Maybe I don't understand, but...

This pic goes with "A)" below. Please, a little patience.

Saturday's Tampa Tribune, which, by the way is merely a delivery system for junk mail that you pay to recieve, had an article titled"PATCH FOR ATTENTION DEFICIT GETS FDA PANEL'S APPROVAL. BOARD SUGGESTS LIMITED USE, THOUGH". Maybe I don't understand the disease, if it even really is a disease and not just a personal shortcoming, but wouldn't them that needs it keep forgetting to put it on?

Got ahold of FRL yesterday. He was my reason for discovering Pittsburgh which, after New Orleans, of course, is a favorite American city of mine. I guess it's just icing on the cake that so many of my friends from FL and a lot of the people I met in the navy all wound up in the small towns around Pittsburgh. I can go to one place and see so many friends. In fact, when I was still in the navy, I could see 5 times as many friends there as I could by going home. Of course, as I stated a few weeks ago, a trip to Pittsburgh is not without peril. Because, for me anyway, somebody always steals something when I'm there. But a trip anywhere else is definately without A) a view of the stadiun and rivers from high up on a cliff, B) a ride on the incline, and C) a big ol' messy Primanti Bros. sandwich.

But I was telling you about FRL. And that's him up top, though now he is much thinner and in much better shape. I guess moving from Pittsburgh to Pompano Beach will do that. He was telling me he had bought an eighth floor condo overlooking the beach. He said he was pretty happy with it. He also said that riding out his first hurricane in an eighth floor condo was a "moving" experience (the bad pun is mine and mine alone). I told him that I supposed so. He allowed as how anytime he thought about moving back north, which really wasn't all that often, he just checked the weather: 82 here, 29 there. Think I'll stay here.

Oh yeah, I went over 10,000 hits over the weekend. It happened while I slept. It wasn't near the rush I had thought it would be. But still, I have touched 10,000 people. 10,000 otherwise normal people who probably feel just a little bit dirty right about now.

Dorcheat Creek (Down By The Bottom Bridges)
9 Dec 1996

Dorcheat's gotten high and slowly licks along
them three old bottom bridges.
Stain brown and the cypress trees, and me,
and the silence of the ages.
A big ol' fish, he rolls, and what I know
I'll likely just keep hiding.

But the red clay stays.
And the rest, it all just drifts away with time.
Lord, I've been blessed
with a pine woods Lou'sana state of mind.
Sometimes we all move off so quickly
that the best is often left somewhere behind.

All the talk of love's got some folks running scared
and feeling kinda repetitious.
I scratch that black cat right between the ears
never bend to superstitions.
This hill's grown old with stories often told
on nights still laced with magic.

Let the Dorcheat roll.
And the rest of it can drift away with time.
For I've been blessed
with a pine woods Lou'sana state of mind.
'Cause when we get lost in the details
seems the best is always left somewhere behind.

The Webster Parish mercury goes crazy
in the lazy summertime.
Watch your step, the rattlesnakes take shelter
in them watermelon vines.
We plug that sucker anyway, with backyard hooch
then dance into the night.

Honeysuckle grows
over top of all that drifted off with time.
And they smell so sweet,
it's a pine woods Lou'sana state of mind.
I can't imagine being nowhere else
with the best of me all left somewhere behind.

You can roll your eyes til Monday
I ain't leaving all the best of this behind

Ed
Jacksonville, FL

Here in my cow I feel udderly safe, out
Ramblin' Ed