Happy Day after Thanksgiving and Black Friday and all that. Lots of folks have been out and about, shopping for the great bargains, and better them than me. I’ve been happy to be home, reading a good book and eating yummy leftovers from our feast yesterday.
I’ve been reading No Strangers Here by Carlene O’Connor, a fascinating mystery set in Ireland. Here’s just a bit of the plot: On a rocky beach in the southwest of Ireland, the body of Johnny O’Reilly, sixty-nine years old and dressed in a suit and his dancing shoes, is propped on a boulder, staring sightlessly out to sea.
A cryptic message is spelled out next to the body with sixty-nine polished black stones and a discarded vial of deadly veterinarian medication lies nearby. Johnny was a wealthy racehorse owner, known far and wide as The Dancing Man.
In a town like Dingle, everyone knows a little something about everyone else. But dig a bit deeper, and there’s always much more to find. And when Detective Inspector Cormac O’Brien is dispatched out of Killarney to lead the murder inquiry, he’s determined to unearth every last buried secret.
The other major character is Dimpna Wilde, the daughter of the local veterinarian, and a veterinarian herself. The secrets involve her family as much as the family of the dead man, and the tangle is one I’m looking forward to seeing how it is sorted out.
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One of my adult grandchildren was visiting for a couple of days over the Thanksgiving holiday, and we shared the dinner with some of my kids, their spouses and some other invited guests. Great food and great company. The holiday just begs for gathering.
How was your celebration? Let me know with a comment. And in the meantime, here’s a guest post from Slim Randles. Enjoy…
Happy Thanksgiving, world! One of my favorite days, but I couldn’t tell you why … exactly. Oh, it’s time to get the clan together around the table and compliment Grandma on how yummy the world’s dumbest bird is this year, like always.
The complete stupidity of the turkey is legendary. Of course, they have been domesticated since Miles Standish was in Pampers, and domestication gave them large breasts but didn’t help the thinking process much.
You know, like some actresses we could name.
And of course, there’s the family entertainment. We get to check out the elderly uncle to see if he’ll tell the same stories as last year, and if he can keep cranberry sauce off his white shirt. It’s always fun to tease old folks, but since I happen to BE one of the old folks these days, it sometimes hits close to home.
Did you know that domesticated turkeys can’t reproduce without help? Yep. The tom turkey is now so heavy if he tried the traditional method on a hen he’d break her legs. Turkeys have to be bred artificially.
But fat or stupid or not, the turkey deserves our respect for one thing at least. There have been some changes over the past 250 years. There are today more turkeys in America than there are Pilgrims.
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Has turkey become boring? Here’s one alternative. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/g41429719/easy-thanksgiving-cocktails/
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Check out all of Slim’s award-winning books at his Goodreads Page and in better bookstores and bunkhouses throughout the free world.
All of the posts here are from his syndicated column, Home Country that is read in hundreds of newspapers across the country. I am always happy to have him share his wit and wisdom here.
Slim Randles is a veteran newspaperman, hunting guide, cowboy, and dog musher. He was a feature writer and columnist for The Anchorage Daily News for 10 years and guided hunters in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A resident of New Mexico now for more than 30 years, Randles is the prize-winning author of a dozen books, and is host of two podcasts and a television program.