Big Rock Candy Mountain (Traditional/Wannberg)
One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains”.
It’s A Bum Outlook
Siobhan and I were driving from the training center to McDonald’s Tuesday morning when we noticed an extraordinary sight. At the intersection of I-75 and Marion County 326, there were NO bums. Usually, of course, there’s one at each point of Interstate entry or egress, but today—nothing. A little spooky, if you ask me. We eventually noticed a giant pile of fashionable bedding halfway hidden off in the bushes which led us to believe the forces of law and order, perhaps a little peevish over the accumulating complaints, had decided to sweep the area and run the rascals off into the night. Alas, we were—literally and figuratively—BUMMED OUT.
We started wondering what happened to our little bum colony. Did they merely scatter into the nearby woods to return to fight another day? Did they mosey on down the highway to find a less contentious spot? Is this even permissible in the bum code of behavior? It seems all the local corners have been duly assigned and interlopers are not welcome. Is there a great bum council somewhere that doles out panhandling locations? What if a NEW bum—say a 6-8, 275 pound new bum—usurps an old bum’s territory. Does he get, like, reported on? What kind of punishment can you give a bum? He’s already a bum, right?
Siobhan wants to know where the bums get all their stuff. She thinks there is probably a giant bum store somewhere where they sell all those signs (“Will seriously consider working for money”) (“Lost everything at the track”) (“Homeless, legless Vietnam Vet with shrapnel wounds and eight children needs help”) and other bum accessories. Like special bum clothing. I mean, who’s going to give any money to a panhandler in an Armani suit? Or even a polo shirt and a nice pair of jeans? You gotta have that bum look and these outfits are not available just anywhere. What about those dogs some bums have? Normal dogs don’t look like that. Bum dogs all look like they’ve been rode hard and put up wet. And there’s obviously a bum rule that all bum dogs must wear those red bandanas—where do they get those if there’s no bum store? And all those bruises bums have—are there some kind of instant bruise tattoos? It’s a dilemma.
Did you know that some bums are capitalists? Yep, it’s true. I took a cab once from the gym to the Interstate, where my car was being repaired, and, in the course of discussing the highs and lows of the taxi business, the cab driver told me his steadiest customer was a capitalist bum he took to and from his Interstate spot each day.
“The guy makes over a hundred a day,” said the cabbie. “He makes more than me. He thinks he has a regular job, you know, just like everybody else. He says it’s the same as those construction guys who hold the ‘Stop’ and ‘Slow’ signs. They both just stand there holding their signs. What’s the difference? For a bum, this guy’s a high roller. I take him back to the Star Motel every night.”
Gee. I gotta admit, I never thought of it that way.
I hired a bum once to work at the Subterranean Circus. He was an affable, mid-twentyish guy named Eddie. Liked to come in the store and talk when nobody was around. Eddie was pretty smart so I asked him if he wanted to work a few hours a day. He said sure, why not. And he did a good job, too. After awhile, Eddie came to me and said he’d found a better-paying job at the Plasma Bank where he was a regular donor. I wished him well. Eddie eventually moved up in rank to a supervisory position. He got his own apartment. He even came into the Circus and actually bought things. Then, all of a sudden, no more Eddie. About five months later, I saw him back on the street, dressed in prior bum garb, cheerful as ever.
“Eddie!” I exclaimed. “What happened?”
“Ah,” he said, looking down at the ground, embarrassed, “I missed the street life. I missed my friends, missed the freedom to do what I wanted every day. I didn’t like all the responsibility. So I came back. I’m happier now.”
So there you have it. Another true-life experience from a corner seldom heard from. And further proof of the old axiom: You can take the bum out of the dumpster but you can’t take the dumpster out of the bum.
A Day In The Life—Part I
Just in case any of you think we run around here leading the lives of heroes from the Gothic Comics, it’s not like that. The same annoyances and frustrations that mark the lives of the balance of society also intrude on us.
The other day, Siobhan and I decided to take one car to Gainesville. I would drop her off at the School of Massage where somebody named Gordy, a suspicious massager name if I ever heard one, would work on her frozen shoulder while I would go over to Shands to get some blood drawn. I figured by the time I was through she’d be finishing up her hour-long appointment.
Have you had your blood drawn lately? There must be some Cosmic Rule afoot that stipulates that all waiting rooms at these places will be jam-packed with humanity, most of it coughing and wheezing all over the place as you try to find some little unaffected corner to hide in. I tried to knock off my trusty New York Times crossword puzzle and ignore the din, but it wasn’t easy. One particularly obnoxious toddler, about three years old, had a notion that she was absolutely required to scream at the top of her lungs as often as possible. She had one of those doting, permissive mothers who was convinced that everything her little troll did was uncommonly cute so there was no question of discipline. Even when she clocked some old grandpa with her plastic chair, certainly denting his ancient shin, the rest of the waiting room chuckled in pretended amusement. But I knew her demise was near. Sure enough, the nurse soon called her name and she skipped optimistically into the Lair Of The Big Needle to meet her fate.
I smiled cruelly as the little monster’s screams seared the waiting room and the hills beyond. No one could imagine such a tiny little thing would be capable of generating her enormous volume—louder, for certain, than Janet Leigh’s shower-scene screeching in Psycho. A fitting punishment, diminished only by the mother getting away scott free. The very large African-American nurse (300 pounds, easy) took me in next. “Sometimes we have to hold them down,” she said. “Sometimes it takes two of us.”
“Oh, please,” I implored. “Next time you need help, come and get me.”
Are We Done Yet? How About Now?
When I got back to pick up Siobhan, I was pleased to note there were only ten minutes left on her appointment. I looked around the little gift shop at the usual inventory these places display—chimes, New Age Music, candles, other predictables. No Siobhan, though. I figured it was taking longer than expected because her ailment is difficult to alleviate and would-be shoulder-fixers have little experience with this problem, which flared up one day while we were in Knoxville. Siobhan’s brother, Stuart, a doctor, took her in to see a specialist.
“Frozen shoulder,” he ruled. “No doubt about it.” I had never heard of it. Even Siobhan, who knows everything, had never heard of it. It’s not a nice thing. Makes it difficult to find a comfortable position while sleeping. And it’s almost impossible to put your hands above your head.
“Oh piffle,” you might say, “that’s not so bad.”
Yeah, well how would YOU feel when all of your friends were doing the Wave and you couldn’t join in? Or when the home team got a touchdown and everybody else raised their arms above their heads, emulating the referee? Worse even would be if you were in a robbery:
“Okay, everybody put their hands up!”
“Er, sir—I can’t do that.”
“Well, why not?”
“I’ve got frozen shoulder—my arms won’t go up.”
“Well, gee, lady—put ‘em out front or somethin’. Help me out here.”
Anyway, I waited an hour. Nothing. I sat down, read the newspaper, went outside, looked at the pea hens, came back, listened to all the silly massage girls as they tittered over the impossibility of agreeing on any conceivable lunch. Finally, I sent one of them in to find out what was going on. None of my massage people ever gave me five extra minutes, let alone an hour.
“Five more minutes,” came the answer. It turned into fifteen. I thought I might hitchhike home when Siobhan finally appeared. She said there was no clock and she didn’t have any phone to check the time. “I thought it was taking a long time, but who complains about extra massage,” she said.
“You mean outside of me?” I asked her.
We take two cars when we go to Gainesville now.
A Day In The Life—Part II
Siobhan’s business, Pathogenes, is really taking off. She has developed a new drug called Oroquin-10 for the treatment of EPM (Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis) in horses and other assorted critters and, so far, it has a 94% success rate (she’s working on that other 6%, of course). This means that every day, the Post Office box is full of blood samples, not to mention other deliveries from Larry, the Fedex man, UPS, and a bunch of other people we barely know. So we have a lot more conversations now than we used to with delivery people. Johanna, who makes sure to put our stuff out first at the Post Office, insists we “have a blessed day,” each morning and we certainly appreciate that even though it didn’t seem to help on that trip to Gainesville. And Larry provides any sports bulletins we may have missed in addition to sharing gardening tips with Siobhan. The UPS man is still afraid of China, our Rottweiler, but he’s getting a little better.
By the way, Siobhan is holding a Webinar on September 6 from her compounder’s lab in Ocala. You can watch it even if you don’t care a fig about Equine Protozoal Encephalitis. All you have to do is e-mail us for the particulars.
Show Them A Light And They’ll Follow It Anywhere. Even a very DIM Light.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has decided that he, too, will join in the fun and jump into the running for the Republican Presidential Nomination. Why not—every other dim bulb extant has joined the race. And he’s just what we need at this critical time in our nation’s history, another evolution-denying, global-warming-ridiculing, gun-loving religious fanatic arriving on scene to pump up the rancor. I thought we had Pat Brown in Texas to put a stop to this sort of foolishness.
Keep On Truckin’, Frank
About ten years ago, a man named Frank Stronach, who ran a giant car-parts colossus called Magna began buying up thoroughbred racetracks all over the country while also developing a humongous horse farm just down the road from us called Adena Springs South. The farm, several thousand acres in size, extends many miles from County Road 316 to CR 318, and every acre is beautifully maintained. In the meantime, Frank has managed to win the Breeders’ Cup and many other significant stakes races, often with the produce of his own stallions.
Things have not always gone swimmingly. Some of the racetracks lost money and others did not achieve the profit level expected by some of Stronach’s Magna investors. Eventually, he parted ways with Magna, getting a billion dollars for his trouble and holding on to his horse properties. To us, all of this is neither here nor there. What we appreciate is seeing a man in his seventies, at a time when most others are wrapping their lives up, charging full speed ahead with new projects, ambitious challenges, continuing on with his life as if he were decades younger. For this, he is frequently criticized. Back when he started accumulating racetracks, it was “Oh, Stronach’s too old to be involved in all this—what’s going to happen if he dies right in the middle of it?” Well, Stronach didn’t die, but what if he did? His estate would be resolved the same way it would be resolved if he were forty or fifty.
Now, at 78, he is getting the same criticism after buying thousands of acres in Levy and Marion counties to establish a large herd of top-quality cattle and a processing plant intended to turn out a better degree of beef. He’s even talking about opening a chain of restaurants in which to feature his new product. His age isn’t slowing him down at all, and it’s a good lesson to the rest of us. How many of us have said, “Oh, I’d like to do this or that, but I’m too old.” So what do we do instead? Usually, not much. Sure, everybody has to be realistic about age and health and, like Clint Eastwood famously said, “A man has to know his limitations.” But often it’s the psychological limitations we put on ourselves, rather than physical ones we actually have. The worst thing about aging is that it has a tendency to steal your confidence if you’re not careful. And that’s the unkindest theft of all.
That’s all, folks….
