Folks,

Is it just me or is the reply page and some other pages taking an inordinately long time to load lately? OK, I know I'm an old dial-up guy living in a broadband world and that may be the problem.

Dux:

C51 says his website is still up. There are several bird watercolors on that site but it does not have that Blue Jay on it. I'll send you a copy of that painting from my own archives ASAP. I expect to have a check on the address as well shortly.

Speaking of expectations, I trust no one of sound mind who has recently struggled his way through chapter one of "Danger:UXP" has any expectations what-so-ever of better writing in chapter 2.

Danger: UXP (Unexploded Pig) Episode 2
By JRT
HWH Original
Page Unknown
9/5/01

It was not uncommon for the old farmer to glance apprehensively toward the sky. Too often the sky had visited upon his small farm rain or wind or parching sun to destroy his crops and threaten his survival. These were acts of Providence and he could accept them. Just now however, as his tired old eyes squinted into the sun, he was not concerned with the whims of Providence. The threat he observed coming straight in his direction was man-made and just about as deadly.

High in the sky over the farmer’s carefully furrowed fields several flights of unescorted German bombers were being savagely attacked by British fighters. So vicious was the attack that most bombers turned from their target, a RAF airfield, toward the safety of home. Doing so, they began to drop their bombs indiscriminately on any field or folk below. Bombs originally meant to destroy runways and military structures now fell equally upon civilian gardens, houses, schools, churches, and roads. Several bombs of a particularly nasty variety fell on the old farmer’s fields.

Just as he dived for safety behind the only cover available, a tall pile of steaming horse manure, the poor farmer saw the first bombs roll in to plow into his pasture and pigsty. Lying there buried face down in oozing layers of indescribable filth, the heaving farmer spat out something gross and congratulated himself that he was still among the living. He had heard no explosion. There was no explosion. Getting shakily to his feet the old man surveyed the damage. Two large bombs were buried deep in the muck of the pigsty. Several of his prize hogs lay about stone dead. Just over the fence to his right, one bomb could be seen partially buried up to its metal fins in the cow pasture.

At that moment explosions beyond anything the old farmer had experienced since he fought in the Great War caused the ground to heave beneath his Wellington’s. Collapsing once more, he desperately sought cover in the stinking, steaming mire. Had he been looking in the direction of his big red barn he would have had just enough time to see it disintegrate in a bright flash with a billowing cloud of chalk dust, straw, farm implements and several very ruffled chickens.

Lying there squirming, slobbering and loudly retching, the farmer gritted his slime encrusted teeth. He began trembling with rage as he cursed first the Luftwaffe, and Hitler and then the RAF. Look at it from his perspective, (Umm, perhaps you’d wisely prefer not to for he has now dug down deep in muck). From where he lies, and that is up to his little pink ears in horse dung, this old man knows that were it not for the RAF base recently built so near to his farm these bombs would not be crashing around his cringing, crap smeared head.

As the last explosion finally subsided, several heavy, wooden barn planks fell out of the sky and landed with a splat not three feet from where the old man cowered. After a moment of quiet had passed, the old fellow lifted his spattered face out of what could best be described as an imperfect likeness of him mirrored into the soft, mushy manure.

Struggling to his feet, the old fellow spat up something unmentionable and stumbled in a daze, squishing at every step, across the farmyard toward what still remained of his world.

To Be Continued