STILL "HANGIN' ON"

ROADSIDE APPLES, STILL "HANGIN' ON"

Monday,  8:30 AM.  29 degrees F, wind NW, light to moderate, with strong gusts.  The sky has a high overcast, darker in the south, lighter in the north.  A trace of snow and freezing rain fell last night. The humidity has dropped to 67% with the colder temperatures and the barometer is trending up, at 29.92".  The destructive storm system that hit much of the central Midwest did not, as usual, get this far north, although it raised havoc with a  Packers football  game in Green Bay, which is about 150 miles to our southeast.  The Farmer's Almanac predicts cold temperatures and heavy snow by the 19th of November.  We will see if that is an accurate prediction for our western corner of the Great Lakes States.  

   Yesterday was my birthday, yet another milestone on life's circuitous journey.  I never  appreciated what a "milestone" actually was, until we lived in Armonk, New York, just off New York State Route 22, the colonial "King's Highway," where stone mile markers could then still occasionally be found  that stated how many miles it was from New York, or to Albany...I no longer recall  which.   A birthday is a milestone of sorts as well, measuring the time from one's birth, since we don't know the time/distance factor remaining to the end of the journey.  Which, all things considered, is probably a good thing.  I have never had any inclination to have a Gypsy read my palm.
   Anyway, it was a good birthday, quietly spent with a good dinner and a good fire and good companionship (Joan) and telephone calls from my grown children, who rather patronizingly told me how well I had done, was doing and would still in the future do, all of which I appreciate.  

   I do, however, pride myself on being a realist, and when I start to get puffed up I let the wind out of the bag with a deflating literary jab from The Old Man and The Boy, by the outdoor writer Robert Ruark.  The Old Man was feeling down and in his cups when he said to The Boy, "There's two things got no place on this earth; an old dog and an old man.  Neither serves any useful function, and both generally smell bad."  

   Well, perhaps that is a bit harsh, and maybe I can get away with characterizing myself more like the yellow apples stubbornly clinging to the tree along Old County Trunk K; which, in spite of the lateness of the season, are still "hangin' on."