Beech Tree News Network

I wish I had said that: Miss Fannie Stoback had a big, red rooster a certified coward and a sneak. To cap that off he was poison mean. He bore watching. He had already blind-sided me once… spurred a slit in my new overalls and cut a nasty gash in my leg. 

From then on I carried a good-sized tobacco stick when I went to her house to get milk and butter, usually on Saturdays… an eight year old boy’s chore. 

I’d spot my enemy as soon as I set foot into the yard; lurkin around, planning meanness. However he left me be when I began carrying my stick. I had hemmed him up in a fencer corner a time or two, but only got in a couple of glancing licks. He knew what the stick was for. He was mean but no dummy. 

Miss Fannie evidently had witnessed the altercation in the fence corner when I almost got him with my stick. 

“I don’t want you trying to hurt my rooster.” 

I wish I had said: “No, I’m not gonna hurt him for long. I’m gonna put his lights out for good if I can get in a good lick with this tobacco stick.” 

Eleanor Roosevelt: “Friends walk in and out of our lives. But true friends leave their foot prints upon our hearts.” 

Kelley was a short man with the short man syndrome. Not likeable, he was head of Vocational Agriculture Education of the state of Kentucky. Kelley was a jerk and cock-of-the-walk; he was fond of tooting his own horn-he was liked saying: “I have reached the top rung of the ladder of success.” 

Kelley came down from the ivory tower in Frankfort to evaluate our Ag Department. He carried a clipboard and paper, which he called his “instrument.” I so wanted to ask him if he could “play anything on his instrument.” But I held my breath; I figured I was already in enough hot water; he kept making a lot of marks on the “instrument.” I surmised I was up the creek without a paddle. I was. I was balanced in the scales of justice and found wanting. 

I kept my job. Kelley lost his-he died. I was not particularly sad. In the novel, For Whom The Bell Tolls, somewhere the statement was made: “Any man’s death diminisheth me, for I am a part of mankind.” 

Horse-sugar: I didn’t like Bob Kelley any better after he died than when he was still living. This is not old age talking; I’ve always been this way…jerk now; jerk afterward. But the Lord will straighten that out… no jerks in Heaven. 

Nuf-cd, except for- He’s still working on one. 

Lieutenant Joe Kenda was a detective on the Denver, Colorado police force for over 28 years. Once investigating a murder, a person remarked: “I don’t understand someone being murdered in an upscale neighborhood like this.” Lieutenant Kenda answered: “People live here don’t they?” 

I’ve got to grab my saddle horn and blow. 

Kindest reagrds…….