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Carolina Wrens And Gunslingers

    Hey, everyone. It's been a cool day in the mountains with a high of 42 degrees. I dumped a truckload of firewood in the front yard. It was in chunks and the plan was to use a wheel barrow to get it around back and stack it neatly at the edge of the woods. Well, I didn't get finished, which is fine. Shortly before dark I was walking by the window and saw two Carolina wrens jumping around on the pile of wood.
    The wrens are awfully cute. They like to hop along the ground. They are small birds, brown and white, with a little bit of yellow color. They like to live under porches or decks, in an old tire sometimes. They are so chubby that they are almost perfectly round, like a ball with legs.
    So these two wrens, a couple I suppose, were hopping in and out of the caverns created by the wood being piled up, one chunk tossed upon another. So I told my wife that they were searching for a condo. She began to watch them and quickly decided that they were hopping around on the wood, eating bugs. They are certainly welcome to the bugs. My wife said they were dining out and I said they were seeking a condo.
    Today I was thinking about my youth. When I was a kid, I would go out in the woods a few weeks before Christmas. I'd walk the hills and the ridges seeking a well-shaped cedar tree for Christmas. They usually had one side with a bare spot or a side that was less full. I guess that the hunt was the best part. Having an excuse to tramp about in the woods is pretty cool. Eventually I'd find a tree I could live with and I'd cut it down. I love the smell of cedar. Even now, when I'm in my fifties, the smell of cedar takes me back to being a kid, cutting a tree for Christmas.
    For several years now, we've used a fiber-optic tree. It doesn't have a bare spot, nor the smell of cedar. They don't shed needles, like my cedars used to. This is a plus with the wife, cause she doesn't have to clean them up.
    Sometimes a stray memory pops up when you get older. I remember one Christmas when I was little. I was a big fan of cowboy shows on TV. One of the really cool shows of that era was Have Gun Will Travel. The star was Richard Boone who played a guy named Paladin. He was a gun for hire in the old west days. He was a bit different. He lived in San Francisco and was cultured and refined for a gunslinger. He loved good literature, poetry and the opera. He wore these holsters with a symbol on them. It was the symbol of a chess piece, a knight.
    On one particular Christmas, Santa brought me a holster and gun set with the Paladin knight on the holster. It also had little business cards with a knight on them. They stated, 'Have gun will travel'. Perhaps coolest of all was the derringer that came with the set, since it had saved Paladin's life on numerous occasions. Did I mention that all the guns would shoot caps? Very cool. I also got an orange cowboy shirt with pictures of ropes and guns on it. There was a red scarf about the neck of it.
    When I was little I was crazy about dinosaurs. One of my first memories is that of my Mom taking me on a greyhound bus. We went to the city and saw a dinosaur movie. Awesome. Then, when we got home she ordered me some dinosaurs through the mail. In those days you found an ad in the back of a comic book and ordered something. Then, after ages passed, you'd get a little brown box in the mail with dinosaurs in it.
   Unfortunately, I gave my T-Rex to a girl in the first grade. I thought she was really cute, but looking back she was not T-Rex cute.
    Now I hunt dinosaurs on the I-Pad with the Carnivores game. If I can kill a T-Rex tonight, I certainly won't give it away.
   From the nostalgia place, I'm CE Wills.

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