Grumps’ Additional Ideas

When Grumps was a little boy he lived in a big old Inn and they had so much room in the old building that there was room for a lot of pets.  This was good but sometimes it got to be a bit too much---what with the cleaning up (poop) and feeding, and exercising them and, in fact, playing with them.

When Jack brought Jeff, his new stuffed toy monkey home, he told Julia, “Jeff will be a good playmate for both of us, and I’m sure he will enjoy getting to know and play with our Mulligans.” What Jack and Julia didn’t know was that Jeff, the very cute monkey, had more than play on his mind. He looked at their big beautiful house, their playhouse, their bedrooms, their exercise room, their nice big flat screen TV and began to think about something other than play.  Jeff started thinking about business. MONKEY BUSINESS.

One evening after a long day at school for Jack and Julia, just before bedtime, they watched one of their favorite movies---Mary Poppins. When they had watched the movie again and climbed in their beds Jack said, “Momma, I have an idea. Why don’t you and Dada go out to dinner some evening and get us a baby sitter.”

There is nothing better than beautiful horses to take kids off to dreamland.  And that’s what Julia and Jack’s momma said when she tucked them off to bed with a kiss and a hug. Pretty soon both kids were fast asleep, they’d been playing hard that day and were tired, Jack had been fishing in the lake and Julia and her mom had been playing games and talking about horses----it was time for a good night’s sleep.

When Grumps was a little boy, he loved to read. This was a good thing; it made his momma and daddy very proud. He was a good reader and one of his favorite stories was Tom Sawyer and painting the fence.

There’s something about a tin can full of good fishing worms that can make a boy feel like a million bucks. As a kid, the smell of those big night crawlers sliding around in a rusty old soup can never failed to bring a whistle to Grumps’ lips or to quicken his step all the way to the creek. The summer he was nine, fishing for sunnies and bluegills down at Sam’s Creek was pretty competitive sport for the boys in New Windsor, Maryland, and they didn’t take nearly so much pride in the fish they caught as they did in the bait that brought them in.