False starts in the morning

Why is it true that everytime I place the collar around the dog and step into the darkness of the early morning to allow him to make his morning deposit, that he will inevitably do something like stop dead in his tracks somewhere in the darkness of the carport for no apparent reason? When that happens, I usually stumble over him or suddenly pull to a halt in trying to step through the darkness out to the front yard. This morning, I got up and asked Tex if he wanted to go outside. He jumped down to the floor and walked over to the mud room to wait for me to place his collar around his neck, then he moved over too the door to wait for me to open the door. Then I opened the door and he stepped into the darkness of the carport. As he trotted around the car in the carport and started heading out toward the grass, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. At that point, I tripped over his body, hunching down on the cold concrete of the carport. I still don't know what caused him to decide to stop there on the concrete. At that point, I had to pull on his leash to get him out of the carport and then pull him further onto the grass. Sometimes what goes on in his brain is hard to fathom.

Apples in the mountains

Tomorrow I take on the moral equivalent of Stuart's ride around McLellan during the peninsula campaign of the early Civil War. Polk, Gordon, Murray, Dawson, Habersham and Jackson Counties. Driving up past the yankees on their right flank, through Cobb County, I bypass the yankees who are now gathering in Rome and Cartersville and head west to Cedartown, up to Calhoun and Chatsworth, then swing down south on to Dawsonville, then surprise, move north to Clarksville and then on to Jefferson,before I head back to the office.

I think that will be quite a surprise for tomorrow.

I am eating an apple we picked south of Ellijay. These Honeycrisp apples are pretty good. I must say that the Granny Smiths are perfect for the big bowl of melted caramel. Tart and firm, but perfect contrast with the thick, rich sweetness of the caramel.

That was good until the fish sandwich in Dahlonega and the pint glass of Guiness. I could have used two, but Cindy wouldn't have let me drive for the rest of the day, so I rode down to Dawsonville, or "Awesomeville" as we called it on Saturday.

The skies were pale blue and there were no clouds in the sky. We enjoyed as much of the outdoors as we could without hiking up some mountain in North Georgia. In double time.

In a few weeks, we will be hiking up in the mountains. The air will be even cooler. We might smell woodsmoke and try to catch some little trout fish. I think we better borrow the waders, although Momma says if they leave the house, they don't come back into the basement.

Right now, the Honey crisp is good for eating and maybe it will keep the doctors away for another week. So the saying goes.

Pestilence, death and destruction

Yesterday it rained. Today it rained. Tonight it may rain. Tomorrow it is supposed to be sunny and cool. Tomorrow is Foreclosure Day and we will be travelling through the mountains. I mean "I" of course. Kate will be driving east and Patti will be motoring in a circle to the west and south of here.

Wednesday, we return to the courthouse for civil matters. I am supposed to start a case at trial on Wednesday. I am in somewhat of a pickle, in the sense that I need for this case to go away and start over again in a new manifestation. It took me a month of thinking about the trial of the case before I figured out the problem with the case from the beginning.

Sometimes it takes me some time before I finally figure out the basis of the case. In this particular case, the lawyer for the plaintiff wanted to avoid trying the case in front of the assigned judge. So he recast the complaint and had it tried before one of the other judges. The problem is that there is no reason why the case should be retried. It was tried before. He is doing a bit of forum shopping.

He is also trying to recast the case to get more in damages. The problem is that the res of the case makes certain requirements on the parties. He really can't do what he wants to do. It is my duty to convince the judge of that conclusion.

But tomorrow is Hillbilly Dispossession Day. So I sleep early and get on the horse first thing in the morning. The three horsemen ride tomorrow.

A beautiful Fall day

The sky was incredibly blue this morning, with no clouds or humidity. When I awoke it was quite cool and felt like Autumn had really come. Cindy and Kate got up relatively early and we headed for north Georgia. We headed up 575 toward Canton, Jasper and Ellijay. We made Ellijay by ten thirty and turned off 575, down Ga 52 toward Dahlonega.

The apple stands were busy with tourists from Atlanta and elsewhere and we stopped at the Hillcrest Orchard and parked next to a thick hedge of ragweed. Exiting the car, we walked into the store and picked about a bushel of apples of varying sizes, shapes, colors and varieties. Buying the apples, we also bought two styrofoam bowls of apple slices, covered with caramel sauce. Afterward, we sat out on the bench in front of the store and ate our slices of apple, covered with caramel.

Afterward, we drove on down Highway 52 toward Dahlonega and finally saw signs for Burt's Pumpkin Farm. We pulled in to the parking lot and grabbed a wheelbarrow and entered the yard with all the pumpkins, gourds, squash and other assorted Fall accoutrement. As we looked over the huge yard full of pumpkins, we first saw the very large orange pumpkins, large enough to sleep a young toddler. I was reminded of "Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well." I thought, perhaps, that I could cut open this particular pumpkin, pull out the seeds and actually sleep a small person quite adequately.

We ended up not buying the large size pumpkin. Instead, we bought various varieties of pumpkins: orange, blue, white, orange and green, striped, tiny, and others. As I watched Cindy and Kate inspect and various pumpkins and place them in their wheelbarrow. Meanwhile, I stood against the back wall of the pumpkin store and smelled the spicy smell of pumpkin bread being cooked in the kitchen behind me. I had to have some of the bread.

By the time we had enough pumpkins in our wheelbarrow, I suggested to Cindy and Kate that we could use some of that pumpkin bread, which we did buy. Later, we drove on into Dahlonega and found a perfectly good Irish pub right next to our parking space. We had to make use of it.

So we sat under the television set showing the Alabama-Kentucky game, and drank Guinness and ate our sandwiches. It was delightful and the temperature outside was delightful. Oddly, we were inside a screened in portion of the patio, which had open areas above the screens and where there could have been a door. We decided that this was a test for mosquito intelligence. The smart ones watched the dumb ones slam into the screen and then went around the screen. Meanwhile, the dumb ones just slammed their tiny bodies into the screen and watched as the smart ones speeded around the screen and feasted on the bodies of the patrons of the restaurant.

After lunch, we headed down Ga 400 to the Prime Outlet Mall in Dawsonville. It was a long day and quite a bit of shopping. Georgia lost to LSU. W&L lost to Randolph-Macon. Thank goodness, the time together was worthwhile. Fall is more than just football games on television. No, sometimes you need to go to the game in person.

Driving in the mountains

Fall is definitely here. Yesterday it was sunny with white, fleecey clouds floating upon the sky. Now it is overcast and there is a cool drizzle. We were going to go see the Braves before the season was over. The season is over. I was looking forward to a Chicago dog and a beer. But Kate decided we would probably get wet. We can still go tomorrow or Sunday, but Georgia plays LSU at 3:00 tomorrow and I've got to meet with a client on Sunday afternoon.

Tomorrow we are going to get up early and eat breakfast and drive up into the mountains and go to a pumpkin farm and enjoy the North Georgia mountains before the game begins. It is Octoberfest in Helen and I would love a cold German beer and a wurst and some saurkraut. That would be fun. I think I would listen to the game on the radio for that experience.

Gosh! October, one of my favorite months. Cool in the morning when I walk the dog. Cool at night when I watch the light of the day fade into the west. Feel the warmth of the day fade away. Football. The beginning of hockey. The leaves turning colors. Bags of boiled peanuts. Hot chocolate. Apples. Pumpkins of varying colors and shades and stripes.

Soup for lunch. Soup for supper. Oatmeal and tea in the morning. A container of tea for the drive to the office.

Halloween and a big bonfire in the darkness of the night. Candy and chili and a trip to the Varsity. Chili dogs and frosted orange and onion rings.

I would love to drive up to Lexington and watch a football game at the new Wilson Field while the sun goes down against the Blue Ridge. Sugar maples and oaks on the hills. The moon rising above the old brick buildings. The sound of music coming from the fraternity houses on red square. Walking down the sidewalk past the R.E.Lee Episcopal Church. Looking back over my shoulder at the collonade in the moonlight. Thinking about those four years I spent there.

Sometimes I wish I'd stayed. Fall is the prime season in Lexington, Virginia. Spring is best in Griffin. The azaleas blooming. The dogwood blossoms. The warmth of the sunshine. The trees leafing out with their tender green.

Right now is good. Typing my thoughts on the computer. Kate and Cindy and me watching a movie on the Friday night. Tex yawning on the sofa. Soon, I'll climb in bed and read a bit. Morning will come before we know it and we will be driving up to the pumpkin farm. A day in the early Fall. With the girls. Fun.

Military Industrial Complex

I found myself on the road this morning, with Kate by my side, driving toward Kathleen, Georgia, a small community just north of Perry, just south of Warner Robins. Kathleen was once a small hamlet, a farming community, a few wooden farmhouses interspersed between the peach trees and the pecans.

Now it is a series of residential communities, as Houston County is transformed into one of the more vibrant residential communities in Georgia. I have found that military bases do have a tendency to create economic zones in Georgia, which thrive, despite the economic downturn in Georgia, generally.

This certainly points to something that Dwight Eisenhower, West Point educated military man and President, said toward the end of his final year in office in 1959. In a speech before congress, President Eisenhower warned against thebed growth of what he referred to as the "military-industrial complex." President Eisenhower apparently found a threat to the stability and health of this country in the combination of military might and its needs. As long as our military was allowed to be the reason for our economic growth, we ran the risk of relying on the military for strengths which are dangerous to the rest of our interests.

This, of course, was ironic since President Eisenhower was a military man, who would ordinarily be assumed to desire a strong military. Apparently, President Eisenhower had the ability to understand that strength in some ways made us weak in others.

A strong military is important to the safety of our country from threats from other countries. However, a strong military cannot provide the impetus for our economy in a general sense. Our economy must be broad and cover many needs of the country. Agricultural strength, monetary strength, housing strength, strength in utilizing and conserving our natural resources are all important to the relative strength of our country. None of these assets are necessarily tied to the military. President Eisenhower understood that a strong country required a balanced economy.

Northern Houston County used to be a very strong agricultural area. Peaches and pecans, chickens, pigs and cattle all vied for the acreage of the area. Now those agricultural uses are gone. Those farms are covered with little VA houses to house the members of our military and their families.

Today, we visited a young couple who grew up in Gwinnett County, in an area which was very rural when I was a child. Now the couple live in a nice house in Kathleen, Georgia, and their yard has two or three pecan trees as future shade for their house. Of course, they may be reassigned by the time that happens. And no farmer will cultivate those pecans and sell them on the market. Pecans are a strong source of antioxidants and provide a source of agricultural strength in Central Georgia. However, none of that is happening. Instead, the pecan farms and peach trees are replaced with houses, streets, shopping centers, etc. which are the ultimate result of the combination of Robbins Air Force Base and a large expanse of cheap land, formerly used for agricultural purposes.

The question is this: what is the better use of this land? No one has asked that question. No one has answered that question. But you can't eat houses. On the other hand, Warner Robins and Columbus (which has Fort Benning as a major component of its economy) are both thriving in comparison to other communities in Georgia which don't have the advantage of a military base nearby. And there are fewer and fewer military bases in Georgia.

Perhaps President Eisenhower knew something we still don't know.

The invisible wind

The tiller sits firmly in my hand,
A natural fit against the smooth wood,
And the stern rudder will turn
With the desires of my heart;
Yet the wind will blow where it will
Fair wind or fowl, against the tide,
My little boat will beat against
The call of prevailing winds
Until I find myself in port again
Despite my best efforts.