Comes a Time You At Least Give a Blanket (Six Sentence Story), Good Fences, Sammy's Poetry Day and Brian's Thankful Thursday

 ***********************************

(The background for this story is told at Comes a Time.)

"Hello, Gwen...you what...wait a minute, slow down Gwen, I need you to talk slowly and tell me what's up...okay, you haven't seen him in...he's not answering the phone you gave him...haven't seen the dog...okay, Gwen, I'll go by and make sure he's okay...all right...I'll call you when I know something...good-bye."

Ms. G gave me the look that said she was not pleased and said, "That's great, that's just great, Fred hasn't been seen in four days, his up the street neighbor Gwen can't get in touch with him on that government phone she gave him, and she hasn't seen the dog in four days, and now I have to go over to that hole he calls home and make sure he's alive, because if anything's happened to him I need to rescue Molly."

Then her eyes lit up and she pulled over the truck we were running errands in, played on the phone a while, and said, "Well, he's not on the list of inmates at the prison, so he didn't get himself arrested, let me called Steph and have her check with the morgue, make sure they don't have any unidentified older white male drug addicts on a slab over there."

Having satisfied herself that he wasn't in jail or being dealt with by the coroner at this time, she stopped at the house for a stepladder in case she needed to climb in a window and fussed the whole way up to the area of town where he lives, "Doggone you, Fred, you've put a knot in my day that I just didn't need, you and your sorry druggie ways, and I better not find you dead in that house and I have to call the coroner and your daughter, and poor Molly, that sweet dog deserves better."

She drove around some of the streets near his place looking for signs of him, and as soon as she pulled onto his street she yelled in triumph, "I'd recognize his sorry butt on a bicycle anywhere, did you see that, he just turned the corner," and she chased after him and flagged him down, getting out of the car to talk to him.

"Fred, Gwen says she hasn't been able to call you...lost the phone...okay, you probably pawned it again, but whatever...here, it's going to be freezing for the next few days, here are some blankets...you're welcome...now you make sure you take care of Molly, you hear..." and as we pulled away, she smiled and told me, "It's a G-d thing he was right there on the street for us to see him, and Gwen can quit worrying now!"

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Knot.      

***********************************

While Good Fences Around the World seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird, i still enjoy looking for and posting interesting fences, so i will!

***********************************

It's Angel Sammy's Poetry Day!  This week's image and my poem:    

You can't beat tradition,

we always cut our tree,

now I'll get this baby home

you can count on me!

***********************************

Brian of Brian's Home hosts the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop.   It's time to share something for which i am thankful.  

Today i am thankful Ms. G bought me a loaf of spinach/artichoke bread when we were out running errands yesterday, and that Fred was alive and as well as he ever is, plus i'm thankful i didn't have to help Ms. G climb through a window!

***********************************

Today is:

Beetle Banquet and Badger Ball -- Fairy Calendar

Chipmunks Day -- the date, in 1958, when Alvin, Simon, and Theodore hit #1 with "The Chipmunk Song"

Day Sacred to the Lares -- Ancient Roman Calendar (household gods)

Hari Ibu -- Indonesia (Mother's Day)

Icelandic Yuletide Lad of the Day, Gattapefur -- Sniffer, who uses his big nose on hlakkandi ("looking forward" day, when you begin to look forward to Christmas) to sniff out a cake or two to snatch

Khoiak Ceremony for Raising the Djed Pillar -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (Osiris festival, the pillar represented his spine, and so stability and strength; date approximate)

National Date Nut Bread Day

Santa Claus Flight Clearance Day -- US FAA (they make sure he's cleared to fly, with his de-icing system, Terrain Avoidance Warning System for low-altitude flight, and special seat belt extension in good working order)

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's Day (Mother Cabrini, the first US citizen canonized; Patron saint of emigrants, hospital administrators, immigrants, orphans; against malaria)

Unity Day -- Zimbabwe

Birthdays Today:

Jordin Sparks, 1989

Ralph Fiennes, 1962

Maurice Gibb, 1949

Robin Gibb, 1949

Steve Garvey, 1948

Diane Sawyer, 1945

Steve Carlton, 1944

Hector Elizondo, 1936

Joe Pyne, 1925

Barbara Billingsley, 1922

Gene Rayburn, 1917

Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson, 1912

Dame Edith Margaret Emily "Peggy" Ashcroft, 1907

Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869

Giacomo Puccini, 1858

William Ellery, 1727

James Edward Oglethorpe, 1696

Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Graduate(Film), 1972

"Ding Dong School"(TV), 1952

Today in History:

A serious earthquake strikes Innsbruck, 1689

The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies, 1790

The first freight train is operated in Roorkee, India, 1851

Jules Janssen flies in a balloon in order to study a solar eclipse, 1870

The first string of Christmas tree lights is created by Thomas Edison, 1882

Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, becomes the first Prime Minister of Japan, 1885

French officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialed for treason, triggers worldwide charges of anti-Semitism (Dreyfus later vindicated), 1894

Colo is born, the first gorilla to be bred in captivity, 1956

Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany, 1989

Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63, 2001

An important peer-reviewed study of the spatial memory of bumblebees is published in the Biology Letters journal of the Royal Society by a class of 25 8- to 10-year-old children at Blackawton Primary School, 2010

Ebola vaccine VSV-EBOV is found to be 70-100% effective in a study published in The Lancet, becoming the world's first proven vaccine against Ebola, 2016

A tsunami hits Indonesia's Sunda Strait killing over 400 after part of the Anak Krakatoa (Child of Krakatoa) volcano slips into the sea, 2018