Don Negus

When I lived in upstate New York, I was surrounded by quality trout streams and I fished them often from the time I was four. But when we followed my dad's promotion to Lansing, I had no idea where to go trout fishing or who to go with.

Well this is the big day, so, Happy 250th Birthday, America. I turned 75 yesterday on the 3rd (not hinting for presents here but If you simply can't restrain yourself, I'm 6'2, I weigh 270 lbs and I like my t-shirts roomy so, 3X).

Coming of age in the '60s was pretty trippy (no pun intended—well, OK, it was sort of intended). Let me clear something up.There were a lot of people who would be considered “hippies” back in the day, but not everybody. I was but I didn't see most of you there.

Desperation has not yet set in. I still have a day and a half before I need to get this tangle of words down to the copy desk in Oakland. Usually I'm at least half done by this point, if not completely done. I am not. I am undone. I started one, ground out around 150 words, didn't like it. So here we are.

Most of my past has been pretty darn, bright, hence the title. That said, I got to thinking, partly because I'm pathologically interested in my own past and partly because I couldn't think of anything else to write about, I

I'm a couple days on the good side of my deadline, just the same, my relentless sense of responsibility behooves me to stop watching this 50-year-old rerun of “The Rockford Files,” put down the pipe and devote the next couple hours to delivering my golden prose to the masses.

If a virulent dayglow toadstool and a lumbering Pontiac station wagon, couldn't snuff the life of your cherubic young narrator, perhaps a six-inch, fish-gutting, implement of destruction, inattentively worn, might be able to get the job done.

Sometimes I feel Sometimes I feel Like I've been Tied to the whipping post Tied to the whipping post Tied to the whipped post Good Lord, I feel like I'm DYIN' – Allman Brothers from Whipping Post

Dang it. It's dinner time on a Tuesday night, I'm hungry and I'm a day late starting my column. When I am hungry, I tend to have the attention span of a raccoon. I should be writing or at least thinking about writing while my marinara de la Negus percolates. Instead, I'm staring blankly at the pair of goldfinches on the feeder outside my kitchen window.

Scotland. Alba. Caledonia. Kinrick o' Scotland. Land of the Scoti, as the Romans knew it, and a place many members of the Negus clan call home.