Welcome to my blog.  Sometimes I’ll use this cyber chalk board to scratch out some observations on writing.  Most of the time, though, I’ll use it to simply communicate with you.   There are a lot of short, anecdotal stories I really enjoy sharing.  It’s good to connect and communicate with the folks who are reading my books.  So this is our midtown diner with its big, round table where he can meet over coffee and conversation.

The word “blog” intrigues me.  It’s sort of like the word log, but with a more royal title.  Blogging, the way we sit and chat over issues, reminds me of the time I was driving through Immokalee Florida and had a flat tire.  I pulled over to the side of the road to change the tire.  It was a spot near a Seven-Eleven store, a place where many agricultural workers seemed to hang out.  They bought fifty cent tacos and washed them down with Mountain Dews.  The preferred drink, however, with a few in the crowd was Thunderbird Wine—a variety of wine aged in the Seven-Eleven store for a day or two after delivery.

A few of the men sat on a weathered cypress log in the adjacent vacant lot next to the store, sipped wine from bottles wrapped in brown grocery bags, and they swapped stories.   As I changed my tire, I learned that the old log, worn smooth from years of people sitting on it, was the communal place to congregate and tell stories.  “To swap lies,” as one grinning man in a green John Deere cap told me.   He was introduced as Crazy Joe.

The men called their wooden perch their  “million dollar log. “  I asked why and Crazy Joe looked up at me after a nip and a slight burp.  “It’s ‘cause we come up with million dollar ideas.  The longer a man sits on the log, sits and sips, the smarter he gets.”

I nodded like I understood, and then I  jacked up my car, unscrewed the lug nuts, dropping them safely in my hubcap which sat on the ground upright like a big bowl.   As I removed the spare tire from the trunk, I stepped on the edge of the hubcap spilling three of the five  lug nuts into a storm drain.   Two men sitting on the million dollar Log chuckled.  Crazy Joe only stared, a slow grin working at one corner of his mouth.

Big problem.   I’d changed tires but lost the three of the five lug nuts.  There was no way to bolt the wheel and spare the tire to the lug screws.   Crazy Joe stood from the log, walked toward me and looked down at the two remaining lug nuts staring up from the hubcap with light in his pale blue eyes.  He shook has head at my plight.   “Tell you what you can do,” he said in a drawl.

”What’s that?”

“You got two left.   Not enough to do the job.  Take one lug nut from each of the three remaining wheels and use them with the two you got left and you can drive home.  Or you can drive to a parts store and pickup the ones you lost.   Either way, you’ll be able to drive.”

I grinned and asked, “Why do they call you Crazy, Joe?”

“I might be crazy, but I ain’t stupid.  Been sittin’ on the log too long for that.”