Looking back through the past 52 issues of The Scott County Times at the things that happened in 2022, the things that didn’t happen in 2022, and the things that could have happened, should have happened, or that we wished would have happened in 2022, including the topics covered in this space, it occurred to me that there are a whole lot fewer columns that will flow from deep inside my head, and out the tips of my fingers, in the future than have already done so over the past 38 years.
That is simply a fact. A scientific fact. That’s just life!
Sometimes subject matter is difficult to summon up, and then at other times it bolts from me like lighting from a dark summer rain cloud. That’s just the brain. The way the brain works.
Some of the topics we pondered here over the past year had a familiar ring. They are constants year after year, after year. Litter bugs. Trashy, trashy litter bugs. “It is a terrible, nasty, trashy habit,” was the headline on January 11, 2022. “Trash a big problem in Forest,” on March 2.
Another popular subject, it seems, was dogs, pet dogs, family dogs, old dogs, new dogs, stray dogs and poor, old, Snot, the ever so friendly Blue Heeler, tossed into our driveway with a massive gash in the side of her head.
To whomever it was that thought throwing the old girl out was the best thing to do, I suppose you were correct. It was the best thing to do for her and she is over the moon about it now. Especially when her mom, my wife Danny, is scratching her belly with a back scratcher.
She has also come back to her senses somewhat — I guess is the right way to put it — and now enjoys showing us how good of a cow rounder upper she is every day when we drive up after work.
She greets us at our vehicles, slings a little snot around, snorts a good bit, and heads to the pasture 90-to-nothing, looking back and grinning as if to say “look what I can do, look what I can do.” So, yes, you did the best thing for her.
I would also be amiss if I didn’t mention, by name, the daughter, and her dog. The two of them were the subject the first of the year, the middle of the year, and in the end near the end of the year. Here’s to Rachel-Johanna and Lady too.
Folks will tell you — have told me for nearly 40 years — when you can’t think of something to write about, write about children and/or dogs. Everyone likes to read about children and/or dogs, so, I reckon, folks have had some things they liked to read about here as they turned to this page last year.
But likewise, there is the bad, the cruel, the evil.
Killings, murders, mass shootings...unfortunately those all made the editorial page in 2022 as, it seems, they have every year for years now. It just used to not be like that. It should not be like that.
My fear for 2023, though, is that you will be reading my opinions, my thoughts, my questions on the same in the coming months. I wish that were not the case. I hope and pray that will not be the case.
Weather extremes? Oh yeah!
You know we’ve had them this year from beginning to end. Hot when it is not supposed to be hot — like right now — freezing when it isn’t supposed to be freezing, and bitter, bitter cold just in time for Christmas like it was last week.
Muddy roads, dusty roads, flooded roads, especially the road that leads to home, Pine Grove Road. It has seen every extreme including, and probably the most easily fixed problem that will never be fixed, the trashy trash throwers that obviously have no soul!
And finally, equally as difficult to swallow as murders, and shootings, and mass killings, is the COVID-19 pandemic that just keeps on going, and going, and going. It. Just. Needs. To. Go. Away.
True today, as it was in the headline of this space on February 16, 2022, I. Hate. COVID. Always have, always will.
So, wrapping up so I can tune into Mississippi State playing in one of, what has become in modern day, “really weird named bowl games” I’ll begin right now today thinking about what the future will hold for these tired old fingers and their ability to conjure up something from this tired old brain.
We’ll find out next week.
A hint, maybe, perhaps, I hope at this writing 15 minutes before kickoff, a bowl win for the Bulldogs. That too is a topic that frequently finds its way out of that dark spot hidden in the middle of my mind.
Happy New Year. Cheers and Hail State!
