Hello, fellow Friday 56ers!
It's been a while since I last participated in the Friday 56 (hosted weekly by My Head is Full of Books). What can I say? I've been busy with a lot of things. My 70-year-old father had a knee replacement two days ago and was released from the hospital yesterday. Unfortunately, there’s no home health care available due to issues with insurance and Medicare, which do not seem to cooperate, especially in our area. I won’t go into more details now; maybe I’ll discuss it in my next Watering Hole, which is my renamed Sunday Post series.
I took the Western paperback The Last Ride of the Dirty Creek Gang by William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone with me to the hospital but never opened it. Instead, I watched Blazing Saddles for the millionth time on my Kindle Fire tablet. William W. Johnstone has long since passed away, and J.A. Johnstone is his niece. I'm not sure how much involvement she had in writing this book aside from having her name on the cover. As with all new Johnstone books, the copyright page states that the Johnstone family hired an unnamed author to outline and create new stories that are published under William W. Johnstone's name. However, it doesn’t specify whether this "creator" actually ghostwrites the books or if other authors handle the newer Johnstone titles. For now, I’ll assume it’s the latter until I know more.
Anyway, I know little about the book aside from the blurb. It’s essentially about an old outlaw gang that is called upon to work together one last time for a potential big payout.
Now, here’s a preview from page 56:
His clothes flapped about his diminished body as he rode, but life had come rushing back into the man once they hit the trail.
— Johnstone, William W; Johnstone, J.A. The Last Ride of the Dirty Creek Gang, Pinnacle, 2026, p. 56.
〜B.J. Burgess
Welcome back! I've missed you. So how is your Dad doing so far? These days they give someone a new knee or hip or heart and push them out the doors of the hospital in record-breaking time. All my friends with knee replacements did really well as long as they followed the doctors orders with physical therapy and the types of activities to help regain strength. Good luck. Is he staying with you? //I didn't realize JA Johnstone was/is female. My bad. I often make assumptions and then get pulled up short by them. Blazing Saddles, huh? That is such a funny movie.
ReplyDeleteDuring my childhood, my dad and my uncle watched "Blazing Saddles" repeatedly. In fact, my uncle borrowed my dad's VHS tape so often that he eventually wore it out. It was a different time, and I probably shouldn't have known the film by heart by the time I was in kindergarten.
DeleteMy dad is doing great! He’s starting to rely less on a walker and can now go up and down stairs without any issues. He uses a CPM machine for two to three hours at a time, two to three times a day, and he has therapy at the local hospital three times a week. The doctor has advised that he cannot drive while on pain medication, so he stopped taking his pain meds yesterday. We'll see how that goes. The surgeon plans to make a "tweak" to his hip sometime in the fall, and then wait until winter—perhaps next year—to replace his left knee.