TERRY MOSHEER
It’s a weird, dangerous and horrifying world we are living in now with Covid-19 forcing divisions and shutdowns and blame being thrown at anybody that can be blamed. We might as well be in Jerry Seinfeld’s Bizzaro World where everything is the opposite of reality because, well, that’s what it looks and sounds like.
Our President urges his supporters to liberate three Midwest states, says he’s ordering the withdrawing of funding for the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic when it is needed the most and sports fans get their fix from replays of anything from soccer matches to boxing matches (Muhammad Ali still wins two of three with Joe Frazier) because the real ones are on hiatus while Covid-19 swirls about in the country’s nursing homes ending patients life’s sooner than expected.
Then we lose one of our top country-folk singer song writer, John Prine, to that same Covid-19 before we want to let him go. It’s a crushing blow to a tornado of crushing blows.
I’m listening to Hank William’s Honky Tonk Blues at 4 in the morning because I can’t sleep in our weirdness. Hank says, “City life has got me down” and is going back to his pappy’s farm to lose these Honky Tonk Blues.
I have no place to go to lose them
Prine joked that he should go back to being a mail man, which is what he started out to be because that is where he began his song writing and got inspiration and time to do them while walking his route and avoiding the boredom by thinking of songs that fit original life, not the weirdness he left us with.
Most of his writing was sad songs, which he liked because he could explore feelings and emotions through them. Some of them were not sad but funny instead – Jesus, the Missing years; Other Side of Town (most men can smile at this one, but their wives, not so much) and Dear Abby – but he nailed what most of our lives are all about in simple prose.
Here’s one that fits us as the virus bites us in the butt and kills the rest of us – Hello In There. He wrote this one as he delivered mail, often to older people who looked longingly out their windows, hoping somebody might stop and say, “Hello in there, hello.”
“We had an apartment in the city
Me and Loretta liked living there
It’d been years since the kids had grown
A life of their own, left us alone
John and Linda live in Omaha
And Joe is somewhere on the road
We lost Davy in the Korean War
And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter anymore
Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.”
Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what could I say if asks, “What’s new?”
Northing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do
Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.”
So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ‘em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello.”
It’s strange to watch horse race, which is about the only live sporting event on TV these weird days, in front of empty stands, the cheering as silent as the stars when night creeps in. Announcers and handicappers chat from their carved out small spaces in their homes and we see them by remote imaging with a five-second delay so unintentional bad works uttered when their horse fails to finish first crushes their wallet is as silent as the stands
We have run out of Amazon (Prime Video) series to watch after binging on the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Larry David’s Curb your enthusiasm and Making the Cut. After ten years of watching Seinfeld reruns we know their lines by heart and are getting bored seeing George be such an idiot.
I’ve gone back to my sports games with a deck of cards that I used to do for years during my down times. In my latest basketball season I’m averaging over 40 points and my team is scoring 108 points and is undefeated. My historical record, stretching back to my teen years, is 21,000 to 10 losses. That is just an approximate. I’m still upset with the losses.
We lost our Sophie several years ago and on occasion I still feel her climbing into bed with me. A Shih Tzu, Sophie was small enough when we bought her home that she could fit in the palm of my hand. I miss her. Mary even more than I do. For sure, we could use her company about right now.
How many times can a person take a lap in the living room. I’m about to find out. Got to do something, right?
Okay, it’s five in the morning. Time to go see if Sophie has returned. I’ll be back.
I’m back and now I’m watching live horse racing from Tampa Bay Downs, Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fl and Oaklawn Park in Hotsprings, AR. I also watch a bit of the trotters and quarterhorse races, but they really don’t interest me much and I get bored real quick. If you blink you miss the quarterhorse races and the trotters just look funny, and it’s difficult for trotters to come from behind in those races.
At Gulfstream they have a Rainbow 6 in which you have to pick the winner of six consecutive races and the money keeps carrying over until somebody wins. The pot is over $7 million right now. It seems to me that you could bet every horse to win in the six races and make a little change. But the math doesn’t work because you have to pick the winning combination before the first of six races. I’m a good math guy, but I’m not going to spend my boring days trying to figure out how many combinations you would have to get to cover all possibilities. You might have to bet more than you would win.
I remember when Longacres had a pick-six a Bremerton bettor won twice the same racing season. I think his total winnings were just over $150,000. That should have been enough to buy me dinner (he didn’t).
One bet I’m willing to spend is that our lock-down in the state won’t last much longer. I think it will be a partial reopening, and I believe golf courses will be among the first to get the okay from Governor Jay Inslee to open. That will get a big hurrah from a lot of golfers, but not me.
You see, I was the world’s worse golfer. I could play basketball, baseball and football pretty well. I was a very good Ping Pong player at one time, I loved to golf, except golf did not love me. I was a very good baseball hitter and I tried to take that to my golf swing and it was a horrible mistake I could not correct. When I finally broke 100 at the old golf course at Gold Mountain with a 99, I quit. That was over 25 years ago.
Okay enough. I’m going back to the horse races.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.