June 05 '04
Volume 418


Hittin' On Eight

This issue, Ridge Rider News Volume 418, marks the beginning of our ninth year of publication, and we appropriately celebrate our Eighth Anniversary. If you are unfamiliar with our numbering system, Volume 418 designates this issue as the 418th consecutive issue since publishing our first newsletter during the first week of June 1996.

To say that time flies when we’re having fun is perhaps trite, but it’s also truthful. And, for the most part, our efforts have been enjoyable and fun. Certainly, deadlines are not fun, but without them we might not be inspired to maintain the effort required each week.

In our youth the typical automobile or light duty truck had eight cylinders. Properly tuned and with spark plugs firing in all eight cylinders, the motor was said to be "hitting on all eight." In time the expression was shortened and adopted by the typical man-on-the-street.

When asked, "How are you," it was not uncommon to hear the reply, "I'm hittin' on eight," and such was universally understood to mean the individual was doing fine.

Today, Ridge Rider News can honestly say, "I'm hittin' on eight," for not only are we eight years old, but all of our cylinders are firing properly as we enter a new year of publication.

Anniversaries are times of reflection as well as times of celebration. Ridge Rider News remains a free publication, but a few subscribers help us financially with monetary contributions, and we thank them for their thoughtfulness. For the many who take the time to express their enjoyment of Ridge Rider News, we are grateful for their encouragement and support. For those who do not express their appreciation, we are nonetheless thankful they continue to allow us to share a part of our lives with them each week. Additionally, we appreciate all persons who have contributed articles of interest and /or humorous material for Bodock Beau. Our most appreciated readers are those who share this newsletter with others. No statistics are available, but we know of a handful of readers who regularly extend the readership of this publication in this manner.

We celebrate our 8th Anniversary, proud of our publishing record that has kept readers informed every week this past year in spite of our being on vacation several weeks, working out of state for four weeks, and the editor’s surgery and extended recovery. Yes, a few issues were later than normal in arriving into the hands of readers, but no weeks were skipped.

We celebrate a growing readership via the Internet, with several persons choosing to access our website at their convenience. The web-based version of Ridge Rider News is named Ridge Rider News Online and can be found at the URL www.rrnews.org. Each week, an average of five hundred client hits is recorded at the website, and of these, perhaps, ten to twelve are regular readers that are not counted in the totals below.

Ridge Rider News is emailed to forty-four families, a figure that is up four from last year's accounting. Presently, sixty-three copies are printed and either mailed or hand delivered to readers. Thus the combined total of newsletters that are emailed, mailed, or delivered stands at one hundred seven. This represents a modest increase of six new readers this past year.

Ridge Rider News has a global following, geographically speaking, and a breakdown of locations follows with more than one household indicated by the number in parentheses:

Foreign Countries: Germany, Iraq - A total of two readers.

Nationally: Georgia (7), Tennessee (5), Louisiana (3), Arkansas (2), Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Mexico, and New York - A total of twenty-six households across thirteen states outside of our home state of Mississippi.

State of Mississippi: Pontotoc (46), Jackson (4), Thaxton (3), Tupelo (3), Greenville (2), Ripley (2), Vicksburg (2), Belmont, Brandon, Caledonia, Carrollton, Florence, Forest, Greenwood, Gulfport, Hattiesburg, Indianola, Leland, Ole Miss, Olive Branch, Starkville, Southaven, Utica, and West Point - A total of seventy-nine Mississippi households.

In celebrating the Eighth Anniversary of Ridge Rider News and the beginning of the ninth year of publication, the editor, his family, and the staff of Ridge Rider News invite the families of all readers to join us for a backyard fish fry on July 31, 2004, at the home of the editor.


Slow And Easy A Turtle Story

After dinner on a recent Saturday evening, my sister, Sara Sue, and I were walking the grounds of 218 Dogwood Circle, and I was explaining what else needed to be done in the way of landscape improvements. I don’t think Barbara and I can afford to do all that we want to do this year, and some projects will have to wait until after the fish fry this summer and may even be postponed until next spring.

I had shown Sara Sue some of the round, fragile seedpods (or cones) that were still clinging to the limbs of the Leland Cypress trees in a corner of the backyard. The ground beneath the trees is barren of grass but covered in opened pods, which have an appearance similar to that of crushed pecan shells. I was particularly attuned to the pungent fragrance of the pods and of the cypress themselves, for the air about them seemed more aromatic than usual.

We had made our way to the front yard and were standing near the berm I would later ring with red concrete edging when we heard Felicia call to us.

"So, that’s where you are," she exclaimed, while walking in our direction.

She had only recently arrived at my house and not finding her mother inside, came out looking for her. As she approached, she uttered a small shriek and quickly sidestepped something on the lawn.

"Oh, it’s only a turtle," she said with some relief. "What’s it doing?"

I had seen, probably, the same turtle earlier in the day, near the mailbox at the edge of the street and thought if it hung around there long, it stood a good chance of getting run over by someone pulling into our driveway. I’m no expert on terrapins or turtles, but I’ve seen similar looking critters identified as box turtles. My youngest two granddaughters were fascinated by a turtle they spotted in a flowerbed beside our deck a few weeks earlier and would have played with it had I been willing to capture it for them. I explained that "wild things" were best left alone to explore their natural environment, but it was okay to observe them. For the next several minutes, Merilese and Katherine observed the turtle until it made it’s way beneath the deck.

The turtle Felicia stumbled upon was far less frightened of her than she was initially of it, and it didn’t seem to mind our curiosity. We stood nearby and watched the turtle digging a hole in the soft ground with her hind legs. I suggested that the turtle was probably preparing a nest to lay her eggs, and in so stating, opened a floodgate of questions from Felicia.

"Can you see any eggs? Why is it not digging with its front legs? What’s that thing sticking out between its back legs? How many eggs will she lay? How long will it be before the eggs hatch? Will the babies ever see her again?"

I’m sure there were other questions, but these provide evidence of Felicia’s interest in the turtle. I knew there would be no eggs until she finished digging, and she obviously was not finished. I didn’t know why the turtle didn’t use its front legs, but my guess would be that Nature didn’t intend for turtles to dig nests with their front legs. The rear appendage was definitely the turtle’s tail, but there was nothing in my encyclopedic brain regarding the average number of turtle eggs per nest or the incubation period of the same, though I was reasonably certain whatever hatchlings emerged would never see their mother. Sara Sue expressed agreement and quipped something about how human mothers should be so lucky.

Minutes passed before anyone thought to get Jason out and capture the event on his digital camcorder, but Barbara came out to join the excited group. None of us had ever witnessed a turtle preparing to lay her eggs in the "wild."

Jason got caught up in the moment, too. He filmed several minutes of video and has some great close-ups of the turtle’s slow and easy movements. Basically, the turtle extended one foot into the hole, grabbed a "fist full" of dirt, pulled the foot out, and casually deposited the excavated dirt to one side. She then repeated the process with the other foot. At no time did we observe her use the same foot successively. She systematically alternated using her hind feet.

I don’t know how deeply she dug the hole, but the last time I looked it appeared to be at least two and one-half inches deep. I returned to the "big dig" after darkness to find mama-turtle resting. I figured she was about to lay her eggs, and, thinking it best to leave her undisturbed, I went back inside for a while. When I returned, the turtle was gone, and the hole was filled and packed down. The only evidence that anything had taken place was a shallow rim of unpacked dirt heaped in a semicircle near where I had last observed the turtle’s activities. It rained the next night and washed away most of the remaining unpacked dirt.

Since then, I’ve checked reference materials to find the number of eggs laid and the incubation period for box turtles. A box turtle may lay three to eight eggs in a clutch, though four or five are common. Depending on soil temperatures, the hatchlings should emerge in seventy to eighty days, or roughly two and one-half months. In our case the expected date for hatching would be mid-August. Well now, mid-August is practically my birthday. I’ll have to let readers know, if I find any hatchlings on the sixteenth.


Bodock Beau How To Get To Heaven

Children tend to draw conclusions differently than do adults. Vickie Murphree shared the following anecdote

I was testing the children in my Sunday school class to see if they understood the concept of getting to heaven.

I asked them, "If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?

"NO!" the children answered.

"If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?"

Again, the answer was, "NO!"

By now I was starting to smile. Hey, this was fun!

"Well, then, if I were kind to animals and gave candy to all the children, and loved my husband, would that get me into Heaven?" I asked them again.

Again, they all answered, "NO!"

I was just bursting with pride for them.

Well, I continued, "then how can I get into Heaven?"

A five-year-old boy shouted out, "YOU GOTTA BE DEAD."

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

During his re-enlistment interview, the first sergeant asked my friend if he'd considered re-upping in the Air Force.

He seethed, "I wouldn't re-enlist if you made me a four-star general, gave me a million dollars, and had Miss America as my roommate!"

On the form, the first sergeant wrote, "Airman is undecided."


Contributed by Larry Young

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