I'll just entertain myself

Just get a cane like the television of Bat Masterson.

Or a bazooka.

My grandfather's papers

A thread on the boards had me reminiscing. When I was a homeless vagabond I never did learn the art of panhandling. Couldn't work up the nerve to approach dozens of strangers. Yet somehow when I breezed into a town there was always a helping hand from hobos and other homeless souls, offering me a stay overnight or showing me where to get work and food. There was a kind of community spirit where generosity was the norm. It was only after I quit hitching and riding trains that life became a struggle.

I love berries. My favorites are boysenberries. Also you can't beat a good strawberry. But around here they pick the strawberries so green that they are hard and flavorless. If you wait to see if they ripen more they go bad. So I quit buying them. One year I bought some strawberry plants to grow my own, but the berries they produced were tiny and not worth the effort. Oh well there plenty of the other kinds.

Our strawberries are wonderful.

Last year I bought a punnet from the New Forest, so sweet and tasty.

We get strawberries from all round the World, but nothing beats the local stuff.

I haven't had a good strawberry in years.

But I came here to share a recipe for sleep. Youtube is rife with videos on every subject, many of which are outright crap. So I looked at a few about sleeping well. One person whom I consider pretty knowledgeable offered what he called a "treat" that actually works. So I did as he suggested. Sliced a banana in half, longways, and froze it. Half hour before bedtime I took it out (gasp). I put cinnamon all along the banana half and ate it. If eating rocks is a treat, that it was. But. I slept somewhat better. Last night I modified the recipe by slicing a banana, but did not freeze it. I put cinnamon on it just as in the video. But I put the other half back on it. I found this recipe more tasty as
well as much easier to consume. For years I've laid awake a while
before sleeping and after two or three hours tossing the rest of the night. Last night I went right to sleep and slept soundly all night long. Definitely worth another try tonight.

I don't know what a boysenberry is. I mean I've read about them and know they're a type of fruit, but I've never seen or ate one.

We're on the other scale temperature wise over here. Citrus fruit doesn't really grow over here, but raspberries and similar fruits like loganberries and tayberries dovery well here.

Our climate is particularly suited to strawberries.

You have to have a handful of boysenberries to appreciate them, after reading this Wikipedia description.
Boysenberry. The boysenberry / ˈbɔɪzənbɛri / is a cross between the European raspberry ( Rubus idaeus ), European blackberry ( Rubus fruticosus ), American dewberry ( Rubus aboriginum ), and loganberry ( Rubus × loganobaccus ). It is a large 8.0-gram (0.28 oz) aggregate fruit, with large seeds and a deep maroon color.

I first discovered these berries before reaching teen age, in my step grandmother's back yard, in Campbell, CA. I swiped a couple and fell in love. Daily I pulled her berries, despite the protests. As an adult, a restauraunt called House of Pies made pies with them. Best pie I ever had. No stores around here sell any.

The dewberry is another I've never seen or tasted.

Apparently the fruit of the cashew nut is delicious, but it doesn't travel so you can only enjoy it where the cashew trees grow.

The supermarket sells us blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and those awful strawberries. So I eat some of the first three every week.

Blackberries are a weed over here, they're so common.

We used to pick wild blackberries around here, but the builders have eliminated any good ones I know of.

They're commonly referred to as brambles, well the plants are anyway.

They sprout up everywhere.

I mistakenly called the local wild ones blackberries. But they are dewberries.

Some dewberries are in my yard, but the lack of sunshine keeps them from being productive. I've been weeding them out.

I saw a post about children and eating on another site. Made me think of a grandson who lived with me for a while. He was a voracious eater of everything - salads, meat, fruit - whatever. He would eat steamed broccoli the way most kids tear into an ice cream cone. Then some ass watching him when he was with his other grandparents said "That 'll put hair on your chest." He wouldn't touch broccoli for a long time because he didn't want a hairy chest.

The banana/cinnamon thing works. Three times in a row I slept well. Going to keep it up indefinitely. There will always be somebody coming along to say, "It doesn't work. I tried it and it doesn't work." No remedy works for every single person that I know of. I'm happy.

The property with the unspeakable trash is still an assault on the senses, but I can tell that somebody stops there in the middle of the night to haul away perhaps one pick up load. I don't see how they can make the thirty day limit working so slow.

I

Batso the Clown had removed his shock of exploded looking red hair on coming into the room. As he crossed from the door to the seat at his makeup table, he kicked off each shoe into the corner. That is where they customarily resided when unworn. He slipped the suspenders off of his shoulders and then he sat to wipe away the monstrous clown makeup that made him so feared by young children and the more credulous adults. Before moving the cloth over his face he stared at his image and smirked, recalling shrieking little children, one of whom babbled, “Clown going to eat me up,” on the way to clamoring into his indulgent father’s arms at today’s performance. Then the monstrous clown rubbed and blotted away the makeup. Behold! Batso’s face was clean and now he was just Elmer Barns, in for the day.

As he left the chair, his stomach was heavy from a recent meal. The food would make the cigar he stuck in his mouth all the more satisfying. Feeling a bit weary, he eased into his recliner and reached for the remote. Scarcely had Elmer clicked the TV on when he heard a commotion out on the porch. Then silence. He believed it was a neighbor’s dogs making the noise, and he listened for more. Sitting still to be sure he heard it right. The commotion began again. They were not dog sounds at all. Those were human feet out there; he became certain of it. At least two sets and maybe more. He awaited the expected knock. Probably neighborhood kids, he decided, after nothing happened. Doggedly chewing the cigar, he began channel surfing.

The images clicked by until a face he recognized caught his eye and he let the device in his hand rest. Onscreen was a broadcast of an old series, but it was better than the news channels. Anything was better than that. He hated news.

Before his ears locked on the dialog, a faint knocking sounded from outside. Well, damn. He pushed himself out of the soft chair and slipped on his jacket, then trod heavily to the door to turn the lock. When he eased it out a crack there was a force from the other side that pushed open the door and bowled him out of the way. A very large man entered his home. It was, in fact, a very large clown, nearly seven feet of clown.

The tall clown went to the center of the room and pivoted on one foot to turn and watch as a really small clown toddled in. The really small clown was followed by an in-between clown as thin as a wafer. And behind him strolled a normal-sized clown with a top hat and a paunch.

Astonished, then outraged at being assaulted, Elmer made fists as he glared at them. He looked the giant clown up and down, at his china blue suit with a lavender flower at the lapel and a face with a red banana nose, wide eyes, and a happy grin. His gaze pivoted to the wafer skinny one with stripy shirt, pants that ballooned over really long red shoes, medium-sized red nose, and long yellow mop-like hair. The next clown had stubble painted on his face and carried a straight cane with a knob on top for a handle. The smallest clown had by now audaciously approached and regarded Elmer with extreme sternness. Elmer looked down at the clown’s big head and babyish body, clothed by an undersized tee shirt and a diaper. He guessed by their demeanor this one had to be the leader.

“Little Dumpling is the name,” the smallest clown said, scowling viciously. “My colleagues are, Cool Hand Bert the Giant Clown, Taffy the Stick, and Major Bulldog (note the jowls).”

Little Dumpling poked Elmer’s knee with a finger. “You are Batso the horrible. We caught your act the other day.”

Elmer’s anger began to soften. “You bought tickets for my act?”

The little clown gave Elmer a further rendition of stink eye. “If you wanted to know what real clowns do, you should have seen us in the circus at Jenner and South Walnut this afternoon. We’re fun. We make people happy.”

“Yeah: Our crazy car and madcap antics,” Taffy gushed.

Those statements roused Elmer’s contempt. He said, “That’s fun? Drive screwy cars? Run in circles and fall down? I happen to know that nobody goes to the circus anymore. Know why? It’s boring. You‘re boring.”

Little Dumpling reached inside his diaper and pulled out some Silly Putty, the color of excrement. He plopped it on Elmer’s shoe and smeared it with his palm. “It’s you,” he said. “People become jaded because yokels like you give clowns a bad reputation. They see a perversion of tradition that brings on condescension and contempt for real clowns. Fear, even.”

The little clown’s harangue had Elmer sneering. “Have you seen movies like The Joker?” he said. “It’s what people expect. You guys are the Brownies of the 21St Century. Nobody even knows what Brownies are anymore. That’s why you are Brownies. Nobody cares anymore. The public wants Batso. Because they love hating clowns.”

“Well,” Bulldog said, waving a big yellow gun, “There’s going to be one less clown to hate, shortly.”

He stood behind Little Dumpling with the gun pointed just below Elmer’s sternum.

“That’s not a gun,” Elmer said. “This is a gun.”

As Elmer’s fingers clenched on the gun handle behind his jacket, Bulldog fired the yellow gun. It shot a tiny syringe into Elmer’s flesh. A stab of pain caused him to say, “Ow.”

He tried his best to pull his gun clear of the holster, which action is hard to execute if one is losing consciousness and falling at the same time.

“I’m going for the bag,” Bert announced, looking down at the fallen ex-clown. “I brought the one that looks like a rolled-up carpet.”

“Good choice,” said Little Dumpling.