Slackjaw's Forum

This is a picture of my grandparents right before he shipped out to fight in the trenches of WW I. Fortunately the only trenches he saw during the war were of the latrine type on the island of Hawaii where he lived as part of a contingent stationed in the South Pacific to protect our western flank. I have often wished I was older when he died, so that I could have heard the story on that one. As our boys were dying in the cold muddy trenches of Europe’s western front, he and his mates were keeping Hawaii safe for democracy. By the time I knew my grandparents they had already moved from Missouri Valley, Iowa to Chicago during the depression. Grandpa was retired from the railroad where he had worked as a boxcar painter and my grandma had gotten very heavy. They lived in a red brick duplex in Bellwood that had a cement stoop and a fence in the back where I threw rocks at my sister to knock her off and she broke her arm and a small yard where the fireflies came out at night. The Ch...

Well the littlest one had to go to the hospital to get his tonsil’s removed. We had already spent last Friday night in the ICU due to the fact that he was having trouble breathing on account of how big they got. They had tried to get us to move to the floor over the weekend but we were having none of it. It’s hard enough teaching the ICU nurses how to take care of the boy much less the nurses on the floor. Instead we went home, all got some sleep and took him back on Monday for the big operation. The boys fine, though his throat’s a little sore. Since his swallow isn’t that good he wasn’t allowed to have ice cream or a popsicle or anything so he was putting up a pretty big fuss. We had the operation done at Mary Bridge CH here in Tacoma. It was a good practice run for both them and us. Up until now the boy had always made the trip up to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and that commute is just about enough to do you in. I swear I don’t know how sweetie does it the three days a...

Dewy and Ham's little dog Pepper died. He’d been on borrowed time since the rope episode anyway. Not much of a bark left to go along with his poor eye site and patchy fur loss. No one quite knows what happened, he just went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up. Dewy said she thought something was wrong when he just lifted his head and watched her walk to the bathroom, instead of following her in the middle of the night like he usually did. I feel bad for the girls ‘cause they had that dog for damn near ever. Ham’s already talking about getting a new one but I think Dewy’s still not so sure. As anyone who’s ever had a pet knows they don’t live that long, unless it’s a bird or turtle or something and it’s hard to get back on that bicycle after the big crash. I’m thinking Dewy just needs a little more time before she can let her heart go somewhere else. Last night it rained. Usually the sound of it on the roof of the Airstream puts me right to sleep but not last night. I...