Monday, August 27, 007

Bob's Blah Blog:

"Bonus dee us" (praticing my spanish).

Okay, a little ketchup, please. Back in Edisto Beach I forgot to mention I went skinny dipping in the Atlantic ocean. Now...try to get that picture out of your head for the rest of the day.

Back in Iowa, I read a story about some guy named Pankow who worked in a bank back in the 1800 or maybe during the Great Depression (I don't recall which is correct, but I think it is the Depression). Anyway, folks were defaulting on their mortgages and this guy began to help them by taking his own money and paying the debt, of course, not letting the folks know he was helping them. His goal was to save their credit and not allow them to lose their land. But, as time passed, he ran out of money and began taking money from those folks who had lots of money and could best afford to help out those less fortunate. Of course, he didn't let those folks know he was borrowing their money. He always figured times would turn around and folks would get work and everything would be okay. Well, things didn't get better, and he eventually was found out. He committed suicide. All the town folks went to his funeral the next day or so, but word spread about what he had done. Those folks who had money, about 100 of them, went to his grave and urinated on it that night. In the end, those who didn't have money either paid those whose money had been "borrowed," or the debt was forgiven in the spirit of neighborly goodwill. Some folks just walked away from the debt. It was all because of the goodwill of one person. As time passed, folks realized this and now the name Pankow is well known and respected in the community.

Another story...a bad guy (murderer) was caught and taken to the hangin' tree. The sheriff told the man he was to be hanged by the neck for 30 minutes, and if, after that time, the man was still alive, he would be set free. The sheriff felt the letter of the law would be met and the bad guy had served his punishment....which was to be hanged. Well, the bad guy thought this was a pretty square deal, so he eased himself off the bucket and hung himself without breaking his neck. A doctor was on hand and when the 30 minutes had passed, the sheriff, not wanting to see the bad guy walk away, did not allow anyone to assist him and the bad guy eventually died from hanging. I often wondered why, in the olden days, the sentence given to the bad guy read: "Hanged by the neck until dead." Now, I know why. I wasn't going to finish this story in this blog, but I didn't want to leave you hanging for the rest of the story....hehe!

Also, if you read August 25 blog but not the August 18 blog, you might want to go back and read it. It got posted just before the 8/25 blog.

Our neighbors on the Outer Banks campground had a really nice Ford F550 diesel truck they had customized for pulling their house on wheels. It was pretty nice. Wish I had taken a pix of it. But the most interesting part of it was they are full-time RV'ers and they travel with about a dozen or so cacti (hey to Don R.). Some of these cacti were pretty large and their RV was a lot smaller than ours. Why would you want to travel with prickly cacti? Seems like someone would get stuck, as we did when someone (and I mean me) tracked some jumping cactus into the coach, totally inadvertently, and someone (and I mean Corinne) got stabbed in her hand by one clump of it. I kissed the ouchy and made it all better. I got magic healing lips from my mom who always did the same for me when I got hurt or skinned a knee.

We visited the Wright Brothers Historical site where the birth of modern aviation was founded. Pretty interesting site. The park ranger guy gave about a 40-minute program and history of the bro's, but he was hard to understand due to poor microphone and speaker system...just like being on an airplane today. I really didn't understand why we had to fasten our seatbelts and put our trays up just to hear his talk.

Some guy made an exact replica of the bro's 1903 gas powered aircraft and donated it to the museum on the 100 year anniversary of the first powered flight, which only lasted some 3 seconds or so. The furthest distance they flew on that day, including lay overs was 859 feet, I think. Of course, you may ask, there was no carry-on luggage.

We ate at a restaurant named Dirty Dick's Crab House. Food was good and the service was exceptional. For obvious reasons, I am not going to say any more about this, other than I got crabs. I did make the cashier in the gift shop part of the restaurant blush when I told her I wasn't buying thong underwear but I didn't want her to think I wouldn't wear them if I did. (Just in case you got the skinny dip picture out of your mind, this is something else to work on. If you haven't got it out of your brain, someone, and I mean Corinne, welcomes you to her world.)

It rained pretty hard after we left the islands. We crossed some pretty awesome bridges going to and from the islands. Corinne doesn't like crossing tall bridges with lots and lots of freefall space between the span and the water. She even drove over the tallest, longest bridges when we went onto the islands and I drove back from the islands.

We are on our way westbound to western NC to go by Dale Jr.'s motorsports facility and to DEI. Then, we will most likely push on to Pittsburgh to see Brandon.

We got a text message from my brother Danny yesterday about it being the 27th anniversary of brother Tommy's death. D was hosting a drink at his house to honor Tommy, a United States Marine 1st. Lt. killed at Camp Pendleton, CA in 1980. Sempre Fi, brother!

Corinne has biscuits, gravy and scambled chicken embryos ready for breakfast, soo0....

Bobo