Country Boy Logic

Here are some everyday threesomes: Win, lose, or draw; faith, hope, and charity; snap, crackle, and pop; love, honor, and cherish. There are many more.

None, however, can top Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, the threesome serving as a bright and lofty beacon for everyone.

Those unalienable rights first drafted in the Declaration of Independence serve as the anchor for all the words expressed in the United States Constitution. They speak of the deep thought and sound logic of those few great people who wrote that document with humble sincerity and fervent hope. In remarkable fashion, … Read the rest “A Threesome We Must Always Honor”

Throughout life, there are happenings, amusing to hilarious, sobering to serious. Although soon forgotten, they tend to return later in life, remembered and treated not in the context of long gone moments, but as parts of your enriched mortal existence.

Early in our long stint of boating we bought a sixteen-year old 36-foot trawler. It had a full bath aft and a half bath forward. One of the many needed repairs was the replacement of some plumbing in the aft bathroom. I didn’t have the expertise, so I hired a repair man who did.

While lying on his right side … Read the rest “Two Happenings, Two Adventures”

During many years of extensive travel I’ve had to match wits with a myriad of unfamiliar and unexpected situations. I’m about to share with you some of what I’ve learned, a thoroughly field-tested strategy that will likely prove to be much more useful than all those often fabricated and misleading reviews gushing forth from dozens of websites. And also consider this: What you discover is what it is at that moment, not days, weeks, or months ago.

Okay, here goes:

Within one minute, you’ll be able to anticipate the quality of food at a restaurant and how well you’ll be … Read the rest “One Minute Sleep, Eat, and Meet Test”

As with all fledgeling TV programs, Friends entered the entertainment arena with no guarantee of success. Its hook, however, caught fast and went deep. For ten years it was a “must watch” for many millions of viewers.

The simple plot reflected the lives, laughs, and loves of six young working men and women living in New York City, heartwarming and funny, flavored with overtones of uncertainty and immaturity.

In exceptional fashion, the six actors stayed together the entire time, each playing their roles so faithfully that when the series ended, separating was hard to do. It had been a program … Read the rest “Join Me in This Tribute to ‘Friends’”

All of us young kids agreed. To look at Jim, even being close to him, was scary.

He was tall, ruggedly built, and stout as an axe handle. His long face with a protruding nose was covered by skin roughened by many years of work on his farm.

What really got to us, though, were his eyes. Under heavy brows, they were dark and piercing. Not only that, his voice was coarse and unfriendly.

Unfortunately, I had to see him on occasion because I was the only kid carrying newspapers in a “town” only four blocks wide and five blocks … Read the rest “Things Aren’t Always What They Seem”

With a feather in one hand and a rock in the other, lean out a second-story window, drop both, and watch what happens. The rock accelerates to a speeding blur and hits the ground with a thud. The feather, however, goes into a slip-slide kind of glide and lands with silent gentleness.

Both responded to the law of gravity, both arrived at the destination. The startling difference, however, was the methodology.

There’s much truth in the phrase “light as a feather.” Feathers are, indeed, light, soft and sensuous to the touch. Laying your head on a pillow filled with them … Read the rest “A Strong Argument Favoring Falling Feathers”

When my father-in-law passed on, family attention became focused on Grandma and how she was getting along living by herself. In the main, she was doing fine. In a reasonable time, she had been able to replace grief with quiet acceptance and sturdy endurance.

Our faith in her usual good judgement, however, was badly shaken when we learned she had paid almost seven-hundred dollars to a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. During some square-jawed questioning, we learned he was in his early thirties and, to quote her, “was well dressed and a very nice man.” She had also been impressed by … Read the rest “Random Acts”

Charlotte was the wife of my dad’s boss. Knowing I, a college student, needed to make all the money I could, she offered me the job of keeping their lawn neat and orderly.

One day, she asked me if I’d ever built anything of rock, like a rock wall. I told her I hadn’t. Then she asked if I’d be willing to give it a try. I told her I would, but that she had to realize I’d be learning as I went. By the end of the week, the three tons of rock slabs she’d ordered had been dumped … Read the rest “The Wall”

Finally, it’s Friday, the end of a long week on the road. I’m at the airport in New Orleans, heading for Chicago.

As I walk the loading ramp, I glance out a window facing toward the tail of the plane and see what appears to be a dent in the plane’s fuselage. I do a quick stop, look again to be sure, then keep walking.

The flight attendant checks my ticket, and I find my seat, stuff my duffle into the overhead compartment, and sit, my brain flashing back to what I’d seen minutes earlier.

What if it really is … Read the rest “What-Ifs and a Smile”