It may be about time to get rid of the old Gravely. The last time I wrote about this venerable piece of equipment it spawned a reaction from a Gravely fan in northern Ohio so strident that Athens NEWS editor Terry Smith wanted to call the authorities, lest (or perhaps in hope of a good story should it happen) the angry fellow come round and murder me.
Sometimes when the air is just right, its invisible ingredients comprising a particular admixture of humidity, pollen, fragrance, and who knows what, it is as if a person has been carried back in time.
The other day I was at the grocery store, grumbling that the house-brand refried beans, 69 cents for quite some time, are now 89 cents, an increase of more than 20 percent. Then I noticed that the house-brand dry-roasted peanuts, $1.99 since forever, have gone up by more than 10 percent.
This didn’t turn out at all as I’d expected. Here’s the prelude: When I made pictures for a living, I got plenty of exercise. Walking five miles or more per day was routine. I’ve run backwards up hills (so as to photograph parades and protests coming up those hills) and carried lots of photographic gear appreciable distances, about which my muscles later registered an opinion.
You kinda gotta laugh.
If you pay any attention to the national news you have seen how Washington, D.C. has gone more berserk than normal. The cause of this particular derangement is this year’s emergence of the proud members of brood X of the 17-year cicada.
My maternal grandmother, were she still alive, would have turned 141 years old today.
In the spring of odd-numbered years, it’s my task to upgrade the operating systems on my computers. It sometimes goes uneventfully.
It’s not nostalgia that leads me to think of a television show that all but disappeared more than 50 years ago. I bring up the once-famous “GE College Bowl” for an entirely different reason.
In March 1981 a moderately successful television program premiered on ABC. “The Greatest American Hero” was a semi-spoof superhero show that ran for three seasons, neither a huge hit nor a bomb.
We’re not supposed to be surprised that Ernest Elbert Midkiff has died, which he did last Wednesday. He was, after all, 99 years old. He would have turned 100 on Veterans Day.