First of all, I would like to thank the folks who have reached out to me to see if I was OK since I haven’t written any blogs lately. I have a very good explanation for that. The two ladies who run our web site began pushing me to have the material for our summer newsletter, Summer Scene, to them by a certain date. I normally wait until a bit later to write Summer Scene, but I have another upcoming eye surgery; so I thought that I had better start putting my thoughts on paper. Two different thoughts could roll around in my head for eons without fear of collision. I also need to receive input from Cader IV, Jerry, and Greg about anything new going on this summer.

I have noted with a great deal of interest how the liberal Democrats are enlisting the Snowflakes in their battle to take our guns away. These young people are too naïve to realize that they are being used as pawns. As I shared with an old friend recently, if we re-instituted mandatory military service, I can promise you that our military would instill some discipline in a too many kids who are just drifting and self-centered. I thought that I knew everything until I entered basic training at Fort Campbell, KY. That was when I first learned that my name was not Cader. Sometimes I would be addressed as “Trainee”, but most of the time my drill sergeant lovingly referred to me when addressing me as “S—T For Brains”. However, he did keep me from making a terrible mistake. After watching an inspiring film on going airborne, I was about to raise my hands to volunteer when this old geezer who had just returned from two tours in Vietnam clamped down on my arm and whispered, “Trainee, only two things fall out of the sky—Bird S—t and fools. Which one are you?” I stayed in the infantry.

The military didn’t have to teach me to respect weapons or how to shoot them as Pop had drilled that into my head when I was a kid. They did teach me that in a gun fight, the most important thing is to HAVE A GUN. The army did not teach me this, but life’s experiences have: The average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes (I will return to this statement in a minute) while the response time of a .357 is 1400 feet per second. Think about that millennials and snowflakes.

In closing, allow me to go back to that 23 minute average response time to a 911 call. Out here in the sticks, it is 40 minutes. The first time we ever put in an alarm system at our offices, it went off one morning about 1:00AM. The sheriff’s department was dispatched, and I waited patiently for them to show up. Dummy me, I was unarmed. When Deputy Doofus (and I really do like our men in blue, but this one’s elevator stopped short of the top floor) asked me to unlock the door and cut the alarm off. I told him that he had the gun rather than me, and I wasn’t remotely interested in opening a door where bad guys might be on the other side. He was insistent that I do it; so I finally talked him into giving me his pistol. Of course, a spider had just crawled across a motion detector eye. And there were no bad guys in the building other than the spider.

From that day on, if our burglar alarm goes off, Cader IV and I meet each other down here with 12 gauge shotguns loaded with high brass #6’s. I feel much safer with my son covering my back, or mine his, than in waiting for the sheriff. We clear the building, and then call and cancel the police car while it is still a good 25 minutes away. OK, I’m going to close with this comment that I read which is just too funny not to share.

I decided to stop calling my bathroom the “John”, and renamed it the “Jim”. I feel so much better saying that I went to the “Jim” this morning.