Not Peculiar, Just Southern

We have a few peculiarities down here in my South, especially we country folks. For instance, we rarely ever lock our doors. Most everyone owns a gun, or 2, or 6, and they know where the bullets are, so that alone pretty much keeps the pilfering and meanness down around our place. There's also the fact that some of your relatives and neighbors might need something that you have and how on earth would they get it if it were all locked up? And although I lock my truck up when I get out of it in town, I don't do it when I park it in the driveway. I do take the keys out but I just lay them on the dash so I can find them when I'm ready to leave the next time. I figure if someone strange comes to our area, and is up to some meanness, they might look in the truck and find the keys and drive off instead. It'll save having to shoot them for trying to come into my house uninvited.

Doesn't that make a little bit of sense?

Earlier this week, about 30 some odd miles north of us, there was a shooting. Three people were murdered by this fella and he shot and wounded another guy and a deputy. This is BIG news down here and folks start scrambling right off to find out more facts see if they knew any of those involved.

Now if this had happened in a big city like Memphis, or some much more urban area like New York, 30 miles might be a long way, but in our rural area it's not much more than a skip and a jump and that makes it news. In New York someone can live right on the other side of your living room wall and there's a big chance that you don't even know their name. Down here, you not only know their name, but you also know their family tree pert neart back at least to the time of the Civil war. After much debate you might even find out that they're your 3rd cousin's, second cousin by marriage. Or something to that effect.

Also, in New York, your neighbor across the wall might be murdered and you wouldn't even know about it unless the sound of the gun going off was louder than than the noise of the television. Down here, you know about it soon after the dispatcher has notified the authorities cause he/she's gonna call everyone she knows and relay all the information. Word of mouth is faster than greased lightening around these parts.

Anyway, they caught the fella who did the shooting down near Laredo, Texas and a friend of James', who's with the State Police, was headed down there today to bring him home. The officer also has a job on the side selling chemicals to the farmers (policing doesn't pay so well in Arkansas, I hear) so he'll probably stop by sometime in the next few weeks to tell hubby all about it.

After tomorrow the tax work will ease up and I'll be back to working from home. I'll really be counting down the hours tomorrow too cause I'm more than just a little tired of the hassle this year. It gets harder and harder to get loosened up every morning when I climb out of my bed and actually having to put something on other than my sleep pants and tees is a pain in the patootie, especially that early of a morning.

I'll get back to takin myself a nap if the urge hits me.

And be able to do a better job at monitoring what Ya-Ya watches on TV all day long.

Ya'll have a good un!