Okay, so here's my opinion on some news stories that I think are interesting. Did you read about the amish guy in the buffalo area that led the police on a high trot chase for 3 miles and they couldn't catch him? Huh? He drove his horse and buggy into a field and abandoned it. They caught him at a farmhouse and arrested him. They were unsure if he had obtained a lawyer yet. They ticketed him with reckless endangerment, overdriving animals (again, Huh?) and obstructing governmental administration"wait, what?". I wonder if they checked to make sure his signals were working. How can you not catch a horse and buggy when you are in police cars? "This is the New York State Police, Pull over!!" "He's not pulling over sir, what should we do?" "I don't know, this guy is really moving!! Our cruisers are up to 25 mph. At this speed we have to be careful not to crash!!" ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!! And what did he do in the first place to warrant being pulled over? Was he wearing purple instead of blue? Who knows, the article doesn't mention that.

So the funeral home in South Carolina admits that they cut the legs off a 6 foot 7 inch man because he didn't fit in the coffin. This apparently happened in 2004 and the wife of this man had heard rumors about this and had the body exhumed to make sure and guess what? The legs were cut off between the calf and the ankle and put back in the coffin. Now, I understand that this may be an uncomfortable conversation between the funeral home and the widow. "Ah, ma'am. We have a rather large problem. It seems that your husband is too tall for the coffin. I realize that this is a very sad time for you but we have to discuss the options. What we could do is either fold your husband in half or see if we can cross his legs. Or maybe we could cut holes in the coffin and have his feet stick out or maybe we could just saw the legs off. It's not like he's going to use them again anyways!!" Well, Mr. Dumb Funeral home director, how about telling the wife the problem and then asking her if she would like to have a custom made coffin to fit the man in or here's the other obvious solution, have him cremated. Problem solved. What a terrible thing for this family to have to deal with. But didn't anyone at the funeral notice that Jim shrank?

Okay, wagon teamster Bob is getting ready to get back on the road. He retired the remaining 2 horses that were plowed into with a pair of Belgians from Hunt, NY and his wagon is almost ready and he's thinking of taking off again in a couple of weeks. Check out his site at www.wagonteamster.com