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Stumpage Reports
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Tuesday, May 20, 2003 :::
My Parents: or, The Battle of the Boxes
I don't think I've mentioned my folks much in this blog. They both live here in town and are in their mid-seventies. I usually have dinner with them once a week. My Dad is retired after working at IBM for 30+ years. My Mom has stayed home ever since my older brother was born. They have a condo and Dad volunteers at a listener supported radio station and Mom volunteers at the library.
This is an example of something about them that can either irritate the shit out of me or make me realize how much I love them and how much they've done for me. I'm getting ready to move so they've been saving boxes for me from their respective volunteer-places. I tend to like the liquor boxes and these nice little Staples boxes they've been getting. They're just the right size for books but they're not too heavy when packed. For some reason, Dad just loves the photocopy paper boxes. You know, the big ones that have two stacks of paper reams in them with the nice big lids. I don't care for them, they're heavy as hell when filled with books, hard to tape up, and a pain in the ass to break down.
I was over there last weekend and Dad said "I got some of those good boxes with lids." My Mom called today to find out if I still needed boxes and she told me "Your Dad got some more of those paper boxes with the lids." I went over there tonight to scarf up some boxes, and Dad mentioned his boxes-with-lids four times as I was grabbing the other boxes. For two seconds, I thought about saying "Damnit I'm stressed out as hell trying to find a place to live and move and find a job I don't like these boxes please stop talking about them!" Instead, I paused for a minute, smiled at Dad, and said "Yeah, those are some damn fine boxes." I took five of them and made him happy.
It was really pretty easy. They do a lot for me and don't ask for much in return.
Quote of the Day:
Monday is no different from any other weekday in Jefferson now. The streets are paved now, and the telephone and electric companies are cutting down more and more of the shade trees -- the water oaks, the maples and locusts and elms -- to make room for iron poles bearing clusters of bloated and ghostly and bloodless grapes, and we have a city laundry which makes the rounds on Monday morning, gathering the bundles of clothes into bright-colored, specially-made motor cars: the soiled wearing of a whole week now flees apparitionlike behind alert and irritable electric horns, with a long diminishing noise of rubber and asphalt like tearing silk, and even the Negro women who still take in the white people's washing after the old custom, fetch and deliver it in automobiles.
--- William Faulkner, That Evening Sun, 1931.
::: posted by tom at 12:47 AM
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