Along the Arkansas: It's About Time
We mark time in different ways out here on Baker's Branch. Here's one: scorpions. When I lived near Capistrano, it was the swallows in the spring. In Pacific Grove it was the monarchs in the fall on the way to Mexico clustering orange in the seaside pines. Out here on Baker's Branch it's the little honey-colored scorpions in the dangdest places imaginable all over the house, and usually two weeks to the day before the first real cold weather of autumn. I don't know how the little "jabbers" mark their seasons so accurately; all I know is that they do. Everybody who has lived in this house has been stung by the little %$#&*^**! except my son Rode and me, and we've had our close calls. Pam and Sarah have been nailed, twice. Apiece. When they were little, getting Sarah and Rode ready for the drive to town and school was a daily exercise in chaos with Pam in charge. Super Mom, but she couldn't be at all places all the time. I always told her she w