Jawbones and Assholes

“Yeah, that’s just not going to happen.”

I turned around on the bus, stunned, just after I tried to move my seat back only to have it kicked upright. Chguck.

“There’s no way you’re putting your seat back,” the man said to me. “My legs are just too long. No.”

If I have ever been “agape” I was agape then. I burst out laughing. The man in the seat next to me was aghast.

I said (still laughing), “I’m just going to put it back a little bit, all right?” as if I were speaking to a retarded child. Or a deaf puppy with three legs. “Actually, why don’t you and I just switch seats?” I offered, smiling like a deranged lunatic.

“Oh, sure! That would be fine!” the man replied with the air of a crazed moron.

We switched seats. I ended up crammed next to a window next to a man with body odor. The man now in front of me instead of behind me sat ramrod straight the entire trip. I had a fancy amount of leg room.

Here’s the view out the window though, New York to western Jersey:


Not bad. Note the movement wave in the lamp pole and sunlight.

Today I saw the excavated bones of a mule buried under my father’s house. He had not buried it (no, my father never killed a mule, as far as I know, although his father was in the cavalry)–his house was built maybe 50 years ago on the bank of the Delaware River, when mules were used to drag coal barges downstream. Somebody gave this mule a decent burial instead of letting it rot aboveground, it seems. It’s been found since my father is in the process of having his house raised 1.5 feet above the waterline of the largest local flood, which was in 1955 when the river made a record flood level of 38.85 feet. There have been three major floods in the past couple years, during which my father’s tile floors were ruined and this mule quietly stirred in its muddy home.

Here is another picture, this one of the mule's jawbone.


I have to go be in New Jersey now.