Here I Am

Well here we are on the 20th of February , 2007 and again I find myself laboriously pounding away one-fingeredly on this self-centered tale of boredom and disallusionment. At this moment Tubby and his Cats are getting pounded by LSU at Rupp. They may somehow still pull it out, but who cares at this stage. They are earnestly trying to lose four in a row, this time to a mediocre team without "Big Baby". I guess Randolph Morris "can't get his head into the game"again. Somehow Big Blue losing 4 in a row in the SEC is like baking a cake and leaving out the three whole eggs. I went to Sparta , Tennessee today andfled across Wolf Ceeek Dam again as they keep dropping the level in fear of breakage. As we speak the level of Cumberland Lake is 680 feet above sea level. THe Corps of Engineers says it will keep it at this level until September when it will consider whether to drop it further. Normal summer pool is 723 feet above sea level. The lake is 43 feet lower than tourists and boaters like. Nearly all the ramps are above the lake and new ones are hurriedly being poured, too late I fear. Coupled with $4 a gallon dock gas and the greatly diminished lake surface, these next 7 years promises to be catastrophic to central Kentucky's tourist dollars. Already touted as the houseboat capital of the worlde Somerset, Monticello , and Russell Springs had better have better markets for these floating mansions than Lake Cumberland. I . in a weaker moment once agreed with Sandy to get into the Houseboat business and we purchased one. Now this boat was hardly in the category of these modern floating palaces, but it perhaps matched what we were used to at home. It was a 54 foot Sumerset of 1978 vintage and was about as worn out and dilapidated as the rest of our possessions. We just kept it at the dock where we found it, which to our delight and relief was as trashy and worn out as our beloved neighborhood at Helm Street, or simply the "hood". Our comfort level has to descend so low as to feel threatened as I have previously explained. No sir!! No green zone for us . I knew I was home when the little German dock owner started shooting the ducks because they were nibbling at the styrofoam docks. Every once in a while towards dusk you would hear shotgun blasts over by the launch ramp as he killed the nocturnal copperheads as they came down to bask on the warm blacktop. Yes ,I really knew I was home. Or the constant smell of burning trash and wood as he set the garbage on fire and saved dumpster bills. As the thick, acrid smoke would settle on the water It tould take on a touristy atmosphere. Every so often the boys and girls would drink too much and pass out on the dock, or in one case a red-neck girl made it to the blacktop and feel on her face, nose first. In hindsight her fall may have been broken by copperhead serpents, their heads newly blown off by Willy. One time he told me you could tell the poisonous serpents as they swam in the water from their none -poisonous cousins by the fact that the poison boys swam with only their heads out of the water. Non -poison varities swam with their entire bodies floating in a wiggly motion. That was great news to me! Like a great deal of Cumberland Lake, most of the older boats at the dock( and they were all old boats)did not have holding tanks and flushed their toilets directly into the harbor, chopped up into soup by the macerators in the toilets.I christened the harbor into Turd Harbor and would often swim in it. My main salvation was that the current was carrying the feces soup down stream to the green zone of Burnside. I honestly feared the snakes and accidental shooting far more than fecal matter. The fat bluegill that I caught had A certain brownisn tint, but that could have been from when Tim and I accidentally spilled some stuff in the water.As in all things , nothing lasts forever. We sold the yacht year before laST AND BOUGHT SOME MORE REAL ESTATE HERE IN THE SLUMS. wE BOUGHT THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR FROM A GAY GUY AND HE HUGGED ME AT THE CLOSING DOWN AT THE BANK . sANDY DIDN'T GET HUGGED. i FELT i WAS TOO OLD FOR THE QUEER ONE, BUT MAYBE HE LIKED GREY HAIRED SLUM LORDS. aS THEY SAY, THE HAPPIEST DAY IN YOUR LIFE IS WHEN YOU BUY A BOAT, AND THE SECOND WHEN YOU SELL IT. i CAN VERIFY THIS TO BE THE TRUTH. hOLY HELL somehow I hit the caps lock and it appears I am Shouting. If anyone reads this I'm sorry, but get over it! I'm not stating this drivel over again.I also must be on alert as I will interchange commaS WITH APOSTROPHES. tHEY LOOK ALIKE TO ME. What am I hitting to do that?I am 57 years old and typing totally frustrates me and mystifies me. Hello to all my friends in the green zone.