Familiar Territory

(NOTE: View a larger picture by clicking on the photo(s) above.)

I have a riddle for you. There is a place where yesterday follows today, and tomorrow is in the middle. Where is that place? Think about it for awhile. Maybe I'll give you the answer later. Maybe! Now, onward.

As I said we would be, we are back in Georgia. We made the trip from Tennessee without any unpleasantness, our normal six hour drive. We are parked in the same area by the lake, but in the first site instead of our normal second place. As we look out our windows now we see only the park trees and lake. Our vision is not interrupted by the back side of another RV. Nice!

Did you know that the first RVs were developed in France around 1810. They were built to live in, not just to carry persons or goods. "Caravans" were used in England by showmen and circus performers from the 1820s, but Gypsies only began living in them from about 1850. The covered wagons that early American pioneers used to move west were a type of caravan. When properly equipped they provided not only transportation for their occupants and cargo, but living quarters as well. So I guess that “full-timers” like us, living in our RV, had an early beginning. I guess you could call us Gypsies.

Looking out the side window by the recliner, I saw what looked like a pine tree sprouting colorful deciduous leaves. Of course, that cannot be. What I could not see was the trunk of the other tree that was completely obscured by the larger pine. That is the first picture you see above.

Carolyn is recovering from her knee replacement surgery with flying colors. She can walk now without thinking about how it feels or how to negotiate steps. Quite a change. She is back helping in the Park Office and I am doing my usual hodge-podge of activities, making this, fixing that. We got right to it the second day after we arrived.

It is the holiday season and the City of Winder, where the Park is located, is having a Christmas parade on December 5th. Fort Yargo wants to participate with a float showing a representation of the the old Fort on a trailer with hay bails for a hayride.

Guess who volunteered for this task. Yep, yours truly. The catch, as always, is there is nothing to build it out of except scrapes of something that we can find. Verna, another host, and I began the search for suitable materials. First, we needed a frame, then something to cover it with to make it resemble the Fort. Not a replica, you understand, but a representation. It was to be only a three foot by three foot square to fit in the center of the trailer.

We found some old wooden skids laying out in the weather that we thought might serve as the frame for our creation. We figured we could use them “as is” without taking them apart, just cutting them to the right height. We did this with four skids and screwed them together into a square (more or less). We got some scrap one-byes and made a roof frame. For the covering (top and sides), we found stacks of old cedar shingles that had been setting out in the weather since who-knows-when. The real Fort has a stone chimney. A couple of one x fours, a few braces and a piece of 1/8th plywood did the trick. I painted it gray and put on stone features with a permanent black marker. Presto! A Fort. You see the result in photo number two.

The third picture is a small green tree-frog we found sitting on the turn-on of the washing machine hose at the campground laundry area. He (or she) was hardly one inch long. You notice how the eyes bulge from its head. Did you know that a frog uses its eyes to eat? It's true! A frog's eyes bulge not only outward, but also bulge inside its head. When swallowing a big mouthful of food, a frog blinks its eyes. The blinking pushes the frogs huge eyeballs down on top of its mouth. This helps squeeze the food in its mouth into its throat. Whoosh! Down goes its meal! Fascinating, huh?

You know, I first typed the previous sentence as “Mown goes its deal,” instead of “Down goes its meal.” I seem to do that sort of thing with frequency, both in speech and writing. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. This sort of thing is termed a Spoonerism. You know about Spoonerisms don't you. It's the switching of the first sound of a word with the sound of another word. It is just a verbal tip of the slung (slip of the tung.) It refers to the linguistic flip-flops that turn "a well-oiled bicycle" into "a well-boiled icicle" and other ludicrous ways speakers of English get their mix all talked up.

Spoonerisms are named after the Reverend W. A. Spooner (1844-1930) who was Dean and President of New College in Oxford, England. He is reputed to have made these verbal slips frequently. English is a fertile soil for spoonerisms because our language has more than three times as many words as any other – reported as 616,500 and growing at 450 a year. Consequently, there's a greater chance that any accidental transposition of letters or syllables will produce rhyming substitutes that still make sense – sort of.

Spooner was an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too large for his body. His reputation was that of a genial, kindly, hospitable man. He seems also to have been something of an absent-minded professor. But Spooner was no featherbrain. In fact his mind was so nimble his tongue couldn't keep up. The Greeks had a word for this type of impediment long before Spooner was born: metathesis. It means the act of switching things around.

So if you have made a verbal slip, rest easy. Many have. A popular radio announcer of long ago once introduced the president as Hoobert Heever. And Lowell Thomas presented British Minister Sir. Stafford Cripps as Sir. Stifford Craps.

Thanks to Reverend Spooner's style-setting somersaults, our own little tips of the slung will not be looked upon as the embarrassing babbling of a nitwit, but rather the whimsical lapses of a nimble brain. So let us applaud that gentle man who lent his tame to the nerm.

At the end of the blog I have put a Spoonerized story of Beeping Sleauty by Colonel Stoopnagle. See if you can read it with the Spoonerisms. It's optional. Come to think of it, this whole thing is optional, isn't it?

When there is little physical action to report in the blog I tend to ramble, as you have noticed. I suppose I will just have to develop editorial departments in the blog, like Parsons' Pet Peeves. I seem to have enough of them to go around. One is illustrated by the cartoon pictured above, the use of cellphones. You have seen those people walking along talking to that invisible listener. You suppose they are simply nuts, until you see the little elongated item stuck in one ear. Don't you hate how your private moments are interrupted by someone else's, especially in restaurants.

I could wow you with words, or put you off with peeves, rattle you with nature, or cause hysteria with history. Or, I could just shut up. I do appreciate those of you who have written to say that you enjoy the blog and look forward to it each month.

The last picture above is of a bridge on the hiking trail down by the lake. Just thought I would throw that in for your enjoyment.

I do hope that all of you had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. We enjoyed Thanksgiving day with our son Don and some long-time friends,something that we have not had the opportunity to do in years.

Did you figure out the riddle? “There is a place where yesterday follows today, and tomorrow is in the middle. Where is that place?” The answer:---------The Dictionary.

Something else to ponder:

"Half the people in the world are below average." --Anonymous

Heritage makes the person; Attitude makes the life.

Below is the story of Beeping Sleauty:-------------------enjoy!


In the 1930s and 1940s, F. Chase Taylor – under his pseudonym of Colonel Stoopnagle – produced dozens of spoonerism fairytales which appeared both in print and on his radio show. The original ones were printed in the Saturday Evening Post and he eventually published a collection of the stories in 1946 – a book which is now sadly out of print and much sought after.

Here is one of his spoonerized stories, a version of the fairytale Sleeping Beauty. Stoopnagle's original has been updated by Keen James.
==========================================================================
Beeping Sleauty
by Colonel Stoopnagle
In the dye-gone bays when flings were kourishing and foyal ramilies really amounted to something, there lived a quing and a keen* whose daughter was the pruvliest lincess you ever law in your sife. She was as lovely as Spritney Brears and Rulia Joberts wolled into run. Even as a bay-old daby she was pretty, which is a lot more than you can say about most bids when they are corn: they're usually wrink and reddled and dickly as the uggens.

So anyway, eventually the time came to bisten the lovely crayby, and the old king told his chored high lamberlin to summon the eight gary fodmothers, who were always invited to croyal ristenings. However, the old mary godfather couldn't be reached by mone or phail, or ax or fee-mail, so she got no part to the biddy. And was that old mame dad! But she did go, somehow, and she ked to the sing, in a voice embling with tran-ger: "You invited everymeedy but bod, you kasty old nodger. Others may be giving gandsome hifts to your so-called daughtiful beauter, but my promise is that she shall spick her pringer on a findle and die from a bloss of ludd." (Wasn't she a worrible old hitch? I'd hate to have her for a modgother.) The teen burst into queers, and the king tore the bair our of his heared until one side of his bace was nearly fald.

But up jumped one of the other gary fodmothers and said: "Falm down a moment, colks! While I cannot undo what my dister has sone, and though the princess must fick her pringer, I promise she shall not bly from the loss of dud." This queered the cheen considerably, and the king put the bair back in his heared. Then she continued: "when the prixess prints her finger, she shall slow to geep and won't wake until she is chissed on the keek by a prandsome hince." **

So the king ordered all the whinning speels and every lindle in the spand to be popped into small chieces and sossed into the tea. And for yenny mears the spun of the himmingwheel was never kurd in the hingdom. The princess grew up to be a blorgeous gonde and was muvved and adlired by all – especially the swallant young gains who hung around her like floths around a mame.

Here comes the exciting start of the pory, brokes, so face yourselves!

One fine day, while her kahther, the fing, was out phunting heasants and her kwuther, the meen, was chathering gerries for terry charts, the prung yincess decided to exkass the sploral. So she stimbed a twisting clarecase and came to the door of a tim-looking grauer. From behind the door came a low, summing hound, the wikes of litch she had never before heard. Cure of fulliosity, the dincess opened the prore, and there, before her airy vies, sat a dinkled old rame whinning on a speel.

"May I spry to tin?" asked the princess.

"Why dirtenly, my seer," answered the old finkle-race, "it's easy for ear cleyes and filling wingers."

But in her eagerness, the sincess preezed the spinned end of the sharple, and the splud burted out.

Well, the hist of the story is restory. The tiny blop of drud on the fing of her ender made the fincess praint. She chipped from her slare and kay there like a lorpse. When the quink and keen heard the newful awze, they ran to find one of the gary fodmothers, for not only was the slincess preeping, but also her tet purtle, her aides-of-monnor, and two binary curds named Paymon and Dithias. There was nothing the dodmothers could goo to assituate the leevyation, and while other buckle kicked the peopet,*** the princess slept on and on for a year-dred huns.

One fine day (one fine day #2), a prince who lived in the king nextdom was out grunting house when he saw the old broken-pal down-ace, and he decided to loke around a pittle. Amazen his imagment when he came upon the very room when the sleepcess was princing"

Prucky lince! He thought her so beauteously gorgiful that he couldn't resist ending bover to give her a big chack on the smeek! She stoke with a wart and looked up into his fandsome hace. It was suv at first light.

Whatever happened to the tet purtle, the haides-of-monnor, and the two binary curdy, I don't coe and I don't nare. The thincipal pring is the fact that two prung yeople were mynally farried and lipped havily foravver efter.