YES, I AM STILL HERE looking out the window on Main Street, and I am wondering what government devil came up with the plan to distribute the Economic Stimulus Payments.
At first I was expecting that a check would be deposited into my bank account, like my Social Security payments.
But no. Then I was expecting to get a check in the mail. But no. There was pitiful publicity put out by the government devils but somehow I learned that some genius bureaucrat had already sent me a debit card.
Que problemo! The debit card came in an envelope that looked JUST LIKE the hundred or so I get each week wanting me to sign up for burial insurance or to make a continuing donation to the Cicada Preservation Fund of North America.
Naturally, I threw it away.
By the time I realized what I had done, the card was under a million tons of trash at the landfill.
Apparently I was not the only senior citizen to throw away that priceless debit card. I whined and moaned until someone told me how to beg for a replacement card.
“It’s so simple, all you have to do is …..” I really really hate it when people say that.
It was not simple at all.
It was similar to pulling your neighbor’s pitbull’s impacted wisdom tooth without benefit of anesthetic.
When I finally got through pushing buttons 1 or 2, and giving secret numbers, the governnent devil said I would get a new card in the mail.
“Don’t throw this one away you old geezer because every time you do it’ll cost you $7.50 to get a new one,” the devil said.
I understand now. If there are hundreds of thousands of people like me who tossed their cards, and if there is a company that gets $7.50 for issuing each replacement card, then this has been a prime lesson in capitalism.
I’m not sure how much Economic Stimulus money on that debit card, and I won’t call to find out. The devil will charge me 50c every time I dare to ask.
The only question I want to ask is: “Whose idea was it to send out the debit cards disguised as burial insurance solicitations?”
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HEARD FROM. A polite fellow named Ron Williams in Valley, Ala., was surfing the Internet and came across our newspaper’s recent Memorial Day article about Eli Collins, a Revolutionary War veteran who is buried in the Nashville Cemetery.
Mr. Williams is compiling a history for his own town and wants to use our article and picture of the Collins grave marker.
Sure, I said. Just send brownies, and don’t hold back on the chocolate.
Williams writes that Collins was a founder of that community and once owned a ferry across the Chattahoochee River that brought other pioneers to Alabama.
Sometime late in life Collins moved to Nashville in the care of his grandson. He died here at age 94.
But records showed that he was buried in Hempstead County, and the Daughters of the American Revolution arbitrarily picked a spot and put up a grave marker in a shady cemetery at Old Washington.
In 1844 when Collins was buried, Nashville WAS in Hempstead County. Howard County was formed later from parts of Hempstead, Pike, Sevier and Polk counties.
So, Eli Collins was a most unusual character. He fought under Gen. George Washington, and was buried in two counties. And he lived to be 94 at a time when someone 64 was an old, old man.
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OW, THAT HURTS! In a discussion in our office about pain, someone suggested “Just think about a woman in labor who hit her shin on a trailer hitch.”
What do you think?
Can you imagine anything that would hurt worse? Just email me.
I can only think of one, so far. And it hurts real bad.
From the #1 Fair Weather Arkansas Razorback Football Fan: My football team getting beat at home by a quarterback our dunce coach had run off.
Well, here’s another: Virus, riots, toilet paper shortage, electric outage, murder hornets, no major league baseball and then there is a big hurricane rain storm headed our way.
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DIDN’T IT RAIN? An update on this topic which was a part of this column a couple of weeks ago.
Through the end of May:
All five months were above average in rainfall.
More than half of the days of nearly every month had measurable amounts of rainfall. That’s 78 rainy days out of a total of 152.
Thru the end of May we are more than 15-and-a-half inches ABOVE normal rainfall. At one point we had nine consecutive days of rainfall.
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WORD GAMES. Another set of twins: Come and Get it. Usually heard about mealtime.
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HE SAID: “Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.” Warren James, Paymaster General of the Continental Army
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SHE SAID: “I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.” Greta Garbo, legendary actress
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
