It's Not So Bad, If You Squint Your Eyes...

-Birkla-

I was telling my kids earlier today that I had a dream about the first boy I loved and how he is now a mayor and insurance salesman. Then I rambled on to say he was a super-funny guy with a motorcycle, but I cheated on him (i.e., kissed) with his best friend, a Matthew McConaughey type character (see photo, right). There were more than a few similarities in the "Dazed & Confused" character and our own hometown smooth man.

One of the kids said that I oughta put that stuff in a book. I'm surprised that they would be interested. I won't even look closely at photos of my parents "in the day" when they were young and beautiful. I have a hard time picturing them in their teens and twenties, or even thirties. If they did half the things I did, I do not want to see it written on their faces.

I must say, I'm very jealous of a Texas blogger, known as The Bloggess, for achieving the writer's dream of publishing for money, and a book at that. What really upsets me is that in a blurb I read, she said that no one believed her when she said she used to swim in a tank that they washed pigs in. Well, hell, if I knew people were interested in that kinda stuff, I could write all day! I'll write my pig trough anecdote and perhaps I will be published soon.

On our farm, we had a big rambling farrowing barn, built for chickens, used for pigs. There was also a penning area called the lot. In the lot was a big concrete trough, originally made for cattle, I think, but it had been modified for pigs to drink out of, with lots of little fountain things placed on the outside where a pig could mash a tab with its snout and the water would come out. This trough was only about three feet high and the pigs would sometimes crawl in the water to cool off.

My grandmother, known as Daisy to me, Mrs. Templeton to others, would ask if I wanted to go swimming, and guess where she would take me? That's right, to the pig trough, down in the lot right behind her house. Pigs are not discriminant about where they crap, either. Yes, it was squishy between the toes on the bottom of the concrete (mini) pond. I was pretty young then, at that age where bugs and spiders still didn't creep me out and I would eat pig knuckles willingly. Sometimes referred to as the good old days. Goat on a rope and all that. A tale for another time.

Okay, publishers, editors, rush me! I got a jillion of those down-home on the farm stories just waiting to get out of me. I'm like a gold-egg-laying goose. Catch me if you can (really, it will be easy).