On Top Of Mount Tandy Thinking About Waving A Flag On 9/11 & Missing Camaflouged Canisters

In the picture you are standing on top of Mount Tandy, around noon, on 9/11, looking past some dying trees at the semi-stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth.

I am really enjoying the more tolerable temperatures of late making the Tandy Hills hill hiking a lot more pleasant.

Upon arrival at the top of Mount Tandy today I was fiddling with something under my hood when a pair of humans exited the hill zone, howdying me and inquiring if I required assistance. Since I did not require assistance I indicated I did not.

On my way to the Tandy Hills I saw a few American flags waving, but not nearly the number that I saw waving 10 years ago and the weeks that followed that awful day.

The most memorable flag waving I saw in the days that followed the 9/11 of ten years ago was in the parking lot of the McDonald's that you go by when you exit I-30 to head to Six Flags in Arlington. A guy was standing on the bed of his pickup, waving a big flag stuck on a long pole, back and forth.

An hour later I drove by the same spot and the same guy was still waving the same flag. This was not a young guy so fervently waving that flag.

The only mystery I came across on the Tandy Hills today is that 24 hours after showing up, the sinister looking camouflaged canister has disappeared from inside the Giant Tandy Tire. I suspect foul play of some sort.

Easter Morning A Tattered American Flag Waves In Texas While I Wear Tattered Clothes To Wal-Mart

I didn't realize until yesterday that today was Easter. Or maybe it was this morning.

Whenever it was that I knew today was Easter I decided I wanted to cook a ham.

I mentioned getting a last minute ham to Betty Jo Bouvier who proceeded to tell me the hams would be all picked over, should have been purchased a week ago and I'll be lucky if I'm able to find a scrappy ham. I may be paraphrasing.

I needed milk and bread, besides a ham, so I decided to go walking at Veterans Park and then go to the ALDI Food Market in Pantego to ham hunt.

On the way to Arlington I stopped to check my P.O. Box, at the Handley Post Office, and was surprised to see the flag flying on Sunday. On Easter.

Aren't there some sort of rules about how to display the American flag? I'm not one of those who gets all bent out of shape over such things. If someone wants to wear a bikini made from a flag, this does not bother me.

But, this American flag flying above the Post Office, in addition to flying on a Sunday, was also tattered, as in badly tattered and torn.

I know the U.S. Government is in really bad shape, running up deficits far beyond what anyone thought possible only a few years ago. I know the economy is still in bad shape.

So, is this tattered, torn American flag the new standard issue? Somehow symbolic of these troubled times in which we live?

After taking pictures of the tattered, torn American flag waving on a Sunday Easter morning in Texas, I continued on to Veterans Park.

At Veterans Park I saw several Easter picnics going on. I've noticed this on Easter ever since I moved to Texas. I thought maybe it was a Southern thing.

Then, this morning, after all this time in Texas, I realized that on Easter in Washington I would not have been in a park, I would have been stuck at some relative's Easter, so I've no idea what goes on in Washington parks on Easter.

Part way to Veterans Park it dawned on me that ALDI might be closed. I continued on anyway. After walking around Veterans Park I headed to ALDI. I passed the Pantego Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. It was open. A sure sign that ALDI would be too.

That sign was wrong. I felt dejected. Easter ruined. No ham. On the way back here I dropped into my Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. I looked at the Wal-Mart hams. None said buy me. I then saw the bake it yourself pizzas. One had ham on it. It said buy me. And so I did.

Being in my local Wal-Mart Easter Sunday, after church, put me in mind of a funny thing Betty Jo Bouvier sent me as part of her "REDNECK" emails.

"You might be a Redneck if your wife is quoted in the local paper saying..."

I was dressed more for Dollar Palace than Wal-Mart today, what with all those post-Easter service people all decked out in their Sunday finery and me in my hiking rags.

Tattered American Flag At Wal-Mart Again & Rush Limbaugh

What is it with Wal-Mart and the U.S. Flag? The flag at my neighborhood Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market was all tattered today.

Maybe that's the new style of the flag, sort of to better symbolize the current tattered state of the United States.

Earlier today I mentioned I woke up feeling agitated. When I was biking today I figured out why.

First off, I no longer am reading a daily paper. I had not thought about it, but I'm really getting a lot less news. One would think that would make me less agitated. But more often than not, what I read in the paper was just interesting, it didn't agitate me.

So, here's the problem. I've been reading more books. I think it may be my choice of what I read that gets my agitated. A couple days ago I finished The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination by David R. Wrone. I was already of the opinion that Lee Harvey was a patsy. This Zapruder Film book sealed the deal. That and actually seeing the Zapruder Film.

After the Zapruder Film book is when I really made a bad choice and started reading When Giants Fall: An Economic Roadmap for the End of the American Era by Michael J. Panzner. This is a very new book. The author details in excruciating detail how big the trouble is that America is supposedly in. The book is so recent it covers the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG Bailouts. The guy predicted, accurately the next problems that cropped up.

By about page 80 I'd grown so tired of the doom and gloom naysaying that I decided to go back to my previous point of view, that being that America has weathered some rather tough times before and has always come out okay. The guy lost me when he went into all the future conflicts, as in wars, America will be facing, dealing with the new Superpowers of China, India and Brazil.

So, that guy had me agitated. And then there is Rush Limbaugh. Back when he was not on the opposition side of things, I found him pretty amusing most of the time. I don't often agree with him, but I enjoyed listening to him spew his bombastic, well-spoken version of reality.

And then Obama gets elected. That turned Limbaugh nasty. At times the rhetoric seems so inflammatory, to me, that it's almost like the man is inciting an insurrection.

It's so bad that I worry that Limbaugh may be poisoning the mind of some nutjob who decides to turn all John Wilkes Booth on us, demented into thinking he is saving America from a president who, Limbaugh says over and over again, is the most extremely radical leftist socialist ever to lead America. That and he repeatedly claims this or that thing Obama says or does is incompetent. And he repeatedly refers to Obama as Barry and the Messiah.

I can only take listening to Rush Limbaugh for about 15 minutes anymore til I tire of it.