We don’t like to waltz. It’s a matter of taste. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. It’s annoyingly old-fashioned.

I’m Sylvia’s best friend, completely content to watch the ash from my cigarette burn and fall, singeing the shag carpet in the Elks Hall. Sylvia broke up with her boyfriend because she found him nuzzling the nurse with pouty lips and curly red hair. I generally think men wimps, perhaps useful if they can rise to the occasion. But even then, I don’t find much pleasure in their bull-dozing ways.

My dad left for another woman when I was twelve, two weeks before my first period. So my emotional investment in men is kinda small.

“Want another drink?” I ask.

“Not yet,” Sylvia says.

Except for the breakup, she usually postpones decisions. When eating out, she always asks the waitress for more time to choose between the chicken salad and club sandwich, questioning whether the sourdough is worth the calories before biting her lower lip. When dressing for work, she pulls out her blue shirtwaist and red skirt then thinks about them over Rice Krispies. We’ve shared an apartment for three years, and I’m used to her delays. I’m used to Sylvia in a way that makes it impossible to think of not rooming with her.

I love the way she wears her beret on bad hair days, tilting her head and flipping one side of her hair over her shoulder and pulling the other over her breast.

“Do I look French?” she asks.

“Mais oui.”

I love the way she holds her cigarette, wrist resting on her knee, smoke drifting to the side like a ghost train leaving the station.

I love to watch her sleep. Listen to her talk in her dreams. Sometimes I answer. Sometimes I cry. I think I would kill her if she left.

The band announces the last dance, “Cherish” by The Association. A couple of guys are looking our way. I kidnap her cigarette, take a drag and crush it. I stand and offer my hand with a slight bow.

Chella Courington is from Santa Barbara, CA

 

 

 

I’m the last person who would sign up for a high school reunion, but I freely admit I am curious to know what happened to everyone. Maybe I could just read the book (or wait for the movie). It would be fun to know if some of the high school girlfriends got married (and whether they are still married or twice divorced by now). There’s also the fantasy where the goody two shoes girl who could do nothing wrong got busted on a prostitution charge, but that never happens. She really was perfect, and still is, although she has paid a tremendous price by enduring 30 years of therapy to try to feel like something approaching normal. I have some perverse curiosity about whether Doug still plays the trombone and was Barry really gay or just pretending to be. We didn’t even use the word gay back then! Do the former majorettes still have thighs that can mesmerize me, or are those days gone forever?

Back in my hometown on one of my infrequent visits, I heard a woman’s name mentioned that I knew was familiar. She was the mother of a high school classmate who was a good friend. I approached and explained that I had gone to high school with her daughter. She remembered me and we struck up a conversation.

“So what is she doing now?” I really wanted to know.

“She is raising llamas in Maine.”

“Wow, that’s different.”

“She loves it. She started about 5 years ago and it’s turned into quite a business, harvesting the llama wool.”

“I know she always loved animals, but it seems like a surprising career choice.”

“You never know what life has in store for you. What are you doing now?”

There it was. The big loaded question. What are you doing now? Do you tell the truth or make up the big lie? Has your life been so boring that you can’t bear to tell the truth to someone who is almost a stranger? What’s wrong with me? Why am I debating this question with myself?

“I’m running a mule team,” I replied with a straight face. “If you think wrangling llamas is difficult, try hitching a bunch of independent-minded mules to a harness and getting them to do something at the same time.”

“I’ll bet that is tricky,” the mother said. She was looking at me with a sidelong glance, maybe trying to see it if I was putting her on. “You must love it though.”

“Oh sure, I get the biggest kick out of it.” And I really meant it.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

 

Hey, hey  – what the hell are you doing? I see you. Put that old tire down. Are you crazy? Who throws old tires down in the creek?

What? You think it’s going to melt? Biodegrade? Decompose? Are you nuts?

You throw an old tire in a creek and it’s gonna be there for a million years. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Let’s just say it’s going to be there a long, long time. You think it’s going to magically rot away. Some biological organisms are going to eat it and it will disappear?

Fuggeddaboutit! There are no organisms that feed on rubber. So after ten thousands of years, the heat, friction from movement, freezing and evaporation might break that tire down into smaller pieces, but it’s not going away.

You want to do the right thing, don’t you? Make a tire swing out of it. Or a planter. Or a chair. There’s a thousand ways to reuse tires and you can find them all on that Internet thingy. This country disposes of 300 million tires per year – almost one per person. If we put them in a landfill they trap water that attracts rodents and mosquitoes. Plus, the methane emissions get trapped and the whole pile ignites. It ain’t easy to put out a tire fire. Tire-fire may sound silly, but not if the smoke is pouring into your backyard.

Tires can be converted into TDF – that’s tire-derived fuel. It’s an alternative to fossil fuels and even better, it produces 25 percent more energy than coal. The tires are put through a shredder that uses powerful knives to tear the tires into small pieces. The steel can be sorted out for other recycled uses. Then the remaining pieces of rubber can be incinerated to produce energy, used as playground mulch or even material for new tires.

See what I’m saying? There’s a right way to save the planet and fight back against climate change, and there’s a wrong way. It just takes a little bit of consideration for your old Mother Nature. Trust me, you don’t want to be on my bad side.

All my love,

Mom

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

So, here’s me and my old (like really old) buddy, Sal, on the way back from Nebraska hauling a second-hand bulldozer to Michigan. Sal is driving. That’s a condition of his involvement—only he can drive his International Harvester truck. That leaves me with the task of navigating and keeping him awake during the long tedium of wheat fields waving.

“You know we’re down to half a tank of gas,” I thoughtfully remind him. “We might as well top her off at that gas station coming up.”

“It’s not a Shell station,” he replies.

What can I say? It’s his truck.

Half-hour later, I notice Sal starting to fidget and wiggle behind the wheel. Maybe it’s the caffeine I’ve been pouring down him for the last 150 miles. Or maybe it’s the coffee trying to get out. Once again, I suggest a stop—this time for emptying rather than filling.

“Naw, that’s all right. An aching bladder keeps me awake. That and your constant jabbering.”

I start in explaining my plans for the dozer. The road commission is going to run a freeway near my farm. So, with this dozer, I’ll scrape the topsoil from my back-40 bottom land and sell it to a nursery. Then I’ll get money from the road guys to dump their fill dirt on my land. Then I can sell it to a developer for condominiums. Slick, ha?”

“Big plans. Lots of money.”

“Well…yeah.” I glance at the fuel gauge—a quarter tank to empty.

Shouldn’t we be stopping for gas soon?”

“I know my truck. Don’t worry.”

Later. “C’mon, Sal, we’ve been riding on empty for the last five or ten miles. Why are you doing this? We just passed a perfectly good gas station.”

“To keep me awake.”

Finally, the truck wheezes, stutters and dies. I’m mad. “Damn, Sal. Now look. We’re stuck without a farm house in sight and nothing but a long road sloping down to the horizon.”

“The operative word, here, is down. If the road slopes, let’s put the truck in neutral and see what we find.”

So, we slowly trundle down the long, curving road until it rounds into a small town with a Shell gas station on the corner.

Sal is grinning so hard I’m afraid he can’t see the road.

“Now, what did that prove?” I scold over hamburgers and pie.

“That just enough is enough.”

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

Another in a continuing series of articles about what exactly animals and marine life are up to, that you always wanted to know.

We’ve all seen it. About an hour before sunset the cows come home. If we’re talking milk cows, they head for the barn because there’s food there and a place to get out of the wind. But what about cattle on open grazing land? Where are they heading? How do they spend their nights?

First of all, we’ve all heard the expression “herd mentality” and when it comes to cattle, there are always some dominant animals that decide where and when the herd moves. They are after all prey animals, so there’s safety in numbers. So after a hard day of grazing, cattle will seek out some lowland out of the wind and elements and find bedground for the night. You would be surprised at how much body heat an 1,800 pound cow can generate and they do have a whole lot of insulation, so I would not get too hung on whether or not they are cold. Ask a rancher in North Dakota how low the temperature has to get before a cow freezes.

There’s usually a lot of gossip about who saw what (Did you see that rusty old pick-up truck go by?), how much forage everyone had, and some of the goofy things the calves were up to that day. There is a lot of talk about the quality of the forage, so much like humans, cattle will drone on and on about where the best forage was, or complaining about the scarcity, or how long it took to chew cud.

Cattle are very social, so it’s not unusual for some of the better storytellers to break out a story that’s been handed down for generations for the listening pleasure of the rest of the herd. On some rare occasions, the herd will come across some Jimson weed and on those nights the cattle have a riproaring time getting high as kites (perhaps not the best comparison when you’re talking about an 1,800 pound animal) and having some really wicked hallucinations. If you’re wondering what kind of hallucination a cow might have, one of the most common ones is that a cow will think that the ear tag is some kind of radio controller that’s following every move the cow makes. Creepy yes, but not out of the realm of possibility.

So the next time you see cattle making their move around sunset, you’ll have a pretty good idea that the party is about to get started.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.