On the way home, I said to Kate, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go on any dadgum hayride! In this Florida heat? Getting straw in my shorts is worse than getting sand in my shoes at the beach.”
Imagine my surprise when my bride, who could borrow a page out of New York gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan’s political playbook and start the “Florida Is Too Damn HOT Party,” chastised me: “Oh, you big WHINER! It will be fun.”
“Well, I’m going to suggest something else, maybe a movie,” I countered.
“You need to PLAY more with those kids,” she parried. “Besides, I already told Melissa we’d go.”
That’s when it started. The whining. Heck, I hadn’t been on a hayride since I was in high school, and back then, the hormones were looking for different things in a haystack than pumpkins, if you catch my drift.
I didn’t stop at whining, though, because we all know all that does is give a guy a headache. So I schemed. I tried to figure out a way to have to work yesterday. Didn’t work. I tried to ramp up my heartbeat so I could fake a heart attack. I lay down on the railroad tracks, trying to end it all. Dadgum train stopped inches from my head.
Saturday arrived. My eyes popped open, and I checked my limbs, just in case, to see whether I had been paralyzed in the night and I could have used that as a dodge. Everything worked, as well as it does, at my age, so, since I’d been foiled, and foiled again, we set out for the punkin farm; fortunately, it wasn’t too damn hot, and the sun playfully, mercifully ducked behind the clouds.
Then another reason to whine transpired: The wind blew my new hairdo askew. After all the planning, and my hairdresser, Sharon’s, careful planning and execution of my coif to look like Mark Harmon, the wind botched the part down the middle. When I had left her shoppe, I was the spitting image of the NCIS star.
Granted, when I got home, Kate agreed that I looked like Harmon’s character. Well, she coughed that out between guffaws, as she rolled on the floor and kept repeating his character’s name: “You look just like a JETHRO — like one of the characters in ‘Brother, Where Art Thou?’ goin’ down to the river to pray.” (And she didn't mean the George Clooney character, either.)
Soooooooooo, anyhooooooo, I’d like to unveil my new ’do, but the wind aft gang it aglee. And so did the hayride/punkin hunt. The adventure turned out to be quite a bit of fun. Of course, the added thrill was seeing a baby alligator in the canal next to the punkin patch. And wonderin’ where the mama grizzly, uh, mama gator, was.
With no further whining, or ado, here’s a mini album of the outing:
Luke, Patrick and Skip on the hayride; upper left: Kate's photo-challenged finger.
Skip, Melissa and the boys (from left) Luke, Vincent, Patrick and Jack, guard their gourds.
Luke and Vincent pick pumpkins under the watchful eye of Mark Harmon, aka Jethro Gibbs. He just HAPPENED by, working an NCIS case, no doubt. He's doesn't seem to have the tight, well-formed 12-pack I have.
Kate poses with a character from 'Brother, Where Art Thou,' and (from left) Luke, Vincent and Jack. And, of course, their punkins.
After a hayride and a punkin hunt, nothin says lovin in a Florida oven than ICE CREAM. Some of it even made it into Patrick's mouth.
Vincent puts a finishing touch on his caramel apple, and the day, by showing his prowess at caramel through his teeth. I suppose it fits the Halloween season.
OK, OK, I'll have to say that, overall, it was a fun day. I guess my aversion to hayrides turned out to be just a straw man, or maybe I've sublimated a memory of being slapped on a hayride in my youth. All I can remember is that the girls were on one end of the wagon, surrounding Ray Burns, like they ALWAYS did, and most of us guys were on the other.
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