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Some formatting changes to Bits and pieces

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An eagle eyed viewer and frequent commenter pointed out that one of my posts had an equal amount of dislike reactions from the thirty or so total reactions. I have therefore decided that if you can react to a post, you can very well use your words to comment on a post – particularly if there’s something you DON’T like. This feedback is relied on to determine what gets posted and what I should avoid posting. More importantly it helps me to know when a post goes too far off the rails of entertainment and comedy, and assists me in delivering only the most quality of content in the future. So moving forward, the likes on posts have been removed and I encourage you to leave comments.

Sincerely, me

Friday Firesmith – Storm Damage and stuff

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The back of the property is finally dry enough for me to reclaim my Compost Pile Complex, yet only the original pile is going to be used for a while. I’ve got some work to do back there. Let’s so a quick recap of why this conversation is taking place.

12 April 2023. A freak rain event drops eleven inches of rain in six hours on top of a small part of Brooks County Georgia, resulting in the pond overflowing, my backyard flooding, and the compost pile being submerged. I lose a giant Live Oak in the backyard due to its roots being submerged and it falling over. A wet summer follows.

20 August 2023. Hurricane Idalia comes ashore and brings us some wind and rain. Some smaller trees are knocked over, limbs fall in the flooded area and that’s where they will stay for a while.

26 September 2024. Hurricane Helene comes ashore and we take a direct hit with maximum winds of 128 mph recorded in Brooks County. More rain, more downed trees in the back, and one big Water Oak on the west side of my two acres is broken near the ground and pushed due west. It had been leaning due east. The flood water in my backyard nearly reaches the deck. My shed, which is three feet off the ground, is six inches away from being flooded.

20 January 2025. A foot of snow falls in South Georgia. It’s pretty. But it’s also made of water and it does not help at all. The giant Pine Tree in the backyard dies from its root system being submerged. It’s seventy-five feet tall. I take it down with a chainsaw and more than a few tears.

The water hangs around until we start having drier weather in the first part of 2025. April and May see only a few inches of water, and as the water recedes, I start moving stuff out of the yard.

By June of 2025, the water is almost all gone and by July, I’m back into the Compost Pile.

The hibernaculum started before the flooding and got bigger once the Live Oak fell. I set fire to it one time, when the water was high and got some cool photos of it. I also took the kayak out and paddled around, even over the compost pile.

But now, it’s a wasteland out there for trees. Many, many, many have died, from being pushed over or for being drowned. Quite a few are leaning on other trees and will eventually fall. I can either let nature takes it course and hope they fall well and not on a dog, or I can take them down.

One thing is for certain is I won’t live long enough to see the trees return. The First Tree, the tree that caught my attention by being the first free to grow in the Fire Pit Area is dead. For years, the back part of the property was overgrown with vines, and when I cleared them out, the trees returned. That was twenty-five years ago. A lot of my work in growing trees has been erased now, and I will not get another chance.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – A tale of Greg

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Greg and I were friends in high school. Several things about Greg were strange, but after all, he was a drummer in a band. I dated a woman who had known him most of his life, and was good friends with his family, and she thought Greg was a little odd, but so where most of her friends.

I was the best man at his wedding. His new bride was eighteen, he was twenty-four, and they seemed to be a happy couple. Two years later she left him.

Greg started dating a woman older than he was, and she had a twelve year old daughter. They went on vacation and Greg’s beach photos were mostly of the little girl in her swimsuit. I began to feel uneasy about Greg and the girl, but shortly after the beach trip, her mother broke up with him and left.

When I left the Army I moved to Valdosta Georgia and Greg had disappeared. A few years later he called me looking for a character witness in a trial. It seems that a computer virus had infected his computer and downloaded a lot of child porn. I told Greg I was the last person he wanted in that courtroom. If summoned I would have told the truth.

He had called a mutual friend and that friend called me, and we began to compare notes. Greg never had a girlfriend in high school, never dated, and his wife, Kim, looked a lot younger than eighteen. The photos of his girlfriend’s daughter made us stop and wonder. There was only one conclusion to come to about Greg. He was a pedophile. All the clues had always been there, but we, and everyone else, never put them together.

Last I heard, Greg had served five years in a prison in West Virginia on the child porn charge. Where he is now, I have no idea.

Greg and I were good friends. We drank together, we talked a lot about music and life. I was a roadie once for a gig he played at a Country Club where a woman got on stage and stripped. We went to concerts, the beach, and hung out a lot. I wore my dress green uniform at the wedding and somewhere there’s photos of us together. Greg and I were close.

Child Porn is a red line for me with Greg or anyone else. Sexualizing children is abhorrent. I was more than willing to disregard the good times years of friendship in order to preserve my own values. I would do the same with anyone I have ever known.

I will, without hesitation or regret, cut ties with anyone who has anything to do with sexualizing children. There is no acceptable degree.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday FireSmith – I saw a Cat

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I know where I was on August the 25th, 2023, because I have a photo. Not of me, not at all, no. I got a partial photo of a cat. Grey, striped, with a white shoulder, it ran away as I drove down the driveway, and for reasons I cannot explain, I snapped a photo.

I called my neighbors and they, too, saw this cat, but it ran away from them. A stray, a feral, it really didn’t matter at all for nothing small and helpless is going to survive out here. Coyotes, bobcats, owls, hawks, venomous snakes, alligators, foxes, and humans with guns who might think a bullet is a mercy for a stray all live here. Starvation, if it lived, parasites, heat, and a host of stinging insects awaited this animal until something killed it.

            There was no way I could take a cat it. Wrex Wyatt had a dislike for small mammals.

Several days later I looked out of the front door window and there was this cat, walking up my mama’s wheelchair ramp as if it meant to simply walk right through the front door. I opened the door and the cat fled. I was too shocked to get a photo, but I did start putting out food, and the food began to disappear.

            I’ve been hungry. Not just simply wanting to eat, but not having food and not knowing where food was going to come from, or when. Whatever else may be true, no animal I can get food to is going to feel that.

            For reasons I won’t not try to explain at the moment, I started calling this cat, “Aqaba.”

Pronounced Ack-a-baa. I would go out on the porch with the bowl of food and sing out, “Aqaba! Aqaba! Kitty, kitty, kitty!” and put the bowl down.

            A week later, I could see him hiding in the woods near the house and when I called he came out, a little bit, and then stopped.

            Eventually, he made his way into the garden to wait. One day I called him and he came running out of the woods and stopped in the garden, and watched me, and crept a little closer.

            And this was as far as Aqaba would get. I talked to him, sang to him, kept food and water out, but there was a line this kitty was not crossing.

            The last week of August I began setting live traps for Aqaba, but he wanted to part of them at all, and refused to go in. On August the 30th, hurricane Adalia slammed into South Georgia, creating more flooded areas and knocking down trees. The power went out. Somewhere in the woods, Aqaba Thomas, the Cat Unexpected, had either lived or died. I set out food for a couple of days and sang for him. The food was untouched. I waited. There was no sign of Aqaba at all.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Gonzo, the God of Thunder!

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The one thing I never got used to in the Army was you could wake up one day and be living in the same room as a complete stranger. Okay, that was also one of the things that were cool, but I got stuck with a cigarette smoker once, and damn.

Some guys from another platoon got stuck with Gonzales. “Gonzo,” was his nickname quickly, and it was hard to pin down at first, I mean, other than his last name, but after a while, we realized Gonzo was doing a good job at hiding a few, uh, quirks.

Okay, here’s an interesting tidbit. The Army had this contest for “Soldier of the Year,” and to get there you had to get Soldier of the Month, Soldier of the Quarter, and Soldier of the Day After a Three Day Weekend and Not Be Hungover. Basically, Soldier Of Meant you wore your dress uniform well and could answer a lot of Army based trivia.

Gonzo missed Soldier of the Year by one slot. He came in second.

Hang onto that one, okay?

Stationed in South Georgia meant guys from other parts of the world, and Gonzo was from Salt Lake City, had never seen a thunderstorm like we have, with thunderbolts and lightning. Gonzo came unglued. Lightning freaked him out. His room dogs told the story of Gonzo yelling at God to stop it, and locking himself in the bathroom while screaming.

Then there was the Sergeant Murrey Incident. Murrey was one of those guys who was not only a lifer, but thought everyone else ought to be, too. You cut him, and Sgt. Murrey bled Olive Drab green. We were out in the field one night, and Murrey got us lost on tank trails, just Murrey and me, and he had no idea what to do next. Finally, I started marking intersections with cans to show him we were going around in circles.

But we got back to the perimeter late. The password had expired and yay! Gonzo was manning the gate. He wouldn’t let us in. Murrey “ordered” Gonzo to let us in. Gonzo refused. Murrey started to step over the Concertina Wire barrier and Gonzo flipped his M-16 around and was about to swing away at Murrey’s head.

With Murrey screaming at Gonzo, and Gonzo screaming back, half the battalion woke up, crawled out of their tents, and eventually, someone came over to me and asked what the problem was, and gave me the password. I yelled the password out to Gonzo and he grabbed the wire and let us in. Murrey wasn’t done. He wanted Gonzo written up. But the rules were rules and Gonzo had followed them. Murrey was scolded and he never got over it.

Gonzo went on to grab second place in Soldier of the Year, and he took a couple of weeks off to spend with his family in Utah. We never saw him again. He stripped down to his underwear in a shopping mall and ran screaming through the place until the cops came, ran him down, tackled him, and arrested him.

I never got used to living with some of the people the Army stuck me with, but I’ve never run out of writing material.

Take Care,

Mike