Blind Mumbling

A Few Thoughts

2007-01-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

Joe always came up just short. For example, his dog is a Better-Than-Average Dane.

If you didn’t like those “apply directly where it hurts” ads, you’ll hate the ones showing now for rectal thermometers.

Talk about low sex drive! He bought the soundtrack to “Girls Gone Wild.”

I wanted fresh vegetables so I went to the grocery and a carrot dissed me.

I’ve stopped listening to the president. If I want lied to, I’ll ask my wife why she got home late.

HOW THE STORY CHANGED

2006-11-03T17:52:00.000-08:00

2002
Little George Bush sat on his tush
Warning ‘bout WMDs.
When he got our ear, he taught us to fear.
We must defeat Saddam, oh please!

2003
Dubya made a stop on a US flattop
And strutted. He’d got what he wished.
He stuck up his thumb and said, “I ain’t dumb.
By me was this mission accomplished.”

2004
George made his speeching a new kind of teaching
‘Bout how any questions were treason.
But as he was spinning ‘bout how we were winning,
Iraqi snipers and bombs were in season.

2005
Bush never strayed from the path he had laid,
A path he said we must endorse.
The terrororists win if we ever give in
So we must all stay the course.

2006
While George was out stumping, he kept on tub thumping
‘Bout how things were great in Iraq.
“It’s better each hour. We’re growing in power.
A decade, we’ll start bringing boys back.”

JOHNNY KERRY

2006-11-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

Whenever Johnny Kerry went out West,
We people who were voters looked at him.
He was a gentleman, one of our best,
Clean favored and tuburcularly slim.

And he seemed always dressed in gray.
And he was rather turgid when he spoke.
He didn’t inspire liberals on his best day,
And God knows he couldn’t tell a joke!

His wife was rich -- yes, richer than a Trump --
And he’d been taught at Yale’s respected school
So even though he campaigned like a lump,
We favored him o’er that loony Texas fool.

So on we worked and hoped for what is right
But feared Diebold, Florida, and the South.
And Johnny Kerry one calm summer night
Went out and put his big foot in his mouth.

WHY IT WASN'T FOLEY'S FAULT

2006-10-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

Foley has an alcohol problem. Blame Jack Daniels.
Foley is gay. Blame Ellen DeGeneres.
Foley was sexually abused by a priest. Blame Father Flynn.
The Liberal Media is blowing this out of proportion. Blame the New York Times.
Foley was always picked last in schoolyard games. Blame the faculty of P.S. 132.
Foley’s father often wore a dress. Blame Christian Dior.
Democrats are spending millions to keep this in the news. Blame George Soros.
Foley’s maid threw away his baseball cards. Blame What’s-Her-Name – the one who dusts.
Foley never met Elvis. Blame Colonel Parker.
Foley never met Hillary. Blame Tenzing.
Foley’s been paying more than $2.50 a gallon. Blame OPEC.
Foley was depressed over the breakup of the Beatles. Blame Yoko Ono.
Foley’s ears didn’t match. Blame what’s between them.
It’s all Bill Clinton’s fault

Even More Mumbling

2006-09-21T19:18:00.000-07:00

11 – 7: Eleven is the number of Canadians willing to trade their healthcare for ours; seven is the number of American politicians willing to do something about it.

If Global Warming had hit a hundred years ago, the Titanic would still be sailing today. Of course it would have to dock in Peoria.

The e-coli-spinach incident has made me nervous about the food I eat. Last night I washed and scrubbed my dinner. That’s the last time I do that with soup.

If our football team punts now, the terrorists have won.

I got a lemon when I bought a GPS receiver. It just sits there in my living room and never tells me where I go.

THINGS YOU ALMOST NEVER HEAR FROM FOOTBALL FANS

2006-09-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

If they really wanted to, they could get in more commercials.

I wish those other guys would pipe down so Theismann could talk.

Extra points are the most thrilling plays.

D’ja ever notice? They never do kneel-downs in the first quarter.

They ought to review every play and catch all the rule breakers.

After they make a play, players should show excitement so fans will know.

Our QB is just a little off today, but that’s no reason to put in the back-up.

Games would be better with more field goals.

The cameras should show more of the painted fans in the stands.

While we’re here. We should buy something. The team needs the money.

THE LATEST MUMBLES

2006-08-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

I took MotionEaze, Viagra and Unestra and had a wonderful wet dream.

Pro Bono: those who favored Sonny over Gregg Allman.

Q: Michael Jackson is still called the King of Pop, but has he been usurped?
A: Hey, Man, I don’t even like to think about whet he and those kids do.

A woman who commits adultery should be stoned, but sometimes it’s enough if she’s just a little drunk.

The only place on earth unaffected by Global Warming is the Oval Office.

MY HELPER

2006-06-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

(Submitted to PETA by Anonymous)

Few people realize the dependability and reliability of boa constrictors as working animals. My boa Slinky is a great help to me in my pig-raising business. Pigs are very intelligent, but they don’t always use their minds for worthwhile purposes. As a matter of fact, if you don’t keep an eye on them, they can make a real mess out of things.

Because of other commitments, I’m sometimes away and unable to keep an eye on the sty myself. Left to their own devices, those pesky pigs would quickly be off roaming hither and yon. On two occasions when I was out of town, I left Slinky in charge. The first time, he was new to the duty and one of the pigs escaped. We never did find her. Slinky felt so bad about losing that pig that he didn’t eat for a week. I really felt sorry for him.

The second time, I decided to give him a mentor, an animal to show him the way to keep watch. I brought in a small Irish Sheep Dog who I was assured had an excellent record. As it turned out, the dog was totally untrustworthy. When I returned the next day, he had run off to Lord knows where. Even though my pigs were none the worse for the dog’s dereliction, I could tell Slinky was unhappy with the way things turned out because he went several days before he ate again. My heart went out to him.

I am growing a bit concerned about Slink’s high sense of duty. His constant fasting when things don’t go perfectly could weaken him so that he might be unable to fight off a predator. I’ve assured him again and again that he is not to blame for the errors of other animals, but it’s hard to tell from the expression on his face or his hisses whether he agrees.

Tomorrow I’ll take my pigs off to the fair where I’ll exhibit them for several days and hopefully conclude a few sales. While I’m there, Slinky will stand guard over my empty sty against the vandals in the neighborhood. My wife has promised she’ll stop by in a couple of days to feed him.

AN APPEAL FOR HELP

2006-06-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Johnny M. was a happy little boy with a loving family, a dog named Glurge, and an Elektromatik-Football Game. One day Glurge got run over by a semi. Smashed him flatter than Aunt Ethel sang hymns.

Johnny tried to keep Glurge under his bed, but that left no place to keep his Elektromatik-Football Game. Besides, his mother kept getting fleas in her dustmop when she cleaned under Johnnny’s bed. She decreed Glurge had to go.

Johnny’s father took the flattened pooch to a little-used field to bury him. He took along the box from the Elektromatik-Football Game to serve as a coffin. The reason the field was little-used is that it had served for many years as an army firing range and there were still many unexploded shells lying around. Sure enough, when Johnny’s father dug in his shovel, he found one and blew up.

For weeks afterward, Johnny’s mother went out to the range to sift through the dust, hoping to find some of her husband’s missing pieces. She found a few chunks of the box for Johnny’s Elektromatik-Football Game but no sign of Johnny’s father. Unfortunately, an old prospector spotted her one day and thought she was panning for gold where he had staked a claim. He jumped on his burro and raced to her. He spurred the poor animal so enthusiastically that the prodded burro made no effort to stop when it reached her. Johnny’s mother was trampled into what didn’t turn out to be paydirt.

Johnny went to live with his Grandma, a religious woman. Johnny’s Grandma worked as a handy-grandma for her church and lived in a little building attached. She installed Johnny and his Elektromatik-Football Game in a sideroom set aside for unused statues. Johnny often accompanied her when she took the ancient church van and ran errands for the minister. One day, just after she had gassed up the church van, she lit a candle in memory of Johnny’s parents. Woosh!

While the medics were treating Johnny for smoke inhalation, it was discovered that he was suffering from a rare disease that was causing his ears to grow. Within a month of the discovery, his ears had become so huge and heavy that he had to put a crutch under his chin to hold his head upright. The only other known victim of this disease was a Nebraska boy who, by coincidence, also owned an Elektromatik-Football Game. He and Johnny exchanged condolences and even played an Elektromatik football game by mail.

Johnny’s Nebraska friend was always upbeat. He hoped to one day get a job with a circus. Sadly, on his tenth birthday, he broke into a little clown dance, stepped on his left ear, lost his balance, and fell out of the hospital window. Tragically, the hospital was the only multi-floor building in Nebraska. Johnny was brokenhearted that his friend would never be able to finish their Elektromatik-Football Game. Johnny was ahead by a field goal at the time.

As the days passed, Johnny became more and more depressed. Many days he just sat in a corner wrapped in his ears. Only a very, very expensive operation could cure him.

A very, very rich man who wishes to remain anonymous (his name rhymes with “Fates”) heard about Johnny’s illness. He has offered to pay for the operation but only if Johnny receives ten thousand e-mails at www.johnnywithgreatbigears@aol.com . To prevent duplicates, all e-mailers should include their name, address, and social security number.

Won’t you help?

MORE MUMBLES

2006-06-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

Dog owners should always carry pooper-scoopers so the rest of us won’t walk down the street and step in the Reverend Phelps.

I believe everyone should get a second chance. It’s your best shot to really rub their nose in how they screwed up the first time,

Marry in haste. You get to the honeymoon part quicker.

Better to light one little candle than to torch your business with a gallon of gasoline if you want to fool the arson cops.

That which does not kill us makes us stronge; that which does kill us doesn’t.

One man's meat is another man's veggieburger.

“What do you call a framework of parallel or latticed metal bars for blocking an opening, particularly in a stove, furnace, or fireplace?”
“That’s a grate question.”

On 3rd-and-4, our quarterback asked, “What would Jesus call?” Then he forgave the other team and was sacked for a nine-yard loss.

The difference between Niagara and Viagara is one falls and the other riises.

After she was mauled by a German shepherd, Cynthia stopped dating European sheepherders.

RUTH'S CALLED SHOT

2006-05-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

By Guest Blogger Dr. Charles T. Gregory
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology,Mountebank University

Perhaps no incident in baseball’s long history has aroused so much debate as Babe Ruth’s famous “called shot” home run against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series. Accounts by witnesses vary widely -- Chicago participants vehemently denying Ruth had actually predicted his homer, Yankees players insisting that he had, and fans in attendance generally supporting their chosen team’s side. In addition to this factionalism, there has been the major problem that the entire controversy turns upon the interpretation of a gesture made by Ruth while at bat before the homer. Did he point toward centerfield? Or at Cubs’ pitcher Charlie Root? Or did his gesture signify something else? Even film of the event fails to settle the argument.

The incident, incidentally, was documented feelingly, if with some poetic license, in the critically underrated film, The Babe Ruth Story, a gritty biographical epic for which I personally believe actor William Bendix deserved at least an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the title character. Wearing a cunning putty nose and tight pin-striped uniform, Bendix was totally convincing during the 1932 World Series.

This author had long despaired of ever learning the truth of the incident until a day last spring when a dignified gentleman of advanced years walked into my office and introduced himself. His name was Umberto DiMaggio, and I naturally asked him if he was related to the famous centerfielder. He was not, but the occasion for his visit was indeed to talk about baseball.

Mr. DiMaggio explained he had immigrated to this country in September of 1932 and traveled immediately to Chicago where he was taken under the wing of his cousin Dominick Tierri. This was a fortuitous situation because at the time Mr. DiMaggio did not speak a word of English.

(Parenthetically, I remarked that he now had virtually no accent. “Grazie,” he said.)

Dominick Tierri it turned out was a fanatical baseball fan, and a few days after Mr. DiMaggio’s arrival, he took the young immigrant with him as a guest to a game played at Wrigley Field. It so happened that this was the third game of the 1932 World Series, although DiMaggio did not realize the significance at the time.

The only seats Mr. Tierri had been able to procure were deep in the bleachers, but fortunately he owned two pair of powerful binoculars with which, according to DiMaggio, “it was as though we were standing in the batter’s box.”

The most surprising link in this chain of events was then revealed to me by Mr. DiMaggio. In his youth, he had been temporarily deafened in an accident. By the time his hearing returned, he had become an expert lip reader. He now found that with the powerful binoculars he was able to ‘read’ the words of the baseball players even though he did not know their meaning in an unfamiliar language. He decided that it might aid him in learning English to write down a phonetic account of the players’ conversations in a notebook he always carried with him.

This he did, but as later events in his life moved furiously ahead, the precious notebook was laid aside untranslated. Then a few weeks before coming to my office he had found it in the back of a closet. ‘You have written about baseball,’ he said to me. ‘I have heard of your History of Balls of the Base Variety.’

“Would you like an autographed copy?” I asked.

“No. I have heard of your History of Balls of the Base Variety. Perhaps you would be interested in the conversation between the batter Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees and the catcher Gabby Hartnett of the Chicago Cubs during the fourth- inning at-bat when Senor Ruth hit his famous home run.”

Naturally, I was all ears as Mr. DiMaggio read from his notebook:

RUTH: Well, Gabby, here we go again. That darned score’s tied 4-4. It’s like we’re starting over.

HARTNETT: That’s right, Babe. Say, I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that razzing coming from our bench.

RUTH: Of course not, Gabby. I know you always behave as a gentleman should.

HARTNETT: Thanks, Babe. And may I say the same about you.

UMPIRE: Strike one.

RUTH: Old Charlie (Root) seems to be throwing well today, doesn’t he, Gabby?

HARTNETT: He’s a fine pitcher, Babe.

RUTH: He certainly is. But, Gabby, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Has something got you down in the dumps?

UMPIRE: Strike two.

HARTNET: How observant of you to notice, Bambino. Yes, I’m a trifle miffed.

RUTH: What seems to be the trouble, old friend? Mayhap I can somehow alleviate your distress.

UMPIRE: Ball one.

HARTNETT: Alas, Bamster, my misery is no doubt beyond your purview. For my sad state cannot be improved by the hitting of a home run as you have so often done to inculcate joy in ailing, hospitalized children. My favorite pizza place has been closed for two weeks.

RUTH: No wonder your usually sunny disposition is hidden by an uncharcteristic cloud, Gabby. I well know how you dearly love your pizza. Why has the shop been lately shuttered?

UMPIRE: Ball two.

HARTNETT: Word has it that the owner incurred the wrath of one of Capone’s old lieutenants by forgetting to top with pepparoni, Sultan of Swat. The poor soul is likely to now reside with cement brogans somewhere under Lake Michigan. And I despair of tasting excellent pizza ever again.

RUTH: Fear not, Gabby one. I know a premier parlor located right here in your fair city of Chicago. Merely walk down two blocks and turn left at the traffic light. The name of the fine establishment is ‘Umberto and Dominick’s.’

Here, according to Mr. DiMaggio, Ruth pointed the direction that Hartnett should go, using his bat to punctuate his gesture. A moment later, Root pitched and Ruth hit the ball into the centerfield stands.

This grateful author thanked Mr. DiMaggio for finally bringing the shining light of truth to a subject long shrouded in myth and implored the old gentleman to send his priceless notebook to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He promised to consider it.

THE ORIGIN OF THE COFFIN CORNER KICK

2006-05-19T03:22:00.000-07:00

You probably never heard of Marvin Kerner. Had it not been for one small problem, Marvin Kerner might be remembered as the greatest football player of all time. A brilliant passer, sensational runner, and powerful kicker, Kerner could do it all. Except . . . .

Except that after a wonderful season of freshman football at Furbusher State College in 1908, Kerner developed a disabling allergy to cowhide. Every time he so much as touched cowhide, he would suddenly be struck by uncontrolable coughing. And, as footballs are unfortunately covered with cowhide, handling such an object in any way proved impractical.

Although he could no longer perform as a backfield star, Kerner’s love of the game of football was so strong that he continued on the FSC squad as a third-string guard. Of all his wonderful talents, line play was not one. Although he had no ability for that position, he tried hard. He also carefully avoided sparking a coughing fit by refusing to recover any fumbles for three seasons.

In Kerner’s final game, FSC led by two points with three minutes to go when it came up short on third down at the fifty-yard-line. The FSC coach looked to his bench and discovered that two of his top three punters were out with injuries and the third had just been thrown out of the game for punching the referee. The old coach signaled to Kerner.

“Mervin,” he said.

“It’s Marvin, sir,” Kerner corrected.

“Whatever. I want you to go in there and punt one for the team.”

Bravely, Kerner nodded and resolutely trotted out on the field.

His punt sailed high and deep. It hit at the five and bounced out of bounds at the three. FSC’s victory was preserved, but at a terrible cost. Merely handling the football while punting caused poor Kerner to have a world-class coughing fit that proved fatal. But ever since, great punts that contain opponents near their own goal line have been called “Coughin’ Kerners.”

As often has happened with many terms, the spelling has been simplified.

MUTHUH GOOSE

2006-05-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

LITTLE SLUT MUFFET
Sprawled on a tuffet,
Eating a Kurd with compunction.
But when a huge spider
Sat down beside her..
The Kurd had erectile dysfunction.

LITTLE JACK-OFF HORNER
Sat in a corner
“Pleasuring himself” as a male.
He knew he’d go blind;
But he didn’t mind.
His pleasures all came to him by Braille.

OLD MOTHER HUBBARD
Went to the cupboard
But found her vibrator was muted.
The batteries were dead.
So she gave the vibe head
Until it rose up and saluted.

LITTLE BO PEEP
Has lost her sheep
She feared they were prey of a leopard.
But later she found
They were all safe and sound
Shacked up with an over-sexed shepherd.

RECENT MUMBLES

2006-05-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

Liberals who criticize Stephan Colbert as being “rude” at the Washington Press Corps Dinner would take the legendary kid who yelled that the emperor had no clothes and spank him.

If you think that tiny, gray-furred mammal digging in your garden is a midget donkey, it proves you don’t know your ass from a mole in the ground.

Those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it. But that’s okay. It’ll seem brand new to them.

We should stop criticizing Vice President Cheney for his “Bleep off!” remark. I mean it wasn’t like he shot somebody.

Nastiness entered politics when Eve called the third party in Eden “a snake.”

Paid Advertisement

2006-04-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

You’ve had a long, hard day. Finally you’re in bed, ready to drift off. Suddenly, your descent into healing sleep is interrupted by an annoying itch in your groin. Tragically, you’ll stay awake until you scratch. And then the cure may keep you awake even longer! Sadly, you are a victim of Really Annoying Groin Itch at Night Syndrome, or A.M.P.R.X.B.U.G., or Arghhh!

Now, at long last, help is available!

Ask your doctor about AUHAN DAHN, the little purple pill that can give you a full, non-itching groin for a great night’s sleep when used as directed.

Do not take Auhan Dahn if you are addicted to hominy grits, occasionally drink kerosene, are under treatment for Sally Struthers Disease, or sometimes bark at the moon. Side effects may include neuralgia, constipation, stuffy head and speeches, loss of hearing in elevators, continuous belching, persistent memory of clowns, sniffles, maggot breath, compulsion to do long division, inability to speak Spanish, bearing children with heads of pigs, addiction to “American Idol,” sudden growth of earlobes, stuttering on words beginning with Q, automatic crossing of fingers when lying, coughing if told to look away, loss of hair on one’s knees, higher gas prices, spontaneous combustion, and other less common problems. Be sure to contact your doctor if any body parts fall off.

AT A RECENT CABINET MEETING

2006-04-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

By Guest Blogger Charles Carroll (Someone’s Smarter Brother)

Bush: Well then who's the Chinese President?
Rice: Yes.
Bush: I mean the fellow's name.
Rice: Hu.
Bush: The Chinese President.
Rice: Hu.
Bush: The President of China.
Rice: Hu.
Bush: The guy leading...
Rice: Hu is China’s President!
Bush: I'm asking YOU who's their President.
Rice: That's the man's name.
Bush: That's who's name?
Rice: Yes.
Bush: Well go ahead and tell me.
Rice: That's it.
Bush: That's who?
Rice: Yes.
(PAUSE)
Bush: Look, they gotta president?
Rice: Certainly.
Bush: Who's president?
Rice: That's right.
Bush: When they pay off their president every month, who gets the money?
Rice: Every dollar of it.
Bush: All I'm trying to find out is the fellow's name.
Rice: Hu.
Bush: The guy that gets...
Rice: That's it.
Bush: Who gets the money...
Rice: He does, every dollar. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.
Bush: Whose wife?
Rice: Yes.
(PAUSE)
Rice: What's wrong with that?
Bush: Look, all I wanna know is when the Chinese President signs an order, how does he sign his name?
Rice: Hu.
Bush: The guy.
Rice: Hu.
Bush: How does he sign...
Rice: That's how he signs it.
Bush: Who?
Rice: Yes.
(PAUSE}
Bush: All I'm trying to find out is what's the guy's name.
Rice: No. Watt invented the steam engine.
Bush: I'm not asking you who invented the steam engine.
Rice: Hu’s the president of China.
Bush: One person at a time!
Rice: Well, don't change the names around.
Bush: I'm not changing nobody!
Rice: Take it easy, buddy.
Bush: I'm only asking you, who's the Chinese President?
Rice: That's right.
Bush: Ok.
Rice: All right.
(PAUSE)
Bush: What's the Chinese president’s name?
Rice: No. Watt invented the steam engine
Bush: I'm not asking you who invented the steam engine
Rice: Hu's the Chinese President.
Bush: I don't know.
Rice: Eyedunno’s the Prime Minister of Toga, we're not talking about him.
Bush: Now how did I get to Toga?
Rice: Why you mentioned his name.
Bush: If I mentioned the Toga Prime Minister’s name, who did I say is Prime Minister?
Rice: No. Hu's the Chinese President.
Bush: What's President of China?
Rice: Watt invented the Steam Engine.
Bush: I don't know.
Rice: He's Prime Minister of Toga.
Bush: There I go, back to Toga again!
(PAUSE)
Bush: Would you just stay on Toga and don't go off it.
Rice: All right, what do you want to know?
Bush: Now who's Prime Minister of Toga?
Rice: Why do you insist on putting Hu in Toga?
Bush: What am I putting in Toga.
Rice: No. Watt invented the Steam Engine.
Bush: I don't want to know who invented the steam engine.
Rice: Hu is the Chinese President.
Bush: I don't know.
Rice & Bush: TOGA!

PEP TALKS

2006-04-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Secret Service Leader:
“All of you rookie agents in today’s guarding detail must live up to the tradition of the service. Had someone attacked President Reagan with a knife, every agent would have leaped forward in front of that blade. If a gunman had let fly at the first George Bush, every agent would have gladly taken the bullet. Had some madman hurled a bomb at President Clinton, every agent would have thrown his own body on the blast. And if today President George W. Bush is attacked by some killer with a deadly weapon, you should try your best to talk him out of it.”

Coach:
“I want you boys to remember, it’s not if you win or lose but how you play the game. Sure, we’ve had some losses this season, but you’ve always shown sportsmanship. Always. I know you boys have played fair and square out of the respect you hold for me. I’ll go farther than respect. I’ll say you love me as much as I love you. Today, facing our traditional opponent, I know none of you will use any of those illegal acts we showed you in practice this week. We demonstrated those ways of cheating only so you could protect yourselves. We won’t use any shameful moves no matter how easy it is to avoid being caught. And next year, when I’ve been fired, I'll save up and buy a ticket to one of your games. I know I'll see the same good sportsmanship that’s cost us so many victories this year. “

Director of a Play:
“I’m sure you’re mis-reading the audience’s response. You know that in New York an appreciative audience would send roses up to the stage. That’s fine for them, but our community theater is in the heart of farm country. Here, many crops are more valuable than roses. When our local people throw tomatoes and other vegetables up to the stage, you should consider it a compliment. And, having expressed their opinion, tonight’s audience saw no reason to wait around. That’s why when you came out for your curtain call, there were only a few folks left. And no, that’s not what they were calling. What they yelled was ‘Boon!’ meaning ‘a timely blessing or benefit.’ You can only hope that you’ll get more tomatoes and boons tonight if anyone shows up.”

Father of the Bride:
“This is the biggest day of your life, Sweetie. Today you take my arm and walk down the aisle to meet your soulmate. Sweetie, when I arrived at the church today, Uncle Henry handed me this pre-nup. Not that you’ll ever need it. I’m sure you and Wilfrid will live happily ever after. For you kids to sign the pre-nup is only a formality, Sweetie, but formalities are important. This little ceremony you and Wilfrid will go through at the altar today is a formality. .Before you go through that elaborate and very costly formality that I’m paying for, you must dot all the T’s and cross the I’s. You must sign Uncle Henry’s little formality. It would be a shame to send all those guests home without the wedding they came to see.”

ANOTHER TIME AT THE PLAYHOUSE

2006-04-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

A while back I mentioned that I am a disaster when it comes to on-stage ad-libs. Ad-libs are not to be confused with spoonerisms, the sometimes ludicrous juxtaposition or substitution of the initial sounds on words. For example, in a production of the play Bus Stop, a young waitress told my wife, playing an older waitress, that she planned to meet an old lecher in Topeka. Apparently this shocked my wife so much that one evening she dropped her “m” and responded, “You’re not going to eat that man in Topeka or anywhere else.”

It’s best in such a case to just keep going. Ignore any inadvertent sexual slip. Although my wife thought she’d made a Hall of Fame Goof, few in the audience noticed her error. Even fewer knew why she was suddenly blushing. When she came off stage, she gasped, “My mother is in the first row!”

Sometimes, going on is impossible. A misstatement can bring the play to a screeching halt. In a famous example, a con man was supposed to burst into a hotel room and tell his fellow conspirators that there was a hotel detective – a “house dick” – outside. For reasons known only to himself, he strode to center stage and proclaimed, “There’s a horse dick in the hall!”

The mental picture caused the entire cast on stage to break up.

Another famous stage story concerns an actress failing to enter on cue. The single actor on stage repeated the cue several times while offstage the stage manager scrambled to find the missing actress. When she was at last pushed on stage, the relieved actor greeted her with his proper line – “Where have you been?”

The tardy one blurted the truth: “I was in the green room having a cigarette.”

Something similar once happened to me. I forget the name of the play. I had a small part as a building contractor who, at the opening to Act Two, was supposed to be at center stage talking to the lady of the house. The actress was named Jane Smith and her character was named Mrs. Jones. There was no curtain, so I made my way to my place in the dark. When the lights came up, I was alone. No Jane Smith!

For once, I kept my brains about me. I had some blueprints in hand. After a few minutes, I went to the door and called, “Excuse me, Mrs. Jones. Can I see you for a minute?” Normally, I would have bad-libbed and called out to Mrs. Smith.

When the actress arrived, we completed a short scene and I left the stage. An apprentice was standing there with eyes like saucers. As I passed him, I whispered, “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” Actually, I only made a few dollars more each week than the apprentice. The point was that for once I had successfully ad libbed.

Bad-libbing isn’t hereditary. My son was only ten when he went on stage for the first time. In a second act scene, he and another actor were on stage when the telephone rang by accident. A popular acting anecdote is about just this situation. The phone rings; both actors freeze, panicked over what to do. Finally one actor reaches for the telephone. The second actor relaxes until the first actor answers, then hands him the phone. “It’s for you.”

My son had no doubt heard that story many times. When it happened to him, he answered and told the caller it was a wrong number. A couple in the audience who had seen the play and knew what had happened applauded. The only thing really interesting about the event, aside from a quick-thinking ten-year-old, was that the technician in the light booth who inadvertently rang the phone was my son’s mother, my wife.

Despite my bad review for my first appearance at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, I was thrilled to be find a role in another production, Wait Until Dark. This time the casting was letter-perfect – a not-too-bright thug out for no good. I was the third creep in a trio who terrorized a blind lady for three acts. I couldn’t have asked for better type-casting. I thought, “Let’s see the reviews this time!”

I did have one small bad lib. Because the lady was blind, we thugs did all sorts of things to search her home without her realizing what was happening. At one point, I was to mount a three-step stool so that I could reach something. As I balanced on top, the stool began to slowly bend. I rode it like a tiny elevator down to the floor and then stepped off. Across the room, the lady was supposedly blind. She reacted cleverly by alluding to the odd sound. “What was that?” she asked.

My answer was, “I bent your thing.” For some reason the audience laughed.

Although my answer broke the tension on stage for a few moments, the production was fine over all. I couldn’t wait for the newspaper reviewer to write about my performance this time. In my first Playhouse production, all she had said was I “appeared nervous.” That was true, but I thought she might have found some positives. No matter, my thug in Wait Until Dark would win her over.

The next day, I ripped open the newspaper to her review. After spreading praise on the director and leads, she got to me in the fifth paragraph. All she wrote was that I “appeared less nervous than in his previous Playhouse appearance.”

And that was it. She’d got me twice for the same play! My ad-libbed review of her review was not fit to print.

THE FIRST HUT

2006-03-31T23:23:00.000-08:00

By Dr. Charles T. Gregory (Guest Blogger)
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology, Mountebank University

I hope the reader will forgive me if I digress from my usual baseball lecture in favor of a fascinating football story about the origin of the term “hut.” It was related to me by my old college history professor, Dr. Ajax R. Kayuk, a gentleman of impeccable honor and whose word I would certainly take as gospel.

In 1906, the forward pass was legalized. Most important football teams, college and pro, decided to ignore it on the ground that it was an unnatural act. However, Willis Kryhoski, the coach at Wilmerding Normal (now Wilmerding State Teachers), about 20 miles from Pittsburgh, saw in the pass a way to give his heretofore woebegone team a chance to win. As a footnote, the Wilmerding Bulls hadn’t registered a single victory during the 1905 season.

As soon as his team assembled that fall, Coach Kryhoski had them begin practicing forward passes. They soon discovered that one hand worked best and spirals were preferable to end-over-end. Coach Kryhoski determined that Jason Gribble, his quarterback, was fairly adept in throwing, but that only one of his ends, Harold Skub, was able to catch the ball. The other end, Stanley Mueller, not only was hopeless on thrown balls, he tended to drop the football when it was handed to him.

So, from the start, Kryhoski’s air attack was limited to Gribble-to-Skub. Unfortunately, while both were competent athletes, neither was much in the mental department. Or, as Kryhoski put it, “Gribble’s thicker in the head than a elephant is in the ass, and he’s the smart one!”

Nevertheless, the passing attack worked well in practice, as Gribble and Skub connected consistently. Now you must understand that this was a totally new way to move the football, and there was no existing terminology. Such niceties as “Z-out,” “Stop and go,” or “Button-hook” were far in the future. At first, Gribble and Skub made up their own signals for pass patterns. These signals were called at the line of scrimmage, by the way, as the huddle was not widely used until much later. The rudimentary pass patterns simply involved Skub running straight downfield from his right end position, racing toward the middle, or cutting diagonally across. Gribble would call, “Straight!” “Middle!” or “Cross!”

Coach Kryhoski felt this was a little obvious and that opponents would quickly diagnose Wilmerding’s intentions. He watched Gribble for several days before he made a suggestion. Lined across the north end of Wilmerding’s field, behind the end zone, were three small sheds. The ones at either corner of the end zone were used as dressing rooms for the Bulls and the visitors, and the one in the middle for storage. The coach told Gribble to think of them as “Bulls’ shed,” “storage shed,” and “visitors’ shed,” and to direct Skub toward one or another in his signals, thereby masking the pass pattern from the enemy. After several days of practice, Skub managed to remember which shed was which.

A few days before Wilmerding’s opening game, an incident took place on campus that was to have far-reaching reverbations. Jason Gribble was active in campus politics and indeed had been only narrowly defeated in his run for sophomore class treasurer the year before. The burning issue on the Wilmerding campus that fall of 1906 was freedom of speech. This because the school library had removed a work by Oscar Wilde from its shelves over the summer. Many students were upset -- perhaps a majority -- and a rally was held on the campus green.

Gribble, of course, realized that he could advance his political hopes by being in the forefront of a “hot” issue. He managed to wangle a spot as one of the speakers at the rally.

Although many students spoke with more logic, verbosity, and erudition, it was Gribble who drew the loudest cheers when he faced the crowd and bellowed, “If I want to say (bleep), I’ll darn well say (bleep), by heck!”

The next day, nearly every area newspaper carried an account of the rally with Gribble’s pronouncement prominently featured. The Pittsburgh Press even had a picture -- a cartoon actually -- of Gribble standing on a soapbox, with fist upraised, shouting words that were plastered over with “censored.” Although eyewitnesses insisted that Gribble had not actually raised his fist and that he’d stood on the pedestel of the statue of General Horatio Wilmerding, the school’s founder, they all agreed that it was a fine likeness of the young firebrand.

For its opening game, Wilmerding hosted Allegheny Mines and Farm Machinery. As soon as WN had possession of the football, Gribble walked up to his quarterback position and called, “Bulls’ shed!”

He was shocked when the referee, a Mr. Lionel Tauber, stepped in and penalized Wilmerding for bad language. It turned out that Tauber was slightly hard of hearing and, recognizing Gribble from the newspaper cartoon, had misinterpreted what the fiery quarterback had said. No amount of persuasion on the part of Gribble could convince Tauber that the word uttered had actually been “shed.”

For the time being, Wilmerding was stifled. Gribble was afraid to call another pass play for fear of being penalized, and WN was soon forced to punt. AM & FM ran the ball back all the way for a touchdown.

Things might have gone better had Gribble and Skub been able to talk with Coach Kryhoski at that point, but the rules of the time forebade coaching from the sideline. Before they lined up to receive the ensuing kickoff, the two young athletes discussed their predicament. They reasoned that they needed to employ a word other than “shed” to denote the small buildings that were the key to their passing game. Skub suggested “outbuilding;” Gribble came up with “enclosure.” They settled on “hut” and numbered the buildings from right to left.

On Wilmerding’s first play after receiving, Gribble called out, “Hut one!” AM & FN was caught flatfooted as Skub raced straight down the field to take a beautiful forward pass from Gribble. It would surely have gone for a touchdown had not Skub stumbled over a recalcitrant blade of grass at the ten-yard-line. The Bulls tried two running plays without gain and the first quarter ended.

The teams reversed ends of the field. Perhaps Gribble might have said something to Skub as Wilmerding walked back up the field, but, as he admitted later, he was somewhat put out that his end had fallen down on the way to a sure touchdown. He determined that the third-down play would be another pass, and as soon as his team lined up, he hollered, “Hut three!”

Gribble naturally assumed that his end would be able to mentally transpose the sheds from one end of the field to the other, but such cleverness was far beyond poor Skub. When the ball was centered, he turned and ran UP the field away from the goal line and toward the real shed at the far end of the gridiron. This maneuver totally confused poor Gribble who compounded the error by actually throwing the football toward the retreating Skub. Ironically, the addled quarterback never threw a more perfect spiral.

The result was a completed lateral pass and ultimately a safety. The demoralized Wilmerding squad eventually lost by 40 points. Even though the “wrong- way” play accounted for only two points, it was headlined in most western Pennsylvania newspaper accounts of the game.

The Pittsburgh Press re-ran the same cartoon of Gribble on a soap box, but this time he was shouting “Hut one!” Several eastern newspapers also picked up the story. “Hut one, hut two” became the in-joke of the season, and several teams began incorporating it into their signals, often catching their opponents back on their heels rocking with laughter.

It is said that when DeWolfe Hopper’s famed recitation of “Casey at the Bat” failed to amuse his audience, he could always save the situation by intoning “Hut one, hut two.”

Harold Skub dropped out of school and is believed to have joined the French Foreign Legion.

Jason Gribble, who was arguably more at fault, continued his education, finally graduating in 1910. But “hut one, etc.” continued to haunt him. No matter what he tried, he was not taken seriously. In the fall of 1911, after failing twice in business, he ran for the Pennsylvania state legistature. His opponent countered with the slogan: “I never hutted once!” Reportedly, the only votes Gribble received were his own and that of the ever-supportive Coach Kryhoski.

In desperation, Gribble left the country, taking a job as an able seaman aboard the passenger ships of the White Star Line. This may explain the famous quotation alleged to have been uttered on the bridge of the Titanic in 1913: “Iceberg? Don’t be silly. That’s old ‘Hut-One’ Gribble on lookout.”

IS THERE A SUBTRACT LIB ?

2006-03-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

I used to love those old Bing Crosby movies where Der Bingle seemed to ad lib his way through the whole picture. No matter what kind of predicament he got himself into, Bing would pop up with a clever remark that you just knew no script writer ever thought up. Talk about thinking on your feet!

I’m the anti-Bing. I ad lib as well as I do rocket science. If you need to mess up a scene in a play, just put me in a situation where I have to think on my feet.

I suppose the worst example was my first role at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. Between various "little" and summer theaters, I’ve done over 100 roles. Although many of them were marred by my horrendous ad libs, the Playhouse was the most important theater I ever acted in, so ad libbing there counted more against me.

We were doing The Little Foxes, Lillian Hellman’s classic drama about a selfish, post-Civil War family. I was playing Oscar, the second brother, a churlish, mean-spirited, wife-beating, cowardly creep. I loved the part.
Except for smacking Birdie.

Birdie was Oscar’s – my – wife. Early in the play, she said something that angered Oscar. As she started to walk past, I smacked her right in the face. Smacking her made me nervous.

The act of hitting Birdie was good for my character. It showed what a really nasty person Oscar was and set everyone in the audience against me. Which was fine. Of course, I wouldn’t really smack her, I’d slap her cheek with a cupped hand. She’d roll with the blow. We’d end up with a loud, vicious-looking smack that didn’t actually hurt a bit.

Unless.

Unless I miscalculated and missed her cheek and slapped her in the ear. That, as she brightly informed me early in rehearsals, could blow out her eardrum. Thanks a lot, Birdie! That sure relaxed me! Each night, right from the first rehearsal, I worried about that slap until I got it out of the way.

The director had a clever way to open the show. When the audience came into the theater, they saw an empty living room. About half an hour before the show was scheduled to begin, they heard sounds of conversation from behind an upstage set of sliding doors. The idea was that the family was eating dinner behind those doors. To that end, the director had the cast assemble and ad lib a family dinner for thirty minutes. He believed that it put us into character.

When it was time for the play to begin, the lights came up on the stage. Addie, the maid, entered from a door downstage and closed a window. Then Cal, the butler, entered from the other side carrying a tray with glasses and a bottle of red wine. Addie took the tray from Cal and they exchanged a couple of lines before Birdie, my wife, came through the sliding doors upstage. She told Cal and Addie how wonderful everything looked, and then she was to give me my cue to enter.

So there I stood on opening night trembling behind those sliding doors awaiting my first entrance on the Pittsburgh Playhouse stage, when I heard a crash and some lines we’d never rehearsed. I peeked through the crack between the two sliding doors. Disaster! The tray, the wine bottle, and the glasses were strewn on the floor! All the cherry kool-aid that masqueraded as wine was soaking into the rug.

None of the plastic glasses had broken. Addie, Birdie, and Cal got busy gathering up the mess, re-filling the glasses, and ad libbing like mad. Where was my cue to enter! Twice I started to go through the doors only to realize they were not done cleaning up the mess. It seemed they went on forever, but at last the glasses were filled and Birdie emoted my cue. Desperately trying to look fierce, I slid the doors open, stepped through, and closed them behind my back.

And one of the doors fell off! It fell back into the set where it leaned against a wall. I couldn’t ignore it. When it fell, it pulled me back. It was time for one of my smooth ad libs.

I sidled over to the nearest actor and ordered, "Tell Cal to fix that." I cleverly jerked my thumb toward the fallen door.

Too late I realized that the actor to whom I had given my ad libbed order for Cal to "fix that" was indeed Cal himself. The actor looked at me as though I’d grown another head.

I struggled in the scene that was to conclude with the dreaded Birdie-smack. Cal was behind me tinkering with the wounded door. My mind was desperately groping with remembering my lines, worrying about the approaching assault on Birdie, and whether I had to go through those damned doors again. I survived, but it was not my finest fifteen minutes on stage.

The next day, the play was reviewed in the local press. Although generally favorable about the production, the reviewer noted that the actor playing Oscar "appeared nervous in his role."

Well, duh! I’d like to see that reviewer walk on stage to a tray-wreck, a broken door, and a prospective deafening of a fellow actor. I’ll bet that would have even thrown Bing.

CHECKING THE MAGAZINE STAND

2006-03-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

According to Weird Buildings-R-Us, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is an example of erectile dysfunction.

According to Football Health and You, the NFL’s bad news is that steroids are still a problem. The good news: not a single NFL lineman has ever been treated for anorexia nervosa.

According to Reasonably Happy Marriage, nice guys finish last. That’s what makes them great lovers.

According to Inside Dirt, by 2056, the Hollywood Walk of Fame will stretch all the way to Portland, Oregon.

According to Parent & Kid, when your son says he wants to be a soprano, he’s not planning on turning gay. However, keep your gun locked up.

According to the Slippery-Slope Theory, by 2015 all NFL quarterbacks will be named Manning.

According to Your Friend Oil, the U.S. energy policy’s acronym is GOUGE for Giant Oil Unveiling Gigantic Earnings.

DURN DANES!

2006-03-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

(Originally publidhed in The Coffin Corner)

Recently, the wire services ran a story that researchers had found references to "baseball" years earlier than its traditional 1839 invention by U.S. General Abner Doubleday. Supposedly, the early dates brought into question that baseball was first played in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Well, duh! In truth, no responsible baseball historian and few serious fans have put any faith in the Doubleday yarn for nearly half a century. The new dates may be of interest, but they hardly disprove what was thoroughly disproved long ago. It’s like NASA suddenly announced the world isn’t flat after all.

Although baseball’s history has been rehashed ad nauseum, the origins of football have not had the same wide exposure. As a consequence, a number of myths about football’s early years are still out there and likely to show up in otherwise learned manuscripts.

F’rinstance, just about everybody who writes about football’s origins has to bring up Kick-the-Dane’s-Head. As I’m sure you know, the mean old Danes conquered England in the 900’s or so. By a hundred years later, the Dane’s went back to Daneland and the English sat around waiting for William to conquer them in 1066.

According to the myth, the Englishers so hated the Danemarkians that they’d dig up the skulls of those presumably dead Danes who’d been buried there and give them a good pasting. All this Danish pastry eventually devolved into a game where whole teams of Brits tried to kick a Dane’s skull from one village to another.

Now if those kickers were smart enough to figure out they couldn’t kick the whole Dane for miles, I think they were probably smart enough to know that kicking skulls makes your toes smart. I mean, skulls are hard! And toes are soft! Especially that one that runs piggely-wiggely all the way home.

I’ll just bet those Saxons had a different angle. I’ll bet they filled a bag or a pig’s bladder with straw and then called it a "Dane’s Head."

Those Saxons were pretty slick. Especially the ones that lived in villages. I heard there was even a TV show about it -- Saxon the City.

IN SEARCH OF THE HISTORICAL CASEY

2006-03-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

By Dr. Charles T. Gregory (Guest Blogger)
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology,Mountebank University

"But," and I paused dramatically, "there is NO joy in Mudville -- Mighty Casey has STRUCK OUT!" I’d never recited "Casey at the Bat" with more fire. When I pantomimed "and now he let’s it go," an imaginary baseball rocketed from my hand toward the imaginary plate. When the air was "shattered by the force of Casey’s blow," the windows nearly rattled. I half expected applause. But, of course, a roomful of blase third-graders hadn’t yet learned the proper response to a brilliant dramatic recitation.

"Is that it?" asked Katherine (with a K), a chubby blonde behind buck teeth.

"Yes. Did you like it?" I asked.

"It was okay. Can I be excused?"

"In a few moments, Katherine. First, we should discuss the poem."

Mrs. Offenbach, the principal at Wilmerding Elementary, had warned me the class would try to take advantage of a substitute teacher. In many ways, she’d said, these moppets were far more diabolical than the college students to whom I normally lectured. "We’re happy that the university is on spring break and you are willing to stand in for Miss Slogg while she has her operation, but you must be careful or your whole class will be off to the rest room," Mrs. Offenbach had cautioned.

"Now, class," I said, "was there any part of the poem you didn’t understand?"

"Who’d Casey play for?" asked John, a pale redhead with a superior smirk.

"Mudville. The Mudville nine."

"There ain’t no Mudville in either league," John announced.

"‘There isn’t any Mudville.’"

"That’s right," John agreed. "I know all the teams in the majors. You want to hear them?"

"Not right now, John. Mudville is a --"

"Can I be excused?" Katherine interrupted.

"-- in a few minutes, Katherine. Mudville is clearly fictitious?" I explained. "‘Fictitious’ means --"

"It ain’t real." John finished.

"Well, not real in the sense of being --"

"If it’s not real," Kim, a lump of indeterminate sex in the third row, protested, "who cares?"

"We often suspend our disbelief to enjoy the vicarious --"

"Yeah, who cares?" John agreed. Several others in the class nodded.

"Wait," I said. "You watch stories on television, don’t you."

"I Witness Video" John said.

"And Rescue 911 and Top Cops and Unsolved Mysteries," Kim added.

"And 60 Minutes and 20/20," John continued. Those are all real."

"Except for Andy Rooney," Kim shouted.

"Can I be ex --"

"Just a minute, Kath --"

"Andy Rooney is so real," John insisted.

"Is not," countered Kim.

"Is too," testified John.

"No," Kim said. "Andy Rooney’s an actor. My father told me he used to be in a lot of movies in the olden days. I saw one called Boy’s Town on the Late Show. It was so old it was in black and white and Andy didn’t have any wrinkles!"

"Kim," I said, "Your father may have confused Andy Rooney with Mickey Roon --"

"Why’d they make movies in black and white in the olden days anyway?" Jennifer asked. She had been sitting shyly in the back. "Did people see like that then?"

"They just didn’t know any better," John said brightly. "Isn’t that right, Mr. Gregory?"

"That’s Doctor Gregory, John. Can we get back to ‘Casey at the Bat?’"

"But if there wasn’t any Mudville and there wasn’t any Casey," Jennifer asked. "What difference does it make?"

The class rumbled in agreement.

"Now wait a minute, people," I said desperately, "while the names Mudville and Casey may be fictitious, it’s altogether possible that Ernest K. Thayer based his poem on a real incident."

"Like an NBC movie?" Kim asked.

"Well, sort of," I agreed.

"And did they change the names to protect the innocent?" asked Jennifer.

"Perhaps."

"Well," John said, "why can’t you tell us the true story?"

"John, you have to understand --"

"It’s probably another government cover-up," Jennifer said.

"Casey-gate!" blurted Kim.

"Tell us the truth!" the whole class began to chant. "Tell us the truth! Tell us the Truth!"

"Uh -- Katherine, you may be excused."

"Never mind now," she sulked. "It’s too late."

"John, will you find the janitor and ask for a mop?"

I must admit that by the time I arrived home that evening, I was in a state. If I was to maintain any credibility with that class of terrors, I’d have to tell them the facts behind "Casey at the Bat." But what were the facts? In all my baseball research, even when I was preparing my book, A History of Balls of the Base Variety, I hadn’t looked into Casey.

The key, I felt, was in identifying Mudville. If I could decipher the real city in Thayer’s poem, I could go to team rosters, and then work through the season to find the right game. The poem, I knew, was first published in a San Francisco newspaper in 1888. Could San Francisco itself be Mudville? Was it there that Thayer saw Casey, whoever Casey was?

But, when I looked up Thayer, I found something odd. When the poem was published, he had already moved back East and was living in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Suddenly, inspiration struck. I visualized Thayer coming east on a train. He’s bored with the long trip and gets off at some city along the way to break up his trip. While visiting, he goes to a baseball game. It’s there that he sees the event that he will make famous. When he continues his train journey, he composes "Casey" to pass the time. And once he arrives in Worcester, he encloses the poem in a letter he sends to his friends back in San Francisco.

Often, in seeking the truth, one must create a reasonable hypotheses in order to know where to look for the rest of the story. This felt right! Mudville was a midwestern city -- and surely one with a major league team in 1888, for certainly Thayer couldn’t have reached such poetic heights by writing about minor leaguers.

But what city? I re-read Thayer’s opening line: "It looked extremely rocky for the Mudville nine that day." The word "rocky" seemed an odd choice. Could Thayer have meant it as a clue to Mudville? My hand trembled as I opened my atlas. There it was! ROCK Island, Illinois! But wait, Rock Island had only a minor league team in 1888. And suddenly I saw the logic. The Mudville team had played badly that day, just like the MINOR leaguers in Illinois -- Rock Island. And this was a shame because the Mudville nine was the MAJOR league team in the land of Lincoln -- Chicago!

I believed in my theory, but I needed some more proof. And, the next moment it was there before my eyes. I knew that Chicago in 1888 was already a meat-packing center -- hog butcher of the world, so to speak. Thousands of animals in open air pens! The smell must have been unbelievable to a stranger visiting for a few days on his way east. Thayer had put it into his poem by naming the city. Obviously "mud" was a literary pun on the French word merde which he dared not use in those Victorian times. Definitely Chicago.

I next pulled out my dog-eared copy of All-Time Rosters of Major League Baseball Clubs to find the names of Chicago’s 1888 players. In addition to Casey, Thayer named four other players in the poem: Cooney, Burrows, Flynn, and Blakey. Two names were only slightly disguised. Catcher Silver Flint was obviously "Flynn." Pitcher George Borchers just as obviously "Burrows." I wondered whether Thayer had intentionally disguised the names or simply mis-remembered them later on the train when he wrote the poem. Then, in a flash, I realized he would have had to adjust some names to fit the poem’s meter! "Cooney" and "Blakey" were no doubt used in place of longer names that would have produced non-scanning lines. Once I recognized that obvious fact, I was certain the two real players were outfielder George Van Haltren and shortstop Ned Williamson.

At that point, I was reasonably certain I knew who "Casey" was too. But first I had to find a game that fit the situation in the poem. I got to the library only an hour before it closed. Fortunately, our local paper is on microfilm all the way back to 1864. Even more fortunately, it carried box scores and brief accounts of all the league games during the season of 1888.

I expected Thayer to have changed the incident slightly for dramatic purposes. With that knowledge, it didn’t take me long to find the correct game.

It occurred on June 16. Chicago lost to New York 8-4. Thayer halved the score to make the game appear closer. There actually was no one on base in the last of the ninth, so Thayer simply invented two base-runners to make a "Mudville" victory possible. And "Casey" didn’t strike out; he much less dramatically popped to shortstop. Once I had my mind inside Thayers’, so to speak, the game, despite his clever obfuscations, was easily identified.

"Casey" himself was a cinch because Thayer had retained the middle "s" in the player’s name. The final two letters in "Casey" were changed from "on" to the beginning of the word "eye" because the real player was not merely "on" the team but the one who "oversaw" it’s actions. And the "Ca" in "Casey" represented the beginning of the real player’s famous nickname -- "Cap!" Yes, "Casey" was none other than Hall of Fame first baseman and Chicago manager Adrian Constantine "Cap" Anson!

In wonderment, I realized that Thayer had undoubtedly wanted readers to see through his camouflage, but it had taken over a hundred years for someone clever enough to come along. Not that I want to pat myself on the back, so to speak.

I couldn’t wait to go to school the next day to show those little bra -- brainy children what a dedicated researcher could accomplish. But shortly after I arose the next morning, I received a phone call from Mrs. Offenbach.

"Mrs. Slogg has decided to postpone her operation and will be returning today, Dr. Gregory, so we won’t need you at Wilmerding Elementary."

I was disappointed. I could have used the extra day’s pay. However, I told Mrs. Offenbach that I would still drop around to tell the students of a discovery I’d made.

"Dr. Gregory," she said, "I looked into the third grade after school yesterday. Half of our textbooks are wet. There is paste in the pencil sharpener. The drinking fountain now spurts across the room. Our large alphabet letters around the blackboard spell out dirty words. The blackboards themselves have been finger-painted yellow. Mrs. --"

"Perhaps I should have kept a tighter rein," I admitted.

"-- Slogg’s filing cabinet is smashed flat --"

"For show-and-tell, John brought a sledge hammer."

"-- and three desks are missing. If you ever set foot on these grounds again, I’ll have you shot!"

I didn’t care to argue with an obviously emotionally overwrought woman. Besides, she’d hung up. However, I still wanted to tell those kids -- particularly that smirky little John -- about Casey. I thought I could simply stand on the sidewalk and call to the third grade class when it came out for recess.

I certainly wasn’t loitering. I tried to tell that to the officer. When Sergeant What-Ever-His-Name-Is comes back to the interrogation room, I’ll explain it all to him calmly and rationally. Pervert indeed!

Or perhaps I should ask for a lawyer.

A Penis for Your Thoughts

2006-02-24T22:56:00.000-08:00

I’d like to say a word about penises. This is not a word that I have had many occasions to utter in the past. In fact, I’ve used it so seldom that I’m unsure whether the plural is penises or penisi. I’ve settled on the former here only because the latter looks like something that would served along with sushi. I just don’t like that mental picture.

Nowadays they teach little kids to say penis instead of euphenisms like weewee or Little Joey. When I was growing up and had to mention mine to my parents, I used a grown-up word – thing. Not that I had to mention it very often. Actually just once – the day I had to dress in the same room with a very sneaky, mean duck.

By the time I got to high school, I’d learned some grown-up words for it. Those were so grown-up that I’d never dare use them in front of my parents, teachers, or other grown-ups. The only people I could say those grown-up words to were my teenage friends. Lord knows I couldn’t say "weewee" to them. "Penis" would have been worse.

As I grew older and older, the rules I’d learned as a teenager continued to apply. Certain words – the childish, the grown-up, or the scientific – were not to be used in talking with anyone who was a close friend of the same sex. But the words I could use with friends were to be abandoned when talking with anyone who might report me, slap me, or pray for me.

You could always tell what was okay and what was no-way by watching network television. If they said it on Friends or Seinfeld, you could say it to your minister.

Then one night I was watching Drew Carey and he said "penis"! The audience roared. Before the program ended, he said penis thirty-four times.

I don’t think Carey was the first to say "penis" on network TV, but he was in the vangard. As they say in France, "Apres vous la deluge de penis!" From that first "penis" on Carey, it got so you couldn’t turn on the TV without someone blathering about a penis. And I’m not counting Bob Dole. For a couple of months, television had more penis-talk than commercials. Well, almost more.

Eventually the excitement over "penis" wore off. Audiences stopped laughing at its mention and simply accepted it as another word in a conversation. For shock laughs, comedy writers dredged up "vagina." Sometimes "penis" and "vagina" were together on the same program.

I haven’t been watching much television lately, so I’m not certain what the latest shockword is. Recently, while channel-surfing, I swear I heard someone say "fellatio." Of course I may have hit a cable channel.

Sometimes I speculate about what words will be common on television in ten years if things keep going the way they are. Naturally I don’t speculate out loud if there are grown-ups around.

WAY, WAY OFF-BROADWAY

2006-02-17T03:03:00.000-08:00

Let me make an analogy. When I was hired as an actor by the White Barn Theater, it was like a baseball player being promoted from Class D to Class C. The ballplayer still has a long way to go to get to the majors, and I was nowhere near Broadway, but it was a definite step up.

Then, within a week after I arrived at the Barn, I wanted to chuck it all and go home.

I’d been acting in our local community theaters for several years, everything from "Here’s your package, sir" to leads. I’d been paid a few compliments, but the White Barn actually paid its actors in real money. Not much, but a little. And when, through the intersession of a friend, I was hired for the summer as the theater’s regular "character actor," it meant I’d receive a weekly paycheck. As a West Virginia high school teacher, I was paid only ten months, so that paycheck – tiny though it might be -- was important. But most important was the ego-boost of actually being paid to act. I was a professional!

I arrived at the Barn on Friday evening and went into rehearsal the next day. Except for me, our cast was made up of amateur actors who had real jobs in the real world. Community theaters usually rehearse over a six-week span. The summer playhouse follows a shorter schedule. The cast first meets on Saturday, rehearses ten times -- usually three-hour sessions at night until the show opens Tuesday-a-week.

This was the first play I’d ever done at a summer theater with its short rehearsal schedule. Still, I was a professional. I could handle it. I was supposed to play this little character role of a doctor. Two scenes and a curtain call. Nice. School was out. Instead of teaching, I could devote all my time to learning my lines.

Four days into rehearsals our lead handed in his script. Tommy, our director, explained, "He said he couldn’t do it in the time he had." The part had been written for Henry Fonda. He had every other line. He was always on stage and everyone talked to him. Worse, he answered them. Some of his answers went on and on for half a page. The man never shut up!

"Nice of him to figure that out after wasting four precious rehearsals!," I harumphed. I tossed my script on the table by Tommy. "I guess this means no show."

"Au contraire, Meester Pussy Cat," Tommy explained in her best Mel Blanc impression. "We just recast."

I laughed. Where would she find a genius who could learn this monster role in half the time? Despite my anger, I could well understand why our former lead went former. And then I wondered why she was smiling at me.

For the next six days, I learned lines. From the time I woke up in the morning the only moment I didn’t have the script in my hand was at rehearsal when I was fumbling to get through a scene without it. My fellow cast members were encouraging, but they seldom looked me in the eye when they said it would be fine by opening night. By Saturday, there were still large chunks of verbiage I couldn’t navigate without some cues from offstage. Sunday was technical rehearsal, and with the constant start and stop for lighting and sound, everyone was missing lines.

Dress rehearsal was Monday. I got through it by being cued only twice. My confidence was growing. I spent the whole of Tuesday going over lines. About half an hour before curtain, I went to the dressing room for make-up. Several actors were already there.

"Well," the actor playing my son-in-law said, "Tommy told me they almost never review a White Barn show this early in the season."

"Then why is he reviewing tonight?" the stage manager asked.

Reviewing?

I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly I knew I’d forget every line. My mistakes would be trumpeted to all the world. I could see the review: "Tonight the White Barn audience was treated to long minutes of silence while the lead actor struggled to remember his lines."

A few minutes later, the stage manager looked at his watch. "It’s magic time!" he said. We made our way to the stage. I hoped I wouldn’t throw up when the lights came on.

Amazingly, the whole show went smoothly. I did’t miss a single line. I was perfect! It was almost disappointing it was so easy. An actor would speak to me, and I wouldn’t even have to think about it. The line came tumbling out of my mouth. The letter-perfect line.

The next day I raced to the theater. The newspaper had already arrived. I tore the paper apart getting to the review.

The headline told little more than there had been a play performed at the White Barn. The first paragraph was devoted to the girl who played my daughter. That was okay. She really was very good. She deserved all the praise the reviewer lavished on her.

The second paragraph gave a nearly equal rave to the actor who played my son-in-law. Wait a minute, I thought. The son-in-law was a much smaller part. And he wasn’t that good. What about ME? I was the one who carried the show. I was the one who learned all those lines and SAVED the show! I was Henry Fonda!

The next couple of paragraphs dealt with telling the story so readers could skip attending. The reviewer revealed two of the funniest lines in the show.

I read the reviw to the bottom, and there I was. "Also in the cast were . . . ." He named four actors. I was the third.

THE REWARDS OF POETRY

2006-02-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

(Or About Those Four Words That Can’t Be Rhymed)

A poet can seldom earn silver.
Still ver-
Ses with with no style nor range
Writ in orange
Or purple
‘Bout hero or twerp’ll
Elicit a lisping cheer each month
At least oneth.

THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS

2006-02-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

Should someone who spreads manure on a flower bed be arrested for giving aid and comfort to the anemone?

A recent poll showed that teenagers who do not have sex are "happier" in their relationships. Will they survey the boys next week?.

Why do people say "you could hear a pin drop" when they talk about how quiet it was? Have you ever been in a bowling alley?

From his funny hat down to his knee socks, everything the football fan is wearing is new, with this year’s version of his team’s logo on every item. He had to pay double to get the jersey with the right number. How come his wife’s coat is gray, five years old, and has a raveled sleeve?

When the choice is between water and whiskey, I always ask, "What would Jesus walk on?"

Did Miss Muffet perform fellatio in northern Iraq?

When did your local TV newsteam begin to spend less time giving you the news than they do telling you how good they are at it?

I TRY TO WATCH SOCCER

2006-01-27T22:17:00.000-08:00

I read on the OpEd page that they’re playing the World Bucket or Saucer or Bowl or whatever they call the big soccer game to choose the best soccerers. From what I read I should be ashamed of myself for not caring.

The letter writer explained that I must be wrong because all the fans in France and Tierra del Fuego and other such places love soccer so much that they kill people over it. Years ago there was a popular song, "Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong." Add in the Uraguayans and all the others, and soccer would win a yes or no vote everywhere but in Ohio.

I was worried that to keep up with the French I’d have to learn to eat snails or surrender to somebody, but I finally decided to do my duty and tune into a game on TV. There’s all kinds of stuff on cable. I was sorely tempted to watch either a guy who talks to dead people or a rerun of Green Acres. But I was on a mission, so I surfed over to a soccer game.

They were showing the warm-ups. About a half-hour later I realized that what I was watching was the game! They’d fooled me by not scoring. Gosh, those guys can run! I’ll bet they really could get going if they didn’t bother to kick the ball all the time.

I think the reason they kept kicking was so some of the guys could get close to each side of the field so they could hear what people yelled at them. The fans were yelling in Korean or German or one of those languages that all sound alike, so I don’t know what they were saying, but they seemed very sincere.

So the players sincerely kicked and ran the ball in one direction. Then they’d kick and run in the opposite direction. Then kick and run back in the first direction. Then kick and run . . . .

Well, I dozed off . I woke with a start when the announcer got stabbed. At least I guess that’s what happened because he gave this long, drawn-out wail. I thought they might show him being carried out. When they just went back to kicking and running, I nodded off again. When I next woke up, it was over. I would have looked up the game in the newspaper the next day if I could’ve remembered who played.

I plan to watch another soccer thing the next time they hold one of those World Whatevers. Gotta keep up with the French.

LA LAWLESS

2006-01-22T20:14:00.000-08:00

The LA DA leads the league
In losing front page trials.
The stars aren’t major anymore,
But they leave court all smiles.

They couldn’t get O.J.’s glove to fit.
They whiffed on Bobby Blake.
Now, Michael isn’t guilty.
(Tho he certainly is a flake.)

Star defendents always win
Those trials out there in Hollywood,
But put in different venues
They might not fare so good.

In New York, Russ Crowe threw a phone;
Chris Slater groped a gal.
By now they surely must be wishing
They’d done their deeds in Cal.

In LA they’d be off the hook.
It really makes us chuckle.
Who’d that DA last convict?
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle?

SWIFTBOATING THE BABE

2006-01-13T14:01:00.000-08:00

By Dr. Charles T. Gregory (Guest Blogger)
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology, Mountebank University

On Election Day morning, Bob was sitting at my kitchen table, scribbling furiously on a sheet of foolscap, drinking my coffee, and complaining that I didn’t have any doughnuts. He's like that sometimes. We'll be talking and suddenly he gets an idea about something he wants to write. Until he puts it down on paper, he's lost to everything else. Except doughnuts, of course.

I, as you would expect, was devoting my thoughts to the election. I believe an intelligent, informed electorate is the backbone of democracy and that voting is both a privilege and a duty. Had it not been threatening rain, I probably would have walked over to the polling place to cast my precious ballot for what's-his-name. Or maybe the other guy.

Bob looked up from his writing. "Doc? Why do they call this kind of paper ‘foolscap?’"

"Originally, it was called ‘fool scrap,’" I explained, "taking its name from people asking, ‘Where’s that fool scrap of paper I was writing on yesterday?’"

Bob made a disappointed face and scratched out something on his paper.

I certainly understood his annoyance. I well remember the agonies I experienced in searching for the perfect word or phrase while writing A History of Balls of the Base Variety, my magnum opus. How many times had I become so frustrated in my search that only a large lunch and long nap could free my muse and convince me that what I’d already written was good enough?

Just then, my neighbor C.C. walked in without knocking as he usually does. "Wowee!" he exulted. "What a beautiful day!"

"Did you bring doughnuts?" Bob asked.

C.C. shook his head. "I was wonderin’ if you guys were ready to go vote."

I told him it looked like rain and I was on the verge of a cold. "There’s not a cloud in the sky," C.C. said.

"Actually, it might be the flu."

"And the temperature is above sixty," he added.

C.C., who is himself above sixty, never seems to know when to let a subject drop. One time Bob complained that C.C. went "on and on ad nauseum." C.C. told him, "Maybe I do beat a dead hearse to death, but you go on odd gymnasium yourself. I’ve heard about you going to Cleveland as a kid so often my butt’s sore from ridin’ the bus!" When C.C. gets started, we just try to change the subject.

"The next time I go to Cleveland," I said, changing the subject, "I think I’ll visit the Rock Museum."

"I’ve got plenty of good rocks in my backyard," C.C. said.

"Hey, C.C., do you know why they call this kind of paper ‘foolscap?’" Bob asked, changing the subject.

"Sure." C.C. answered confidently, "In school, the teachers used to fold up sheets of it to make dunce caps for the dummies. Uh -- anyway, that's what I was told. You ready to go vote, Bob?"

Bob put down his pencil. "Back in October, I got so sick and tired of all those attack ads on TV that I vowed I would never vote for anybody who put out one of those poison pieces. Yesterday I checked. The only person I can vote for is that fellow running unopposed for county surveyor."

"Well, are you going to vote for him?" C.C. asked.

"No, I don’t like his stand on foreign aid."

"I for one think those ads were terrific," C.C. said. "Otherwise, how would we know that the bums in charge of the country for the last couple of years are such selfish, devious, lying, two-timing, hypocritical scallawags?"

"But," Bob said, "according to the ads, the people running against them are also selfish, devious, lying, two-timing, hypocritical scallawags."

C.C. shrugged. "No system’s perfect," he said.

"I was reading something George Will wrote about elections," I began learnedly.

"What’s a baseball writer know about politics?" C.C. asked.

"I think he writes a column about Washington or something in the off-season," Bob said. "A humor column, I think."

"Is he funny?" C.C. wanted to know.

"Well, he's no Mark Russell," I said.

"Russell was a great center with Celtics," C.C. said, "but I never thought he was all that funny."

"I'll tell you what’s weird," Bob said. "Guys like us gripe about politics, but the only elections we really get excited about are the ones for the Baseball Hall of Fame. I mean, Doc is still upset that they ignored Gil Hodges last year. C.C., you’re always complaining about Pete Rose."

"Don't forget how you go on and on about Hank Majeski," I said.

"Exactly," Bob said. He picked up the piece of foolscap he’d been writing on. "Imagine, if you will, that the Hall of Fame was just opening this year and they were holding a national election for the first player to be elected. Here’s what ---"

"Wait a minute," C.C. said. "Is this some fool crap you’re writing?"

"Fool crap? Another derivation heard from," I muttered.

Bob set his paper down. "I -- uh -- thought it might make an interesting subject for my column."

"That’d be a first," C.C. said sitting down at the table, his expression bemused. "I don't get it. They keep publishing your weird scribblin’s. What? Do you have photos of one of the editors in fragance grandee with a barcalounger? They always send back my articles, like the one I wrote on Charley Maxwell."

"Maybe they sent it back because you spelled ‘Maxwell’ with two x’es," Bob said. "Anyway, get the picture. Imagine it’s the election for the first player to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. You turn on your television and you see pinstripes on a white background. They are expanding. The camera pulls back and we realize we're looking at Babe Ruth’s belly. A voice like that guy who used to imitate God for NFL Films says, ‘How many hot dogs and how much soda pop can this belly hold? And how much extra have you Yankee fans paid for your hot dogs and sodas to make up for the freebies this man consumed? Do you really want this glutton who cost you money enshrined in your Hall of Fame? One year, he stuffed himself with so many hot dogs and sodas he missed half the season!’ An insinuating female voice: ‘If it was hot dogs and sodas.’ Back to the voice of God: ‘His appetites were out of control!’ And at the bottom of the screen: ‘Paid for by the Ty Cobb for the Hall of Fame Committee.’"

C.C. stared at him. "This is an ad on television?"

"Well, not a real ad," Bob said. "It's imaginary. You have to imagine they're holding the first --"

"-- election for the Hall of Fame," C.C. completed. "What I don't get is why they’re sayin’ rotten things about Babe Ruth."

"It's like those attack political ads," Bob explained. "Only about baseball."

"I see," C.C. said, the light dawning -- sort of. "Hey! How about this? Babe Ruth is pulling the petals off a flower and suddenly there’s this big nuclear explosion."

"That's sort of -- uh -- sort of --" Bob looked down at his paper. "Here's one. We could show pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover, and Babe Ruth. And the voice says, ‘He told us he was better than an American President!’"

I couldn't let that pass. "What Ruth really said, Bob, was that he had a better year than Hoover."

"Hey!" C.C. erupted, making a TV screen in the air with his hands, "‘He'll call his shot, but he won't talk about Whitewater!’ Or better yet, ‘Babe Ruth wants to cut Medicare!’"

Bob slowly rolled his piece of foolscap into a ball. I felt it was time to change the subject. "Who are you planning to vote for in the real election, C.C.?"

I was soon sorry I asked. C.C. started at the top of the national elections giving both his choices and his reasons. He finally ended with his candidate for county surveyor whose stand on foreign aid he admired. I noticed that for the final ten minutes of the recitation, Bob not only didn't move -- he didn't even blink.

I couldn't think of anything to say.

At last, Bob took his wadded up piece of foolscap and made a one-handed push shot for the sink. Two! Then he stood up.

"Well, Doc," he said, "let’s get going."

C.C. was elated. "So you guys are going to vote after all?"

"Oh yes, in self defence," I said. "You convinced us."

As we walked out the door, C.C. was saying, "About that other TV thing. How about ‘The Babe was not only soft on crime, he even stole some bases himself'?’"

"We can stop on the way for doughnuts," Bob said dreamily.

My First Act Was the Worst

2006-01-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

When Bill asked me to try out for the Little Theater production he was going to direct, I’d been in two high school plays and one in college. All told, I’d spoken nearly a hundred lines on stage. Compared to the other guys at tryouts, I was a Barrymore.

Despite my vast experience, Bill didn’t put me in the lead. The male lead in the play called for a handsome, witty, urbane doctor type, but he was also in his fifties – more than twice my age. Brett, the actor in the second best male part, had to be tall, very athletic, and a real hero type. I was shorter than our actresses.

Fortunately, I was perfect for Brett’s friend, the third male part, who was described in detail as "Brett’s Friend."

The play was about how the doctor brings a girl named Miranda home from a fishing trip. He won’t tell his fiancee why he has the girl staying with him , but naturally she has her suspicions. The audience discovers at the end of Act One that the mysterious Miranda is a mermaid. This supposedly produces a great deal of merriment in Act Two until Miranda and Brett swim off together.

On opening night an hour before curtain up, the men’s tuxedos arrived. Someone had to show me how the detachable collar worked. I didn’t know it was to be attached at the nape of my neck to a button on the back of the shirt. I was more concerned with the jacket which seemed to have shrunk and was now a size smaller than when I’d been fitted. I was sure I'd only gained a couple of pounds.

As the curtain opened, the three men were standing on stage discussing Miranda. The Doctor was very evasive, never revealing she was a mermaid but lavish with cute references to the ocean and fish. It was sophisticated as all hell. After a few minutes, he offered Brett and me champagne.

So far, so good. We’d worried about the Doctor. This was his first play. He looked and sounded the part, but he was also the stiffest actor I’ve ever seen. I often wondered how he managed to speak his lines because that board up his butt must have gone clear to his throat.

The scene in which the doctor poured champagne was a struggle. He couldn’t multi-task. If he poured, he couldn’t speak; if he spoke, he couldn’t pour. Bill finally solved the problem by having him move on particular syllables. "MIR- (pour champagne into glass) anda is a WON- (lift bottle) derful PER- (pour next glass) son. I’M (lift bottle) sure you WILL (pour third glass) agree, MEN (lift bottle)." After going over it a hundred times, the Doctor had it down pat and had even learned to turn his head and speak directly to Brett while he said "anda is a WON".

Five minutes into opening night, the Doctor lifted the champagne bottle. He poured nicely as he said, "MIR," but then came – "is a personal – oh! I mean, he’s – that is, SHE’S a bonder – uh – what I’m trying to say is, Miranda is a wonderful." Through all this, his eyes were on Brett. As he was fumbling and repeating, our champagne – actually ginger ale – was bubbling out of the bottle, overflowing the glass, spreading across the table, and puddling up on the floor. By the time he got to my glass – the third – the bottle was empty.

A few moments later, I set down my empty glass and splashed off stage to get Miranda. Naturally, as a mermaid, she had no feet, just a tail, but at this point in the play, only the doctor knew that. She kept her lower half wrapped in a blankett. I was to carry her on stage and place her on a chair. When I got to her in the wings, I saw she had changed from the gray blanket she used in rehearsals to a fuzzy, red-orange wrap. "This will look better," she said.

I carried her on stage and put her in a chair. As I stepped away, I looked down. The entire front of my tuxedo was covered with red-orange lint. The blanket had shed all over me. A few moments later, things got worse.

Trapped on stage, I tried to wipe some of the red-orange lint off. That put too much strain on my detachable collar which suddenly de-tached at the front. The button in back held, but the ends of the collar, like white wings, extended out over each of my shoulders. I tried to reach up to fix it, but the tuxedo was too tight. I couldn’t raise my arms. For the next twenty minutes I paraded my wings around the stage while the other actors pretended that there was nothing unusual about how I looked. I’m sure the lint on my tuxedo was no redder than my face.

At last, I got my cue to exit. In the wing, the stage manager tried desperately to wipe off some of the red-orange lint while the make-up lady tied my collar together. I still had one more entrance in Act One.

At the end of the first act, Miranda was to be left alone on stage. Finally she’d open her blanket and reveal her fish tail to the audience which was expected to gasp and suddenly understand all the ocean and fish references they'd’been hearing. Then she would hear me coming and recover her tail. Our stage didn’t have an actual curtain. When the act ended, we would put out the lights, but the exit signs cast enough glow that dim figures could still be seen on stage. Because Miranda couldn’t walk with her fish tail, I’d carry her off as the lights went out.

The girl playing Miranda was more a singer than an actress. To take advantage of that, the director had her sing "Danny Boy" while she opened her blanket. She finished the first verse, and I was starting to enter when the stage manager stopped me. "She hasn’t opened her blanket yet!" he whispered.

Miranda sang the second verse without showing her tail. "How many verses are there to that song?" the stage manager asked. Miranda launched into a third verse.

The make-up lady came running up to me. She was carrying Miranda’s fish tail!

Obviously, our Miranda had been more interested in singing than in showing her tail. I went out and carried our unrevealed mermaid off stage. "I forgot it," she whispered. "What do we do now?"

Somehow we got through Act Two. We ad-libbed a scene so Miranda could show her tail. The audience even applauded us at curtain call. Several relatives told us we were wonderful. Bill’s mother said we were ready for Broadway.

The Day We Bombed the State

2005-12-30T11:58:00.000-08:00

Robbie swore it was true. I wasn’t so sure. "Everyone knows about it," he said. That sounded convincing. If everyone knew about it, it must be true.

I wondered why no one ever used such a powerful explosive in any of the war movies we went to. Every week we watched movies at the State Theater about things that really happened in the war, things like Wake Island, Bataan, and Corregidor. Lots of Japanese airplanes and tanks got blown up, but no one ever made any explosions with this stuff. Why was that?

"Because it’s a secret!" Robbie yelped. "If they showed it in movies, everyone would know about it." I had to agree that made sense. "Besides," he added, "the explosion’s not THAT big. It’s not going to blow up the whole building, for Pete’s sake."

"How big is it? I don’t want to hurt anyone."

Robbie gave me his best are-you-crazy look. "With bubbles?" he asked. The idea was that millions of bubbles would erupt to fill a large part of the theater. Millions of bubbles would make a great explosion but wouldn’t hurt anyone. When I worried that the bottle might explode, he reminded me we were going to put the whole thing behind the drinking fountain down the hall from the entrance..

"Maybe we ought to test it first," I suggested.

"Fine!" Robbie said in disgust. "Do you have enough money to buy another coke to test with and still go to the movie?"

I agreed testing was a waste of time. By then we were a block away from the State Theater and could read the signboards. "Uh-oh," I said. "They’re showing a Lash LaRue western. I was hoping a Bob Steele."

"It doesn’t matter! We’re going for the explosion, not the movie." He pulled me into the doorway of a shoe store and told me it was time to hide the coke. "They won’t let us into the theater carrying a bottle of coke."

"Why can’t you take it?"

"I’ve got the aspirin," he explained.

"Well," I said, "I paid for the coke." He’d brought the aspirin from home. He didn’t have to pay for it. With the price of the movie, I was putting twenty-six cents into the plan compared to his sixteen to get him into the movie.

"All right," Robbie agreed. "You take half the bottle, and I’ll take half."

I gave up. Robbie put the coke in the small of my back, held there by my belt which he tightened so that I could barely breathe. I was afraid the bottle would slip out, so I walked up to the ticket booth slowly and very stiffly.

An usher stood just inside the door taking tickets. He gave me a curious look and asked "Are you okay? You’re not going to puke are you?"

"He’s fine," Robbie said. "He hurt his leg playing football."

The usher waved us through. "As long as he don’t puke."

"He ran for a touchdown," Robbie added. "He won the game."

We sat down front in the third row. There were only a couple of others in the audience. I was giggling. "How long was it?" I asked.

"How long was what?"

"My pretend touchdown run."

"Sixteen yards," he said without hesitation.

I was curious. Why sixteen?"

"When you make something up, always try to put in details you can remember easy. You paid sixteen cents to get into the movie. So if the movie usher asks you how long your touchdown was, you won’t have any trouble remembering. Now, who’d your team beat?"

"The La Rues," I said.

"No. That would make the usher suspicious. Why would the team and this movie have the same name?

"The Steelmen."

"That’s better," Robbie agreed.

We watched the movie for ten minutes. Lash LaRue used his whip to flick a six-gun away from a crook. Then it was time to place our bomb.

We went to the restroom where Robbie pried the lid off the coke. He took six aspirin out of his pocket. Suddenly I got an awful thought. "What if it goes off as soon as you put in the aspirin?"

"It’s supposed to take a while," he said.

"How long is a while?"

To give us the most getaway time, we waited until we were right next to the drinking fountain before we put in the aspirins. Robbie jammed the cap back on the bottle and wedged it between the fountain and the wall. Then we scurried back to our seats and waited for the bubbles.

Nothing happened after five minutes. We gave it five more minutes and then we went to the drinking fountain to have a look. The cap was loose on the bottle and there appeared to be a wet spot on the floor. Robbie held the bottle up to the light on the fountain to see if the aspirins were in there.

"You can’t have that in here!" The usher who’d taken our ticket at the door had come up quietly behind us. "It’s gotta go."

Robbie tipped up the bottle and chugged the whole coke.

"You better not puke," the usher said.

I told the usher my touchdown run went for sixteen yards and beat the – uh – Autrys.. He wasn’t impressed. He kicked us out.

On the street going home, Robbie complained that the coke and aspirin explosion was a big lie. "What if we were being chased by an enemy spy and the only way to escape was to blow him up?"

"Maybe it just hasn’t gone off yet," I suggested. "Maybe you should puke or maybe . . . ."

Robbie began walking home faster.

ADAGES OR WHATEVER

2005-12-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

The main difference between America and England is that in this country spotted dick is a social desease.

A metaphor is saying someone is an asshole.
A simile is saying someone is like an asshole.
A facsimile is saying someone pretends to be an asshole.
A factsimile is saying someone is like an asshole when in fact he really is one.

When Pat Robertson dies it’ll prove God hates him.

Tom Delay translates as Tom of Lay; apparently one of his ancestors substituted the regular verb lay for the irregular lie.

People who say George W. Bush is the worst president ever are unfair; they are only counting the U.S. presidents.

Go practice aural sex. Stick it in your ear.

"My brother is a child psychologist."
"What will he be when he grows up?"

Scientists have discovered wasps can be trained to sniff out drugs. However, most scientists say they don’t get the same satisfaction out of saying, "Good wasp," while petting them.

Some object to "Happy Holidays" and want "Merry Christmas." I say compromise: "Merry Holidays."

SIMILES

2005-12-16T14:31:00.000-08:00

As blue as the air in a marine barracks
As camouflaged as a blonde in a burka
As common as tattoos on porn stars
As faithful as a plain, fat girl
As hard as Chinese algebra
As high as a sherpa on meth
As low as a mole’s ankle bracelet
As polite as a mean kid before Christmas
As purple as a prince’s pajamas
As rare as a caucasian cornerback
As red as his face when he walked out of the Ladies Room
As shocking as an original speech by a football coach
As stupid as a carjacking on a ferry
As suggestve as wearing a condom in her hair
As unlikely as an anorexic linebacker

THE DAY I SUCKED ON STAGE

2005-12-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

I’m sure anyone who ever stood shaking in front of an audience never forgot the first time. All those eyes watching. Judging!

My moment came at the Victoria Theater sixty years ago.

The Victoria was one of the lesser movie houses in town. Top movies with famous stars like William Powell and Veronica Lake played at the Capitol, Court, or Rex. So-called "B" movies – Roy Rogers westerns and Charlie Chan mysteries for example – could be seen at the State or Liberty. That left the "in-betweeners" and second-runs for the Vic. The Vic’s audience was often made up of movie goers who’d seen all the first-runs.

Toward the end of World War II, the Vic found a way to bring in an audience – Saturday morning cartoons. The idea was that working mothers with their husbands in the service could drop the kids off on a Saturday morning while they attended to shopping, getting their hair done, or just catching their breath. The Vic was the baby sitter.

Unfortunately, the Vic couldn’t find enough new cartoons to satisfy its Saturday morning audience. Watching Bugs outwit Elmer in exactly the same way he had done last week and the week before tended to bore the pre-pubescent.

To keep the kiddies happy during their internment, the Vic folks added a stage presentation – a weekly contest involving the kids themselves. If a kid was able to sign his name, he was old enough to compete. Midway through the cartoon program, the names of eight or ten kids were drawn and they were brought down on stage.

The contests changed each week. They usually involved stacking things, throwing things through hoops, or moving small objects from one place to another. While the contestants performed their tasks, the audience cheered. The winner got a prize – a candy bar.

When my name was called, my first thought was to stay in my seat so the other kids wouldn’t laugh at me. That made the other kids laugh at me. So I went down to the stage. The emcee lined eight of us across the stage and explained the contest to us.

Each of us was handed a baby bottle complete with a nipple. Each bottle was two-thirds full of orange soda. The emcee assured us that each bottle contained the same amount of orange. Our challenge was to drink the most orange through a nipple in thirty seconds.

I have to explain here that I knew what a nipple did. I was nine. In fact, I later discovered that I had been a "bottle baby" myself although I didn’t remember the experience. Nevertheless, I’d often seen babies with bottles when my mother or some other relative ordered me to "look at the baby!" Looking at babies was never very interesting, but I’d dutifully glanced at them. I knew what a nipple did, but I didn’t know how it did it. It never occurred to me to ask anybody to show me the way a nipple did what it did. What did I care? I was nine!

I realized that my moment at the Vic was the test for which all of my nine years had been preparing me. If I failed, my whole life for the next hundred years would be dogged by failure. My ignominy would be taught in school as a cautionary tale. Movies would be made – all comedies starring Bob Hope! They’d carve "Failed at the Vic" on my tombstone. I stood on that stage while a hundred or so kids watched, or, as I thought of it, while thousands of unflinching, venomous foes waited to jeer.

The emcee had us all kneel down. Up to there, I was fine. Then he said, "Go!"

I picked up my bottle and sucked. And sucked. And sucked! Nothing happened. I stared down my bottle. I could see it was still two-thirds full of orange. Beyond my bottle was the floor.

Wait! I suddenly became aware that the kids on either side of me had turned their bottles so the bottoms were up. Their orange was in the top of the bottles which was now at the bottom. Filling the nipples! Being sucked! Why hadn’t someone told me nipples worked that way! How could I be expected to understand the intricasies of hydraulics? I was nine!

I’d lost ten seconds, but I tipped up my bottle and sucked like crazy. Magically, my bottle’s orange level decreased.

Too soon the emcee called game. In the short time I’d had my bottle tipped up properly, I’d got to second place. There was no prize for second place. Not even a gum drop. Had I not lost the first ten seconds because they didn’t explain about nipples I would have won. Instead, every kid in that audience was looking at me and thinking, "He only finished second."

They say that early experiences influence you the rest of your life. No doubt that early embarrassment taught me to hold back from fully committing myself in future endeavors. For example, in later years, I did quite a bit of acting on our Little Theater stage. As an amateur actor, I was often praised. My performance as the Delivery Man in Dinner at the Gregson’s received a particularly fine review in the local newspaper.

But I always remembered how those Vic people tricked me. I always remained cautious and avoided full commitment. Surely that’s what kept me from jumping on a bus, going to Broadway, and becoming a star. Each year, when they pass out the Tony Awards, I always think, "There, but for a bottle of orange soda, go I."

CIRCUM-sensed

2005-12-02T17:21:00.000-08:00

Circumambient – being both left- and right-penised.
Circum Del Soliel – Wonderful Vegas show with full frontal nudity
Circumduction – being introduced to a bunch of naked guys
Circumference – subtle hint that a guy is Jewish.
Circumlocution – a speech by a moil.
Circumnavigate – not looking down while walking through a room full of naked people
Circumscribe – a Jewish stenographer of the male persuasion.
Circumspect – gender check
Circumstance – standing cross-legged while visiting your friend at the gay nudist camp.
Circumvent – an open fly.

BASEBALL'S FAMOUS NICKNAMES

2005-11-25T07:49:00.000-08:00

By Dr. Charles T. Gregory (Guest Blogger)
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology, Mountebank University

One of the continuing glories of baseball is the plethora of colorful nicknames affixed to its stars of the past. A great deal of research has gone into unearthing the origins of these nicknames. I'm more than familiar with the agonies of research from my efforts in compiling A History of Balls of the Base Variety Recently, I've become interested in the derivations of many famous nicknames.

For example, how Ty Cobb's difficulty in handling George Winter's curveball in 1907 caused an exhultant Red Sox fan to cry out in his Italian accent, "He no hit-a George-a peetch!" and thus give Cobb a nickname for the ages.

Equally famous is George Ruth's receiving a lifetime nickname for his performance as the second lead in the St. Mary's School for Boys' stage production of Paul Bunyan and His Blue Ox.

Indeed, many famous nicknames were attached during school days and lasted through careers. Everyone is familiar with how Harold Traynor's excellence in geometry earned him the admiration of his classmates and the appelation "Pi-R-Squared" Traynor (later shortened by newspaper men to fit into headlines). Or how first grader Harold Reese's insistence on printing some of his alphabet in miniscule size gave him his lasting nickname.

An astonishing number of nicknames stem from the inability of children to properly pronounce the names of their older siblings. A well-known example is Lemuel Speaker who had difficulty with the the name of his big brother Chris.

Vernon Gomez is unusual in that he received his nickname when reading aloud from his third grade textbook and stumbled over the famous French hero of the American Revolution, Lafayette.

Often the receiving of a nickname was an unpleasant experience for the receiver. Biographer C. Foote Knoat has written feelingly about the temporary arm trouble that afflicted Tommy Henrich as a high school sophomore and his embarrassment when his weak outfield throws caused other team members to christen him "Old Re-layable."

Children can be so cruel. One need only remember the brutal hazing suffered by a youngster named Cuyler when he inadvertently stuttered over his own last name. In later years, the young man paid bitter tribute to that early trauma by signing autographs, "Hazing Ki-Ki-Cuyler." Worse yet was the ridicule heaped on young Jesse Burkett after the other children learned of his unfortunate infestation with vermin.

Usually the nickname hung on long after its reason for being had passed. Upon reaching adulthood Gordon Cochrane never suffered the fainting spells that so often caused him to drop "as though given a mickey finn" as a youngster. And the full-grown Denton Young exhibited none of the melancholia that haunted the teenage "Sigh" Young.

However, it's likely that Joseph Floyd Vaughan's admiration for the stories of Rudyard Kipling -- hence his nickname "R.K." -- continued throughout his lifetime.

The majority of nicknames, of course, referred to some personal attribute of the player. Fair game was a player's politics ("Red" Ruffing), religion ("Rabbi" Maranville), off-season employment (cabdriver Lewis "Hack" Wilson), or physical appearance ("Wall-eye" Moses).

One nickname that had always puzzled me was "Yankee Clipper." I had somewhat assumed that the second part referred to some talent that Joe DiMaggio showed as a barber, either in the tonsorial manner or in the baseballese denotation of one who razzes, jeers at, and ridicules an opponent. But the first part was a complete mystery in that DiMaggio hailed from San Francisco rather than the Northeast.

At last, in desperation, I decided to contact the great centerfielder himself.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find his address. But I was able to locate a Mr. Walter Board, the catcher on DiMaggio's high school team. Mr. Board was kind enough to write the following explanation:

"I'll never forget that day. Our high school team was playing the S.O.B.'s at the Santa Oro Bambini High School field. Joe hit a home run that just carried over the very short leftfield fence and the Santa Oro Bambini team began ragging him about his `Chinese' homer. Well, Joe was always quick-witted. As each of our succeeding players came to bat, he'd call out as though introducing them on a public address. But he gave everyone nicknames that had something to do with China. I remember Charles Garden was `Chunking Charley,' Peter Blard was `Peking Pete.' I was kind of chubby, so Joe called me `Great Walter China.' We were having a wonderful game. Everytime Joe called a nickname, it seemed like we got a hit. I blasted a double, the only extra base hit I ever made in my life.

"Well, the Santa Oro Bambini players were fit to be tied. We batted around. `Shanghai' Shultz was on first when Joe came up again. Only since he'd been the one doing the nicknaming, he didn't get one at first. And, funny, the S.O.B. pitcher whipped over two quick strikes. Then the pitcher made a mistake. Joe was standing outside the batter's box putting some dust on his hands when the fellow sneered, `Oh, and who are you, Mr. Chinese Nickname-Giver?'

"’I'll tell you who I am,' Joe said, stepping back into the box, ‘I'm the Yangtze Yclepter!' And he hit another homer.

"I guess the name sort of stuck."

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, Part 2

2005-11-19T10:46:00.000-08:00

When kids play with toy guns today, they have to use plastic guns that are orange or red so that no crook will try to stick up a 7-11 with a toy gun. I guess nobody worries about color blind crooks.

Personally, if I was a clerk in a Stop ‘n Go, I’d rather face a junkie holding a plastic gun than a junkie with a real one. Oh, sure, I might be a little embarrassed to find out afterward that I had to change my shorts without ever being in real danger. Nevertheless, no matter how kindly a druggie with a real gun might be, he could get the hiccups from excitement and blow my butt off.

There are laws today against selling toy guns that look real. Maybe there shouldn’t be.

When I was a kid, back in the 1940s, you could buy realistic plastic six-guns complete with realistic wood bullets in any toy store. Then as the war went on -- the real war, that is – other realistic guns began to show up. There were Colt 45’s, German Lugers, and even Thompson sub-machineguns. The pistols all shot caps, but the Thompson had a little handle that you pulled to get a brrraaaccckkk noise that sounded about as much like a machinegun as Hope sounded like Crosby.

Funny thing. We always had a whole bunch of real guns at my home. My father’s hobby was "checkering" gunstocks. He’d sit down with a plain gunstock and begin etching parallel lines into the wood with a little two-bladed tool. Then he’d come back with parallel lines running diagonally across the first set. He’d surround the crossed lines with an etched border, usually a diamond or rectangle. When he was done, he’d have an attractive decoration on the stock. Other gunowners were always asking my father to put one of his decorative designs on their favorite hunting rifles.

When my father went into the army to save the world from Hitler, he left all his own guns hanging in a closet. I knew where the key was. I could have taken a real gun out to play. We played shoot-‘em-up games every day. It never occurred to me or anyone else to bring a real gun.

I know one reason for me was a little meeting the local hunting club had. All the fathers brought their kids in for a lecture on gun safety. We weren’t too thrilled to be there. Most of us had been hunting and shooting targets with our fathers for years. We knew all about gun safety.

One of the fathers got up in front to talk to us. He was carrying a rifle which he took over to a kid in the front row. He asked the kid to make sure the gun wasn’t loaded, which it wasn’t. Then the man began lecturing us on how we should be careful with a gun. He talked for about fifteen minutes using the empty rifle to illustrate his points.

We kids were almost asleep when he aimed that rifle at the back of the room. "You know," he said, "old Joe back there and I had an argument before the meeting. I told him it was a good thing my rifle wasn’t loaded." We gave an obedient chuckle, and he pulled the trigger.

The rifle was empty. We’d seen it was empty. The explosion in that little room roared like the end of the world. The flame shot five feet out of the barrel. Everyone’s eyes went to the back of the room where Joe was surely dead.

He was standing there laughing. The man with the rifle laughed too. "I coulda sworn that gun wasn’t loaded," he said. "Good thing I missed old Joe."

Of course it was a trick. Somehow he’d slipped a blank into the rifle. Trick or not, the point was made. In all these years I’ve never been near a gun that I didn’t see in my mind that spurt of flame from that unloaded rifle. I check and then check again.

I’ve seen people protesting against stores that sell toy guns – even toy guns with orange barrels. They say that kids who play with toy guns will come to bad ends. Although I haven't kept track of all the fellow gunkids, as far as I know, none of us ever grew up to commit a crime with a gun.

I think people who rant against toy guns are off base. Instead, rage against the ease of getting real guns; if a kid wants a real gun, he can probably rob someone with a knife to get one. I'm afraid that demonizing guns just causes kids to become dangerously curious -- like they do with sex.

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, Part 1

2005-11-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

MOVIES KILL PEOPLE

When I was a kid during World War II, we all played "Guns." That's what we called our war games. Sometimes it was all of us together trying to take the imaginary machine gun at the top of a real hill. Sometimes it was a variation on hide and seek, more like hide and bang-bang-you're-dead.

Our favorite game was to see who could die "neatest." We got that idea from watching movies. The State Theater ran a weekly diet of B-movie double features -- all westerns, war films, and mysteries. By dinner time every Saturday, we’d seen more than two dozen movie actors bite the dust. Very early in our movie-going, we began noting the more esthetic dyings. We’d even cheer them.

Naturally, we’d discuss the films afterward – sort of Ebert and the Dead End Kids. We could have reviewed the plot, admired the acting, lauded the camera work, or hummed the music. Instead, our admiration most often fell on how someone was gunned down. The next step was to act our favorites out. And from there, boys being boys, a competition evolved.

The way we did it, the designated dyer would stand apart, then advance toward the gang. At a propitious moment, he’d yell "bang" to indicate when he got shot. Then the self-targetted target would go through the throes of dying. A well-done death brought congratulations from our fellow gunners.

Chuckie was oversized, and it made him as awkward as talking about sex with your mother. But, because he fell down a lot anyway, he turned out to be good at getting shot. Except for the times when he fell down before he yelled "bang."

Mickey always overacted with too much clutching his chest and way too much grunting. Unfortunately, when he didn’t get a high rating on his first death, he’d just add more clutches and grunts on the second. By the third time he died, he could take a whole minute from bang to dead.

Most of the gang just copied some death they'd seen in a movie. That was okay, I guess, but it wasn’t very artistic.

I usually got high marks because I would always be involved in doing something else when I yelled "bang" and then I’d let momentum take over so that I would fall oddly and end in an unusual position. It was abstract-expression dying.

On one of my best, I started to throw a hand grenade, a nice roundish rock I’d found. Just as I pulled the pin and drew my arm back, I yelled bang. For a second, I stood stock still, then my hand opened and the grenade fell just behind me. I grabbed my stomach, turned and fell right on the hand grenade. Now, this is what made it great. When I fell on the grenade, I kept my arms and legs under me. Then I yelled "Boom!" and launched myself upward like I was blown up. Being different was always worth some points. As well as being artistic.

If some moviemaker ever put our game in a film, he’d probably try to teach a lesson. Like one day we’d all show up with our toy guns and one kid -- we’ll call him Johnny -- is just sitting there all sad and mopey. We ask him why and he tells us he’ll never play Guns again. He tells us his older brother – that real nice bigkid we met in the first reel – had just been shot at Iwo Jima. Then he points at my pistol and yells, "With a gun like that!"
After that, no one feels like playing anymore, and we all pile up our guns on the grass. We walk away. It starts to rain. The music swells. The end.

Actually, nothing like that happened with us. Nobody’s brother died. My father was in the Battle of the Bulge but came through it okay. We stopped playing Guns because we all got too old to be running around with toy guns.

We realized it was time to quit when a couple of Bigkids we knew happened to walk by while we were engaged in one of our gun battles. They started laughing and pointing fingers. One of them yelled, "Bang-bang!" in a high-pitched voice. The other one yelped, "You missed me! You missed me! " Then they walked off laughing.

We knew we would hear about it in school the next day. Bigkids can’t keep their mouths shut when they can tease younger kids. After a while, Mickey said he’d go inside and get his baseball if Chuckie would run home for his bat.

GUEST LIST #7

2005-11-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

Benny Fishel: a good person to have on your side
Min O’Warr: lady who lost only one swimming race
Fidele Wylromeburns: musical arsonist
Orel Saks: expert on French social customs
Ginger Yale: bubbly Ivy Leaguer
Harve Ard: Ginger’s straight-laced boyfriend
Cole Gate: raider involved in energy scandal
Phil Innablank: great test-taker
Sam & Janet Evening: couple known for ability to see strangers across a crowded room
Walt Ewall: rug merchant
Walker Putout: notorious womanizer
Darnell Andamm: smalltime curser
Wade Onismind: worrier
Rhett Ribution: avenger
Millie Meter: silly smoker of long cigarettes
Gus Tatori: big eater
Nanette Well: dined only at the best places
Sam & Ella Outbreak: caterers. Don’t touch the dip! (submitted by Mark Ford)
Anna Mossity: a very unpleasant person
Rhea Sponzabel: take-charge girl
Minnie Skurd: adventurous fashion designer
Boo Derek: a 4
Jeb Pardy: what is a name?
Chick Flick: known to make women cry
Dick Kotomy: of two minds
Vince Auble: doesn’t put up much of a fight
Vern Ali Kwinnox: grows cross at the equator
Sorrell Erosion: gets rid of the dirt
Booker Danno: Hawaii detective stuck with the paper work
Barb d’Comment: lady with a wicked tongue
Mark O’Kane: murderer
Noah Zark: zoo keeper
Ari Ratt: Noah Zark’s landlord
Joseph Jacobson: sharp dresser
Moses Supposes: according to some he erroneously believes his toeses are roses
Gale Luppole: wants your opinion
Dermott O’Logey: suffers from soriasis
Julie DeForth: independent declarer
Liza Lott: cannot be trusted
Talhia O’Story: prevaricator
Sid Dan Shuddup: annoying hyperkid
Moe Grass: groundskeeper
Mel Bourne: Australian who sometimes goes by the name Sidney
Igor Tupleez: yesman
Bela Cotton: large, squarely built, white guy
Heywood Sheelye: suspicious boyfriend
Anne Nomilee: an unusual person
Cary Grunt: charming, urbane movie star who can also play tough guys
Lance Boyle: doctor who restricts himself to minor surgery
Curt Rude: disliked manager who doesn’t explain well to his employees

COSTUME BAWL

2005-10-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

It was one day before Halloween and I was mad at my mother.

"Why don’t you go as a clown?" she asked. "I could get a good clown outfit together. You know, with a red nose?"

I reminded her I’d been a clown the year before.

"I thought you were a cowboy," she said.

"That was the year before last!" I yelled. "In first grade!"

Aunt Nell was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. "You know," she said without looking up, "they repealed that law."

"What law?" I asked.

"The one against wearing the same costume more than once."

There was never such a law I told her.

"Sure there was. But the people who went out dressed like office workers petitioned to have it changed so they could keep going out as office workers." She smiled. "Well, I’ve got my costume."

My mother gave a little laugh.

Aunt Nell was an office worker. I didn’t know exactly how she did that except that she knew how to type. She was my mother’s youngest sister. When my father went off to beat the Nazis, Aunt Nell moved in with us to help my mother cope with the housework and me. My mother took my father’s job at my grandpa’s wholesale candy store. I liked having Aunt Nell around because she said funny things. I didn’t always understand the jokes, but my mother laughed. She didn’t do that a lot since my father went away.

This time though I was a little annoyed when my mother smiled at what Aunt Nell said about office workers wearing costumes. I didn’t want my mother to forget how she’d let me down. I decided to stomp off to my room.

As I left the kitchen, Aunt Nell called, "If we got some grapes, you could go as a winemaker."

All the kids in the neighborhood went out Halloweening. We didn’t call it "Trick or Treating" because we never tricked anyone. We just got dressed up and then walked around collecting goodies.

It was one of the best times for my grandpa’s candy business. Leading up to Halloween, we sold boxes and boxes of candy to stores around town. Then parents bought the candy, and we kids got it when we went around Halloweening. Since my mother’s job was to get all the candy orders together and then deliver them to stores, she was really busy. That’s probably why she forgot to bring me boxes.

I’d had this wonderful idea which my mother spoiled. Before we went out Halloweening, all the kids met at our school for a costume show. Kids got prizes for costumes! Some girl always won for the prettiest costume; some bigkid would win for most patriotic. I’d set my sights on the prize for most original – a super box of 64 crayons.

I knew that Halloween sales would produce plenty of large, empty cardboard boxes at our store. I asked my mother to bring some boxes home. She forgot.

At the costume shows before, I’d seen cowboys, dancers, soldiers, ghosts, clowns, sailors, football players, and more animals than you’d see in a zoo. The same year I went as a cowboy, a different cowboy won for most original – I think because he carried a lasso. I knew for a sure win I’d have to have a costume that was really different. I decided to go as a cannon.

"A cannon?" my mother said. "Did you say cannon?"

Aunt Nell said, "He thought he’d give it a shot."

"No, really," I explained. "I’ll take boxes and build the base. Then I put this big piece of pipe I found on top for the gun barrel. Another small box can be the place where you put the shells in."

"Certainly high caliber thinking," Aunt Nell said.

My mother asked, "How will you keep the pipe on the box? Glue won’t work."

I had it all figured out. We had tape in one of the kitchen drawers and under the sink was half a can of black paint. Once my cannon dried, I’d get inside and have the most original costume they ever saw at that school.
I could hear them now. "Who’s the cannon?" and "How original!"

But then my mother forgot to bring the boxes home and my idea was all over. Even if she brought them home the next day – Halloween – there wouldn’t be time for the paint to dry. I told my mother that I wouldn’t be going out Halloweening this year because I didn’t have a costume.

In school the next day, everybody was talking about the costume show. I didn’t have much to say. When I got home, I went straight to my room and listened to the radio. I wouldn’t go to the costume show or out Halloweening later. That would show my mother. After a while Aunt Nell came in carrying a piece of plaid cloth.

"Put this on," she said.

For about an hour, Aunt Nell and my mother worked on the costume. Aunt Nell found some red hair she called a fall that wasn’t exactly a wig but that worked like one when it was pinned to a hat. They even painted my face so that I couldn’t even recognize myself.

At the costume show, teachers and kids looked at me funny. At first they thought I was a stranger who didn’t have a costume, and then they’d realize I was me and I did. Then they’d laugh. I even won a prize – a Hershey Bar. Some kids said it was for the prettiest costume, but it was actually for Best Costume Using Only Things Found at Home. That meant nothing on it was bought new.

I got the usual amount of treats when we all went out Halloweening after the show. Some people just thought I was some kid’s sister without a costume. The next day, only Mickey said anything about me "being" a girl, but he changed his mind when I hit him in the arm.

I guess my mother’s old dress turned out to be an okay costume. Aunt Nell said I made a "real cute girl," but she was just being funny. I still think a cannon would have been better.

RAVENS NOT THE FIRST

2005-10-21T17:30:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Charles T. Gregory (Guest Blogger)
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology, Mountebank University

APRIL 1, 1996 [IMP] When Art Modell proclaimed "Ravens" the name for Baltimore’s new pro football team, several newsmen insisted it was the first time a sports team had ever been named after a bird in a poem. Apparently they were unaware of the lines scrawled on a wrinkled sheet of foolscap found in a Baltimore attic last August by Earl (Slick) Gimcrack. The composition not only belies the "first literary sports bird" contention and sheds new light on the name of the city’s baseball team, it also reveals a more poetic side to legendary manager John McGraw than had heretofore been suspected.

Dr. Charles T. Gregory, identified by Gimcrack as a baseball expert and author of A History of Balls of the Base Variety, authenticated the poem, stating that he believed it was written in the early 1890s shortly after McGraw was named interim manager of the then-Baltimore "Crabs." Dr. Gregory added that he was certain the work was completely original and any slight resemblance to any other poem was purely coincidental.

The Oriole
by John J. McGraw

Once upon a midnight foggy,
While I sat there feeling groggy,
Thinking ‘bout the night so soggy,
Soggy with the mist outdoor --
While I slouched there deeply scowling,
Suddenly there came bow-wowing,
Much as someone loudly howling,
Howling at my chamber door.
"‘Tis our catcher drunk," I muttered,
"Howling at my chamber door;
Only him and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I recall same.
Only last year in the fall came
On the eve of our big ballgame
All those horrid wails of sorrow.
"You there! Comes the ‘morrow!
Go and have a midnight snack at
Home. Then sleep, else lack that
Blessed rest you’ll need to score.
One-ten percent and nothing more!

"While the dawn is nearer creeping,
All the Giants lay home sleeping,
Resting up to set Crabs weeping
O’er tomorrow’s final score.
Meanwhile, you’re out midnight prowling
Making that unholy yowling.
Why in hell are you bow-wowing
Loudly at my chamber door?
Cease you now your late night tour!"

But the howler kept on wailing,
Like the whole wide world was ailing,
Like the whole wide world was failing,
Failing to come up to snuff.
Fin’ly, I rose up and trotted,
With my tummy muscles knotted,
To my doorway dank and rotted,
Shouting in a voice quite gruff,
"Darn you, Howler! That’s enough!"

I expected, I should say here,
I’d discover our drunk player
To be leaning blurred and grayer
Than a dead fish at my door.
Or, perhaps the dog was real there,
Barking for a bone or meal there
With a real dog’s angry zeal there.
Which might be in truth in store?
Either way, it made me sore.

Here I opened wide my portal.
Came a strangely high-pitched chortle.
Laugh demonic, just the sort’ll
Raise the hairs upon one’s back.
No drunk catcher in the fog there;
No yap-happy sappy dog there;
I stood startled, stared agog there
At a birdie orange and black.
Quoth the birdie, "What’s up, Mac?"

"Listen you, you noisy birdbrain,"
I yelled in a most absurd vein,
"In your howling I have heard pain,
Heard a world of ache and rage."
"Bosh!" he boldly snapped his fingers
(Or perhaps I should say ‘wingers’)
And, as I’ve seen opera singers,
Took command of my room’s stage.
"Grow up. Mac, and act your age.

While it’s true my bird-heart’s achin’
O’er a lost love all forsaken,
I’ve come here to save your bacon.
Never mind my broken heart."
Coldly I said, "You’ve been parking
On my doorstep loudly barking,
And unless I’ve been mis-harking,
Bow-wows ain’t a birdie’s part."
"Oh," he chuckled, "that’s my art.

"Imitations to perfection.
Timbre, tone, the right inflection!
Now that we have made connection,
Mimicry can win the round."
Hopped he then with feathered flutter
On a jar of peanut butter,
Next these words the bird did utter,
"I’ll ape every Giants’ sound
And send them sadly homeward bound.

"Imagine my ‘I got it’ yell,
Ord’ring batsmen ‘take’ as well,
Or tell the ump to go to hell!"
"I do that all the time," I said.
"The other stuff, though, might confuse
And mess ‘em up enough to lose.
It seems, indeed, a winning ruse."
But then the birdie shook his head.
"Of course, I could help them instead."

"Name your price!" I shouted out.
"I want to win. There is no doubt.
Pretty please with sauerkraut!"
The birdie preened his scrawny neck.
"A simple thing I ask of ye.
By game time, a new name I see.
Re-name your Crab team after me.
And I New York will gladly wreck."
Quoth I, McGraw, "Well, what-the-heck!"

We were ‘Orioles’ one and all
And won most of our games last fall.
Our clever bird could fool them all
With his mimicry so queer.
We all loved that clever sinner
‘Cause he made our team a winner,
But a cat had him for dinner
In October of the year.
Rest in peace, oh Birdie dear.

A DASH OF ADAGES

2005-10-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing – especially when you’re sitting between two women.

History teaches us that we never learn from history.

If your name is Lulu, expect to be insulted when you visit Tokyo.

What do they call someone who gets paid to crastinate?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me over and over, you’re Karl Rove.

Anyone who speaks in absolutes is wrong 100 percent of the time.

Build a better mousetrap and PETA will picket you.

The early bird catches the worm; smart worms sleep late.

What goes around, comes around. Buy boomerangs!

Only a few Italian-Americans are in the mob, but if a stranger named Nunzio wants you to take a ride in his car, you might consider waiting for a bus.

Gunplay at Rickety Fork

2005-10-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

"Oh boy!" Billy yelped happily in my ear. "What'd I tell you!"

Back down the dusty street, past where our fellow passengers scurried wildly for doorways like panicked sheep, a man I'd never seen before in all my seventeen years raised his rifle to his buckskinned shoulder and fired again. At me!

"C'mon!" Billy shouted, grabbing my arm. We hightailed out of the middle of Rickety Fork's main street and hunkered down behind a water trough. I wished to heaven we'd stayed on the train. Horace Greeley was crazy!
Another shot and a woman screamed! I figured it was the young lady with the blue parasol. She'd got real excited in the coach this morning while Billy was entertaining everybody by telling the way "Two-Gun Bob" Jamison got shot. When Billy explained how the bullet came out right where "Two-Gun's" left eye had been, the lady nigh fainted.

The water trough was big as a coffin and about twice as high. I started to peep up over the edge, but another shot put me nose down in the dust. I was no hero. Last spring when a couple of my friends wanted to join the army and fight the Spanish in Cuba, I told 'em to count me out. I remembered the Maine my way -- in my prayers.

All of a sudden, Billy started cussing like a sailor. "Are you hit?" I asked, afraid to look.

"No! I stepped right in a mess o' road apples! Look at that!"

His shiny new boots showed they rode horses in Rickety Fork.

"Billy, why is that man shooting at me? I don't even know him."

Billy was on his haunches, trying without much success to scrape his boot in the dirt. "Probably never get the smell out," he said.

"Billy! Why's he shooting at me?"

A know-it-all smile spread across Billy's freckled face. "You greenhorn! He ain't shooting at you. He's shooting at them!" He pointed up the street at the saloon. There, peeking from doors and windows, I saw maybe a half dozen more men with rifles. As I looked, they started banging away at the fellow in buckskins down at the depot. "Shucks, boy, they don't even know you!" Billy laughed. His blue eyes flashed in excitement. "What did I tell you about Rickety Fork?"

He'd started in bending my ear about Rickety Fork almost from the minute he got on the train at St. Louis and sat down beside me. "Wildest little town in the whole Wild West!" he'd crowed. "We might see some real gunplay there, all right."

He was decked out in brown leather chaps and a neckerchief only slightly redder than the shock of unruly hair peeking from his snow white ten-gallon hat. A silver six-shooter rested trimly in the holster he wore low at the hip. I guessed him at eighteen, a year older than me, but a whole world wiser.

I'd never met a real cowboy before -- never even seen one except on the cover of a dime novel -- but I always thought they were supposed to be stand-offish and close-mouthed. Not Billy. He could have talked the wheels off a bicycle.

He figured I was heading West to become a cowboy because he started in educating me about everything from coyotes to trail bosses and back to cayuses. Rickety Fork was going to be the best part of the trip, he said.

When I told him I was riding all the way to San Francisco and my Uncle Harry's Emporium where I had a clerk job waiting, and I sure wasn't going to stop off in Rickety-whatever-it-was, he was real disappointed. "Where's your spirit, Son? How are you gonna make your fortune in this cruel world if you're 'fraid to take a chance?"

"I don't need a fortune," I said. "Just enough to go back to Harrisburg and start a little feed store."

"And you got a girl waiting too, I'll bet."

I could feel my face starting to redden. "What makes you say that?"

"Shucks, that's the way it always is. A man has the opportunity of a lifetime spread out in front of him -- a chance to really be something. That's what the West is, Son. But he decides he'd rather play it safe and close to the vest. And why? Because his head's all a-twitter about some female!"

He thought for a minute and then brightened. "Well, anyhow, we'll be stopped for a couple of hours at Rickety Fork. I asked the conductor 'fore I even got on this train." He leaned back against his seat like he'd just won something. "Yessir, I hear there's a shooting in ol' Rickety almost every day."

"I think I'll stay on the train," I said.

The trip was long, dirty, and hot, but Billy made the time pass with his exciting lectures on western history, geography, and customs. If there'd been a college of the Wild West, Billy would have been head professor. I noticed others in the car were listening and some even changed their seats to hear better. When he saw that, Billy began to talk louder.

His best subject was gunfights. He knew all the details of famous shootings in near every town and village we chugged through. "This is where Dry-Gulch Charlie Mathewson got his," he'd say, waving his hand at some dirty shacks we were passing. "He was an ornery cuss who'd shot one of the Bar-X boys in the back." Then he'd recite chapter and verse down to poor Charlie's last words.

He taught me the difference between bushwackers and straight-shooters. "It's an attitude. A straight-shooter is a feller you can turn your back on. You can depend on him to play square with you."

Right after he told a John Wesley Hardin story, Billy got bushwacked by the anvil salesman. He was a big, bluff fellow wearing a nifty store-bought suit, sitting there two seats away, more interested in the young lady with the blue parasol than in Billy's stories. It was hard to tell whether the one good smell in the coach was her perfume or his after-shave. I guess he didn't much like the way she kept looking admiring-like at Billy because he said in a voice like a snake coiling itself, "You know, fella, I been drumming this territory for near five years now. It's funny I never run into you."

"Well, it's a big country," Billy said easily.

"But someone who knows as much as you, why, I'll bet people come from miles around just to hear you spout. Yessir, you must be famous, I don't know why I can't recollect you. When was the last time you were in Dodge?"

"Well --"

"Or was it Abilene you come from? Where was it you said?"

Billy mumbled it so low I wasn't sure I heard him right until the anvil salesman repeated it so loud everybody in the car heard. "Philadelphia? Well, now stop me if I'm wrong. I'm just a drummer. I don't know all about shootings and such, but ain't Phil-a-del-phi-a somewhere back East?"

"Why, I've been to Philadelphia," the young lady with the blue parasol said. She meant anybody and everybody had been there.

"Do they punch many cows in Phil-a-del-phi-a?" the anvil salesman sneered. The young lady laughed.

Billy didn't say anything, and I watched an empty horizon go by out the window.

"I believe I would like a breath of air," the lady said, rising. The anvil salesman trailed after her toward the open platform at the rear end of the swaying car.

After sitting quiet for the longest time since I met him, Billy said, "I'll hazard I know more about the West than any fellow born and raised there. I've read everything in the whole Philadelphia Public Library. And I bought books."

I tried to think of something that would help. "Once I heard our preacher say he didn't have to visit heaven to know its streets were paved in gold," I told him.

After a while the anvil salesman and the lady came laughing back from the platform. They were so busy talking together they must have forgot about Billy. And after a longer while, he seemed to forget about them. We passed through another little town, and he told me briefly about a fourflusher who was called out by a German immigrant who couldn't talk English but could shoot like a native.

The nearer we got to Rickety Fork, the more Billy got stirred up. He kept checking to see his six-shooter was loaded okay. "A good man don't look for a fight," he told me, "but it never hurts to be ready."

He was itchy as a chigger waistcoat. When the train huffed to a stop beside the worn-out depot with its fresh-painted, red and green Welcome-to-Rickety-Fork sign, he just about leaped for the door. And like fool, I was right behind him.

The whole dusty stretch of Rickety Fork's main street was no more than a hundred yards of clean store fronts and old hitching posts, with the depot at one end and a big, orange and white saloon at the other. That's where we'd hear all about the latest shootings, Billy insisted, pulling us way ahead of the other passengers. We still had thirty yards to go when the "latest shooting" started.

We crouched behind our water trough. The bullets didn't seem aimed at us, but the thought that my life hung on how well some stranger could shoot scared me like hell. "Maybe we ought to make a dash for it, Billy."

He drew his six-shooter. "You go ahead," he said. "I'll cover you."

"Billy, don't!"

He took aim up the street. "Six to one odds don't seem fair to me," he said. Billy's six-shooter boomed and splinters flew from a hitching post near a shooter standing wide open on the plank sidewalk in front of the saloon. The feller had been exchanging shots nice as pie with the rifleman at the depot for quite a while, but a new partner in the fight seemed to rattle him. He dropped his rifle and scrambled back into the building.
"That evens things a little," Billy laughed.

Something slammed me in the back, knocking me flat into the dirt. For a split-second I thought I'd been shot. But no! Some old coot was standing over me, hollering to beat the band.

"What are you doing? Stop that! Stop that!"

A fat old man -- red-faced, gray-bearded, in a black suit and a purple rage -- stood there in the middle of a gunfight, bellowing at me. His yelling was scarier than the bullets. Even Billy went sheepish and stammered an apology.

Gray-beard glared, snorted, and pointed to a nearby doorway. "Get in there!" he roared.

We got. Gray-beard trudged through the door behind us. "You young idiots! Don't you know you could kill someone with that fool gun?"

"But -- but -- out there -- they were --" Billy sputtered.

A high-pitched peal of giggles made me turn. A thin man in tie and shirtsleeves was near collapsed in laughter against the wall, his green eyeshade slipped down over his nose. I looked around the large room. The long counter with its caged windows said "bank". So did the sign on the front window, only backwards: KNAB. While

Eyeshade giggled, Gray-beard -- the banker, I realized -- was busting a button. "That --" he waved his arm toward the street, "-- that is a private affair. You have no right to -- to --"

Eyeshade sat down, he was laughing so hard. I asked nervously, "Is it a bank robbery?"

"A bank robbery?" Gray-beard stared at me; then he stared at the wall and counted to ten while Eyeshade shook his head. When Gray-beard spoke again, he sounded almost friendly. "Look, boys, I'll explain later. You can watch the shoot-out from the window, but keep that gun holstered. Promise?"

Billy mumbled an agreement. We went meekly to the window. Shots still crackled outside. After a minute, I looked back. A calmer Gray-beard and Eyeshade were both laughing together in the rear of the bank.

"Look at that!" Billy cried, clutching my arm.

Through the window we saw a powerfully-built giant step from one of the buildings across the way and stride to the center of the street. A metal star glittered on his chest. Like Moses parting the water, he raised his right hand and the shooting ceased.

"Golly!" I gasped.

"The man with a star," Billy whispered, admiration dripping over his voice like syrup on a sundae.

Suddenly, a single shot came from the saloon. The sheriff clutched his chest and a splash of red gushed through his fingers. He staggered, almost fell, staggered again, raised his bloody hands to the sky, and then -- like a big tree -- fell over on his star.

"They shot the sheriff!" I screamed. Gray-beard, leaning against the counter at the back, nodded curtly.

"We gotta help him," Billy said. "He'll bleed to death out there."

"Billy, he's already dead."

His blue eyes flashed angrily. "Did you ever see a man shot?"

"No."

"Well, then you don't know, do you? You just don't know!"

"Uh -- boys?" Gray-beard called, his voice rising.

"You got a handkerchief?" Billy asked me.

"Yes, but --"

"Boys!"

Billy had a white handkerchief out. "Follow me!" he cried and dashed out the door. My handkerchief was blue and Billy was a fool and it wasn't my fight and the sheriff was already dead and Billy was going to get me killed and Gray-beard had hold of my shirt and Billy was crazy! But I followed him anyway.

In a second we were beside the body. I heard shots and yelling from the saloon. Billy heaved the dead man over onto his back. The whole front of the sheriff's shirt was drenched bright red, but his eyes flew open.

"Get away!" the sheriff whispered hoarsely

"Don't worry, Lawman!" Billy shouted, putting his hands under the sheriff's shoulders. "We'll take care of you!"

I grabbed the sheriff's feet. He kicked at me, no doubt crazy with pain. Somehow we lugged him, squirming, kicking, and cussing across the street and into the bank. I tore at his shirt. The awful bleeding had to be stopped. The wet cloth came away easily.

With a sudden burst of strength, the sheriff pushed me aside and jumped to his feet. Then he ran to the rear of the bank and disappeared out the door. I still held the shreds of his bloody shirt in my hands.

Gray-beard cleared his throat. "Well," he said, "I guess he wasn't hurt too bad after all."

"He wasn't hurt at all," Billy said, gaping.

"He didn't have any bullet wounds," I said.

Gray-beard looked at the floor. "Uh -- no, I guess --"

"What in blazes is going on?" Billy yelled.

"Look, boys, there's no harm done." He smiled weakly. "A little show. That's all."
Billy stared at him coldly.

Gray-beard cleared his throat again. We waited. Outside, shots continued. "Well, two years ago, the railroad threatened to quit stopping at Rickety Fork." He shrugged. "That would have been the end of the town. We would've just dried up and blown away."

"So you put on sham gunfights," Billy said bitterly. "Fakes!"

The old man nodded. "Son, you got to understand. It put us on the map. Folks wanted to stop at Rickety Fork so they could see the Wild West. We gave 'em what they wanted."

"A show!" Billy was near tears.

"So, after the -- uh -- gunfight, the train passengers go to the saloon for a while, buy a few drinks, maybe some souvenirs. No harm's done."

"No harm!" Billy spat on the floor.

The old banker ignored that and smiled his friendliest. "I hope we can keep this our little secret, boys. I'm sure we can make it worth your while."

"But -- but what about all that shooting?" I asked.

"Blanks," Eyeshade said.

"Blanks!" Billy echoed.

"We couldn't take a chance on anyone getting careless. So every gun in town is loaded with blank cartridges."

"Except one," Billy`s eyes were big as silver dollars as he leveled his six-shooter at the banker. "Stick 'em up," he said.

ME AGAINST PETE'S TEAM

2005-10-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

"So you think your team can beat mine," Pete said.

"What team?" I asked.

"Mickey told me," Pete said. "You said your team could beat my team."

"I don’t have a –"

"We’ll see. Four o’clock, down at the tracks."

He walked away. My stomach turned over. Even if I had a team – which I didn’t – Pete’s Team would have been better. I should know. I was on Pete’s Team!

Pete was our hero because even though he was a bigkid three classes ahead of us in sixth grade, he’d still treat us decently whenever there weren’t any other bigkids around. When we were playing baseball, he’d get right up there and show us how to hit. If we were playing war, he was the captain. Pete taught us a lot. Especially football.

Pete never played in our usual three-against-three games. Having him on one side would have made the game too uneven. But when we had enough players for a whole team, Pete was in charge. Naturally we called ourselves "Pete’s Team."

The lineup went like this: Pete was the coach and quarterback; Pee Wee, a bigkid a year behind Pete, played left halfback, and Billy, who was a fast runner, played right halfback. Ross, Chuckie, Jimmy the Fat Kid, and Mickey made up one side of the line. If the Drew brothers or anyone else showed up, they were put on the other side of the line. I was the fullback. That meant I ranked just behind Pete and Pee Wee.

The only trouble with Pete’s Team was that it never played any football games.

We kept hoping to get a game with a team from another part of town. Pete said he talked with a couple kids but "they’re too scared of us." So, for the time being, we just practiced to get ready. Pete would line us up and tell each of us what to do on "Hike!" My job was usually to run out and block the imaginary defensive end who otherwise would put an imaginary tackle on Pete or Pee Wee, whichever was running the ball. At least once in each practice I got to run the ball on a play and Billy blocked the imaginary defensive end.

Most days, Pete wasn’t there to run practice so we just chose up sides of two or three and played a game. That was fun, but it wasn’t like a real team.

One evening, Mickey and I had a game in my back yard. We took turns -- four downs to gain the length of my yard to the hollyhocks at the far end. We were in rare form. For whatever reason, we ran better and tackled better than usual. Naturally, we began telling each other how good we were.

Mickey said we were better than the high school team. We were kidding. We’d never seen the high school team play, but they were all bigkids and we sure knew eleven of them could beat me and Mickey. We were just giddy.

"I’ll bet we could beat Pete’s Team," I yelled. We laughed. Shortly after that, we decided we could beat Notre Dame, a team I’d seen in a newsreel at the State Theater.

The next morning, Pete stopped me on the way to school and challenged me to bring my team to the tracks at four o’clock.

What team?

All day, I couldn’t get near Mickey to find out what he’d told Pete. Obviously I couldn’t hit him in class, and during recesses he stood next to Miss Lake, our teacher. At lunch, he disappeared completely. Finally, during an afternoon recess, I walked up to him even though Miss Lake was there.

"What did you tell Pete?" I asked.

"Just what you said." He managed to keep Miss Lake between us, but by that time I’d decided not to hit him anyway.

"I never said we could beat Pete’s Team!"

"Yes, you did!"

"That was kidding1" I said.

"Don’t yell in the hall!" Miss Lake reminded. "This is your last chance to go to the bathroom until school is dismissed."

At four o’clock, I walked to the tracks. That was a place where there were two siding tracks running off the regular B. an O. track. We sometimes played football or baseball in the area between the two sidings.

Pete saw I was alone. "Where’s your team?"

"I’m it," I said.

It took a little more convincing, but Pete finally believed I hadn’t built a team behind his back. Mickey admitted he might have misunderstood me, but that was mainly so I wouldn’t hit him later.

Because we were already there, Pete decided there’d still be a game. He put Ross, Chucky, Billy, and Jimmy the Fat Kid on one side, and me, Mickey, and the Drew brothers on the other. Mickey took one look at the sides and remembered his mother needed him.

The only thing Harold, the older Drew brother, could do was center the ball to me. His younger brother couldn’t do that much. When the score got to 36-0, we stopped. Pete came over to where I was lying and put his hand out. "That took guts," he said. "From now on, you’ll always be my fullback."

He said "always!" I think I know how some of those players feel when it’s announced that they’ve won the Heisman Trophy.

Pete’s Team never did get to play a game, but I was the fullback for practices -- always.

Overheard on the Bus

2005-09-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

"I thought you were going to change your underwear. How come you’re still chafed?"
"The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on."

"My grandma had hip replacement surgery."
"Cool! What did they replace?"

"It’s easy as shooting fish in a barrel."
"Wouldn’t it be even easier if you got out of the barrell?"

"You’re lazy; you believe in the conservation of energy."
"You’re a neo-con; you believe in the conservation of empathy."

"When are those old guys going to give up and retire?"
"The Rolling Stones gather no mas."

THE CLOAK ROOM ESCAPE

2005-09-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

Looking back, it wasn’t all Miss Scott’s fault. You have to think of the whole picture.

Like in a picture, suppose you want something – say a ball -- to look really, really red. What should you put next to it? Well, right away you think orange. Orange is almost red so if you make the background orange, it’ll make the ball the very reddest, you think.

Wrong.

That orange sucks the life right out of red. You don’t want a background that’s kind of like the ball; you want a background that’s as different as possible. The most different from red is green. Put in a green background. That will make the ball look the most red.

Notice that you haven’t changed the red at all. You’ve changed what was around it.

The background for Miss Scott was that she wasn’t Mrs. Rice or Miss Rice. That wasn’t her fault; it’s just the way things were.

Mrs. Rice was my beautiful, wonderful, redhaired teacher in kindergarten. I planned to marry her until I learned of certain difficulties related to her being called "Mrs." She liked the pictures I drew in class. One time she called me her "little artist." I felt a chill up my spine.

Miss Rice was an older lady but just as nice as Mrs. Rice. She always talked softly and said "Please" and "Thank you." Miss Rice got me interested in music. I played first triangle in our first grade band.

Miss Scott wasn’t pretty like Mrs. Rice or as old as Miss Rice. The thing I remember most was she had two frown lines between her eyes. They were so deep that even when she wasn’t frowning, she looked like she was.

After Mrs. and Miss Rice, whoever taught second grade was almost sure to seem meaner than she really was. But Miss Scott was pretty mean. She never said please. Like she’d say, "Take out your books," not "Please take out your books." When we were done, she never told us thank you.

Judy, one of the girls in my class, whispered to me, "Mrs. Rice and Miss Rice are both nice, but Miss Scott is not." When I didn’t say anything, the girl hissed, "It rhymes!"

"Do you have something to share with the class, Judy?" Miss Scott asked suspiciously from across the room.

"No, ma’am."

When Miss Scott asked questions and we put up our hands to answer, she always gave the easy questions to the dumb kids. A fair way would have been to let all of us have some of those easy questions.

By my second week in second grade I was having second thoughts. I’d always liked school until then. Now I wasn’t so sure. I started giving Miss Scott some mean looks, but she never seemed to notice. Then I would look out the window and all of a sudden I’d hear her call my name and tell me to pay attention. That was embarrassing. Did she think I couldn’t watch a bird in a tree outside and still listen to what she was talking about, whatever that was?

Things were building up. On a Friday afternoon, everything blew!

The whole second grade had just returned from a bathroom break. Miss Scott started walking around the room asking questions about the story we’d read before our break. A couple of kids answered easy things like "Jane" and "Spot." I had my hand up, but she didn’t pick me until she had a hard question.

When she finally called on me, I said, "Puff."

"That’s wrong," Miss Scott said, and she called on another kid who gave a different answer. I still think Puff was the right answer, but that wasn’t the point. She didn’t have to announce that I was wrong in front of everybody! If she really thought Puff was wrong and didn’t just want to embarrass me, she could have waited and talked to me about it at recess. Or even on Monday.

I felt like I was going to jump up and say something I shouldn’t. I raised my hand. I didn’t wait for her to call on me. As soon as she looked, I said, "Miss Scott, I have to get something out of the cloak room." Before she could say anything, I was on my way.

I don’t think schools have cloak rooms anymore. They were little rooms off the classroom where kids could leave their coats, hats, and boots when the weather was bad. Cloaks too, if anyone ever wore one. And if you went to a school where you had to bring your lunch, you could leave your lunch box there too.

Once I got in the cloak room, I walked back and forth until I calmed down. I could hear Miss Scott asking her dumb questions. I wasn’t in any hurry. I sat down. Miss Scott finished her story questions and told the class to take out their arithmetic papers. Then she raised her voice. "Are you coming out?"

I decided not to answer.

The next thing I knew, she was standing beside me. "Out!" she said.

"No!" I said. "You’re not the boss of me!"

Yes she was.

Miss Scott wasn’t a very big woman. Maybe she lifted weights or worked out. In what seemed like seconds, she had me out of the cloak room, down the aisle, and into my seat. The other kids looked at me as though I was a bomb.

"Put your head down on the desk and keep it there," Miss Scott ordered.

I was more than willing because I knew tears were coming to my eyes and having my head down would hide me. I cradled my head on my arms and shut my eyes. I kept my head down through arithmetic and spelling.
The kids lined up and went home, but I stayed there with my head on my desk while Miss Scott saw them out safely. She came back and spent a long time at her desk. I knew that when she let me put my head up, she’d really lash into me. I dreaded it and hoped I wouldn’t cry.

At last, she said, "You can go now." That was it. No lecture. She was writing something. She didn’t even look up.

"Miss Scott?"

She leaned back in her chair and stared at me while those two frown lines aimed down her nose. "What is it?"

"I’m sorry," I said. "I won’t do it again." My lip trembled just a little.

"Words are easy," she said. "Now go home."

I ran for home. That apology had always worked before. There’s just no pleasing some people. It was going to be a long year.

TOMMIE

2005-09-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

I was seven when my cousin Tommie died. That was right after he saved me from a strip poker game.

Tommie was the son of my Aunt Ange and her husband Tom. My mother and father got together with them every couple of weeks to play euchre for an evening. When that happened, Tommie was stuck with babysitting me. Of course I never thought of it as "babysitting." I just thought my cousin Tommie, who was twice my age, was there because he wanted to play with me.

Tommie wasn’t fat, but he was solidly built and about a head-and-a-half taller than I was. He had a mop of curly black hair that he always had to brush back with his hand. The thing that I remember most was that he was always grinning. When he’d push back his hair, his hand seemed to be uncovering his grin. It gave me a good feeling.

When my parents hosted the card game, I had some games in my room that Tommie and I could play, although he usually wanted to listen to the radio instead. Sometimes we pretend-wrestled. What made it pretend was that Tommie usually let me win.

When we went to his house, he sometimes took me out to walk around his neighborhood. On this day I remember, we stopped at one of his friend’s homes where there were four bigkids playing cards. I’d watched my parents play cards. "Can I play?" I asked.

"I don’t think that’s a good idea," Tommie said.

The other boys disagreed. They said I could sit in, and one of them dealt me a hand. I saw a four, a six, a nine, and two face cards. That didn’t look like any euchre hand I’d ever seen.

One of the boys asked me, "Do you know how to play poker, Kid?"

I’d heard of poker so I said, "Sure."

Tommie jumped in. "He hasn’t played very often. I’ll help him with his hand."

I knew Tommie and my parents played their cards for money, a dime a game. On a big night, one of them might come away fifty cents ahead. "How much are we playing for?" I asked.

One of the boys laughed, "We’re playing for clothes. This is strip poker, Kid." I’d never heard of strip poker, but when I had to take off my belt after the first hand, I understood. When you lost a hand, you had to put an article of clothing in the winner’s pot.

Within a couple of hands, I was down two shoes and a sock, plus the belt. I was getting nervous. I thought of myself sitting stark naked while all those bigkids pointed and laughed. I could feel my mouth going dry and my face turning red. One of the bigkids laid down two kings. "You lose again, Kid." I thought I was going to cry.

Tommie spoke up. "I think he better stop. It’s drafty here, and he just got over the flu."

"I didn’t –" I started, and then I realized Tommie was saving me. I coughed. Twice.

On the way back to his home, Tommy said he’d teach me to play poker next time.

He never got the chance. A couple of days later, I came home and my mother announced that Tommie had died. Somehow he’d got a rope caught around his neck. I overheard my parents talking. My father said it might have been suicide, but my mother said no because her family was all Catholic. I think it must have been an accident just because Tommie never seemed that sad.

We all went to see him at the funeral home. I’d never seen anyone dead. Everyone kept saying Tommie looked like he was asleep. I thought, no one sleeps in a room filled with people talking, even if they’re keeping their voices hushed. Besides, the smell of flowers was so strong it would have waked him up.

My mother took me up to the casket so I could "say goodbye." I didn’t know if I was really supposed to say it out loud or just in my head. I decided to keep quiet because I knew he wouldn’t answer.

When I walked back to where everyone was gathered around Aunt Ange who was crying, I remembered I could have thanked Tommie for saving me in the strip poker game. Then I also remembered that Tommy had told me not to mention the game to any grown-ups. I turned and faced the casket. I thought, "Thank you, Tommie." If he was going to hear it, he’d be able to hear me whether I was beside his casket or on the other side of the room.

After awhile, Aunt Marge who was married to one of my father’s brothers, told me to get my coat. We were going to a movie. We saw "White Savage" with Maria Montez, Jon Hall, and Sabu. There was a crooked card game in it, but Jon Hall saved the day. For a minute, I thought of Tommie and strip poker, but then there was an earthquake and the movie got really exciting.

THE JOYS OF FOOTBALL

2005-09-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a freshman on my high school football team, I had the best seat in the house – the bench -- for every game but one. I’d spend the week getting mauled by the regulars and then as a reward I got to watch them play on Friday night. I tried hard all week, but I never got in for a down in any of those games. We had a pretty good team, and the coach didn’t want to risk a win by putting in any of us subs.

I’m not sure what he didn’t want to risk in the game we lost 28-0.

For the Bridgeport game, our most one-sided win, I didn’t even get my usual seat. It snowed all week, and when we left the locker room and went out to sit down, we discovered six inches of solid ice encrusted on the bench.

"This week," Fritz said, "we won’t benchwarmers." By the fourth quarter, we were just praying for the game to be over so we could go some place and be warm.

We stood the whole game. "We ended up with our ends up," Pudge cracked later. That night I really hated football.

I didn’t have to be there. I almost didn’t go out for football as a freshman. I knew that it would be a whole year of never getting into a game. Practices began at nine o’clock on a Monday two weeks before school started. It was August and burning hot. I stayed home and listened to a baseball game on the radio.

That evening I got a phone call from the coach. He asked if I was ill.

"Uh – no." I didn’t expect him to know my name. Wow! I told him I’d forgot about practice.

"Then you will be at practice tomorrow," he said confidently.

I assured him I’d be there. I mean, if it was going to get personal!

I suppose he just needed enough bodies to scrimmage at practice. Every day I lined up against Big Ernie, our star tackle with the concrete elbows. My nose was chronically bloody all fall.

Looking back, I’m glad I was on the team. There were three rewards: the assembly before the final game, the trip to the pro game, and the football banquet.

The banquet didn’t happen till well after the season, just before Christmas. It was full of speeches, but I’ve had worse times. First we had a big meal of chicken, baked potatos, and green beans, with cake for dessert. They gave us our choice of milk or water.

After we ate, the coach gave out the big team letters to sew on sweaters. You had to play half of our forty quarters to get a letter. I was twenty short. He also handed out a lot of special awards. Big Ernie got a couple. I thought I deserved one for scrimmaging against Big Ernie every day – maybe one like an Oscar with the nose smashed in. Actually, they did give one out for best sub, but Fritz got that.

Then the coach introduced the featured speaker. One year, they said, the speaker had been an All-American. Another year it was a famous coach of some college in Ohio. This year we just got the assistant sports editor for the local newspaper. He told us that in life as in games we had to try hard.

The last thing, the coach got up and said as much as we’d miss the players who were graduating, we’d still have a good team next season because we had a lot of good players coming back. It’s nice to know you’re appreciated.

That was why I liked that final assembly.

The morning of our final game, the whole school was in the auditoreum. The principal got up on the stage and said how hard we were going to try that night, and then he introduced the coach who said how hard we were going to try that night.

One-by-one, the coach called the players up onto the stage with him. He started with us subs. There was a smattering of applause for each player. We never mentioned it to each other, but each of us subs ranked the amount of applause we got against that of the others. I did better than the kid who was absent with strep throat. I’d never stood in front of such a big crowd. It was exciting to be there with the whole school looking at me until the regulars came up on stage and stood in front.

When subs left their seats to stand on the stage, the clapping would peter out by the time they reached the steps. The regulars got up onto the stage and waved before the cheers stopped. When the coach called up the team captain, the yelling, whistling, and clapping was so long and loud the coach had to hold up his hands. Then the captain said that we were going to try hard.

I know I was enthusiastic, but I couldn’t figure out how I could sit harder.

On the Sunday of the weekend after our last game, we got to see a professional football game. The whole team piled aboard school buses and went to watch the Steelers up in Pittsburgh. The Steelers were not a very good team in those days. They were still using an old-fashioned singlewing offense while every other team in the league used a modern T-formation. Even the high school teams we played against all used the T. Pittsburgh’s opponents, the Redskins, were almost as weak as the Steelers, but they quickly built up a three-touchdown lead in the first half.

The game was at old Forbes Field where the Pirates and Steelers both played. Had we been there to watch the Pirates play baseball, we’d have had ideal seats – lower level, right behind home plate. Unfortunately, when the field was laid out for football, those same seats were behind an endzone. We watched everything through the goal posts.

Maybe that would have been okay on a decent day. On this frozen Sunday, the temperature was in the low 20s with an icy breeze. Every once in a while, we’d get snow flurries. It was colder than Bridgeport.

Near the end of the second quarter, Henry, another sub, shivered over to me and asked, "Do you know what’s on the other side of that big lot our buses parked in?"

I’d never been to Pittsburgh, so I had no idea.

He leaned in and whispered, "The Carnegie Museum."

Henry and I debated sneaking over during the second half. After all, we couldn’t see much of the game, and it wasn’t a very good game anyway. I’d heard of the Carnegie for years. It housed all kinds of treasures. We’d learn all kinds of wonderful things. Wasn’t the whole point of a school trip education? We were almost obligated to go there.

God willing it would be heated!

The Carnegie was even more wonderful than I’d expected. There were statues that made you wonder how anyone could carve rock so exactly, and paintings that made you wonder how anybody could get colors so vivid. A lot of the statues and people in paintings made you wonder how anybody could be so naked. Henry’s eyes got big as footballs, but I’d looked at artbooks in the local library. "That’s art," I told him.

The dinosaurs were huge. Most of them were just bones, but you could imagine. The best part of the whole museum was the Egyptian display with its mummies, pharoah’s coffin, and pyramid exhibit. Just joking, I pointed to a mummy and said, "I guess he was in a real bad accident." Henry started explaining about how Egyptians buried their dead even though we’d both just read it on the sign.

I changed the subject to the pyramids. "Henry, did you know that the pyramids are still standing after thousands of years?"

"How can you knock over a pyramid?" he asked.

Henry wasn’t much fun. "What’s back here?" I said to get away.

I walked around a corner and right into the coach. He wasn’t happy. Neither Henry nor I was wearing a watch, but the coach was kind enough to inform us that we were an hour past the time the buses were supposed to leave. He informed us of that in a voice that was more of a growl. We’d kept everyone waiting. The snow was building up on the road. I think he said something about the Donner Party. The coach said that because we hadn’t told anyone where we were going, they’d spent an hour searching all over Forbes Field. Which was really cold!

I told the coach I was sorry. I tried to look sorry. When we got to the bus, everybody was angry. Henry and I scooted to a rear seat. The coach had a team rule about cussing people out, but I guess he wasn’t listening to what everybody called us just then.

I didn’t care. It was worth it. The Carnegie was great! I still remember some of the statues.

SOLVING THE PROBLEM

2005-09-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

It’s a disaster,
Master!
Who can we blame?
Who can we frame?

We’ll put our talks
On Fox.
Hannity’s tame.
He’ll buy our claim.

Fox always flies
Our lies.
That Coulter dame!
She has no shame.

Use the Swiftboats!
More votes!
Although it’s lame,
Keep a low aim.

It works for us.
No fuss.
That’s our game!
It brings us fame!

(in unison)
Sing polly-wolly-boondoggle
All the way.

DELAHANTY'S DENOUEMENT

2005-09-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

Guest Blogger Dr. Charles T. Gregory
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology,Mountebank University

My visitor looked vaguely familiar -- mid-thirties, stocky, staight brown hair combed flat to one side, an Irish grin -- but when I asked his name he shook his head. "Later," he said. He told me he was in need of someone with a vast knowledge of baseball. A lady at the library had suggested me. "First, I want to talk to you about the death of the great battin’ star Edward James Delahanty."

"Ah, yes," I said. "‘Big Ed’ Delahanty. Rookie season 1888. Led both the American and National Leagues in hitting. Lifetime batting average of .346. Drunk. Fell off a railroad bridge at Niagara Falls and was swept over. July 2, 1903, if I’m not mistaken." Not that I wanted to parade my vast knowledge.

"You got the battin’ average and the date right, Doctor," the stranger said, settling into my favorite easy chair. I noted he moved with the assurance of a powerful athlete. Perhaps I had met him while doing research on my book, A History of Balls of the Base Variety.

"But there’s more to the story of Delahanty’s end, Doctor. Much more."

"Have we met before?" I asked. "You look so familiar."

"We’ve never met."

"You’re certain?"

"I came here to tell you about Ed Delahanty."

"Usually I’m very good with faces. I’m sure I’ve seen ...."

"Do you want t’ hear me story or waste time blatherin’?" the stanger snapped.

"Of course," I said, turning on my tape recorder.

He stared at it with alarm. "What’s that hellish thing?" he growled. When I explained, he shook his head. "I don’t trust them newfangled doohickeys. Take notes. That’s the way. Plain pencil and paper was good enough for that high-toned English scribbler Will E. Shakespeare."

I took a number 2 Faber Castell from the drawer, but I let the tape run while I sat poised at my desk.

"I don’t mean to be contrary, Doctor," he said in a softer tone. "I am a wee bit short-tempered of late, I admit."

"Perhaps you haven’t been getting enough sleep," I suggested sympathetically. Surprisingly, he burst into laughter. He laughed so hard that it was several minutes before he was able to go on. I took the time to rewind my tape recorder. Waste not, want not.

"Believe me, Boy-oh, I have had plenty of sleep," he finally managed. "More than enough!" Then a crafty look came to his eyes. "But perhaps we could use a little stimulation to wake us up. Would ye happen to have a drop of somethin’ perhaps?"

I told him I was all out of No-Doze. He seemed puzzled but then shrugged and cleared his throat. "In April of 1903," he began, "Delahanty was recruited as a special agent for the Pinkerton Detective Agency by himself, Allan Pinkerton, no less."

"Allan Pinkerton died in 1884," I said.

"Who says?" he roared.

"I says, er, say. I’m very good with dates. 1884."

He stared at the wall above my head, mulling that over. At last he said, "It was the son. Pinkerton JUNIOR! Do ye know when HE died by any chance?"

I admitted I didn’t even know the famous detective had a son.

My visitor nodded in satisfaction and went on with his tale. "Mr. Allan Pinkerton -- Junior -- got word in early 1903 that a master criminal had made his way to this country after accomplishin’ several wicked deeds in England. This arch-fiend, it was suspected, planned to play fast and loose with the National Pastime by fixin’ the outcome of the American League pennant race, that league then bein’ in only its third season, don’t you know. Arrg! The Saint Louie Browns was goin’ t’ win!"

"Fixing?" I gasped. "How?"

By the various nefarious ways these master criminals have. Bribery, blackmail, threats, even assassination. This same rogue was suspected of havin’ his crooked finger in all sorts of monstrous pies. Moriarity was the name he went by, but I doubt that was his true handle. Supposedly an educated man. He was in Cuba when the Maine blew up. In South Africa when the Boer War began. In Buffalo at the Exposition when the McKinley conspiracy took place ... "

"That was a lone gunman," I said.

My visitor gave me a pitying smile. "Oh, Doctor, Mr. John Q. Public wasn’t told about the events that took place on that grassy knoll next to the Paraguayan Pavilion. Pinkerton told ... Delahanty all about it. Huge cover-up! Perhaps later we can discuss it. Right now there’s more important matters. Pinkerton and Delahanty met one night in the cellar of a carriage barn in Washington, District of Columbia, don’t you know. Pinkerton chose him because, as the greatest batter in the American League, he was sure to be approached by this devil Moriarity."

"Was Delahanty assassinated?"

"Hold your pants on, Doctor. I’ll get to that. Now, nothin’ of a suspicious nature happened through the first part of the 1903 season. No sign of Moriarity. Delahanty was hittin’ up his usual storm for the Washington ball team, o’ course."

"His average was .333 after 42 games," I said.

"And that don’t allow for some good fieldin’ and bad umpirin’ neither! Then, just as July began, Delahanty spotted the arch-fiend in the grandstand at a game in Detroit. The unspeakable demon was sittin’ alone down the leftfield foul line. Aye, foul it was that day! Dressed all in black he was. Delahanty, who had the sharpest eyes in the league, recognized him from the discription he’d been given by Pinkerton Junior but even more by the palpable aura of evil that emanated from the cursed man."

"Had Delahanty been drinking before the game?" I asked, ever the seeker of truth.

"What’s that have to do with ANYTHIN’?" my visitor roared. "Before, durin’, after! It don’t make no difference. Delahanty could carry his load better than any ten men you can name!"

I apologized.

"Any twenty men!"

I apologized profusely.

"Where was I now? Oh, yeah. When the game ended -- and a darlin’ affair it was -- Delahanty dressed fast and rushed outside the ballpark. Moriarity was not to be seen. What to do? What to do?"

"Perhaps he could hire a detective," I suggested.

"Cleverly, Delahanty went to the nearest saloon, suspectin’ that the loathsome criminal might well have been drawn there to wet his wicked whistle. Many’s the time evil men are at the mercy of strong drink."

"Actually," I realized, "Delahanty was a detective himself since he was employed by the Pinkertons."

"Well, it took a couple of hours of hard questioning in several taverns, but he finally learned that a man dressed in black had been seen sneakin’ toward the railway station. There, he discovered that a black-clad stranger had purchased a ticket for New York City. Knowin’ he had little time to spare, Delahanty bought himself a ticket on the same train and boarded just before it pulled out of the Detroit station."

"The story was that he jumped his team after being suspended," I said.

"Aw, that surely was fixed up just to put a good face on it. Would any sane manager suspend his best hitter? Jumped the team? I ask you, Doctor darlin’, which was more important? Playin’ one dinky game against them silly Tigers or savin’ all of baseball from the clutches of that dastardly Moriarity? Delahanty was a HERO, an’ you want t’ make him a renegade!"

"I didn’t ...."

"A hero, Doctor!" The stranger leaped to his feet and pounded his fist on my desk. For a moment, I actually thought he might attack me. Then, he regained his control and sat down again. "So, once he was on the train, Delahanty started going from car-to-car, seaching for the villain."

"But wouldn’t Moriarity recognize him? Ed Delahanty was rather famous." I tried to picture the famous batsman’s face in my mind.

"Arrg," my visitor said. "O’ course, he was famous. And justly so. But there’s where Delahanty was smart. He happened to have with him a little flask o’ the good stuff as prevention against frostbite. And every time one of them train passengers looked at him, he’d tip it up in front of his face."

"Fascinating," I said. "Frostbite in July?"

"Which reminds me, Doctor. All this jabberin’ has parched me throat. Would ye happen to have a little nip of something now just to loosen the vocal cords?"

I offered a coke, coffee, milk, tea, water, Gator Ade. My visitor sighed. "You know," I said, "Delahanty probably didn’t have to worry about being spotted after all. Quite often famous people are not recognized when seen out of context. Moriarity wouldn’t expect to see a famous baseball player on a train."

"That he wouldn’t," my visitor agreed. "Now Delahanty was almost to the end of the train, no doubt drawing near his quarry, when the conductor, obviously one of Moriarity’s paid henchmen, begun to make a fuss. Accused him of being under the influence! I ask you, Doctor, as a fair man, could YOU walk a straight line down the aisle of a lurchin’ railroad train even if you was sober as old Ban Johnson himself?"

"So then," I interjected, "the conductor put Delahanty off the train on the Canadian side of the falls."

"Well, with the help of a couple -- TEN! -- burly ruffians he did. They thought they were rid of Delahanty, but they never reckoned with his fightin’ spirit. Undaunted! He started followin’ that blasted train on foot, don’t you know."

"Across the railroad bridge?"

"Right ye be! Then, as he reached the middle, a huge and evil silhouette loomed up in front of him. Moriarity!"

"Silhouettes are named after an 18th Century French minister of finance, Etienne de Silhouette," I explained. "The term was used in mockery of his petty economics."

"Fascinatin’," my visitor said. "But, as I was tellin’ you, Delahanty and Moriarity were locked in mortal combat on the bridge above the roarin’ falls. What a titanic battle! Good versus evil, don’t you know! A great athlete against the epitome of wickedness! First one had the upper hand and then the other."

"Did you ever see that movie Night of the Hunter," I asked, "where Robert Mitchum has ‘good’ tattoed on one hand and ‘evil’ tattooed on the other? He hand wrestles with himself and ...."

"But slowly, Delahanty began to gain."

"It’s a great movie. The only one Charles Laughton ever directed."

"At one point, Moriarity shouted in mortal fear, ‘Take my money. Just let me go!’"

"Perhaps not an Oscar-winner, but nevertheless ...."

"Just then, a railin’ gave way! Still locked cheek and jowl Delahanty and Moriarity plunged into the raging river together!"

I was on the edge of my chair. "And together they were swept over the falls!"

"Not quite," my visitor said. "By the way, Doctor, you shouldn’t sit on your chair like that. It causes piles."

"What do you mean ‘not quite?’"

"Only one of them went over the falls, Doctor. His fearfully mangled body was discovered a few days later and identified as Delahanty. But the condition of the corpse was so bad that it could just as easily been dear St. Patty himself."

"Which one went over?" I asked.

"Meanwhile, the other combatant managed to swim to shore. An iron constitution the man had! Exhausted, he sought only the merest shelter to lay his poor head to rest. He staggered along the shoreline until he at last he met up with the wall of what he thought was a barn. He crept inside."

"But which one ...?"

"And then came the final irony, Doctor. The place he had entered was an ice house."

"You mean one of those barn-like structures where, in the days before refrigeration, they used to store ice blocks cut in mid-winter from rivers and lakes for later use during the summer?"

"What else?"

"Well, you might have meant an igloo. Or perhaps you had run your words together and actually said ‘a nice house.’"

"IT WAS A -- SPACE -- ICE -- SPACE -- HOUSE -- SPACE -- COMMA, BY GOD -- DOCTOR!"

"I only wanted to be certain."

"Aw, bitter cold it was! Filled with ghostly moonlight reflectin’ eerily off them silent ice blocks. The poor man shivered, blinded by his own steamy breath. A maze in ice!"

"See?" I said, "It’s unclear whether you just said ‘a maze in ice’ or ‘amazin’ ice.’"

"His life-preservin’ flask had been lost in the struggle on the bridge. Desperately, he tried to find his way out of that freezing quandary but only drew himself deeper among those fearsome walls of ice. Suddenly, he slipped headfirst into a crevasse. Ice all around! He was trapped! The end had come."

"Hypothermia?"

"There weren’t no needles involved. Just cold!"

"Are you saying that Ed Delahanty froze to death?" I asked.

"No, Doctor, I ain’t sayin’ that at all. Delahanty didn’t go over the falls an’ he didn’t freeze -- at least not to death. But it brings me to why I come to see you today."

The stranger took a folded tabloid newspaper from his coat. Surprisingly, it was a respected journal sold mostly in supermarkets. I’ve used it often in my research. The editor had once been kind enough to publish my interview of a neighbor whose back yard was regularly frequented by Martians.

My visitor pointed to the headline: "ICEHOUSE BURNS; ENTOMBED MAN DEFROSTED! LIVES!" According to the amazing story, a well-known ice house landmark near Niagara, New York, had burned to the ground only a few weeks before. Amazingly, a healthy man in his mid-thirties had walked unharmed out of the ashes and disappeared into the crowd before he could be questioned. The paper speculated that he had been frozen for decades. Why hadn’t Fox reported this!

"So, Doctor, here’s why I came to you," the stranger said. "I saw in the newspapers that baseball teams today are payin’ ordinary talents millions of dollars. I may be 135 but I’m in my prime and I can still hit. I’m lookin’ for a big bonus contract. Can you find me a good agent?"

ADAGES R US

2005-09-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

It is better to light just one little candle than to let everyone know how many really belong atop your birthday cake.

Never jump off a 50-foot cliff with a 60-foot bungee cord.

It’s important to understand the difference between Viagra and vagina – especially if you chew your pills.

Women flock to a guy who can comb his eyebrows with his tongue.

I had a good job as a Tour Guide at the Grand Canyon, but it got outsourced to India.

There’s a language gap. I told a beautiful Chinese waitress what I wanted to eat, but she brought me a fried cat.

A naif is a guy who thinks Hooters is a restaurant that serves owl.

"I’d vote for a woman for president" is the new equivalent of the old "Some of my best friends are Jewish."

When it comes to pleasing women, I stop at nothing. I might have better luck if I did something before I stopped.

Many people would have sex with pigs were it not for a lurking fear that the pigs won’t respect them in the morning.

THE TAKEN ROAD

2005-08-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

"Never," I said. "Not ever."

"Not even once?" Maizy asked.

"Not even once," I said firmly. "I never copied an answer or sneaked a look at a crib sheet."

"What about --?" Maizy began suspiciously.

"No, I never whispered psst! to the guy in the next seat and then made a subtle finger movement to ask whether number twenty-three was a, b, or c. Not me."

"So you’re the most honest grandpa in the whole world," Maizy said, sounding just a wee bit sarcastic. She folded her test paper with the big red zero and tucked it between the pages of her history book.

"No, honesty had nothing to do with it. I didn’t cheat because I was too conceited to cheat," I explained. "I thought I was too smart to need to cheat."

"What did you do, Smart Guy? Study all the time?"

"No more than anybody else," I insisted. "Less than some. A couple of times I got bushwhacked on pop quizzes. I had a few bad grades, but I was a good guesser on multiple choice and true-false,."

"Maybe you were just afraid of getting caught."

It wasn’t easy to explain. "Say I ended up with the highest grade in the class -- I wouldn’t have any pride in it because someone else might have done better. You know, I get a 95 that should have been 85. What do I say to the kid who got an honest 93?"

Maizy shrugged. "You wouldn’t have to tell them."

"I just couldn’t feel the same pride about myself. I would have felt like, I don’t know, like I was letting myself down."

I didn’t mention another reason. I was never really up against it. There was never a time when the roof would collapse if I failed a test. Had I been in one of those fail-this-and-I-fail-forever fixes I’m not sure what I would have done. It’s easy to be moral when the stakes aren’t that high.

"Did you ever help other people?" Maizy asked.

"You mean like giving them answers?" I said. She nodded. "Okay, you got me. I did that sometime."

"Ah-HAH!" Maizy chirped.

"I meant I never cheated to help myself. I don’t count the times I let someone look over my shoulder at my paper."

Maizy stared at a far corner of the ceiling. "My teacher says the one who gives the answer is just as guilty as the one who gets the answer. She marks them both zero."

"There are worse things if you get caught helping. Do you know what a parody is?"

"My teacher says that’s when you just repeat what someone else said."

"That’s parroting," I corrected. "A parody is usually written. It copies something, but in a funny way by making slight changes. Like ‘Four beers and seven shots ago, my father brought forth on this bar a new cocktail dedicated to the proposition that all drunks are created tipsey.’"

"What?"

"It’s a parody of the ‘Gettysburg Address.’ You know, ‘Four score and seven years ago?’"

"Oh, yeah," her eyes lit up.

"You get the idea. Well, one time --"

Maizy had a pencil. "Wait a minute. Say it again."

"I’ll go back later. Let me tell this first. One time our tenth grade teacher assigned the class to write parodies for the next day. I’d gone to a different elementary school from the other kids, and my sixth grade teacher taught us about parodies, so I was all set. In no time at all, I wrote three of them"

"That wasn’t fair," Maizy decided.

"So I had two left over. A couple of kids asked if they could hand in the ones I wasn’t using. Then some other kids asked. Well," I said with some pride, "I ended up writing nine parodies for other kids. But the very best one – the tenth one -- I saved for myself."

"Like what?"

"I can’t remember them now," I admitted. "One started out ‘Oh say, dare you ski when the rocks stick out there? For if badly you fail, your blood will be streaming.’"

Maizy was mystified. "What’s that?" she asked.

"The National Anthem!" I sang it. Maizy wasn’t impressed. She wanted to hear the one about four beers again.

"One of our teachers was about to retire. He was an old guy who always took the first five minutes of class to take roll. Well, there was this poem that Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote when they were going to dismantle Old Ironsides." Maizy looked blank. "The ship from the War of 1812. Holmes’ poem helped get the ship declared a national monument. You can visit it today in Boston."

"I’ve never been to Boston," Maizy said.

"Anyway, the poem begins ‘Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see that banner in the sky.’ So I wrote, ‘Aye, throw his tattered gradebook down, long has it taken roll, and many a kid has wondered if his grade would rise or fall.’ It saved the ship, but the teacher still retired."

Maizy’s eyes were beginning to glaze.

I hurried on. "So when it came time to hand our parodies in, I’d actually written ten of them – not the copies that were handed in, of course. I remember there was one on ‘The Night Before Christmas,’ and one on ‘The Raven.’"

"What was the one you kept for yourself?"

"There’s this great poem called ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost.’ It goes ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow –‘"

Maizy nodded. "So this poem by Jack Frost was the best one you did?"

"Robert Frost. ‘Two roads diverged –‘"

Maizy stood up. "Nobody reads poems anymore," she said.

"Maybe, but it could be a song. You can write parodies of songs. Just so long as people can recognize the source. ‘Two roads di –‘"

"Really? So how’d your poem make out?"

"So the next day, we got our parodies back. The nine others got A’s and I got a C."

Maizy laughed. She began fooling with her cell phone. "Can you make me a copy of that beer one?" she asked.

"Actually, I think the teacher knew I’d written the others. She couldn’t prove it, but she wanted to teach me a lesson. See, even when you cheat for others --"

Maizy was lost on her phone. "Sarah? Guess what! We’re going to write a parody for extra credit. Bring over your rap album – the one with all the lyrics on it."

I said, "I think ‘parody of a rap song’ is a non sequitur," but she didn’t hear me.

ON THE INJURY LIST

2005-08-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

All things considered, I’ve been lucky. I probably should be knocking on a carload of wood when I say this.

I’ve never had a broken bone. Generally, I haven’t gone out of my way to get any part of me busted. Not only have I never broken a bone, I also have only once suffered an injury that required stitches. And then it was only three of them.

I was nine. It was a beautiful April Saturday morning. It had rained during the night, and a whole gang of us kids were enjoying throwing bricks into a big puddle in the alley behind my house. The bigger the brick and the more powerful the throw, the greater the splash.

The alley was paved with bricks from the year One. It was filled with loose bricks and broken bricks. The puddles were in the places where the bricks used to be. One particular puddle about the size of a bedsheet was halfway down the alley. It was deep enough so that when we threw a brick into it, the brick would stay submerged.

When Mickey threw brick, he’d yell "Woosh!" He was getting mud all over himself. I told him his mother would be mad. He laughed and tried to rub some mud on me, but I jumped back.

I was being careful. I only picked up small broken bricks. I could handle them so that I wouldn’t get any muddy gunk on my new sweater. It was tan with green panels on the front. Actually I didn’t like it much; I thought the panels looked sissy. But my mother had just bought it so I had to take care of it for a while.

I decided I could get a better angle for my next throw if I moved over to th --- WHAM!

I think before I felt anything, I saw a big brick spinning up from behind me, over my head, and falling toward the puddle. Just for a second the thought crossed my mind: "That’s a funny thing for a brick to do."

Chuckie, the biggest kid there, had unleashed a whole brick toward the puddle just as I walked in front of him. Had any other kid thrown that brick, it would have hit me in the shoulder, but Chuckie was tall enough that his brick caught me right in the back of my head.

"Ouch!" I said. Or "Yipe!" Or "Eek!" Actually I was too busy feelng the hit in my head to remember exactly. I do recall I turned around and glared at Chuckie. And then I felt a steady tapping on my shoulder. I was bleeding.
The taps were coming fast.

The kids took me home. I managed to keep from crying. If I was brave about it, my mother wouldn’t panic. My mother was in the kitchen. She immediately put a towel on my head and pressed it there while she took me a block up the street to where a doctor had his office. My Aunt Nell came along for support.

The doctor I saw when I had the measles was a friend of the family, but he lived in another part of town. The doctor we went to was close. He was also about a hundred years old. When we got there, he was talking with a lady who was probably a patient. He seemed a little annoyed like I could have picked a better time to get hit in the head. Nevertheless, he stopped with the lady he was treating and and looked at my wound.

"He was hit by a brick," my mother said so he’d know that my head was not normally in that shape.

"Ummm," the doctor said. He began laying a batch of vicious-looking instruments of torture on a table in front of me. They had blades and points all over. There was a tart, mediciny smell. He sponged some stuff on my head. I thought it was going to be water, but it burned like crazy. "Oww!" I told him.

"Hold still," he ordered.

He put some steel thing against the wound on my head and pushed. "Yowl!" I said.

The doctor sat down. "I can’t do anything with him," he said. "He’s hysterical. Take him up to the hospital."

I still can’t understand how "Oww!" and "Yowl!" amount to being hysterical. There I was, bleeding like Niagara Falls, I say "Yowl" and suddenly I’m hysterical?

My mother and Aunt Nell didn’t believe it either. They walked me five blocks to the hospital, complaining about the doctor all the way. I was still being brave, Not a tear. I wasn’t bleeding much anymore, but my head was beginning to hurt a lot. At the hospital, I thought I got four stitches, but it turned out that the pain I felt for one of them was the removal of the clamp the old doctor had put in.

By then, my tan sweater was completely ruined, but my mother didn’t complain. I guess the hole in my head meant she’d let me slide.

Billy fretted a lot more the next year when he fell off the school fire escape. His four stitches were on his forehead. He told me, "I’m afraid a scar will ruin my good looks." I thought having a scar would be great. My dumb luck, my stitches were in the back of my head and were soon covered by hair. I’d have to wait until I was old and bald to show my scar.

Three stitches were a big deal for a nine-year-old., but the part I remember most was the doctor saying I was hysterical. That was an insult! I never even cried! Hey, guys with scars don’t get hysterical.

When I’m brave, I expect to get credit for it.

ACTING REAL

2005-08-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

Miss Tissuer liked to read to the class, and she was very good at it. When she was going on about Augustus or one of those knights of olde, I could shut my eyes and it was almost like listening to the radio without the commercials.

What made Miss Tissuer a better reader than the other teachers was that she didn’t overdo it. When all the other teachers read to us, their voices would zoom up too high and drop down too low. They sounded fake, like they were talking to pet puppies. Even worse was when they would come down hard on a word to be sure all the kids in the room got it. The teacher would be reading along, sounding almost normal, and suddenly come across a word like "dishonesty." First there’d be a little pause, and then the word would be said about ten percent lower and twenty percent louder than any other words around it. "DIS-HON-ES-TY!" How dumb do you have to be to miss that?

Miss Tissuer let you notice "dishonesty" and yet make it sound like an ordinary word.

One day I found out why she read so well. During Study Time, she called Billy and me up to her desk. "I don’t know whether you’ve heard," she said. "I’ve been cast in a play for the local Little Theater."

And that explained it. She was an actress! No wonder she could read better than the other teachers. I hadn’t caught on because when I thought of actresses I always thought of the beautiful girls the heroes kissed in the movies I went to on Saturdays. Miss Tissuer wasn’t like that. She looked like someone’s mother. All at once I realized that there were other actresses in movies. Some of them played mothers.

"Do you boys know what a play is?" she asked. Billy and I both nodded. I’d never seen one, but I knew it was like a movie only alive. "Would you be interested in being in a play?" Again we nodded.

She held up two pieces of paper. "In this play I’m in, there’s a role for a boy just about your age. When you go home," she handed us each a paper, "you must ask your parents to look at this paper and sign if they give permission for you to be in the play."

"What’s the name of the play?" Billy asked.

"It’s called ‘On Borrowed Time.’ It’s a famous play. One of the main actors is a boy. If it’s all right with your parents, I’d like you two to try out for the part tomorrow. I told the director that one of you would be able to do it well."

I thought I understood. "You mean Billy and me will read to you? And you’ll only pick one?"

"The play’s director will be here. He’ll decide." Miss Tissuer gave us some more papers. "Tomorrow you’ll read this scene. The character is named ‘Pud.’"

When I told my parents that night, my father thought Pud was a funny name. My mother said I shouldn’t be disappointed if Billy got the part.

I wasn’t worried. I knew I had a big advantage over Billy. I’d heard him read out loud in class. He read like a kid with his voice going too high and too low and hitting some words too strong. I knew that when the director heard me read kind of flat and normal like a real person, he’d choose me.

I practiced at the kitchen table with my mother. "That’s fine," she said, "but don’t you think you should put a little emphasis on some of the important words?" She explained what ‘emphasis’ meant.

I told her about reading like a kid. I even showed her how Billy sounded. She didn’t think it sounded so bad Billy’s way. I don’t think my mother had ever been in a play.

The next day just after arithmetic, a tall man with a moustache came into the room. Miss Tissuer had Billy and me come up to her desk where she introduced the man as the director of the play. She took the other kids outside for recess while Billy and I stayed in the room to try out.

Billy read exactly the way I said he would. On my turn, I read perfectly my way. Then the director asked me to do it again, a little less "muntone," whatever that meant. If anything, I kept my voice even flatter than before. I sounded just the way people really talk.

"Did you read over that scene last night?" the director asked. "You kind of read like you’ve never seen those words." Right then I knew I’d get the part. When people are really talking, they don’t see the words they’re going to say first. The director was telling me how real I sounded.

Miss Tissuer brought the class back. She and the director talked by the door for a couple of minutes. Then he left. Billy asked her about the play, but she said to wait until school was over. I was so excited I don’t even know what she taught us in the time left. Maybe spelling.

Finally, all the kids were gone. Miss Tissuer had lined them up and marched them out while Billy and I sat in our seats. Before she came back, Billy wished me good luck, so I wished him the same. I meant it about as much as he did, but it was a nice thing to do.

Miss Tissuer came back in and sat down. She clasped her hands in front of her and called me to come up to her desk. I noticed she had a little lace hankie in her hands. She seemed a little sad.

"You read really nicely," she said. "The director told me that you have a good, strong voice. But –"

But?

"Sometimes they pick an actor for a part just because they want a certain look. The director felt that Billy looked more like Pud. I’m sorry."

I smiled and told her I really didn’t want to do it anyway. It would have been all kinds of extra trouble, and besides my mother wanted me to start helping more at home. Then I turned and told Billy congratulations. I was halfway home, walking along perfectly normal, when for no reason at all I started running as hard as I could and didn’t stop until I was in my room.

A couple of weeks later, Billy asked me if I wanted to come see his play. I told him I’d ask my mother.

But I didn’t.

TODAY I ARE A ARTIST

2005-08-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

The question of nature versus nurture is as old as Ally Oop’s mother – certainly older than my kid brother Chic. Just because he majored in chemistry and became one of those scientists, Chic thinks Darwinian. He says it’s all nature. Personally, I don’t even know how many petris you can put in a dish, but my experience says what you end up being is mostly because of the experiences you – uh – experience.

Recently, Chic went the Roots-way and started tracing the family history back beyond Grandpa. I figured he’d uncover a horse-thief and quit. Instead, he discovered that one of our great-great grandads on Mother’s side was a successful artist-photographer back in the days of President Grant. Chic, the chemist, dabbles in photography so now he’s sure he knows where he got that urge. He also tried to foist his theory off on me.

"You majored in art," he reminded me. "And then you taught art in high school, you know."

Of course I knew. I’m older than he is but I’m not senile yet. "Okay," I admitted, "and I also taught art to first-graders. That inflated my ego ‘cause I was the only one in the room who could name all the crayons in the box."

"And didn’t you do some illustrating?" I confessed to illustrating a half dozen books. I’d even sent him copies of two of them about ten years ago.

"And I will read them when I get the time," he promised. "But my point is that you inherited your artistic talent from our great-great grandfather. You got his art genes."

"No."

"What do you mean, ‘No?’" he yelped.

"There’s an Art Gallery, an Art Nouveau, and an Art Linkletter, but there’s no Art Gene."

Chic gave me one of his get-serious! looks. "Then how do you explain your wonderful artistic talent.?"

"For starters," I explained, "my talent doesn’t reach the level of ‘wonderful.’ The quality of my work is halfway between a stick-drawing of the warden scratched on a cell wall by some felon and one of those sacharine pastel images of flowers created by girls in proper eighteenth century finishing schools. In other words, my talent is ordinary, but by practice I learned to make fair pictures."

"You’re an artist!" Chic insisted.

"Whatever I am," I said, "I remember exactly when I became it. Back in kindergarten. It was all because of Mrs. Rice."

Mrs. Rice was the most beautiful, wonderful, redhaired kindergarten teacher in the world. At the time this occurred, the significance of the word "Mrs." was not clear to me. I planned to grow up and marry her. When we played games, I always tried to win for her. When we drew pictures, I always used the crayons she recommended. When she read us stories, I hung on her every word.

One day, Mrs. Rice read to us about Abraham Lincoln and how he worked in a grocery store. He was very honest, and when he discovered he had accidentally overcharged a customer by three cents, he walked seven miles through the snow to return it. After she finished, Mrs. Rice gave each of us paper and crayons so we could draw a picture about the story.

Most of the kindergartners drew a stick-figure Lincoln standing behind the grocery store counter. That way they only had to draw him from the waist up. I was going to do that until I realized that I’d have to put some boxes on the shelves behind Lincoln. Drawing boxes was okay, but how could I label them? I couldn’t spell! I didn’t want Mrs. Rice to learn that.

I decided to draw Lincoln walking up to the cabin where he would return the three cents. I put Lincoln over on the right of my paper. You could tell it was Lincoln because I gave him a beard. At the end of his hand, I drew three tiny circles for the pennies.

On the left of the paper, I’d almost finished drawing a cabin with brown logs when I noticed our class had a visitor. A man and Mrs. Rice were talking earnestly at the door. I wondered if he was a teacher in one of the big-kid classes upstairs. Just before he left, the man leaned forward and kissed Mrs. Rice. On the lips!

The little girl sitting next to me at the table whispered, "That’s Mr. Rice."

I felt like I was falling. I should have understood the meaning of Mrs. before then, but the only grown-up women I’d ever been introduced to were friemds of my mother, and they were all called Mrs. I’d assumed that Mrs. just meant grown-up.

"May – maybe it’s her brother," I said to the little girl.

No such luck. The little girl said she and her mother had met the Rices out shopping. It was true. Mrs. Rice hadn’t waited for me. I began to feel betrayed.

I’d get even. Before me was my great drawing of Abraham Lincoln returning three cents. She would have loved it. But, I thought viciously, when he got to the cabin – it was on fire! What do you think of that, MRS. Rice? I grabbed my yellow crayon and began scribbling fire in the cabin’s window. Burn, Baby, burn!

"And what do we have here?" Mrs. Rice said as she reached over me and scooped up my drawing. I waited in anger for her to see the flaming windows. Maybe she’d cry.

"Look here, Children. Look what was done here." Here it came. Oh, boy! "See the windows?"

And then she said something amazing.

"He’s made the windows yellow to show how warm and toasty it is inside the cabin. Abraham Lincoln has just walked all those miles through the cold snow. Brrrr! We can tell how cold it is outside because we can see how warm it is inside. See? This is just wonderful." She took two pins and stuck my picture on the bulletin board. Then she clapped her hands and the rest of the class joined in.

"And that’s what made you an artist?" Chic said doubtfully.

"From then on, drawing – art, if you will – stopped being something to do and became -- I don’t know -- my personal thing. It was a way to feel good about myself."

Chic laughed. "You mean it got you compliments and praise."

"Which made me feel good about myself."

"What would have happened if you’d used a red crayon on the windows?" Chic asked.

"Maybe I’d have become a chemist."

IF ANIMALS SENT E-MAILS

2005-08-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

Friends:
Hey, I just heard there’s a big holiday coming up where everyone gets together for dinner and gives thanks. Maybe we should all meet at someone’s coop for a big meal.
---- Tom

Joe:
Personally, I’ve never had a Christian. Up to now, I’ve been quite satisfied with gnus. However, as you said, they are becoming hard to find, and no gnus is not good news. :) You may be right. This could be a good time to expand the old diet.
---- Simba

Boss:
I’m all for seniority, but I’ve been in the traces here for a lot of years myself. Isn’t it time I got paid as well as Donner, Blitzen, and the older guys – all of whom, I should remind you, follow MY lead? Don’t forget I got extra expenses what with batteries and all.
---- Rudy

Desk:
This is important, so I’m depending on you. I need a wake-up call. Don’t forget. February second. Sunrise. If I don’t pick up right away, keep ringing until I wake up.
---- Punxsutawney Phil

Old friend:
Hope all is well back home. Surprisingly, I found being outsourced a good thing. Yes, I remember fondly those lush meadows in Wisconsin. I was particularly fond of clover. The fields here in India are not so green, but we have other perks. What I like best is the respect we receive. It’s almost religious.
---- Elsie

Everybody:
Run! A terrible thing is about to happen! The end is near! Wear helmets!
---- C. Little

Friends:
Not to bend your ear, but for ten years this place was great. Lots of food and sleep. Once in a while fetch something. Then all of a sudden last week my master wants me to roll over, sit up and beg, jump through a hoop, and I don’t know what all else. I’m too old to learn that stuff! It’s been hell!
---- Rover

Henri’s Furs, Inc.
Gentlemen:
Please be advised you sent me the wrong garment. Mine has small spots against a tan background. As you will see, the one I’m returning has very large spots. I do not wish to change my "look."
---- A. Leopard

Honey:
Not now. Busy, busy, busy.
---- Buzz

TERROR AT GOOEY FALLS

2005-08-08T13:43:00.000-07:00

"How do you get your clothes so dirty?" my mother asked.

I explained, "There’s no grass in Mickey’s yard."

That was true but wasn’t the reason for my filthy clothes. If I told her the real reason, it would have scared her to death.

My mother was afraid I’d get run over by a train. She ordered me never to go to the tracks to play baseball. I think she thought I’d go running back for a fly ball and get smack in front of the Super Chief.

Actually, it had been a long time since she brought it up. I guess she figured she’d told me when I was in third grade and I would remember two years later. Two years was long enough that I could have forgot. Certainly I could claim I forgot if I ever got caught.

The Tracks were a siding on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. The B & O ran along the shore between the Ohio River and the city. There was a wide spot just below our school where for about 300 yards two extra tracks lay alongside the regular track. Freight cars could be pulled off trains and onto one of the sidings to be unloaded. I never saw them get unloaded, but every once in a while big crates or steel beams would show up on our playing space between the first and second siding. If I wanted to get hit by a train, I would have had to run fifty yards to get to the main track.

Telling my mother that I was playing on the tracks would have just upset her. With my father still in Germany enjoying his victory over Hitler, my mother had enough worries, so I didn’t tell her for her own good.

A better reason to avoid the tracks than getting hit by a train was the chance of running into Clang-Clang. I don’t know if my mother knew about him. The bigkids said he was a crazy bum who lived by the tracks. They said if you saw him and yelled "Clang-Clang," he’d chase you. No one knew what would happen if he caught you, but no one wanted to find out either.

Once I saw a man walking along the tracks way off in the distance. I told Mickey about it.

"Did you yell," he asked.

"No"

"I would have yelled," he said.

The Tracks were not an ideal ballfield. It had no fence to hit home runs over, of course, but also the siding tracks themselves were too close together. We put first base on one of the ties for the first siding and second base on a tie on the second siding. Any ball hit outside either siding was foul. That gave us a very narrow field of play. Instead of spreading 90 degrees from home plate, our field spread only about 60 degrees. The worst part was the dirt. It wasn’t normal soil but more of a greasy, black ash.

I always worried that my mother would be suspicious of the greasy, black stains I brought home on my clothes. Fortunately, she never used any forensic tests on what I wore to compare my dirt with Mickey’s yard.

One day the game ended early when Ross had to go to the dentist and Chuckie had to go someplace with his mother. Mickey and I went exploring by the river. If my mother had known I was going down by the river, she would have been afraid that I’d drown except she would be sure I would be hit by a train first.

Exploring along the river was actually kind of boring. Most of it was just a long, muddy place with weeds. I honestly can’t remember seeing anything interesting that had washed up. No dead bodies, not even animals. The closest thing was a muddy Raggedy Ann doll.

The only sight really worth looking at was Gooey Falls. Whenever we explored along the river, we always took time to check Gooey. That was what we called a large sewer that emptied a small but steady stream into a pool about the size of a bedsheet. As the stuff flowed out of the pool, it carved a ditch we called Yuck Canyon that meandered through a couple of S-curves to the river.

The pool surface had what looked like gray, dirty soap suds covering every inch. They bubbled up where the sewer drizzled into the pool and disappeared as the stream ran into Yuck Canyon.

What was great about Gooey Falls was that the sewer flowed out of a big concrete cave. We could sit on the ledge above it and bomb the pool with rocks. The suds would fly up in the splash and look like a real explosion.

Mickey and I took turns trying to make the best explosions. Then we ran out of rocks.

"You ought to climb down there and get some rocks," I suggested.

"Who broke your legs?" Mickey asked.

It was not an easy climb so I said, "It’s an easy climb. We don’t both have to go."

"Right. So you go."

"Why don’t we flip a coin?"

Mickey didn’t have a coin. I had a quarter in my pocket. "Okay," I told him, "heads I go; tails you go."

I flipped the quarter in the air. It came down in my palm. Bounced. And spun over the ledge toward the Falls.

"Oops!" I said.

Mickey and I looked over the ledge at the suds-covered pool below. "I’m not reaching in there," Mickey said.

"No, look!" I said, pointing. I spotted the quarter partly buried in the mud a few feet from the pool.

"Your quarter," Mickey said. As I started down, he reminded me, "Bring back some rocks."

The way down was steep. I was halfway when I began to think I should have tried to use a long stick to poke my quarter out to a flatter place. The only way I could keep from tumbling was to hold onto the weeds.
Suddenly Mickey yelped, "Omigosh!"

Forget the quarter! I started to scramble up the bank. A clump of weeds that had been so sturdy coming down pulled loose. The next second I was standing thigh deep in Gooey Falls.

For a couple of seconds, I stood stock still as though that would keep any more of the goop I was in from touching me. Then it occurred to me that the goop might eat right through my trousers and begin dissolving my legs. I decided to head for shore.

I couldn’t. My feet were stuck in the goop. I was within reaching distance of the shore but I couldn’t get there. "Mickey!" I screamed. But he was gone. I was stuck until someone sent out a search party. An awful thought crossed my mind: did rivers have tides? I imagined Gooey rising higher and higher until it reached my mouth.

"Ugh!" I had to get free. "Mickey!" I yelled again.

And then I looked up to see a shabby figure standing on the ledge above. He was unshaven, his hair was uncombed and his clothes were worn and messy. "Help me," I called. In a way, I thought, this was wonderful. The "crazy bum" that everyone made fun of would be my rescuer. It was like some story we read in school.

He looked down at me and smiled. "Clang-clang," he yelled. Then he laughed and walked away.

About five minutes later, Mickey came back. He got a branch and together we got me out of the Falls. I didn’t even try to make up a story to explain to my mother why I was covered with foul-smelling muck from the hips down. Sometimes honesty really is the best policy when you can’t think of anything better.

WHADDYA MEAN, NICK?

2005-08-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

I saw a TV show about the 100 Greatest Movie Lines. They got it all wrong. Forget "Play it again, Sam" or "Rosebud" or even "Frankly, Scarlett." The greatest movie line ever was "Whaddya mean, Nick?"

That was the gospel according to Robbie.

Robbie had been my first friend back in the days when we played with toy soldiers in my yard, but then my family moved and he ended up going to a private school, and we lost track. When we were freshmen in our high schools, we ran into each other downtown at a sports store where we were both mooning over a Bob Lemon baseball glove. It turned out we were both Cleveland Indians fans.

We talked about how different our schools were. For one thing, he had to march around and wear a uniform. At my school, we could wear jeans, and we got to bring our lunch in a bag. For some reason, he thought his school was better. Despite our school differences, Robbie and I had a lot in common in addition to our mutual devotion to the Cleveland Indians. We started to hang out together.

On a Saturday evening, I’d go over to his house and he’d spin some 45’s. He had a terrific collection, but we always ended up listening a couple of times to Les Paul and Mary Ford do "How High the Moon." We’d both air guitar being Les Paul.

Later, we’d walk downtown to a movie and after that go to a teen dance at St. Matthew’s. We both understood that if either of us got involved with a girl there, the other one would disappear. That never happened, but if it had, we’d have been prepared.

After the dance, we’d go to DeCarlo’s for a couple of pizza slices. We’d sit in a booth and discuss the girls at the dance and the night’s movie in depth. We liked little known character actors. Certain supporting actors were among our all-time favorites – Lyle Bettger, William Conrad, and Casey Adams. No doubt it was their obscurity to most moviegoers that made them heroes to us. We felt like insiders! We knew who Arthur Hunnicutt was!

Every movie had a line or two that we decided was memorable. I don’t remember many of them now. They all had a sameness – ordinary statements that would have passed unnoticed into the ether had we not anointed them. Lines like "Wait in the taxi" and "This looks suspicious." Right away we grabbed "Too quiet" when a movie soldier said it after another one said, "It’s quiet out there." But then we heard somebody else use it so we stopped.

"Whaddya mean, Nick?" was perfect, but it had close competition in its own movie. I felt strongly about "The second one got him." Robbie and I argued about it at DeCarlo’s.

The movie was "The Racket," a pretty good film noir from 1951. Robert Mitchum is an honest cop against Robert Ryan, a crime boss named Nick. William Conrad is a cop named Turk who’s playing on both sides of the street. It’s when he’s trying to understand some scurrilous instruction from Ryan that he utters those immortal words "Whaddya mean, Nick?"

"Anything anyone says in a Robert Mitchum movie is automatically worth remembering," Robbie said.

"No kidding," I agreed, but ‘The second one got him’ was also in the same Mitchum movie. Moreover, both lines were said by William Conrad. Almost anything William Conrad said was a likely winner for Best Line of the Movie. He almost won the competition in "The African Queen," and most people don’t even know he was in it.

"But ‘The second one got him’ sounds like a movie line," Robbie argued. Obviously it lacked that common touch. When we said a movie line, we didn’t want everyone else to get it. Like today if someone says "Loving means you never have to say you’re sorry," eveyone laughs. Our best lines were just shared with a few friends.

"’The second one got him’ is perfect," I insisted. It’s the close-out line in a Mitchum movie, and it’s spoken by William Conrad while he’s taking the empty shells out of his pistol after he shot Robert Ryan."

I never cared for Robert Ryan in those days. Too many wrinkles in his face. Then a couple of years later I saw him in "The Set-Up" on the TV Late Show, and he was terrific. Funny thing, Ryan made "The Set-Up" two years before he made ""The Racket." I’m not sure I would have enjoyed him getting shot as much if I’d already seen "The Set-Up."

George was with us that night. He was the one who immortalized "Hey Joey, I got your pigeon" after we saw "On the Waterfront." I asked George what he thought but he just wanted to talk about a girl he’d danced with at St. Matthew’s. I’d probably have more to say about the dances if I ever learned to dance.

None of which ended up mattering. Robbie won me over by showing that "Whaddya mean, Nick?" was more versatile. "You can use it almost anytime," he said.

"I can think of lots of times when you couldn’t use it," I said.

"Whaddya mean, Nick?"

"I mean –"

"For ‘The second one got him’ to work, you have to have a second one."

"Okay," I admitted, "but lots of things come in twos. Like shoes!"

Robbie sighed. "But then they have to stop. Kerplop! They can’t go on to three or four. Or more."

"That’s numbers," I said. "Everything in the world isn’t numbers."

"Whaddya mean, Nick?"

"Well, like Mitchum. There’s only one Mitchum," I said.

Robbie smiled in triumph. "So how can you use a line like ‘The second one got him’ with Mitchum? Mitchum is Zeus atop Olympus."

They didn’t teach Greek myths in my school. I fell into the trap. "What do you . . . mean . . . ahh, hell!"

"See!"

Actually, it was the third one that got me.

POKEY

2005-07-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

Turtles aren’t good pets. They can’t sit, and they don’t fetch. With that shell, they probably don’t even notice when you stroke them. You have to tip them up to get them to roll over, and even then, they’ll usually only go half way.

About the only way to have fun with a pet turtle is to put something in front of him and watch him crawl over it. That’s what Pokey and I did every day.

Pokey was about the size of my fist. He had a green top shell, a lighter green bottom shell, and green legs and head with blue and white stripes. I named him Pokey because that was the name of a turtle in a story Mrs. Rice, my beautiful, redhaired kindergarten teacher, read to us. The Pokey in the story talked. My Pokey just crawled.

When I’d got home from kindergarten, I’d take Pokey from his pan behind the kitchen door and carry him into the living room. I’d put a couple of pencils in front of him, and he’d start crawling over them. Once I tried a couple of my Lincoln Logs, but they were too big for him. Pencils were just right.

It was interesting. Pokey could be sitting in his pan with his head and legs all pulled in, but put him on the floor and he always crawled. I wondered if he was maybe trying to get back to his pan. It was designed just for him with a dry place and a wet place. It had a Lincoln Log under one end raising it so that there could be a little lake for him at the other end.

Pokey didn’t usually crawl in the direction of his pan, but I didn’t think that meant anything. He was little and could easily have been confused by the great distances between the kitchen door and the living room. And, to tell the truth, Pokey didn’t seem too smart anyway.

What he was was determined. He just kept crawling, pencil after pencil. Sometimes he would crawl so far across the living room that he was poised to go under the sofa. I couldn’t let him do that, of course, because my father would have had to move the furniture to get him out. So I’d pick up Pokey and bring him back to the center of the room. It didn’t faze him. He just started crawling again.

I told Mrs. Rice about Pokey and his pan. She said that was wonderful, but I should raise my hand before telling. Mrs. Rice was beautiful and the nicest person in the whole world. When I grew up, I was going to marry her until I found out what "Mrs." meant.

Kindergarten was only in the morning. In the afternoon, I usually played with Pokey, but one day, my mother told me to wait. My father was coming home for a late lunch. Because of his work schedule, my father almost never came home for lunch, so this was a great occasion. I decided I should do something special.

I told my mother my plan, and she said it was okay. When I heard my father on the kitchen porch, I hurried and hid behind the door. When he walked in, I jumped out and hollered "Boo!"

"Oh, my goodness," he said. "You sure scared me." We both laughed.

"Uh-oh," my mother said. She was looking at Pokey’s pan, and she wasn’t laughing.

Pokey was in the pan, his little legs moving like he was crawling, but he wasn’t going anywhere. All around where his top shell met the bottom shell was what looked like mashed potatoes. I knew what had happened immediately. While hiding behind the kitchen door, I had unknowingly stepped on Pokey. My father reached down, picked him up, and popped him into one of the brown bags he sometimes took to lunch.

I was already crying. "Will he die?" I asked.

"No," my father explained. "But he has to heal. To get well, he has to go swim in natural water, not city water like in his pan. I’ll take him out to Piedmont Lake." My father told my mother he’d have to skip lunch. Piedmont Lake was a long drive.

"Will that make him b-better?" I begged.

He smiled as he headed out the door. "You’ll probably see him next summer when we go fishing."

I decided not to tell Mrs. Rice what happened to Pokey. I didn’t want her to think I was careless.

As years went by, my life got in the way, and I pretty much forgot about Pokey. When I finally thought about him, the truth about that "healing in Piedmont Lake" stuff came through to me. I’d believed it at the time because I wanted to believe it – which is why most people believe things.

MY OWN PRIVATE RUMPLESTILTSKIN

2005-07-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Being the New Kid is a bitch.

In May, just at the end of sixth grade, my family and I moved from the city to a rural hilltop outside another part of town. For seventh grade, I was sentenced to Warrick, a small school I had only dimly heard of. Warrick was fed by the only elementary school in that part of town. It was both a high school and a junior high containing grades seven through twelve. None of the classes had more than sixty-five kids. And, among those nearly four hundred students, I was the only one who didn’t know everyone else.

"You’ll make lots of new friends," my mother promised.

"I liked my old friends," I said. The early reports on new friends were not encouraging.

I knew exactly one kid. During the summer, I’d gone for an exploratory hike and met a kid my own age. Don was red-haired, red-eared, red-faced, and dull as a cow patty. He didn’t like baseball or football. He never read books, went to movies, or watched much television. Music didn’t interest him.

When I got home, my mother asked, "So what was this boy Dave -–"

"Don"

"--- Don like?"

"All he did was pet his dog." It was a nice dog, but hardly nice enough to build a lasting relationship on.

For my first day at Warrick High School, I didn’t have to ride the school bus. My father dropped me off on his way to work. As soon as I got out of the car, I saw Don sitting on a little fence near the front door. When I walked up, he didn’t seem to remember me.

"Hi, Don."

"Oh, hi." He was just as red as I remembered.

A dark-haired kid standing next to Don, asked, "What’s your name, Kid?"

I hadn’t expected a question from the crowd. I looked at the dark-haired kid suspiciously. Why was he asking? Was it some trick? Should I answer? But in mulling it over, I waited too long.

"He don’t know his name!" another kid shouted.

Another voice: "Did you forget?"

Another: "He forgot his name!"

"Yeah! He forgot his name."

At this point I knew that I didn’t dare answer at all. I turned to walk away.

Then Don knifed me in the back. "His name is Humphrey!" he sneered, "Humphrey Pennyworth!"

People my age may remember that there was once a populat comic-strip character with that name. As I recall, the character was a terrific boxer, but Don wasn’t suggesting that I was a boxer or popular. He was alluding to Humphrey’s most obvious feature: he was enormously fat, easily 450 pounds.

I won’t say I wasn’t a tad chubby. Maybe more than a tad. But fat?

For the rest of the day, kids were walking up to me and asking my name. If I hesitated, they were convinced I did’t know it. If I actually told them my name, they seemed disappointed. One kid even said, "I thought you was Humphrey."

I had to do something.

That I’d become known as "The Kid Who Forgot His Own Name" didn’t really worry me. That would soon pass. Answer a couple of questions in class to demonstrate I wasn’t an idiot and the whole Forgot-His-Name thing would go away. But "Humphrey" could destroy me. It would become a permanent attachment. Everybody would know me as Humphrey. It would be printed on my diploma. What could I do?

By the afternoon, I was frantic. And then I remembered The Name.

Back in sixth grade, my old friends and I had spent a fun afternoon inventing the silliest names we could think of. The winner was long, it was funny, and we’d memorized it. During the last class of the day, I went over The Name several times in my head to make sure I could fire it off without a hitch.

After the final bell, those of us who were taking the school bus home gathered in front of the school to wait for it. Sure enough, one of the big kids sidled up to me with an expectant smile. "What’s your name, Kid?"

"Atwater Beauregard Van Hornblowdrinkwhiskeysnootfulsnobsdelightpompoofnik the Third."

He blinked then asked me to repeat it. I did. He called a couple of his friends over. "Listen to this. Tell ‘em your name, kid."

"Atwater Beauregard Van Hornblowdrinkwhiskeysnootfulsnobsdelightpompoofnik the Third."

And that changed it all. No longer was I being asked my name so I could be laughed at. When they asked, they were begging to be entertained, even impressed. The Forgot-His-Name stuff ended there. Humphrey resurfaced a couple of times in the next years, but it too eventually disappeared.

I handled requests for the wonderful name as long as I was at Warrick. When other kids tried to learn it, I always said it too quickly for them to memorize, and they would give up. Requests dwindled down to a few a year, but to the end, I was famous in the school as "Tubby, the Kid with the Great Name."

I’ll explain about the "Tubby" later.

I'LL CHECK TO THE FLOP

2005-07-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

Poker is the hip new sport
On TV and the web.
Knowing when to hold or fold
Can make you a celeb.

I’ve heard a lot of college kids
Play poker on the net.
They’ll soon be writing home to Dad
To cover their last bet.

I’d like to be a poker star,
But now I have to wait
Until I’m certain if or when
A flush will beat a straight.

DON'T SNACK BEFORE LUNCH

2005-07-19T04:34:00.000-07:00

Because we’d not yet been civilized by the disciplined drudgery of kindergarten, Robbie and I were free to enjoy our playtime doing what we wanted to do – fight wars with our toy soldiers. Our battlfield was a grubby flower bed with a few weedish green things still peeking through the dirt. At one end was the stump of a small tree.

One morning I captured Robbie’s machinegunner, his favorite. A soldier could only be captured if you moved within a strictly measured distance of no more than almost about a foot. As soon as I called the capture, Robbie yelled, "No, you’re not close enough."

"Yes, I was," I insisted, thereby proving him wrong.

"No, you weren’t!" he countered brilliantly.

"Yes, I was," I responded craftily. We went back and forth, illustrating our certainty by getting louder. Robbie was sitting next to the tree stump. Suddenly he reached down, scooped up a handful of battlefield, and popped it into his mouth. Then he chewed and swallowed.

"You ate dirt," I said. In all my whole life, I’d never seen anyone eat dirt.

"Now it's your turn," he said.

"I don't want to."

When he smiled, the dirt made his teeth look like they needed drilled. "You have to." I shook my head. "Then," Robbie said with perfect logic, "I get my machine gunner back."

Dirt tasted dry and worse than Brussels sprouts. A couple of minutes later, Robbie won the war. Among his prisoners was my favorite, a cowboy toting a six-gun. We gave our soldiers back, except Robbie got to keep one because he'd won. He chose my rifleman, and we started to get ready for another war.

"I want to be by the tree this time," I said.

"You can next time."

This war I was very careful. I moved my men only to places where they couldn't be captured. Pretty soon I had almost twice as many of Robbie's soldiers. All he had left were his bazookaman, his handgrenade thrower, and his machinegunner. Then he ate another fistfull of dirt.

"Go ahead," he said. "Fair’s fair."

I did, but this time I REALLY didn't want to. Right away, I started to feel funny, so I said I was going in my house for a drink. I went straight to our bathroom because I thought I was going to throw up. After a while I knew I wasn't going to so I washed my face and slurped some water from the faucet. My mother always says, "Use a glass," but it's colder from the faucet.

I walked back out through the kitchen where my mother was fixing lunch. "Are you all right?" she asked.

I told her I was.

"Let me feel your head." She put her palm on my forehead.

"What's Pokey having for lunch?" I asked. Pokey was my pet turtle.

She got me a piece of luncheon meat to tear up and give to him. He was sitting beside his rock with his head pulled in, and he didn't seem much interested when I dropped the pieces of meat right by his face.

"Do you think Pokey's sick?" I asked my mother.

"I wish you'd worry about yourself as much as you worry about that turtle. Put on a sweater if you're going out again."

"Maybe he's been eating dirt," I said.

As I went out the door, she called, "When your father gets home, I want him to have a look at you."

Back at the battlefield, Robbie told me he'd won. "I got tired of waiting for you," he said. He had all my soldiers piled up by his headquarters.

"This time," I said, "I get to be by the tree."

"Next time," he said.

"You said `this time!'"

Robbie looked at me. There were little pouty bulges around his mouth. "All right," he said like it wasn't all right. Then he turned to my pile of soldiers. "Now, which one do I get?" he said. "I think I'll take this one!" And he reached down and picked up my cowboy.

"You're not allowed to take favorites!" I said.

"I'm going to take him," Robbie leered, "and then I'm going to shoot him!"

My stomach began to feel worse than it did when I ate dirt. I walked up close to Robbie. I didn't want to lose my cowboy, but more than that, I didn't want Robbie to take him. My fists were doubled, but I didn't yell. "Put him down," I said.

Robbie knew I meant it. I put my face right down against his, and I knew he was trying to decide what I'd do if he kept my cowboy. "One," I said. "Two."

"Ahh, who wants him anyway?" Robbie said, throwing the cowboy down in the dirt.

I wiped the dirt off the cowboy. He was all right.

"I've got to go take my nap," Robbie said. He always took a nap in the middle of the day, but only after his mother called him. She hadn't called him this time. I told him that.

"I don't want to play with you anymore," he said. "You're a dummy. You ate dirt."

"So did you."

"No I didn't. I only pretended to. But you really ate it, and I'm gonna tell!"

Robbie ran off but to his own house. I put all my soldiers back in their shoe box. I put the cowboy on top.

My mother was setting plates on the kitchen table. "Go wash," she said. "Lunch will be ready in a bit."

I hoped Robbie wouldn't tell that I ate dirt. Maybe he wouldn't.

DOUBLE KAYO

2005-07-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

The reason I don’t brag much about the night I knocked out two people is that one of them was Sue, my fiancee. That night I was working off my summer vacation at Stand B in Chippewa Lake Amusement Park. The hours were long, but the work was easy on the brain. All we sold was one kind of beer, four kinds of soda pop, and coffee. Beer was a buck; pop was fifty cents, and coffee was a quarter. By the second week, I could have done it in my sleep.

"Here you go, sir. That’ll be two-fifty."

No. By the second week, I was doing it in my sleep.

I was there because of Sue’s mother. Every summer she left her home and drove seventy miles up to Chippewa Lake where she tended a soft ice-cream stand until Labor Day. From the time Sue was old enough to make change, she went along to assist.

All spring I fretted over the prospect of not seeing Sue for a whole summer. That was bad enough. Worse was when I learned that Georgie, one of her ex-boyfriends, also worked in the park running a ride. Of course, she told me that it was all over between them and they were just friends now. And, of course, I believed her. But . . . .

The thing was, I didn’t know him. I’d be home all summer feeling lonesome while he’d be there in that romantic amusement park. He’d probably offer her a free ride on the Doodle-Bug, and then one thing would lead to another.

I had to be at that park!

Sue’s mother put in a good word with the park owner. I was hired to be one of the bar tenders at Stand B. I had the right qualifications. I was breathing.

The first day I was at Stand B, Georgie the ex came by to introduce himself. He was tall, well-built, and more cute than handsome. His smile knocked the cobwebs out of the corners of the room. I swear he had "Nice Guy" stamped on his forehead.

Georgie and I shook hands. He nodded to the bored blonde holding his other hand. "This is Louise, my fiancee," he said.

A great weight lifted. I was short, chubby, and neither cute nor handsome. My smile made orthodontists cringe. So what? Georgie had a fiancee. Scratch one ex-boyfriend!

"We’ll have to double-date sometime," I said.

Life at Chippewa Lake fell into a routine. At eleven o’clock in the morning, I’d go to Stand B and help fill the bins with soda pop and beer and cover it all with ice. At noon the park opened. After that I went on automatic, shoveling out beer and soda to the crowds that were sometimes three-deep at the bar. At midnight, the park closed. By ten after twelve, Sue, I, most of the younger crowd, and all the serious drinkers were at Chippers, a town bar that stayed open late.

One night in late June, we closed Stand B early. We’d sprung a leak in a pipe and water was spraying all over the front of the bar. The customers headed for Stand A. There were a lot of handles and spigots under the bins, but we finally found the one to turn off the water. By then everything was soaked. It had been a slow Tuesday anyway, and the plumber said he couldn’t get there until morning. By ten o’clock, I was in the bar waiting for Sue.

What happened next was her mother’s fault. If she hadn’t kept Sue working until the park closed, I’d have had her to talk to. And if I’d been talking to Sue, I wouldn’t have been drinking – at least not as much. When she got there, I stood up and almost tipped over the table. That was my first clue that I’d maybe had a bit too much. The second clue was when I said, "Hi, Sweery, glajou make it."

"Sweery?" she asked.

"I getchoo a coke," I said smoothly. At the bar I ordered a beer and a coke. I lifted my foot to place it nonchalantly on the rail in front to the bar. Odd, the rail was higher than I remembered it. I just grazed it with my toe. Nonchalantly, I brought my foot down. Nonchalantly, I tipped over a spitoon.

Back at the table, I explained, "’Sweery’s a cross buhtween ‘Sweetie’ an’ ‘Dearie.’"

"The only thing crossed here is your eyes," Sue said. That happens when I drink too much. It would have been the fourth clue if I’d thought about it. Instead, I was too busy being drunk-clever.

"Well," I said, "you soun’ kinda cross. And my fingers’re crossed that you won’ stay mad."

She stared me down. "Dogs get mad," she said. "People get angry."

I was about to make a clever bon mot about star-crossed lovers, but her attention went to someone standing beside her chair. "I’d love to," she said and rose. As they walked out on the floor, I saw that her dance partner was Georgie.

It was a slow dance!

I looked wildly around the room. Georgie’s fiancee Louise was nowhere in sight. The cat’s away, I said to myself. Georgie and Sue were dancing too close together. I could see that. Everyone could see it. Was Georgie laughing? What had Sue said about me? Now they were both laughing.

The song ended, but they didn’t leave the floor. Another slow dance came on the juke box, and they moved into another clinch. This was insufferable! They were holding each other even closer this time!

I was out on the floor. I grabbed Georgie’s shoulder with my left hand and whirled him around as I swung on him with my right. It was a fearsome blow but Georgie saw it coming and pulled his chin back. My iron fist glanced off his shoulder.

Hands grabbed me, pulling me backward, away from my prey. I twisted out of their grasp and stomped to the bar. With one foot on the rail, I ordered a beer. A guy I knew who worked at Stand A came up beside me. "You okay?" he asked.

"Tell Georgie I’ll meet him outside," I snarled.

"They just carried him out. I don’t think he’ll be fighting anymore tonight."

Holy smoke! One punch! I hadn’t realized my strength. One right hand to the shoulder and it’s a knockout! Maybe beer increased my strength. More likely Georgie had a glass shoulder.

"Are you stark, staring insane?" Sue was behind me. "What is the matter with you?"

I mumbled that they’d been dancing too close.

"What?"

The way it was supposed to happen – the way I pictured it in my mind – was this. I’d whirl around to face her, riveting her with an accusatory glare. I’d snarl, "You were dancing too close!" And she, suddenly realizing the error of her ways, would dissolve in tears and beg my forgiveness. That’s the way I planned it.

I hadn’t allowed for her not being directly behind me. Instead she was more to my left and leaning in. Meanwhile, my elbows were on the bar. When I whirled, my left elbow stayed up. Her chin stayed in. There was a sudden, regrettable meeting as she parried my elbow with her chin. She was flat on the floor.

I was suddenly cold sober.

By Labor Day, I was still apologizing. I think Sue finally believed me that her kayo had been a pure accident. In a way, so was Georgie’s. When friends pulled me back, my foot shot out to uppercut him in a place where no man ever wants to be uppercutted. He didn’t even remember my mighty smash to his shoulder.

Sue doesn’t remember either. Years later, I mentioned the incident only to discover she had completely forgot. "You mean you don’t remember the night I knocked you out?"

"No-oo," she said suspiciously.

"Well, that’s good," I said quickly. "Cause it didn’t happen. I just made it up to test you."

That’s my story now, and I’m sticking to it.

ADAGE: THE MOVIE

2005-07-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

The coward dies a thousand deaths, but none of them count unless they catch him.

Fellatio is a matter of taste.

Did anyone notice what last night’s Awareness Concert was for?

According to Ancient Egyptians, the god Osiris created himself by masturbation. He’s pictured as the smiling god with a hairy palm.

Why does every guy who gets hammered always try to get screwed?

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" gives new meaning to "stop and smell the compost pile."

Does he who lies down with fleas get up with a dog?

With my Viagra and the new pill against premature ejaculation, I’m looking forward to hot times with my blow-up doll.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth -- especially if you’re wearing an oat necklace.

Somehow the gila monster never really caught on at the petting zoo.

THE LINCOLN LOSS

2005-07-07T01:35:00.000-07:00

Every time I hear the phrase "Four score and seven years ago," my blood rises.

I’m still angry about how Abe Lincoln cost my team a football game. It was five decades ago back in eighth grade, but time doesn’t heal every wound – especially the ones you get in eighth grade. The loss wasn’t really Lincoln’s fault. It was Miss Grigg’s.

The eighth grade was the first time I’d had Miss Grigg for my English teacher. She started off well enough. She gave me a B-plus for the first grading period. I’d expected slightly higher, but it was no big deal. Miss Grigg wasn’t my favorite. She was humorless and imperiously brusque. In other words, she was a typical teacher.

What really counted with me was our eighth grade football team. I was the starting left guard. As we entered the second grading period at school, our team was undefeated through three games. Classes were just something to get through until I could go to football practice.

That’s why I was irked when Miss Grigg told us we had to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and recite it in front of the class. School was supposed to be answering questions and taking tests, not reciting some ancient speech! Not standing up in front of everybody and looking dumb!

I hated memorizing. It took a lot of hours, a lot of concentration, a lot of practice, and a lot of time away from football. This was very unfair. Instead of studying what came after "four score," I could have been memorizing who the left guard blocked on 22-Series-22, one of our best plays.

I rebelled. On Monday, Miss Grigg began taking volunteers to recite. By Thursday, only three of us had not stumbled through the Address – a kid who was waiting for his sixteenth birthday so he could quit school, a kid who was out most of the week with whooping cough, and me. Friday the whooping cough kid said the Address.

I had figured out that saying the Address was only one grade. By refusing to learn it, I could make my protest against memorizing. Then I could make up for the F and keep my B-plus by acing the tests and handing in all my homework. If it really became necessary, I might answer a few more questions in class during the coming weeks.

That Friday was an important day. After school, our whole team was to get on a bus and go to our first "away" game. The coach said our opponents were strong, but we were stronger. When I went to the locker room to get my helmet, pads, and uniform, the coach told me I couldn’t play. I couldn’t even get on the bus. I was failing English!

I caught up with Miss Grigg just as she was leaving her classroom. "How can I be failing when I have a B-plus average?" I inquired politely at the top of my lungs.

She told me that I did not have a B-plus average for the second grading period. The only grade I had for that period was an F. My measured and considered response was, "That’s not fair!" When the logic of that didn’t change her mind, I told her I’d say the Address right then.

"You have to do it in class," she said. "Monday."

When the team returned a couple of hours later, I learned that we had lost 6-0 on a touchdown scored through left guard – my position. Most of the guys blamed me. Needless to say, on Monday, I recited The Gettysburg Address without a hitch.

It’s important to grow with each experience. Looking back, I realize that the incident taught me one of Life’s great lessons: Don’t mess with Abe Lincoln or Miss Grigg!

A JULY VALENTINE

2005-07-04T16:49:00.000-07:00

My grandfather owned a wholesale candy store which made my friends envious. They assumed I could eat all the candy I wanted for free. That wasn’t so. I had to pay for every gum drop and candy bar lest some store owner be cheated when he bought the box. You don’t make happy customers that way. When I wanted a Clark Bar, I had to put the money in the empty space left by the absent bar. A grocer would open his box of 24 Clark Bars and discover 23 bars and a couple of coins.

My grandfather was in his seventies, but he still "worked" by going to the store every day and sleeping in his office.

My father did almost all the work. He’d spend a day driving around town going from customer to customer, getting their orders. The next day, he’d make up the stacks of Sugar Daddys, Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum, Oh Henry’s, and other nourishing treats. A lot of times, he had to go back after dinner to finish up. And on the third day, he’d pile the candy in a truck and deliver it to candy-sellers -- mostly mom-and-pop grocery stores – around town.

When I got older, I began going to the store in the evening to help my father get candy orders ready for delivery. In the summer, when my father was out getting orders or delivering, I store-sat so my grandfather could sleep. Once in a while a customer phoned in an emergency order: "Help! More Milky Ways!" By the end of the day I’d usually finished all the three-letter words in the newspaper’s crossword.

For my help, my father would always slip me a few dollars on Saturday. That became particularly useful once I started dating.

Sue was an attractive brunette with a good figure and a better mind. She had me in her pocket almost from the day we met. Alas, the course of true love never runs smooth.

One summer day, she and I had one of those you’re-so-pigheaded-I’ll never-speak-to-you-again arguments. I don’t remember what it was about, but I knew I was right, and I was sure that by the next day she’d figure out how right I was and apologize.

But when I called, her mother said, "Sue won’t come to the phone." I asked if she was sick. "I didn’t say ‘can’t,’" her mother explained. "I said ‘won’t.’"

She wouldn’t talk to me the next day either. Or the day after that. Women are unreliable; you can never depend on them to not do what they say they will. When Sue still wouldn’t speak to me the day after that, I knew I’d have to get drastic and do something nice.

So there I was sitting next to the Hershey Bars trying to think of something nice I could do to get Sue to talk to me. Suddenly, inspiration struck.

I went to the back of the store where we had piled a dozen leftover Valentine hearts put out by a fine manufacturer of chocolates. I picked out the prettiest – a big pink-and-blue glory that needed only the dust brushed off the cellophane to soften the hardest real heart. I wrapped and addressed it. Fortunately, I only had to pay the wholesale price, so I slipped five dollars into the cash register. Then I left the store long enough to mail my heart to Sue. Valentine’s Day in July! How could she resist?

The next day at the store I waited for the phone to ring. She was certain to call. When she saw that heart, she’d probably cry. Neat!

My father was on his way out the door on yet another mission to sell candy when he paused. "Why don’t you clean up a little around here?" he ordered. "And throw out all that junk on the back shelves."

"All those great valentine hearts?"

He laughed. "Hell, they’re five or six years old. We sure can’t sell them."

I didn’t know the hearts were that old! Chocolate sitting for five years -- even chocolate wrapped in cellophane -- was not likely to be at all appetizing. In panic, I started for the back of the store. The phone rang.
I can still hear Sue scream, "Wormy candy? You sent me green, wormy candy!"

I should have sent flowers. You can always tell when they’ve expired.

GUEST LIST #6

2005-07-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hal Lusenate: has weird dreams
Molly Coddled: pampered, over-protected weakling
Rose Kollerglas: optimist
Mal O’Dorous: a real stinker
Abner Mall: strange person who doesn’t fit in
Kerry Uhgunn: NRA member
Ty Lucends: finishes well
Dianne Nightly: unfunny comedienne
Ben Bizzy: he never gets back to you
Lou Neetunes: eccentric
Nan D’Nominational: agnostic
Rosa Mongthorns: better than her buddies
Perce Snatcher: sneaky, minor criminal
Scarlet Billows: Mac the Knife’s friend who is beginning to show signs of middle age
Buck Stoptear: found guilty of corporate fraud; sentenced to ten years
Frau Duelent: fake Munich housewife
Sammy Salsa: saucy outfielder
Emile Onnabunn: citizen of Hamburg
Sam Perphigh: U.S. Marine
Will Dew: ever obedient
Fisher Kuttbate: decision maker
Hal Hidymoon: NASA technician
Raymond Bore: actor famous for playing successful but extremely dull TV lawyer.
Rob Peters: always pays Pauls
Hal Nalbrunkal: speech therapist
Tilly Pathek: call girl who always knows just what her customers want
Reggie Sterdbreed: snob
Halle Tosis: beautiful girl but surprisingly unpopular
Beryl O’Maunkees: more fun than almost anything
Rosa Perks: woman who insisted on riding in the front of the company limo
Hardy Harhar: great sense of humor
Larry Etahdogie: cowboy with a huge appetite
Del Lusion: not what he appears to be
Toy l’Twatter: smells surprisingly nice
Earl Lee Byrd: owns a worm farm
Hank O’Hare: hirsute cross-dresser
Skip Toumalew: square dancer
Si Fiesigh: enjoys stories about aliens
Hi Fiesigh: his brother the music lover
Barney Stone: kissable flatterer
Stacy Diztance: unswervingly determined
Buz Werd: famed for rousing oratory
Polly Wollydoodle: off to Lou’siana to see Susy Anna and singin’ all the day
Mona Loa: Miss Hula of 1996
Fidele Wylromeburns: musical arsonist
Russell Kattle: hanged
Curt Tanser: unfriendly conversationalist
Angie O’Plastey: heart surgeon [contributed by Mark Ford]
Patty O’Furniture: prefers to sit outside [contributed by Mark Ford]
Mark Ford: identifies places to cross streams

A TIME FOR CUSSING

2005-06-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

By the summer before fourth grade, I had developed an unsavory reputation for not cussing. All the other guys cussed – had so for a year or two – but not me. I didn’t mind too much when Billy called me "the kid who never says (bleep)," but then Mickey said, "You think you’re better than anyone else." The second worst thing to happen to a fourth grader is to have his friends think he thinks he’s better than they are. Even if he really does think so, he can’t let it show. I knew I had to do something about my vocabulary.

I did not not-cuss for purity of motive. No one in my family ever cussed. I had no role models, and I was afraid I’d screw it up. The first worst thing to happen to a fourth grader is to screw up something all his friends can do right.

I decided to study the subject of how to cuss by observing my friends at their cussing. Normally, one doesn’t really hear the cusswords; they’re just punctuation. I started listening.

It turned out there were four categories of cusswords. The least-used was the biblical taking-the-Lord’s-name-in-vain. That only counted as cussing with us when one added a "damn" after "God." It didn’t count to say somrthing like, "God! I’m hungry!"

The second group of cusswords was anatomical references. These had endless synonyms – so many that often one slipped in when there was no intention of cussing. I’d be sitting in class listening to Miss Lake going on about long division and find the kid next to me giggling. Later he’d whisper to me that she’d said a word that up until that moment I’d thought was an ordinary noun.

Miss Lake wasn’t foulmouthed; there were just too many synonyms. The danger for me was that I might spout a blue streak of synonyms and no one would realize I was cussing. The anatomicals were additionally difficult because I was unfamiliar with the female parts that made up about half of the possible choices. I thought it safer to avoid the anatomicals.

The third category was bodily functions. Truthfully, mentioning these always seemed a bit childish and no more cussing than "tinkle" or "big boom-boom" or "number two."

And that left the biggie – the acme of cussing – a term so loaded that even today it is often referred to in its bowderlized form – the "F-word." If I was to overcome my no-cussing reputation, I’d have to go to the fourth category. But that made me very uneasy because I didn’t know what was actually involved in real life F-wording. I knew that it was done with a boy and a girl, and I had a good guess what they did it with, but I had no idea how. And I sure wasn’t going to reveal my ignorance by asking someone. I’d just have to bluff.

Eventually I decided the mechanics didn’t matter. I didn’t have to understand how an engine works to drive a car, did I? Of course, I would have been a more confident fourth grader had I actually known how to drive a car, but the principle still held.

For more than a week I practiced whenever I was alone. Sometimes I stood in front of a mirror with my eyes half-closed, looking tough. Sometimes I started with my back to the mirror, then whirled around and let fly cusses. I searched for the perfect cuss-phrase to begin my cussing. I settled on "I don’t give a F-word," as my opening cuss. It had insouciance, disdain, and concealed my ignorance of the F-word’s intricacies.

We were playing baseball in the school yard when I hit a pop-foul. A big kid standing out in the street caught the ball. Instead of throwing it back, he began tossing it in the air and catching it. As the pop-foul hitter, it was my job to go recover the ball. I walked over with my hand out. The big kid ignored my entreaties. When he said he might keep the ball forever, I blistered him with my first real, out-loud cuss.

"I F-word what your F-word!" I yelled. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew I had screwed up.

"What?" he asked incredulously.

I wasn’t going to backpedal. "I said I F-word what your F-word! You F-word."

The kid laughed but he tossed me the ball. When I got back to home plate, Billy asked what I’d said. With new confidence, I explained, "I told him to give me the F-wording ball."

"I’ll be F-worded!" Billy said.

TEN TV PILOTS THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT

2005-06-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Each season, new programs are proposed for prime time television. Some succeed; some fail. Many never get any farther than rejected pilots. Here are descriptions of ten TV pilots that very nearly made it to network nightly schedules in years long past. Below that are the titles of the shows. Can you match shows and titles?

Descriptions:
1. __ Two part program about covering your grass with fertilizer.
2. __ Classic story about Texas family’s many love affairs.
3. __ Unoriginal, unappealing, unwatchable science fiction.
4. __ Sunday night primetime show made up of a variety of boxing matches.
5. __ Sitcom about a bar run by a popular singer-actress.
6. __ An uptight army nurse runs a dessert bakery.
7. __ Sitcom proving extra weight means extra smart.
8. __ Story of two breweries built in a nasty part of town.
9. __ Waitress keeps insisting that a small person sit down and relax.
10 __ Woman goes to a ball in a new city each week.

Titles:
a. Star Dreck, b. Chers, c. Dallies, d. Fatter Knows Best, e. Lawn & Odor,
f. Houlihan’s Pieland, g. Alice Rests a Runt, h. The John L. Sullivan Show,
i. Have Gown Will Travel, j. Heel Street Brews

Happily, all was not lost. The titles were later used in part for other successful TV series.

RUNAWAY BRIDE

2005-06-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

Runaway Bride, Runaway Bride,
Where did you go? Where did you hide?
Our zealous media is never too busy
To get caught up in a new tizzy --
Let themselves be sidetracked -- over
Runaway Bride, Spontaneous Rover.

Runaway Bride, Runaway Bride,
You said you’d marry but, darn, you lied.
No one knew where you were rushing.
Latenight TV hosts were gushing
Clever mots designed to hurt you.
Runaway Bride. You’ve lost your virtue!

Runaway Bride, Runaway Bride,
Maybe you should be certified.
When he found out what your fate was,
That’s when your poor would-be mate was
Mortified. It’s all your fault,
Runaway Bride, Skitterish Colt.

Runaway Bride, Runaway Bride,
Some of us laughed. Some of us cried.
You had your flash while we stood by
That’s 15 minutes! Now goodbye,
Farewell, Godspeed, so long, adieu,
Runaway Bride, Runaway . . . who?

A TEST OF FAITH

2005-06-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

Third grade in Wheeling, West Virginia, during World War II had its good and bad points.

The biggest good point was the battleships. Our classroom windows faced the Ohio River, and once or twice a week we all rushed to the windows and watched the spanking new battleships they built up in Pittsburgh sail down to the war. Bristling with a couple of real guns mounted menacingly on their decks, they thrilled us in rhythmic tan and green camouflage or stern warship gray. All us third graders cheered and waved. "Yay! Here comes another battleship, Tojo!"

I was the only kid who knew they weren’t really battleships because for Christmas my Uncle Alfie gave me one of those military recognition books with silouettes of all the American airplanes, tanks and ships. I was pretty sure we were cheering LSTs, those big Landing-Ship-Tank barges with huge doors in front. Newsreels showed them pulling up on a beach and vomiting tanks onto invaded islands. I told the teacher, but she didn’t understand the difference.

I explained, "Battleships don’t float up on beaches."

"But they all battle," she said.

The worst part of third grade was Churchschool. Every Wednesday morning, all the kids from third through sixth grade at George Washington Elementary were sent out to get religious instruction. All but three kids walked half a block to a big protestant church. The three who didn’t were catholic and walked four and a half blocks to Sacred Heart Grade School.

I was one of the three. The other two were my cousin Patty and a fifth grader who hated having to socialize with third graders. He always walked ahead of us.

Every Wednesday came up raining, snowing, or blistering hot, but four and a half blocks wasn’t out of my hiking range. As far as I was concerned, the walk to Sacred Heart was the only good part of Churchschool. I would have liked it to be longer – say, long enough that when we got there we’d have to immediately turn around and come back.

At Sacred Heart, we went straight to a classroom where I swear all the kids were bigger than I was. I’ve forgotten the name of the nun in charge -- I think it’s Freudian – but she was bigger than everybody.

Sister Whatever always made it clear that we three "public school pupils" were interrupting an important classroom lesson about some saint. There were four rows of desks, but the front of each first desk was just a pulldown seat. She always placed each of us up front on pulldown seats so that her regular students could watch us squirm. We couldn’t even rest our elbows.

She used the Socratic Method to teach. She asked questions. I may be wrong but I think Socrates tried to elicit wisdom with his questions. Sister Whatever wanted to elicit mortification. I can’t remember exactly what she asked but the questions were always about people I’d never heard of -- How many jugs did Rachel take from the well? What did Esau have for lunch? Which of Joseph’s brothers rode a camel named Humpy? And like that.

When Sister called on one of her regular students, the kid would stand up and rattle off the answer easy as pie. When she called on one of us public school heathen, we’d stand up and shrug. We’d never heard of Rachel or the rest. After each of us had failed a couple of times, Sister would deplore the inadequacies of a public school rducation. She could deplore that for five minutes without taking a deep breath.

After the first couple Churchschools, I’d go back to Washington Elementary contemplating my eventual consignment to hell for attending a public school. But after a while, I began to wonder just how important it really was to know Esau’s lunch menu. Was I better off knowing how many brothers Joseph had a kazillion years ago or better off knowing an LST from a battleship?

I also discovered that while I was being humiliated at Sacred Heart, all the protestant kids were up at their church eating cookies, singing hymns and watching movies.

In March of 1944, after a crisis of faith, I converted to protestanism. I became either a Lutheran or a Methodist. I forget which, but the cookies were usually chocolate chip.

CHILL, DR. DEAN

2005-06-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

Democrat leaders beg, "Chill, Dr. Dean,
Please do not upset our Republican brothers
With nasty allusions and slurs that are mean.
A more tactful tongue would be our Dean druthers.
If you dare continue your bitter oration,
You may get swift-boated like candidate Kerry,
Dredge up more character assassination –-"
Hey! Who’s that guy yelling, "Give ‘em hell, Harry?"

"If we’re nicer to Right Wingers, then who knows, sir?
They may say we hate our country less often.
Our next lost election may not be much closer,
But maybe the poisonous blowback might soften.
Someday the Neos may grant us some crumbs
If they find our liberal leanings less scary.
We must stop suggesting they’re all thugs and bums –-"
Hey, shut up that guy yelling, "Give ‘em hell, Harry!"

"So let us be kinder and be gentler too.
Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes.
Avoid confrontation, no negative view.
Republican leaders aren’t all rats and snakes.
Sure, compromise may seem like surrender,
But politics can’t be all thrust and parry.
What’s spent on offense blows back on the spender –-"
Hey! Throw out that guy yelling, "Give ‘em hell, Harry!"

This Just In (March, 1775)

2005-06-14T02:53:00.000-07:00

LEADERS ABANDON HENRY

Philadelphia (Colonial Press) - Virginian Patrick Henry found himself with few allies today after uttering words that some Tory leaders criticized as "out of control." Colonial leaders backed away from Henry, insisting that his statements before the Virginia legislature were too extreme to represent their views.

"I don’t think it was helpful to suggest we have no liberty," fellow Virginian G. Washington told reporters. "As Englishmen, we have more liberty than citizens of other countries, like the French. Perhaps Mr. Henry might have said something like ‘Let me retain the liberty already granted.’"

John Hancock of New York counseled. "We certainly our not asking to be given more liberty than other Englishmen. I could never sign my name to a declaration such as Henry’s."

Massachusetts leader John Adams pointed out, "It’s not an either-or thing. One need not go directly from some minor infringement on our liberties all the way to death. There are countless possibilities for negotiation in between. I’m sure George III will prove reasonable once he hears our case."

Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, one of the leaders charged with representing the colonists in their negotiations with England, suggested that extreme views such as Henry’s make it difficult for him when he speaks before Parliament. "Hopefully, the next time Mr. Patrick feels his oratory about to take flight, he will sleep on it." Mr. Franklin then related a short anecdote about the benefits of retiring and rising early.

Despite their critcisms, Colonial leaders were cool to Tory suggestions that Henry be banned from making extreme statements. One leader who preferred to remain anonymous said, "We don’t want to limit Henry’s freedom of speech, just amend it."

IF ONLY YOU CHOOSE WELL

2005-06-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

How things turn out for you each day
Depends on the option you choose.
Opt wisely you’re shouting "Hip-Hip-Hooray!"
Pick badly -- you’re singing the blues.

Sometimes patience should be your guide.
Just wait for a sunnier day.
Had Titanic sailed on a warm summer tide,
That berg would have melted away.

When Custer turned left instead of going right,
It made his famed stand be his last.
Life is a matter of "ifs," "buts" and "mights"
So never make choices too fast.

Had Lincoln decided to skip that ol’ play,
Stay home with his wifey instead,
The newspaper headline on the next day
Would not have pronounced him dead.

Had Hauptmann retained Perry Mason,
He would have been cleared. Here is why.
Ol’ Perry’d have won the case on
A confession by some other guy.

Had helium filled up the Hindenberg’s tanks,
It wouldn’t have gone down in hot flame.
The tragic choice of hydrogen ranks
As the worst gas-up we can name.

Mankind’s goofs could set minds to boggling --
So many tragic paradoxes!
(I’m pleased to get this chance at blogging.
I usually lecture on old soapboxes.)

MERKLE'S BONER

2005-06-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

[Previously published in Oldetyme Baseball News]
Guest Blogger Dr. Charles T. Gregory
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology, Mountebank University

In baseball lore, Fred Merkle has been castigated as a "Bonehead" ever since 1908 when he failed to touch second base. I even included a few chapters on the incident in A History of Balls of the Base Variety. I was particularly pleased with the chapter in which I related the phrase "get to second base" to American interpersonal relationships and suggested that Merkle’s failure to accomplish that at the Polo Grounds may have stemmed in part from his high school years when he took an unusually chaste young lady to the prom.

Everyone remembers the situation at the Polo Grounds on that fateful September 23: the Cubs and Giants tied in the last of the ninth with two out, Harry "Moose" McCormick on third, Merkle on first. Suddenly Al Bridwell singled, apparently winning the game for New York. But, instead of running to second base, young Merkle headed for the centerfield clubhouse. Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers called for the ball, but Joe McGinnity, who was coaching for the Giants, intercepted and heaved it into the stands. Eventually a ball was retrieved (though many said it was not the one that Bridwell had hit) and Merkle was called out at second. By then, everything was so tumultuous that play could not be resumed, and the game was declared a draw. A few weeks later, when the Giants and Cubs tied in the final standings, the game was replayed. And when the Cubs won, they had the pennant and young Merkle was blamed for the Giants’ failure.

Only of late, new evidence has come to light to indicate history has been in error for more than 90 years. It wasn’t "Bonehead" Merkle at all; it was "Bonehead" McGinnity.

The new facts are contained in a slender volume entitled Memoirs of a Peanut Vender by Leonard Mercedes Skiff recently rediscovered in the Gatesboro (New York) Public Library. For many years, this privately printed book, apparently the only surviving copy, had been mis-filed under "Agriculture." It was only when a Gatesboro broccoli salesman who was considering a career change happened to pick it off a dusty shelf that Memoirs of a Peanut Vendor was discovered to include Mr. Skiff’s remembrance of that famous game in 1908, during which he by chance had a unique ringside seat.

In Chapter Seven (pp. 45-51), Skiff explains that he was hawking his peanuts in the stands along the first base side when a dissatisfied customer, after biting into a sour peanut, hurled the almost full bag at Skiff’s head. The bag richocheted off Skiff’s cranium onto the field of play and landed near first base. Skiff asserts that this occurred just after Merkle’s single.

Feeling responsible for the bag of peanuts on the field and recognizing the possibility of an ankle injury should a player happen to step on it, Skiff climbed over the railing and onto the field to retrieve the danger-laden peanuts. Just as he neared first base, he heard the burly McGinnity lean in from his coaching box and snarl at Merkle, "Listen, you stupid rookie, you do exactly what I tell you or I’ll fix your wagon!"

While these words might seem harsh, it will be remembered by baseball historians that 19-year-old Merkle was only a recent addition to the team and the hefty McGinnity was a disciple of Giants’ manager John McGraw, a mentor renowned for treating his players as automatons.

The game situation was so tense at that moment that no one had halted play despite the presence of the conscientious peanut vender on the field. Indeed, says Skiff, no one seemed to notice he was there. Just as he picked up the hazardous bag of peanuts, Bridwell made his hit. Merkle headed properly for second base, Skiff insists.

It was at that moment that McGinnity made the fatal error that was ultimately to cost the Giants the pennant. He forgot that his duty was to coach Merkle from first to second and instead turned his attention to McCormick, who was trotting in from third with what seemed to be the winning run. In fact, says Skiff, he began shouting directions across the diamond to McCormick. That baserunner, a lumbering fellow, was universally called "Moose" by friend and foe alike. But for some reason, McGinnity used the gentleman’s proper name in bellowing his orders: "Home! Harry. Home!"

According to Skiff, Merkle heard McGinnity yelling and turned short of second. "His face took on a quizzical expression," Skiff wrote. "I understood instantly what was going through his young mind. As a newcomer to the club, he no doubt knew McCormick only as ‘Moose.’ Moreover, given McGinnity’s earlier threat, he had to expect that any instructions coming from that direction were meant for him. And, with the noise of the crowd, it seemed to him that McGinnity was yelling, ‘Home! Hurry home!’

"But surely McGinnity could not have wanted him to head for home plate, for at that base the only run necessary for victory was being scored by another. There was only one other ‘home’ possible. Obediently, the quick-witted Merkle headed for the Giants’ ‘home’ at the Polo Grounds -- the centerfield clubhouse."

Skiff goes on to theorize that the reason McGinnity fought so hard for control of the baseball was his realization that his coaching error might cost the Giants the game. Furthermore, Skiff praises Merkle for his refusal to reveal the old veterans’ mistake so that McGinnity "might live out his days in honor and never be subjected to the ridicule and scorn mistakenly heaped on the young first baseman by those who did not know the true story."

THE RETURN OF THE ADAGE

2005-06-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Information is power! Quick, name the Seven Dwarfs!

She swam over and kissed him passionately. When he backstroked away, she thought he was being chased by a shark.

Those who can – do. Those who can’t – become sports reporters. Those who once could do but can’t anymore – become color men for TV games.

I favor doing unto others as I would have them do unto me, and if I did unto others as the Religious Right does unto others, I would have others beat the hell out of me.

There’s nothing wrong about sex between a man and a sheep so long as they are both consenting adults. Sadly, some sheep are real whores and cannot sustain a lasting relationship. They’ll break your heart!

The truth shall make you free – if you’ve got a good lawyer.

Mary had a little lamb, along with some mashed potatoes, diced carrots, and a light green salad.

Thus far I’ve had no luck in my ambition to become a porn star. Nevertheless, I still go to all the auditions.

If buffaloes had carried guns in the1800s, one of them might have been called "Bill Cody" Buffalo.

Will Rogers said he never met a man he didn’t like. You didn’t know him, did you?

THIS JUST IN

2005-05-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

Several male Indy drivers have complained that Danica Patrick had an unfair advantage with her 100-pound weight. They complained her car could go faster because of its lighter total weight. Obviously, that's why all the best racecar drivers are jockeys.

Oliver Stone has announced his new project. It's about a conspiracy to railroad an innocent man to prison. It opens with a spurious DUI.

A mother in Nashville was arrested for hiring a stripper to perform at her 16-year-old son’s birthday party. She was turned in by a clerk at the drug store where she took the photos to be developed. The clerk explained that for his birthday he only got socks and underwear.

Those who’ve agreed with the criticism Nixon loyalists have aimed at Mark "Deep Throat" Felt will enjoy reading Al Capone’s assessment of Elliott Ness.

I DIDN'T FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY

2005-05-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Sweetie,

You probably think I forgot your birthday. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I didn’t mention it Thursday because the gifts I ordered for you hadn’t arrived yet. I couldn’t say, "Happy birthday; now hold your horses for presents."

I went all out to get great birthday presents, and I wanted to see your face when I gave them to you. I ordered a 24-carat diamond ring, a full-length mink coat, a 60-inch digital television, a paint-by-numbers picture of The Last Supper, and a big cake with sprinkles.

Well, they all arrived yesterday, and I was set to invite you over so I could give them to you.

But first I wanted to be sure everything was okay. I tried on the coat, counted the paint tubes, and watched Regis on the TV. Then I put the ring on my little finger. It was really shiney. Looked great! But when I tried to take it off, it got stuck. So I pulled and pulled. Suddenly my hand slipped and my left arm went flying out.

I happened to be standing in front of the television set. Wouldn’t you know, my hand collided with the screen, making about a ten-inch scratch on the glass. Worse, the set started teetering over backward. I grabbed for it, but I was too late.

The TV set crashed with an enormous noise right on the paint by numbers. Smashed that sucker flat! All the paint tubes, of course, spurted out their paint like rockets going off.

Well, the bad part was the mink coat happened to be sitting next to the paint set, and the thing got drenched in every color present at the Last Supper. It looked more like Joseph’s coat than a mink’s.

Here’s a funny thing. Did you know that when you try to clean oil paint out of mink fur with turpentine the mink sheds?

After a while I just gave up and tossed the balding coat in the trash along with the flat paint tubes and the remains of the TV set. That’s when I noticed that the 24-carat diamond had fallen out of the setting in the ring. I’m still looking for it. I guess the only thing harder than a diamond is finding a diamond that’s lost.

The only present I had left was your cake. I hope you don’t mind but I was so depressed I ate it.

Anyway, happy birthday. I’ll get you something really great next year.

Love,

PHEROMONES

2005-05-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

Pheromones are the chemicals we
Send out to entice other sexes.
"Mones" have no taste or smell, you see,
But they conquer like love-loaded hexes.

Like dogs get yipsy at notes so high
That only a doggie can hear ‘em,
Gals go all tipsy over a guy
When they sniff pheromones near ’em.

A guy can find all the lovin’ he seeks,
And get it a whole lot quicker
Than years wasted usin’ techniques
Like flowers and candy and liquor!

No aphrodisiacs needed for moi
Or learning erogenous zones.
The sexiest guy you ever saw --
Just me and my great pheromones.

Right now my passions are all on hold.
Their moment will come soon enough.
It’s just that the girls must all have colds.
I’ll score when their noses unstuff.

GUEST LIST #5

2005-05-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

Boss Annova: Mafia crime lord and graceful dancer
Helmut Olivet: Franco-German hermit
Constance Pated: uptight lady
Wade Ryetin: rash first-day hire
Denny Grate: put-down artist
Cal Cuelator: IBM vice president
Marvin Gardens: monopolist
Virginia Avenue: Marvin’s assistant
Diego Nafloor: clumsy chef
Wade Dingpool: cautious near water
Norma Lizer: calming influence
Bob Ben Weaver: elusive boxer
Evan Munny: careful gambler
Otto Mayted: lacking in spontaneity
Cora Spondant: named as "other woman" in divorce suit
Della Gates: manipulator who always gets others to do her work
Perry Normal: ghost chaser
Heidi Hoe: drives the local Welcome Wagon
Sharon Clapp: Party Girl who has recently lost her popularity
Jess Gruven: cool cat
Gail Warner: Weather Girl
Donna Teeshird: casual dresser
Ivan Myemomma: immature complainer
Les Filling: captain of a championship Beer-Debating Team
Paul Behrer: professional mourner
Ellis Emefftee: lucky smoker
Gordon Knott: extremely twisted enigma who never opens up
Gregor Ian Chan: religious Number 20 Son
Wood Dennikle: counterfeiter
Arrianna Klozer: impatient traveler
Stacy Tedplees: a calming influence
Nick Slevel: constantly improving
Armand Joy: sweet but kind of nutty
Selma Body: prostitute
Sadie Word: always ready
Rosemary Thyme: Herb’s companion
June Moon: failed poet
Phil DeBurn: demanding personal trainer
Tod Danfetherd: into S and M
Orel Whoopey: cunning linguist
Hugo Victor: author of Les Selbaresim
Peyton Toowan: oddsmaker
Bobby Rant: Londoner who complains long and loud about the police
Kenny Topthis: constant challenger
Marian Haste: leisurely repenter
Sam Andreas: Californian with a fault
Jess Hangengout: loafer
Bemis Upscotti: Trekee
Justin Stock: the man who has everything
Cece Andesist: quitter

THREE WISHES

2005-05-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

My friend Joe calls me up so excited he’s fit to bust. "You won’t believe it!" he yells. "I bought this dumb lamp at an auction this morning. I get it home and start to polish it and poof! Out pops a genie! He says I got three wishes."

Naturally, I hustle over to Joe’s house. When I get there, his yard is full of cowboys, all carrying ropes and guns. And all drunk as a skunk.

I go up to his door and I can barely get through ‘cause his front hall is taken up by this guy shoving wrist watches, alarm clocks, hour glasses, and other time pieces into bags.

I go inside and there’s Joe sitting on his sofa crying. Next to him is a genie looking baffled. And next to him is the littlest guy I ever saw – less than a foot tall – bangin’ away on a miniature piano.

"Joe," I shout, "you could ask for anything in the world and you ask for a nine-inch pianist, a tight posse, and a clock sacker. Are you crazy?"

And the genie cups his hand to his ear and says, "Lazy? Who’s lazy?"

ME AND GEE: A BASEBALL STORY

2005-05-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Christmas when I was eleven I got a bat. My parents didn’t try to disguise it in a box. It’s hard to make a bat in a box look like like anything else except maybe a length of pipe or a dead snake, and I hadn’t asked for either of those. They just tied a ribbon around it and stuck it under the tree. That was okay. If I’d been in Florida or California, I’d have gone right out and hit a few flies and let the other presents sit. But that year we had the rotten luck to have a white Christmas in West Virginia.

Until I got mine, the only kid in my gang to own a bat was Chuckie, and we all used it in our games. But Chuckie’s bat was so old the wood had turned gray and the barrel end was starting to split. I blamed Chuckie’s bat for the hitting slump I’d been having since I was eight. My new Christmas bat was a rich chestnut and polished to a sheen. It looked filled with home runs.

Stamped on the barrel was the authentic signature of Gee Walker. I’d never heard of him -- I found out later he’d been long retired by the time I got his bat -- and it would have been nice if it had been stamped Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio. But, having gone my whole life without owning any bat, I wasn’t going to complain about Gee Walker.

I did complain about the weather. After the Christmas snow melted, it snowed some more -- all through January. Of course, we could only play baseball, if we’d been able to play baseball, on the weekends because everybody but Billy had chores after school, and it got dark early. There was one nice Saturday in February, but the ballfield by the tracks was deep in mud and the schoolyard had a four-inch sheet of ice covering its bricks.

Billy had an idea. "I’ll bet we could break the ice off if we hit it with a bat."

I almost hit him.

When it was too cold or rainy to play ball in March, I began to worry. Miss Pratt, our health teacher, told us one day that muscles that weren’t used got weaker and weaker.

Billy asked, "Do you mean like that muscle between Chuckie’s ears, Miss Pratt?"

Everybody laughed except Miss Pratt. She wrote "A TROPHY" on the blackboard, and then told us that once she broke her arm and had it in a cast for weeks and weeks. "When the doctor took off the cast," she said, holding a ruler up, "I could barely lift this ruler." Then she brought the ruler down very fast and hard on Billy’s fingers. Smack! "But, with excercise, I got my strength back," she said.

I was scared my Gee Walker bat would get a trophy! It was almost April and it hadn’t been able to hit a single ball. If we didn’t play ball soon, it might be permanently weakened!

The last Saturday in March was perfect for baseball. But Mickey owned the ball and his dumb grandmother died. He had to go to her dumb funeral and wouldn’t let us use his dumb ball. The next day it rained. Gee Walker was wasting away!

At last, we got a playable Saturday. The tracks field was still too muddy, but the ice was gone from the schoolyard. We all got there early and chose up sides -- three to a team. Billy chose Mickey and Jimmy the Fat Kid, which meant his team had speed, power, and good fielding. I had Chuckie, Ross, and me, which meant our team had Chuckie, Ross, and me.

At least, we batted first. I took a practice swing with Gee Walker and announced I’d bat first. Chuckie urged that he bat first instead. Chuckie was a half-foot taller than I and twenty pounds heavier, so his logic prevailed. "Okay," I said magnanimously, "but use your own bat."

Surprisingly, Chuckie hit the ball, but it flew out to the pitcher funny. Billy ducked, and that’s when I saw it wasn’t a ball whizzing by his head, but half of Chuckie’s bat.

"I’m up," I yelled. Me and Gee!

"Captain always bats last," Ross hollered. "I’m up."

I explained to him that this was a special case -- the first time I’d get to use my Christmas bat. He explained to me that if he didn’t get to bat he’d go home.

"Game over! We win!" Billy yelled.

"Can we tape Chuckie’s bat back together?" I asked.

Ross held out his hand. I gave him Gee. I didn’t cry.

The worst part was that every time Ross got a hit, he threw the bat. Poor Gee would be scraped raw on the schoolyard bricks before I ever got to use him.

"C’mon, Ross! Get a hit!" Chuckie yelled.

I yelled, "C’mon, Billy! Strike him out!"

When Billy twirled that third strike past Ross, I ran up and grabbed Gee out of his hands before he could throw it. "This bat’s no good," he told me. Ha!

As soon as my fingers closed around Gee’s handle, I knew he was not a trophied. After all these months, he was bursting to crack line drives. Everyone sensed that a new power was coming to bat. Mickey, the left-center-rightfielder, backed up almost to the fence. Jimmy the Fat Kid twisted the wrapper around his Zagnut bar and stuck it in his pocket. Somewhere a dog stopped barking.

I stood at the plate. I felt loose, powerful, and ready. I cocked Gee over my right shoulder. The schoolyard fence beckoned. I swear Billy cringed as he pitched the ball.

Coming in, the ball looked big as a grapefruit. I hate grapefruit. Gee hated grapefruit. I swung him with all my might.

Twap!

The ball blasted back toward Billy. On its second bounce, it hit a loose brick and leaped over his head. Jimmy the Fat Kid couldn’t bend over fast enough as the ball flashed between his legs. Mickey raced in but misfigured and the ball rolled to the fence.

At full gallop, I was around first, around second, third. Mickey was just throwing the ball in when I reached the plate. Home run!

"You’re out," Billy said.

In our excitement, Gee and I hadn’t parted company. He was still in my hands. I had broken one of the cardinal rules and carried my bat onto the basepaths. I’m not sure why we had such a rule -- perhaps because a baserunner with a club in his hands might inhibit a fielder in a close play -- but it was certain that such a rule existed. Once Jimmy the Fat Kid had been called out when he couldn’t let go of the bat because of sticky fingers.

I didn’t try to argue with Billy. Gee and I had smashed a wonderful home run, but we were definitely out.

Billy’s team came in to bat. I suddenly realized that they would be using Gee -- Jimmy the Fat Kid with his sticky fingers and Mickey who threw the bat almost as bad as Ross!

"I’ve got to go home, " I announced. "It’s my grandmother’s funeral." Maybe by tomorrow Chuckie might have fixed his bat.

DEAR TED:

2005-05-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

Draft of a letter; found in the Oval Office wastebasket in 1998. [The words in red were scratched out]

Dear [Mr. Kazinski] Ted,

By the time you read this, you will have learned that I have issued you a Presidential pardon. Your release should follow in a day or two and you can get on with your life’s work. [I’m sor] I didn’t intend to take so long to get around to it, but I have been extremely occupied with a PRIVATE and PURELY PERSONAL problem. Even Presidents have private [affairs] lives.

I take full responsibility for acting so slowly. I might have forgot completely except that during a recent [inquisition by] conversation with Mr. Kenneth Starr, the well-known lawyer and ADVOCATE OF TECHNOLOGY, he happened to refer to you as "that CRAZY MAN" who should be "LOCKED UP FOR LIFE." His harsh, unforgiving words caused me to feel your pain. He shouldn’t have done that. In fact, it was wrong. There’s no nice way to say it – he has sinned.

In starting a new life, you might want to seek help from some politically powerful people. I am enclosing with this letter the names and addresses of the 50 most important Republicans (Ken Starr’s address is on page 6). I may send you a list of important Democrats later [depending on a few votes].

Best of luck with your new freedom. Have a BLAST!

Your friend,

Bill Clinton

P.S.: Ken Starr also wants to raise postal rates on packages!

ADDED ADAGES

2005-05-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

Politics makes strange sodomites.

You can’t win lying down. To get elected, you must lie UP and down.

He who hesitates has time to double-check the bungee cord.

Too much masterbation will make you lose your memory and something else I can’t remember.

Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, except for your bratty daughter.

You can’t burn a candle at both ends -- unless you put it on its side, or you can soften it in the middle and bend both ends up, or you can make the wick out of something that will burn no matter what, or you can cut it in two and set the bottom half upside down, or . . . .

You know you’ve got a poor sex life when you can walk into a drug store with a dollar and walk out with a lifetime supply of condoms.

Eat natural. Never touch food that hasn’t grown out from under a ton of animal feces.

My favorite player never used steroids. He owes his exceptional muscles to the many hours he’s spent combing his back.

Theological ethicists say there is growing evidence that the unusual recent outbreak of destructive weather is God’s punishment for Pat Robertson.

THE DOUBLEDAY LEGEND

2005-05-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Charles T. Gregory (Guest Blogger)
Professor of Leisure History and Comparative Phrenology, Mountebank University

Nearly every modern history of baseball is at great pains to explain that General Abner Doubleday did NOT, as was earlier alleged, invent the national game. Historians have found that the Doubleday claim rested solely on the questionable testimony of one Abner Graves to the Mills Commission, a group of baseball graybeards assembled at the turn of the century to investigate baseball’s origin. Graves said that his boyhood friend, Abner Doubleday, had conceived baseball on an April day in 1839 at Cooperstown, New York.

Among other proofs used to debunk Graves’ assertion, it is usually stated that Doubleday could not have been in Cooperstown at that time because it would have meant he was absent-without- leave from West Point where he was then enrolled as a cadet. In that Doubleday rose to the rank of U.S. Army general, indeed was a hero of the Civil War, such a blot on his record as an early AWOL seems highly unlikely.

However, a newly discovered document casts further light on the subject. It explains some discrepencies in Graves’ story and suggests that contributions to American sport by the Doubleday family may have been far greater than is presently believed. The document in question is a letter written to the Mills Commission by Hamilton J. Cresap in August of 1904. It was found only this year in an old trunk stored in the attic of Mrs. Louise Cresap Haines, Hamilton Cresap’s great-grandaughter. Mrs. Haines resides in Credulous Hollow, New York, near Cooperstown. She happened on the trunk while looking for possible contributions she might make to the local old clothing drive conducted by the the Third Methodist Church.

The letter was addressed and sealed but never mailed. Mrs. Haines has investigated her ancestor’s history through notes in the family bible and news clippings from the Credulous Hollow Gazette. She believes the letter was unmailed because Cresap met an untimely demise beneath the wheels of a Coopers Brew beer truck before he could consign his story to the post office. Handwritten on lined paper, the contents of the letter are here published for the first time:

April 18, 1906

Dear Mr. Mills & Gentlemen,

The last time I talked to my old friend A. Graves he told me he had communicated some information to you about our mutual acquaintance A. Doubleday and a certain day in 1839. Unfortunately, from his discription, Mr. Graves seems to have got some of his facts wrong.

I well remember that April morning for it happened to be my 16th birthday. My uncle George Cresap gave me a new bat for the occasion. I named it "Herschel" and put it in a cage in my room. As it turned out, Herschel was not a very good pet. He slept all day and caused quite a ruckus at night. I finally released him to the more congenial confines of the Third Methodist Church belfry.

Later on the morning in question, a number of us boys turned out with ballbat and ball at our local green, intent upon a rousing game of One-Old-Cat. We were met there by A. Doubleday. However, this was not Abner but instead his first cousin Anser.

I can understand why Mr. Graves mis-remembered. No doubt all of us who knew him would like to forget Anser. He was a perverse individual, who gained pleasure by forcing others to his will. For a time he was known as "Bully" Doubleday. This was later shortened to "Bull."

Doubleday told us we were not going to play our usual game of One-Old-Cat but instead a new game that he’d thought up in his spare moments at the Cooperstown Iron Foundry where he worked. He ordered us all home to procure the necessary equipment.

When we returned we discovered that Bull had set four stones on the lawn, placed so as to form the corners of a rectangle. These, he instructed, were the boundaries around which we were to race. Then we all put on our rollerskates and spent the morning playing Bull Doubleday’s new game which he called "Roller Derby."

The last I heard of Anser Doubleday was that he had disgraced his family by showing the yellow streak at the Battle of Manassas. In fact, his cowardice was so pronounced that the affair has since been widely known as "The Battle of Bull’s Run."

In hopes that this will clear up any unfortunate misunderstandings caused by my old friend Graves’ faulty memory, I remain

Your Obedient Servant,
H. Cresap

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT PLEDGING

2005-05-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

When one pledges his allegiance "to the flag," he is not expressing loyalty to that piece of cloth. One of the many meanings of the word "to" is "toward." What is really meant is "I pledge my allegiance toward the flag and to the republic for which it stands." Or, to be absolutely clear, "I pledge my allegiance to our republic as I’m facing the flag which symbolizes it."

The reason one looks toward the flag while proclaiming one’s loyalty is that flags are handier than complete maps of the United States, particularly since we added Hawaii and Alaska.

Of course, one does not absolutely need a symbol to focus on while pledging, and if one is alone and feels like pledging allegiance, one can dispense with the flag. Actually, one can dispense with saying it out loud.

However, assuming that the pledging is being done aloud in a room full of, say, third graders, it is probably best to have them all face in the same direction. Otherwise, they tend to make faces at each other. They might simply face the front of the room, but it would eventually be thought of as pledging allegiance to the blackboard.

Besides, pledging "to" the flag keeps them from asking difficult questions like, "Teacher! Teacher! What the hell is a republic?"

GUEST LIST #4

2005-04-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Jerzy Bownz: manufactures rubber blow-up cows
Lou Kwaishus: radio talk-show host
Paddy O’Sama: Irish terrorist
Buck Shorter: welcher
Morris Bettah: corporate executive
Evar Reddy: lighthouse keeper
Patricia Cornfed: writes mystery novels about a forensic veternarian
Hugh Sehyellay: West Coast academic
Sue Grufftone: mystery writer; her latest & Is for Ambersand
Jock Kitsch: tawdry, vulgar and pretentious athlete
Lois Spirits: pessimist
Bev O’Wack: camper
Adam Mupp: C.P.A.
Yassar Trebaggsful: sheep shearing terrorist
Arch Support: shoe salesman
Ellen Wheels: wild, unpredictable lady
Dee Kupp: extremely well-endowed sweater model
Ice Berg: Jewish rap artist
Donna Party: non-vegetarian
Bjorn Tolouse: French biker gang member
June Moon: lyricist
Sammy Baughhumbug: famous grumpy NFL passer of 1940s
Imogene Clone: lacks originality
Ty Wonon: sot
Ida Sworn: shows extremely poor judgment
Ken Dew: energetic optimist
Lois Ann Clark: schizophrenic explorer
Marta Nan Lewis: singer-comedienne
Lupe deLoop: stunt pilot
Pierre Daily: suffers from chronic dehydration
Jesus Saves: born-again banker
Wolf Blitzen: celebrated newsman and sleigh-puller
Mucho DeNiro: daughter of Robert DeNiro and one of the Marx Sisters
Raleigh Mawnkey: extremely exuberant baseball fan
Diane Nonstege: seldom-funny comedienne
Freda Goeh: parolee
Helen Highwater: daredevil
Ali Glitters: not to be confused with Ali Gold
Lon Geray: cross-dresser
Hugh Tohpia: the man with perfect hair
Al Priori: conspiracy theorist
Anna Partridge: lady lumberjack and fruit picker
Hyman Howgozit: nightclub greeter
Dwayne DeOil: gwease monkey
Polly Unsatcherate: fat girl
Lily Putian: female jockey
Sarah Togatrunk: legendary mover of ancient Rome
Len Mehyerkome: kooky valet parker
Lola Palooza: sexy Italian actress
Al Ackrety: a very quick guy

ELEVEN O'CLOCK MUST-SEE

2005-04-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

At five till eleven every night I’m edgier than a serrated scimitar. What’s happening out there that I don’t know about?

What if Hurricane Butch blew Louisiana into Vermont tonight? What if that serial killer left Florida and is headed for my door? What if someone I never heard of died in Monroeville? What if there’s corruption in the government? What if an asteroid is smashing into Montana right now and destroying all life on earth? I’ll feel pretty silly if I miss that!

I was going to say I like to watch the eleven o’clock news, but I really don’t. I watch it as a bad habit like smoking -- I don’t enjoy it anymore but I start to twitch if it’s not there. I need the news to sleep. Otherwise, I’ll toss and turn like a penny in the dryer and wake up every hour to check how long to go before I can wake up. I guess I need the news because I subconsciously realize that no matter how scary my nightmares might get later, they’ll never match the horrors TV confided to me at bedtime. I’ll sleep right through my dream of being devoured by a scaly dragon if I know there are worse things in the real world. Because of the eleven o’clock news, I’ve enjoyed many a night’s sound sleep (and several scaly dragons grew fat).

But lately the news doesn’t have its old zing. Oh, there’s plenty of bad things happening. It’s not that the message got better; it’s the messengers who are slipping.

My town has three stations offering news at eleven, but two of them are in the category I call "Only-Watch-at-Gunpoint."

The gunpoint station with the highest channel number used to be my favorite. That had nothing to do with its news content -- which was probably no better or worse than the others -- But what they offered as a bonus was the best unintentional humor in local TV.

In its quest to appear to be an equal-opportunity employer, the station hired a blonde ditz named Beverly. Talking without a teleprompter totally defeated her. Once, when the studio sound was lost to an on-the-scene reporter, she began: "John, I know you can’t hear me but I want to ask you this question ...." To her surprise, John continued to stare blankly into the camera. She led off one newscast with: "Groucho Marx took a turn for the worse tonight. In fact, he died." On another occasion, she turned to a co-anchor, "Adam, I’m not from around here. What does NATO stand for?" Perhaps her most memorable moment came when a piece of film failed and she tried to explain to viewers what they would have seen if it hadn’t. At the end of thirty seconds of rambling, she somehow gave the impression that a local dog had shot a local man. Mercifully, the director went to an unscheduled commercial.

Beverly shared the anchordesk with a veteran newsman named Adam and a features reporter named Jack. Virtually every night viewers could count on Beverly to ad lib some god-awful non-sequitar to Adam or Jack who, in staunch newsman-style would nod sagely and bite their lips. There must have been blood all over the anchordesk. One night the show opened with Beverly alone at the desk. She solemnly informed the viewers: "Adam’s in the hospital and Jack’s off too."

When she was simply reading from a teleprompter, Beverly could still be disastrous. Her forte was mispronouncing names, but even common English words could baffle her. My favorite was the two minutes she devoted one night to a story about the rise of "Heat Disease" among women. She mentioned the dread malady Heat Disease at least six times while I scratched my head. When she returned from a commercial break, Beverly blithly confided that her earlier story had actually been about Heart Disease.

Sadly, Beverly left the station for a bigger market and was succeeded by a parade of pretty male and female strangers from far away who were uniformly defeated in their struggles to pronounce Monongehela. I finally gave up. If they didn’t know to un-Frenchify North Ver-SALES, they didn’t belong in my living room.

For a time I tried the middle-numbered channel even though I always felt if I admitted it to a priest I’d be saying Hail Mary’s until Easter. Perhaps "sleaze" is too strong a word, but this channel had less sensitivity than an octogenerian’s private parts. They never met a bloody accident or a dead body they wouldn’t film in living color. After one too-many of their reporters asked a dazed survivor how it felt to watch his house burn down and his children burn up, I burned out.

I’m down to my last local eleven o’clock news, but I can’t say I’m thrilled.

The anchorheads spend a lot of time telling me what they’ll be telling me and very little time actually telling me.

For example, before the first commercial break I hear: "Eight people die in a shootout. We’ll tell you the details!" After an eternity of ads for new cars that look like last year’s, diet drinks that pretend to taste like milk shakes, and lawyers who promise to get me money if I’m even in the same time zone as an accident, the anchorhead returns to voiceover film on the rescue of some guy’s pet boa constrictor from a phone booth in San Diego, briefly mention a new pill that’s coming on the market to fight five o’clock shadow, and dazzle us with a photo of a rock on Mars which looks suspiciously like any number of rocks in Wilmerding. Meanwhile, I’ve been mentally running through a list of all my acquaintances who might possibly be involved in a large scale homicide.

Just before going to another break, I get the details of the shootout which may have killed eight of my closest friends: "In Spagnu, Czechoslovakia, today, eight people were killed in a shootout."

I don’t know anyone in Spagnu.

"Next, the pictures on your wall can give you cancer. We’ll tell you how!"

Much of the program is given over to self-congratulatory promos about the advantages of watching their news in your hometown because their news people really care. I guess the other stations are just in it for the money.

Eventually we get to the weather. I’m not very good with weather. I still can’t tell partly cloudy from partly sunny. I always have to find out what someone has decided it’s going to be partly like tomorrow, but by the next morning I always forget what was predicted. I’m always surprised by the snow storm, rain squall, heat wave, or partly cloudy. Or sunny. It’s not all my fault. The secret of successful weathermanning is to perform the task with so little charisma that viewers forget what you said as soon as you’ve said it. Then they won’t blame you when a blizzard blots out their picnic. The actual prediction takes all of seven seconds but it’s couched in two minutes of camouflage about highs, lows. inversions, and a weather map that looks like it is being digested by amoebas. The station’s super-duper weather radar is so advanced they gave it a name that sounds like you could fly it to Saturn and blow up the ring.

Someone should tell them it’s still just radar.

After years of watching, the only thing I remember is it’s usually colder in Canada. At least in the top part.

The best part of the sports news is the sportsguy’s eyebrows; they jump up and down like first graders on a sugar diet. He could be semaphoring the Steelers’ Game Plan to Bengals spies, but it’s probably just show. After all, he’s a "hometown guy."

The sports segment serves roughly the same purpose as the editorial page in a newspaper -- that is, the sportsguy treats us to his opinions and occasionally makes vague references to signings, salaries, and scores. There’s often a filmed interview with a local athlete who earnestly reveals he’ll play one game at a time while giving one-hundred-and-ten-percent. He just wants to make a contribution to the team. So long as it’s not monetary. The sports news ends with a "Watch This!" segment so we can see a fiery car crash in Florida, a basket from midcourt in Oregon, or an ostrich race in New Mexico.

After one last piece of important breaking news -- usually involving film of a cute animal -- the weatherguy reprises his soothsaying in case you couldn’t figure out what he was talking about the first time. Then, after threatening to return tomorrow, the anchors banter small talk about the Pirates until fade out. I keep expecting one of them to ask, "That IS baseball, isn’t it?" but I can’t decide which one will say it.

THE BEST MOVIE EVER

2005-04-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

One June day when I was eight, I pestered my mother into giving me sixteen cents so I could go with my buddy Bice to a movie. In those days you could go to a movie for sixteen cents. And in those days two eight-year-olds could walk four city blocks unchaperoned and spend a summer afternoon in a theater without any grown-ups to order them around. Bice and I did it all the time.

There were five movie theaters in town, but our preferred picture palace was the State Theater. One of its features was always a western. We liked to get there early so we could get seats down front if it was crowded. This day it wasn’t crowded, but being early was still good because we got to see a newsreel, two different Previews of Coming Attractions, a Three Stooges short, a chapter of the latest serial, and a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The main feature was "Island of Rainbows" or "Rainbow on the Island" or something to do with islands and rainbows. It was sort of a South-Sea-island-comedy-adventure. With music. It came on in glorious technicolor and was thrilling and funny all the way through. I even liked the love story part – the boy and girl mostly argued and only kissed once..

Next, we watched the second feature – a western with Bob Steele -- called "Rangers of Dirty Valley" or something. Bob Steele was my favorite cowboy, but I really couldn’t get excited. My mind was still going over "Isle of Rainbows." I tried to compare it with something else that was wonderful, and I decided it was like Christmas. Not last Christmas when I got mostly socks and underwear, the Chrismas-before-last when I got a baseball glove.

When the western ended, Bice went home. I stayed so I could watch "Rain on the Bow" again. In those days you could do that, pay one admission and stay and watch the movie again and again right up until the theater closed. I didn’t mind sitting through one newsreel, two previews, three Stooges, the fourth chapter, and a cartoon to see what I’d already decided was my all-time favorite movie.

"Island Blowfish" was just as good the second time around. I would have stayed for the next showing, but I was already late for dinner.

Without a doubt, "Isle of Raining" was the greatest movie ever filmed. I would have bet it won the Oscar that year hands down if I’d know there was such a thing as an Oscar. During the rest of the week, I went to the State Theater three more times and watched "Rain on the Isle" twice each time. What a great movie!

For years, whenever I saw a good movie like "On the Waterfront" or "Dr. Strangelove," I’d think, that it was terrific – but not as terrific as "Rainbow Whatsis." That was the nonpariel I rated all other movies against.

I kept hoping it would show up on television. Finally, more than forty years after I first saw it at the State, it was listed on the late, late, late show on Channel 2. Forty years, but I still treasured my moments on the celluloid South Seas. I had to sit up until three o’clock in the morning. As the big hand approached twelve, I got my snacks ready and snuggled down in my favorite chair.

The screen broke out in glorious technicolor. After forty years!

Ten minutes later, I turned off the TV and went to bed.

I guess one’s opinion of what’s funny or exciting or tuneful or good acting changes as you grow older. Oddly, since I turned off the TV that night, I haven’t been able to remember the real name of the movie.

TEN THINGS YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CLINTON SCANDAL BUT WERE TOO NAUSEATED TO ASK

2005-04-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

1. What did the Washington Press Corps do when this scandal passed?
Go back to roaming the streets in packs searching for carrion.

2. What was Paula Jones greatest fear?
That someone would throw a bucket of water at her when she reached for the ruby slippers.

3. What was in that bag Ken Starr threw in the trash?
His integrity.

4. Does Monica Lewinsky have a future in politics?
She’s connived, lied, extorted, made an advantageous deal with the prosecutor, and will earn tons from her book. Hell yes!

5. What did Ken Starr’s staff do when they were not gathering evidence?
Eat their young.

6. Are Orrin Hatch’s collars really too tight?
That’s an optical illusion caused by his stiff neck.

7. Who are Linda Tripp’s friends these days?
Only Marcel Marceau.

8. Where might Dan Burton clones be found?
Lying used and discarded at the ends of Lovers’ Lanes.

9. When they make the movie, what music will they use?
Devil with a Blue Dress On.

10. What is the Latin for Stephanopoulos?
Brutus.

MY GREATEST HIT

2005-04-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

Mother always says my Uncle Alfie spoils me rotten because "he don’t have any kids of his own to spoil." She is probably right about the spoiling. One Christmas when I was, I think, seven he gave me a whole cowboy suit, with a white hat, two guns I could put real-looking plastic bullets in, holsters with tassels, a vest, funny imitation-leather things I snapped on my wrists, and chaps to wear on my legs. The chaps chafed, but I played with the rest of the stuff until I lost the bullets, got too big for the vest, and broke one of the wrist-snap things. By then I was too grown up to play cowboys anymore anyway. I was a baseball player.

For my tenth birthday Uncle Alfie gave me a ten dollar bill.

"That’s too much, Alfie," Mother said. She wasn’t smiling when she said it either. Mother believes in giving socks and underwear.

"That’s only a dollar for each year," Uncle Alfie explained. Then he asked me what I was going to buy with it.

I couldn’t imagine anything in the world that could be worth as much as a real ten dollar bill except ANOTHER ten dollar bill so I said I’d have to think about it.

And that’s all I did the rest of my birthday -- thought about that ten dollar bill folded carefully in my overalls pocket. When I checked for maybe the millionth time to see that it was still there and safe, Mother told me to stop touching myself because "it looks a scene."

Just before Uncle Alfie left to go home to Aunt Lil and "get the fight started," he looked at me very sternly and said, "You know what you ought to do with that ten dollars?"

I shook my head.

"You should" -- and then he smiled his big, wrinkly smile -- "buy exactly what you want to buy. Think about what’s most important to you."

Baseball was the most important thing, of course. But I didn’t really need anything. I already had a George Stirnweiss glove. My friend Chuckie had a Nick Etten bat. For a while, I thought maybe I might buy an Ethan Allen Baseball Game like my friend Billy has. But then I thought some more because Billy and I are the only ones who play it and Billy already has one.

When we finished supper, we listened to Inner Sanctum on the radio. Just after the creaky door and the host welcoming us, Mother suddenly said, "You could put it in the bank."

"Huh?"

"I said, you could put it in the bank. Your ten dollars."

All I knew for sure about banks was that, if you put money into them, you couldn’t go to Murphy’s or Kresge’s or Key’s Drugstore and buy something with the money you didn’t have anymore.

"Well ...," I argued.

"Or you could buy a war bond. That would help your father." My father was beating the Germans at the time. The twin appeal to my patriotism and my duty as a son was nearly overwhelming -- and, I’m sure, calculated to be. But I bought stamps every week and pasted them in my book. I figured I was already a couple of B-17’s ahead.

"Why isn’t Uncle Alfie in the war?" I segued.

"He was, but his ship was torpedoed."

"Won’t they let him back in?"

"He was injured. His leg."

Uncle Alfie limped, but it had never occurred to me that there was a reason for it.

"My father won’t get hurt," I said.

After a second or two, Mother said, "We’re missing the program."

That night I went to bed and I put the ten dollars under my pillow so Mother couldn’t sneak in and wash my overalls with the ten dollar bill still in them. Mother is always doing things like that, which is how I lost my pet caterpillar. Then I stayed awake for hours checking that no one stole it from under my pillow and wondering how I ought to spend it.

I wanted to make a good choice because being ten is right on the verge of being a bigkid. Bigkids are the ones who when we ordinary kids are playing baseball in the schoolyard and the score is close, like 34-28, come over and take the bat away from me and say "Pitch it in here" and hit our ball over the schoolyard fence into Mickey’s Yard and then laugh and go away to do bigkid stuff while we chase the ball. Sometimes they even hit it over Mickey’s Yard into the yard of The-Lady-Who’ll-Call-the- Police and we have to run in and get the ball and get out before she can. All us ordinary kids hate bigkids and can’t wait to be bigkids ourselves.
Making an ordinary kid choice, like buying Key’s Drugstore out of comic books or getting enough candy bars to get sick, was all right when I was nine. But now, as an almost bigkid, I wanted to make a bigkid choice. Only I didn’t know exactly what bigkids did when they weren’t hitting our ball over the fence into the yard of The-Lady-Who’ll-Call-the-Police.

In the morning I put my ten dollar bill back in my overalls pocket and walked down to Mickey’s house. Mickey had been ten for weeks and weeks, but he’s all little and skinny and freckles and trying to be funny. I don’t think Mickey will ever be a bigkid. So I didn’t tell him about my ten dollar bill because he’d just say candy or comic books. When he asked why I kept touching myself, I told him I had poison ivy.

Mickey had a brand new wizard baseball. I don’t remember what they were really called, but we always call them wizards. A wizard ball looks like a real baseball and even acts like a real baseball until you hit it a couple of times. Then it gets all mushy and lopsided like a dumpling and goes THAP! when you hit it. When the cover gets torn, something like sawdust comes out.

So we went over to the schoolyard to wait for Chuckie to bring his bat. Wizard balls are perfect for the school yard because after they get lopsided bigkids can’t hit them even into Mickey’s Yard. Best of all, a wizard only costs a quarter.

The school yard is paved with bricks and always tears up our baseballs. Still, it is the best for baseball because of the fence, even though none of us ordinary kids had ever hit one better than a bounce in front. The fence was our target. I don’t know if we ever said it exactly, but hitting one over the fence was a bigkids thing.

When we got there, I asked Mickey if he’d called Chuckie.

No. Did you?"

I shook my head no. "What if he doesn’t bring his bat?" I was thinking how I could surprise everybody and say ‘Don’t worry. I can BUY a bat for us.’ Then I remembered that Murphy’s was six blocks away and Chuckie only lived two blocks away. It would probably be easier for him to go home and get his bat.

"Chuckie always brings his bat," Mickey said.

"Yeah, I forgot."

"Or he can go home and get it."

"Yeah."

"He only lives two blocks away."

I nodded.

"Did you forget that?"

Chuckie was always punching Mickey. Ross did it a lot, too. So did Billy. I only did it once or twice when he really deserved it. Bigkids punched Mickey for no reason at all.

"What do you want to do until they come?" I asked. You want to practice running the bases?"

Another good thing about the school yard is the bricks are shiny-smooth so you can slide into the bases. Except third base where a couple of bricks are missing. Chuckie always slides into bases even when he doesn’t mean to. Lucky for him he almost never gets to third base.

Mickey slides into bases better than anybody. He is a good fielder too, but he doesn’t bat very well because a lot of times he likes to hold the bat by the barrel and hit the ball with the handle. That’s one of the main things Chuckie will hit him for. Chuckie arrived with his bat and Billy and Ross. We had to send Ross over to get Jimmy the Fat Kid, so we could have full teams of three on a side. We sent Ross so we didn’t have to hear him yell when we chose up sides and he got picked after Jimmy the Fat Kid. Then Billy and I tossed the bat to see who’d get Mickey.

Billy and I are the best hitters, but Billy is better than me because he runs so fast. Whenever he doesn’t strike out or pop up to the pitcher, he hits a home run. None of us could catch him. One day he hit 59 homers and then went home because he had to go to the dentist. Later, when I learned what 60 home runs meant, I wondered if he knew how close he’d come to immortality.

Billy won the bat toss which meant my team got to hit first.

While we waited for Ross and Jimmy the Fat kid, I thought about telling Billy and Chuckie about my ten dollar bill. Billy was almost a bigkid too, and Chuckie was big enough to be one, except he was just big and was always falling over his own feet. Chuckie could fall down from combing his hair.

But then Ross came back with Jimmy and I knew they’d just say candy.

Especially Jimmy the Fat Kid.

"You’re up, Ross. I chose you first."

Mickey started to say something, but Chuckie punched him in the arm.

After Ross struck out, Chuckie hit a grounder to centerfield, but he fell down at home plate and Mickey threw the ball in to Billy who was pitching and playing first base.

Before I went up to hit, I made sure my ten dollar bill was still snugged down safe in my overalls pocket. Mickey yelled from the outfield that I’d better not get poison ivy on Chuckie’s bat.

We always play slow-pitch in the schoolyard because hitting is a lot more fun than striking out. A good game might end up 68-56. But Billy and I always throw just a little faster to each other. This time he threw very fast.

The pitch came in low, about knee-high. I swung as hard as I could. And hit it square! Even though it was a wizard ball, it wasn’t lopsided yet. It went CRACK! and I felt good all the way down to my ankles. [Author’s note: I think it was the best feeling I ever had until I was seventeen and went to the drive-in with Chuckie’s sister.]

I stood at home plate and watched it go. For a second, I was afraid it’d clip the corner of the school, but it slipped past, just starting to fall, and disappeared into the girders of the fire escape that jutted into left field.
Mickey ran over, ready to play the ball off the girders, but when I saw him jump up in the air with his back to me, I knew it had cleared the fire escape and gone over the fence. I acted real casual, like I’d done it a million times, as I trotted around the bases with my first bigkid home run, but inside I hopped and skipped all the way.

After I stepped on the home plate brick, I looked out and saw Mickey just sitting down in the outfield.

"Go get the ball," I yelled.

"I’m not getting it," he yelled back.

"You have to go get it."

"No, I don’t."

"You BETTER go get it!"

"Go get it yourself."

Then I knew the ball must have gone all the way into the yard of The-Lady-Who’ll-Call-the-Police. Mickey would never go into her yard even if Chuckie hit him.

"If I go," I said, "I’ll keep the ball."

Mickey shrugged. It was only a wizard, by now probably lopsided.

My need to see the whole distance of my home run -- my first bigkid, over-the-fence home run -- was greater than my fear of The-Lady-Who’ll-Call-the-Police.

"All right for you," I said. "And I’m keeping it!"

I climbed over the school yard fence into Mickey’s Yard, and after a long look at the house of The-Lady-Who’ll-Call-the- Police, I climbed over her fence. But I couldn’t find the ball. I looked behind her umbrella tree and under all her hollyhocks, but I still couldn’t find it.

Then I heard someone say, "Up here, little boy."

I looked over the NEXT fence and saw an old woman -- even older than Mother. She wasn’t The-Lady-Who’ll-Call-the-Police, but she looked like A-Lady-Who’ll-Call-Down-the-Wrath-of-God. For a second I even thought there were streaks of lightning shooting out of her head. But what I really saw was her standing in her kitchen staring at me past light reflecting off the shards of broken glass in what used to be her kitchen window. She was holding a very lopsided wizard ball.

When I got home, Mother asked what I bought with my ten dollar bill. I told her about my three-yards-over, bigkid home run and the lopsided wizard.

Mothers are funny. She got more excited when I told her I’d bought a ten-dollar window.

SON OF ADAGES FOR AN AD AGE

2005-04-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

Those who don’t read history have extra time to make some.

You can kill two birds with one stone if you keep throwing it.

A penny saved is the one under the sofa.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps he hears a different drummer or maybe he’s just a klutz.

The child is father to the man . . . at least that’s how it works sometime in West Virginia.

All work and no play means the boss has a clear view of your desk.

They can’t pay you enough to do that job. So do it badly. That’s only fair.

A rolling stone is most likely going downhill rapidly.

"Penny wise and pound foolish" is buying a used car instead of walking to work.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, that and the big, hairy thing with fangs hiding in the closet.