Seedless clown

I don't know. The clown as a metaphor for grape maybe. My titles seldom mean anything much, I just like them to be eye catching. Not to hook your eye, which would just be cruel. But to catch your eye. Well, actually, to catch and release your eye. Anyway, I do ramble.

Been too busy to do much of anything the last few days since Norton Anti-Virus brought down so many of our members' computers. I don't know if I am supposed to, but when I tell folks what happened I also add in that Norton is a good company and that this was an honest mistake and here's how to set it right. I figure it's good business to avoid running down someone else's name, even if you could.

My first wife was a pretty good old gal. She didn't really prove it to the rest of my family, and there towards the end she got messed up with bad people and badder habits and I had to distance myself. And, truth be told she was probably a better girlfriend than wife. And before you say it, I was definately a better boyfriend than husband, since as a boyfriend you mostly just gotta be cool and adventurous and run all over town renting motel rooms. Then you become a husband and you find out that the tux comes with a pocketful of responsibilities and bills you struggle to pay.

And I was going to tell you a story bout her and me, but while I was waxing poetic about husbandry the thought took off and seems to have escaped me cmpletely. So I will indeed share this other fond memory.

I was precommissioning the might warship ANTIETAM in Pascagoula. We lived in a little duplex on Old Mobile Highway and I had my truck, motorcycle and jon boat. She had a Pontiac I bought her because I really like Pontiacs*. So she was out looking for a job that day and asked me what I was going to do. I said head out to the 4 corners bayou and go fishing after work. She wanted to go, too.

"Well, I'll be home about 3:30. Will you be home then?", I asked. "Yeah, sure."

So 3:30 came and went, and when it got to be 3:40 I realized that I was burning daylight and jumped in the truck, the boat was pre-loaded for my convienence, and took off. I got to the bayou, parked near the edge, politely greeted the swarms of mosquitos who, it seems, don't bother you near so much if you exchange pleasantries as opposed to getting out of the truck and taking a swing at 'em. There was, of course, the occasional exception to the rule and I would simply crush them as soon as they landed. So, common courtesy, or the threat of swift and sure mosquito carnage, kept things pretty amicable twixt us all. I launched the boat and hopped aboard.

Now I had slow paddled the boat about 30 yards or so, which in Ed fishing time is about 30 to 40 minutes, when I heard the commotion of a car horn and hollering coming from the bank. Looking up I spied my Pontiac pulled up askew in what was obviously a hurried and careless job of parking. And there was the wife, jumping up and down and waving her arms, yelling for me to come back and pick her up. I smiled. Then I paddled back, kept the boat steady while she embarked, and then headed back out to where I had been while she rigged up a spinning rod to use.

"Glad you could make it."
"The interview went long, but I got the job."
"Cool. Hey, nice dress."
"I was afraid I'd miss you so I didn't stop to change."
"Cool. Cast over yonder. I think a big one lives there."

Gotta love a gal that'll go fishing in her nice, white, Sunday go to meeting dress. And, by the way, the next poem is not about her. That it seems it could be is pure co-inky-dink.

Second 19 March, 2006

I was the second of two bad kids
She was the second of three
I been laughing at my own bad jokes
cause it sure beats laughing at me
I've been down where the used to be
ain't what it was back when
She's been painting her fingernails
And we been living in sin

She been growing her hair long
And I've been cuttiing it close
I've been to shotgun weddings
and I don't want one of those
A quarter for her trouble
God bless her when she sneeze
And a nickle that she prob'ly
oughta hold between her knees

I was the second of two bad kids
She was the second of three
She hugs me in the morning
and she kiss me when she please
You might say that happy
is 'bout all we've got again
She's been hiding the doughnuts
and we've been living in sin

I've been working my tail off
Three hundred dollars a week
We've been mixing beans and rice
and watching our TV
It's a little gone too fuzzy
More black these days than white
But it comes on in the morning
and it goes off late at night

Yeah, I was the second of two bad kids
She was the second of three
Sexy is as sexy does
when it don't try to be
Bite marks on my shoulders
and hickeys on her chin
Tennis shoes beside the door
We've been living in sin

I was fixing her breakfast
I was fixing her toast
I was fixing to tell her
'Bout how I loved her most
She reached over to get the jam
brushed me on my knee
I knew all about the jelly roll
that there was fixing to be

I was the second of two bad kids
She was the second of three
She seems pretty good, you know
when she's been kissing on me
Got no ring on her finger
But I'll get it when I can
Make our mamas happy
'cause we've been living in sin

Ed
Brandon

Hot, black, and bitter, out
Ramblin' Ed

* Used to say it means Poor Old Negro Thinks It's A Caddilac