Forget politics---eat a hotdog

The Democrats are meeting down the road from my city so traffic is beginning to solidify on the interstates, helicopters are wump-wumping overhead, black SUV’s have suddenly appeared out of nowhere and there is a pork-smelling gas cloud venting out of the Time Warner Cable arena where the presidential nomination is taking place. This is a big deal for Charlotte, which is more accustomed to jazz fests, art jams and public concerts rather than the televised power struggle of a democracy. Me, I’m barefoot.

It’s still summer and red cardinals flutter about while I sip lemonade and decide it’s time others pointed out the pitfalls of leadership and policies. If you don’t have an opinion of where things are going by now then you’ve been living in a mine shaft. I am going to sit on my deck and read a book of American poetry and wait for evening when fireflies come out and my yard becomes a thousand points of light and puts me in awe of nature.

We have billions of dollars in a national electric grid yet a bug the size of a paper clip can have light whenever it wants and never worry about rate increases. To see swarms of lights bob about reminds you of billions of stars and then you realize this is a big universe and that it’s not always about you. Suddenly your mortality hits you over the head like a hammer. Bwwang!

Politics has taken us into decades of debt along with a war against Islam and the people under 25 are going to pay the price and they are, like uh, you know, okay with that so long as they can text each other. They walk around proud of a new tattoo and have no idea that “government deficient” means they will never be able to retire. You tell them the Chinese own us and they say, “Chill, dude”.

But I won’t be fighting this war because, I am, you know, like, 59. Really, I am 59 years old and with enough Zantac and Zolof I’ll continue to grow old and I hope you will still love me and you will still feed me when I’m 64.

I’m lucky. If the ice caps melt the ocean will not wash away my car. No tsunamis can reach my doorstep and besides none of my friends are penguins. If Pakistan gets mad and shoots a bomb over here do you think that they are really going to drop it on Statesville no they are not. So chill, dude.

Politics plays havoc with this great nation but the United States will always be around in one form or another. Cities may flood and crumble and we may have to hire security men with machine guns mounted on small pickup trucks to escort us to Food Lion and back but we’ll be here. Somewhere a boy will still fall in love with a girl and they will believe in a future.

I recently saw a young teenage couple walk out of a hotdog eatery. He carried the food, she had the napkins and they had one drink. Both sat down side by side on a bench and fed each other, sipped out of the same straw and occasionally laughed and giggled. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek causing him to put his arm around her shoulders and draw her close. Suddenly politics is small potatoes.

Forget deficits and mandated health care. Find someone that makes you happy, hold their hand, buy them a hot dog and let the fireflies light up your night.

There are rules, so follow them, okay?

This is an awesome country to live in and one of its special beauties is freedom of expression which seems to be getting freer every day. Also Fall is near and this makes for a general happiness wherever you go. It’s impossible to brood with the air full of anticipation for bright colored leaves, crisp cold mornings and thick warm stews.

I’ve been traveling lately and was in Wilmington, NC where I saw the young and flat bellied hold hands and stroll along a river walk past downtown pubs and restaurants. A soft breeze carries the scent of flowers, street musicians play acoustic guitars and you catch whiffs of cooked onions and peppers mixed with the smell of salty ocean air-- a perfect moment. Suddenly you have a heightened sense of optimism. You smile.

But on TV liberals and angry conservatives accuse each other of playing politics (really?) but you don’t run into this in everyday life as you walk through a mall or stop at the Quick Store for the rest room or gas. You’re not approached by angry people demanding you fix the economy.

Of course Facebook is full of old grumblers wailing about the fall of the country or weight gain and threaten to take you off their list of friends if you don’t reply to their demand to confirm your friendship. You can only shrug at all this—like walking across a rug and building up static electricity. Sure you get a slight shock, but it doesn’t turn on the house lights.

As one of my lunch friends likes to say, “So, what have we learned from all this?” Well, we’ve learned that Wall Street execs are so full of greed and dishonesty that it makes the Mafia look like sweet old men in frumpy clothes. We learned that elected governors will canoodle with the household help and some will travel as far as Argentina for a mistress. A state representative in Minnesota trolls craigslist looking for sex from young boys and gets caught. He thinks perhaps he should not run for re-election but feels duty bound to public service. Say what?

All this bad behavior ( yes, this is called BAD behavior) creates a yearning to go back and embrace virtues and values that when we were young we thought terribly dull---look where you’re going, feed the dog, don’t be a jerk, wait your turn, say please and thank you, pay your bills and hang onto your friends because one day nobody may remember what they liked about you other than now it’s become a habit. We learn life has some basic rules---so just follow them, okay?

Sensible rules, courtesy and virtues like modesty, integrity and a work ethic are the foundation of a good society. But when we bail out dishonest businesses and excuse bad behavior we lower the bar.

The young shrug at all of this. Sociologists now call this the “deviation of normalcy”. The young have been exposed to this ugliness so long they think it’s normal.

They’ve eaten processed food for years and have no idea what a homemade biscuit tastes like. An entire generation has lined up at a drive through window and accepted whatever came out. They’ve been raised on the biscuits that McDonald’s, Hardee’s or Bojangle's sells, tasty, but nevertheless doughy attempts to mimic your mothers’ cooking and now it’s all they know.

The young accept apathy and artificiality—they know nothing else. But once you know what a real homemade biscuit tastes like you’re never really satisfied with anything less.

Let’s get back to basics, follow the rules---maybe make some biscuits.

Some thoughts on love, politics and hot-air balloons

People accuse us conservatives of being a bit smug, uppity and believing we have all the answers and Lord knows they are right. Therefore when three of us had lunch recently all agreed before we sat down: no politics. We already know what we are going to say so why waste our breath? Knowing Everything is a good old American trait along with self-righteousness and baseball which is all preferable to cruelty, torture and having Vladimir Putin run your country. Nevertheless we all must remind ourselves: you’re not better than others and not much different than anyone else (Sunday School Lesson, June 1999 “Judgement”).

However by the time I’d taken the first bite of my eggroll we were deep into politics so I deliberately said a non-uppity non-smug thing: I don’t think any of us truly believe everything we claim to believe. It’s all biological. You hear a phrase and a response comes out, like Pavlov’s dog. We are all specks on a spinning ball lost within a vast creation of galaxies and if the planet exploded today and we lost everything---Bach, Aristotle, Socrates, Heather Locklear--- it would make no difference whatsoever in the big picture so why be concerned about the November election?

There was a long pause of silence then somebody said that Barack had lost 5 percentage points in the eastern states and the Republicans better get their bus out of the ditch.

What I didn’t get to talk about was the hot air balloon that landed in my front yard. We touched on the Electoral College and somebody ranted about the price of gas but the balloon was never mentioned.

A hot air balloon? (Thank you for asking).

A beautiful Saturday morning and I’m standing in the bathroom looking at a piece of soap that resembles the state of Virginia. I hear a thunderous blowing sound directly overhead and I look up but the ceiling is still there, just where it was suppose to be. Then I heard my wife scream for me to come to the front door, NOW---for God’s sake, NOW!

Wearing blue boxers ( with a decorative paramecia pattern) and a lathered face I run downstairs wondering if maybe Putin had taken one of my stories the wrong way--- only to see this enormous hot air balloon sitting in my front yard close to the front door and people piling out of the basket beneath it.

I found some pants, wiped my face and raced out the door to see if I could be of some help but everything was under control. What is the etiquette for guests that drop out of mid air and onto your front lawn at 7:00 a.m.? We offered coffee.

Some of us talked while the balloon was packed away in a van. Seems a passenger, Dr. Joe Perry , wanting to give his lovely wife Gaylynn an anniversary gift decided to simulate the moment she swept him off his feet, so they left the ground together.

An early morning balloon ride with someone you love. Your spouse, your best informed critic still wants to go to new heights with you. Amazing. So you hold hands, the earth passes beneath you, the wind touches your cheek and you feel their warmth beside you. Suddenly you know what is really important and it’s all right there in your hand.

I think just before the first presidential debate we should throw the two candidates into a hot air balloon, send it aloft and see if it doesn’t help bring about something profound. Surely, like Joe Perry, they could rise to the occasion.

Readers can write to Joe at Joehud@hotmail.com and see his work on www.viewfromthehudson.com, http://www.ncwriters.org/ or FanStory.com

Moon over Bogue Sound

The beach is another world. You wake up late in the morning and lie in bed because you can and New York is already on it’s second coffee, the next scandal in Washington is just coming to light ( GSA spends $20,000 on chicken wings at Opryland) and back home a county commissioner falsifies a building inspection report that snowballs into a resignation. It all seems so distant.

You wander out onto the balcony with your laptop which is full of emails but you don’t have to answer them because you’re at the beach. Everybody thinks you’re attending a workshop on creativity-- sitting in a lotus position near the surf while a priestess clad in a white kira plays ancient Malaysian melodies on a bamboo flute.

Back home it’s hot and dry and it makes you jittery whereas the beach is hot but it’s all part of the show. The local residents that I know thrive on heat and are generous normal people with a smattering of zealots that love to surf, hike and shoot hoops in 100 degree weather. I grew up thinking you had to choose between being laid back or being productive but at the beach they believe you can have it all.

Which is how I ended up 800 feet in the air over Bogue Sound in eastern North Carolina dangling beneath a parasail with a big yellow smiley face on it. A parasail? Thank you for asking.

Not wanting to waste a moment of my vacation, upon arrival at the beach I booked (productive) a sailing flight (laid back) with DragonFly Parasails whose staff are all flat bellied and look like they attend high school until you hear them talk about their wives and children. Then you realize they look so young because you’re getting so …ah, mature.

Jason, a sun baked stick thin fellow strapped me into a harness that supports your legs and arms but forces your rear to hang down and out in the air. You stand at the back of the boat on a platform, the captain pushes the throttle to Pretty Fast and the parasail fills and you’re snatched up into the air. The boat falls away from you.

Suddenly you are eye level with seagulls and realize you don’t belong up here. God never told you to do this and the harness that on the ground looked strong enough to lift the state of Vermont, now, in your professional opinion, seems to be thinner, maybe a little aged.

And still up you go further into the air and the boat becomes a speck and there you dangle and sway like hung meat with your rear end pushed out into the air. You feel the air all around you, in fact you’re feeling a lot of air, air in places that normally never get air, places that public law declares should never be exposed to air.

On launch your bathing suit was accidently pulled down.

Way down. And from the looks of everything you really should work out more.
To anyone looking up from beneath they see a moving white celestial orb with hemorrhoids all under a big yellow smiley face. Eye catching.

You drift down near a bridge and a car slows. The driver, a decent Christian father, does a double take and you imagine his sweet little children all pointing open mouthed while their mother swoons.

But it wasn’t so bad. I made a lot of friends while I was slowly reeled back in. Complete strangers in nearby boats waved and cheered me on. And what can you say? It’s the beach and that’s another world.

Let's Joke Around

I was amused lately when a man who sells chicken sandwiches answered a question regarding marriage and suddenly conservatives and liberals are hurling accusations at each other like javelins. Massive crowds gathered at the eateries to show support or condemnation which created huge waiting lines. A few just wanted lunch.

These are Spanish Inquisition days where every statement is analyzed for the tiniest bit of potential offense. This is a sad fact in the country that gave the world Micky Mouse, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Bill Cosby, Johnny Carson and dozens of funny TV sitcoms. Now we’ve become a shrill tense group of people glaring at each other with our arms folded across our chests. Cars, the internet and email all physically separates us, we hear our own voice too much.

We don’t joke anymore.

Back before we decided we were all oppressed there were two good ways to get to know a person. You could work beside someone doing an unpleasant job like cleaning up road kill or digging postholes and another way was to tell jokes-- like the one about a horse that walks into a bar and just stands there. The bar tender looks at him and says “Why the long face?”

I’ve heard that joke a million times and it still makes me smile. And there were good old Knock Knock jokes about Dexter and the halls and the one about Mr. Walter when the well runs dry. And of course there was the Buddhist that refused Novocain for his root canal because he wanted to transcend dental medication.

We use to laugh a lot. Then everybody got cell phones and there was no need to see each other.

Now, jokes are only told but up until the 1960’s people use to play jokes. Cars and machines were simple. My father and his pals disassembled a neighbor’s Farmhall tractor and reassembled it in the man’s tobacco barn. It took the farmer a day to find his tractor. Of course there was good natured pay back later. Tying tiny bells to the bottom of a young married couple’s box spring mattress always got a wink and a smile. Many homes, like your grandmothers’, had outhouses that your friends tipped over at the most delicate moment. That’s how I learned to cuss.

Telling a joke right has nothing to do with your political affiliation, religion, education or income. You do not need physics or theology everyday but the ability to tell a good joke always comes in handy. Some people have a knack for it like making hoop shots with a swish.

Nobody knows where jokes come from. Years ago I was standing in the Charlotte Douglas airport watching a news report on a big screen TV that was following up on a president that had sexual relations with a young intern. Standing beside me in a blue business suit was a gentleman I had never seen before. He turned to me and said “Did you hear Belk is having a Presidents Day sale? All men’s pants are half off!” He had heard a version of that joke in a New York diner.

Jokes help you release tension, even oldies like my favorite fifth grade joke,” Why do gorillas have large nostrils? Because they have big fingers.” Or “The blind man picked up a hammer and saw.”

Your life may be a mess, your clothes tattered and torn and you’ve misplaced your car keys but a good joke every now and then will do you good. So tell a joke, give out a laugh and let’s all sit down and eat.

Have the good sense to flee perfection

Recently we’ve had early morning showers followed by bright balmy days which made for wonderful evenings to sit outside until late and wax long and hard about life like you did when you were in college. Days like that are almost perfect, so of course you immediately pack your bags.

Perfection produces distance thunder---a warning of pending storms. The moment one experiences the perfect and the ideal you realize with dread that the inevitable decline of life is just ahead---any day now--- better to get an early start on it. So I drove to Greenville in eastern North Carolina where the weather was unseasonably cool with light drizzling rain. This is perfect for sitting inside sharing coffee with my mother and growling about the awful weather.

Greenville has East Carolina University with its medical school which attracts thousands of people from all over the world. Most are young with flat abdominal muscles, their life bankrolled by someone else so they are happy and have no mortgage or lower back pain.

Sitting at a stoplight I am struck by the beauty of a girl with long black hair walking along the sidewalk. She has Asian features with high cheekbones and skin which is carefully and frequently moisturized. Her blue shirt clings to her in the misty rain. She travels on long slender legs that were poured into tight fitting white jeans. An elderly man in a grey pin striped business suit holds an umbrella over his head and watches her. The man stares at this young goddess as she walks by him, she nods politely and then suddenly she is gone out of his life forever. He looks a bit wistful. You should not live in a college town when you past the age of fifty unless you are prepared for disappointments and regrets.

My mind ponders disappointments as I pass a golf course now empty in the drizzling rain. Golf is a game of disappointment capable of producing sudden moments of self loathing and thunderous anger that hurls a nine iron into the nearest water hazard. And it’s all done in a beautiful quiet pastoral setting.

But golf is a wonderful benefit to society as it’s ranks are filled with corporate lawyers, politicians and CEO’s who, if they spent their time in the office, just think of all the damage they would do. Therefore municipal golf courses would be a wonderful investment in our future and well being. I am amazed at how much people will pay to go to a place so they can suffer.

I don’t play golf anymore. I dabble in the arts now which gives me all the opportunities to suffer that a man can bear. There is nothing like spending days writing a story that turns out to be a public disappointment or produces little response. You never got off the tee. Then some newbie writes a book, for fun she says, about different shades of grey and masochistic sex and it’s a New York Times best seller. Your wife reads it and one night you find stainless steel handcuffs on the nightstand. You want to say bad things and hurl your pen into a lake.

But travel levels the playing field, available to almost anyone. You sit in a strange city, sip coffee and for a little while you have no past and no responsibilities. You see beautiful people, gain a different perspective on life and acquire fresh ideas. One day we will look back and be amazed at the things we’ve done and experienced if every now and then we have the good sense to flee perfection.

Politics and real work do not mix

Another evening given from God and this one is exceptionally well designed. We linger over supper outside in the backyard and discuss the hot weather and barn swallows (Do they really feed on flying insects only? No, says the family ornithologist) and then conversation drifts towards Ronald Reagan returning from Heaven and leading us to 12 percent annual returns.

Meanwhile the sun slowly sets and insect repellant candles come out and slices of pound cake and nobody feels an urge to get up and tackle life. I’m normally quiet and humble but give me a warm summer evening, a little candle light and I am tempted to make startling confessions---“I admit it (heavy gut wrenching sob). I started writing a newspaper column as a way of gaining attention! It was never about truth and inspiration. No, no, no, it was all about Me! I just needed attention! God forgive me!”--- but I realize as host it is my duty to conclude the meal and so I say “Well, umm, yep…”, stand up, stretch and start gathering plates. One can sit too long and one can say too much.

I’ve had to talk a lot this afternoon which is challenging. I’m not social like my wife who carries conversation easily like a gull drifting in flight. She is away for a weekend at the beach. My guest left some time ago, he has an early morning flight and now I am alone, the house is unusually quiet. Nobody in a slinky black dress has burst into my study, pressed her lips to mine and begged me to run away with her to Casablanca and live on love. There simply isn’t a lot of bursting or kissing going on right now only the steady tap, tap, tap of keys and the random squeak of my chair. The boxer at my feet just stretched, yawned and broke wind. That pretty much sums up the moment.

I don’t like to travel anymore so I stayed home. My need to see beautiful ocean sunrises, gather seashells and take long walks is at an all time low.

I’ve been reminded to water the tomato plants which is a labor intensive job I am not good at but I did it this morning so I guess I’m still young enough to learn how to work.

If your mother is alive it means you are still young. My mother has a firm grip on 79 and shelters me from mortality. Whenever I need to feel young and safe again I drive to my mother’s and discuss family and recipes and life. She tells me I have a lot of life ahead of me yet. My mirror tells me different.

I’ve never loved summer as much as now which I guess is a factor of age---the less time you have the more you appreciate it and partly because a short drive from my house the Democrats are going to hold their national convention in a few months. Now I know how the villagers felt when the Visigoths convened just outside the village. You hide your daughters and brace yourself for big crowds. I’ve been trying to think of a sign I could put out in front of the convention hall but “Aw Heck!” is all I’ve got right now.

I’ve been writing about Democrats, Visigoths and Ronald Reagan and suddenly remember I have left the water hose running for the tomato plants. They are probably drowned by now. I may need to call a tomato whisperer or a scuba diver. Talk to you later. I should know better. Politics and real work have never mixed.

A True Squirrel story---mostly

A beautiful Sunday morning and you walk outside in your back yard to enjoy the serenity, the peace and the fullness of nature as allowed in residential zoning. You have bird feeders strategically mounted for your viewing pleasure. However you notice a squirrel on one of the feeders and you walk towards him to run him away. Startled, he jumps on top of the feeder and with a look of pure malice faces you and starts yelling at you in squirrel! Angered you wave your hands and yell back but he stands his ground. The feeder is almost eye level and now you have two hairy legged guys standing four feet apart screeching at each other and neither guy wants to back down. Yes, I agree...so far pretty normal.

But two days later Fed Ex delivers a military grade squirrel proof bird feeder designed by a retired NASA engineer. Assembled it looks a bit Dr. Seuss inspired with cantilevers, pulleys and counterweights all made to collapse should the squirrel manage to get past thirteen built-in safeguards. The squirrel approaches, climbs the pole and figures it all out in 3.2 seconds.

So you make a plan. You buy a special titanium water hose nozzle that boosts water pressure up to a million pounds per square inch and produces a thin stream of water like a laser.

You lie under a bush holding a pressurized water hose and you watch and wait. Your mind drifts to that situation at the office and if the boss will....wait!...there’s the squirrel!

You watch the little jerk climb to the feeder. You hear him chortle to himself as he eats your feed. The Squirrel bends over for another sunflower seed and exposes the one place he does not have hair. You smile and suddenly a million pounds of pressurized cold water nails his rear end. The squirrel leaps 10 feet into the air and when he hits the ground you swear you hear him say “ Holy Crap!” He staggers to a nearby tree leaving behind a trail of small brown squirrel nuggets on the bright green grass.

You go into the house and pour yourself a victory drink and ponder your superiority over God’s creatures. Suddenly you hear your wife pleading for you to come to the front door quickly. You hurry and find her staring and pointing out the glass front door, tears running down her face.

She sobs,“That poor creature is hurt. Just look!”

You see the problem. It’s the squirrel--- limping across the yard and casting glances at the front door. A real drama jerk squirrel.

“I know that squirrel, “ you say, “ and the limp is fake. I hit him with water.”

Your wife stops crying, she turns to face you, contempt on her face.

“You? You did that?” her voice is cold. Over her shoulder you see the squirrel holding his stomach rolling around in the yard laughing.

And suddenly you and your wife are in a heated discussion about how you’re selfish and never warmed up to her mother who, by the way, claims you’re bipolar. The squirrel does cartwheels across your view.

The marriage counseling takes months but in the end she leaves you for Wayne, a big wheel in the PETA organization.

Now you live alone, it’s ten in the morning and you sit on your deck unshaven in your ratty old bathrobe, a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels by your side and you chain smoke menthol cigarettes.

You become aware of being watched and see the squirrel sitting on a low branch looking directly at you. He appears to be smiling. This isn’t over.

Come to me my sweet....corn

I was born in January a cold dark month. I arrived totally disoriented and without any clothes, was hoisted up by my feet, given a good whack and thus welcomed into the world. The mood in the room was somber and people avoided looking at each other. The doctor, nurses and my parents all knew the sad truth—I had missed the sweet corn season by six months.

Just mention the corn year of ’52 and older people in my community get dreamy, become trancelike and they drool. Corn connoisseurs say the crop that year was especially vibrant, a wonderful bouquet of earthy tartness balanced by the sweetness of the sugar with delicate hints of fried bacon. It was said that a farmer in the community, so enthused about the new crop, ate twenty ears of cooked corn in one sitting and (alas!) lost his taste for it. He sold the farm and played sad songs on the harmonica. He never got over it.

From the time I was just a wee kernel corn has always been a source of wonder and delight. We grew the corn close to the house and when it was “ready” my mother would march our family into the field at sunrise where we picked corn by hand and put in it in bushel baskets. Then we brought it back to the house, sat in the shade of a huge oak tree and there we would shuck, silk and stack the corn like gold bars. The bigger your pile grew so did your glory. “Oh my,” Mother would say” You’re such a hard worker! Look! Look everybody!” which produced frowns from your sisters but you’d smile and try to remain humble. God favored people like you.

Later work moved into the kitchen which became a boiler room filled with clouds of steam from the pressure cooker and pots full of boiling water for sterilizing the jars--- all of which had the name “Ball” written on them in cursive writing. We washed the corn in the kitchen sink passing the ears to my mother who slaved away at the canning process, her damp hair stuck to her forehead as if she’d just stepped out of the shower.

Mother would boil us fresh ears of corn for lunch and we sat outside on the ground and ate like beavers. No juice was ever so sweet and no crunch so tender as corn cooked, salted and buttered by your mother.

Corn is the grain of America. From it came a TV show set in a cornfield. A generation grew up watching “ Hee Haw” with Junior Samples who gave out the most famous telephone number in the world-- ‘BR-549”.

Corn mash is used to make whisky which is the foundation of the Kennedy family’s wealth and without them there would have been no news to report in the 1960’s and 70’s. There would have been no need for Walter Cronkite or the word “ Chappaquiddick”.

Without corn chips how would we eat salsa? With a spoon? Yucko, amigo.
Now corn stands accused of giving us unhealthy love handles that hang over our belts. Corn syrup is the least health-giving and the most fattening of the carbon consuming foods.

Ethanol, a mash that is one part corn and two parts tax dollars consumes about as much energy as it yields.

Corn is another tradition the health police are trying to take away from us. But I say to corn, come hither “Golden Jubilee”, come to me my “Silver Queen”. We go back a ways. Remember when sunshine and fresh air were considered good for you?

Summer and the living is confusing

I had meant to do an impressive essay today on food preservation as practiced by Himalayan Sherpa’s but my mind has wilted in the heat and it’s all I can do to roll the garbage to the curb and pant like an exhausted sled dog. Besides right now I’m caught up in a decision about draperies--pastels or primary colors? Pattern or plain, floor length, curtain rods or boxed, etc.? I usually leave these things up to my wife while I devote myself to weightier issues-- the collapse of the European Union, the Godhead Trinity—but the heat has thrown me way off.

Cold weather helps a man stay focused. This is a little-known fact. The thermometer plunges towards freezing and men are moved by primal urges to don heavy Carhartt clothing and hurl themselves into blowing snow, secure the livestock in the barns and then return inside with a haunch of moose for supper. But let the temperature climb to the nineties and those same men become fascinated with draperies, chopped basil and wear green plaid shorts and yellow flip-flops. The wife walks into the den buck naked covered in Mazola corn-oil stands between her husband and the TV, winks and the guy thinks, “ The cleaners! I was supposed to go by the cleaners.”

This increase in male confusion is directly related to global warming. No kidding.

Back when a winter was a winter men moved their tribes south to Florida, New Orleans or Six Flags. Men were able to walk about bare-chested and show off their washboard abs to attract women. Guys kept fit. You never knew when you were going to have to fight another tribe or pull an all-nighter on Bourbon Street and this kept men on their toes. But warming trends allowed people to remain up north like in New York and live in a climate that was neither very hot nor cold. Gradually as men began to wear shirts they lost the drive to stay buffed, they invented couches and then came the TV remote and bad cholesterol. Men didn’t know where they belonged or how to behave-- they became confused and short of breath.

Now thanks to medicine old geezers head for Miami or Arizona and you have Viagra induced love triangles popping up all over the country. These elderly would normally have passed the time playing bingo down at the lodge sipping an Old Fashion with bitters and complaining about the cold. They would have kept their hands to themselves.

Now men in their 70’s form hiking clubs, they surf and sky dive on the weekends. I tried to hike with a group of retired men not long ago, guys who should have been sitting in a nursing home watching the “The Price is Right” but were instead carrying pitons, climbing rope and lanyards. Just as we were walking out of the parking lot towards the trail I fell behind but bravely waved them onward. It was okay I shouted. I’d find my way back to the car.

Hold it a second. I’ll be right back.

Tic….tic….tic….tic….tic.

Whew, I’m back with some iced tea. Summers are better since I stopped drinking beer years ago and took up tea. With beer you get weepy, grab a buddy and start singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” but with tea you are alone and do solos, something in a high falsetto like “The Rose”. I really need to decide about those draperies. I have a secret fondness for Laced Nottingham’s, but that’s just me. My wife is the solid beige type.


I’m confused. What were we talking about?

An Old Testament View of Vacations

My dentist, Dr. D E Carroll a very competent man, looked down and patted me on the shoulder. He had applied a new topical anesthetic to numb my jaw so I would later not feel the needle prick of a syringe. Then in an unsure voice he asked his assistant for instructions. Did it take two minutes to numb or could he just stick me now? She said she couldn’t remember. There was a moment of dead silence in the room. Then both burst out laughing. Dental humor.

I admired that. I am a worrier myself and appreciate a professional approach to anxiety.

I come from a long line of worriers and first cut my teeth on vacations. Nothing fills me with trepidation like planning a week of pleasure and fun. I was raised an Old Testament Baptist and believe that God smites people who enjoy carbohydrates, mingle with pagans and whoop it---or as they say, a vacation.

Therefore I believe that a vacation trip only jeopardizes your future. I’m leery of door handles in public rest areas because you know they have been smeared with germs by the great unwashed masses. I always think of gonorrhea and syphilis which until this moment could not be caught from door handles but you become the very first to contract both at the same time and in this way. It will make medical textbooks, YouTube and Twitter. You will be packed off barking mad and foaming at the mouth to a nursing home that doubles as a truck stop. You are unfriended on Facebook.

Everyone believes you got it from sordid sex and you are judged guilty without having experienced the pleasure. Later your brain turns to talcum powder and you die believing you are Henry VIII. At your funeral public outcry has demanded your casket be shrink wrapped in plastic and instead of pall bearers they bring in a forklift and the undertaker wears a toxic waste moon suit. They bury you behind the maintenance shed at the cemetery.

Or perhaps back home your sweet old mother has fallen and broken her hip and is now dragging herself across the front yard in the cold night rain waving a flashlight at passing cars. You see all this in your head as you sit to take your first bite of dinner at a resort in Hilton Head.

Or maybe the pipes burst in your upstairs bathroom flooding the house and creating mold. When you return home a week later and open the door you inhale extremely virulent spoors. You develop a nagging cough and your eyebrows fall off which turns out to be the result of a fatal Brazilian respiratory disease so rare only two doctors in the country even know the name of it.

So you grow sicker and waste away. People hug you longer than necessary and silently mouth over your shoulder to the others in the room “Goner”. Then your wife comes to your bedside one evening to spoon feed you your evening bowl of tepid watery soup. She seems hurried. You notice she is wearing a pearl necklace and a black evening dress with spaghetti straps and a nicely dressed man is looking down at you from over her shoulder, smiling---it’s the doctor who diagnosed your disease. You stare at the ceiling and say in a weak raspy voice, “If only I’d never taken that vacation.”



So you’ve already made reservations for your summer vacation? Now you’re having second thoughts? Well, I’m sorry you didn’t ask me about it first. Good luck.

Sir, your screams are forgiven

Sunday and I am driving through my neighborhood observing picturesque yards with thriving lush greenery, shrubbery and multicolored flowers, the labor of each homeowner evident and offered for the viewing pleasure of any and all. Yet the children that live there could be telling chilling stories to their therapists about mental and emotional stress experienced in these very homes when back in April and May parents forced them to hard labor which in turn made for this beautiful yard. My son probably told the same stories years ago. I smile. This does not bother me. Those who make beautiful things happen are simply forgiven.

I am on my way home from church, a place founded on forgiveness. And good stories. Today’s story was about an adulterous woman and her accusers, the Pharisees, who wanted to stone her. She had made bad choices but our Lord forgave her, prevented the authorities from stoning her and told her to go and sin no more. A story all too real that shows among other things, people in authority can become calloused and willing to commit horrendous acts of cruelty.

The recent massacre in Houla Syria comes to mind. About 100 women and children, mostly children were simply killed outright. The Syrian president claims the murderers were terrorists, which may be the beginnings of a civil war, and so he demands greater power. Hitler took the same tack with the “Kristallnacht” (Crystal Night) as an excuse for emergency powers which ultimately led to the death of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. Interesting to note that when one person is attacked it is a story but when a hundred or millions are executed it is just a statistic. Man’s heart is cruel.

Which is all the more reason to enjoy this quiet street and it’s green lawns, toys on a front porch, a cat slinking around some hydrangeas, a bicycle propped against a tree—it’s the miracle of the ordinary. All of societies’ goals are realized here on this street-- security, peace, prosperity, a bed of orange Day Lilies, a child’s chalk writing on a driveway. There are men who would destroy this and men who would protect it.

But here today we are not interested in war or the politics of a corrupt Syrian or past dictators. Good stories all, but sometimes you wish people would get angry about meanness and cruelty.
I think of the man on the interstate highway last week that became enraged when I changed lanes. I thought I had given him plenty of warning with my turn signal and lots of space but apparently he felt I had cut him off. He pulled up beside me, rolled his window down and screamed obscenities. Then, for emphasis, he showed me his finger.

I wish he could show some rage for those massacred children. I like to think that later he felt embarrassed, hoped none of his friends saw him so that when he pulled into his driveway and saw the chalk message “I love Daddy” and saw his house and it’s lush green yard and unharmed children running to meet him, that he felt chastened. I hope that he got out of the car and realized his home was as he left it this morning and took a moment to look at all that was his. Earlier he wanted to stone me, but now with time to reflect I hope his rage is replaced by gratitude.



Good sir and father, thank you for your beautiful yard. Your family is safe and loved. Your public display of rage is forgiven. Now go and scream no more.

When Winnebago’s give way to stories

Ninety percent of the ten people I polled in my doctors waiting room believed that the price of gas will exceed $4.00 a gallon after the presidential election and dashed my hopes that oil prices would return to something normal—which we all know is about 30 cents a gallon. I could buy a Winnebago and drive around the country this summer and do Yellowstone National Park with air conditioning and lawn chairs under a roll out awning.

However Winnebago and RV stocks are wilting. When you sell big metal McMansions on truck chasses for as much as a quarter of a million dollars your clientele is rather select and may opt to buy a home in Cancun rather than face five o’clock traffic on an interstate.

When I was a kayaker I hated RV’s. You paddled to shore after a long day on the water only to see the campground filled with motor homes and hear the hum of air conditioners and see the flicker of TV’s sets through the windows. You would camp as far away from them as possible so as to keep yourself pure. You also learned that if you picked a good angle you could watch “ The Red Skelton” show through their windows while you ate your supper of cold Beanie Weenies.

The dream of easy travel lies deep within most Americans and once when I was 12 years old a friend invited me to go camping with his family in their Winnebago. It was wonderful to have your comic books on shelves and clothes in a drawer and you could use the bathroom all while hurtling down the highway at 60 miles per hour. I drank a lot of water for the fun of it.

Eisenhower transformed our society with the interstate highway system which was based on the assumption of cheap fuel, so we built houses with big back yards which made for long drives to the grocery store. We’ve forgotten how life looks on foot and now whenever I walk across the parking lot of a giant Wal-Mart I feel as though I’m approaching an enemy fortress
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We shall have to entertain ourselves in other ways. I predict harmonica sales will pick up. Screened porches will come back and so will fly strips. Story telling will return as a source of amusement for people on foot. I have never told a story to a clerk at the drive-thru window but you can walk up to the check out lady at Food Lion and make small talk and learn that her grandson is in a school play and suddenly you experience fellowship and humanity. She becomes a real person to you. People who are not real to each other are dangerous. They sometimes wear bombs in their clothes or go on shooting sprees in high schools. Stories and conversation gives us feelings for each other which allows the practice of the Golden Rule and that is the foundation for a civilized society and the freedom to carry three ounces of shampoo onto an airplane.

So when gas passes five dollars and goes on to six and eight we’ll learn to sit still and tell each other stories about our lives. I’ll tell one about me and a mountain camping trip when we sat by the light of a Coleman lantern and ate fresh caught trout and the night stars listened in to our stories and we rekindle the joy of talking to each other.



And so something is lost and something is gained and we know that is the real story of our lives.

The simple past may be the way forward

At a produce stand in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains I bought an armful of sweet potatoes and some blueberry jam simply because the seller, sitting on a small stool, was a stunning blond haired beauty who happened to be Amish. She wore a long cotton dress buttoned high at the neck, a gray bonnet covered her head and her horse and buggy stood in the background. She seemed so wrong for this role. Her face belonged on a college campus or a soft drink commercial smiling into a camera with a tropical beach in the background. So rather than stare --- I thought there could be a story here—I decided to buy something and strike up a conversation. And like so many of my great ideas that didn’t happen.

Years ago I questioned the Amish beliefs that denied their children many wonderful things in the world but now I pity the kids of affluent people. They spoil their children leaving a wake of emotionally stunted lives with dysfunctional Charlie Sheen behavior believing they have “the blood of a tiger” but couldn’t bear a day without cell phone service.

The Amish adhere to a doctrine that teaches “to be in the world but not of the world” a belief built on few verbs but nevertheless sets them apart which they turn to their advantage as a thriving enterprise in the form of a tourist attraction. And so this young girl sits quietly while paunch bellied, credit card carrying golly-gee-that’s-a-horse Protestant tourists give her a brisk business in sweet potatoes and blueberry jam at $5.00 a jar. You don’t want to know what I paid for the Amish organic sweet potatoes.

As I studied her horse and buggy it dawned on me that while we believe the Amish live in the past they may well be the future. Our children and grandchildren will be faced with what we have been able to ignore--- life with rationed gasoline and expensive electricity and subsist on three acres with a plow and a good strong team of mules named Gus and Brownie. Maybe someone will invent a car that runs on common air or maybe we’ll transport ourselves on microwaves but the cynical realist in me has grave doubts.

It’s been an extremely short winter in a long session of short winters with record breaking high temperatures and sporadic rainfall. Even the stout capitalist in me who believes trees were made to build yard decks senses a line has been crossed. Somewhere Mother Nature is putting down her apron, breaking off a hickory switch and is about to address us wasteful fuel consuming creatures.

I walk about the small town and it is picturesque with shaded streets and tidy yards. I pass by a huge pile of a house--- an old Victorian home with a screened porch and green ferns hanging from corner eaves. It has seen the influenza epidemic of 1918, the Great Depression and the passion of World War II and people sat on its porch and believed in God and prayed for people other than themselves. It speaks of a time when everyday honesty and hard work anchored a nation and our lives. There was no pizza delivery.

There are zealots, politicians and tyrants out there working the main highways but back here in the little towns and farms they still survive on honesty and work. I made a blueberry tart and cut the amount of sugar in half to bring out the berry taste. I was pleased. The simple life of the past may well be the way forward.

Sex in the Secret Service reminds me of Superman

I’ve been trying not to think about the big party some Secret Service boys threw with the local prostitutes in Cartagena Colombia and think about the future of American Chinchilla farming instead, or the environment but it is hard to put tropical sex out of your mind. Besides-- the environmental impact was slight, a few sheets and towels at most.

Our guys with the really dark sun glasses and black suits went to Cartagena to scout out the area before President Obama was to arrive a week later. No doubt the stress of operating in a tropical resort environment created a need to bond with some locals and swap jokes---Colombians tell the same jokes about Norwegians that Americans use to tell about Polish people—and they were all very happy about the FTA (free trade agreement) and thought they’d test the process out. But there was a misunderstanding about phasing out tariffs for goods and services and a prostitute thought it was $47 and an American agent thought it was $42 and the police were called and now the secret service man is listening to his wife’s divorce lawyer explain why the wife is getting the house and the Volvo. Free trade has it’s pitfalls.

And that is about all we know except one Secret Service man is believed to have said “My life is ruined.” Which is the type of thing a good Protestant American boy should say after he has gotten drunk, had sex with a potential spy and perhaps compromised the safety of the American president. It shows good manners. You can’t have international sex with a complete stranger on company time and then say “I have a nutrition problem”. You’re pretty much expected to squat by the fire, rock back and forth and scrape yourself with pottery shards and ashes.

Many people feel the need to go somewhere else to misbehave. I am a Baptist and therefore all forms of joy are suspect such as when my brethren tell me they are going to vacation in Cancun or the Bahamas supposedly for the gentle tropical breezes. “Gentle breezes for what?” one must ask. Ha! Wild sex, most likely.

This is one area of life American writers need to explore. You read about the secret service and their professional reputation and you think “They would never do such a reckless thing as that. No way, no how, no no no!” And so you write a story and attempt to create understanding by putting the reader into bed with the prostitute and write it as though the secret service agent was full of patriotism and sacrifice while his pants and drawers lay scattered on the floor of a five star hotel room. Remember to use plenty of verbs.

But this is what happens to a nation that has excused moral responsibility and bad behavior for so long the cancer has eaten it’s way to the top of what was once the very best. God is not mocked and the age of these men indicate they are the first products of that time when this nation first told God to get out of our schools and our laws.

Such behavior defies reasoning. I’m reminded of the time I was nine, tied a towel to my neck for a cape and jumped off the top corner of the house to fly like Superman. I landed in an old rose bush and was scratched badly and twisted an ankle. My mother heard my screams and ran outside but stopped short upon seeing I was still alive and said, “What in the world were you thinking?”

Censored Columnist caught in Saladgate

I’m eating a burrito at a local Mexican restaurant and discussing the blight of North Carolina politics when a waiter I’m not familiar with comes up to me and in broken English explains I owe him $18.76 for a taco salad.

I politely tell him he is mistaken and resume my conversation but the man does not walk away. I turn back to him and he explains that some weeks ago he served me and when he left me the ticket to sign for my credit card I picked up the customer copy, never signed the merchant copy and walked out. He was forced to pay the bill.

My face turned red with anger, I sensed a scam. Suddenly I thought about actors and politicians in newspaper headlines that had been caught stealing (Wealthy Actress arrested with $1.50 Lipstick in Purse—Whoa Momma!) and people all over America think, “Petty theft, how disgraceful. I always knew she was rich trash.” I did not want to be thought of as petty or trash or someone with lip stick. I didn’t want to be scammed either.

People nearby overheard and were staring and suddenly I remembered that particular lunch--- how I was upset about a work issue--- and decided to leave---- and grabbed my ticket---- and rushed out the----Oh. My. Goodness. He was right! I had inadvertently stiffed the guy! Where I come from they put such thieves in wooden stocks so people passing by can pull the offenders ears and twist his nose. And so I paid up. I also added an enormous tip. I saw a woman at a nearby table shake her head.

I didn’t mind paying my debt-- it was the embarrassment and the quick judgment of those looking on who did not know all the facts that hurt so bad. The waiter wasn’t just collecting a debt, he was testifying in a Congressional hearing.
Later I realized my Saladgate was probably God’s punishment for an email I had sent earlier.

I had been invited by an academic institution to submit an article about local life, politics and food--- make it humorous. After reviewing it they sent it back saying it was too conservative politically. What!? Suddenly I heard muskets firing and saw redcoats running and I was crossing the Delaware River standing in a row boat. This was censorship and tyranny boys, and we ain’t gonna take it. No sirree.

To be censored in America is a high honor for any writer because it never really happens but to imagine being censored makes you feel wonderfully righteous. So I fired off a hastily written email indignant about their “caveman mentality”, their “mushy liberal politics” and “freedom of expression being the American way”, etc. and I considered further action (Censored Columnist Occupies Public Park—Mayor cancels peace negotiations with Mooresville to monitor situation).

Later they emailed back “Sorry you are upset. Nevertheless you’re still our favorite columnist.” and my arrogant hot jets suddenly cooled and sputtered to a stop in mid air.

Now humbled I reviewed the email I had sent with it’s haughty tone. When you write a sanctimonious letter like that you lose control; you don’t argue the facts but instead your chest swells and you defend godliness, the Constitution, freedom of the press, the Alamo and the plight of Irish people everywhere. And shortly thereafter you stiff a hard working waiter of his money and a woman watches you, shakes her head and thinks “ That poor man needs serious help.” and then she glances into her compact mirror and makes sure her lipstick is on properly.

I got the Sears closed-up-and-shutdown-blues

It’s spring and life is cheerful though one must accept certain grim realities like mortality, paper cuts and the demise of our local Sears store. I will miss our Sears which had come to be like a friend to me that brought back memories of the old Sears-Roebuck & Co store I knew when I was a boy.

That store had creaky wooden floors and was filled with toys, sporting goods, sewing machines and appliances. The Sale clerks were middle class working people who knew my parents by name and everyone agreed that Eisenhower should nuke Russia into a flat piece of glass. It was there my father purchased my first bicycle and the clerk took me out back and helped me learn to stay upright on a moving two wheeled object. A wonder, like the Trinity, suddenly made clear by kindness. You don’t get that type of instruction on the internet.

Imagine America in the 1880’s. There were only 38 states and about 65 percent of the people lived in rural areas. Only a dozen or so cities had 200,000 or more residents. One day a Chicago jewelry company accidently shipped some watches to a jeweler in a Minnesota hamlet who did not want them.

Richard Sears was an agent of the Minneapolis and St. Louis railway station in North Redwood, Minnesota. When he received a shipment of watches - unwanted by the Redwood Falls jeweler--- Sears purchased them himself, sold the watches at a profit and ordered more for resale.

In 1886 Sears began the R.W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis which expanded into other merchandise and became one of the first mail order houses in America supplying catalogues that contained about the only view of the world many people ever saw outside their own community. Old catalogues were carried to the outhouse where they doubled as reading material and a torn page crinkled and held just right was the foundation of American hygiene.

As a child I lived for the Sears & Roebuck Christmas catalogues. The catalogue’s arrival announced the holiday season and my mother would place the new catalogue on my bed so I would see it first thing when I came home from school. You were allowed to choose three items from it for Christmas but one item had to be clothing. Bummer. I would lie across the bed propped on my elbows and slowly turn each page and marvel at the new wonders of the year. The book was a holy document and each picture was a prophecy of the coming of Santa Claus. Today’s internet pictures have no holiness or wonder. They’re just pixels. And you can’t use them for hygiene.

The Sears company was founded by a romantic who dreamed of quality goods and service but in the early 1980’s it fell into the hands of rapacious bandits that tore it’s heart out, refused to update the stores, streamlined the name to “Sears” and treated employees like outhouse catalogues.

And so I mourn the loss of my childhood and with it the loss of an icon of the American economy. Closing Sears makes me sad and I want to grab an old beat up guitar, sit on the front porch while wearing dark sun glasses and strum some old blues chords and sing:

“I wanted to buy some things today.
So I went down to Sears with my pay.
But the door was locked, a sign was in my way. I heard it on the evening news.
She’s now lost to me and to you.
And that’s why I got these Sears closed-up-and-shutdown blues.”

Poetry solves man’s greatest dilemma---women

If you’re planning to throw your golf clubs in the car and head out for a round of 18 holes it may not mean much to you that April is Poetry Month. You may still be smarting from your Supreme Court Justice nomination that lost steam due to that little limerick you recited at the company New Year’s Eve party back in 1989 which has been used to make you appear to be a sexist jerk, so your interest in poetry and the word “Nantucket” has dimmed. Well, you’re not alone.

Poetry, when read aloud, has been proved over and over again to break up a gathering. Many police departments, to avoid the cost of pepper spray and water cannons, are now issuing their officers bull horns containing the recorded works of Robert Frost and Walt Whitman. Poe, that moody figure of literature, is considered by law enforcement to be a God send for Halloween crowd dispersal. SWAT teams may start carrying the entire works of Maya Angelou.

Then what is the message of poetry month? It’s not that we should read about flaxen hair or the shadow of emotions as clouds in our coffee---no, but that we should write a poem ourselves and watch it work it’s power over the hearts of women.

Back when our bare-chested hairy legged ancestors smelled of bear grease and smoke, lived in caves and slept on animal hides, men were considered unattractive by women. Fighting with spears and rocks had left unsightly blemishes and open wounds and sometimes changed good bass singers into sopranos. Guys sat around camp fires stitching themselves back together with cat gut, telling war stories that projected calloused indifference while deep down they ached to be loved for who they were.

Men wanted women to show an interest in a fellow for his inner self rather than ambush another tribe and eviscerate and hack asunder other warriors and drag the women away by their hair screaming and sobbing. There had to be a better way to date a person, especially since you, the winner with bleeding gashes, was no longer interested in sex, what with your massive loss of blood.

Then Christians appeared and sought to put aside carnal pleasure but it made them irritable and moody and they hung out in gangs of twelve, wrote a lot of epistles and went to Spain and conducted inquisitions—anything to pass the time. And they prayed for women. Literally.

Men longed to find something appealing that would make a woman throw herself into a suitor’s embrace and prevent terrorized screaming. Also, whips and thumb screws appealed to only a very small group of women with unique tastes.

And so poetry was found with it’s soothing cadence and delicate encouragement of desires. Poetry beckons us to “seize the day” and so you should write your own poem. Tell her you adore her and you long to take her in your arms, smell her hair and kiss her smooth soft throat. Be original and forget Shakespeare and roses are red violets are blue stuff and don’t steal glances at the sports channel while you try to write.

Do not send your poem by e-mail, postal delivery or text messaging. Write it down by hand on a clean piece of paper and hand it to her yourself. You want to be there, standing close, just behind her shoulder when she reads it and be ready for the quick embrace and passionate kiss.

Robert Frost said “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired” and that my friend is what usually gets the girl.

The frog, the soup and the child

This morning I became a hero. I heard my wife scream, the blood curdling sound you hear when the tall vampire raises his black cape to embrace the bare shouldered woman while lowering his fangs to her milky white neck. I rushed downstairs and there was my wife in her old bathrobe, back to the wall, eyes wide with terror staring across the room and pointing to the monster. I dashed in to see a bloodthirsty undead small green frog sitting on the carpet and saved my family from an eternity of walking the earth at night.

And now I am making chicken soup which my wife says is better than any restaurant could make. She says it’s the caviar of soups. Such is the life of a gentle hero. I quietly chop onions, carrots and celery toss them in a pan with butter then transfer them to a pot of chicken stock with meat from a rotisserie chicken. My wife and our boxer Roxy are entertaining Juliette, one of our grandchildren whom we are babysitting.

Juliette is over a year old, with red curly hair and a smile that melts your heart. She lives in the moment the way the poems tell us to do, gathering rosebuds which for Juliette means putting her hands in the dog’s water bowl. What you and I would feel if we won the state lottery is what Juliette feels each and every morning her bedroom curtains are opened to a new day. The boxer turns and licks Juliette’s face who laughs with such gusto you pause from stirring the soup just to enjoy the sound.

Mmmm, I don’t say that my soup is the greatest in the world but of all the frog-catchers in our city I think mine is as good as any of them. The secret is to carefully sweat the vegetables in butter then quickly put them in boiling chicken stock with dark and white meat, turn to simmer and go read a good book.

I use to enjoy playing golf but golf made me speak in tongues and tennis can be perilous for a man my age. You stretch to stop a fast serve and a groin muscle snaps and for three months you walk around like Charlie Chaplin in the old jerky black and white movies. Cooking is now my sport. It’s indoors, gives you a feeling of accomplishment and then you sit down and consume food.

Last night Juliette awoke at 3:23 a.m. and decided no one in the house should sleep so all of us played with a toy rabbit that squeaks when you squeeze it’s bottom--- a masochistically inspired toy indeed. Morning found my wife and I sitting on the couch, dazed and hollowed eyed like people emerging from a hostage situation, our minds were blank and we could only say the word “coffee”. My wife went downstairs to the kitchen and that’s when she discovered the frog.

The frog sat staring straight ahead and I grabbed it from behind with a paper towel then carried it outside for release. I have a friend who would have used his bare hands but he played football in high school and I played the clarinet. The frog hopped away looking for a voluptuous village maiden with a low cut dress and I went back inside.

Later over a bowl of soup my wife thanked me for removing the Undead. I shrugged. A hero’s job is to serve. Then she said “Your Italian bread is to die for. I wish you’d make that tonight.” And so I will.

Her boots are the first to hit the ground

My wife is a teacher, an elementary grade educator; her boots are the first to hit the ground in America’s offensive to educate its young.

She arises at 5:30 each morning and is out the door and ready to receive busloads of second grade kids by 7:00. Many of these little bodies have not been fed, washed or have clean clothes. They stumble bleary eyed into class, small bundles of life----some have already known abuse and some have homes that have the ambience of a late night bar during a brawl. Little angels bound to the ground.

She returns home and tells me about the 40 pound kid that dumped a load in his pants, the parent that could not be reached at any phone number on file, the timid student teacher ( you must stare the children down or all 30 will bolt for the bathroom like gazelles), the kid that dropped Mr. Snowball the hamster ---cage and all-- in the floor during quiet time and the diva parent who expects the school system to raise her child and demands a conference of which the whining mother never shows up though teacher and principal waited a half hour past the appointed time. And I pour my wife a stiff diet coke on ice that she tosses down her throat, places the glass down on the kitchen counter and says “Hit me again.”

Public teaching is a divine calling and comes with much frustration. Sometimes she grits her teeth. The heat in the building did not work, she got a new kid that does not speak English and neither does the parents and she endures the ill-designed rating of schools that depend on a teacher’s performance judged by the whim of a child. Yet the teacher in her pushes on. Her complaints about pay are good natured; she loves her job, is paid a fraction of what she is worth yet maintains a high level of professionalism.

Professionalism in education is a world apart from mine: mine requires no more than a computer key board, a cocky attitude, a bag of pork skins and interesting underwear.

Three thoughts to all beleaguered teachers:
1.Remember, you are a professional. You are not a paper-pusher at Amalgamated Brooms. Before politicians began telling your profession how to teach, your predecessors built the framework for the world’s greatest country—America. Stand tall.

2.Hang out with other teachers. Never chum around with principals or administrators. They have their own agendas and crosses to bear. You can be nice but not fawning or subservient. Don’t gravitate there, don’t orbit.

3.Do not accept ugly remarks or rude behavior from parents passively. Stand up and leave the room or simply hang up on them if it’s a phone conversation. The problem in education is not lack of money, politicians (What!?) or global warming—its bad parents. Spoiled lazy parents are the enemy of education and when school boards find a legal way to treat them as such these over indulged narcissists will be put in their place and the respect for your profession will return.

Maybe in a hundred years from now teachers will be treated like a holy priestly order akin to the Illuminati or the Order of Melchizedek but in the mean time teachers will arise each day, wipe little noses, endure a myriad of naïve policies yet somehow pour knowledge into an impressionable little mind. And one teacher will come home, gulp down a diet coke on ice and say to her husband “They dropped Mr. Snowball today---cage and all.”

The class of 1971 has my heart--- and my stomach

In 1769 Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot a Frenchman, took off his beret long enough to build the first steam powered car and everybody thought it was totally tres bon until the early 1900’s when Standard Oil of Ohio told everybody that gasoline was better. So Henry Ford said, “No kidding?” and built thousands of gasoline powered cars which created all over America the need for paved roads-- one of which I followed to the Brook Valley Country Club in Greenville, NC. My Forty-year old high school class reunion had begun.

You go to high school reunions not to see old friends as much as to see what our teenage selves became as reflected back in the eyes of those that knew us when. So you can imagine my shock when I entered the room and noticed our teenage selves looked a lot like the teachers we use to have ( Note: I for one always thought we had very nice looking teachers).

The first act of meeting an old classmate can be touching as you go for a warm handshake and realize your stomachs are almost touching too. Your eyes are constantly glancing at name tags even though everybody tells each other that they’ve hardly changed a bit. To be fair some truly had not changed much at all which I found to be as surprising as it was irritating. I tried to hold in my stomach.

The mood of the room was joyous as many could now afford a better grade of alcohol. The bar was doing a brisk business as “Joy to the World” (the one by Three Dog Night) blared out in a room that was a casserole of different conversations and sounds. There was the occasional shrill laughter as a group of women reacted to something said and you heard the hearty slap of a hand on the back of someone who recognized an old friend and a new conversation began.

In 1971 the barn doors swung open, they slapped our haunches with a diploma and we galloped off into the world with our manes flowing and our heads held high. Hawaii Five-O and the Mary Tyler Moore shows were favorites and the first super bowl to be played on artificial turf occurred with the Baltimore Colts defeating the Dallas Cowboys. John Denver sang to us about country roads and the Temptations decided love was just their imagination running away with them. I noticed a woman whom I carried a big torch for in those days had changed little and could pass for a mid--thirty while a former athlete walked with bad knees carrying about 200 additional pounds. I pulled my stomach in tighter.

We showed each other pictures of our kids and grandkids and the photos had to be held very still--- under good light---at arm’s length. Some laughed about it. I was getting dizzy. I really needed to breathe.

You learn that someone lost a child to a terrible accident, someone had beaten cancer three times, some were happily divorced while others had the same spouse they started with decades ago. The mood became relaxed, the lights were dimmed (slightly so we wouldn’t fall) and the dancing began. My stomach resumed it’s natural shape and for a few hours the music carried us back to football games, proms, first kisses and to each other.

They say the young today have everything---the chance of long health and amazing technology. But to never have danced to the Temptations song “My Girl” with someone you love is to miss a wonderful thing. The young---I almost feel sorry for them.

Welcome to Statesville

Welcome to Statesville North Carolina.

We’re a modest little city of 26,000 friends and neighbors located north of the quasi-nation city of Charlotte, which as you may have heard, is a cultural Mecca and one of the greatest banking centers in the free world. Statesville is not.

Statesville was originally to be named the First City, it being the most promising city of growth in the 1700’s for the young state of North Carolina. But being First isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and we are people that do not trust fame nor seek opulence. We like our feet planted in churches, farms and solid businesses not the quicksand of average accruals and corporate mergers. Our ancestors, stoic unassuming people, worried about getting the big head so they decided to let others take the glamorous headliner names like Raleigh or Charlotte and thus decided upon the name “Statesville”. “Statesville” implies we are the ESSENCE of North Carolina but we’re humble about it.

Statesville is an island located in a gentle rolling sea of dairy farms, corn and soy beans. Most people here get their deer every season, the First Pharmacy has hot dogs that even your momma can’t make and churches end their worship service at exactly 12:00 so you don’t have to worry about the pot roast being overdone. We’re caring like that.

Charlotte consumes gallons of vinaigrette dressings and tons of smoked salmon. Statesville is a city where fish is fried (as our Lord intended they be) and a bottle of Kraft French Dressing is good enough for anybody so get over yourself. Oh sure, we have restaurants that can compete with any plate of pâté or crème de menthe cake you would want but to go into detail would be bragging which is unseemly. We’re too modest for that.

We are a hard working gentle city straddling the intersection of two major interstate highways which gives easy access to businesses and beckons families seeking a safe harbor with a need to tie to the docks of good neighborhoods. If you come here looking for a big city life of traffic congestion, loud race car tracks and sushi bars on every corner you’re going to be disappointed.

Someone once said that “life is a show” and our show is better enjoyed one day at a time among friendly people, good neighbors and blue berry scones.

We don’t do a New York show with David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon. Our show does not have:
1. A pre-show guy in baggy pants and suspenders running around the audience for 10 minutes telling goofy jokes to get you all pumped to scream and yell
2. Actresses with low-cut dresses pushing their latest movie or sobbing about the difficulty of trusting people
3. Elephants

Our show of life isn’t the worst you’ll ever see but it’s the best experience you’ll ever have.

Later in the show we have street festivals and outdoor parties with the downtown area closed off for your convenience---and it’s free, Honey Cakes. You have a chance to eat boiled peanuts, drink, get rowdy, sing country or beach music and win valuable prizes for the Most Beautiful Baby, Hog Calling, Corn Leaf Identification, and my personal favorite the Mr. Marvelous contest.

If you’re sick we’ll bring you a hot dish. It’s not about us but you--- as long as you’re with us.

You may now have figured out that we can be passive-aggressive, steadfast but tempered, proud yet truthful but most of all we’re a friendly humble community and we’re so glad you came.

Welcome, you lucky person you!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow changed my show

People that know me are aware I suffer from low self-esteem, which is a hard throw for someone expected to pitch 600 words over home plate every week about the state of our union and those “aha!” moments we all share in life. I do it in the hopes you’ll be moved to take out your BIC lighter and wave it as a light against the darkness or help someone save a stitch in time or join a village and raise a child--- all of which I can’t do because I lack the confidence.

It is February, the month in which the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born. He wrote “Evangeline” which contains a beautiful line that describes Evangeline as she walks by-- “When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.” Recently I gave a speech in a nearby city and a man came up to me and said “Thanks for coming. It’s just hard to get a good speaker on a week night”. Which made me wince, as though the music didn’t cease so much as maybe I killed it.

Perhaps they’d tried to get Newt Gingrich to come and throw down a handful of bones and tell the future of America but they failed and got me. I like to think that even if Longfellow showed up to speak they’d have said, “Thanks, Henry. We tried to get Tom Brokaw but he wanted a boatload of money and a hotel suite. Can you believe that—a hotel suite for God’s sake!? ”

My speech was entitled “ The Greatest Tree House There Ever Was” which has baseball, sex, cigarettes and a little piano playing in it but at 45 minutes it’s a bit long. However the people were real troopers and no one threw anything at me but could you blame them if they did? The economy is sagging like my jowls and you see men in white shirts and ties throwing dice in back alleys and front yards have FOR SALE signs in them and you feel so much pain for these people. You want to stop and hug them but no one wants a short guy with self-esteem problems putting his arms around you in the driveway unless he’s a buyer with approved credit carrying a check book.

I almost spoke on “A Problem---Low Self-Esteem” but I know people with high self-esteem and they’re like a biblical plague. They swarm in malls, airports and government buildings screaming into their cell phones, they have less self-doubt than a male moose during a rut, all stomping around and rattling their antlers for show.

I wish I’d written that line “When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.” That is such a beautiful thought and what has Joe Biden ever said in twelve words that moved you so deeply you heard soothing music, remembered beautiful women and imagined yourself a wonderful lover though you actually had the moves of a woodchuck.

Out of suffering comes beauty and Longfellow had his share with losing two wives unexpectedly and dying a painful death from severe inflammation of his stomach. Nevertheless he was brilliant and wrote “Hiawatha” the first poem I ever read.

So you can sit around in sorrow and worry about the economy or you can ponder the idea of lovely women, wonderful music and the future of Newt Gingrich. As for me, I’m thinking about changing my show with a new speech “Find Fulfillment in Chinchilla Farming”. I’m open right now to bookings in March through June. Fees are negotiable and I can sleep in the car.

Procrastinate your way to health

Recently I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours with our newest city councilman, Mr. Roy West, who is known for his quick humor, business savvy and who has a passion for cycling which is why his stomach is flat. My stomach is round, like a planet…with it’s own gravity field…and I think last night I attracted a moon. You can understand my concern.

I have been feeling out of shape lately probably due to cutting back on my exercise regime about 40 years ago. Back in olden times I rode a bicycle to do my errands and I averaged about five miles a day. But that was in 1970 miles which today would be like 30 miles. I was flat bellied and my prostate was the size of an almond, not a grapefruit.

I even had running shoes back then, Nike’s but we didn’t know how to pronounce it because there was no Google or internet. In my day being a cyclist or a cross country runner was great birth control. You may as well have been sprayed with girl repellent.

Some time ago I approached fifty with the enthusiasm you reserve for a colonoscopy and felt the first call of getting older—the urge to spend money on exercise equipment.

My first purchase was a quality bicycle since running was now out for me. In college the only joints I burned and smoked were my ankles.

The nice bike salesman, Fernando offered to help me further. We started with the basics and I got a helmet that was gluten free and firmly cradles your head to prevent the reoccurrence of childhood memories involving an emotionally distant father. He said it was all the rage in California.

Then I got self-adhesive tire patches, tire levers, a spare inner tube and an easy carry air pump. The rest of the staff in the store gathered to watch Fernando assist me.

With his arm around my shoulders he walked me through the aisles pointing out the “must haves” and so I bought a small bottle of chain lube, a light weight solar tent for sudden blizzards, an outdoor bicycle cover (water proof), a locking upright roof rack for hauling the bike to places I can’t afford to go, sweat proof sunscreen designed for cyclists by a NASA sun specialist, an oak wood floor to ceiling storage rack, arch support cycling shoes ( though a riding sport, cycling can be brutal on your feet--- according to Fernando), a wireless odometer that remembers your birthday, a spandex cycling jersey (one can dream), half-finger gloves with cushions made of Persian cat fur and my favorite, padded shorts that protect what Forest Gump calls your “But-tocks”.

And that was just for daylight riding.

We worked through the afternoon and I bought taillight reflectors, ankle reflectors and the cutest little windbreaker you ever saw with zippered vented flaps all in coordinating colors.

At check out Fernando totaled my bill and gave a moving speech about my impending fitness—there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. As I went out the door I think I heard the opening of champagne and what sounded like “He’s a jolly good fellow” being sung to Fernando.

I drove home that day taking note that other cyclists looked so unprepared. Shmucks.

It took me weeks to cut off all the price tags and months to unbox everything. In the meantime I’d found this awesome herbal tea from South Africa that slims you down and buffs you up. It takes years to kick in but when it does, I’ll be all set to ride.

Hard work teaches you to live and give

( This is an excerpt from a book I am currently writing )

I grew up on a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina and before we became middles class (those people that used a piece of aluminum foil only one time) I realized we were poor. It was my mother’s Sunbeam mixer that gave me my first clue.

You’d go through the kitchen while she was mixing batter for a cake and hear the old mixer groan and slow down when she put the metal beaters into the bowl. You’d find yourself quietly willing it to keep going while mother wished out loud for a new one. She would lift the mixer out of the batter and it would whir like crazy then back into the batter and it would sound like something drowning.

I also knew we were poor because Ronnie Scales told me so. His father owned, according to my dad ---“the entire free world”-- and Ronnie asked me one day how much money my dad earned. The largest sounding number I could think of right then was five hundred so I told him 500 dollars. “HA!” he said,” You’re dirt poor!” and he rode off on his bicycle.

Well, that explained the mixer.

When you’re poor you try to compensate by being smart—read books, write stories—but that amounted to zilch if you worked for Mel, the supervisor of a local logging outfit, as I did one summer. I was sixteen.

Mel looked to be just under six feet tall and though retired from the military he still maintained a look of fitness, there was just more of him. His middle had begun to bulge from beer and he kept a cigar in his mouth that seemed to offset his slightly pugged nose. Mel hated smart and said so-- “Don’t get smart with me, boy” he’d say and puff on his fat green cigar and glare at you, his huge bushy black eyebrows coming together for emphasis.

Mel said you could get my kind for a dime a dozen---that I should be glad to have a job and live in a land that was saved years ago on the beaches of Normandy by men like himself who fought so trash like me could cut down trees and not worry about German soldiers shooting my hiney off (Mel never used the word “hiney”). Then he’d spit.

Work is serious business and everybody should do hard work said Mel-- unless you thought you were too good for it in which case you could take your “hiney” straight to Where-They’ll-Never-Have-Ice-Water ( Mel only used one word for that phrase). Mel’s wife, according to Mel, wanted him to retire but everybody he knew that retired turned stiff and waxy within six months while their friends stood around and remarked how natural the person looked. Mel believed when you stopped moving on the beach of life you died---that Normandy thing again.

One day he told me to come with him and I found myself grabbing one end of a twenty foot steel crane pole while Mel grabbed the other. He said “Lift!”
Right then I went from a 32 to a 34 inch sleeve.

“Too much?” sneered Mel. Oh, Noooo.

We set the pole down where he wanted it and I realized my angle of vision had changed, I saw more ground—no skyline. I wondered if I would ever be able to straighten up again. Joe Quasimodo. I never grew an inch taller after that day and now all my bones are slightly out of plumb and they squeak when I walk. “Lift with your legs, kid.” Mel muttered, spit and walked away.

I’m glad I knew people like Mel. Now I’m not afraid of hard work or think it is something that only people from another country are suppose to do. Hard work taught me how to tackle things in life—you learn how to lift.

You also learn the fruits of hard work are better shared. I remember the year I saved up and gave my mother a brand new Sunbeam mixer. She loved it and told me that I was a good and very smart boy. I’d liked to have seen Mel’s face.