A Brief Note On The Ornery Old Fart

What if wishes were not the beginning of dreams?

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Sam, Tina, Xzavier, Kairi, and Kiana for being good grandkids. Thanks to my brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews for allowing me to stay crazy. Thanks to Grandma for giving Grandpa the time to lose his mind and putting her special touches on the process. And a special thank you to everybody who said that I belong in a nut house, and didn’t turn me in!

Thank you to the meticulous copyeditor Lucia Zimmitti of manuscriptrx.com.

No less of a thank you to the gifted cover artist Duncan Long of duncanlong.com.

Grandpa aka Uncle Tom aka Oldman

And of course, the Ornery Old Fart

P.S. A special thanks to Miller Lite®

Introduction

In early childhood, a psychotic

The snowball got bigger and bigger until it growed into a snowball too big for the earth to hold.

The snowball hung from the bottom of the earth by an icicle, with Naqi hanging under it in quite a pickle.

Naqi looked down her nose past her purple fingers and boots.

She saw the stars and said,

“I want my old boots!”

Tommy-Tommy Couldn’t Hop

This is a story about Tommy the un-terrible. Tommy was afraid of anything that had the slightest notion of motion. Tommy has something that doesn’t show and it’s called “vertigo.” This is what happened one day before preschool when Tommy was stuck at the gutter, on the curb, across from the school.

A small stream of water flows.

A puddle, at his feet, grows.

The bright morning sun was glistening off of the dripping leaves. The morning’s bewildering shower was over, but Tommy was still weak in the knees.

Tommy glimpsed left and right, afraid he would die from fright. He didn’t know how to go, so afraid of his vertigo. He had to make his own way to preschool this preschool day. Tommy lived a block from school, with only one street to cross. He begged to walk by himself, and to fail would be a terrible loss.

Ronnie had called him a Momma’s

To him hypertension was the norm.

Bewares and dares were got through, and all so old-hat that they were worn to the scorn.

Clair lipped off to the Teacher, and by the lip he was dragged.

To the corner with a screecher that even made his ears sag.

“Ouch!”

The Teacher left the room to go outside. She had to cuss, and that was something she had to hide. The Teacher wanted to spit and had only the classroom floor. So once she was outside, she flung one for a new top score!

It wasn’t that the Teacher didn’t love children. She was at the end of her rope and imagining their little necks in the proverbial noose. So she let off some steam, all the way to her caboose!

Naqi took advantage of the situation in a payback of long overdue duration. She crept up behind Clair and poked him in the derriere. When Clair turned in anger, he didn’t see Naqi hiding behind the mirror. “Glare this!” Naqi said with her lips making the sound of a not-so-sweet kiss.

Clair squinted in a glare unrelented and out of the side of his eyes he saw his insides and realized his turmoil was from within and oozing out.

His lungs were sagging and he couldn’t shout; he was melting into a blend and the world melted with