Please read this...Little bit of this...and a little bit of that...

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<p class="p1">This week, a little bit of this...and a little bit of that...</p><p class="p1">...so, I'm heading home for lunch on Monday. While motoring through metropolitan Anna, I happen to see a little boy walking on the sidewalk with a young man (his big brother? dad?) </p><p class="p1">The little boy is carrying what appears to be a magic wand, a long, rod-like object, black, with a white tip. The boy is waving and twirling the object. He seems to point the object in my direction as I drive by.</p><p class="p1">Oh my goodness. I think he might have just cast a spell in my direction. I looked in the mirror. Nope. Don't look like a frog. I thought about it for a moment. The little boy had indeed cast a spell. And he made a grumpy, old journalist smile on a Monday morning...</p><p class="p1">...how many of you guys, or gals, ever had a big, shiny, bright red fire truck on your Christmas wish list? One with a ladder that really worked. And a siren, too.</p><p class="p1">The Other Half had one of those toy fire trucks, back in the day. The fire truck had a ladder. And a siren that worked, too, well until some sand got in the siren. She didn't get her fire truck for Christmas. She won it. By coloring a picture in a contest for the local fire department.  </p><p class="p1">Right around Christmas, the Anna Fire Department got a new fire truck, too. Not a toy, mind you. The real deal. And it's a nice one. Computerized and everything.</p><p class="p1">One day last week, yours truly stopped by the Anna fire station to take a few pictures of the new truck. A fellow from the company which manufactured the truck was at the fire station to lead some training for the new vehicle.</p><p class="p1">While I was taking pictures, he asked if I might want to sit in the driver's seat of the new truck.</p><p class="p1">Wow. A chance to sit in the driver's seat of a brand, shiny new fire truck. I'd never had a chance to do such a thing. Sure, I said. What an opportunity. </p><p class="p1">...last Sunday afternoon, while the sun was still shining, I decided to try to get in my daily walk. As noted, the sun was shining, so I figured it might be at least a little bit nice outside.</p><p class="p1">Wrong.</p><p class="p1">About halfway through my walk, I had to start strolling in the direction from whence the wind was blowing. (I've always wanted to use the word "whence" in a sentence. We'll call it a "whentence." By the way, I do not know for sure if "whence" was used correctly in the first sentence of this paragraph. My next goal will be to use the words whence, wents [as in "they done gone, they wents thataway"], hence, pence, fence, sense, sents, dense and dents in a single, extremely awesome sentence.)</p><p class="p1">Anyway, I was walking north. A cold, cold, cold wind was coming out of the north at the very same time. It did not take long before my face started to hurt. Fortunately, I only had to go a couple of blocks before I could change direction. Of course, by then, my face was frozen. Oh, well.</p><p class="p1">(...at this point, as I am writing this silliness, I am looking at a sign in my cubicle at The Paragraph Factory which reads: "The air hurts my face. Why am I living where the air hurts my face?)</p><p class="p1">...anybody else out there have a Ziggy Stardust memory? "Golden Years," perhaps? I'm thinking about a movie which had David Bowie's "Golden Years" in the soundtrack. I saw the movie with my daughter, lo, these many years ago...</p><p class="p1">...stay warm...and take heart...spring training starts in just a few more weeks...</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p>



What an opportunity...your writer had a chance to sit in the driver's seat of the Anna Fire Department's brand spanking new fire truck last week. I was not given the keys.


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