Insomnia, the farm and those Dirty Birds

Part of the reason this blog exists is that I am a morning insomniac. I have no problem going to sleep. I can hit the pillow under a medical exam room light and a tornado moving in on the homestead and fall fast asleep within 30 seconds. But when that clock hits 4:47am I am up like someone doused me with a bucket of ice water. Being up hours before just about everyone else always gets you thinking about things. Like this morning as I am ascending the stairs en route to my office I started think what if today was Sunday September 10th, 1978? Just what in the heck would I be doing at 5 o'clock in the AM 28 years ago?

Well for starters I would probably be a lot less worried about the visiting Atlanta Falcons. Instead of the athletic Michael Vick and his mystery backup Matt Schaub at the quarterback position there was Steve Bartkowski and June Jones.  The Falcons running attack of 1978 was a little more subdued in the form of Bubba Bean and Haskel Stanback who rushed for a combined 1295 yards at 3.3 yards per carry. Catching the passes from Bartkowski were receivers Wally Francis, Billy Ryckman, Alfred Jackson along with tight end Jim Mitchell. Now I do not want to say this team sucked because it was one of those extremely rare Atlanta playoff teams which actually won a wildcard game before losing to the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional game. But my mouth would be salivating to see the current Carolina Panthers take on the 78 Falcons.

I would not be writing a blog entry because even if I did have a computer, it would only be good for taking up the same space of my rear projection 55" Toshiba television and allowing me to publish  my writings in the form of paper printouts from some ancient Epson dot matrix printer that would wake up the neighborhood. And then I would have to dash around town and drop off a copy at each of your doorsteps like the morning newspaper. That would seriously cut into tailgating time.

Even if I were inclined to turn on the television, it would not have been to endless repeats of ESPN Sportscenter and NFL Network Total Access. If I was lucky one of the stations may have actually kept their transmitter on all night so I could watch the looping American flag and listen to the national anthem until the rest of the house awakens. And no DVR option because in 1978 it does not exist and VCR's are still out of my price range.

I imagine given my same set of sleeping habits the best line of work for me in 1978 would have been on the farm. Instead of sitting here at my desk with a Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke typing words in cyberspace I could be out in my barn collecting some fresh eggs from my hens and picking out the two I am going to kill off and clean up for today's tailgate feast. I could also have saved the trip to Costco to get the ribs and side of beef I am cooking up today as I would have just rounded up a healthy steer from my back 400 acre range two weeks ago, slaughtered it and hung up the sides in the cold beef store. Yesterday all I would have had to do was cut off the parts I wanted to cook and prepared them. Mmmm, wonder if it is too late to get a farm?

Well the sun is starting to peek up and now it is time to get cleaned up and ready for the game. I am glad that I do not have to spend the morning scrambling around the barn trying to get some chicken necks under my axe head. The Panthers should be able to take care of those Dirty Birds for me.