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A flamtastic kinda day

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[June 28, 2014]  On a good, warm Saturday morning, you have your choice here in our valley: yard saling or livestock saling.

Since Windy didn’t need have much of a need to rummage through stacks of doilies or record albums starring Patti Page or the Kingston Trio, he headed for the sale barn.

You see, Alphonse “Windy” Wilson doesn’t have a ranch or farm. No, Windy was trolling for an audience.

He tried the coffee shop there, but there were just two ranchers there, and they were in an intense conversation. He walked around through the waiting pens, and it was there he saw the kids. There were three of them, teenage boys, chatting with each other, wearing hats and boots. Leaning on shovels. Windy knew what their jobs had to be and figured them as good audience fodder.

“Shore is a flamtastic kinda day, ain’t it boys?” Windy said, maneuvering so they would have to actually walk over him to get back to work. “Puts me to mind of the day we was all having a picnic up on Thompson Ridge … you boys know what a picnic is? Oh, they still have ‘em, eh? Hard to keep up with all the new innervations you young people have … I’m an old timer, you know? Oh, of course you knew.

“Wellsir, it was a day just like this, solarily speaking, with picnic writ all over it, and there we were, just a salivatin’ along on Thompson Ridge, looking for a ‘propiate spot to have lunch, when the ground started to shake. It was a dad-gummed earthquake! We used to get one oncet in a while, you know. Well boys, it shook and shook and the trees went wobbly at the knees and so did we. Some of us thought it was the end days, you know. But then it quit, and I can extrapolate to you that was a mighty good thing to have happen.

[to top of second column]

“And we sat down and opened our picnic baskets and do you know what? That there earthquake turned the young’uns’ ration of cow’s milk into vanilla milkshakes!”

Windy sighed. “Used to have some pretty good picnics in them days.”

[Text from file received from Slim Randles]

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Slim Randles' Home Country

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