TheBanyanTree: Moon Of The Red Grass

[parishdm at att.net]

20040502T1405

It rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock yesterday when Sheri and I
came out of the Texas Justice studio, where we had been audience
participants.  I was amused at the production-- a girl told us when to
clap, when to talk amongst ourselves, when to shut up, and when to get
up.  Another gal-- more important, in my opinion-- came in to ask who
wanted bathroom breaks.  Security was a tight joke.  We were told we
couldn't bring in any sharp objects, knives, etc., and I'd left my
knives in my diddy bag before we went into the studio.  But they met
us at the door, led us in groups back through a huge room where there
were about a hundred people mingling and sitting, then asked us to
line up on the far wall and go through security.  Would have been easy
enough to stick your gun or knife under your coat and go through the
line-- there was too much crowed for them to tell what was going on
and who was in what group.  But they confiscated my P-38 from my key
ring after all that anyway.  Left the more dangerous weapons in my
possession.  Like my pen.  During the whole production, I couldn't
figure out who or what would have been worth a security problem.  ??

After leaving the studio, we drove through the rain-soaked Houston
freeway spaghetti bowls to Interstate 10 and Orange.  It rained on us
all the way to Beaumont, when the precipitation diminished into a
sprinkle.  By the time we got to my house, it was barely raining.
Sheri called Ronnie and we got directions, after which we headed out
towards Orange and Ronnie's house.  We were draining our first pot of
coffee when Ronnie's wife Judy came in from work, and we went to work
on the second pot before deciding to go into Robert's for supper. 

Robert's is a meat market expanded into an eating joint-- that was the
first time I'd been in there since they'd knocked down the walls and
put in a kitchen and dining room.  They used to have take-out stuff,
but you can't make that much money cutting meat, I hear, so I guess
diversication is the direction of choice.  After good red beef, they
had Mexican more than Cajun featured on the menu, which surprised me,
but the enchiladas were good.  Judy & Ronnie got their friend Shirley
to come out of the kitchen to show Sheri a live crawfish.  Ronnie gave
the unnamed critter a cigarette, which he held firmly in his claw, but
Ronnie wouldn't light it for him.  We had a bit of trouble convincing
Sheri that you should suck the head of the boiled crawfish after
breaking off his tail, but she'll just have to experience it for
herself.  After supper, I bid them all adios and headed back home.  
Sheri and Ronnie have a lot of hunting stories to work. 

This morning, the norther had blown through, and it's a pretty, sunny
day out there, but for the water standing everywhere.  One of Sheri's
comments yesterday as we drove through the rain was the flooding-- it
wasn't "flooding" by our standards, it's just that in this flat
country, when the elevation's 13.6 feet above sea level and your
drainage "ditch" is 13.2 feet and you get .5 feet of water falling, it
will spread out till it finds something higher than 13.8 feet to
divert it elsewhere.  Water doesn't run down here-- it wanders.  Stays
a while, breeds some mosquitoes, keeps the rice flooded, then meanders
off.  Engineers call it "storage."  Drainage structures should be 
designed accordingly, but the people who think they can change Mother 
Nature get upset when they find out that Mother Nature alway wins, and 
insist on wasting more of my tax dollars to treat the sympthoms rather 
than learning to live with them, cause they don't yet have control of 
the weather, and if they did, they'd screw it up for the people who 
raise their food since it would interfer with their pleasure and 
convenience.

I hadn't put the cushions on the lawn chairs up, and the bottom ones
always fill up with water when it rains, so I draped them over the back
of the chairs and sat down on the front of a chair to eat my lunch.
The water draining out of the cushions pooled up and wandered around the
concrete sidewalk, meandering generally towards the outside edge,
where I'd tried to slope it 24 years ago.  The pine pollen nodes are
covering the sidewalk and some were getting dampened in the processes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught one that appeared to be floated
off against the edge of the water's miniscus, until I noticed that it
wasn't a pine flower at all, but a caterpiller.  He didn't seem to
want a bath nor a drink-- he cranked up all his legs and skeedaddled
away from the water, which at that point had decided to go more east
than south, but at about the time he found third gear, the water found
a tiny channel in the surface of the worn sidewalk and raced around in
front of him, cutting off his escape.  He seemed uncertain which way
to go at this point. 

The water raced under a laurel oak leaf, lifting it up.  It was curled
on one end, and the flat end was lifted up as the water advanced under
it till it floated on the water, only millimeters deep.  Then, a
breeze from around the corner of the house caught the elevated curl of
the leaf like the sail of a boat, and blew it upstream, right back
towards the caterpiller.  I guess the sight of a giant leaf bearing
down on you is enough to help get one's brain in gear when you've been
busy trying to harness so much leg power.  As the leaf buffered the
miniscus and rebounded nearing the caterpiller, he fled for the side
of the sidewalk and the grass.  I bade him farewell as he disappeared
over the edge under the leaves.  Told him I wanted to see butterflies
when he had the time.

Too wet to plow, bushhog, or work on the dozer.  Got a date tonight to
go cut brush and get fed supper, so I'll just sharpen my ditch bank
blade, machete and chainsaw and take advantage of lazy Sundays. 

Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish           |     Lamar University's Token         
628 Parish Road          |         Perpetual Student       
Orange TX 77632-8055     |       dmp8910 at hal.lamar.edu
(409) 745-3899           |    http://hal.lamar.edu/~dmp8910