I have not written a blog for several days.. I’m afraid the blog offends some folks. I don’t mean for it to offend anyone in particular, just everyone in general. The blog is called JLM’s Journal and is written for my personal satisfaction as a record of the things that interest me and I want to poke fun about. If I live long enough, I may go back and read them when I’m too feeble to type. They might amuse me at that time. It’s also a little record of my views that some future great, great grandkid might read. I would sure like to know what my great grandfather thought about the Texas Revolution, slavery, etc. As far as I know he didn’t write anything.

In my poking fun, I commonly refer to thieves, politicians, lawyers, bankers, doctors, preachers and others in the trade. Notice, I don’t say physicians or ministers. There is a difference in my mind between doctors and physicians and preachers and ministers. I don’t usually criticize people who earn their way by the sweat on their brow or respectable professions like teaching. I hold these folks in the highest esteem and consider some of them almost sacred. The only thing I criticize related to these folks is the injustices in their live like lack of proper respect or compensation. I also don’t like to criticize veterans who put their lives on the line for us. I have recently contributed to a blog that may be published on the web site of my previous place of employment. It’s about the problem of access to doctors and it’s sure to ruffle some feathers. Anyway, enough said about all this stuff.

In the past few days, its been too cold to think about anything except staying warm. In my advanced age it’s just harder to stay warm. This cold spell has made me think of other cold times in my life. When I was a kid I had three uncles who lived in the piney woods area. One was a farmer who had a son my age. I once visited them during a cold snap and remember it as one of the coldest times of my life. He lived in a Texas style dogtrot house with board siding and absolutely no insulation. Insulation had not been invented. You could actually see between the cracks of the adjacent boards. The house had a tin roof with little perforations in the tin that allowed you to see the night sky. There was no electricity, and as a result no lights. There was no indoor plumbing, so we used a chamber pot under the bed until daylight when we would make a run through the freeing weather to the outhouse. The house was built on bocks, so stepping on the floor was like stepping on a block of ice. The main heat for the house was a wood burning stove in the kitchen.

My Uncle would get up before daylight even in the winter and start a fire in the stove. He then went into the night to feed the animals and milk the cow. He then came in at dawn for a breakfast prepared on that stove by my aunt. There was no such thing as hot water from the tap. The breakfast was, nevertheless, great. We had mouth watering, deep yellow yard eggs, bacon, biscuits and unpasteurized milk with the cream. The breakfast was delicious but pure cholesterol.

I enjoyed playing with my cousin, but the visit was like camping with the most primitive conditions. It was during that cold visit when I decided I didn’t want to be a farmer. Now this doesn’t mean I don’t like farmers and am trying to demean their line of work. There conditions have greatly improved and I have great respect for farmers. The improvements were just too late for me, and my poor uncle.

Farming is a pretty hard life but some of these folks live a long time. Like my uncle I probably wouldn’t have been one of those to live so long. If I had chosen farming as a career, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here on the porch on this cold day writing a blog that, hopefully, won’t offend too many folks