The Yamduck

Just before Thanksgiving of last year while shopping at my local grocery store I spotted what appeared to be a sculpture of a duck among the large display of yams in the produce department. It was partially sticking out from under a huge pile of yams and it was difficult to retrieve it with out causing what might have been an embarrassing avalanche of tubers. Once I had it in my hand I realized this was not a sculpture but an actual yam that looked exactly like a duck.
 I could hardly believe my eyes. It was one of Mother Nature's little oddities. The produce manager walked by and I showed him my little treasure. He examined it and said he had never seen anything like it before (and this guy sees a lot of yams). He took out his pen and marked it "No Charge", and after showing it around to his co-workers, he handed it back to me with a wish for me to have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy my "Yamduck." I proudly showed it to everyone on the way out of the store. It was a big hit in the checkout line, in fact a crowd gathered to see it. As soon as I got it home I took pictures of it and emailed them to everyone I knew, including the Food Editor at our local newspaper. She asked if she could do an article on it and I eagerly agreed. The Yamduck had hit the big time with it's picture in the paper. It was a local "celebrity" overnight. My brother came up with the idea of trying to sell the Yamduck on Ebay. He thought that it might get on the Tonight Show's segment, "What We Found on Ebay". I thought it would be neat to possibly have him(Yamduck) on National TV so I said, "Why not?" As you can tell from the previous sentence, I was already beginning to refer to the Yamduck as a living breathing entity. I was becoming very attached. I listed him on Ebay, never in my wildest dreams thinking someone would bid on him...but they did. My heart sank. I was going to have to part with my little friend and send him to a stranger in Ohio. I guess, I knew all along that the relationship couldn't last forever as the Yamduck was starting to shrivel a little like most veggies do when they have been around too long. After a tearful goodbye, I packaged him up and reluctantly mailed him to his new owner. In a few days I received glowing feedback from Yamducks buyer telling me how thrilled he was to have Yamduck and thanking me profusely. I was able to enjoy Thanksgiving , knowing Yamduck had a good home. I couldn't bring myself to eat any sweet potatoes, however. When ever I see a display of yams my eyes scan automatically for a duck shaped one. I know that I will never find another like him again, but I am glad to have had the opportunity to know and love him. Even though his personality wasn't all that great..He was still cute. VXA©

The Hazards of Trying to Buy Land in Florida

Many years ago, my husband and I were looking for waterfront property in Florida. We had seen an ad in the newspaper for undeveloped lake front lots near Panama City which is in the Florida Panhandle and is nicknamed "The Redneck Riviera" as it is the closest beach to Alabama and the people from Alabama really flock there especially on holidays.
We had never been there before but said to ourselves, "How bad can it be?
The ad we saw in the paper said "Free weekend at our new development, food and lodging included."
It just happened to be Memorial Day weekend and we had three days off. We called and made an appointment to come up and look around. We drove miles off the highway into a swampy, spooky, desolate area that was reminiscent of scenes in the movie "Ten Thousand Maniacs". We expected others to have answered the ad and we thought that there would be other prospective buyers there. There were not. It was just us.
There was an "Igor" type fellow that came out to greet us and showed us to his "Master", I mean boss who's eyes seemed to light up when he saw us, like a hungry
man seeing a steak dinner for the first time in a while...I took it to mean that he was glad to have a potential buyer for his desolate property..at least that was what I was trying to convince myself.
There was no civilization for miles and no scream for help would ever be heard. There was heavy gray Spanish moss draping eerily on dead grotesquely shaped trees. The roads were narrow ruts with muddy water filling the tire tracks. It was a perfect place to hide a body, I thought, letting my imagination run wild.
The property owner was very accommodating and said we could set out early in the morning after a good night's sleep and tour the property. He instructed "Igor" to get our bags and take them to our cabin.
It was the beginning of Summer and the mosquitoes were unbearable. It was hot and humid and the rainy season had rendered all the narrow roads virtually impassable.
When we were finally alone in our room I told my husband of my feelings of uneasiness about this place and asked him if we might please go into the next town to find a motel because I was,to put it mildly, terrified to stay there. He laughed and did the "There, There" thing that men do when they think their wives are being silly or unreasonable. I insisted that we get the heck out of there together or I was going alone. He finally acquiesced. This was in the time before cell phones, so we tried to call some motels from our room but the line didn't work. We complained to the owner and he said the rains had seeped into the phone lines but in a week or so they should be fine. Okay, now I had seen enough scary movies to see where this was going. My husband, in his condescending best, said to the owner that "The Little Woman"(me) wanted to sleep in town tonight and we would be back in the morning to take the tour. The property owner and Igor went out of their way to try to convince us to stay but by that time my "fight or flight" mode was kicking in and I grabbed my husband and said, "We are leaving NOW!" We pushed past Igor and his master who were standing in front of us trying to form a barricade with their bodies. We ran to our car, abandoning our luggage which was still in the cabin, started the ignition and tried to speed away which only caused us to become partially stuck in the mud (I was surprised the car even started). Finally after several tries we freed the wheel and were on our way to safety, we thought. We were panicked and lost in the woods and kept driving in a circle with out knowing it till we kept passing the same landmarks. It was nearly dark. Finally we found the road to the highway and sped to town.
When we arrived in Panama City Beach we were shocked to see the road literally bumper
to bumper with cars filled with young people drinking beer and shouting to each other. We got in the line of traffic which was nearly at a standstill from the crowds. We looked at the motels lining the street on both sides and they all read "No Vacancy". We went into a couple of them and were told there were NO available rooms in town. We asked the desk clerks to call around for us and they said it wouldn't do any good. We drove and drove at a snails pace trying to spot any signs of vacancy anywhere. We were exhausted after our long drive in the morning and our ordeal with the spooky development guys. We just wanted a place to lay our weary heads, when I spotted a Holiday Inn with a "vacancy" sign. I ran in the office hoping it wasn't a mistake. It wasn't... The reason it was still available was that it was $200. per night (remember this was in the early eighties and this was a Holiday Inn!)minimum of three nights. We said we only wanted it for one night and they said that was fine but it would still cost us $600. We took it.
When we got to our room there was no TV, no lamps, just the glaring over head light, no pictures on the wall. You could see the spaces on the wall where pictures had recently been removed. It was like a very expensive prison cell. We called the desk and they said they always had to remove anything breakable from the rooms on holiday weekends because of the rowdy guests. We said we weren't rowdy and we would like our tv. The desk clerk said,"That's what they all say" and hung up.
We spent that evening getting a few bags of snacks out of the vending machine's
depleted selection, and went to bed. We did not venture out till morning.
We got up early while the revelers were still sleeping off the night before and hightailed it back toward home and civilization.That was one of the strangest weekends we ever had and it gave us good conversation material for years to come.
We never went back to see the property....something told us that just wasn't where we were meant to be. ©

VXA

The Sheep People

What is the difference between fraternities and street gangs or some motorcycle gangs ?
The fraternity guys are most likely from a wealthier family and possibly somewhat better looking. Other than that they are just more young men that had little to offer as individuals and had to band together with others to feel like they belonged to something bigger than themselves because on their own they were nothing special..It reminds me of kids with a tree house club that don't let certain other kids in so they can feel superior like they know a secret the others don't..The secret hand shakes and the initiations and the clandestine meetings behind closed doors are humorously reminiscent of the old "Honeymooners" episodes where Ralph Kramden belonged to the Royal Order of Raccoons ....In high school I was envious of the kids that were in those clubs but now I see how silly it really is..I remember as a college student I worked part time as a hostess at an Elks Club and at precisely eight o'clock every evening everyone who wasn't a member had to leave the room while the members all faced the stuffed Elk's head mounted on the wall and paid homage to it...I knew even then it was a hilarious ritual..I had to snicker to myself at the grown men who took this seriously and to think they were some of the city's leaders made me shudder. The fraternity members are just the same. People like that worry me.
The street gangs and bikers are probably no more dangerous and perhaps even less so because it is blatently obvious that they are usually up to no good...The fraternities on the other hand are surreptitiously infiltrating the government and other high offices where they can control those of us that "don't belong". It starts early, sometimes in the teens..Some of the members are chosen because their fathers or brothers were part of the group or because they are from an influential or affluent family or just because they are good looking..They rarely have any other attributes ,like thinking for themselves, otherwise they would not belong to such an absurd society. They rarely if ever have compassion and empathy for the underdogs of the world nor do they feel the need to expand their minds or their self sufficiency. They have been known to cruelly shun someone who might want to be part of their circle because they do not live up to the shallow standards of their so called elite group. I prefer to do my own thing and make friends from all walks of life and not feel that I have to be part of a snobby herd of spoiled sheep to be somebody. © VXA 2010

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Last night my wise sage of a son said something to me that changed my whole way of thinking about my husband’s recent death. It was something I had never thought of and something I had not heard from anyone else in the nearly two years since the tragic accident occurred. Despite my haunting of grief forums online and reading everything inspirational I have been able to get my hands on in these past months of torment, nothing has touched me the way my son’s words have.
For some reason we were just sitting in my living room casually discussing someone we know who has a very difficult situation they are dealing with, both healthwise and in their lives in general. This particular fellow in question has a serious illness, is nearly blind, is broke, his electricity was shut off, his live in girlfriend passed away leaving him helplessly alone to sit in the cold dark roach infested place he calls home. His parents are both dead, his one brother died about a year ago and his other brother lives on the other side of the country. His only escape from his bleak reality is in alcohol which he has run out of and does not have the money to purchase more. We wished there were something we could do for him besides pray. We have tried to help this young man previously but despite whatever we do he winds up back in the same situation every time. He is very intelligent and was raised well by his parents and at one time had a good job and a decent life, but along the way things just got worse and worse for him until he eventually wound up like he is today.
My son said, “I’d hate to go out like that”. I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I’d hate to die all alone and penniless from a lingering, illness in that kind of situation”
I said, “Oh, would you like to just fall off a roof and be killed like Walter (my husband)?”
He replied, “Well, yes I would”. He went on to say, “Walter was on top of the world when he went out. He had a nice home, people who loved him, a good woman who had dinner on the table waiting for him every night when he came in from work, a nice big screen TV to watch.” He continued, “Yeah, that’s how I’d much rather leave the world, quickly, when everything’s going great, not knowing what hit me, than slowly suffering,alone and miserable.
I was quite stunned to hear those words coming from my son. I always worried that I hadn’t done enough for my husband and wished I’d done more to make his life even better, but from my son’s vantage point, my husband had it all.
I guess I’ve been too hard on myself as bereaved widows often are. We second guess ourselves at every turn and find ways to blame ourselves, even though there is no guilt to be had. We create it for ourselves out of grief. We plague ourselves with the “If onlies”.
My son is right, my husband did have everything he wanted when he left this earthly sojourne. Even though his life was cut short, it was a good life.
© VXA 2010