Pete's News

ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT 
AND SOME THAT AIN'T

Howdy folks! This here's ole Pete and Rosebud a comin' at you again!

This year is really slidin' on by fast. Somebody said 2012 is a leap year. Maybe that's why. It's just leapin' on by. No, just kiddin' about that. I know that ain't why they call it that, and I couldn't swear that this even is a leap year. I don't remember seein' nothin' about it on the calendar. So, how can you tell? I imagine it's wrote down somewhere, but I don't know where. Wherever it is, I guess I missed it. I ain't one to go 'round studyin' up on leap years and stuff like that.

To tell you the truth, I ain't for shore I even know what a leap year is. I think it's where they have a extry day stuck in there for some reason. I don't know why. I asked my mule Rosebud about it and she give me some long winded speech about the world circlin' the sun and stuff like that. Said it took a little bit less than a year for it to get all the way around and the calender-man had to tack on a day ever now and then to keep things even. She made it sound like the world's a clock that runs a little slow so we have to run the calendar up a little every now and then to keep it right. But I've learned that you can't pay too much attention to her when it comes to stuff like that. I mean, what's she know? But it's my own fault. I ort to of knowed better than to ask her about it in the first place.

I've noticed that about mules. They ain't got much of what you'd call common sense. Rosebud ain't. She does purty good when it comes to book learnin', but not when it comes to just plain ole horse sense. Or in her case, maybe it'd be mule sense. Most of the time I try not to ask her nothin' where she's got to use mule-sense, but this time it just sorta popped out before I thought. And that's when she unloaded this wagon load of earth-circlin'-the-sun stuff on me. I might as well have opened the winder and listened at the wind blowin'.

You could tell right off that she didn't know what she was talkin' about. She started in about how there was just so many minnits and seconds of time difference between the time it took for the world to go 'round the sun and the time that the calendar said it was. Anybody ort to know better'n that. You can't tell time by a calendar. A calendar is for tellin' the days and weeks and months. You've got to have a clock to tell what time it is. You'd shore be in trouble if you was dependin' a calendar to wake you up in the mornin'.

Let's say this ole boy's got hisself a new job down at the sawmill. He sets the calender on the table beside his bed expectin' the 'larm to go off and wake him up in the mornin'. Then, when it don't, he drags in to work two hours late. "Sorry about bein' late, boss," he says. "But my calendar didn't go off this mornin'." Can't you just see that? That'd go over real good down there at the sawmill, now wouldn't it?

I tried to 'splain it all out to Rosebud, that you can't use a calendar to tell time, but I couldn't get it through that thick skull of hers. I told her as simple as I knowed how, just like I done right here with you, but she still didn't get it. She just stood there with her mouth open, lookin' at me like I was talkin' some other language. Finally, about the time I was gettin' warmed up good, she stopped me. Said that I needed to listen more and talk less. Said I might learn somethin' like that. Well, that sorta ticked me off. No, I take that back. There wasn't no "sorta" to it. Where does she get off talkin' down to me like that? I ain't about to learn nothin' from her.

That's part of the trouble right there. It all goes back to that book learnin' I was talkin' about. She reads them ole books and gets all kinds of silly stuff stuck in her head. What she ain't figgered out yet is that book learnin' is fine and good for playin' with, for passin' the time, but there ain't none of it got nothin' to do with the real world.

One time she got to tellin' me about this stuff she was readin' in a book about them atom things. Said they was little bitty ole things and they look sorta like what the sun and earth and the moon and all them other planets whirlin' around each other look like. Said that everthing that there is was made outta them atoms. Said nothin' wasn't really like how it looks like it is. Said there ain't nothin' solid, not even rocks, and that it was kinda like a fog of them little bitty ole atoms that just looks solid to us.

Does that make any sense to you? 'Course not. Common sense tells you better'n that. That's what I told her. "If you don't believe a rock is solid," I said, "then it won't hurt when I bounce one off'n your head." That aggravated her, but that shows the difference between the book learnin' and common sense I've been talkin' about. One works and the other'n don't. And that's Rosebud's problem. She's got so much book sense crammed in her head she ain't got room for no common sense.

But you know what? I still ain't figgered out if it's a leap year or not. Oh, well. I've got timet. And, besides, it don't matter nohow. I ain't got to be nowhere at any partic'lar time.

You can contact Pete and Rosebud by email at
BStover@swbell.net