They were born under a sink. I fixed up a nice bed and everything in the cabinet under the spare sink in my bathroom. Miss Kitty (who had always had her kittens in the wild), was delighted. Not at first, though. She’s peculiar; she was determined to have them in the house, but where she wanted to, not where I had in mind.

I finally convinced her, though, and she finally curled up in her bed last Thursday afternoon and by 10:00 PM she’d had 4 fine kittens.

Since then the whole atmosphere of the house has changed. Miss Kitty and her kittens have brought a feeling of comfort, peace and tranquility to my home. We are all getting along just fine.

© 2010, booshink. All rights reserved.

© 2010, booshink. All rights reserved.

© 2010, booshink. All rights reserved.

Here’s wishing everyone a joyous and peaceful Christmas and a bright and happy new year.

© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.

© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.

© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.

Other guys had AMC 3-in-1 car models. These were neat because you could customize them all different ways and paint them and put on decals and things. They always had empty model boxes with paint, glue, decals, extra parts and stuff in them.

One guy built plastic model airplanes and military models like tanks, half-tracks, and jeeps and had them all around in his room. He even had planes hanging from the ceiling on strings in authentic attitudes of flight.

Another guy knew how to make gunpowder and he made homemade guns and miniature cannons that would shoot. One was a replica of a Napoleonic era cannon. We’d build dirt fortifications and put army men in them and shoot them with the cannons. This guy’s dad was a Marine and the guy was kind of like a Marine, too, and he really wasn’t one of those that had a lot of stuff but I thought I’d mention him anyway.

The guys that really had a lot of stuff would always have their own rooms and their rooms would be full of their stuff. A lot of them even had sort of a theme to their rooms and the stuff would be a part of the theme: you know, one guy with a monster theme, another with a car theme, another with planes. They usually had a lot of neat stuff in their drawers, too.

My brother and I didn’t really have a lot of stuff like that; not that we were poor or anything – we were military kids – but we just didn’t: usually a bed and somewhere to put our clothes and maybe an Ouija board and a Monopoly game. We didn’t decorate our room with themes.

Some of the guys back then had crystal radios and a few even had transistor sets. The crystal sets were neat because the transistors and crystal and wires and stuff were just on a board and you would try to tune a station and it would scratch and whistle and sometimes tune in to something that sounded like it was coming from outer space. Cool.

We were all military kids. That’s how we grew up. Some of the guys had been to Okinawa or somewhere in the Orient and had those silk looking jackets with dragons and stuff on them and their parents had a lot of Oriental stuff in their houses.

We played guns a lot: you know, army. Even with this some of the guys had all kinds of army stuff: web belts with canteens and ammo pouches, and those toy rifles that were replicas of the M1 and had wooden stocks and bolt actions and everything. My brother and I usually just shot with our fingers. I killed a lot of guys that way.

We used to play dieing: you know, see who could get shot and die the best. Once I got shot and died and fell out of a tree. The guys all thought I was a good die-er. My favorite was to charge a machine gun nest and get cut down.

But, anyway, back to stuff. Stuff is important. Most people have a lot of it. Some people will even kill or at least fight real hard to protect their stuff. I have a lot of stuff myself, now. Mostly books and stacks of paper. Sometimes I spend time organizing my books and moving and re-stacking my stacks of paper. When that’s done I sometimes feel that I’ve accomplished something. Once in a while I’ll go through the stacks and try to throw some stuff away, but most times I don’t.

Stuff can get in the way, too, such as when you’re dusting, vacuuming, or cutting the grass. It can be a problem as well, such as deciding what to take if you have to evacuate your home or something. But the guys on Wall Street, especially, are really into it, in-the-way or not. See, the more stuff we buy the higher the stocks go and the more stuff they (the guys on Wall Street) can buy. Stuff really makes the world go ’round.

It’s almost like everywhere you look is stuff. Everywhere. Especially in, say, a Wal Mart or something. There’s a lot of stuff in a Wal Mart. Sometimes it’s hard to see other things for all the stuff.

Yeah, a lot of the guys I knew when I was a kid had a lot of stuff; heck, they probably still do. Anyway, I didn’t have a lot of girl friends back then, but I would like to have seen what kind of stuff they had.

© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.

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© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.

Something about that bothered me. See, Sparky’s is the name of the place, so “Sparky’s Got It All” just didn’t sound right. I wasn’t sure whether that meant that Sparky’s (Has) Got It All or that Sparky’s Has Acquired It All. In all fairness I assume and am reasonably confident that the saying “Sparky’s Got It All” simply means that there is an entity called Sparky and he/she has a lot of stuff and that the writer of the ad is not too concerned with precise grammar. I decided that the next time I went by there I would stop and see if Sparky’s had or had acquired it all.

Here’s what I discovered:

• Sparky’s is a typical beach-type souvenir shop.
• Sparky’s has a lot of stuff.
• Sparky’s doesn’t have it all.
• Sparky’s doesn’t appear to have acquired it all.

Anyway, here’s some of the stuff that Sparky’s has:

• Not-very-good, over-priced food;
• Tee shirts (mostly with South Carolina, beach or Harley Davidson stuff on them);
• Sea shells;
• Moccasins and flip flops;
• Fireworks;
• Ashtrays, little glass globes with stuff that looks like snow inside, shot glasses and other fairly useless articles with South Carolina, beach or Harley Davidson stuff on them;
• Some cute summer girls working there.

Here’s some of the stuff Sparky’s doesn’t have:

• Ad writers with a fine sense of grammar or semantics;
• Fly fishing equipment;
• Classical guitar strings;
• Marionettes;
• Scuba gear;
• Work clothes;
• A set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica;
• A prayer or meditation chamber.

Well, there you have it. Next time you’re down that way stop in and check it out. You might even see Sparky.

© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.

And here are the lyrics:

We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale.

She said, ‘There is no reason
and the truth is plain to see’
But I wandered through my playing cards
and would not let her be
one of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might have just as well’ve been closed.

© 2009, booshink. All rights reserved.