It has been a rather long, rather odd holiday season, and mercifully, it’s over. All that unbridled joy and laughter and light of the Yuletide star and stuff wears me out. It seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people, like retail clerks and ungrateful relatives. 

I fear that the holidays didn’t do much for some of the residents of Corn Cob County. I heard that the police were called to Clara Lu’s Homestyle Buffet when the battling Lilleboes came for Christmas dinner. Some years ago, Grandma Lilleboe caught Grandpa having coffee at the senior center with Edna Krutch. Now, Edna was in Grandma’s water aerobics class, and she was a hussy and on the prowl. Grandpa promised he would never see her again, or anyone else for that matter. 

A few days before Christmas, the Lilleboes came to Clara Lu’s for the holiday special: turkey loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and candied sweet potatoes. Clara Lu was glad to see Grandpa. She gave him a big kiss and he gave her a pinch on the butt. Upon viewing this, Grandma picked up her plate and lobbed it across the table at Loverboy’s head. The police arrived to find two old people slamming each other with crutches and sweet potatoes, and I won’t tell you what Grandma called Grandpa, because I don’t talk like that.

Clara Lu scraped candied sweet potatoes out of the wallpaper for days and now she thinks that next year she’ll skip the sweet potatoes and anything else that can be thrown and tell the Lilleboes to go elsewhere. 

A wave of panic washed over the farm community recently. Apparently one of the causes of global warming is all that methane gas emitting from herds of cows and pigs in farm country. Someone came up with the bright idea of a head tax on cows, pigs and sheep, etc. This was to pay for environmental cleanup. They mentioned $175 for one cow and $75 for each pig. The reaction was immediate, the Gund family quickly made plans to smuggle their cow, Margaret, up to Canada to escape taxation. 

Gertrude, the giant mama pig, was afraid that her owners would convert her to pork chops before they would pay a tax on her. After a few days of insecurity, the idea seemed to fade away. Some people thought that someone should tax Luther, the Fungo’s bulldog, who released large quantities of methane gas, usually during dinner. He was sneaky about it, too, and couldn’t be trusted in public. 

Well, my husband made chicken soup last week. He likes to do this although it drives me nuts. I have a small, out-of-date kitchen and I don’t want to be in it myself, much less him. I hid in the bedroom for a whole day while he peeled, chopped, sliced, boiled and so on. The soup wasn’t bad, but he added a lot of barley and rice and after it cooled down, we realized something strange had happened. The soup tasted and smelled slightly odd. Then it dawned on us: It had fermented, and we had made beer. If you are interested in a beer with pieces of chicken and carrots floating in it, we have quite a lot of it. 

A new year is dawning and I hope the rest of the year goes better than this. Beer, anyone? PJH