"You Might Live In A Small Town..." - if for entertainment you play "Barn Swallow Dive Bombing" on your front porch. You win if you hear the sound of their wings in your ears and feel the breeze as they swerve past your face at the last moment and don't flinch. Click on picture for a brief introduction to the game.
I was a little excited when we first received the postcard mailout from our local electric co-op. It began with these words: "In keeping with our commitment to provide economical and reliable service to our members..." Ahh, a rate reduction perhaps! Or maybe some new equipment installation that will help eliminate our occasional brown-outs! The statement continued: "...(your electric co-op) has begun a system wide pole inventory project."
"A system wide pole inventory project"?!
Thankfully that was followed by a detailed explanation of this complex project: "This project will consist of inventorying every pole on the system and numbering it." Nothing will slip through the cracks on this project: not only will each pole be counted and inventoried, it will be numbered.
It's hard to express the peace of mind this announcement brings. Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying about electric poles that are just out there somewhere, uninventoried and unknown, unnumbered and unaccounted for. I will no longer have to lose sleep over this matter. I can now move on to other perplexing issues, like how counting and numbering poles will contribute to more "economical and reliable service" from my electric co-op.
I love small town life here in Texas!
Oh, by the way, the postcard also mentions that "work is scheduled to begin on or about Monday, July 6th." You know, on or about that date...
Did I mention I love life in small town Texas?
How hot IS it? Click on picture and pump up volume...
________________________
"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye..."
Life can change so quickly sometimes.
The light turned green, so I began to pull my car out into the intersection--just in time to hear the piercing sound of car brakes.
I did not see the little blue car racing through the red light, headed toward the passenger side of my car. I thought the noise might be coming from somewhere behind me. But I did see the last part of its evasive reaction: After slamming on his brakes, the car made a sharp right turn down the street where I was headed to avoid colliding with my car. It went about 20 or 30 feet and then stopped, just behind the theater building where I happened to be headed for work at that moment. I parked my car in my usual spot across the street and just across from where the little blue car had stopped.
As I gathered my stuff to go into the theater I noticed that the car continued to sit where it had stopped, and I wondered if the driver was so shaken by his near collision that he needed some time to regain his composure. Moments later the driver opened his door, and I thought I should check and see if he was okay.
Then I noticed he was busy doing something, not paying any attention at all to me--the individual he had just nearly run over: He was shoveling out big ice cubes from his car onto the pavement. Apparently he had spilled a very big cold drink when he slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting my car.
He finished his bothersome chore and then drove on down the street a little ways. On my way to the theater I had to walk past the area where he had dumped out his ice cubes. As I looked down I noticed something else: he had inadvertently shoveled out a Zippo lighter. I picked up the metal lighter just in time to see the little blue car turning around on the street and headed back my way. "Coming back to look for his missing lighter," I presumed. Instead, he just drove right past me, never once looking in my direction, turned right at the intersection (this time making sure the light was green), and headed back in his original direction.
No big moral to the story here. Might be rather poetic that both fire and ice came out of the man's car onto the pavement following the near collision. Mostly I'm just thinking that I'm very glad to be alive and not in a major amount of hurt this twenty-fifth day of June, 2009.
And I'm also thinking that I shouldn't be late for rehearsal anymore...
"He leads me beside waters of rest." [Psalm 23; ESV Hebrew reading]
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." [Hans Margolius, philosopher; quoted in "One Square Inch Of Silence"]
