Telegraphers and turtles

The woodpeckers were wearing nametags and funny hats, drinking beverages with tiny umbrellas, filling the Oak Point Nature Preserve with giddy messages as they hammered out the news.  Big flickers, little downies, black and white woodpeckers, bipartisan sapsuckers all going to a party in the tree.  P. D. Eastman could have written a book. 

(Last weekend the turtles had their convention at the Heard Nature Center.)

I'm spelling relief "H-O-S-P-I-C-E".  I tackled the ginormous pile of ironing, and other neglected household tasks this morning.  When I got over to see Dad he was a new man! Had the hospice nurse worked magic on him? Maybe, but it seems like two days on antibiotics caused the improvement. Dad was hungry, wide awake, and (avert your eyes, Gentle Readers) needing to read the Sunday newspaper in the bathroom. Dad was, okay, still nutty as a fruitcake, but all the rest was good.

Dad seemed to emerging from a fog. He knew he had been sick. He asked me if I could find the 52nd Street exit ramp because he didn't think he should be out walking around yet. (It's been two years since he walked.) He told me he didn't want to upset my apple cart, and wondered what I had planned for the afternoon. He thought we were driving a van. He drank two cups of coffee. Then he ate some of the turkey, hashbrowns, minestrone soup, juice, roll, chocolate cake, and zucchini.

I'm still in the fog.  I've cycled through Funky Winkerbean, Henry Winkler jumping the shark, and Washington Irving to finally reach Rip Van Winkle.  Get up!  Now is the time for all woodpeckers to get going!

Along the way I remembered riding all the way to Omaha with my sixth grade Sunday School class to see "The Bible:  In the Beginning" movie at the Indian Hills Cinerama on Dodge Street.  There is a connection, however tenuous.  All the way up and back the car radio kept playing the new hit song, "Western Union" by the Five Americans.  1967.  Telegrams?  Even then it was outdated technology.  Check the links above for Sixties flashbacks!

After the Sunday School trip I dutifully reported to my parents that "Adam and Eve were a little obscene."  I don't remember anything about Richard Harris playing Cain vs. Franco Nero as Abel.  A few months later I would see that pair as King Arthur vs. Lancelot in "Camelot" at the Stuart Theater on 13th Street.

This turtle is not pleased about the blue bag litter in Rowlett Creek.  There are only so many battles I can wage at the moment.  Sorry, but I have Morse Code and woodpeckers in my head.

*Jumping the shark is a widely used idiom – first employed to describe a moment in the evolution of a television show, characterized by absurdity, when a particular show abandons its core premises and begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder