Loose Connection

A Visit From Norm

by Bill Price, N3AVY

 


 

I’d like to share with you my poem about the rejuvenation of nature: Spring has sprung; the grass has riz—I wonder where old Normie is?
To be sure, I know where he is: he’s in New England savoring the end of what may be his last miserable cold season and awaiting the onset of his last miserable mud season—something that we in Cowfield County, Virginia, live through each year as well.

I know his whereabouts because even though I’ve never strung an antenna here in the Old Dominion, Norm has discovered e-mail through his account at work (you didn’t think he’d pay for it, did you?) and now avoids making any long distance calls at all. I can just hear the glee in his heart when he types to me “and it’s free! It’s not even my computer!”

Norm, for those of you who don’t know him from previous columns, is a true and great friend. A guy you’d want next to you in a foxhole (if you even know what a foxhole is). And if you could tolerate a little interference to your broadcast radio and TV, he’d make a good neighbor as well—particularly if you’d let him run his guy wires into your yard and if you thought towers were, uh, beautiful to behold.

Another reason I know Norm’s present location is that he’s planning his occasional pilgrimage to visit me, my wife, and a lot of his “stuff” that he’s left here for various reasons, mostly that his car is overloaded as he passes through.

We prepare for visitors and guests in different ways. For instance, when we thought that Princess Margaret was dropping by (I believe she has horses stabled nearby) we top-dusted everything, put some fresh gravel over the mud in the driveway, and vacuumed and fluffed the throw-pillows on the sofa. When Bill Gates was thinking of coming for a weekend, we cut down all the apple trees to keep him from getting upset. With Norm, it’s not like that at all.
I remember one Thanksgiving when Norm joined us. Norm is a bit to the right of center, politically, so we took our turkey right from the supermarket to the nearby vet to have its left wing carefully removed and re-attached on the right side. That Norm wouldn’t have to look at a left wing—it always gets him started.

 

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