Did You Know...

Did you know that in Nov 1954 Elvis signed a contract to appear on the Louisiana Hayride every Saturday night for a year.
He was paid $18 a show and Scotty Moore-guitar and Bill Black-bass were paid $12

Did you know that when ElStud (my other half) went to see Elvis in Lubbock TX in 1955, the ticket for a decent seat was $2.50? (Our granddaughter received a ticket to the Jonas Brothers in Denver next month as a graduation present - $87.)

W O W

Do yall know what a "Morton's Toe" is?

A toe that touches salt?

Yup. It's something I've lived with my whole life. Can making a good fit with certain styles of shoes a real pain, but otherwise no big deal.

There is an NPR show out of NC called "The Story." Fascinating interviews with people with interesting stories to tell. There was a very witty woman on today offering her contribution to an ongoing discussion about "My first summer job." She was years ago, a "toe checker" at a swimming pool, inspecting the feet of female swimmers at a pool. She never quite had it explained to her what she was looking for.
Years later she was at a picnic and ran into a friend of a friend who was wearing flip-flops. The toe-checker recognized some other factor (the woman's laugh?)
but couldn't resist asking if the lady frequented that pool. Yes, and the story teller said "I recognized your Morton's toe."
Which is---an extremely long toe next to the big toe.

Well, it doesn't have to be an extremely long toe to be a Morton's toe--mine isn't--it just has to be longer than the big toe. I suppose somebody who had an especially prominent one would be memorable to a toe checker though.

I retract the "extremely" word. That was wrong.
My big toes and the next ones are the same length.

I guess I have Morton's Toe, then. Two of them, actually.

I never knew there was a term for it.

Yep, there is. And though it isn't a highly unusual condition, only some of us special people have it. The run-of-the-mill ordinary people, like Johnboy, just have to put up with being among the unremarkable majority.

According to the one source I checked, 10% of the world-wide population has this (ha, ha) "disorder" (their choice of a word; not mine).
I am told by my employees that we should expect a bunch of summer school students from UVA in the next few days; cell phones glued to their ears and wearing flip flops. I will try to look, as surreptitiously as I can, at toes.
Why do I have a premonition I may up in jail?

Naw. Foot fetishes might be a bit kinky, but they aren't illegal.

17 miles south of Cville, near the town of Scottsville, is the Hatton Ferry. It is, I hear, the only remaining hand powered ferry in the US; two people pushing long poles into the riverbed, it crosses 220 yards of the James River. It can carry something like six cars and a couple of dozen pedestrians.
For a century or two it was a critical link, connecting river, rail, road and a canal from one farming area on the north to shipping on the south without having to make a circuitous 15 mile trek to end up a mere 220 yards away.
The state highway dept cut all funding for the operation this Spring. The County kicked in $5K to get it through the tourist season. A loan until private donors can raise $21K a year to keep it going.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic area, particularly in the rural, mountainous area, we have ticks. Mow the lawn, work in the garden, go hiking. We need to check for ticks afterwards. Tiny little blood-sucking b*stards that can, according to research I read about today, leave antibodies in humans that will make those folks allergic to red meat. The allergy is manifested by something like hives or maybe by a spike in blood pressure.
Did yall know that?

Are ticks active in November? Actually, the better question is, when are ticks most active?

Summer. Warm, humid weather. First frost kills them off.
The part of the story that really caught my eye was a person's inability to eat beef, pork or lamb without a reaction. Something about a kind of sugar in those meats that gets in a fight with the antibodies left behind by a tick bite.

My wife and I have plans to travel to Philadelphia in November, and you had me worried for a bit. I have traveled the east coast of the US during warmer climes, and that was never one of my worries; tick bites are rarely heard about in Northern California.

Yeh. A friend got rocky mountain spotted fever, which if I remember correctly is tick borne and so is Lymes, and a bunch of other diseases.

If an ant could see, how far could it see?