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!

Christmas is right here and I've just about had it with all of this newfangled modern, up-to-date stuff. I don't know how I ever got myself into this mess to start with. Well, I take that back. Me and my mule Rosebud got to lookin' around and seen how everbody else looked like they was havin' a modern Christmas and all we ever had was the old fashioned kind. So we decided we was gonna get modern and be like everbody else. That was a bad mistake. I can see it now. We got us one of them new plastic Christmas trees, the kind that opens up like an umbrella and it's already got the little twinkle-lights on it. It's real handy. All you've got to do is unfold it, set it up and plug it in. And you're finished.

There's only one thing wrong with it. There ain't nothin' Christmasey about it. We put it up and me and Rosebud both just stood there and stared at it for the longest. Neither one of us didn't want to say nothin'. I thought she liked it and she thought I liked it when there wasn't neither one of us could hardly stand the thing. Finally, after a day or two, she said maybe we ort to hang somethin' on it. I said un-huh, maybe a bed sheet would be nice and both of us looked at one another and busted out laughin'. We was still laughin' when ole Denver come up. We told him what we was laughin' at and he said he shore was glad we'd come to our senses, that he was startin' to worry about us. That's when we decided maybe we'd carried this modern Christmas stuff a little too far, that maybe we ort to get back to basics, back to the old time tried and true.

It didn't hardly seem right goin' out and cuttin' down a tree as close to Christmas as it was, so we decided we'd take and decorate that store-bought plastic tree like it was a real one. And that did help. I started poppin' popcorn and the three of us eat popcorn and strung it on strings for half the night. Then Rosebud discovered she could just toss the popcorn at the tree and it'd stick to that plastic pine straw. Don't know what made it do that. Reckon it was that static `lectristy like they talk about. Anyway, we got to throwin' popcorn on it to see who could get the most to stick and by the time we got through with it, it was startin' to look like it'd showed on it.

Had to do somethin' about Christmas presents too. We went over there to that mall they've got, but we didn't none of us do no good. We split up out in the parkin' lot and agreed to meet back at the truck in a hour. I come back after half a hour and found Denver and Rosebud both settin' there poutin'. Ole Denver got to worryin' about gettin' lost from his pickup out in the middle of that big ole parkin' lot and decided to stay there with it. He never even got started. Said he'd druther go back to Silas's store at the crossroads and pick out somethin' for me and Rosebud than to chance gettin' caught up in all of that hustle and bustle in there and get turned around and not be able to find his way back to where he parked at.

And, as it turned out, maybe it was just as well he did wait there at the truck. Denver ain't real good with people and there was a jillion people in there, ever one of `em pushin' and shovin' and grabbin' at stuff. Ever time I tried to stop and look at somethin', a bunch of `em would pile up behind me and start millin' around like a bunch of cattle. I got to worryin' they was liable to panic and stampede so I got out of there as quick as I could myself. I ain't never been tromped on up to now and I ain't real anxious to start no ways soon. I don't know how people ever get anything bought in a place like that. I decided I'd just as soon do my Christmas buyin' up at Silas's too.

Pore ole Rosebud didn't even get in the place. She found out they ain't real fond of mules in the mall. Real narrow minded about it, she said. At three different places they met her at the door and told her they didn't allow no mules. How's that for bein' stuck up on yourself? You'd think, as hard as times is gettin', that they wouldn't care who you was as long as your money was good.

I reckon it didn't matter to Rosebud. She ain't got no more use for that mall than it's got for her. Like me and Denver, she decided that Silas's was the place for her, where they know her and `preciate her business. And Silas was proud to see us. He didn't have all the fancy stuff they've got in the mall, but they ain't nobody ever been tromped on tryin' to buy somethin' in his store either. He knows everbody by name, even mules, and if you ain't got the money for somethin' right now, he'll put it on the book for you for awhile. I'm glad we decided to come back up here to do our Christmas shoppin'. That's what we should've done in the first place.

But we got to thinkin' about how old fashion we was, settin' back up here in the holler like this. So we tried bein' modern and it didn't work. We like Christmas like it's always been. Reckon we're gonna stay old fashion from now on. At least we are at Christmas.

Me and Rosebud and Denver and everbody else up here in Gump Holler wishes you and yours a old fashion Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And if we don't get snowed in or somethin', we'll see you next year.