Spring time is excellent for writing, so do it

Spring is a wonderful time of year as we tend to become one people, leaning a lot more towards unum than pluribus. The dogwood trees explode with reds and whites and suddenly we feel magnanimous and artistic and have a desire to bask in the glow of photosynthesis and gather our family together, smile, hold hands and run uphill to a huge green meadow and twirl around and around with our arms outstretched and sing “The hills are alive, with the sound of muuusic!”

Or something like that.

Here in the south spring comes after Mothers day and southern boys throw tackle gear in the back of the pickup truck and take their mothers fishing. You both sit on the creek bank passing around a plug of black chewing tobacco, your mother takes a big bite and begins to talk about the years when she was a show girl in Vegas before she met your father, about fantastic men she met in their tuxedos driving fancy Stutz Bearcats, how they carried swollen rolls of fifties and loved to spend them and how she met Mel Torme and while they were at dinner one night she said she loved Christmas and chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Suddenly Mel looked like he had been hit in the head with a ball-peen hammer, said something about a great line for a song and ran out of the restaurant hollering for a piano and left your mother holding a tab for $63.78.

Yes, I admit it is quite a shock to hear about your mother’s wild and rascally years--- but then everyone has had them. Life isn’t just for men, so get over it buddy boy.

This time of year everyone becomes a bit dizzy with an urge to change their lives. I, for example, am tempted to grow a goatee, wear a red beret and change my name to Jacque L’Hudson but I probably won’t do it-- I’m just saying.

In spring a person’s thoughts naturally turn to what you would rather be doing with your life other than what you are doing now and according to my email everybody wants to be a Writer or an Artist. Winning the lottery is a dim hope, becoming a reality TV star is a wispy fantasy but the desire to write novels seems to be on the mind of about seventy percent of the people and the others want to write poetry.

And you thought you were the only one? Ha! You are just one in a million. The reason the economy is tanking is because no one wants to pick cotton, tote a barge or lift a bale. We’d rather be moody and self-absorbed in an intellectual way.

Your mailman wants to be a writer ( I dropped the stamps, took her in my arms and from out of nowhere her Doberman bit my….) and this does not improve postal service.

Your plumber wants to be artistic and tap dance so he does a Buffalo shuffle up your driveway, spins and hands you an invitation to his recital and says “toilet clogged again?” So you go to his recital and try to avoid saying stupid things like “That number flowed nicely!” or “So, you clog too?”

I really did go fishing with my mother one time. She reads my column and no doubt will take exception to my artistic license about her chewing tobacco, Mel Torme and Vegas (I love fiction). She may write a rebuttal or put it in a poem but that’s okay, it’s spring—she can get in line and write with the rest of us.