Sidetracked Charley

Where were you when you realized this was serious? I was having a 1942 Case Tractor delivered to my house as a lawn ornament/landmark. Through my life there have been a series of questions which are landmarks or turning points. Questions that still pop up in conversations with people who have lived through the same times. Where were you when President Kennedy was shot. At the student union building at University of New Mexico having lunch with friends from high school. One had brought a bag of Frito's. I have not eaten them since. There are a who bunch of when you heard someone was assassinated in the following years, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Stand out. Then there was Kent State. I was in Senator Charles Goodall's offices when the news broke with fellow staffers all stunned as we watched the news. The same staffers I worked with during Watergate. I was back in New Mexico when Nixon resigned. I was skiing in Red River when we attacked Iraq the first...

This is a plague year: Bubonic Plague. Like in in Europe in the Dark Ages. Only here in the Southwestern mountain states it is the rodent above that carries the fleas that carry the plague. Some of the numerous Blacktail Prairie Dogs have developed an immunity to the bite of the fleas that plague them and as such merely become moving homes for the fleas. There is a huge new Prairie Dog town in the property behind me where the trotters are and on the land up the hill which grazes cattle. They have never been in either of these places before. Their first toehold in the community was the golf course. Oh, what they can do to a golf course! The tourists think they are cute and so control of these rodents has been prevented by bleeding hearts. Well, they are not on their land. Their holes are not tripping livestock and breaking their legs. Their dogs and cats are not trying to catch them and only getting the fleas. I blame the adoration of rodents on the cartoon Tom and Jerry. Notice the ca...