Inspiration

Job declared “Man who is born of woman is a few days and full of trouble.”

Over three thousand years later, American writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” M. Scott Peck in his modern masterpiece, The Road Less Traveled, put it even more succinctly. He wrote “Life is difficult.” Chief Ten Bears in the movie, The Outlaw Josey Wales, referred to our time here as “the struggle of life.” An old hymn from my childhood echoes these words: “It’s not an easy road.”

 Any way you slice it, we all encounter bumps in the road of life. Some of those “bumps” are no more than minor inconveniences and aggravations. Others are nothing short of devastating. Everyone experiences disappointments of one degree or another.

At the ending of the movie, Old Yeller; the father, played by Fess Parker, shares some interesting words with his son, Travis:

“Now and then, for no good reason a man can figure out, life will hall off and knock him flat - slam him against the ground so hard it seems like all his insides is busting. But it’s not all like that. Some of it is mighty fine. You can’t afford to waste the good part frettin’ about the bad. That makes it all bad.

But I’ll tell you a trick that’s sometimes a big help. You start lookin’ around for something good to take the place of the bad. As a general rule, you can find it.”

I must admit. It takes a lot to get me down. I am, by nature and by training, an eternal optimist. But sometimes I get that for which Memphis, TN is famous…”the blues.” I can’t fully explain it, but every now and then things just seem to pile up on me, and I feel overwhelmed by life. Such was the case not so long ago.

After a trying weekend, I found myself on Sunday evening wondering how in the world I could take on Monday. It was going to be a demanding day, and I was about spent before it even arrived.

Late Sunday night I drifted off into a restless sleep.

The next morning force of habit pulled me out of bed. To put it mildly, I was not feeling one bit less discombobulated. I did manage to pull the things together that I would need for the coming day.    

Just after daylight I stepped out into the morning air. The birds which sing just at the breaking of dawn were already gone. It was pleasantly cool and unusually quiet. I hesitated for a bit to drink in the moment. Then, I heard him.

No further away than the edge of my yard, but well out of sight; his song rang out, sharply and distinctly, “Bob White!”

It was music to my ears! Only a country boy or girl would know the call of a Bob White quail.

“Well, good morning, Mr. Robert White quail!” I said out loud (and half-way to myself.)

“Bob White!” he called out again.

I waited.

“Bob White!” he trumpeted the third time.

He had found a familiar rhythm of which I have become so fond over the years.

I paused for a few minutes to feel grateful for growing up in rural America…for knowing about “Bob White” quails …and robins …and mockingbirds…and woodpeckers… and red-winged blackbirds.

Mr. Bob White called out a dozen times or more before I was on my way. I was feeling better already!

Strangely, the next thing I noticed was the homes of two of my neighbors. Sitting side by side, they were beautifully landscaped, the grass newly mowed. I can’t explain it, but the most pleasant feeling came over me as I thought about my neighbors.

Next, I came upon a little hayfield. No more than two acres, it is where spotted goats can usually be seen grazing. But it had been cut for hay in late summer.  And on this morning, it was dotted with square bales of hay. Five perfectly straight rows, with no more than ten bales in each row, lay neatly in this little field.  It spoke to me of order. Suddenly, the whole world made more sense. I felt energized. And I found myself getting back my second wind. 

We all can use some inspiration now and then. I have always contended that you can find it if you look for it. But there is more to it than that.

I would not have thought of a Bob White quail, or a neighbor’s yard or a little field of hay. There was something very deep going on here.

Sometimes I pray for ears that can hear, eyes that can see, and a heart of deeper understanding.

Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall

Home Fires

Seems like as far back as my earliest memories I can see flickering flames dancing in a fireplace. I don’t recall much about the log house in which we first lived, but I remember the fireplace. Maybe it was the warmth of the fire, or the mesmerizing rhythm of the rolling flames. Whatever the reason, I can’t help but smile when I go back down the halls of my memories and find myself in front of a fire.        

Of course, our ancestors sat in front of a fire for thousands of years. Some would say it is in our DNA to be intrigued by fire.       

 I can only tell you this: Each fall when leaves begin to turn, and I hear the haunting call of geese in flight or feel the bite of frosty air on my face, I get a little homesick. And I begin to look for smoke circling out of a chimney, and I have a longing to breath in the smell of smoke from a hardwood fire.       

There is something special about “wood” heat. When you come in out of the cold, the smell of the fire and the feel of the warm air has a quality about it that says, “welcome home.”        

My maternal grandfather’s house in the Brim Hollow featured a big, open fireplace. It would accommodate a back log 9 to 12 inches “through” (diameter). At night, just before going to bed, my grandfather would “bank up” the ashes against the back log; which, in effect, put the fire out for the night. The next morning, he would rake the ashes back from the back log exposing the embers that had smoldered during the night. A piece or two of kindling, and more firewood would bring the fire back to life in a sudden burst of flames. You might say my grandfather was the self-appointed “thermostat.”      

An Ashley wood heater was the centerpiece in the living room in the house where I grew up. My mother was the keeper of the flame. My father (sometimes reluctantly) kept the front porch stocked with firewood, but my mother “tended” the fire. And she had her preferences when it came to the kind of wood he supplied. To my father, “a tree was a tree.”      

My late mother use to say, “hackberry burns about the same whether green or dry.” She preferred Ash.       

To his credit, my father consistently provided an excellent supply of cedar kindling each year. In the spring, he would secure a pickup truck load of cedar slabs (trimmings) from the J. C. Owen sawmill. (That was years before the Owens made the transition from producing cedar boards to making cedar bedding.)       

My father would pile the cedar slabs in an out-of-the-way location and let them “dry out” all summer. At the first hint of winter, he would attach a frame to the front of our John Deere tractor. The frame featured a small, round sawmill blade driven by a 6 inch-wide, black belt which was “hooked up” to the tractor. There’s no sound like the whine of a sawmill blade crawling through dry cedar. My brothers and I would “feed” the slabs onto the frame, and my father carefully guided the wood into the whirling saw blade. The sound of the saw, and the smell of cedar, and the yielding of tired, young muscles; and being a part of a job needing to be done made for an experience to be re-visited and treasured over a lifetime.        

There’s nothing quite like cedar kindling for firing up a fire. My father made sure we had an abundant supply.         

Today, I live in a climate-controlled dwelling. There is a thermostat on the wall. At the touch of a button, I choose the temperature I desire. The air in my house is a bit too sterile for me.         

But that doesn’t keep me from going back to feeling the warmth of a fire on my face and the smell of smoke and dried cedar.  It not only warms my heart, it strengthens the marrow in my bones.

Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall  

Dropping Sticks

 I found myself in deep thought as I “studied” a patch (field) of tobacco one day last week. The last time I was assigned a job in a tobacco harvest it amounted to the simple task of dropping sticks. 

Now, to the uneducated, the term “dropping sticks” might sound a bit foreign. It is not like you are walking through a tobacco patch and accidently let some sticks fall to the ground – like “dropping a stick.” Veterans of the tobacco patch, on the other hand, know that dropping sticks is a very important part of the tobacco cutting (harvesting) process.

In years gone by, when cutting and spiking tobacco was a two man operation, tobacco sticks were dropped on the ground between the two rows to be cut. As the cutter downed the two rows in front of him, he reached down, picked up a tobacco stick and handed it to the spiker. Then, he cut the next 5 or 6 stalks of tobacco and passed them back to be spiked. As the plants were cut and spiked, another tobacco stick magically appeared in the row. Best I can recall, my brothers and I were taught to lay (or drop) the sticks end-to-end, or let them overlap an inch or two. It was no small feat to tote an arm-load of tobacco sticks through big tobacco when dropping sticks that way. You kind of had to walk sideways.

In today’s world most tobacco it cut and piled by the cutters – 5 or 6 stalks to the pile. Later, when the tobacco has “fallen” (wilted), the same ones who cut the tobacco come back and spike it. Even though the process is different, tobacco sticks still have to be “dropped.”

On the farm where I grew up my father had a simple philosophy when it came to cutting tobacco – “Make it easy on the man who follows you.” So, we were taught “the art of dropping sticks.” It involved two unspoken maxims: (1) Don’t make the spiker have to hunt for the stick. (2) If possible have the stick land with the high end of the stick near the butt-ends of the stalks in the pile. That may sound a bit technical, but it was really very simple – “Pay attention to what you are doing.”

I found early in my career you have much more control over where and how a tobacco stick lands if you spin it as you let it go. That is especially true if you are dropping sticks on more than one row as you go through the tobacco patch. Anyway, I was afforded the chance to apply my skill the last time I approached the task.

As I “studied” the tobacco patch I remembered a bundle of 50 tobacco sticks was a heavy load, especially when I was a boy.         

I smiled as I remembered the many personalities of tobacco sticks. Some were fashioned from a tree limb – dark in color – round and straight. Others were of the “split-out” variety – irregular in shape and one-of-a-kind. There were skinny ones and heavy ones – some so big they felt like 2 by 4’s. And there were slick ones and splintery ones. And later, the cut-out, sawmill variety (Sticks void of personality.)  My thoughts took me right back to tobacco stick dropping heaven. I recalled the unmistakable sound (Like a “clap” of thunder.) of bundles of tobacco sticks as they landed on a wagon, and the feel of tight, grass strings in my hands, and of barn dust and spider webs.

That night I found myself dropping sticks in my dreams.

 Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall

Never Give Up

In this writer’s opinion, Winston Churchill was the greatest man of the last century. Known as the “British Bulldog” he was the epitome of determination and resoluteness.  

After the miraculous evacuation at Dunkirk in World War II where the British and French armies escaped certain disaster, it appeared the invasion of “The Island” by the German army was inevitable. On June 4, 1940, Churchill closed his speech to The House of Commons with these words:  

“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender….”

In the course of my years, I have observed friends and family and neighbors and total strangers meet with what I have come to call “crushing circumstances.”  There is so much tragedy in our world. Sometimes it is beyond explanation – the depth of heartache and despair - unfathomable.

It may come as a singular, catastrophic event as in a senseless death, or a tragic accident, or “Stage IV cancer,” or “I want a divorce.” Or, “crushing circumstances” can unfold as a series of setbacks, one right after the other. Like body punches in the early rounds of a boxing match, each one takes its toll. You’ve heard it said, “When it rains it pours.”

Whatever the circumstances may be there is something in all of us that whispers, from time to time, “Why don’t you just give up?” It is a ghostly whisper - that whisper which beckons us to “Throw in the towel,” or worse yet, suggests “It’s no use.” It is a temptation of a ghastly sort.

As I write, on the wall behind me, hangs a photograph of Winston Churchill which overlooks my workspace. It is a prized possession. It is Sir Winston to a tee - his penetrating eyes, his set jaw, his face lined with the wisdom and experience of many years. Underneath the photograph is another of his quotes:

 “Never flinch, never weary, never despair.”

Which brings to mind words of Paul, the apostle: “We are hard-pressed on every side yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; stuck down, but not destroyed…..” The apostle’s words sound almost “Churchillian.”  Or should I say Churchill’s words sound Paulinian?  

There is a great little stanza in Rudyard Kipling’s poem titled, “If” that goes like this:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the will which says to them, “Hold on!”

Sometimes we simply must hold on until the light returns.

On October 29, 1941, in a speech to the boys at Harrow School, Churchill spoke these words: "Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.''

And now, back to the apostle Paul, who wrote: “And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

There are a number of ways of saying that. Let me give it a try.

“No matter what happens to you in life, never grow tired of fighting the good fight. For in time, the payoff will come if you don’t give up.

We have Joseph Fort Newton to thank for these words:

“We cannot tell what may happen to us in this strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us, how we take it, what we do with it – and that is what really counts in the end.”

Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall

The Old Feed Barn

 I spent many an hour in our old feed barn. To a boy it seemed vast in its size and expanse. I became intimately familiar with each stable and hallway. I  especially enjoyed the large barn loft which provided endless opportunities for exploring. But I suppose the old corn crib stands out most in my memory.

Situated on the west side of our barn it featured a 4’x4’ “window” all of 10 feet above ground level. It allowed a man, with corn scoop in hand, to stand on a wagon bed and “pitch” ear corn into the crib. The crib’s wooden floor lay two feet above ground. When the crib was filled to the window, it showcased a mountain of ear corn no less than 8 feet tall. As the crib filled with corn each fall, my father placed boards, each above the other, at the crib door to keep the corn from flowing out into the upper hallway. As the level of corn was reduced, the boards came down one at a time. Working your way through that door was challenging to say the least. It was important to avoid a corn avalanche.

A crib filled with ear corn had two best friends – barn cats and chicken snakes. My brothers and I were given strict instructions to leave the chicken snakes alone. They played an important role in keeping rodent numbers down. And any mice the snakes didn’t get, the barn cats did.

I had a silent arrangement with the chicken snakes – “You don’t bother me, I don’t bother you.” I will admit, though, it’s a bit unsettling to be sitting in a pile of shucks while shucking corn and happen upon a snake’s “shedding.” You knew the snake couldn’t be too far away.

Our feed barn always featured a good number of barn cats. My father encouraged their multiplying – more cats, fewer rats. Sometimes, to the cats’ delight, he provided them with a pan of warm cow’s milk. I’ve watched a throng of cats sit patiently in hopes of getting in on the cow’s milk. My father was skilled in the art of milking a cow. He could squeeze a cow’s tit and hit a cat’s mouth with a stream of milk all the way across barn hallway. To see a cat licking fresh warm milk off its face is a picture I will not soon forget.

I was often sent on a mission to find new egg nests in the mountain of square baled hay stacked high in the barn loft. It seemed the hens preferred the higher elevations. The secret was to find the nests before they had been there too long. A nest filled with eggs (I’m talking two dozen or more.) was not always a good find, especially in the summertime. Good, fertile eggs could go bad pretty quickly. I learned to hold an egg up to my ear and shake it gently. A bad egg is a dead give-away. (They don’t teach these things in schools these days.)

Is there anything that smells worse than a rotten egg? I was sprayed in the face by a baby skunk one time. It was bad. It was nauseating. It was debilitating. But it didn’t make me want to lose by breakfast like the smell of a rotten egg. 

A feed barn presented the perfect setting for a corn cob battle. The corn crib provided an ample supply of ammunition, and there were plenty of places to hide and stage forays.

I remember one particularly heated battle involving the Ellenburg brothers. That day, I got hit in the head with a wet corn cob. I found out that a wet corn cob gathered much more velocity than a dry one. The battle went back and forth until someone discovered a nest of rotten eggs. I was the first casualty. That brought the corn cob battle to a screeching halt!

Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall

August Mornings

 The coming of August marks a fascinating time of the year for me. It is usually in the month named after Caesar Augustus that the rustle of leaves stirred by the wind takes on a different sound. It is to me the first sign that fall is near. But August mornings are of particular interest to me. There is something about them that takes me back in time. It may be the feel of the early morning air or a combination of the sounds and smells of late summer. Whatever it is, I find myself suddenly standing in tall weeds at the edge of a tobacco patch an hour before first light. The dew is cold and thick as I am, by the light of pickup truck headlamps, tying a large piece of plastic around my waist to cover my legs. Without the makeshift rain skirt, the first sticks of tobacco, heavy with dew, would give me a soaking. It is one thing to be cold (and the early morning had a chill about it). It is another thing to be cold and wet. 

By mid-morning the dew is long gone and now the culprit is the August sun.

The morning has been turned from cool to suffocating, the temperature climbing a sweltering 30 degrees. I manage not to be wet by the dew, but now I cannot avoid being drenched with sweat….next stop, the tobacco barn.

Growing up, I was usually the tobacco hanger in the top of the barn. There is one advantage to that. You handle fewer sticks of tobacco. The disadvantage is this: you are up near the tin roof. It was like an oven. It is amazing the relief the slightest hint of a breeze can bring when you are hanging tobacco in a barn that is almost full.

I reckon I took part in raising no less than 25 crops of tobacco. When you have survived that many crop years you have seen about all there is to see about a tobacco crop. Most of those years were pre-MH-30 and Royal MH-30. We pulled a lot of suckers. In some wet years, we pulled suckers twice. When you are shorter than the tobacco is tall, it’s hard to find air to breath.

For most of the years I was involved in raising the crops, allotment was based on acreage instead of poundage. Whether we raised two acres or twelve, it seemed like getting the first half of the crop cut, spiked and hung in the barn was at least bearable. The second half just about killed us. By the end of the harvest, you were as tired when you got out of the bed in the morning as you were when you laid down the night before.

And the labor supply? Except for a neighbor occasionally and a high school boy or two for a few days, we were it. My father, my three brothers and I weathered the load.

(My sister sometimes reminds me that she drove the tractor for the tobacco haulers when she was old enough.) We suffered it out with every crop. We celebrated when the last stalk was cut. We celebrated when the last stick was picked up. And we celebrated when the last stick was hung.

Over the years, I have observed many tobacco crops being raised by other farmers.

My experienced eyes have given cause for me to make many assessments as I considered different phases of various crops. A few of the comments that I have made in my self-talk are: “That tobacco needs a rain,” “Somebody needs to find their hoe,” “That tobacco is burning up!” (or in my father’s words) “That’s a fine piece of tobacco,” or “One more rain and that crop is made.”

A few years ago I drove by a large field of tobacco. We call them fields today instead of patches. This particular tobacco was golden in color, the top leaves long and spread off. I observed to myself, “That tobacco needs to be cut.”

Not many days went by and I passed that same field again. To my amazement, the tobacco was gone! Cut, spiked, hauled, gone! A labor force from south of the border had made short work of the situation. It kind of made me mad! I said to myself, “No one suffered with that crop like we would have. We would have had to fight it to the bitter end to finish that field.”

That brings me back to the subject of August mornings.

To this day, on some mornings in the eighth month of the year, I will walk out of the house and into the morning air; and there is a stirring of my memory. And I can’t prevent the smile from coming across my face as I whisper to myself, “I’m glad I don’t have to go to the tobacco patch this morning.”

But even as I think it and say it; I have a strange longing to return to those days – if just for a moment.

  Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall

Smoking in the Brim Hollow

The story you are about to read is true. Names have been changed or omitted to protect the innocent…or the guilty.

I grew up in tobacco country. My great-grandmother Icey was a snuff dipper. My grandparents on both sides of the family refrained from using tobacco products of any kind. My mother admitted she smoked “a little” corn silk and “rabbit tobacco” when she was a girl. On the other hand, my father enjoyed a good chew now and then. It was not unusual for my father, as he walked down the hallway of a tobacco barn, to reach up and grab a “tip” leaf, blow the dust off, roll it up and stuff it inside his jaw. When he did buy chewing tobacco, he preferred “Redman.”

 My experience with using tobacco products is rather limited. When I was 10 or 11, I smoked a big cigar one time right after eating two big, bologna sandwiches. Made me sick as a dog. I pretty much laid off cigars after that.

Will Herod Brim, my maternal grandfather, died on November 12, 1963. My grandmother, Lena, moved out of the Brim Hollow later that winter. The following summer, four of my best buddies and I “camped out” in the Brim Hollow. I say we camped out. We actually held up in a house long abandoned in the head of the hollow. The house was big…and spooky after dark. One night we had to halt telling ghost storied because one of my buddies got scared.

I was 13 years old in the summer of 1964. My buddies and I were well prepared when we entered Brim Hollow that summer. We had packed extra clothes, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, a four-day supply of food and cigarettes…lots of cigarettes. And we had matches, too. Not just any matches. We had two big boxes of those “Strike Anywhere” matches.

We smoked till our heart’s content for the first two days. I say we smoked. We actually puffed. We were too young and green to tolerate inhaling cigarette smoke. Whenever I did accidentally suck smoke into my lungs, it made me feel sick.

The first two days of “camping” were uneventful except for two happenings. My mother had packed supplies for cooking purposes in baby food jars. There was sugar, salt, pepper, Trend dishwashing powder, etc. The first morning, upon  tasting my attempt at scrambled eggs, one of my buddies cried out, “Oow, these eggs are awful!!” He had seasoned his eggs with dishwashing powder instead of salt!

The other happening was more serious. We ran out of cigarettes. This called for some serious discussion. We decided to walk the two miles to downtown Riddleton, TN and attempt to buy more.

I’m sure it was quite a sight, when all five of us, just barely teenagers, strolled into that country store that morning. If we had had the slightest bit “cool,” we would have requested a carton of cigarettes under the guise of making a purchase of one of our parents. But, oh, no; smoking different brands was half the thrill.

The proprietor, whose name will go unmentioned, had the slightest hint of a smile come across his face as we began to rattle off brands. One of my buddies had the nerve to ask one of the others, “What kind did you father say he wanted?”  The proprietor turned his head to one side to keep from laughing. He had us dead to rights. But, surprisingly, he went along with our charade.

 We left the store that day with a pack of Marlboro, a pack of Winston, a pack of L&M’s, two packs of Kool’s, a pack of Salem’s, a pack of Newport’s, and one pack of Sir Walter Raleigh.

I suppose we got smoking out our system that summer. To this day, none of the five of us are cigarette smokers.

But I will say this. If I am ever accused of illegally purchasing cigarettes as a minor, bet they would have a hard time finding witnesses.

Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall    

Sayings

Webster’s defines “saying” as a “proverbial expression.” Over the span of my lifetime I have heard and used many proverbial expressions related to the animal world. Many of them will be lost to the past as small, family farms slowly disappear, and fewer and fewer children grow up interacting with animal life. Here are some of my favorites.        

 “He (or she) stinks like a Billy goat!” My maternal grandfather, Will Herod Brim, who went by the nickname, “John Reuben” had a large herd of goats. His goats were nothing like the goats we see today. They were of the old, white variety – tough as nails – and they would eat anything that grew out of the ground. They would eat the bark off a tree.           

My grandfather “called them down” every two or three weeks to “salt them.” I can see him now as he allowed the salt to pour out of the sack onto the big, flat rocks that lay just in front of the chicken house. As the goats briskly licked up the salt, he would check the herd. Sometimes, as the goats were coming down out of the hollow, you could smell them before they arrived. Any country boy or girl knows why. The big, “Billies” had long beards. You can take it from there.   

 “He’s as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocky chairs!” That one kind of speaks for itself.

“Don’t kick a dead horse!” A few years back I came upon one I like even better. “If the horse is dead, get off!” That one could be applied to a variety of situations.           

“Slick as a snake.” This one might be called a misnomer. Once, when I was gathering eggs as a boy, I reached in the nest and grabbed a big chicken snake instead of an egg. The snake did not feel slick! Some things you never forget. After that day, I always looked before I reached.              

 “Meaner than a junk yard dog.” I have seen a few junk yard dogs in my time. And they were all mean (or appeared to be so).            

 “This place looks like a pig sty!” This phrase is often used by people who have never seen a pig sty. I have seen some pig sties – in more shapes and conditions that you might imagine. Throw in the smell and most people have no idea what a pig sty is really like.                

“Don’t eat like a pig!” Since I’m on the subject of pigs, I thought I would throw in another.  My late mother was big on table manners. “Don’t chew your food with your mouth open!” she would admonish. Growing up I had a friend who chewed his food with his mouth open. He ate like a pig.

“As stubborn as a mule.” I have ridden a mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon many times. Out there the wranglers informed me you can teach a horse to respond on command. In other words, a trained horse would jump off a cliff to its death if trained to do so. Not a mule. A mule cannot be trained to do itself harm. A mule will not go against its instincts. Hence, the saying, “Stubborn as a mule.”             

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Sometimes we must beware. Things are not always as they seem. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was a master at turning a phrase, once referred to Neville Chamberlin, a pacifist; who preceded Churchill as prime minister, as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.”               

“As gentle a lamb.” I had an orphan lamb once. There is nothing as gentle in the animal world. After a week of caring for it, I came to appreciate the line in the poem Mary Had a Little Lamb - “And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.” That lamb met me at the door every morning and followed me around all day long.              

And, finally, here’s one to consider. I’ve heard it said two ways. “That cooked his goose!” or “He got his goose cooked.” I was never exactly sure what it meant, but I was convinced it couldn’t be good!

Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall