Me and the dawgs just love to load up in the Camry and explore life around the farm where we live. Soon as that car is paid off I'm gonna buy me a truck and a four wheeler, mark my words. This place where we live is a right big parcel of land surrounded by a lazy river by the name of Forked Deere. Back when I was a kid it flooded most every time the spring rains came around. Mama and Daddy had an old red chevy wagon with a hole in the floor that ferried us back and forth from the farm to town for school and church and work and such.
Church was the First United Methodist at the corner of Main and McGaughey where Mama stole Daddy away from the from the Southern Baptists. Most of the time my brothers stretched out on the pews and took a nap while the well paid preacher was pontificating about some great truth found in God's book. We never handled snakes there or spoke in tongues unless you count singin' in the choir or teaching Sunday school.
Mama always worked, and Daddy had two jobs. By day he was employed by the USDA as a bug man with the Plant Pest control division. His maps at work were covered with colored pins marking the journey of the Japanese beetle toward the cotton crop. Oddly enough, his office was in the basement of the hospital building where I was born. Go figure that one. He would come home and work in the yard and garden after chasin' bugs all day and kill those suckers dead if they dared to attack something he planted.
As a kid I never really appreciated the blessings.
Now I do.
^j^