Cranks My Tractor

Just Don't Eat the Cake

Halloween is upon us and my pumpkins are on the porch. Where did all these tricks and treats come from? I was looking at some information related to the origin of Halloween and found some really interesting things related to my Irish roots.

Understanding that some folks think Halloween is a devilish type holiday and has been over commercialized, I still think there are good things that children can gain. Anytime you have the opportunity to make something positive out of something that some perceive as negative; it is good in my opinion.

Children get to dress up and be creative and have a good time. Hopefully, it is all under parental guidance.

Politicians are similar, particularly during the election season. They like to “dress up,” pretend to be someone else and scare you. We should all make an effort to determine the real person behind the mask when it comes election time. That’s all I have to say about that.

Remembering Lee Bartholomew

It seems we are seeing college football players being suspended for “the first half of games” for various things these days. The incidents range in severity from purposely stepping or stomping on opponents during games to saying inappropriate things in public. I even noticed where a high school team suspended a large number of their players for a half and some for a full game for raiding an opposing team’s concession stand, taking cokes and candy before a game the previous week.

In the “candy raid,” 19 players in total were punished. Coaches and school administrators make these decisions; it is their job. I trust that these folks make good decisions.

If my high school team were to have lost 19 players, we would have not been able to play. In terms of players, we would dress in the low twenties on a good night and were sometimes known as “the mean 13” late in the season when injuries and grades would sideline some of our players.

Don't say anything about "The Tackle"

In the 1990’s, I was still living in Huntsville, Alabama, enjoying life and coaching Little League Baseball. It was a fun time; I coached baseball because I enjoyed the game, the boys and the neighborhood.

Not having children playing is the best way to coach baseball or any other sport in my opinion. You couldn’t be accused of playing your child more or letting them play the best positions.

However, you could be suckered into things by other parents. For the most part, I don’t think I ever was. The young parents would pull my leg every once in a while because I was still young and pretty innocent.

It was the first day of a practice which was always fun getting to meet new players, their parents and their grandparents. Every little boy was going to be a baseball superstar – sometimes you had to invent ways of their being heroes, but that was something I also enjoyed.

Peas and Happiness

As I sat there separating the frozen peas from the frozen carrots, I wasn’t thinking about how religion and politics are similar or even how thankful we should be that Clarence Birdseye invented the flash freezing machine. I was thinking about how cold my fingers were and how there should be some easier way to separate the frozen green spheres from the frozen orange cubes. Maybe I could use some sort of colander that only lets the peas fall through?

This is what I was thinking. I was also thinking about how wonderful I was for volunteering to separate the peas and carrots. Okay, I said it, I admit it. I was looking for just a little more gratitude for performing this laborious task.

It’s something I have done before and something I will do again; perhaps I enjoy it. It seems that the recipe always calls for a cup of frozen English peas and there are no bags of English peas in the freezer – only frozen peas and carrots and sandwich bags of frozen carrots that will forever suffer from separation anxiety. So without pulling politics into the task, I do it.