Micro story 3: An untitled book

The two children spent many hours that year, amusing themselves by listening to the stories they recorded in their book.  Until, as you might expect, they outgrew the need to hear them.

They kept the book though.

The terrier and his faithful companion returned to their home world by another way, and were never again seen by the children.  Before they left, they recorded their own story in the book, though the children were unaware of this at the time.  Their account of the incident with the chickens is unique, to say the least.

Mike's grandparents Scowden

Cousin Mike was kind enough to reply to my take on "Lassie".  I'll just repeat a few excerpts...

"Granddad Scowden. For those who don't know our clan, he was not the fellow pictured at the top of the page on his porch. No, this was my paternal grandfather whom Bob and I do not share."

While it's true I didn't share that grandparent relationship, I had to mention here that I was invited along for a visit a few times, when I would be at Poppy's farm.  The Scowdens were always hospitable, and I was always treated as if I were one of their own.

"After some time on the farm, we headed across the bridge to Granddad and Grandma Scowden's...Grandma would be in the kitchen where, later, we would probably be given some vanilla ice cream."

I do remember being treated to ice cream.

"Meanwhile, Granddad had the Sunday shows on. 'Lassie' was one. He loved 'Lassie'."

Mike, on those occasions when I've come across a Lassie re-run, I've always thought of your Granddad.  Even as a kid, I could tell he loved that show.

"Mutual of Omaha's 'Wild Kingdom' would also be on. As was mentioned, it was a little more intense. Especially for Jim. It was Jim, while Marlin narrated, who wrestled anacondas and crocodiles."

Yeah, and Marlin would say something like, "Be careful, Jim!  They bite"!

Oh, and as for the Disney Humphrey the Bear cartoon, I thought it kind of looked familiar, but I wasn't sure.  Until I clicked on the link and the cartoon unrolled before me.  Oh yeah, I remember that one.

Old Fateful, indeed.

So Mike, did you see this cartoon before or after the "Smokey the Bear incident"?

 

 

Lassie, Marlin, and Humphrey

Our host's last post about Lassie brought to mind my Granddad Scowden. For those who don't know our clan, he was not the fellow pictured at the top of the page on his porch. No, this was my paternal grandfather whom Bob and I do not share.

It was our family's custom for many years to travel from Branson to Forsyth on Sunday afternoon to visit our grandparents. Our first stop was almost always the farm to see Poppy (the fellow on the porch) and grandma, though the times I saw her before she got ill I can scarcely remember.

After some time on the farm, we headed across the bridge to Granddad and Grandma Scowden's. There, Granddad would be sitting in his chair and probably have the TV on. Grandma would be in the kitchen where, later, we would probably be given some vanilla ice cream.

Meanwhile, Granddad had the Sunday shows on. 'Lassie' was one. He loved 'Lassie'. Mutual of Omaha's 'Wild Kingdom' would also be on. As was mentioned, it was a little more intense. Especially for Jim. It was Jim, while Marlin narrated, who wrestled anacondas and crocodiles.

Speaking of Marlin Perkins, he was a Missouri boy, born in Carthage, attending Mizzou, and serving two stints at the St. Louis Zoo, the second one as Director.

I saw 'The Wonderful World of Disney' at Granddad's quite often. I am sure I saw this there.

Lassie...what a strange show.

After an interesting day of job interviews – one each for me and my wife – I sat down in front of the TV to put my mind in vacation mode for a while.  Flipping through the channels, I stopped at our COZI-TV affiliate, and they were showing Lassie.

Now, I say the following in jest.  Well, partly in jest anyway.  I remember watching the show as a kid, and you couldn’t help but like Lassie.  Say it with me folks, “Good girl, Lassie”!

What I saw tonight wasn’t one of those “Timmy fell down the well…again” episodes.  Apparently some calamity had happened in the woods – maybe a forest fire – and Lassie took it upon herself to go around and check up on the little woodland creatures, and set things to rights if necessary.

(Hey, you know what you can find in the woods?  Squirrels!  I saw one on Lassie.  Okay, yeah I’m sure that’s true, but they’re not what you’d call exotic.  It’s not like you’d hear, “Dad!  Let’s go to the woods.  I know it’s a long way to drive, but I really wanna see a squirrel.  Please?”  Look kid, just come over to my yard.  We got your squirrels.  Bring your traps along, and you can take as many of those tomato thieves with you as you want!  But I digress.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the woods…Lassie…little animals.

By the way for those of you new to our fine world, Lassie was a big, good natured collie dog who apparently communicated by a combination of body language and barking.

So a fox walks into the woods.  Which sounds like a setup to a joke, “A fox, a dog, and Indiana Jones walk into the woods”.  No, no, no.  No joke, this fox was a skinny, scrawny thing.  Really pathetic looking.  Lassie watches the fox for a while, then harangues it with a few barks.  The fox pauses, then ambles on a bit.

Then we see a quail.  The camera pans over a bit, and there’s the quail’s nest, with five eggs out in the open, unprotected!  Lassie looks at the nest, then looks at the fox looking at the nest.

Foxes gotta eat too, you know.

For some reason this made me think of Solomon, preparing to pass judgment on a difficult dispute.  What will Lassie’s decision be?  “Okay fox, you can eat two quail eggs, but no more than that.  Got it”?

Then the camera cut to the branch of a nearby tree, where sat an owl and two owl chicks in the nest.

“Okay, two quail eggs, and I’ll throw in one of the owl chicks.  But don’t you even think about going for the other one”!  But of course, all you heard was barking.  More barking.

It’s as if Lassie expected all the different forest animals to understand Doggish.  That would be like one of us traveling to France or Germany and expecting everyone to understand English.

What must be going through the minds of these animals?  It wouldn’t matter much to them that Lassie lived on a farm.  No, when you live in the woods you have to be tough.  I can almost hear them thinking, “Just who does this softy from the suburbs think she is, coming here and poking her nose into our business”?

Right then I was called to supper, which is just as well.  I don’t know if the plot turned into some dramatic struggle, fox versus helpless small animals.  It wouldn’t have been anything really intense, though.  We could watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom if we wanted to see intense.

Micro story # 2 - Involvement

“Tom, I was already practicing on one of the big machines next door when they moved me, and I was starting to make progress.  Can you get me moved back over there, or can you get me an interface for over here?”

“I’ll have to check, Bob.  I’ll see what I can do.”

I knew Tom was good to his word, but it might take several minutes.  I don’t like to just sit and do nothing, not when I’m here being paid to work.  I can daydream at home.

Right in front of me on my desk was, of all things, an electric typewriter.  I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I’ve gotten more practical use out of my typing class than all the other high school classes.  The only sheet of paper I saw in the whole room was the one in my typewriter.  The room itself, though older and obviously smaller than the room next door, was kept in good repair.  It looked to have been cleaned within an inch of its life; if there was any more paper here, it was well hidden.

So I typed some practice lines.  None of this silly “quick brown foxes come to the aid of their country” practice stuff would do.  I thought, how about a fake weekly report?

 

Mon.:  1000 units shipped (16 returned)
Tue.:    812 units (Eric’s last day; party ensued) 
Wed.:  1204 units (made up for Tuesday)

That’s as far as I got.

Right then, a young woman (who looked like she could have been my daughter’s twin), walked into the room and stood at my left.  “Tom said to give you this, and you’ll need to work from here for now.”

The interface was a combination face mask and goggles, with what looked like a chin guard.  So I put it on, and was surprised to see a power on light and the outline of a keyboard appear a few feet in front of me.  Surprised and relieved.  I was concerned that the image might appear right on the goggles, far too short a distance for me to focus.

“Okay Bob, first look towards the blank wall straight ahead, it’s less distracting.  Next, what you’re going to want to do is reach your fingers to the chin piece.  Watch the keys in the image in front of you, and touch your fingers to the home row keys, just like back in typing class.”

When I touched the chin piece, I saw an image of my fingers.  When I was positioned on the home row, red dots of light appeared on my “fingernails”.

“Hold that steady until it registers.”

The red dots disappeared.

“Now, set your password.  The first letter is your initial.  The next bit you choose, five or six characters, something you can remember.  Then the numbers…18614 for today.  That will change fairly often, and we’ll tell you.  And that’s it.  I see you’ve been practicing.  Cute.”

She flicked the top left corner of my typewritten page with her finger (snap!) and my fake report text went away somehow.  She pushed the typewriter towards the back of my desk.  “Use the space in front here.”

“So I don’t have to tap the chin piece now?”

“No, just at the first of the shift to register.  Touch the top of the desk.  The interface assumes left pinkie = a, left ring finger = s, left middle finger = d, and so on.  Touch typing, right?  Stretch your fingers out to reach the other letters, numbers, symbols and like that.  All you need is a light touch.  In fact, if you watch the experienced people, they’re pretty much motionless.  They stretch their fingers to reach the letters and numbers, but they hardly move their hands at all.  You’ll pick up on it fast.”

She added, “Not everything you key in will make sense, not consciously.  Don’t worry about that, it will be all right anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you might type, ‘It will be orange except when it’s level’.  That’s one I did yesterday.  And there will be small stray groups of letters and numbers.  It might actually be ‘except L5X when it’s NY30*T level’.  Don’t do any editing, leave all that it; it’ll be used.  Remember, you now have access to a slightly different part of your mind.  Things you don’t realize.”

I recalled their motto, “Not knowing, you know”.  And I wondered how it was that I had this “slightly different mind access” here; maybe they put something in the water.  Or in the vending machines.  Probably both.

“Computers don’t have minds like that, so we people have to be involved.  Just go flat out as fast as you can.  Have no doubts.”

“Oh, one more thing.  Sometimes you’ll see an image in front of you, like an aerial photo in 3D.  Let the lights appear where they need to be.  You’ll find your fingers are typing five digit numbers.  Don’t fight it and don’t stop, that’s good raw data the computer needs.”

“So, you okay to start?”

“I’m good.”

It took me a while to get up to speed.  The first line was gibberish.

Eiouy ert6pip wopo  ty7upwen  i0p-sjhe0 uit6pj  tpy  euiop; t ws0elmj t08ul;j0w tgujppw 8-

The second line, more gibberish.  At least, mostly.

9078 John we’re up w0[j0] top without mph pjs-e7u parent day.  Bjhpdf took down pi’;’ west pocket u

Then something interesting.

“Your Calcium number will not double.”

The Evening Rambler for the New Year’s Eve 2013

As we finish out the year, I thought a quick summary of the Christmas season here was in order.  Yeah, I had a list of a few small gift ideas, but the thing I’ve looked forward to this year was gathering my scattered family under one roof.  That was Christmas for me, that and the Christmas Eve service at church which was good as always.

We picked up my son Daniel at the airport on the 22 nd, and my eldest daughter Erin, son-in-law Mark, and granddaughters arrived on the 27 th, after spending Christmas in Denver with Mark’s family.  It’s so good to see them all!  We took Daniel to the airport this morning, and have since heard that he’s safely back in Michigan.  The rest of us are going to have a board game night soon, so like I said, this will be short.

Oh, and since I mentioned church earlier, this Bible verse has come to mind all season…

“...the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." - Matthew 4:16 (NIV)

In addition to the decorations, presents, snack food and general visiting, one thing we did yesterday was go see “The Hobbit (part 2):  The Desolation Of Smaug”, in 3-D.  Without going into a lot of details, I’ll say I think this was definitely a better movie than part 1 a year ago.  I plan on seeing it again.

So, it’s been kind of an up and down year, a real mixed bag.  A bit better on the whole than 2012 was, for me anyway.  Here’s hoping for more good things in 2014.  Have a healthy and Happy New Year, everyone!

The Evening Rambler for the last day of November 2013

I'm making this up as I go along, so I don't know what direction it will take.  Welcome to live blogging!

We had a good Thanksgiving, my family went to my mother-in-law's and we had a good visit.  Traditional food was the order of the day, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cole slaw, rolls, cranberry sauce, celery stuffed with creamed cheese, and of course pies.  Two choices this year, pumpkin and chocolate.  As I do every year, I asked for a small slice of both since I couldn't decide.  And that's not a lie, I didn't want to pass one of them up.  One of these years I might just choose one, and everyone will look at me funny and ask if I feel all right.

There's an old saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too".  No cake though, as I mentioned Thanksgiving was a day for pie.  The early results are in, and it seems like the old saying applies to pie as well.

So I've been trying to come up with more stories.  A few days ago, I thought of a dialogue that could happen between just some average guy, and an alien.  It went on for a while, and I thought it was pretty clever.  At the last, the alien starts to walk off (presumably to his spaceship), and said, "You won't see me again".

It had possibilities, and now I sure wish I could recall their conversation.  I have got to start carrying a notepad at all times and write this stuff down while it's fresh.

It was a nice fall day today.  The fall season ran kind of late here, but by now all the colors are over and most of the leaves are down.  Except for the big pin oak tree in my front yard.  It will release leaves a few batches at a time, and it's liable to still have some old leaves to drop through the winter and maybe as late as the first of spring.  It does that most every year.  What are you gonna do?

Tomorrow December begins, and it seems like a clean break between Thanksgiving and the Advent / Christmas season this year.  For me, anyway.  I know shopping and running around will happen, but I'm not in a panic about that.  We have our tree up and the lights put on; the boxes of ornaments have been brought up from the archives.  We're poised to begin.