Country music week continues today at Brome Hill.
Well, sort of, because I may have stumbled across a good enough hook to try writing my own country song — one that I’m hearing sung in my head by Wayne Hancock.
While taking a walk around the neighborhood last night, my walking companion joked about feeling as if she had a burger-baby belly. And because I’m still an eighth-grade boy at heart, I responded that I wasn’t helping birth no burger babies. Always up for a challenge, she retorted with a scatological wisecrack worthy of any smart-aleck boy and then waited to see if I could come up with a reply.
After thinking a few seconds, I said I’m gonna be a deadbeat burger-baby daddy.
And if that’s not the makings of a refrain for a country song, I don’t know what is, even if it came out “deadbeat burger-daddy baby” when I tried to repeat it.
***
Obviously, it was a classy stroll. It was an even classier evening for a walk around the neighborhood because it was the night before trash day during the annual spring cleanup week in our town.
For something like 50 years, city garbage crews have designated a week in April when they will literally pick up anything the town’s residents can carry to the curb. Often, however, many of the items carried to the curb never make it to the garbage truck. That’s because many residents in vans and pickups cruise city streets during cleanup week, looking for scrap metal and other bargains.
Last night, I watched a pickup stop at the house of a neighbor and load up items faster than he could carry them out from his garage.
The scene gave me an idea for next year’s spring cleanup. On the night to take out the trash in my neighborhood next year during cleanup week, I’m going to place a lawn chair on the sidewalk and sit there with a cooler of beverages. And I’ll make a sign that invites the cruisers to stop, wander back to the garage and load up whatever is in our pile of junk that they want. I figure it might spare me from making multiple trips to the curb.
***
Speaking of neighbors, one of them was filling his swimming pool with water and getting it ready for summer last night as I carried out our trash.
Hey, you can go ice skating in the morning, I said, after saying hello.
It was 29 degrees outside when I got up this morning and somehow a joke about ice skating in April doesn’t seem as funny now as it did last night.
***
Regular readers will already know I wrote yesterday about an old friend and mentor, who has many friends. And some of them must have stopped by here yesterday somehow, because the blog had about twice its normal amount of daily traffic. To any of the new readers who may have come back today, I say: Thank you. Make yourself comfortable. Y’all come back now, ya hear?
Speaking of regular readers, one posted a comment on Facebook about buying a new bicycle, which she rode to choir practice Wednesday night. Good for her. It was cold and really windy and I did not ride. But I’m looking forward to seeing her soon on a bike ride.
Another regular reader has returned from her annual winter trip to Arizona. She gave me a hug Wednesday morning when I saw her at the YMCA. Welcome back, Jeanne.
Brome Hill 