In Response to Your Many Requests (one)

Due to overwhelming demand, I am posting a photo of our son; the afore mentioned, in the previous post. Sorry girls he is married.

An Hour At Cabela's

My son Matt is in town with his wife to attend the wedding of one of her friends and when I invited him to go to Cabela's with me this morning he jumped at the chance. Cabela's, for those of you who don’t know, is a giant toy store for men. Not only can you buy toys there, you can also buy all kinds of costumes. Rustic camouflage costumes seem to be the most popular. In fact, Cabela's carries so much camo gear that you really can’t see it. You can even purchase a camouflaged porta-potty so you can poop in the woods and not even the bears will notice.
Hunting season is fast approaching and it appears there was a sale on shotguns and rifles. Either that or the entire male population of the county was trying to arm themselves. You have to take a number to be served at the gun counter and the count was up to 2345 when we walked by, so my guess is there are going to be a lot of dead ducks and deer around here or else there will be a huge upswing in the number of armed bank holdups in the next few days. It also appears like the ammo shortage that materialized last fall is finally easing and so I bought 200 rounds of 22 ammo to replace what I shot last week. The shortage was caused by Seth, Rupert and their idiot third cousin Beauford. It seems they have been roaming the country since last November. They would go into any store that sold ammo and asked how much was on hand and proceed to buy every round. The perceived shortage caused ordinary hunters and plinkers to clean off the shelves in self defense. Looks like the Three Amigos may have been arrested on bootlegging charges because I am now able to find ammo for my 22’s in most of the usual outlets. Either that or they returned to their regular seasonal jobs as your children’s 3rd 4th and 5th grade teachers.
Matt and I wandered through the store past dozens of tables set up for the manufactures of duck calls. Each table had at least two reps blowing on their respective duck calls, looking and sounding like two five year olds trying to best the other in the age old game of “Let’s see who can get Mom to scream first”. Matt asked if I wanted to attend a class. Picture this: Thirty chairs set up in rows, filled with old and middle aged men, each blowing on a duck or goose call, trying to imitate the calls being made by the representative from Get a Goose or Duck Quick or Call It In and Blow It Up, Waterfowl Calls LLC. We watch for a couple of minutes but I started to laugh and bring attention to myself so we moved on.
Matt wanted to know if I wanted to sit in and learn how to call a duck. “Are you nuts” I said, “I already know how to call a duck.” “Watch this…..Heeeeeey Duuuuck!!! “ At that point we were asked to leave the store.
I was again struck with the unfairness of life and the prejudice that surrounds those of us who are past 65 and are rapidly picking up speed on our way to the reading of our wills as we walked down the giant stairs to main checkout area and passed an attractive young female employee who was headed up the stairs. She looked at me first, since I had on a bright yellow shirt and a red hat, but there was no indication she even noticed I was there. Her eyes quickly passed to my son, who is young and handsome. Her eyes widened, she broke into a warm smile and began to immediately drool.
I stood naked in front of the mirror the other day after my shower and said to myself. “Johnston you better die before Barbara because this is not dating material and you wouldn’t survive on your own.” Next time I go to Cabela's I will wear camo, and then I will have a reasonable explanation, in my own mind, for why no one notices. Come to think of it, no one ever did.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

For as young as I feel, how did I get this old?

I just got back from spending three weeks with my 93 year old mother. She seems to be doing well but she sure has a lot of old friends. She asked me to take her to a church senior singles dinner. Of the eighty or so guests, my mother seemed to be in the best shape. Lots of geezers with hearing aids and the main topic of conversation was “Do you want to know what the matter with me is this week?”
One of the women, who appeared to be in charge, is trying to be an Elvira wannabe. Lots of jewelry, fake eye lashes, etc. She was wearing a black wig that was a good 18 inches of piled jet black hair and where Elvira is a 38DD this woman appears to be a deflated 38 long. She’s pushing 80 as easily as she is pushing her walker. I have always thought that the best form of birth control over the age of 40 was nudity but this woman would have taken the topic off the menu all together.
My observation of senior activities is pretty basic. It is all about the food. The event was a success or failure depending upon whether the food was edible. As you know, salads do not make my list of great foods so in my senior opinion the meal was a dud. They did serve root beer floats and I ate mine first and left the rest. The only other man at the table asked if was not going to eat my dinner and I told him I was waiting for something that used to have a face. He was quite hard of hearing so it didn’t really matter what I said. Mom is pretty perceptive and offered to buy me a burger on the way home.
I didn’t spend all my time at mothers. I volunteered to be a race marshal for the Tour of Utah and I worked at four of the seven races that week. The first was a Prolog up City Creek Canyon and back. The next time was at the Miller Motor Park in Tooele where they did a time trial on the banked track. The fifth stage was from Park City, through Camus, Midway, down Provo Canyon, over the Alpine Loop and eventually up Little Cottonwood Canyon to Snowbird. It was 92 miles and they did it in about four hours. My last day was the Criterium in downtown Salt Lake where the group of 140 riders raced around two city blocks at 35mph for 90 minutes. Great fun and my ID got me into the VIP tent each time for a free meal. I took my bike on this trip and tried to ride every day. I discovered a circle route that took about an hour and burned 2200 calories. No matter where I rode it was uphill both ways. I would be glad to do a 50 or a 100 mile ride with of you. You only have to promise that when you are 67 you will do the same ride with someone who is the same age you are now.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better

This wasn't the A train

Barbara has been in Oak Harbor helping out with Linda and Eric’s new baby and looking after Tyler, Jared and Alex. When I called and asked how much longer she would be needed, she said about fifteen years. She said she could talk for a few minutes because they just got back from the beach and she had the boys in the tub. Five seconds later she said she had to go. The exact words were…”the boys just came in from the garage and they each have a hammer, I have to go.”

Since Amy was playing with a band at the Indian casino in Anacortes I decided to take the train, spend the night at Eric’s and then take in the show at the casino before returning the “Fun Grandma” to Olympia. It seemed like a good idea at the time. My experience with trains is limited to a couple of trips back to Illinois as a kid and lots of trips on the SNCF in France. French trains with the exception of the TGVs are not necessarily clean, overbooked but usually on time, except for the frequent strikes where the workers load up a train in some large town, pull out of the station, travel to some small village that has a bar-tabac and then go on strike for seven and one half hours. I always traveled 2nd class which meant sitting on my luggage in the vestibule between cars from Lyon to Marseille or anywhere else for that matter.

The Cascade which travels between Portland and Bellingham is the local equivalent. My misfortune was that it was two hours late leaving Portland and I was thirty minutes early at the Lacey station. It’s obviously a government enterprise because although you can purchase a “reserved” seat ticket online you have to go the station to pick it up. The stations is manned by volunteers who know nothing about the schedules, requirements, or amenities and whose only qualifications are deafness, boorish attitude and proof of ownership of a Lionel train set as a kid. Oh I forgot the incontinent part. Having finally got on the train I found out that “reserved seat” means that you go from car to car until you find a vacant seat that does not have a tag on it. Only once you set your butt on the seat itself does it becomes your “Reserved” seat. All in all it was a nice trip and I saw the industrial section of almost every town we passed. What a thrill. No one threw themselves in front of the train and no one tried to beat the train to the crossing so it was pretty uneventful.

Public rail transportation is becoming popular again. Seattle just opened a train line from downtown to the airport. Originally the line was supposed to end two miles from the airport but Sound Transit reconsidered and the new station at the airport will open soon. Seattle also has a short line that goes from Lake Union to downtown. Originally the city, in typical French fashion, decided to call it the Seattle Lake Union Trolley. So… it has now become known as the SLUT. Next time you visit, let’s go ride the slut.

Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

Words to live by

A good friend of ours, Lloyd V Bliss passed away last weekend and I was asked to speak at his funeral. I asked his family to provide me with a list of their favorite "Lloydisms". Let me share just a few of them with you.

"Whats the worst thing that could happen?"

"Of course we're active. We just don't go to church."

"Did your head fall off?"

"Always pay your employees the most you can afford-not the least they will accept."

"If you are going to be a fool, be a quiet fool."

"If you have the power, you have the responsibility to be generous with the other party."

"I like long walks, especially when they're taken by people who annoy me."

"There are three kinds of people. Those who can count and those who can't."

If he did not want to do something he had the following replys:

"I'd rather have a dead rat in my mouth."
"Give me 24 hours notice so I can make other plans."
"I choose not to participate."

Live with great principles and act on them. No one would have ever remembered the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. We should all live such good lives that when we die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Its raining cats and dogs

I was at Amy’s the other day and she tried to give me her cat. Why…? It appears that since there are now two dogs living in the house, the cat is ticked off and shows it by marking its territory in the old fashioned Boy Scout method of peeing on everything. I respectfully declined but wondered what had gone wrong. As a parent, I had held fast to the rule of no pets. No dogs, no cats, no reptiles and certainly thought my children as they grew to adulthood would see the wisdom in the no pet rule and follow suit. No such luck.
Amy has two dogs and a cat. Sarah has 52 cats if you count all the barn cats plus two cows, although one is borrowed. Eric has two dogs technically, since one is currently buried in the back yard. You can tell where, because the weeds grow really tall in that spot. Matt has three dogs including the one that belongs to Uncle Sam. Sounds like a Korean buffet doesn’t it.
It has been my opinion for some time that cats simply allow you to feed them and all dogs should be eaten. This line of thing was reinforced many times during my career as a personal injury claims adjuster for State Farm. Laws vary from state to state but generally if your dog (animal) bites someone or does some property damage, you are responsible and have to pay. In Wa, it doesn’t matter where the dog is at the time. You are responsible. In Oregon, the law says you are responsible if it can be proven that the dog has a propensity to bite, maim or rip asunder. In other words, in Oregon your dog gets one free bite.
I handled a claim by a process server against one of our insured’s who claimed the homeowners dog bit him. The homeowner described the dog as a cuddly, friendly, sweet tempered house dog. To me that meant a large, aggressive, ill tempered pit bull. The process server pretended to be vacuum salesman and when he got on the porch the dog dragged him into the bushes for a friendly discussion about his presence on the property. My guess is the dog didn’t like vacuums. He said he had severe wounds so I asked if we could get some photos. He declined but finally came in two weeks later to show a slight red mark on his calf. I offered to settle the claim for $60.00 to cover the cost of his torn pants and some new clean underwear. He said he would see me in court. The statute of limitations has run on that one so I feel pretty safe. I hope he got the clean underwear. After that experience I am also of the opinion that all process servers should be bitten.
Thanks for listening, I feel much better.

I don't live in this ward, but I'd like to ......

There is one meeting that strikes fear and terror into the heat of every Bishop of every ward in the Church. No its not den meeting, PEC, PPI with the Stake President or even dropping in on the Deacons from time to time. You probably guessed it. The venerable Fast and Testimony Meeting. Every Bishop likes to feel that he has some control of the Sacrament Meeting but once the meeting is turned over to the flock, anything can happen. Today the worshipful attitude was shattered with a brief descripton of the serial killer Ted Bundy, followed by a sister from the Marshall Islands who tried to get her husband and children up on the stand to sing for all of us. She failed. Many prayers were answered right then and there. The Bishop had earlier announced that her husband was going to be baptized tonite but later had to announce that he had been baptized in the Marshall Islands as a kid but forgot. I figured, what the heck, do him again.

Some people who are unwilling or unable financially to seek professional help, use the time to unburden themselves on the rest of us. It becomes a littany of the near dead, the mostly dead, the past dead who have been waiting patiently for the temple work to be done and an assortment of dead pets. Sometimes I really believe I can hear the soft chant of "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry" in the background.

Having been in the uncomforable position myself, I thoroughly enjoy watching our Bishop squirm in his seat. You can almost hear him trying to will, by telepathic means, the speaker into an immediate cardiac arrest.

I have heard "faith promoting" fables about pets being blessed and saved by the priesthood, a priesthood led funeral for a members cat, an admission of an internet addiction to porn, and a pronouncement by a high priest that his wife told him that she was crying because Barbara had just told her that I was having an affair. (What he failed to include was that his wife was mentally ill and that it was just her crazy side talking)

When someone asks after a meeting what I thought about a particular members testimony, I just say "Well bless (his/her) heart. " Translation: "Boy wasn't he full of crap. "

Thank you for listening, I feel much better, bless your heart.