SPEWING SOLILOQUIES. tponetom

[tponetom]

Note: Some time ago, this Email message was sent to a GROUP of forum Members, via the BCC route.
As usual, I am facing another dilemma. Did I post this story previously? If so, just ignore it and accept my apology for redundancy. There may be some new members who have not been baptized by my flood of schmaltzy. Schmaltzy, by my definition, is the ‘wordy saccharine’ that I like to flavor my stories with.

Spewing Soliloquies
To wit:
I sit in my La-Z-Boy at night with the TV on. I watch, without seeing, and listen without hearing. There is nothing there for me with the only exception being, PBS.
My library of tapes is my salvation. The other night I watched the musical, "Carousel,"
for about the fiftieth time or so, with Gordon Macrae singing the "Barkers Soliloquy." All eight minutes of it.
Many years ago I knew that my stories were autobiographical. They were intentional for that purpose. Their ultimate purpose was for my own pleasure of reading them many years later, which I have done. Early on, I wanted to present them in an urbane manner so that when I read them, they would carry a lyrical or sad or funny or reluctant or a dozen other emotional mood swings.
Over the years, my own soliloquies have been many and varied.
I think of words and phrases and try to fit them into the story I am telling.
This morning I was reading an ad about a portable, electric heater. The heater part was free. The handmade cabinet/mantle was made by the Amish and cost $395.00. [[I think.)
My first thought was, "have the Amish given up the ghost?" [[Very sad.)
My mind jumped back to the 21 years we lived in the Upper Peninsula.
A phrase quietly exploded in my head. It was, "The Rapture of Rusticity!"
I had recalled the Franklin Wood Stove that we used for all those years. It consumed scores of cords of wood and spewed smoke, ash, and gases up the chimney and into the pristine atmosphere of the Hiawatha National Forest where we lived. It was, and still is, one of the most useless and inefficient wood stoves one could imagine. Its hunger for the dried Beech and Hard Maple we fed to it was insatiable. On a zero degree morning, the indoor temperature would be in the middle forties. It would take a full four to six hours to nurse enough heat from the stove to bring a semblance of warmth to the house.
We could have afforded to buy a very efficient air-tight wood stove. It would also eliminate the necessity of me climbing up our snow covered roof [[41 degree pitch) to remove the steel chimney cap and wire brush the creosote from the chimney pipe interior. This had to be done every four weeks without fail to avoid a chimney fire!!!
Of course, there was a ‘Catch 22' to our situation.
On those miserably cold mornings, I would slide the La-Z-Boy chairs to within five feet of the Franklin with its doors, open. We would sit there with our coffee and be mesmerized by the contrast of colors given off by the flames. Our feet would get hot but our ears were very cold. We had a panoramic view of the snow covered forest.
Once I asked her if she wanted me to install a more efficient wood stove. Her favorite answer to me was the same as always. She said, "just throw another log on the fire."
Ahhh, The Rapture and Rusticity!
When I joined the Detroit Forum, it was with a high degree of skepticism. I was going to jump in with a bunch of young, hip, intelligent participants and they were going to eat me alive!
Well, I underestimated or did not give the participants the benefit of the doubt that they just might understand where I was coming from.
Enough of them seemed to enjoy what I had to offer. Schmaltzy, dated, irrelevant, or just plain old fashioned, I guess I did strike a chord with more than a few.
I realized that I was coming from an old and antiquated world that most of the members never experienced . So sad for them not to have .!
I have read at least a few thousand or more posts on a myriad of subjects, many of them, practical, some extremely erudite, and some, predictable. I enjoyed all of them.
In the late afternoon and early evening, I amuse myself by musing, like,,,,,,,
Peggy was in the bedroom, trying on certain elements of her wardrobe. She said she had gained two pounds during the past month. She had zoomed up to 114 pounds and she was fearful that none of her clothes would fit her any longer.
She would come into the living room, wearing a different outfit, for my opinion on each one.
Digression:
She does realize that my taste and preference in her dress is infallible. I have been dressing her since we were first married.
"No dammit, take off that blouse with the horizontal stripes. It makes you look like a teapot!"
"Yes, wear the slacks with the vertical, shadow stripes and wear your heels.. They make you look like you are five foot, ten, and you know how I love tall, beautiful women, uhhh,
as long as they are not taller than 5 feet, 4."
[[Peggy was five feet, four, in her younger days.)
So after about ten modeling changes, I said, "Look Babe, you could wear a Burlap Bag and you would still be the most beautiful and appealing woman in the world. No amount or manner of camouflage can ever conceal the beauty that lies beneath."
She replied, "If I put on that Burlap Bag, do you want me to pour a bucket of ice water on your head?"
Muse on, little dreamer, dream on............
　
　
　
　

I

[eriedearie]

Good stuff as always Tp! Now you got me thinking about winter already! Say hi to Peggy

[Ray1936]

"When I joined the Detroit Forum, it was with a high degree of skepticism. I was going to jump in with a bunch of young, hip, intelligent participants and they were going to eat me alive!"

Well, I'm not young. I'm certainly not 'hip', not by today's standards [[Yeah, I did comb my hair into a DA in the back 60 years ago, but I won't go for the mullet or the ponytail......). I guess I'm intelligent, but sometimes I'm awfully dumb. Just ask Marge, my bride of a half century. And nobody eats anybody alive in these forums. Gannon sometimes seems like he might be going to, but I've met him and he's delightfully harmless. Bats never posts on this side, so dismiss him.

Anyway, you just can't make me envy your UP days. I've been up there in Septembers when it snowed. Ditto for June. And I don't do cold. If Michigan, my Michigan, were only July and August year round, I'd move back in a heartbeat. But that's just a dream. I don't cut wood, either. I cut a few other things, like.....well, never mind. Just don't light a match.

Anyway, nice post once again. But please be advised that you can have all the geography framed by Menimonee to Copper Harbor to the Soo to St. Ignace all to yourself with no complaint from me!

[Bobl]

Thank you, tponetom & Peggy, for more wisdom and humor!
Questions:
Do you think that the need to cut cords upon cords of wood made you stronger and led to relative health now?
Is the presence of a sense of humor more, or less, important than hard work and perseverance?
How did you celebrate the anniversary?

[reddog289]

If anything I still love to read your posts TP, The UP sounds like a great place when you write about it But I have been to Rays "new" neck of the woods.Like it there, yet love the winter till about March, then you can have it.As I was sitting outside tonight watching the rain. I though "Damn" time to get ready for winter. Then I read Toms post. Detroit winters are about as much as I want to deal with.

[gazhekwe]

Aahh, wonderful post. Takes me back to those days as well. We heated with wood for the two years we lived in the UP in the 80s. We had one of those cast iron potbelly stoves like they showed in stores at the turn of the last century. It came with the house. Tha stove would get very hot, and warm the kitchen, bathroom, and the upstairs and downstairs bedrooms. By morning when the fire had gone way down, it was really cold in the house. We took to taking our clothes to bed with us to preserve our systems from the shock of debarking into the cold. We chopped and split lots of wood. I think it was a wonderful experience and wish we had been able to stay many more years.

[tponetom]

Ray:
There are two seasons in the U. P. They are:
1. Winter
2. Getting ready for Winter

[Bobl]

And there are two seasons down here:
1. Winter
2. Road Construction Season