Ramble with Storm: O Tannenbaum & other dumbness

Mulling things on my morning ramble

with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

Brent Guthrie had given me a look like it was a dumb question.

And I almost blurted, “That’s not the first dumb question I have asked, and it will not be the last, either.”

Maybe it was the grayness this morning. Another half inch of rain overnight. By the looks of the radar, we will be slammed by one of those red bows with a warning box in front of it in the next hour or so.

April should be like this, not May.

Maybe that explains why I keep mulling something that happened Saturday. Fretting is probably more accurate.

Guthrie is the Carlyle fisherman who immediately loaned the Maine West bass fishing team his bass boat when the motor on the Warriors’ boat blew Friday morning on opening day of the IHSA bass fishing championship.

I caught up with him at the end of tournament on Saturday.

One of the questions I asked was if he had any qualms about loaning out his boat like that. That’s when he gave me the look. I suspect he never even considered not offering his boat.

He seemed like that kind of guy.

But in my world, it didn’t seem like a dumb question. I know fisherman who value their bass boats more than their wives. And a few who change wives nearly as often as they do their boats.

At any rate, Guthrie loaning his boat like that was simply cool.

And on a sunny day, I would focus on that good point.

But it’s not a sunny day.

Grayness weasels into my heart.

It’s Lab weather, perfect for the dark-coated meathead. He loves it, charging through the sloppy puddles around the town pond and down the bank and into the water at each handy opening.

Which, on a day like this, simply reminded me that the Christmas tree I sunk at ice-out is too shallow.

I thought I got it out far enough to settle on a drop. Instead, it is sitting on the flat right above the drop.

On a sunny day, I’ll come back, wade in or push it out deeper and off the drop. Or maybe involve the kids in doing the wading. They would love it.

But that’ll have to wait for a sunny day.

In the meantime, a hopeful line from O Tannenbaum (via German.about.com):

Or one conversion from German to English:

Get me going on a gray morning, you never know where I’ll end up.

Maybe singing green.