THERE'S GRAPE JELLY ON MY "SURE FIRE"

What's going on over at MIL'S house these early spring days, right after Easter?

Well, if you would really like to know, I'll tell you! It's no big deal, I guess, in the great cosmic scheme, but here it is: I got grape jelly on my Sure Fire flashlight today!

"Ha-Ha," you say..."No, seriously."  "Seriously, I DID."

It wouldn't be so bad if it were just one of those inexpensive $3.95 shiny,  chrome-y, two-cell D flashlights from the '50's...the ones it seemed everyone owned. You could just wipe them off with a damp cloth and go right on.

Not this baby! It is a work of the machinist's art! It is a little two-cell (AA) (lithium batteries) flashlight that throws a bright light out there like the spotlight on a PT Boat, so to speak. I mean---it's BRIGHT! This is unquestionably a flashlight of The First Magnitude. Even its lithium batteries, sitting in the shelf, almost seen hot to the touch, as if they can't wait to get going and get into the fray---whatever fray might be handy at the time!

This little light, a little less than five inches long, has checkering in the hard steel tube that reminds one of the checkering in the wood on a fine English double. You'd expect it to have some burrs, glitches, or crisscross-crosses, but no, it is perfection.

The cost is a bit higher than most, but I was able to skip lunch a couple of times.

You say: "Mil, how did you know about that fantastic flashlight?" Well, my readers, I see snippets of TV shows...(which I don't like), and all the doctors, detectives, coroners, zombie hunters---all this "hotch-potch" (in USA lingo= "hodge-podge") of  people carrying Sure Fires.

May I digress here just to tell you, I have been a "flashlight guy" since I was a little kid. I think I've "had 'em all!"---might not be an exaggeration. The main reason I got this one is its size and it's power, and older people like to downsize. Less baggage and weight.)

Besides, it seems that cadavers are everywhere and I may run across one I'll need to check out. Like Dana on the autopsy show. Nowadays, bodies are appearing everywhere---under beds, wired to ceilings, (yes, I do not kid) in graveyards, and even in dumpers in alleys. And the electricity always seems to be out when you need it.

Back to my flashlights---I never had good luck with them---lots of 'em got this white powdery stuff on the inside and the batteries just stuck and wouldn't come out, even after much prying and chiseling. I've thrown away many a flashlight in frustration.

I do have a bigger one---it is a three C-cell camo, exactly twelve inches long, and with a lanyard ring at end. The plumber guy who installed our central furnace in 1986 had one while scoping out the job, in the dark corners, and I rushed down to the surplus store and bought their last one, and have never seen another since. I once "lost it"---that is, it got put away somewhere and was out of sight for a couple of years. Oh, how I feared the white powder/batteries-frozen-solid-disease...but when my three-cell turned up it was okay, and is NOW certainly okay because it sits here by my work station...in beautiful shape---no powder or frozen batteries inside. In fact it has no batteries---in it, at all.

My granddad "POP," whom I have written about in previous posts, lived down there in Dawson County, south of Lubbock, on a farm. He always had a three cell D flashlight of some kind, sitting there on his old Philco radio in his back bedroom by the back door. It was for spotting feral dogs or cats, rabid skunks, PERPS, or other threats to the chickens...or the farm.

Perps tended to stay away from farms, due to the no-nonsense American attitude in those days. For example, a grand jury night say of a dead perp, in a farmer's backyard: "ER, we find that perp should have been at home by the fire, rather than messing around in somebody's backyard!"

Well, I know you've been itching to know how I got grape jelly on my Sure Fire. The fact is, jelly and I just  don't get along.(See MIL'S PLACE: "ORANGE MARMALADE ON MY APPLE.") In that story you will see Smucker's Law of Marmalade, which posits: "A tiny drop of orange marmalade can make everything within a square yard---sticky!"

Here I sat, this morning, at my writing station, eating a light breakfast, and was putting grape jelly on a slab of toast. My medicine...that is, my pills, were counted out and stacked just to my right, ready to be taken after eating. Somehow, the sleeve on my robe brushed over the pills and knocked the big white one off the edge---onto the floor; and it happened to be a ROLLER. It rolled away under my table. Ah, my young readers, you are lucky---you don't have to take pills yet. So you don't know the alarm I felt when I realized: IT WAS MY FIVE DOLLAR PILL! (Oh yes, my young readers, someone is gouging us old folks!)

Ergo, I grabbed my Sure Fire flashlight quickly, for it sits right in front of me, all the time. I was searching like mad under the table for that pill. I wish I could say---"on my hands and knees." but then I couldn't get up. I was seriously flailing around, I guess, when into the mix---the melee---the kerfuffle---entered the grape jelly. Don't ask me what happened...it just got all over my Sure Fire...into the grooves---the checkering. And all over me!

"No problema," you are quick to say. "Just tah dah, tah dah, and that will do it, Mil!"

Ah, but I haven't quoted to you yet "MIL'S  HYPOCHONDRIUM," * have I? It says: "If Mil gets jelly on something, no matter how long and how hard he cleans on it, it will still be sticky five years later""

Why, even my ball point pen---is sticky right now!

 ( *HYPOCHONDRUM---if it wasn't a word before, it is now!)

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04/04/13