Rainy Days and Saturdays

Looks like it will rain all day today and Tom is at a meeting in Beloit, halfway to Chicago. I swept and mopped the floor, vacuumed the rugs, made my bed, went shopping (unsuccessfully) for a planned meal of chicken flautas, searched online without any luck for a replacement ballast for the light in the ceiling fan fixture in the living room and let the cats in and out and in and out and in and out.


If this keeps up I will be forced to sit down and write a story for my Penultimate, Wisconsin collection. Which begins thusly:

Penultimate, Wisconsin
Pop. 631

There are 631 stories in Penultimate, Wisconsin – give or take – and this is some of ‘em.

The first thing you’re going to want to know is, “How did Penultimate, Wisconsin gets its name?”

Now that may not be the first thing you want to know, but I’m telling and you’re listening, so deal with it.

How Penultimate, Wisconsin Got Its Name

According to the local story, there used to be a cheese shop where County Road ZZ ended at Highway 53 what runs alongside the Big Muddy. They was a big sign, “Last Chance for Wisconsin Cheese in Wisconsin”, which was an exaggeration if not a downright lie, lest you was planning to plunge into the river right there and swim across to Minnesober. Whatever the facts of the case may be, in the spring of 1923 a high wind tore through and knocked the sign about, and the only thing left hanging after the wind finished blowing was the two words: “Last” and “Wisconsin”. So the locals, such as they was in 1923, jokingly called the scattered houses along that stretch Last, Wisconsin. Which, after its fashion, it was cause’n of t’other side of the river being Minnesober and all.

Well, that scattering of houses never did amount to much, even in a state that prides isself on having a bunch of communities listed as “Unincorporated” on they road signs. Last, Wisconsin, you might even say, didn’t last.

Howsomever, another batch of houses did eventually reach that level of unincorporation necessary to merit one of them road signs. And some smart elleck down by Madison decided that it oughter be called Penultimate, because it was next to Last. And Penultimate it became and Penultimate it remains.

And that’s either the God’s honest truth or close enough to pass in the dark.

Sigh!

A friend who writes mentioned last night that he just completed volume seven of his projected eight-volume fantasy epic based on the Grail legends. Volume seven alone is 793 manuscript pages. I think he needs to find an Over-Writers Anonymous group.

And I need to sit down and write something...