have a notorious black thumb and can't tell whether it is growing or dying.  It has turned a little brown around the edges (yes I have been watering it and doing my best to follow the fool-proof instructions.  I need Herb-proof instructions, though.) but yet I think it is getting greener in the center.

Well, that's news for now...Oh wait.  Have you guys seen the latest news?  Elvis is not only alive, but plans to run for president in 2008!

Remember, the Good Book says...What's the definition of a will?  It's a dead giveaway.

I received a Savannah Melody in the mail today!  Scarbrough Gardens, http://daylily.net/scarbroughsgarden/garden.htm sent it to me free because they are grandparents and thought little Savannah's story was wonderful.  Woo-hoo!  I ran out and planted it right away.  The instructions were so easy Carter could probably follow them!  We will find out now if I have a black thumb or not.  They seem pretty hardy, both the flower and the baby.

*Last night we had a freeze, which I didn't know was coming.*

Sorry I haven't had much to say, lately.  I have been working on a couple of writing projects for the Writer's Digest Contest coming up soon.

The grown-up has moved in with some friends.

*Sigh*

Oh, in case you haven't noticed, our bubbly little friend, Ashley, is back at http://ashleylintner.blogdrive.com/ and watch out world, she's got a dictionary and knows how to use it!  If she keeps correcting her spelling, people might be able to make sense of what she is saying, well, I may be getting carried away a little...  Anyway, welcome back, Ashley.

And, guess who has started their own blog?  That no-brother-good-in-law-of-mine-from-illi-noise (You'd have to be a Yoopers fan to get that) is at http://spaces.msn.com/members/waynebrain/ Wayne!  That's right folks.  You've read his witty comments on the tagboard, now he is one of us...bwahahahahahaha!

Actually, that msn spot looks pretty good.  They offer free photo storage.  Wonder what the limits are?  I pay five bucks here, can store unlimited pictures and my main blog has no ads.  I also have more bandwidth to use, more disk storage for the blog itself, etc.  I doubt I'll be leaving blogdrive.com anytime soon.

Remember, the Good Book says, "Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end."

Well, the other night (Saturday) Margaret called some of the daughter's friends' numbers in her cell phone.  She spoke with the boyfriend, who swore he hadn't heard from her.  Margaret said, well I would have expected that if you hadn't heard from her that you would call me back to see if I had.  I guess we will have to call the police and file a missing person's report.  This afternoon (Sunday) we get a brief voice mail saying that she's alright, she's staying with a couple of friends and, oh, happy Mother's Day. 

Hmmpph!

She came by the house and picked up some stuff to take with her.

Saturday was Abigail's 14th B-day!  We went to a place here in town called "Mr. Biggs" which is, I guess you could call an indoor amusement park.  They have games, an arcade, go-karts, lazer tag and paintball.  Her and her friend and her sister and my wallet went.  The favorite activity of Abigail and her friend was the paintballing.

Paintball is an activity which involves guns, paint, bruises and welts.  Abigail would freak the boys out with what her friend calls her "Kamikaze" approach.  Vaguely reminiscent of the scene in the movie True Grit (I seem to remember it in the book, too) where John Wayne comes riding over the hill, reins in his teeth and a gun in each hand.  She was too much for some of the boys.  Then there were a couple of boys that wouldn't play with them because she played too hard and "it hurts to get hit with those things."  Well the girls got yelled at by the boys' mother because they were teasing the boys.  When they told me about it I couldn't believe what a bunch of sissies.  I guess don't play with the big boys or the little girls if you are going to get hurt.

They had a really good time and I put in a full (7 hour) day of sitting on a bench or walking around.  And spending money.  It was not bad.  The lines for the go-karts were way too long, but that was the only problem.

Gotta run this AM, just thought I'd let you know what was happening.

Remember, the Good Book says, "A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired."

Margaret and I went up to the college to pick up Elizabeth.  She had called and said she would be done in ten or fifteen minutes.  I park, with the intention of waiting for her to come out, but Margaret decided to go in and check on her.  She had an idea of what she would find.  Sure enough, there she was, entwined with Troy.

We had talked about this with her at length.  We don't have anything against the boy, but they both have been instructed to wait until he is a little more grounded in the church and has a job, etc.  Well, when we got home, mom explained that it is harder for the young man to learn what we believe and teach, and to respect what we as her parents, believe and teach and what Pastor J believes and teaches, if she doesn't do it herself.  He needs to be in church a while and get grounded first, and he has been baptized in Jesus name and received the baptism Holy Ghost, he just needs to really get more knowledge and a job and take some time.  They both need to take some time.

This apparently offended her.  She told Grandma Pike that she was going out to pick up trash in the yard and that was the last anybody saw of her except a note that said "Don't worry about me I'll come get my stuff and move tomorrow.  Liz."  Well, we are fairly certain that her friend Stephanie has seen her because she won't return our phone calls and normally when our house calls she calls back right away.  And, to be fair, Margaret called Troy, and, much to his credit, he called right back and seemed frankly as concerned as we are.  He has called Margaret twice so far.  Nobody's heard from her other friend, who is in contact with her other college friends.

Well, Herb, you must remember how it was being 18.  Oh yeah.  I do.

When she gets over her mad and we can tell you more, we will.

Hoo-Ah!  A phrase in the Army that means Sergeant Promotable Carter R. King is now, (drumroll, bugle call) STAFF Sergeant Carter R. King!  Hoo-Ah!  (Hooah.  It's an Army thing.)

Congrats to my longtime bosom buddy and lifelong pal.  Sorry gals he's taken.  Besides, he's still ugly and his feet still stink.

Also, I want to welcome an old friend from way back, Barb!  Check out her website at http://members.tripod.com/b_barb/ .  You can read about her husband of 20 years who is a typical Wisconsinite, her kids and see a few pictures of some of the most beautiful country God ever made.  Check the humor blog http://herbshumor.blogdrive.com/ for more knowledge about Wisconsin

Gotta fly this morning but don't forget, the good book says, Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.

I just finished reading Star Wars: the Revenge of the Sith.  This is the novelization of the movie.  I didn't buy it and I'm glad, because it wouldn't be worth the hardback price for it.  Oh, stop, I didn't steal it either.  I was listening to a guy on the radio interviewing the author and the 9th caller got a copy of the book.

I was never a big "Star Wars" fan and this book was something of a disappointment to me as a story.  I remember "Star Wars" coming out.  It was the must-see event of all time.  Where I grew up in church we were taught that it was wrong to go to movie theatres for the same reasons we didn't have TV or video.  The spirits of Hollyweird, the depiction of acts and language we wouldn't allow in our home, the darkness, etc.  I don't want to get into it all at this writing, but suffice it to say we weren't supposed to go.  Well, one friend of mine snuck out and went to see it.  I won't tell you who she is since she's a preacher now and probably thinks the whole thing was a little silly.  I kept her secret and she kept mine, which was that I had snuck off to see, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".  What wild teenagers we were.  To be fair, I was really a lot more rotten than that.  That is about the worst thing I know (or will remember) that she did.

Anyway, about this book; I was bored.  I read it through so I could loan it to Randy but I think you have to be a fan to really get into it.  I remember when the first movie came out it was really taken to task by the Christian community.  One book said that it was evil because of the references to "The Force" and its use being related to practices of Witchcraft.  Another book came out later and said that it actually had many Christian lessons in it because of the clear "Good vs. Evil" and such going on.  Well, like most stories, it seems to me that it is all in what you are looking for in it.  That didn't stop me from upbraiding my friend at the time, although you can find as much or more New Age philosophy in anything you look at.  I was just, as usual, being a brat.  (I heard that, and, no, I haven't changed much.)  I think you could apply the philosophies about The Force to anything you want to, especially if there is money involved, which is, of course, the driving motivation of Hollyweird in the first place.

The story has a lot of action, but, just as a book often loses something in the translation to a movie, so does this movie in translation to a book.  As I said, I suppose if you are a life-long, die-hard fan it would be better.  There was one really cool line in the book, however that made the whole thing worth reading just to get to, which was when the former Anakin, now Darth Vader, tells Obi-Wan, "You're the one who should be mindful, my 'master.'  I am a disturbance in The Force."

So, I guess it was okay, but on my personal five-star system I only give it a one-and-a-half.

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I have never been much of an investor but I am thinking of buying stock in Wal-Mart.  When you have to feed a family of six, it pays to go to Sam's, then to Wal-mart.  We spend an awful lot of money at just these two stores, especially if you add in clothes, but I have to say I kind of wish there was a more competitive alternative that was convenient.  There are like, what, 32 checkout lanes and they can only afford to put 5 or 6 clerks on checkout?  You wind up backed up to some ungodly point and then they have to call the manager and (okay Soosan, fan of Wal-Mart and math person) I think if you put a pencil to it, the time you spend waiting in line takes away a significant amount of your discount.  My time is valuable and then if you add Margaret's time.  Even if we only made minimum wage and managed to get out of the line in 45 minutes that would be almost $18 (2 x 45 min x $6 hr).  The self-check lines at other stores are limited to 15 items or less but if you go that way you (on days when you only have a couple of items) wind up behind someone who has 2 cartloads of stuff and every other item has a question attached to it.

You decide, enough is the proverbial enough and go to ask one of the management looking people standing around watching the whole scene and say, "What are the chances of opening up another lane or two?"  Well, the way they look at you it's as though you have more heads and arms than Zaphod Beeblebrox but they reply, "We are working on it right now."  Which work consists of holding up the desk.

Anyway, if someone started a business that offered a little service there might be some competition for the "evil corporate giant."

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Oh, in answer to my younger brother's question, BTW, welcome Norm, thanks for coming and thanks for e-mailing me your thoughts, but, to make myself clear, I think you ought to have be 21 years old to do anything.  Vote, buy alcohol, join the military, drive a car, anything that requires you to be an "adult" ought to be 21.  Maybe even 25.  Either that or have a standardized maturity test, which, if you can pass it, no matter what age you are, you are an adult, because sometimes age is not really a good measure of maturity.  Why, just look at me...er...well...you know what I mean...

As the good book says, If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.