Slackjaw's Forum

I saw her picking flowers again -- going from yard to yard with a small pair of children’s scissors, looking for just the right mix of colors for her bouquet. Young with a slightly Goth bent to her, she never seems to mind the fact that they don’t belong to her. She just takes her time as if she were shopping at a florist with someone else’s credit card. She doesn’t live in the trailer park, at least not on a permanent basis. After you’ve been her as long as I have, you start to recognize just about everyone. Sometimes you run into someone you’ve never met at the spaghetti feed Sarah puts on in August, but I’ve never seen her there, nor does anyone I’ve talked to in the park know who she is either. She seems harmless enough and quiet, though why she’s chosen our park to make these daylight flower raids I can only guess. It’s usually only once or twice a year at the most though you can see how it pisses Heather and Earl off after I tell them she’s been by. They check thei...

Spring has definitely sprung up around the park these past few days. It’s been snowing cherry blossoms out front and in the back the lilacs are a pungent deep purple, their new branches casting shadows over the bleeding hearts, delphiniums and lemon balm. Though there was rain there was plenty of sun as well - enough to go to the parade, enough to go to the fair and enough to watch the older boy take in his first T-ball practice of the season. Sweetie wound up having to work Sunday evening and so left after she had seen the best hitter on the team smack the hell out of the ball, and star first baseman gobbled up everything thrown his way. Imagine our surprise to discover that not only were they the same kid, a handsome blond haired blue eyed boy of six, but that he belonged to us! Ike came with and enjoyed the errant throws and kids playing in that powdery field dust, laughing most of the time, or sucking in his breath that the wind had tried to take away or after the sun ...

I have a book called Houghtalings Hand-Book of Useful Information published in 1887. On it’s cover it clearly states that it costs 30 cents but if you look inside it you find out that you can order the book in an elegantly bound cloth cover for 60 cents. Then book I have is in a red alligator leatherette and inside it is the strangest mishmash of unconnected information I’ve ever seen out of a book this size. Here’s some of what you can find out from this 1887 book. If a railway were built to the sun and trains upon it were run at the rate of thirty miles an hour, day and night without a stop it would requite 350 years to make the journey from the earth to the sun. How to prevent accident to steam boilers. How the President of the United States of America is chosen. The cost of a cable telegraph message. (Washington DC, to Burmah in India, $2.22 per word, DC to Portugal, 57 cents per word, etc.) Friday is an eventful day in American history: Columbus discovered Americ...