Well, dear readers, it's summertime again. Time for outdoor barbecues, trips to the lake and to the beach. Building dams down at the creek. Endless baseball games, and endless games of "army".

Do kids even play army anymore? I mean not on the computer, but outside in the real world. When I was a kid, we'd play army almost every day during the summer. It was the late 1960's, and the Vietnam War was raging, and on the news every night, but my friends and I would always play World War II "USA vs. Japan" or "Germany".

We did have this giant forest tract, that separated two portions of our neighborhood, that we called "Vietnam". It was in "'Nam" where I had my first cigarette, got drunk for the first time, and where the teenagers would "park" to put it politely.

In "Vietnam", there was a big creek where we'd build dams to form a swimming hole, and which we'd blow up a few days later. Also down in those woods was a swampy area and an old boarded up cabin, known to all us kids as "Sam Godfrey's Cabin". A few yards from the cabin was an old stilllhouse and still that had been demolished. We would spend many hours discussing what and who this Sam Godfrey was, and all the rumors that circulated amongst us idiot kids made sure it was an oft discussed subject.

While the reality of the cabin and still filled our little heads, there arose a little prank that the older  boys would play on the younger ones. The older boys would tell the tale of the "Swamp Goblin", a creature that would come out of the swamp at night to eat the neighborhood's pet dogs. The "Swamp Goblin" had been shot many times, and carried the bullet wound scars to prove it, so went the legend. But nothing could stop it. And if that wasn't bad enough, there was also a pterodactyl living down there that would swoop down at night to eat your dog out in your backyard.

As we would get older, and a little wiser, hopefully after only a couple of summers, we'd catch onto the prank and take the older boys' places who were getting too old for such shenanigans and were graduating to taking girls to "Vietnam" to "park". I remember I took a plastic egg that L'eggs pantyhose came in, put a golf ball in the plastic egg and kept in my mom's deep freezer. I'd take that plastic egg out and shake it and the little kids' eyes would be wide open with fear. It was an unhatched pterodactyl I'd tell them. I'd warm up my mom's oven and tell the kids I was gonna incubate that egg and let that bird hatch and get their dogs if they didn't do what I said.

One kid, well it was high time he was catching on to the prank and graduating to the level of prankster from pranked. I told him it was all a big lie to which he exclaimed "No it's not, I saw him trying to get my dog 'Henry' one night last week!". that kid grew up to be a Baptist preacher in Greenville. go figure.

    I hear there's a bill that's been introduced up on Capital Hill, in our nation's capital, that'd be Washington, D.C., that's gonna quadruple, no quintuple, the tax on Grandpa Trundell's elixir. It's just that ol' guvment of ours trying to control us more. And them dadburn politicians know that Grandpa Trundell's elixir is the only thing that'll cure that ol' swine flu, a strain of flu, by the way, created by that ol' guvment just so's them drug companies can sell us a flu shot. And besides making lots of money off of the people dumb enough to get the shot, that ol' guvment is gonna load that shot with thangs that'll help 'em keep track of all our doings. You know they wanna keep an eye on you, with all your big doings.

I'm asking all of the Internet conspiracy people if they really want to get all bent out of shape over something, they should investigate why KFC, which used to be Kentucky FRIED Chicken, has a British CEO and why they're touting broiled chicken. What's this dang world coming to?

Or better yet, all of the Internet detectives should find Cousin Dee for Grandpa, of The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show!

Letters To The Editor

Dear Gazette,

                   Your photos of Emma Roberts have been worthy of journalistic praise. Keep up the good work.

                                                                                      Jim-Bob Mitchell