Well, as I attempted to alert everyone on Thursday before blogger decided to break wind in my general direction, I was gone for the past couple days. I went with the folks to visit the grandpa -- the paternal grandpa -- up in the northlands. It was a trip full of fun observations. Well... observations... I guess you can decide whether they were fun or not.
Grandpa's A-frame still smells the same as it did the first time I visited the place when I was... what six or seven years old. I recall having such a grand time that I didn't want to leave. Grandpa gave me a stuffed... well, a stuffed animal, except that it was a stuffed vegetable. An ear of corn that had begun life as a Del-monte promotional item. I remember going to sleep with it beside me, the scent of wood-smoke, pipe smoke, moth-balls, and the woods, mixing together and reminding me of the fun I had had. Interesting that the scent could still evoke such memories almost two decades later.
This particular weekend, grandpa was dogsitting for a neighbor. The pup's name was Jake, and a more friendly animal you would never meet... then again, perhaps he wasn't really friendly but merely totally indifferent. He wasn't the run up and slobber on you kind of friendly... just restrained... thinking about it now, perhaps Jake had a bit of housecat blood in him. He had a rather strange habit... when he went outside he would find a snowbank, jam his nose down into the snow, then pushing up with his back legs, rub his head and his front legs around on the snow in circular patterns. It was like he was making snow-doggies. He seemed bashful when I whipped the camera out, so I didn't get any shots of that, but, since dog pix really bring in the
hits here are
two examples.
Among other animals seen was a veritable herd of deer that came through on friday afternoon. They were attracted by the corn my grandpa put out in his backyard. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera handy for their appearence, but I did catch a slightly different herd on the way back... a herd of
bison.
Finally, I learned a few interesting things about my anscestors over the weekend. For instance, my great-great grandparents on my grandpa's father's side of the family were named Gustave and Bertha... both spoke German unsurprisingly. One of my great uncles could have ended up playing major leaague baseball had he been willing to leave home at age 18... on the one hand, since it was during the depression, it would have made sense for him to go, but on the other hand, it sounds as if he didn't want to leave the family alone either. Still, the notion that he was knocking them out of the park in the days before juice... well, pretty interesting I think.
Oh yes, and I must say, this trip proved beyond a doubt that temperature is just as relative as time... the temperatures
there were certainly below
anything we got in Nashville, but I never felt cold while I was up there... I guess my body expected it.
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