Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 The original Words for EWednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know in comments so we can come over and read it and add a few encouraging words.

Charlotte's colour of the month is Steel Blue.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by messymimi and can be found on her blog as well as mine.

This week's words/prompts are:

1.plastic  2.remain  3.tooth  4.wisecrack  5.distant  6.enjoy

and/or:

1. heads-up  2.not all it's cracked up to be  3.playing possum

Here is my story:

Next morning Claude Jackson took them all on a tour of his home field, including what was left of his burnt out barn. Two of Jeff's boys, Roger and Tyson were very interested in some of the old tools in the rubble and asked what they were.

Claude then told them all about his mining days, "way back when I was a young'un, finding gold was talked about a lot, we'd all heard of people going to Alaska and coming back rich and we got to thinking maybe there was gold in our hills too. Well here's a heads-up boys, mining is not all it's cracked up to be, you can't dig a pit and come out with your pockets full of nuggets." "That's a shame," said Bill, Jeff's youngest son.

"It is," said Claude, "and I learned that sooner than some of the others and came back to Daddy's farm, which is what you see all around you now. I found it easier to enjoy life when I was doing something I loved, planting the oats and barley with my Dad, turning the fallow fields ready for each crop as the first ones were being harvested."

"I enjoyed helping him fix up the house too, sawing the timber for the new porch steps, replacing some window frames, good solid timber there, none of that modern plastic looking vinyl frame stuff Red's got on his windows, with that foolish wife of his demanding everything under the sun be modernised like city folks has."

Dean and Sam agreed Claude's timber and stone home would remain standing far longer than anything made in a factory. "I may be a bit long in the tooth now, (Jeff's frown stopped any wisecracks his sons might have made about that) but I know strong and sturdy when I see it," said Claude.

Daniel suggested carting stone from his new fields to rebuild the barn stronger than before, saying the fields needed clearing before he could plough them and a stone barn wouldn't burn down like the old wooden one had. Claude got a distant look in his steel blue eyes as he tried to thank Dan without getting too emotional.