Hick has been spiffing up the ol' homestead for the holidays. Actually, all that requires is setting out a string of light-up mini-Santas along the front fence. The fence I do not like. The fence that is an embarrassment to fencedom. The fence that is neither pretty nor rustic. The fence that forces Val to travel around her elbow to get to her thumb if she wants to venture into the front yard to see what her fleabags are currently dismembering/chewing on/destroying. Yes, just a string of mini-Santas taken down from the garage rafters and stretched along the fence and plugged in.
The lights that outline the homestead's roof line are left in place all year, you know, clipped onto the soffits. That's how we do out here where civilization can't hear you scream, "I'm a hillbilly!" All they need for lighting is to flip a light switch by the garage door. Oh, and there are six giant plastic Christmas tree ornaments that Hick used to hang on the cedar tree by the garage. The cedar tree he had cut down without Val's permission or even knowledge in order to build his too-narrow carport. So now he hangs those giant ornaments on the edge of the carport roof. I suppose there's a certain symmetry in that.
You'd think that with so little production needed to decorate the ol' homestead for Christmas that Hick would at least pay attention to detail with the one task that needed doing. He's the man, after all, who screwed a red plastic milk crate onto the cedar siding next to the green front door so the UPS deliverypersons would have a receptacle to hold left packages. I wish I knew what I said to him that discouraged the installation of such a drop box this year, but alas, I cannot.
Nor can I make Hick understand that the power source for his row of light-up mini-Santas is not up to code. It's a good thing he has not yet held the grand opening of Hick's Shackytown Theme Park. OSHA would hand Hick his own butt on a platter.
Yes, this is the handiwork of the man in charge of setting up a saw blade manufacturing plant in an old Red Cross warehouse. The man the company sends overseas to inspect machines and train people at their foreign factories.
Last Thursday, I was expecting a package of high-dollar electronic equipment that is a present for The Pony. I had to be away from the ol' homestead for a few hours to lunch with my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel. I could imagine the arrival of this package while I was gone, and the tripping of the UPS deliveryperson, and the resultant juggling of the high-dollar electronic equipment, and the disappointment on Christmas morning when the shattered shards were unwrapped. Oh, yeah. And the hospital bills of the upended UPS deliveryperson for treatment of 3rd-degree skin-chapping from the licks of Puppy Jack and my Sweet, Sweet Juno as that deliveryperson lay there unconscious from the head-knock received by her noggin on Hick's torn up and put back exactly the same way brick sidewalk.
I unplugged the light-up mini-Santas that day. I coiled the green wire around the fence post. I did not, however, move that industrial-style electrical outlet that is plugged in on the side porch with its own black cord thick as a man's pinky finger stretched across the boards for anyone walking around the porch to stumble over.
Good thing I did, too, because right after I returned home, the UPS deliveryperson put that package on the front porch, leaning right up against the wall by the door, where that red milk crate used to hang. She knocked twice, and by the time I got the door open, she had already scampered past the site where she might have met an untimely interlude.
Hick. Never disappoints when it comes to sparking a blog post.
