Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 3 will be the last day of working as I have for the past six years driving a state employee around this 10 county area since she has accepted a promotion from her regional position to a state administrative position. I no longer will drive on a regular basis but have happily agreed to stand by on an on-call basis and take only an occasional trip. At the beginning of this year I told her I did not care to drive anymore after the end of the year, but this changes things and I might just hang around for awhile. We used to call these little jobs "beer money." Even though I no longer have need of beer money, I can always use a little extra spending money.
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Thursday marks one of my favorite days around here; the Bismarck Public Library starts its three day used book sale. It opens at 7:00 am, and I’ll be leaving here by 6:45 to get there. Prices are right: $20 or less buys a whole bag full. Then, that evening, our premier state writer Larry Woiwode makes a presentation at the Heritage Center regarding the writing of memoirs. For a little culture, what the heck, I’m going to go.
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Yesterday a couple lines of poetry popped into my head; something I had to memorize in college: "The world is too much with us; late and soon,/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours..." I know I’m conservative (my wife calls me cheap), but when I drive around and see all the junk sitting in people’s driveways, I can’t help but think they’ve overspent and are hard-pressed to make payments on that little-used, unimportant stuff. I wonder how many of them have a library card.
