Gone with the Wind... Almost

So, what did I do on Saturday, August 4th? Well, lemme tell ya...

I recently had some car problems, but I had to travel from my town of Webster to Oxford, the town next to it. (Oxford's where I grew up.) It was raining very lightly on the morning of the fourth, so I grabbed an umbrella and left the house around 9:30 a.m. I stopped at an ATM, withdrew $20, and then walked to 7-Eleven to break the twenty for bus fare.

The bus pulled up right as I left the store. (The bus stop is about 50-60 feet from 7-Eleven.) I boarded the bus, and the driver said "How are you?" "Wet!" I replied, "Despite the umbrella!" She said "There's a tornado warning." I said "That's all we need."

I sat down near the front of the bus. Two more people got on. One of them strapped a bicycle to the rack on the front of the bus.

Suddenly, the wind increased tremendously. So did the rain. The bus was rocking back and forth.

A large tree next to the area where people stand or sit to wait for the bus snapped in half like a matchstick.

A very old photo of the corner of Davis Street and Main Street in Webster. That big tree was

the first one to fall. That concrete pillar in the middle of the photo is where the bus was parked.

Right after that, a second tree broke and fell. Luckily, the wind pushed the trees away from us, toward the railroad tracks and 7-Eleven, and not toward us. Two trees landed partially on the tracks, but not even in 7-Eleven's parking lot.

One of the passengers said she could see the actual tornado, but the direction in which I was seated didn't allow me to see it. The driver was freaking out a bit, and someone said a little girl in the back of the bus was, too.

My friend John texted me at around 10 a.m. to tell me there was a tornado warning in effect for Webster. I replied "I'm in it." And if I could have texted "in" in italics, I would have!

I just looked at all the huge windows in the bus and thought, Well, we're f***ed, but I was wrong. The three-story brick building on the other side of the street the bus was parked on shielded us from the brunt of the storm.

I didn't even have time to get nervous. The whole thing was over in a couple of minutes. Not far from us, within our line of vision, a couple of buildings had sustained some extensive damage.

The Mobil station across from 7-Eleven lost its roof (shown below), as did a dance studio a few hundred feet further down the road (not shown below).

The town razed two buildings in record time. They were gone well before midnight. (The two broken trees at the bus stop are also gone.)

And hey, remember the Friendly's Restaurant I showed y'all in my "Keeping It Short" post a few days ago? Well, the sign at the entrance to that little plaza currently looks like this:

And by the way... When the bus finally left the bus stop, the bicycle was still strapped to the front!

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P.S. ~~ I want to give a shout-out to someone I've mentioned on this blog before, namely the rhyming guy named Pat Hatt -- and yes, that's his real name -- the author of the It's Rhyme Time blog, as well as plenty of books! Recently (last Wednesday) Pat did a post called "A Silver Showing As The Whoopdis Keep Growing!" This is part of a month-long series where Pat is basing posts on various comments he's received on his blog over the years. Each day he devotes an entire post to a different follower of his blog, and Wednesday, it was my turn! So check it out, including the comments below it. Lots of nice comments about Yours Truly and my own skewed slant on things.

Thanks for your time.

A Whole Bunch of "Short Shorts"

1. Jay Thomas, 1948-2017, R.I.P.

Jay Thomas, Emmy-winning actor and radio personality, has died at the age of sixty-nine from cancer. I wasn't familiar with much of Jay Thomas' work. I'd seen him play Eddie LeBec on Cheers, but that was about it. Oh, and one other thing. I was on YouTube a long time ago and came across Jay telling a wonderful anecdote to David Letterman about the time Jay met Clayton Moore, better known to the world at large as The Lone Ranger. What I did not know, having not watched Letterman regularly since his NBC days, was that Dave had Jay on his show every year at Christmastime to tell that same story. Being a big fan of TLR and Mr. Moore in particular, I absolutely love it... so here it is! This is the 2009 retelling.

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2. LARRY STORCH IS ALIVE AND WELL!

At least, as of today. Probably best-known as Corporal Randolph Agarn in the 1965-1967 TV show F Troop, he's ninety-four and by all reports, is going strong. Just sayin'. I was watching him the other night, guest-starring on one of the late 1970s C.P.O. Sharkey episodes -- that's Don Rickles' most successful TV show -- that I have on DVD.

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3. Is My Star Rising? No?

Hey, guess what! I was recently the subject of a post on someone else's blog, and I'm not even dead yet! The blog in question is none other than Pat Hatt's It's Rhyme Time, where Pat (pictured above, that handsome devil) rhymes, and rhymes, and rhymes... all the time! Here is the link to the article itself. Thanks for the recognition, Pat!

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4. More Frequent Grammar Goofs!

Three errors I've been seeing a lot of lately are people writing "and" when they mean "an," "you" when they mean "your," and "the" when they mean "they." These aren't really grammatical errors, they're typos, I guess... but why on earth are they so damned common lately?

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5. As Long As We're Showcasing YouTube Videos Related to Dead People...

Here's a video related to the late Jerry Lewis. Not of or by Jerry Lewis, but inspired by Jerry Lewis.

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6. Doobie, Doobie, Doo...

The other day I overheard two guys talking about smoking a "doob. In case you are one of the remaining dozen people on the planet who doesn't know what that means, a "doob" (or "doobie") is a marijuana cigarette, or "joint." (The term is where the name for the Doobie Brothers originated, of course.). I really hate those terms! For that matter, I also hate it when people call their loved ones "boo" or "boo boo," and when people refer to someone's derrière as a "booty." Why? Well, not because any of them are improper grammar. Nope, I hate those terms just because they sound stupid and as you all know, I like to kvetch anyway.

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7. Just Curious

Whenever I read an article talking about someone's tweet (or tweets) on Twitter, the article relates the entire text of the tweet, and then reprints the tweet as well. Why? Isn't that rather redundant? Maybe it's to "prove" that the "tweeter" actually "said" that? If so, why tell us about it in the text of the flamin' article, too?

What would this world do without me to point out this shit?

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8. Another Reason I Didn't Marry My Second Fiancée (Number Two in What Will Probably Be a Long, Ongoing Series...)

(For the first reason, click here.)

Ever get a Christmas card or birthday card from someone who has all the different family members sign the card, and then adds the "signature" of their pets as well? Or maybe you do that when you send cards? Well, I myself don't do it, when I send cards at all, but I think it's a cute and harmless practice.

But... Would you do that when sending a sympathy card?!? That's a rather insensitive way of trivializing someone's deep loss, don'tcha think?

Well. Guess why that's discussed in a Short Short entitled "Another Reason I Didn't Marry My Second Fiancée!"

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Thanks for your time.

The Grammar Nazi

Pat Hatt and his cat Orlin*, of It's Rhymetime fame, have called me a "Grammar Nazi."


(*Don't ask. I mean, what kind of nut would ever make the claim that one or more of his blog posts were written by a cat, right? Heh.)

Well, it's true that I'll occasionally make wisecrack comments about spelling errors, typos, grammatical glitches, and the like, but I only do it once in a while. If I were to imperiously correct every "mistake" I see on blogs, and on the internet in general, I'd sleep a lot less than I do already... and I'd be a lot less popular!

Admittedly, I used to be much worse... like, in my high school days. I'll quote here from "My Island," a lengthy (and all-true) storyline published on my old David'Z RantZ blog:

[Patty] was remarkably tolerant of my irritating habit of correcting her (and others). I say "remarkably" because for the most part, Patty wasn't all that tolerant of anyone's overbearing traits. But don't get me wrong, being tolerant didn't mean that she was totally accepting of my constant corrections. In fact, after she'd sent enough good-natured insults my way in return, I broke the habit. By that time, however, Patty had begun calling me by the nickname of "Professor." In later years, she only used it occasionally; she resurrected the name whenever she needed advice, answers to trivia questions, etc.

Anyway, fellow babies, in Pat's (and Orlin's) honor, I decided to retroactively add a "Grammar Nazi" label to any and all of my posts here on The Lair of the Silver Fox which talk about grammatical errors, spelling snafus, and virtually anything else related to the complexities of the English language! In fact, I did the same thing with the applicable posts on my old, retired David'Z RantZ blog!

So... If you're ever feeling masochistic enough to O.D. on all of them, the "Foxyblog" Grammar Nazi posts are all here (including this one), and the David'Z RantZ Grammar Nazi posts are all here!

And finally, although I can't embed it on this page, here is a link to a short YouTube video about Grammar Nazis... cuz I'm not the only one!

Thanks for your time.