Ramblin' Roses and Flyin' Bricks
Couldn't get to sleep
The late Earl Tucker
Afellow who has just spent a sleepless night can certainly sympathize with people suffering from insomnia. I had such a night last week and I want to tell you it was something awful. Maybe it was because I'm accustomed to falling off to sleep just a few moments after I hit the bed. Insomniacs probably learn how to use the sleepless hours to their advantage and they might even get where they kind of look forward to 'em, but to me it's a terrible way to spend a night.

They say when you can't sleep it's because you're worried about something, but I couldn't think of a thing that was bothering me. I owe a lot of money, but I've been in that shape for 20 years or more. In fact, I haven't been completely debt-free since the good old days of the depression.

Problems with sheep

The first sleepless hour wasn't so bad and it gave me an opportunity to think back over the events of the day and try to figure out why some people can't see things like I see them. I tried counting sheep jumping over a fence. I don't know too much about sheep and how high they jump, so maybe I got the fence too high.

The 73rd one got all tangled up in some barb wire just as I was fixing to doze off and it took me 30 minutes to get him untangled. I took the fence down and let the sheep run wild.

Next, I tried the radio. A fellow was singing "Long Tall Sally," and there's nothing about the song to make a person sleepy. It was followed by a girl singing, "You Gotta Have Money in the Bank, Frank." Neither song was what you might call a lullaby.

I knew I didn't have any sleeping pills in the house, but I remembered my dentist giving me some tablets the last time I had a tooth pulled, so I figured maybe there was some kind of sedative in 'em that might bring on sleep. After taking two I got to wondering if I took the tablets the dentist gave me or whether they were the ones I got to wash my feet in when I had a toe infection. Whatever kind they were, they didn't hurt or help.

Red Bug Squeezings

Sometimes reading will make me sleepy, so I got up and tried to read a newspaper. There was an article in it about how a professor of chemistry at Ohio State University is trying to round up a bucket of chiggers so he can squeeze the juice out of 'em and use it for tests. A chigger, in case you don't know, ain't nothing but a high-sounding name for a red-bug, like viruses used to be nothing but germs. I sure hope the professor finds enough to carry out his experiment. If he'll sit down on one log in the Hall's Lake swamp for 30 minutes he'll be able to get enough to run tests for the next 10 years. They'll have another problem, of course, trying to get the red-bugs off of the professor and into the bucket, but that's just one of the many problems a scientist runs into. Besides, I wasn't getting very sleepy reading the article.

There was a mail-order catalog nearby, so I got to looking through the men's clothing section. There were young men modeling clothes and old men modeling clothes, but there wasn't a bald-headed man in the entire section. That's some kind of discrimination. It's amazing how fine looking the illustrations can make a man look. The ones in the long underwear even looked distinguished, but they sure ain't fooling me any. I don't look good with the things on. Mine always develop certain gabby-looking characteristics.

Then sleep came

I reckon the catalog was what finally made me sleepy. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning and I got over to the garden tool section. They had pictures of people digging around in the ground and raking leaves and all kind of stuff and I must have dozed off. There's something about work or even thinking about work that makes me tired all over.

Reader Comments

No comments have been posted. Be the first!

Other Stories With Comments:
Article	Comments
Football season starting	1
Taking Names and Keeping Score	1
Frances Nichols passes at 91	1
Bryant is a contestant in Ms. Senior Alabama Pageant	1
Dunagans to celebrate golden anniversary	1