Color

As I think of the word color, many things go through my mind. Color me gone, a saying in the seventies. The Color of Money, a movie in the nineties. A coat of many colors, a story in the Bible of one of young Joseph's prized possessions......also a song made famous by Dolly Parton. People of color, referring to the Negro race. These colors don't run, talking about the American flag and the American people, right after September 11, 2001. An off color joke, one that is not told in mixed company. The colors of a rainbow. I think I will write about my main thoughts of color from the ages of 13 through 17, then write of my thoughts from age 35 to the present.

When I was a kid of thirteen my Pa bought me a used Yamaha 100, and boy, would it scream. Color me gone was a favorite saying of mine. I had four motorcycles and a very fast car, so it is no small wonder that 'color me gone' didn't translate into 'color me dead', or 'color me all broken up', but it didn't.

I still get excited, to this day, at the sight of a rainbow. The colors are just outstanding, and the promises given to us in Genesis 9 are very encouraging. The most awesome colors I have ever seen occurred four or five years ago, on Bucy Lane. There were two rainbows visible in the sky at the same time. Both were going from north to south, with one in the west and one in the east! Talk about colors....seeing two rainbows at once was just incredible!

Gentle

I have never thought of myself as being very gentle. Rude, crude, and uncouth are more like my ways, at least more like my former ways. Back in the late fall I was called a gentle soul. Sure do not know if that fits me or not, but my bus driver, on a refinery I was working on, really called me that once! She had read one of my blogs, asked if she could put it in her church bulletin, wrote a little preface to my blog, and called me a gentle soul. Man, I smiled for a week over that one. I do not recall ever being called gentle, but there it was, in print, no less!

I need to be more gentle in my dealings with people. Especially my family, friends, and co-workers. I spent many years basically by myself, and while I would never intentionally hurt anyone's feelings, I realize I could be more understanding, more courteous, more gentle, particularly toward the ones I love and the ones that love me.

Being gentle is not just an action to take, but a mindset, a lifestyle, if you will. I would like to be known, the rest of my days, as truly a gentle soul.

Recipes

Anyone that takes a look at me, understands that I have eaten many, many new dishes made from wonderful recipes. With the internet, now, our choices for new dishes seem limitless. I guess trying new cookie recipes is my favorite, but lately appetizers, with bacon, has been our mainstay.

We tried a new recipe last night at a friend's birthday celebration. You wrap a date around a pecan, then wrap a half strip of bacon around that, and bake for 25 minutes at 400 degrees. To borrow some slang from a Helping Hand auctioneer, “that appetizer was 'larrapin good”. Another one of my favorite recipes is stuffed jalapenos. They are made by stuffing a jalapeno with a mixture of sausage and cream cheese, then wrapping ½ strip of bacon around it and baking for 30 minutes. Another excellent choice is bacon wrapped water chestnuts. Jean & I just love our bacon wrapped concoctions!

A lot of chefs around here cook by taste, or by appearance & the dish never comes out, for us, like the one we tried to copy. Recipes have such a great role in family dinners, but Aunt Sue's dumplings, or Aunt Irenes's fresh apple pie sure needs to have all the ingredients, with all their measurements, with correct preparation instructions, and cooking temperatures! That may be the only thing we chefs of today have over our Mothers. Bon Appetit!

Fishing

This week's word sure brings back lots of very good memories. My Ma was the fisherman in our family, and try as she might, she just couldn't instill her love of fishing in me. Oh, I like to fish, I just couldn't sit on that river bank for hours, like she could. I think she didn't really HAVE to catch anything.....I think just sitting there with the sun beating down, and God's creation all around her was joy enough. Add 50 or 60 or 100 crappie to that equation, and Mama really would smile!

I sure do miss my Ma, and with the days getting warmer, with The World's Biggest Fish Fry just concluding, with stringers of slab crappie in the news often, the thoughts of the days spent with her fishing are good thoughts indeed. I know I did not enjoy the quietness then as I enjoy it now, and I know I ruined some of my Ma's quietness, but fishing brought that peace & contentment to me and I am real glad it did.

Homemade

The word 'homemade' conjures up probably a different thought to me, than it would for most. My Dad owned his own electrical construction business for 44 years, and I do not have the time nor the space to list all his tools that were homemade.

Robert Owens needed the capability to pull up to a job and start bending conduit, so he devised a “bending” trailer that would allow him to do just that. The first one he built looked quite a bit homemade, but the last one looked pretty professional. He had the need to haul 25 foot service poles with his pickup, so he started thinking homemade, again. He came up with a trailer that he secured one end of the pole to, and the other end was fastened to the truck. It mattered not how long the pole was, he could trailer it!

One job we had was installing high bay lights in a couple of factories. This would be no problem today, but around 1974, extending, drivable, boom lifts, were not a common contractor tool. Robert made his own tool for the job. He bought a 1959 two ton truck from the Coca-Cola company, shortened it six feet, built a frame around the truck that would accommodate a thirty foot scaffold, added an electric skate conveyor, and a generator, and we were ready to go. Alan Harris, my brother Dale & I hung many a light off that 'ol truck, in two factories. Republic Steel in McKenzie, and Tecumseh Products here in Paris. What a homemade contraption that was, but it did what Dad designed it to do, and it did it safely.

Another time, in the energy management business, we had the need to find out how long several pieces of equipment ran during a 24 hour period. A company tried to sell us a piece of equipment for between 4 & 5 hundred dollars that would do just that. Robert went to Uncle Lee's and bought 18 alarm clocks for not much more than 20 dollars, cut the end off the cord, wired them into the run side of the equipment, and 'voila, time clocks that would measure run time on 18 pieces of equipment. Homemade?.....definitely......genius at work?.....again, most definitely!

Much of my life, today revolves around homemade ingenuity. That is because during my formative years I was around a man that could invent whatever he needed, whenever he needed it. Learning to think outside the box sure has helped me as this world gets more complicated each day. I am glad I was so close to an inventor that was proud of his homemade "tools"!

Conservation

I knew it would finally happen....I knew it couldn't last forever....I knew I would get busted sooner or later!

Truth of the matter is “I have never been a conservative individual, hence, I do not conserve very much.” I eat at a friend's house fairly regularly, and she uses very few paper towels, while cooking, and uses cloth napkins! I think it could be said that at her house, Conservation is next to Godliness!!

I also have several friends and relatives who recycle. Mostly they do newspapers, but some recycle cans, motor oil, paint, & appliances. I realize that everything we can keep out of the landfill, the better off we will be, in the future, but of the above items, only old newspapers get recycled by me. Of course I don't change my own oil, nor do I do much painting. Never do I buy an appliance without getting the old one hauled off by the people that sold me the new one. That leaves tin cans, so maybe that ain't SO bad. Then again, I don't have a clue what the appliance stores do with the wore out appliances or what the oil changers do with the used oil, but maybe they dispose of everything properly.

Many, many people drive very small automobiles, and get many more miles to the gallon than I do. That is another area that I just cannot seem to be very conservative. Even these beautiful 70 degree days we have had this spring, has not made me open the windows, instead of using the air conditioner.

I think I am incorrigible . I think I am a derelict. Sometimes I think I am not a good citizen. It is time I practice conservation in all areas of my life.

Birds

What a wonderful word to think about and to write about this time of year. We have had so many Yellow Finches, Blue Jays, Cardinals, Titmice, Bluebirds, and Doves. We also will have five or six Hummingbirds a little later. It is really no wonder we have lots of birds as we have fresh water and many feeders full of food. The birds that flock around the Owens' yard are well taken care of! We have three Hummingbird feeders, six feeders full of Black Oil Sunflower seeds, four socks full of Thistle seed for the Finches, and one block of Woodpecker seed and one block of Suet, and something new, meal worms for the Bluebirds. We also have three bluebird houses located away from the house.

Beautiful redheaded woodpecker.

We set out four new feeders Thursday. Two are especially nice. One has a large capacity and a huge opening for the refilling of the sunflower seeds, and the other we mounted right in front of the living room window. It will not be long till we will be photographing beautiful birds from three feet away!

Bird watching, bird feeding, and taking pictures of birds are hobbies we are very glad we discovered. We have seen a few special birds in our yard, over the years. Most memorable have been a white Pigeon, a Sharp Shinned Hawk, Red Headed Woodpeckers(how dignified in their tuxedos), and right now we have two Muscovy ducks that decided they needed adopting. We love our birds and decided long ago we would feed them year round. That is a decision we are glad we made!