Read My Lips - the blog

Episode No. 13

Yes, kiddies, it is that time again . . . time for another adventure from yesteryear. Yes, we all know you are all ready for another adventure of Rusty Rucker, and today's exciting episode is chock full of spine-tingling tales. So gather around, hush your mouths, make sure the parents are in the other room and let's get this show on the road:

Old Rusty lives way back in the boonies with a couple of hound dogs and one lazy ole mule. With nothing to do all day except whittle and listen to the radio, he gets some off-the-wall ideas about our political structure and its impact on our daily lives. Maybe you will get a chuckle out of some of the stuff he comes up with, and who knows, you might even agree with part of it.

August 1999 Updated regularly -- Totally new first of every month.

Let's see if I have this straight. We can spend billions of dollars to protect Albania from the Serbs, but in our war against illegal drugs at home what do we do? I read where President Clinton wants to increase the anount of aid we send Columbia. I say stick that aid where the sun don't shine. The CIA knows the location (unless they have old maps) of every one of those Cocane processing plants. Why not send Stealth fighters in some night and bomb the hell out of all of them. Then make it plain that we will consider any country that exports drugs to the USA to be hostile and aggressive and deal with them likewise. It's stupid to waste time and money trying to stop drug trafficing at the borders. We need to do it at the point of origin.

Something that's a puzzle to me and I can't find no answer. Every time you go to a doctor, he/she will order one or more x-rays, yet we are constantly warned about the danger of radiation. So x-rays are not good for you. Why is it that when a body has cancer they treat it with radiation. It's a mystery I can't solve. Any one who has the answer, drop me a line.

Woah Nellie! Is it ever hot down here in Texas. Folks are doing all sorts of odd things -- like frying eggs on sidewalks, baking cookies inside parked cars, ‘n running air-conditioning day and night. I even got around to hooking up my swamp cooler couple days ago. "Mosquitoes breeding box," I like to call it.
Can't figure how it can be hot and dry for six months but make one little puddle of water on the ground and you'll have a swarm of "skeeters" buzzing ‘round your head all night long.

Might help if I had screens on all the windows. Used to have ‘til one night a danged jet airplane flew over and made a sonic boom. Reckon it skeered Ole Blue a mite. He jumped right through the window, screen and all, and hid under my bed until morning. Hit must a been one of them Stealth Fighters ‘cause I went out and looked all around and didn't see hide nor hair of it.

Billy Bob Simmons lives two places over from me, or did. Old Billy Bob passed away last week and his widow went down to place an obit in the paper. When the paper fellow told her it would cost 50 cents a word she told him just to say, "Billy Bob died." He explained that there was a 7 word minimum so she amended the article to read, "Billy Bob Died. Ford pickup for sale."

Remember what I told ya a couple of months back about leaving kids and pets in parked cars. Well, it's more important than ever to heed that warning. Even with windows cracked it's still too hot. Take ‘em in with you or leave them at home.

My old John Deere tractor is setting idle out in the shed. No sense in planting any fall wheat. Just dry up like my summer garden did. S'pose I'll be eating out of tin cans this winter. Been aiming to run a hose from the creek so I can pump to the house for watering the garden -- maybe a little flower bed too. Only thing is, I ain't got no pump, and no cash for buying one. Of course, if I had a pump I could use the power take off on my tractor to run it. Wouldn't cost much. That old John Deere will plow from sunup ‘til sundown in the summertime on ten gallons of gas.

Expect I got me a brand new grandson yesterday. One of my boys up and married a gal who already has a 7 year old lad. Cutest dad burned kid I ever seen. Looks ‘zackly like me when I was a young‘un. Hee! hee! hee! Am gonna stick a photo of the little dickens down at the bottom. Y'all write and tell me if I am wrong.[*]

Thanks for the ride. Y'all come back now ... Ya hear!!!

Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[**]

See all of the currently published Rusty Rucker works by clicking on this link.

Rusty Rucker posts are from previously published monthly columns of my late father that had been lost until I discovered Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

*I was actually at that wedding, but the groom was not I. The kid was cute, the gal was white trash, I thought my brother made a mistake, and it didn't take long for him to realize that fact on his own. The kid was cute, though, so Rusty had that right. Actually my brother has found a really sweet gal who he has married or will soon marry and they had a little baby gal last Octover, She also has a son from a previous relationship and he is much much cuter than the one Rusty was praising. However, Rusty saw a lot of himself in the other kid, as he was a little left-handed red headed rascal, just as Rusty had been so many long years ago.***

**For some reason, it seems that BIG BROTHER was not watching that month. Only you true Rusty Rucker fans will understand that.

***Anyone getting a clue as to why he was called Rusty now?

Posted by Tiger at July 30, 2003 03:55 PM