Watch Out For The Bear !

The wind is howling up here on the ridge with gusts up to 57 mph. Our house is moaning with each gust.
I can remember when I was a kid, I was told the moaning were the voices of the dead trying to speak.
There are times I think my folks just liked to scare the crap out of us. Can you imagine being sent off to bed with dead people screaming at your window! Or if you had been bad that day, the Devil was going to come out from under your bed and snatch you up, and then there was the bear hiding in the closet for really bad offences! When you are six or seven years old you would believe most anything your folks told you. Well, I survived the dead screaming, the Devil, and the bear in the closet somehow!
The family tradition died when we had our own children, no reading Grimm's Fairy Tales at bedtime for them. Hansel and Gretel were for daytime reading only!
The funeral home was another matter. There were times when we would have to call in an electrician or plumber. Game on! I would watch them work and strike up a conversation and then "Shush, did you hear that?" and then slowly leave them. I had planted the seed in their mind that something was there. It was amazing how quickly the work would get done and they were out of there! People, we knew were generally just spooked out about coming to a funeral home. There are a lot of stories over the years that I could share. I still laugh about them.
So the wind is howling, I hear the voices and laugh!
Watch out for the bear!

Restaurants Banning Kids

Now here's a new twist on things! Many of the restaurants in the Metro-Nashville area are banning small children in their establishments. Being the old geezer that I am, I'm all for it!
It's like being stuck on a plane for a few hours with some kid screaming and crying for the duration of the flight, same is true when you are paying premium bucks to eat out, and some little urchin throws a dinner roll at you from across the restaurant, upset because he/she has to eat their pea's!
I'm not anti-child, raised two of them myself, but when we did go to a restaurant to eat, they knew that the old man went by the adage that, children are to be seen and not heard! Now, that was a long time ago and times have changed, now days, the kids are running the show and the parents are frazzled because they just can't figure out what it will take to please little Johnny!
We recently went out to eat at just an average restaurant. Next to us was a young man of about eight, dining out with his parents. The kid rudely treated the server like a galley slave, demanding his meal be served quickly! Then layed his head on the table, playing with his silver ware. Once his food was served,  he said  he didn't like it and refused to eat a bite! His parents just went along with it, like the kid was some kind of young prince. It was frustrating to watch, but I blame the parents for not teaching their kid some basic manners, or maybe he had just completed the "Redneck In Training" program, and we are just behind the times!
So, Metro-Nashville, put that sign on the door! "No children under 10 years allowed." Fine with me!