Saturday, July 2, 2011

Not a dog

The reason for the name is because the name Jack Russell is thought of by the general public to be a dog by that name.   Sometimes people laugh when I tell them my name.  There are plenty of men named Jack Russell.  I looked up on the internet to see if I could find a famous person by that name but all I found was information about Jack Russell terriers.  This popular dog is not a new breed.  It was developed in 1775 by a reverend John Russell.  (I've heard that Jack is a short name for John- can't imagine why).        Being an old man and having little to do and so much time to do it in, my daughter set up this blog site so I can use up some of it.      Now if you know any old people you may notice that they like to talk about the past and i'm no exception.    Although most of what I learned in school, slipped out about as fast as it went in some remnents of learning are still there like - determanents ,  Ohms law,  Laplace transformation (what in the world is that?)    I think its some kind of math procedure.   But I can remember something important I learned when I was 3 or 4 years old.  Our neighbor had a pet cow--you could keep livestock in town in those days -we had a hog- lots of people had chickens.   Well one day the cow started bellowing, rolling on the ground and causing a fuss.  Someone watching said that the cow must have ate some wild pea vines and the vines caused her to have gas.  So I know since that day that if you feed a cow wild pea vines it will give her gas.  Evan as a small boy I was kind of doubtful about that because I had seen other animals eat  anything you gave them with no ill effects,  but never-the-less if the subject ever comes up and somebody askes me what will be the mostly likely thing to give a cow gas, without hesitation my answer will be "wild pea vines".