Once Upon a Time, page 1

Once Upon A Time

Almost always, it seems, a youngster finally gets some gumption and finds his face in a mirror full of wrinkles and whiskers as white as snow. Yep, that’s the way life is. White hair and bent back are the trademarks of time and there ain’t nothing you can do about it either. Oh, you can get a doctor to help smooth out a few wrinkles and maybe whiten the old teeth a bit but other than that there ain’t no use in fussen about it cause time is going to put you right in the dirt where all of us winds up.

But time ain’t all that bad if you sit back and watch this old world whirl about with all the good folks keeping it in order. It’s a shame that we can’t all just leave well enough alone but there are always some out there that just can’t get along with time. I guess they just don’t seem to understand that when their whiskers turn white and their backs are bent like an old willow tree, they will be just like me. Well, maybe not just like me but you know what I mean.

I wonder why old folks lay about with a cushion on their backs trying to remember once upon a time? If you gotta think about it then it ain’t really worth saying. My poppa and mamma is just as fresh today as it was when I slammed that old screened door. Poppa would be sitting there in that great big old rocker chair reading his news paper and one of the eight kids, which I was one, would run through the house and sure enough slam that old green screened door.

Now being in the army for quite a spell, I can remember some of the old soldiers who came home shaking so hard that they never did get rid of the damage to the brain. That’s the way my poppa was with eight kids slamming the old screened door. Course we didn’t know that we were driving poppa insane till long after he was in heaven and we had growed up. Poor old poppa would set his one eye on the paper and the other eye on the path that led to that old screened door. The minute he heard a footstep his cussen would start and he would shout “Don’t you dare slam that #@$%^ screen door.” Almost every time he shouted he was a day late and a dollar short. The neighbors knew old man Chet as the best cusser in the neighborhood. Course we kids didn’t really give him all that credit cause we just thought all old people were the same and cussen was part of the ritual of being old.
Funny how it's all just once upon a time--