As this Ozark boy demonstrates, the lessons learned at FFA never really leave you:
A dispute over kicking turkeys led to a shovel attack in Polk County that has left a man critically injured, authorities said.The Monday assault left Brewster Marsh, 44, unconscious, with "severe cerebral trauma" and unable to breathe on his own. He was in intensive care at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, officials said.
Jimmy D. Eaton, 17, is charged with first-degree assault.
According to a probable cause statement, witnesses said Eaton and Marsh got into an argument about kicking turkeys at 2114 E. 552 Road in Pleasant Hope. It's unclear from the statement who might have been accusing whom of kicking the birds.
Eaton reportedly got mad at Marsh because he called Eaton a baby, Polk County Deputy Bobby McAntire wrote in the statement.
I guess it just stuck in his craw.
If you haven't read O Henry's amusing "Rose of Dixie," check it out at The Literature Network, a website that has lots of classic short stories in an easily legible format.
Afterwards, a little background on the punchline here.
Another of Duane at the Layla sessions in Miami.
The pink guitar strap is not his regular and I don't recall seeing it elsewhere.
Wail on, Skydog!
In the wake of the death of a child, I wish newspapers would declare a moratorium on the perfunctory interview with the school principal. It's unlikely he or she actually knew the kid, it's unlikely most of the students knew the kid, and addressing death as a representative of an entity takes more eloquence than most can muster. Case in point is the tragic death of an 11-year-old Midwest boy who was hit by a truck Saturday night and left to die in a ditch. On Monday the principal expressed faux-grief to the paper:
"The kids are upset, but we're dealing with it the best we can," said Principal Stacy Ray. "As a whole, we're trying to heal."
He's not even buried yet, why on earth would anybody be trying to "heal"?
I'd thought the paid mourners of centuries past who followed the funeral processions of the wealthy and unloved were an odd adjunct to the death rites, but at least they agreed that somebody should be willing to be sad about another person's passing.
So when some little kid on a routine walk home gets the life crushed out of his body and the shoes smacked off of his feet by some worthless hit-and-run driver, I think it merits those who are claiming a connection to him to be willing to feel a little bit sad and to stay that way for at least a few days -- at least until he's in the ground.
Something strange and potentially delicious.
Dee-lightful, but that's obvious from the title.
Duane at the Warehouse, New Orleans, 12-31-70.
Wail on, Skydog!
One police officer dead, one hit in the knee, two nicked and released from the hospital the same day. Luckily Shawn LaBeet, our Miami cop killer, was one piss-poor marksman:
One witness said LaBeet lined up the weapon with cold precision.''He was taking aim,'' said Melvin Benjamin, 31, who lives a few hundred feet south of the home.
[Officer] Wright was shot in the leg about 200 feet from LaBeet's front door, Benjamin said.
Aiming at 60 meters and he hits a knee. He's a disgrace to mad-dog killers everywhere. The Herald of course wasted no time jumping to conclusions about what kind of weapon it was, coming out squarely against it, and demanding legislation to ban it. They must have been sorely vexed by the unfortunately wildly successful Utah mall shooter and his shotgun. Honestly, the officer's not even cold and they're using his death for a long-standing agenda.
One thing is for sure: the manhunt is the most intense police operation going. The Red Cross had to go out there to serve all the people blocked from their homes. Even with all the road blocks and trunk-searching, the killer's flight from justice continued with the aid of his relatives who smuggled him through, and now they're the ones who're looking through steel bars. One of them might be squinting a bit as he does so, as he needed persuasion to be taken into custody.
Discovered by cops to be hiding in a toilet stall, LaBeet ate a lead lunch which disagreed with him, and he shuffled off this mortal coil shortly thereafter. He'll be missed by his children and his poor mother; everybody else, meh, not so much.
I'm saddened by the loss of Officer Somohano. These guys never know what's going to happen when they make a routine traffic stop.
What an odd video this is. There's a guy doing his vocals live, yet there's no on-site audio booth packed with computer software to help him sound as good as he did, say, when he was in a professional recording studio having his voice redistributed and modulated with the state of the art computer software there. He can just, like, sing wherever and it'll sound great. Huh:
"The bear's gonna getcha."
I heard that warning many times growing up, a reminder to alter my behavior to head off a visit from Florida's invisible ursine, the one that comes up behind you and grabs you around the chest if you're outside and not paying attention to him on a hot day.
A tragedy at the park we walk in twice a day:
Minutes into his first cross-country race Monday, 15-year-old Corey McKenzie -- suffering from severe heat exhaustion and possibly disoriented -- tried to cool off by taking a dip in a man-made lake in Davie's Vista View Park, the coroner said Wednesday.That decision, the autopsy concluded, was fatal.
But the medical examiner's report did little to solve the mystery of how the Boyd Anderson High honors student, who lived in Tamarac with his mother, could have wandered off course and drowned, and his body not discovered until the next morning.
No one can figure out how he got so far off course and so far out into the lake. There are no steep drop-offs near or in the man-made lake, so we're puzzled as to how he got in there to the point he wasn't visible, and so sad that the poor kid died.
As for all the warnings, my one experience with EMS was for the bear. Once I'd started feeling bad I got about six steps before the ground rose up and the lights went out. It was 9:00 a.m. and I'd been sitting on a bench in the shade. I guess it was the suit and stockings that did me in.
When I came to I was looking at a sea of concerned faces that instantly vanished. That's probably because the first thing the damsel in distress did upon opening her eyes was puke.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
Another in the series of shots from the Macon Coliseum show.
Wail on, Skydog!
Below the fold, Lowell George tells why he shops at Sears. It's funny his saying bottleneck requires a very particular kind of bottle considering Duane used...well, a cold pill bottle. Lucky Duane, then, coming across the perfect slide while laying helpless in his sickbed:
