I had an appointment with my heart doc Wednesday morning. I was told his office was no longer where I have been going in the doctor's park section next to the hospital, but he now had his office in what used to be a Winn Dixie before it went out of business. I was quite excited and planned to check and see if they still had the frozen food isle...perhaps for storage of implantable organs. Turned out he had moved his office into the same building with my other doc, and several others. It was a Winn Dixie, but at least 5 years ago, so it officially counts as ancient history in America. Nothing changed as far as doc instructions, meds, etc., though the billing office was harassing about money. Said I must pay something every month or risk having it turned over to collections. HA! Like this something that would worry me...I moved out of that world many years ago.
Looks like I'm going to have to drop the burial insurance coverage. Since I truly don't give a rodent's anal orifice what happens to me after I'm dead, that is, in Wall Street lingo, no longer financially viable. It's the before dead part I care more about. That's $60 a month we can use for cigarettes. Those are far more beneficial to both of us in the here and now...mostly for the purpose of staving off early death due to physical assault brought on by deprivation. Had to beg for money at the Thanksgiving meeting in order to get some. Won't do that again. Some folks say having no burial insurance would leave "the family" with problems after you die. No. It doesn't. Arrange things so that no living person is responsible for any debts of a dead person. If there is no money for a casket, funeral, plot, etc., you just let whatever local government has jurisdiction over that, deal with it however they normally do. They won't leave a stiff in your house very long at all. They will either bury it or burn it somewhere.
Someone wrote a blog about a very small town in Michigan and how half the people there were related to them and they knew most of the rest. I lived in a similar tiny town called Ariton, Alabama. A rich local family had something called Christmas City, which was a seasonal holiday attraction, with the lights and shops, etc. Christmas City actually was bigger than Ariton...had more business, and people too, at least between Thanksgiving and New Years. Ariton has no red light, just a couple of flashing caution lights. It had a bank branch but it went out of business. One gas station, unless you counted the pumps in front of the ancient hardware store. I lived there for about ten years or so. I actually learned the name of the neighbor on one side...his house wall was only about 20 feet from ours. I didn't seek him out, but was out in the yard one day and he called me over and wanted to chat a bit.
The folks who lived straight across the driveway on the other side of us...I never knew anything about them except they mostly kept to themselves, which I greatly appreciated. They had an obnoxious kid or two who would often fire up the 4-wheelers they got one Christmas, and ruin any chance of continuing to sleep.
I knew the postmaster's name was Debra, because one year, she went all civic minded on us and orchestrated a production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof from local talent. It played in what was once the Universal Universalist church, long since abandoned by church folk...they had new multi-million dollars churches outside of town, the Baptists and the Methodists, anyway. Apparently the Universalist ideas had gone long before we came to town. I did enjoy the play though and, had a spark of hope, there for a while, that something might come of it...but nothing ever did.
I suppose the community relations tone was set shortly after we moved there, when my wife at the time, answered the door to find someone taking up donations for floral arrangements for a town resident who had recently died. Philis was pissed and aghast! Can't you see we are poor as dirt, and how amazingly stupid and inconsiderate of you to be asking for money for DEAD PEOPLE, of all things! Who bought her flowers BEFORE she died!? Why the hell should anyone buy flowers for her now, she won't know a thing about it! Why aren't you taking donations to fill the local food pantry!? Far as I know they never visited again. Maybe just as well Philis never tried for a career in diplomacy...she never was very good with lies. Far as I know, no one from Ariton brought her any flowers either, before or after she died.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this blog, I just thought it was cool weirdly...
He had a camera installed in the back of his head. For the easily amused, here is a link to the countdown to the time when we, supposedly will see what he's been missing. 3rdi.
TRB
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