Speaking of Coffins ...
From weird birds in the middle of the road at night, to frosted potatoes and golf course coffins, Donnie Johnston has had quite the week.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
The freeze last week nailed my potatoes. But not to worry. They will come back out in time.
Still, it is frustrating to see plants eight inches high one afternoon and find them frozen and withered by noon the next day.
This has happened a number of times before, but I always end up with a good crop. The cold does not affect the roots and leaves will return in a couple of weeks.
One thing though, after the initial plants freeze, the second growth plants seldom bloom. I have no idea why, but that just seems to happen.
The cold (we got down to about 25 degrees) did not hurt my cabbage, onions or peas.
It is uncertain what, if any, damage there was to the peach crop (trees were in full bloom) up in Rappahannock and Madison counties, where the temperature dropped to about 22.
A friend came home the other night and found the bird pictured here standing in her driveway. She had no idea what it was, but it looked interesting, so she took a picture.
We all spent the next hour or two looking through books and the internet trying to figure it out, and we first thought it to be a Yellow Crowned Night Heron. But the top-notch is more indictive of a California quail. At about 15 inches tall, it is much bigger than a quail but smaller than a heron.
Whatever kind of bird it was, it must have been migrating because it was in the middle of the road (maybe its car broke down and it was hitchhiking its way north).
Anyway, the mystery continues. If you have any ideas, email me.
Got a crazy golfing story. I was playing last week over at New Market when I overshot the green and my ball ended up in the loafing shed of an old barn (most golf courses are built on former farms) that was used to store maintenance equipment.
My ball was on the dirt floor about 15 feet inside the loafing shed, but I had a clear shot at the green, so I decided to play it.
As I was getting ready to hit, I looked to my right and there was a coffin. That’s right, a coffin! I yelled to my playing partner, “Hey, there’s a coffin in here!” Being a little hard of hearing, he thought I said “possum” and yelled back, “Is he dead?”
Now I was rolling with laughter and tried to explain while setting up my shot, hoping I would not hit it too high and have it bounce back and knock me in the head. Of course, if it had, a spare (I think) coffin was right there.
I ended up hitting a perfect chip that landed about six feet from the pin. I made the putt and walked away with a bogey, which wasn’t too bad, all things considered.
That was a first. I’ve hit my ball in the woods, behind trees, had one hang up in a tree, been in ponds and creeks and once even had an errant shot lodge on a shed roof. But that was the first time I ever chipped out of a barn with a coffin at my side.
Speaking of coffins, I have some friends who are painters and one day while they were painting the inside of a funeral home, they decided to play a trick on one of their workers.
With the cooperation of the funeral home owner, one of the guys crawled into a casket and pulled the top down. Then they sent their buddy, who was already a bit uneasy about painting in a funeral home, into that room to paint.
You guessed it. Amid a few moans and groans, the top casket began to rise up and within two seconds their buddy was gone. They did not say whether or not he needed a change of clothes after the incident.
Finally, am I the only person who is tired of seeing these “whole body deodorant” commercials?
We’ve come a long way with TV ads, from Dinah Shore in an evening gown telling us to “See the world in a Chevrolet” to a guy spraying deodorant down the front of his pants or a semi-lovely kinda overweight lady rubbing something on her rear end.
Come on, Madison Avenue! Do you think the American public has no class?
Then again, maybe that’s what sells in today’s society.
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