I had a fun conversation with my friend Ruth. She was
telling me about some of the odd people in her family.
She does have some oddities, I know her family and
well, some of them do push the limit. Her Uncle Punk,
in particular, refused to believe that man had ever been
in space. He lived next door to her and never had running
water. He only died about 5 or 6 years ago, so that was
quite unusual. Actually I have met Punk, he even used
to play fiddle with my grandpa, though I don't remember
that, I am only going by what my grandma tells me. If you
have ever seen the movie, "Where the Red Fern Grows"
you have seen his old car, he sold it to the people who
made that movie.

I told sweet Ruth that my family had some odder oddities
even than hers. I had a great-grandpa who was a stump
preacher, and he not only refused to believe that man
had ever been in space, he believed the world was flat.
The Bible talks about the four corners of the earth and that
was enough for him. (And my dad, his oldest grandson,
worked as an engineer for McDonnell Douglass and helped
design some of the parts that went into the spaceships.)
Great-Grandpa was convinced that the pictures from
space of the earth were fakes. And his wife, who lived
till I was 16 and was dearly beloved by me, smoked a
pipe and chewed tobacco till she died at 89. She looked
like an adorable dried-up apple doll.

Ruth allowed that I had her beat to smithereens. I didn't
even get around to telling her about the Fleetwood-Alsup
fued, one of the biggest fueds ever in the midwest.

As the old Quaker said to his wife, "All the world is queer
except for Thee and me and sometimes even Thee's a
little queer."