Not nice to shoot the horse that brings one home
The Old Men of the Mountain gave the Your Way Café another shot because the Chuck Wagon was closed. It seems the OMOTM wanted to get out — the number of OFs at the restaurant was ample, the conversations were loud and long, and the laughter was plentiful. It’s neat to see and hear OFs with all their ailments have really hearty laughs.
Much of the talk was a good form of gossip. Who, what, and sometimes when; where did not crop up too often.
The information was sad though because it was how the current times have caused many in small businesses, and those with farms, to go out of business and find something else. How often one business is associated with others and when one is having problems the old trickle-down effect passes to the others.
The OFs were discussing what was happening to Joe Blow or Jane Doe, so the conversations were very personal because many OFs knew, or did business, with those involved.
The OFs thought that it is getting too expensive to be in business, and only the big companies with deep pockets are going to make it. One OF thought there may be some young people out there who are going to give small entrepreneurial business a shot, but the OMOTM are out of that loop and only know what they hear on the news or read in the papers.
Many are so discouraged with those sources that the OFs don’t pay any attention to either. That’s odd, because this is going to be in the paper. This scribe is pretty sure local papers are not part of this exclusion group. (Too much interesting gossip and information in the pages of the local papers. Not nice to shoot the horse that brings one home.)
Missing person
The OFs discussed the school teacher from Delmar who is now missing in Massachusetts. The OFs admitted from the photographs in the paper she is very pretty, which prompted one OF to say there is an advantage to being ugly — it cuts down on the weirdos picking the pretty ones as a target.
The OFs think that her car was not driven by the victim to where it was found. Even though they do have to search the area, the OFs don’t think they will find anything there. Some of the OFs thought the police have already assumed this to be the case; however, what else are they going to do until they have checked the area thoroughly?
Gobbling ticks
Next topic reported on: Ticks were the usual spring discussion and one OF reported when his dog came in they took 17 ticks off of the animal.
A few of the other OFs reported they have not seen ticks, but then again they haven’t been in the woods either. It seems every year these nasty little insects seem to cause many problems.
Maybe someone will develop an animal and human one-shot vaccine to ward off the infectious bite of the tick. On the other hand, this is just an OMOTM thought.
One OF wondered why some birds like the guinea hen go around just gobbling those things up and nothing happens to them. What have they got that the rest of us don’t?
Guinea hens are fun to watch as they go around snacking on the ticks from the grass. Do the guinea hens have some sort of sensor that alerts the hen to what tick is loaded with Lyme, and the others are not?
This scribe thinks they just gobble them up and don’t give a hoot about what the tick has, the carrier for Lyme disease or not; the tick is just food to them.
Faith
No matter who the OF is, some may have faith as religion, and some not, but one thing they all have is faith ─ religion, or not. The OFs have certain things happening in their lives that require faith, and with some of the OFs that faith has to be really strong.
Think about how often any of us (OF or not) go to the doctor and then are referred to a surgeon and the surgeon recommends surgery to fix the problem. Bingo, as soon as the OF says, “OK let’s do it,” faith by the ton takes over.
It is often said that, as soon as the OF closes the door of his vehicle, faith takes the wheel, along with the hands of the OF. The OF now has faith in many people, and the OF needs it, so the faith the OF has in all the people that worked on the vehicle is rewarded when the OF arrives safely at his destination.
It takes faith by the bushel to drive a vehicle, weighing more or less 2,000 pounds and aiming it down the highway at 60 miles an hour not thinking once about all these people involved in building this big bullet. The OF is guiding the vehicle effortlessly with one hand and drinking a Gatoraid with the other so who knows what the OF may be thinking as the guardrails zip by.
This scribe bets the people who built the vehicle won’t be one of them. All of the OFs, and those who aren’t OFs, have their minds occupied by so much more not even realizing how much faith we put in people we don’t even know.
Then there are the doctors and surgeons we do know. The surgeon is going to wield a knife over our bodies and deliberately cut into them. Without faith that the surgeon is going to perform his job well, the OF wouldn’t even be on that table. The surgeon has to have faith in himself that he is going to do the job well.
Faith is inherent in all of us, whether we know it or not, so that is how the OFs get to be OMOTM. Bobby McFerrin had it right in his song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Faith is how the OFs get there. The way one OF put it, though, was: That is tough to do right now.
All the OFs who gathered at the Your Way Café in Schoharie and had a good time getting together were: Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Joe Rack, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Miner Stevens, Brian McLaughlin, Doug Marshall, Rich LaGrange, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Bill Lichliter, Jake Herzog, Russ Pokorny, Warren Willsey, Gerry Chartier, John Dapp, Paul Guiton, Bob Donnelly, Dave Hodgetts, Elwood Vanderbilt, Herb Bahrmann, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, and me.