Bring back those lazy, hazy, crazy days of Summer................part one

PROLOGUE

I don't know why I've put off posting these things for so long.........maybe it's because I knew it was kind of a "last hoorah" for me, for a while, before a long and dreadful winter set in.
Posting just seems to close the events out.
They were great times with my kids, and their kids........too rare, it seems.

On the one hand, one might reason that, considering the light hearted,off the wall, left handed drivel with which I normally clutter my little corner of the internet, something as important as a family event would deserve a place of glory........take a priority, as it were.

On the other hand, it almost seems too personal to part with even this bit of it......kind of a funny reaction I suppose..........

.........but a promise is a promise, however hastily or long ago made, and I promised a posting of these events.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CASSIE

We gathered at Casey's place on the 14th of Aug. to celebrate Cassie's 22nd Birthday.

You are familiar enough, by now, with my son's Mansion among the corn, that I don't have to post any more pics of it..........

It's a great place to party.......no neighbors to speak of, just corn......but it's damned far away from anyplace that anybody is. All their friends are in Chillicothe.........and its nearly 45 minutes drive to Casey's.
This may seem a small thing to my Texas and points west readers.........places where it takes a half tank of gas to get to the nearest gas station, but, up here, even in the country, a "far neighbor" is still only about 2500 yds away.

So, though we invited anyone and everyone, we didn't have any idea what kind of crowd to plan for.............as a result, Napoleon's army could've stopped by on the way home from Russia for a quick meal and a pretty fair beer buzz.
I cooked 12 pounds of chicken wings alone.

Now, keep in mind that this is the middle of August.........a time when our part of the country is normally sweltering in the sort of heat that you can scoop up with a shovel and tote around in a wheel-barrow.
We thought ourselves blessed with the fair skies and temperate afternoon we were enjoying..........
and then it started to cool off.
People, it got god-damned cold.......not unseasonably cool, not chilly, but down right fucking cold.

The bon fire that was supposed to be a symbolic throw back to drunken neo-lithic pagan revelry.........became a life giving refuge of warmth. Still I shivered, looking for all the world like a homeless derelict (a foreshadowing??) under a moth eaten quilt I found in the trunk of my car.

I didn't get a lot of pictures.......we gnoshed on the wings in the afternoon, crowded around the bonfire until it gave its last bit of absorbable radiance in the evening and then went to huddle around the gas cooker for hambugers, mega-dogs and cake much later........around midnight!!!

It was a good time, a small and close family time........who is to say it would have been better had a pile of out of control people gathered there.
It's not as though it was warm enough to give way to running around naked brandishing buggy whips and cans of motor oil, with clothes pins dangling from the naughty bits anyway.

Here are a couple of token pictures..........(I really am sorry I didnt get more)

One of the Birthday Girl and her significant other, Hans........and one of the chicken wings.........(am I a foodie or what?).







Cassie was born August 15, 1982.......in the neighborhood of 8 pm.
At the time I was stuck on a train, on the wrong side of a washout, in Eton, Missouri.
It seems such a long ago yesterday.
Since that time, we have had our close and distant days......but like my son and grandchildren, there has not been a waking second of all that time that she has not been a part of everything I've endeavored.
Adorable infants, delightful and shining children, perplexing and challenging adolescents.........
she and her brother have grown to be that best of all things........good people.

Happy belated blog Birthday, Sweetie............Daddy loves you.

Thus endeth the entry..........