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Fat Pa, Old Pa and Junk over Horseshoe Bend

   Written by on June 12, 2014 at 2:05 pm

We just celebrated the Messenger’s 10th birthday.  It was great. We actually had some people show up.  When you get right down to it all a birthday signifies is the fact that you survived another year.  There are only three birthdays that have any real meaning.  The first one is the biggie. Not the first celebration but the actual date of your birth. Getting here is tough. Lots of babies don’t make it.

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

Sixteen is important since it means you can legally drive a car. Twenty-one means you can legally consume alcohol but you can’t do it in a car.  Actually, the only important birthdays are being born and the driving a car one.  The important thing is having a driver’s license. Once you have a driver’s license it can be forged to cover any other date.  You get to choose your age.

I remember my twenty-first birthday. A group of us were celebrating in the Red Lion in Farmville. When the waitress asked what we were celebrating I was shocked when my date said we were celebrating my birthday.  “Which one is it?” I asked.

The waitress wasn’t about to be fooled. “He’s been coming in here for years, how old is he really?” I gave her both ID’s and told her to decide for herself.  She decided to stick with the one I’d been using for years. I’m glad I lost that ID. I’d be almost 70 if we were going by that. Maybe I can locate my forger and get ten years or so deleted. The last thirty years have been great. I wouldn’t mind redoing a few of them.  For those folks who want to be 21 again, leave me out of that.  I’ve still got some scars from that decade.

The eldest Grand-brat, who is skinny as a rail, walked into the room last week.  He stuck out his tummy as far as he could, which made him look like he’d just swallowed a butterbean whole, and said, “Look, I’m fat like Faux Pa.” That was just wrong on so many levels. Sure I’ve added a few pounds.  I’ve got that healthy “gallon of milk” covering what should be six pack abs BUT there are plenty of people in that Brat’s world who are fatter than I.

I’ve decided to embark on a new career.  I’m pretty sure a career isn’t one of the cars I have tastefully sprinkled around the landscape, although I am still looking for that niche everyone says I should find. I just realized I should become an artist.

There are several reasons for that. Artists are expected to be weird and eccentric. I can work with that. The other positive is if I take several junk bicycles, an old shovel, some farm equipment, and some tools and toss them in a pile they are just a pile of junk. If I were an artist I could carefully stack the same stuff into exactly the same pile and I could call it art.

With the proper promotion my art could sell for big prices. As it is now I can create a beautiful work of art on a trailer and it is only worth ten dollars a hundred pounds at the scrap yard.

My bride Management just said she wants a pergola over the deck I’ve been building for a couple of years. Her plan is to buy one and have me install it. When I said I could build one she abruptly declined. I’m not sure what’s going on. I could bolt down a truck axle in each corner, stick a piece of pipe over it, put a truck chassis on top of it for a frame and attractively stack several old bicycles and some yard tools on it. When it is all covered with wisteria, honeysuckle and grape vines it would be ever so attractive. In fact it would look just like several other piles of stuff (I mean several of my other art projects) except it would be hovering eight feet in the air like a UFO. What’s not to like about that?

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