Well, Bird Dog, I have got myself a problem.

You know I am not a church goer even though my great great grampa built the building, or I should say helped build it, but it just isn’t my cup of meat, you might say, but they can bury me in there churchyard, that’s OK with me, sooner or later either is OK because my life philosophy is just keep on keeping on as my Paw would say which is a mans duty in this life. But for several years now those church ladies have been a bit on my case because I guess I am an eligible widower or maybe they see me as an object of pity living alone in skwaler on the old homestead here in the Northeast Kingdom.

 Well what they did is send a delegation of ladies with hats up here like they do every year collecting money to fix the steeple or whatever which I do and this time they want me to come with them on a church trip to Paris and Lourdes and some other church places which maybe for you rich folks in southern New England is no big deal but up here it is like a trip of a lifetime which Korea already was enough for me. Join the Army and see Korea. Ayup, shure did. Well they at first wanted to go to the Holy Land but they got scared of the diper-head bombers, so they said, and would do that in five years maybe – yes, maybe, if they are still alive then, I think to myself. I suspect some of those nice wrinkled widows just have desines on me as a widdower but I don’t know why an old coger who aint any good company and hardly takes a shower and is half grumpy at least half the time. I know they see me shaved and in a necktie sittin in church and praisin Jesus and reformed without my whiskys and smokes etc. and my bachelor bad habits and peeling wallpaper and grilled coon suppers or bear suppers and loaded rifles all over the place and approx. ten mangy mongrels crappin on the walk and everywhere else you might think to place your boots.