This should have been in Happy Monday. We saved on it for a week or two then did not publish a Happy Monday post this week. We didn’t do anything much on the actual 4th of July; I worked in the yard some that morning while it was cool enough, or at least not oppressively hot, both at home and for a relative. I went through the Cook Out drive through for bacon cheeseburgers and Cajun fries then came home to do some inside work on the house. Do you know about Cook Out? It’s exactly what it sounds like; hamburgers, hot dogs, floats with a red and black table cloth motif inside the dining room. The burgers taste just like they would if you grilled them at home over charcoal. Yesterday I made some homemade pulled pork and almost over did it on the sauce. We’ve got a picnic lunch planned today and a real cookout & fireworks event tonight; this will be our 4th of July, planned and executed by some good friends on their farm.

A redundant acronym would be something like “ATM machine” or “PIN number.” If you were to say “Put your PIN number in the ATM machine” what you are really saying is “Put your personal identification number number into the automated teller machine machine machine” Have you ever asked someone to please RSVP? Those have been around for a while, a more recent example is DEF, Diesel Exhaust Fluid. If you were on the road this week you may have noticed travel centers near the interstate advertise they have DEF fluid. Well it turns out there is a name for this occurrence. It’s called Redundant Acronym Syndrome… Syndrome. I think it’s appropriate but then again I work for the department of redundancies department.

Florida is not a southern state, Florida is a state in the South. This map is entirely accurate on that count. Having said that, I would have at least included Louisiana as Deep South. Some have said Arkansas but I would leave that one alone. We lived in Kentucky for nine years. Maybe Louisville and Lexington, out where the land flattens out a bit, prevent it from being a true Southern state but the coal mining country of southeastern Kentucky, the Appalachian part of Kentucky where Hazard is, that region is as southern as any place I’ve ever been.

When I was kid they never rearranged the grocery store. The store was arranged properly and then left alone. I was not adequately prepared for this adulthood.

On the left is a demonstration of a “comfort mower” in 1957. The enclosed bubble is air conditioned, believe it or not, and the whole design epitomizes the 50’s mentality of imagining the future. Today large equipment, such as skid steer loaders (Bobcats) and bigger farm tractors, have enclosed cabins and AC but it never really made it to the consumer market. It’s all about financing; the post WWII American economy boomed like (almost) never before and certainly never since. The pic above on the right shows a John Deere zero turn mower fitted with an after market enclosure that is equipped with AC. But if you buy that machine from that brand in the first place, you are not using it once a week for 15 or 20 to mow just your lawn. That is a commercial machine, meant to be used all day every day by professionals. Only a business operating for profit could justify the expense of the matchine, much less the modification. For what it would cost a DIY homeowner to purchase that rig, you could just pay someone to mow your grass for the next several years.