Dear Friends:
As I sit here in an old house with an old dog putting together an old puzzle, I find myself
wondering, “whatever happened to the good old days?”
I’m not complaining. Really. I enjoy pretty good health. I have a great family. I live in a
wonderful town. And I have the best Boss around.
I readily admit that my Boss could beat me in a fair fight. You might think I could simply grab
her and sit on her. She’d be done. Wrong! She’s smart. She’d stay out of my grasp until I ran
out of breath chasing her. Then, she’d just trip me and end it all. Yup, one fall – that’s all.
The Boss lacks three months of being two years older than me. But the comparison is kind of
like the Tabernacle Choir. Have you noticed all those pretty ladies with a rainbow of hair colors
on one side, along with what appear to be their gray and/or balding fathers on the other.
The Boss hasn’t tripped me in ages, but she’s also managed to stay away from my grasp (for her
own protection) for years. Okay, stop giggling. You’ve missed the point. We get along
famously; as well or better than we have in thirty years! With age and maturity comes
understanding.
We have an understanding associated with health — my health. She promises not to kink my C-
PAP hose if I promise to lay quietly on my back without opening my mouth. For the uninitiated,
opening your mouth while using a C-PAP is akin to having the Titanic’s foghorn go off.
The neighbors called the police once. Their dogs stopped their incessant barking and they
thought there was a grunge rock concert going on in our backyard. It turned out The Boss had
decided sleeping on the trampoline was quieter and safer for both of us. When she got to sleep, I
somehow kinked my own hose and fog-horned the neighborhood. While the neighbor’s dogs
had stopped barking, my noise had awakened other dogs blocks away. Dispatch had been busy.
You have a choice when your C-PAP hose kinks. Breathe through your mouth and awaken the
world, or carefully unkink the contraption and slip quietly back into a dreamland. My recurring
dream happens to involve looking for truck keys in the garage. For some reason it happens every
time I drink soda pop or eat ice-cream after 5:00 p.m.
Again, you’re jumping ahead and thinking I’m complaining. Lest you think I’m losing my
agility (and a few other things), I proved just yesterday that I can still do hopscotch with the best
of ‘em. I was in front of the city office when my feet somehow decided to do an intricate step
routine. If someone hadn’t been going in, I would have hopscotched myself right into the front
glass doors. As it was, I somehow managed to remain mostly upright and made it almost to my
office before someone grabbed a chair and pulled me into it.
The body isn’t what it once was, but the mind is sharp as a dull tack. I can remember anything
that happened before 1897, and I have an opinion on every war including the War of the Worlds,
which was published in that same year. My daughter got married the year Father of the Bride
came out, and I still watch for her husband in reruns of America’s Most Wanted.
Of course, I’m just having a little fun, but I can honestly say life is truly fun for me. I can’t
imagine being in a better place, with better people, than I am right now. God bless the United
States of America and God Bless Us, everyone.
Mayor David Ogden