Red Eye Gravy And Other Stories.

 Payday I got a football ham and a couple cans of sweet potatoes and made a ham and sweet potato supper, candied sweet potatoes with real butter, brown sugar and marshmallows, of course. Bein' as there's just us there were a slew of leftovers.

 So this morning I decided to try Red Eye Gravy for the first time ever. I've had sawmill gravy and brown gravy my whole life but I've never had Red Eye Gravy before. About the only times I ever even heard of it was 'way back when on the Tennessee Ernie Ford show and he's been off the air for a while. Comin' up on fifty years now. Still, every once in a while I've thought of it so, today, I tried it.

 The recipe is easy. Fry a slice or three of ham, I used two slices one kind of thin, maybe a third of an inch, the other maybe a little bigger'n' half. I fried 'em in a big pat of real butter until both slices were nice and brown. Then I sluiced a half cup of hot, black coffee in and kept stirring it until Linda Lou had finished frying up some eggs. My shaking hands do not do eggs well these days.

 Oh, yeah, the grits! I'd cooked up a double order of grits and they were on the plate with the ham. Then the eggs went on the plate and the red eye gravy over everything!

 The recipe says that you can use plain water or coffee or any mixture. I think next time I'll use half coffee and half water. Anyhow, I have now had Red Eye Gravy. Goodness gracious, it's pea pickin' good! I wonder. Is my education complete?

 I should have had biscuits with it, preferably made from scratch with Martha White's gladiola brand, but then, the grits were plenty of starch for one meal. Damn this getting old stuff!

 Speaking of education, the voters of Colorado voted strongly against a "temporary" tax increase to cover the shortfall of Federal and state funds to go for local "education." I put "education" in those scare quotes because little to none of the increased costs in the education budgets in the last few decades have gone to anything that will actually teach students.

 When I was a boy a grade school had a Principal, a nurse, secretary and a janitor for staff. The rest of the adults there were teachers and the odd parent. A high school had a principal, and assistant, and a nurse, secretary a janitor and teachers.; The coaches were all teachers, too.

Today there is a lot more money going into the school systems but it's not going to more educators. It's going to educrats. And if taxpayers revolt  they do not ever fire the educrats. Instead they take it out on the kids. Just like when most cities, counties and states run a little short they close fire stations, lay off the street cops and keep their important people . The sector car might be broken down on the side of the road with the patrol officer kicking the door in but the Deputy Mayor has a new Lincoln.

 And that is why nobody wants to trust government with more money. And the education bubble is bursting, just like the housing bubble.. My house, such as it is, is not an investment. It's a home. I live in it. I didn't make house payments so that I could take equity out, I made those payments so the place would, eventually, be paid for. It is.Now the only house payments I have are for property taxes.

 The taxpayers of Colorado paid for the schools. And kept paying, only to find that, instead of their money going to  teach the kids to read, write and cipher, they're spending their money on things that have no discernible value to students or to taxpayers. So, by almost two to one, in spite of the money spent by the unions, it's the tax increase going down the tubes. Now, somehow, the taxpayers need to keep the educrats from punishing the students.

 I got an e-mail from an old friend Sunday or so, seems that another old friend succumbed to throat cancer. Sigh. When he died the two of those old pals, that I'd pretty much lost track of, were working on shot cartridges for one, or more of the .32 revolvers. I wish I'd have been involved, I think I could have helped. All it would have taken was the primed cartridge case, a .30 caliber gas check, some fiber wads, some fast burning pistol powder, and some  fine shot. Drop the powder charge, seat the fiber wad with a brass rod or wood dowel, sprinkle in the shot until it's just below the case mouth, put the gas check in and crimp the case mouth over the gas check.  Then shoot, and fiddle with the powder charge until it's good enough for a close range snake in the yard or a rat in the corn crib. Handgun shotshells are simple. Seeing as how handguns have to have rifled barrels to shoot shot cartridges, there is no way to have any range to speak of, ten, fifteen feet at the max. Still, if a snake is further than ten feet away, why worry about it?