Kenny Smith was my best buddy for a few years when I was a teenager… He wore huge thick Coke bottle bottomed glasses and had a Rod Stewart hair cut… We hung out at school some but mostly it was after school… His family lived right behind my step grand parent’s house and we just had to cut across a field to meet up… He had a dirt bike and we’d go down to the trails and hang out down there till he had to go home for dinner… Looking back on his family and mine it seems strange that he and I would have even been friends… His family was dirt ass poor.. mine wasn't far from it but we did have it a little better…. They lived in a run down house that had a smashed in garage from Kenny’s older brother coming home too drunk one night…. But every night his mother insisted they come home for dinner and do home work…. You know…. The normal things in life…. We had it a little better by living across town in a better neighbor hood but my parents didn’t give a crap were we were ( those were the days before the ugly step mother )…. as long as you made it home by bed time…. Which was 10 pm… No there was no special time for dinner except on Friday night because that was pizza night and it started at 7pm. My dad was a firm believer that if you were at some one else’s house at dinner time and their mom invited you to eat , you had better take them up on the offer!… So this one particular day we were down by the trails… He had his motorcycle, which was a puke green color, and he had the back tire in this mud puddle and was slinging mud all over the tree’s and bushes behind him… we were laughing and joking and then Kenny got a funny look on his face and said he needed to go behind a tree…. Now I won’t go into all the sounds and happenings that I heard while he was back there but after awhile I heard him yell out…. “Hey! Will ya see if you can find me a big leaf or somethin’?”…. I looked around but everything close to the ground in Texas is pretty small…. I found him a plastic bag but it was a no go…. I told him that he was just going to have to use his sock…. I guess he too, thought this a good idea because he came out from behind that tree wearing 2 shoes and one sock… Well it came to be around his supper time so he went on home… The next day he came up to my step grand mothers fence asking if I was around… she told him I wasn’t but that I might be over the next day…. She told me he looked really up set and told her that he didn’t think he could wait till then…. Turns out… His mom the next day was looking for the match to that sock! He had finally broke down and told her he had used that sock in the woods to wipe his…… Well you get the point…. And she told him … “Boy! You better go get that sock! We aint made out of money!”…. He had looked and couldn’t remember what tree he had been behind. He had wanted me to help look for his shitty sock! I couldn’t believe and still can’t believe that someone could be so poor that the loss of one sock is a major deal! My mother threw all our socks in a pile in the laundry room after they had been washed and I just picked out all the colored ones because my brothers wore white tube socks…. No problems…. And never once did she give a rat’s ass if they were mated! I and Kenny sort of grew up and apart… I saw him later on in life working up at the gas station in my home town one year when I was home visiting my Dad… He had replaced the glasses with contacts and his Rod Do turned into a mullet…. While he was washing my wind shield I didn’t say… “Hey? Remember that time you crapped out in the woods and you didn’t have any toilet paper and your mom made you go search for your allusive shitty sock?”…. Instead I said … “Hey Kenny…. How’s it been going?” And after he was done telling me all his woe’s of the past 20 years I wished I had said that about the sock… To tell the truth, when he didn’t recognize me when I pulled up, I shouldn’t have said…. “Remember me?”… I guess men forget hair color and eye color but never forget a voice…Or mines just unmistakable… You know… the kind that grates on a persons nerves….

It’s hot as a whore in church here today…. My brother called and told me it was 101 back home… I said… “That aint nothin’ BUD! At least you can get in the shade and cool off…. It’s even hot in the shade here!”… And that’s the truth…. But I like sauna heat… always have…

Update: I made the husband bush hog around that cemetery out back and I’m taking my weed eater down there this evening… along with a stick with a nail in the end of it….. I have those timber tan work boots but they only go to my ankle… I have wanted this DR Trimmer for a long time… along with the sturdy wood chipper but THE husband (and I say that like a dirty word)… says I’ll just cut my fingers off with something like that…. But it would be perfect for such an undertaking! Both those things would…. And by the way I know you’re never to load wood in a chipper while standing directly in front of it…. I’m not a fool…

So that diet thing failed miserably… I think I gained some weight on those slim fast drinks! I just need to exercise… and start drinking diet Dr. Pepper’s…. But that just seems…………. Wrong ………….. And those pills? Well I didn’t read on down to the bottom of the bottle were it said under no circumstances are you to consume caffeine drinks while taking them and of course I drank at least a six pack of DP’s… The result was a racing heart and staying awake all night with my back teeth gritted together… So … After I poisoned myself I decided that exercising and just eating better just might do it for me… Like no more having 3 ribs and a twinky for dinner… And maybe next time for a snack I might choose some carrots instead of my wonderful cheese nips… and maybe when I go to the bread store I might actually buy some bread instead of Twinkies and those cool ding dongs that aren’t wrapped in the foil any more… what’s up on that anyway?…. And now I have promised myself more water…. Even though I secretly believe that it rusts my pipes….So cheers everyone…