The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

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Spooks and Snow

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Night before last, the hail pinging on the window above my bed called me to come and look from the back door. The tiny hailstones heaped upon the back deck, then blew away, leaving slippery ice in the morning, to the consternation of the dogs.

In my late-afternoon errands, the overcast sky drifted high above with stories of clouds in shapes and shadows, and the mountain gray with a thin dash of snow, just from the night.

Oh, Eeeeek!

Tonight, goblins will come. Young Ron and Katie across the street have a hierarchy of carved pumpkins, a lighted cornstalk path through scattered hay and huge purple spiderwebs to their door. Looks like a gremlin-grabber to me.

Adrienne and I, newly among the living, cannot rise to carve our pumpkins, so Adrienne has dressed one in a cowboy hat and the other in a bandanna, with twinkly lights. We plan to put the goodies outside in a bowl, with a sign saying “Take only two. Boo!”

Us? We’re going to hide, deep inside the darkened house, and watch a really silly movie.

Categories // Looking Back

The Ashford Agency

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

San Francisco, 1989: Perhaps it was reading all those mysteries, late night and eyes gritty, and the sounds of the night outside. Maybe the accident of meeting Fay, in that seedy part of town just off the waterfront. Maybe I just worried about getting fat, and thought if I was a Private Eye, I’d be the Thin Man.

Whatever it was, I became a Private Investigator.

For a while.

Logo for The Ashford Agency

The business card of The Ashford Agency referred to me as “Dr. Detecto”. Adrienne kept calling me Defecto, but that was just her tough-girl style. The card had a picture of a dragon circling a castle spire beneath the moon, and a story …

“During the middle ages, a monastic order known as the Cistercians became prominant, spreading throughout Europe and the English islands. The Cistercians had an organization which allowed local control of each monastery, but an annual convocation of all abbots that they might remain united in theology and purpose.

“The order was known to be hard-working and honest, stressing simplicity and truth, and they preserved many manuscripts which were already ancient. One such obscure manuscript appears to be an account of a Dragon which lived nearby and spoke with men, although the time of this Dragon was already long past by the time of the Cistercian manuscript, which is circa 1272 A.D. —

“In Ashford Tower upon the plain,
In Time of Auld did Dragon dwell.
In knowledge were He Deep and Fair,
In Visage Dark and Fell.

“The Ashford Agency has chosen this ancient image as a symbol of the eternal search for truth and man’s endless struggle to pierce the veil of illusion, to perceive life as it is, and the ultimate victory of love and hope over the forces of evil.

“The Ashford Agency is licensed by the State of California Department of Consumer Affairs, Bureau of Collections and Investigations.”

Isn’t that just swell?

Alas, my agency and my P.I. career fell quite short of these lofty goals, though I did manage to investigate a traffic accident, serve papers on a couple of guys, wear a disguise, and attempt to tail somebody to their hideout in order to find where they’d hidden the assets. I also got a job to recover funds from some scam boys, but scam boys were way better than me, and remained unfound.

The job did give me a reason to grow a moustache, and to buy a grey surveillance vehicle and a Minolta camera with fancy lenses. The camera turned out to be great for high-speed shots of skateboarders, and for close-ups of the roses in Golden Gate Park in the Spring.

Fay, who helped me set up The Ashford Agency, on the other hand, eventually uncovered an extensive murder ring among a family of gypsies. Honest to gosh, she actually did.

But that’s another story.

Categories // adventure, All, bidness, Looking Back

Cat Haiku

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Online, November 13, 2003: You like haiku? Sure, you do! Everybody likes haiku!

Here are three from the “Cat Haiku” page —

Wanna go outside.
Oh, no! Help! I got outside!
Let me back inside!

Humans are so strange.
Mine lies still in the bed, then screams!
My claws aren’t that sharp …

Oh no! Big One
has been trapped by newspaper.
Cat to the rescue!

Find more on the “Pet Humor” site.

Categories // Looking Back

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Life can look kind of tough sometimes. But maybe it’s how we go about looking …

Daigu Riokan (“Great Goof” or “Big Fool”) became enlightened and decided not to take students but to live as a hermit and subsist on alms. Consequently, he was very, very poor.

However, that’s not the end of the story.

One day a thief broke into his hut, and finding nothing worth stealing, trashed the place. Finding this, Daigu Riokan wrote this haiku —

The thief left it there,
there in the window —
the shining moon.

Categories // Looking Back

Gonout. Backson.

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Out of my body, back soon. Please leave a message. WCB.

Categories // Looking Back

Weak with Flu and Laughter

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

The radio said there would be a big flu season. So far, around our house, this appears credible.

Adrienne got irritable and punky Sunday, when we drove to Ashland, Oregon, the home of the annual Shakespeare Festival, about an hour north of here. There’s a pretty University there, and a quainte downtowne with precious shoppes, where after a long wait we got a mediocre breakfast at high prices. However, the service was only so-so.

Feeling mongo punky

When we got home, she retired early, and Monday was mongo ill. Suspecting the worst, I went shopping. We got the TheraFlu, the Advil Day and Night, the Alka-Seltzer Deeply-Serious Cold tablits, and the ever-handy coca-cola and saltine crackers. A good thing, too.

In the early evening, I fell out too, and slept through the night, all the next day, and the next night. On the mend now, ate rice and a kipper, and seeing as how I was feeling more chipper, asked dear Adrienne did she want a kipper.

She groaned, “No kipper. No skipper. No dipper.”

See, incomprehensible! She’s feeling better!

Categories // Looking Back

The Shirtless Shirt

03.13.2011 by bloggard // 3 Comments

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: Yesterday I received a comment on the “Sleuthhound Club” post from Mary Lefevre, who would have been the youngest member of the club, but she was only a toddler at that time. We sleuthhounders attempted to play a trick on her and on John Burkman, regarding a rocket-ship, which we’d read about in a Little Lulu comic book.

The deal was that Lulu and Annie came along and found the Boyz Club boys — I think that it was after the Boyz Club in Little Lulu comics that several rap groups are named — and the boys were constructing a rocket ship to fly to the moon.

Later, when the girls had gone, the boys hid the wooden rocket ship, and sprinkled some ashes on the ground to simulate the flames of departure.

Annie and Little Lulu were quite surprised upon their return to see these ashes, and concluded that the boys had indeed flown to the moon.

As Annie and Little Lulu walked around their neighborhood, the boys, in hiding, lofted bottles containing messages. These bottles, apparently falling from the sky, told some lurid tale of moon-monsters.

We of the Sleuthhound club thought this plot ready-made to trick Mary and John. After all, they were very young.

We were actually too lazy to build an entire rocket ship, so we arranged some chairs and boxes, and then had Donny bring the two of them to show them the rocket ship. After they’d been led away, we deconstructed the so-called rocket ship, and sprinkled flour on the ground, not having any ashes. Then we hid and awaited the return of Mary and John.

While we’re awaiting the return of the children, Mary — in her email today, now grown, now married with another name, and teaching in our home town for many years — reminded me that as a child I’d invented the “shirtless shirt”. The shirtless shirt consisted of a collar and cuffs, with nothing in between. Perhaps this was summer garb; perhaps something kinky in the making. I cannot remember. But it does make me pause, thinking about the things that mothers must endure, raising the young.

Mary’s mother, Elwyn, was from the Bragg family; that entire family was saturated with a marvelous sense of humor. Elwyn, now 88, still lives in our hometown, and leads an active life. A marvelous woman, she never seemed to be thrown off by anything. Elwyn’s brother, John Bragg, the town pharmacist, claimed to play a three-stringed banjo. The three strings were: bass, treble, and reverse.

Where were we?

Oh, yes, waiting for toddler Mary and young John to return.

We waited for a long time.

Eventually they came along. John and Mary looked at the flour on the ground, looked around for the rocket ship.

“Hmmm,” said John. “Looks like some flour on the ground.”

We heaved our first message-containing bottle over the hedge. It thumped at their feet.

“They’re over behind that hedge,” said John.

After that, the trick kind of fizzled out.

Categories // childhood, Looking Back

Trademark Notice This, Pretty Please

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

TM

Thanks today to the nice folks at abcmalaysia.com, for their recent website modification to remove references to “bloggard”, which is a trademark of Arthur Cronos (me humbo sef) and Voltos Industrial Internet. Other trademarks include “The Bloggard” and “Adventures of Bloggard”.

The abcmalaysia.com website seems to be run by some nice people who work like crazy, and keep prices low and service high, and I very much appreciate the mods they made so as not to infringe upon my trademark.

Remember folks, The Bloggard is so proud of his name he doesn’t want to share it with anybody! (But keep those cards and letters- oops! I mean, comments and links coming in, folks!)

Thank you kindly.

Categories // Looking Back

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