Joe's Funny Bone

February Lifestyle Artic;e

2012-01-27T12:10:00.001-05:00

ARE BLACKBIRDS SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?

They are very smart birds. They speak two languages. Really. They
have one dialect that warns their friends of impending danger. It is
very noisyl
The other one is quieter and they use this
one in everyday conversation with their friends.

My wife hates blackbirds. Sne says they intimadate other birds,
especially smaller ones.
She also hatest the noise. But I'm deaf so the noise doesn't bother
me at all. I think the blackbirds remind her of a Alfred Hitchcok
movie

They hardly ever travel alone. If you see one blackbird, you can be
fairly certain that one
or more are nearby. I have a beautifully illustrated book that claims
you can tell the future
by how many blackbirds you see in your yard. One bird forecasts a
death to come. I think that's right. Two means something
else...three something else. Fortune tellers probably use the book
for reading your fortune. I don't put much stock in the book actually

I don't think my wife likes the idea of birds that are smarter than
her grandchildren.

Apparently there are more 50 species of the common blackbird.
Goodness knows how you tell the difference. They are all black. I
know they come in different sizes. But they all strut the same way.
I love to watch them wallk across the yard. And , my wife is
right...they hog the birdfeeder and make smaller birds get out of the
way. It is a dog eat dog world, as they say.

saluda lifestyles...november 2011

2011-10-26T18:30:00.001-05:00

HE THINKS HE IS A RESURRECTION FERN.

Here in the Lowcountry of S.C., we have some wonderful subtropical plants. One of my favorites is the resurrection fern. It grows along the branches of Live Oak trees (also a favorite of mine). It is almost impossible to kill a resurrection fern. During dry spells, it turns from green to brown and shrivels up....looks dead. But if it rains or if the air gets humid...the fern greens up and comes back to life.

I just spent nearly three months in a rehab facility...as I was checking in, they wanted to know if I wanted to be resuscitated. But I told them "no, I only want to die once, so don't bring me back. But make sure I am really dead. I am a shallow breather so sometimes I just look and sound dead. Put a mirror under my nose before you send me off to the crematory." They laughed, but I was serious.

There was a younger man standing there and he started talking to me. He looked like he had just washed up on the beach...had on a Cuban wedding shirt and designer jeans. He started giving me medical talk and I asked, "Who are you? A surfer?". He tried to convince me that he was the main doctor for the

rehab but I told him he didn't look like a doctor and that I would have to see his

certificates. He said they were back in his office on the wall but I told him.
Not good enough. I need to see them."

They took me to my room then. The guy came by later...told me to drop my pants. I said, "Drop yours first." He said, "I'm the doctor!" And I said, "So you say."

This is a wonderful but old rehab hospital. The beds looked like they were left over from the Civil War. Some of the nurses did, too. And all the patients looked

leftovers. Except for the physical therapists. They really know their stuff. My wife had warned them that I would try to weasel out from anything too strenuous, so they were on to me.. I tried to get out of therapy on Saturday by telling them I was a 7th Day Adventist and it was my Holy Day. (They gave you a banana if you attended church service on Sundays. I went once, but I wasn't that desperate for a banana.Besides, my family members brought me cheeseburgers and milkshakes when they came .... that is until the dietitian caught them and said she would have to strip search them if they didn't stop.. Actually I lost more than 50 pounds on the rehab food.)

They wanted to know what my goals were. I told them I wanted to be on Dancing with the Stars, that I wanted to find my goat and I wanted to be able

to attend my granddaughter's wedding.

Carol came almost every day...one day she brought her WD40 and was under the bed when the nurse came in. I explained that my wife was changing my oil. Carol said it was me that was squeaking and not the bed.

My daughter Laura said the dietitian had bought a new cookbook since the 50s...we had a lot of tuna noodle casserole which I tried to trade for a hot dog.

Speaking of dogs, they were allowed to come visit if they had their shots and brougjht proof...so when my friend Elwyn came to visit, Tallulah (his poodle) came in with him. She was a hit...my room was filled

with visitors, all trying to pet her.

Actually the Surfer was the doctor. He saved my life at least twice...once when I got hundreds of bloodclots in my legs. I decided to change doctors and keep this one when I got out of The Home. Carol didn't like him much because he called her "babe". I tried to explain that Cuban men think every woman is a babe but she wants to be called Mrs. Babe. When I was ready to get out of the rehab place, we made an appointment for the docotor's office. He said to bring a live chicken...preferably a white rooster and to come after dark. I have to admit that it is a little strange....it's the first time I've had to go to a doctor and bring a live chicken.

DO, SI, DO......SWING YOUR PARTNER.

2011-06-16T14:11:00.001-05:00

I was so happy to hear about the square dance over at Jamboree. And about the free lessons.
Even if you think you can square dance, I would advise taking the lessons...especially you guys. It's not as easy as it looks.

Years ago when my parents were first married, they ran a square dance place. It was a covered pavillion by a lake.
They only operated it on Friday and Saturday nights. Mp Sunday dancing unless you were shouting and dancing i. n church.

My Father was the caller and everyone claimed he was good. My Mother loved to dance and she usually had no trouble finding a partner since she has heavy in the bosom. My Father made more money selling Moonshine than from selling tickets for square dancing. Lots

of guys would never get on the dance floor without a few swigs of home brew.
But that's why you need those free lessons.

Square dancing is fun...even if you don't know how. But it's dangererous, too. I would recommend two things for guys:

1. Don't wear a felt or straw cowboy hat. You might look good but they are very little protection when you are ready ro dance roward and bow to your partner. i got a huge knot on my head bowing (or butting) to my partner. She and I were both over enthusiastic. She didn't get a knot...I think her bangs\

saved her.

2. Wear a motorcyle helmet.

I have had two big square dance parties where we hired a square dance club to give lessons and a professional caller to send us around the floor. My wife said no one would like it, but everyone who didn't get knots on their heads had a great time.

For a corporate party, we rented a big barn that had been built just for square dances. One of my fondest and funniest memories was from the dance. A guy who worked for me came and brought his wife who really didn't get out a lot (or drink a lot). The two of them were in our group.
After dancing for a while, we would have a rest and more instructions. At one of the rest breaks,

my friend's wife sat down on an open window to have a cigarette. No one else noticed but me, but

she fell out of the window backwards. It wasn't a big fall; I saw her legs sticking up in the air but then

they disappeared.

When the music started, my friend turned to where his wife had been, He was surprised that she was not there. Then he looked to his left...no wife....then he looked on the floor...then he looked up on the ceiling. I was laughing the whole time and pointing out the windown.. At that point, she was getting\

herself up obviously wondering where she was and he was saying, " What are you doing out there."

I don't think she is coming to the Jamboree Dance. In fact, I don't think she has ever square danced

again.

But you can grab a partner and do-si-do.

SALUDA LIFESTYLES - JUNE

2011-05-27T14:30:00.001-05:00

EVEN WHITE GIRLS GET THE BLUES.

I MISS MY FRIEND HELEN. SHE HAS PASSED ONE LIKE SO MANY OF MY OTHER FRIENDS. SHE WAS A GREAT PIANO PLAYER...LOVED TO PLAY THE BLUES. SHE WAS BORN IN GEORGIA AT A TIME WHEN IT WAS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR NICE WHITE GIRLS TO BE HANGING OUT IN JOOK JOINTS AND PLAYING THE BLUES. BUT SHE DID IT ANYWAY.

SHE ALSO PLAYED THE PIANO AT THE TOWN MOVIE HOUSE WHEN THEY SHOWED SILENT MOVIES. SHE DIDN'T PLAY POPULAR SONGS BUT ACTUALLY COMPOSED MUSIC TO FIT THE ACTION ON THE SCREEN. THAT WAS O.K.

WITH HER DAD AND MOM. BUT THEY DIDN'T LIKE IT AT ALL WHEN SHE WANDERED DOWN TO THE JOOK JOINT TO LISTEN TO MUSIC ON SATURDAY NIGHT...AND EVEN WORSE WHEN SHE JOINED IN TO PLAY. THEY TOLD HER SHE WOULD GO TO HELL, BUT SHE WAS WILLING TO GO THERE IF THAT'S WHERE THE GOOD MUSIC WAS BEING PLAYED.

I DON'T THIN\K SHE'S IN HELL.

SHE COULD PLAY CHURCH MUSIC, TOO. AND DID. THAT'S HOW I MET HER. SHE USED TO COME ONCE A YEAR UP TO MARYLAND TO VISIT HER TWIN DAUGHTERS. WHEN SHE CAME ONE OF THE DAUGHTERS WOULD FIND AN OLD HYMAL AND WE WOULD HAVE A PRAYER MEETING, HELEN WOULD FIX US A REAL SOUTHERN DINNER...BLACK EYED PEAS, FRIED CHICKEN, COLLARDS. AND THEN SHE WOULD PLAY FROM THE HYMNAL....AND WE WOULD ALL SING, EVEN THE CATHOLICS...OR THEY DIDN'T EAT.

YEAR AFTER YEAR, SHE WOULD RETURN AND FIX ME A SOUTHERN DINNER. WE BECAME GREAT FRIENDS,.

SHE TOLD ME WHEN SHE FIRST MARRIED SHE WOULD PLAY THE PIANO AT HER BIG HOUSE AND A BLACK WOMEN WOULD COME ONCE A WEEK TO DO THE WOODEN FLOORS. HELEN WOULD PLAY BLUES AND THE BLACK WOMAN WOUILD DANCE AND CLEAN. THE BLACK WOMEN REFUSED TO TAKE ANY MONEY SHE AND HER HUSBAND MOVED TO WASHINGTON, D.C. SHE SOON HAD TWIN GIRLS TO PLAY THE PIANO FOR. IT STILL WAS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR WHITE WOMEN TO PLAY THE BLUES BUT HELEN CONTENTED 'EVEN WHITE GIRLS GET

THE BLUES.' AND INDEED THEY DO.

YEARS PASSED AND HELEN MOVED BACK TO GEORGIA ON HER OWN. SHE HAD A ONE ROOM APARTMENT

IN A MANSION THAT HAD BEEN CONVERTED TO APARTMENTS. IT WAS ABOUT TEN BLOCKS FROM THE TOWN LIBARY. SHE LOVED TO READ AND I TOLD HER ABOUT BIG PRINT BOOKS BECAUSE SHE WAS HAVING TROUBLE WITH HER EYES. THEN I CONVINCED HER SHE SHOULD START GIVING CONCERTS AT THE LIBRARY. SHE WAS A BIG HIT, EVEN PLAYING THE BLUES.

SHE HAD A BLACK MAN WHO WAS A TAXI DRIVER TO COME TAKE

HER TO THE LIBRARY AND TO BRING HER HOME. SHE TIPPED HIM EVERY TRIP. BUT THEN AT CHRISTMAS, HE HAD TIED UP ALL THE TIP MONEY IN A NICE HANDKERCHIEF AND GAVE IT BACK TO HER AS A GIFT. SWEET MAN.

THE LAST TIME I SAW HELEN SHE WAS VISITING THE TWINS IN S.C. SHE MOTIONED ME OVER WHERE SHE WAS SITTING AND SAID, "COME SIT BY ME.' I SAT THERE FOR A FEW MINUTES AND

SHE FINALLY SAID, 'YOU ARE THE CRAZIEST PERSON I KNOW.' I ASKED HER, ' IS THAT A COMPLIMENT?' HELEN SAID, 'YES, YES OF COURSE.' \

IT IS ONE OF THE NICEST THINGS ANYONE HAS EVER SAID TO ME.

HELEN DIED SOON AFTER THAT. HER DAUGHTERS WERE VISITING AN OLD BLACK GRAVEYARD AND HAPPENED TO SEE A

WREATH MADE UP LIKE A GRAND PIANO. THE FLOWERS HAD DIED

BUT THE FRAME SHAPED LIKE A GRAND PIANO WAS STILL THERE.

THEY DECIDED TO TAKE IT AND RECYCLE IT FOR THEIR MOTHER'S

MEMORIAL SERVICE. THEY SAID IT WAS THE HIT OF THE GRAVEYARD AND THAT YOU COULD ALMOST HEAR HER BLUES MUSIC BEING PLAYED.

SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT. COMING FOR TO CARRY ME HOME,.

JOE ADAMS

Saluda Lifestyles , May

2011-04-25T14:58:00.001-05:00

Why Goldfish Never Graduate From High School

It's not because they can't get a cap and gown to fit, although that could be a problem if they ever made it to high school.

The problem is much simpler. They are fairly dumb.

The goldfish are gorgeous. And they swim better than Esther Williams. But they are dumb as a stump. They only have a memory span of 30 seconds according to scientists. I have no idea how they know this but they claim that whatever you tell them goes in one ear and out the other. If they have ears. That might be the problem since I've never seen fish ears.

Goldfish rarely get beyond first grade. They can't hold a pencil, poor things. Even if they knew the answer, they couldn't write or tell the teacher.

"Hold up your fingers," she would yell. "Blow four bubbles."

There are other problems other than the pencils. They can't tie their shoes. No wonder. No feet. And getting on the schoolbus is a major feat.

And once they are on the bus, they tend to slide from one end to the other. If their mothers were thoughtful enough to put them in a sealed baggie with water, some of the bullyboys start playing toss with the fish.

I sympathize with the goldfish. I really do. They're not going to get a good job unless they graduate from high school. I am retired so I don't have to worry about getting a good job. I worry that I am turning into a goldfish. I can't remember anything I'm told more than 30 seconds ago. Sometimes not

then. Of course, maybe I just don't care. Maybe the goldfish don't either.

Saluda Lifestyles, April - 2011

2011-03-22T18:46:00.001-05:00

I Saw Grandpa Picking His Nose.

My great grandaughter has been living in St. Louis for a while with her Dad, but she just recently returned to Hilton Head Island to live with her grandmother. We are glad to have her back, but I don't get to see her that often. She's very observant and is a real

blabbermouth. She tells everything. She told my daughter recently, "I saw Grandpa picking his nose."

My daughter asked her what I did with the boogers. She said, "Sometimes if they are big, he feeds them to the dog. The dog

seems to love them. Other times he picks one side of his nose, then if he has no place to put it, he sticks it in the vacant side. It is

so sick and disgusting."

My daughter wanted to know if I ever flicked them or stuck them anywhere. But I was not quilty.

I confronted Ellie why she was telling stuff like this. She said it was what girls do.

I asked her why she said I picked my nose. I also pick apples, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries...but she never tells that, She said they don;t come out of my nose.

I tried to convince her that we had two "picking" fingers just for getting boogers...that was what God gave us those fingers for. But she wasn't buying .it,

She said he hade the so called "Picking" fingers to keep your place while reading and to paint so they look pretty.

I doubt that I will be able to stop after all these years. Unless she starts smacking my hands. Then I might have to flick the boogers at her, sweet as she is.

October Lifestyles Article

2010-09-28T10:51:00.001-05:00

I FOUND MY THRILL ON BLUEBERRY HILL

And also my breakfast! I love blueberries. A friend of mine who
lives in Candler found a spot on the Blueridge Parkway that has a
hillside of wild blueberries. He's not giving out the location, but
that's o.k. because he picks and brings me blueberries. He said he
noticed an old graveyard by the roadside. The headstones had become
overgrown with moss. But when he was looking around, he noticed the
blueberries bushes; some up to
fifteen feet high. So he started picking,..filling up whatever
containers he had in his car.
He said it was so easy to pick because there were so many blueberries.
He now makes regular weekly trips to Blueberry Hill and picks enough
to have bowls of blueberries three times a day. He's kind enough to
bring me a few, but he gives more to his girlfriend. (Wouldn't you?)

He claims that blueberries are the healthiest fruit you can eat. He
says they are "brain
food", although I haven't noticed my brain kicking in any faster. And
they are only 80 calories a cup. The wild blueberries tend to be
smaller but I think they are more delicious than the plump ones that
you get at the store for $3.50 for a little cup full.

A few years ago I tried starting my own Blueberry Hill in my backyard
at Lake Sheila. I met a couple at the Pickins Flea Market who sold
all kinds of plants. They had a sign that they specialized in
blueberry plants but you had to order them at a certain time of the
year. I placed my order for l2 plants and went to see them down at
Traveler's Rest.
(I love the name of that little town.) I had cleaned out my car,
expecting some big plants.
As it turned out, they looked more like "cuttings" I was fairly
disappointed but they assured me they would take off and grow really
fast. So I took them home and planted them along a walkway from the
house to the lake. I only have two left. Unfortunately I
didn't warn the yard man and he mowed down ten of them. But two of
them are flourishing. One is more than 6 feet high and usually loaded
with blueberries. I have to fight the birds for them and the birds
are winning. Not only do the early birds get the worms, they also get
the blueberries.

I spent a summer once in the northernmost county in the U.S.....in
Maine. It's the largest producer of wild blueberries in the country.
But the plants are really low to the ground...little more than a
groundcover. I noticed the blueberries first because the hills were
turning blue in color. Literally. Then I noticed busloads of migrant
workers who had been brought up to pick the blueberries. I had a
bunch of blueberries growing where
I was staying in a national forest. I picked blueberries every day,
but I wouldn't want it as a job. Unless of course I was very short.

I PRAY. YOU PAY.

2010-08-30T11:24:00.002-05:00

I've read a couple of times that Catholic organizations here in
America are outsourcing prayers to India. People donate money to have
the Church pray for them, but they have so few priests nowadays, they
turn around and outsource the prayers to some Indian monks who pray
really cheap. I guess it doesn't matter. But I was thinking this
might be
a good thing for an old retired guy to do. I could pray for people.
Since I get Social Security I wouldn't have to charge a lot. And I
have a perfect place to pray on my backporch overlooking beautiful
Lake Sheila...a Heavenly view if there ever was one.
Actually I already pray for quite a few people that I don't know
personally. I pray for Zsa
Zsa Gabor. She's 93 and recently had to have hip replacement surgery
after she fell out of bed. I saw her on TV being put into an
ambulance.Her husband, the Prince, was taking her home from the
hospital because he thought she could recuperate faster at home with
the friendly faces of her staff. She had hospital hair instead of a
wig...no jewels...no make-up. I wouldn't have recognized the poor
thing. I don't ask her to pay me. The prayers are complimentery at
this point.
I'm very organized with my praying, too. I have various
sections...the Extreme Elderly, where I pray for Zsa Zsa and others
that are over 85...Those In Need of Healing...Loved
Ones...Soldiers...Road Warriors, those who make their living driving
around. I also have a section for animals. Mainly dogs. I don't
know that many cats. I pray for Tallulah. a black poodle that travels
with my friend Elwyn who drives for Federal Express. She's seen more
of America than I have. Elwyn takes her to Dog Parks when he can find
one in the
town they are visiting. It's very thoughtful of him, but I suspect
that he takes her there thinking he might meet some nice women for
himself. (He's looking for a wife in case anyone is interested.)
I'm aggressive when I pray. I'm not a Whiner. If you whine when you
pray, I think they put you through to a recording.
So? You need any prayers?
Let Us Pray.

Saluda Lifestyles Article for August

2010-07-22T19:47:00.000-05:00

THE BINGO BOYS

The Bingo Boys of St. Peter's are having a reunion. This is a group
of guys who worked at St. Pete's Bingo games back in 1950's. We were
teenagers then and it was a great way to make some extra money and
learn to charm older ladies. Most of The Bingo Boys
have passed on. I think there are only three left. I'm not going to
the reunion.

St. Pete's is in Washington, D.C. They had bingo games on Monday
nights and, at first, they charged one dollar a card. Then they got
raided by the Internal Revenue Service. It
was against the law to make people pay for bingo gambling. But then
they continued to have bingo games. Instead of collecting at the
door, people entered and found their table.
Then they had a cadre of handsome young teenagers that would go around
to the people
as they sat at the tables. We would ask how many cards they wanted
and hand them out.
Then we would shake a basket at them to get their "donations".

I was flabbergasted at how often they tried to shortchange me. They
would take l0 cards
but only put in a couple of one dollar bills. I was told to watch
carefully and if they didn't
put in the proper amount of one dollar per card, I was to keep shaking
the basket at them
although I couldn't actually ask for more.

We made our money by being charming...running to get sodas or hot dogs
for our table
guests. If they won, they often gave you a tip. If they won big, you
could make some real money. Gratuities were our income. Or so I
thought.

Two years ago I was with some of The Bingo Boys and we were talking
about the good old days. One guy said, "I would never have been able
to get by financially without stealing that money at bingo every
week."

"Stealing?" I asked. I was shocked. I never stole a penny. But all
the others admitted that they stole regularly.

I said, "You stole from your church?" They claimed it wasn't really
the church...it was bingo money.

I was the only Bingo Boy that wasn't Catholic. I was a Methodist who
ran around with Catholics. But I was the only one that wasn't
stealing.

I envied my Catholic friends because when we went out on Saturday
nights, they would run into the church and go to confession. I always
wanted to know what they confessed
but they were vague about it. Whatever they confessed, we went out
and did the same things they had done the week before. And they could
confess again.

When you are a protestant, you talk directly to the Lord. I could ask
for forgiveness but
you never got an answer back so you had mounting guilt. I wanted a
voice to come back
and say: "You're off the hook, kid.". But it never did. I didn't
have a lot to confess anyway
because I certainly didn't steal at bingo or even know that the other
boys were doing it.
I have a feeling that a lot of them are still in Purgatory, burning
like a 3-hour log. That's another thing about the Catholics that I
liked...the idea of Purgatory. A place to go for a while short of
Hell. I think I read that they don't believe in Purgatory any longer.
That's a shame. It was an attractive part of their religion. Almost
as good as confessions.

Do You Have a Shy Bladder?

2010-05-04T19:55:00.001-05:00

Well, according to doctors who specialize in these things, 7 percent of adult males have Shy Bladder. Basically it means you can't go wee-wee in public toilets

How do professional trained medicine men come up with this crap? I'm sure if they cross checked their research, they would find that 7 percent of adult males have tiny penises. That's why they have a Shy Bladder. If they had one the size of a pork loin, they would have no trouble in poppimg it out at a urinal....maybe even outdoors.

I would be embarrassed to be a doctor that specializes in Shy Bladder. Can you imagine being at a cocktail party and when someone asks you, "And what do you specialize in, Doctor?" Then you have to tell them "Shy Bladder". And then everybody in the room laughs out loud as you explain how you have to take your patients by the hand into public toilets. Come on! Nobody would want to shake hands with you after that.

The medical profession seems to be overrun with strange maladies. Think about it. We read nowadays about Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It's just a spastic colon which has been around forever but now they call it Irritable Bowel Syndrome to give it a modern name. Your bowel is yelling, "I am pissed! I mean it. I am angry and I'm not going to let you go more than two feet from the toilet today."

I'm sure it's not funny if you have either one of these maladies....ooops, I've got to go. My bowel is growling. I hope there's no one in the toilet. I'm shy.

Adopt Me, Sandra.

2010-05-02T22:29:00.001-05:00

Sandra Bullock's got rid of her sleazy husband, Jessie James. Now she has adopted a little 2 l/2 year old boy. Sweet. But I just wonder why these movie stars always adopt little kids. Why can't they adopt an old guy like me? If she adopted me and Betty White, we would keep her laughing all the time. I wrote to her on her Facebook page. It already had more than 2,000 messages. All of them were probably asking to be adopted. I should be faster; get in line first. She wants her new son to learn about every corner of New Orleans so I

gave her the name of a neat cafe called Seimolina's, a place that makes 50 different kinds of pasta....including cheeseburger pasta and a macaroni and cheese pie. I miss going to New Orleans. I used to know most of the "corners" as Sandra calls them. I'm sure I could find them again if they are still there after the big flood. They might be covererd in oil this time.

Chatty Carl the Talking Dildo

2010-04-28T22:39:00.001-05:00

Now there's a dildo that really knows what a girl wants...it talks. It's like a Chatty Cathy Doll...it has a string to pull and it says things like: "You want to just cuddle tonight?"

Or, "Have you lost weight?" They come in various sizes and colors....from Finger size to Humongous. You have a choice of languages as well. There's a big South American style that asks, "Que pasa, Baby?" What won't they think of next?

Fatty, Fatty. Two By Four. Can't Get Through the Smokehouse Door.

2010-04-28T22:21:00.003-05:00

; Obama visited Asheville recently. His first stop after the plane landed was at 12 Bones Bar-b-que Smokehouse to get some ribs. They should have named the place 12 Bones and a Million Flies. It's an indoor/outdoors kind of place and the flies do love the ribs. My wife said she doubted if the President and the First Lady ate any ribs since they are so opposed > to fat...and fat people. She thinks they stood at the door and chanted, "Fatty, fatty. Two by four. Can't get through the Smokehouse door." Maybe, but they probably would have been beaten up with naked bones by the Smokehouse loyal customers. I can attest to the fact that they are good ribs even if you have to share them with lots of flies. When you order and get your silverware, you also get a fly swatter. But these savage flies don't just buzz around your face...they land on your lips and try to eat the meat off the bones before you can. So you really need to smack yourself in the face with the fly swatter, and who knows where the flies go? The Obamas moved on to the Grove Park Hotel, a luxury place where no flies are allowed. Before they left Asheville, they went to see Billy Graham who > lives not far away at Montreat. He's 91 now...he greeted Obama with "Did you bring me any ribs, Boy?" Billy's too old to worry about fat. Or calling "tan" people "Boy". They prayed for each other, Billy's son said. > > Billy has been chums with a lot of Presidents, mainly Republicans. I remember a couple of years ago, my wife and I were listening to an interviewer talking with Billy Graham. The interviewer said, "You're getting up in years, Reverend Graham. It won't be long until you are sitting in Heaven with God." But Billy objected. He said, "I'm not sure I have done enough to sit with God." I turned to my wife and said, "We are in deep doo-doo, honey. If > Billy doesn't think he's getting in upstairs, we'll never make it." But she said Billy was probably worrying because he was palsy-walsy with Richard Nixon...probably afraid he will go to Hell and have to play golf with Nixon. Besides, she felt confident that she would make it because she polished brass at church once a month and thought there's probably a lot of brass in Heaven. I told her I was not interested in going if there was work to do, especially polishing brass.

Lifestyle Article for May

2010-04-26T10:44:00.002-05:00

YOU CALL THIS A SPA?

I wasn't born yesterday, but apparently the Spa Movement in America was. It seems like there are spas everywhere...but they are girly things where people go to have facials...mudpacks on their faces with cucumbers on their eyes.

When I think about Spas, I think of The Greenbrier Resort and Hot Springs in

West Virginia. To my mind, those are real spas and not just because George

Washington came to The Greenbrier and drank that awful sulfur water. It tasted

so bad, I spit mine out. They assured me it was the smell and not the taste that

turned my stomach. But how are you going to get the water past into your mouth

without going by your nose?

A friend and I took the famous "treatment" at Hot Springs. We signed up one afternoon for an appointment the next day. I had the attendant "walk" us through what we would be doing because at that time I had a hearing aid and wanted to make sure I would know what was coming next since I would have to store my hearing aid with my clothes. He was kind enough to give us a tour.

The next day we arrived on schedule and the woman at the desk asked, "You boys here

for the Treatment?" We told her we were so she buzzed a mountain man from the back.

Our first stop once we got naked was to the soaking tubes. And they were tubs literally.

The water there is a constant temperature. The tub looked close to full...when I stepped in I could feel the water rising...and as I sat down, the water really rose...right over the top. I

yelled "My goodness, the water is going out of the tub." But before I could panic, the attendant said it was suppose to. The tub had fresh spring water coming in constantly so one's body temperature didn't cool the water too much. They had not told me that part the

day before so I was greatly relieved because it was like a waterfalls once I got all the way in the tub.

Our next stop was into a steam room. The attendant gave us each a wash cloth and, at first I thought we were going to have to wash one another. I was planning to draw the line

there, but the steam was filled with eucalyptus so as the room filled up with steam, he said we might have to put the wash cloth over our faces. (Did I mention that we were paying handsomely for this?). The room filled rather rapidly with steam and I told my friend, "If you have anything to say to me, say it now because I'm not going to be able to read your lips once the steam rises." I was about to break out of the room from the smell just when the

attendant told us our time was up.

Next we went to have a rub down with rock salt...we were stretched out on a marble slab that seemed like what they might use for dead bodies. Actually the attendant was rubbing

(and not gently) dead skin off our freshly steamed bodies. After he got us rubbed down, we went around the corner to a huge tiled room. He had me stand against one wall and he was on the other side with a fire house. He was yelling something to me, but I couldn't read his lips across the room...then he started doing hand-signals by putting his hands across his crotch. Finally I realized that he was saying, "Cover your privates." When I did, he turned on the firehouse and the power of the water almost knocked me down. He was rinsing off the rock salt and the dead skin but there must have been a better way to do it.

My friend was laughing...but his turn was next.

Finally after these ordeals, we were ready to towel off and get dressed. The female attendant out front asked cheerfully, "You boys want to sign up for another treatment

tomorrow?" I said, "I've had all the treatment I can stand in this lifetime." She said that

some people have the treatment every day.

Real spas are in the Black Forest in Germany...palatial buildings with extravagant pools,

etc. And needless to say, extravagant prices. These are where Kings and Queens and rich South Americans come to relax. We had planned a trip there one year with some friends. Normally I would have felt too fat to get naked in one of these places. But in

Germany, the richer you are the fatter you are. Rich industrialists, you know, so I was

actually looking forwrd to parading around with them. Unfortunately because of a terrorist

attack (not on the spas), our trip had to be called off. Now I'm too poor to go. But I have a

sweat lodge under my house at Lake Sheila. Close your eyes and it feels like a European

Spa.

April Lifestyles Article

2010-03-27T19:30:00.003-05:00

Learning to Budget

Back in the days before credit cards, people had to learn to budget. It's a good lesson to learn.

When my wife and I got married more than 50 years ago, we really had no choice. We had to

budget. I was in the Army in Germany. I only got paid once a month. And my wife got a small

allotment. Together I think we got about $l40 a month...and we had to make it last a month. When we got our checks, my wife had a group of envelopes marked: groceries, rent, gasoline,

entertainment, savings, misc. There was hardly ever anything in the misc. envelope. Essentially we had about five dollars a day.

I know you'reprobably thinking that things were cheap back then. Well, they were a lot cheaper than now, but they weren't that cheap.

We lived in a two-room apartment upstairs in a German family's house. We were lucky. It was a

beautiful house. Their son was learning English in school so a German friend of mine convinced them he could learn faster if they had two Americans living upstairs. He did learn faster and he learned to speak with a Southern accent (which baffled his teacher).

Our budgeting envelopes worked quite well. If we ran out of money in the gas envelope, we

walked. I walked 5 miles to the Army hospital where I worked anyway, so I didn't mind walking.

One month, we ran short of money in all the envelopes. My wife had been at the PX when a new shipment of records came in and she couldn't resist buying an album which took all of our money for 3 or 4 days. We listened to music by candlelight while I considered whether I should

eat her fingers.

When we ran short, we would search the car and our pockets to see if we could find some extra

German coins. Then we would go to a German meat market for some wursts and to a German bakery for some hard rolls. They cost practically nothing because they were the main food that a lot of Germans ate.

I was fortunate because I worked at an Army Hospital and I could always eat for free in the cafeteria. But I didn't dare put food in my pockets to take home to my wife. She lived off of peanut butter and jelly on hard rolls.

I have to admit that I supplemented our monthly income by selling stuff to German civilians.

Every month I would buy a gallon of ketchup at the PX. I re-sold it to a woman that worked in

my office. She took it home and put it in ketchup bottles...then re-sold them individually to her

neighbors. I also bought and sold Jergens Lotion and Old Spice. I don't know what their fascination was with these products. Of course the Germans were eager to buy cigarettes, but

they were rationed and we used our coupons to get smokes for ourselves. I made enough off

my blackmarketing so that we could take a month's vacation all around Europe before we returned back to the U.S. We had a budget of $10 a day...that was for gas, hotel, food, peanut butter and jelly. Some days like when we were in Paris or on the French Riviera we had to use more than ten dollars...but then we made it up when we were in Spain and in Italy where it was so

cheap. It pays to budget.

My wife still pays the bills and I'm fairly certain she still has envelopes for the various expenditures.

March Lifestyle Article

2010-02-26T16:02:00.001-05:00

THE WORLD'S BEST BAR-B-QUE COOK

Seems like everybody claims their Moms are the best meatloaf cooks

or the best country fried steak cooks. And my mother was good at both those things. But her real claim to fame was her Bar-B-Que. She was known far and wide for her bar-b-que. And it wasn't even her recipe. She may have stolen it. We don't know how she got it but it came from one of the best bar-b-que places in North Carolina.

When we moved from N.C. to Washington, D.C., my mother said she wasn't going if she couldn't get the bar-b-que recipe from RJ's Cafe.

We figured we would have to leave her behind because RJ guarded it

like it was the secret to the atom bomb.

She said she would do anything to get that recipe. After a couple of trips to the cafe, she finally came home with her note paper and the recipe.

"Did you get the cole slaw recipe, too?" my Father asked. "Bar-b-que

isn't the same without the special cole slaw." He didn't even ask how she got the recipe. But she got the cole slaw recipe as well because he's right...at least if you are from North Carolina. Cole slaw goes ON

the bar-b-que and they both go on a bun.

So with the recipes hidden in my mother's purse, we were packed and

ready to go to Washington, D.C. She had promised the cafe owner

that she would never under any circumstance reveal the ingredients

or how to cook the slaw or the bar-b-que. And she stuck to her promise. She wouldn't even tell us, her own family.

Like others that came to Washington, we moved to North Carolina Avenue. We thought that's where we were suppose to live since we

came from North Carolina. And like good Christians, we joined the

North Carolina Methodist Church. The women's group usually did a

fund raising dinner once or twice a year. When the time rolled around, my mother suggested they do a bar-b-que and she would do the cooking. They usually fried fish so this was a new twist. They took her up on her offer.

She cooked a pile of bar-b-que and buckets of slaw. She wanted no help from the other women other than serving since she was guarding

her recipe. The dinner was a huge success and my mother was a star. Every year she would be named to cook her bar-b-que, and she

was elated to do it. People begged for the recipe but she would only

roll her eyes and say, "If you had any idea what I had to do to get these recipes, you wouldn't ask for them." That always made my father and myself nervous but the food was too good to worry about it.

When my Mother cooked her bar-b-que, people lined up around the block waiting to get in and served. She made herself a red and white

checkered blouse and a pair of pedal pushers out of denim colored material. She felt that kept with the theme. Once people were served and eating, she would walk among the crowd, smiling like a queen. If

she saw anyone that had taken the slaw off the meat, she would chastise them and explain that they had to go together. Some people still believe it but only in North Carolina.

My mother kept her annual bar-b-que event going for years. Finally these sold the church because members were moving to the suburbs.

The congregation that bought the church had heard of the bar-b-que dinners and tried to get my mother to come back. But she only wanted to cook for Methodists.

When my Mom passed on, we seriously considered putting Bar-B-Que Queen on her headstone. But since she was a Methodist and they aren't showy, we decided it would be inappropriate.

I'm happy to say that when we went through her stuff, the recipe was in a little cedar chest. So I have it and once a year I cook it. I do it for my family and friends....usually on the 4th of July which also happens to be my birthday.

Saluda Lifestyle - February Article

2010-01-22T19:44:00.001-05:00

A WIFE WHO MEANS WELL

Having been married to the same woman for more than 50 years, I know that my wife means well. She is determined that I get completely over the stroke I had a couple of summers ago and she doesn't want to see any back-sliding in the process.

She's forever clipping little articles from newspapers and magazines about what people older than me are doing with their lives...or things like "l0 Tips For Getting Rid of Belly Fat". She leaves them next to the fattening meals she prepares for me.

The other morning there was a newspaper clipping about a 90 year old

widower who had flown across the English Channel standing up on the top wing of a bi-plane. Can you imagine? I couldn't. I assumed my wife was trying to encourage me to be more adventuresome so as soon as I

finished reading the article, I yelled into the kitchen: "Call the airport in

Hendersonville. Get me a bi-plane. I want to fly over Lake Sheila on the wings." She said: "What are you going to wear?" I told her I would probably fly naked if the pilot doesn't fly too low. She thought I should wear my pajamas.

"Are you going to use your walking stick?" she wanted to know. I told her that I wasn't walking anywhere...that once they got me up on the wing, I would just be standing there while the plane flew. I might take my cane for balance but I wanted to have at least one free hand so I could wave to my friends and neighbors.

Before she called the airport, she wanted me to know that she thought I as crazy. But she's the one that gave me the article about the man who flew over the English Channel. She tried to tell me that it was just

for my general interest and she didn't expect me to fly on the wings of a bi-plane. It gave me a perfect opportunity to say: "What about the

belly fat article? Was that for general interest?" She said "No...that

was a How-To article in case you decide to shed it."

I think I would have a better chance of flying across Lake Sheila standing on the wings of a bi-plane than losing my belly fat. I know they have a bi-plane in Hendersonville because I went to see the couple that have it one day. But I also know that I am much too fat

to stand on the wings of the thing...I'm sure I would go straight through

to say nothing of how I would get up there in the first place. But in case we can figure it out, keep your eyes to the sky as the crowd

yells, "It's a bird. It's a plane. No darn it, it's Joe Adams standing naked on the wings waving like crazy. Which he is.

November Lifestyles Article

2009-10-27T18:44:00.001-05:00

"Let's Go Octobering".

I had a friend when I was younger who loved autumn. She would
call and say, "Let's go Octobering." It meant she wanted to go for a
walk somewhere she could kick leaves. Or even roll in them. That was
50 years ago but I'm sure she is still "Octobering". She's probably
given up rolling in the leaves.

The other day my friend and neighbor Bandon Reynolds at Lake
Sheila arrived at my house in her golf cart, She insisted that I
needed a ride to the top of the world...or at least the top out this
way.

I'm not too mobile since I had a stroke a while back, but she
managed to get me stuffed into the golf cart. She said it was going
to be cold, and it was. You could feel the temperature dropping as we
went higher and higher up Tanglewood Drive.

We parked when we got to the top because you have a panoramic view of Lake
Sheila below and the countryside. It was a blaze of color and a
magnificent view.
I decided years ago that I was the kind of person who wanted to live
down below by the lake looking up and not the kind who wanted to live
high up, looking down.

I was happy to get my "Octobering" in before I had to turn the
calendar page

I usually have a few pumpkins around to remind me of the season.
But since I have to walk with the aid of a cane now, I still have not
figured out how to carry a pumpkin and walk with my cane. I can
barely get my groceries from the car into the house.

I remember fondly taking my children---and then my
grandchildren---to the pumpkin patch to get our Halloween pumpkins.
The first year I took my two granddaughters, Michelle who was five
said, "These pumpkins don't have faces."
I had to explain that the faces didn't grow on them,,,you had to take
a knife and cut the eyes, nose and a toothy smile.

She was quick to answer, "Our Mom doesn't allow us to have
knives." Her sister said, "We can draw faces on them with Magic
Makers. So that's how we did it. The pumpins weren't nearly as scary
but there's enough scary stuff in the world already. Don't you agree?

Fwd: October LIfestyles Article

2009-09-20T16:58:00.001-05:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joe Adams <americaohyes@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:55:36 -0400
Subject: October LIfestyles Article
To: Cathy Jackson <cathy@cathyjacksonrealty.com>

SOMEBODY LOVES YOU.

I am deaf so I am very, very dependent upon e-mail and my computer for
communications. It's my primary way of staying in touch with friends,
family members, etc. Of course I'm not always that happy to be in
touch with the "etc.'s"

If you've got a computer, you know that people send some very strange
things I have 218 e-mails right now that Google thinks are SPAM. Or
the computer version of Junk Mail.

But every once in a while I get an e-mail forwarded to me that is
absolutely priceless. I want to share one with you. I'll have to
paraphrase it but it was from a guy in Atlanta who
said:

I was watching television on Sunday morning...a church
service...thought it would save me from having to go out to church.
They had a guest speaker, a 93 year old former pastor
who had retired. He was asked to come back so they could honor him.
They asked him to tell the congregation about the most important
lessons he had learned over the years. They were expecting a
full-blown sermon.

When he was introduced, he got up from his high-backed chair and
walked slowly to the pulpit. He carried no notes or papers. As the
applause died down, he held onto the pulpit with both hands to steady
himself. Here's what he said.

"Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little
ones to him belong. They are weak, but He is strong. Yes...Jesus
loves me. Yes...Jesus loves me. For the Bible tells me so."

With that, he turned to walk away. The congregation was so quiet, you
could hear his shoes move on the carpet as he shuffled back to his
chair.

It's a great story. I don't know if it actually happened but I hope it did.

We have to remember that even in our darkest hours and in our deepest
periods of loneliness, we always have a friend. YES, JESUS LOVES
US! We are never truly alone.

Bless you all.

Joe Adams

Fwd: John 3:16

2009-07-22T15:47:00.001-05:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joe Adams <americaohyes@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 22, 2009 4:45 PM
Subject: John 3:16
To: Roff Graves <graves@gravescountry.com>

We've been Presbyterians for hundreds of years on my Father's side so
my first experiences with church was at a nearby Presbyterian place.
The woman next door to us would take me to church. She had a Ford
Coupe Convertible with a rumble seat which she would unfold and where
I would ride. I have to admit that the ride to and from church was
the most exciting part of Sunday mornings.

One Sunday we studied John 3:16. As an only child, I tended to talk
more than I listened. When the lesson was over, the Sunday
school teacher looked at me and said, "Joe, why don't you tell us what
you have to do to go to Heaven?" I was stunned into silence.

I gave it some thought as she impatiently waited for an answer.
Finally I said, "Love Jesus."

She went nuts! "No, no," she screamed, "You don't have to love Jesus.
That's not what John 3:16 teaches us. You do NOT have to love Jesus.
You have to believe. That's what it says."

I truly wanted to cry. She was so mean. But finally, with my lips
trembling, I said, "Well I don't think it would hurt to love Jesus a
little bit."

She threw her Bible on the table and ran out of the room. Some people
shouldn't be kindergarten teachers.

I got my first Bible by learning to say John 3:16 by heart. But it's
not me that's writing John 3:l6 on walls all over America.

Momma's Doughnut Hole

2009-07-22T15:32:00.001-05:00

Once or twice a year --- but never in the summer when it was hot ---my
Momma would find her special pot that she used for cooking doughnuts.
It had a wide open mouth and was fairly deep. She would put a whole
can of fresh lard into the pot and melt it. She saved used lard in a
jar, but she never used this to cook doughnuts.

"You don't want doughnuts that taste like fish," she would say. And
that's true. We didn't want hamburgers that tasted like fish either,
but that didn't seem to bother her.

Doughnut making time meant that I got to go in the kitchen to help.
We would roll out the dough and then cut the doughnuts out. We used a
biscuit cutter but it had a special little center piece that you could
attach that automatically made it into a doughnut cutter. Or if you
left it in, as we sometimes did, you had biscuits with holes in the
middle.

One of my jobs was to cut the doughnuts out. I had to cut as close as
possible to each doughnut so we didn't waste any dough. Then I would
pick out the dough from the hole cutter. I would collect the pieces
of dough (not the doughnut part) and the holes, wad them up and roll
the dough out again. I kept repeating the process until there was
practically no dough left. I would try to make the smallest doughnut
in the world with the final leftovers. I thought people might pay me
to see something like that but apparently people weren't as curious as
I was.

My other job was to carefully put the doughnut dough into the sizzling
lard. The doughnuts cooked fast and the lard could pop up on you. We
had some chopsticks from a Chinese restaurant that we had gone to once
(nobody in our family could eat with two skinny sticks) and the
chopstick was perfect for flipping the doughnuts when they were done
on one side. Then I used them to pick up the
doughnuts and put them on a large platter.

One they had cooled a little, I took the sifter full of powdered sugar
and would cover the doughnuts with a snowstorm of sugar.

These were cake doughnuts...nothing like those air-filled things you
could get at the Krispy Kreme shop. "Sweet air!" my Daddy called
those.

He soaked his doughnut in his coffee. And one doughnut could easily
suck up half a cup of coffee. I soaked mine in milk.

We made little plates of doughnuts to deliver to the neighbors. This
was done mainly so if they made doughnuts, they would share with you.

May Article for Saluda Lifestyles

2009-04-17T16:37:00.001-05:00

CHICKEN EVERY SUNDAY

I love chickens. I always have. When I was a kid, we had chicken
every Sunday. Other
than fat back and other pig parts, it was about the only meat we ate.

I had two pet chickens. The first one was a hen. I used to hypnotize
her all the time. They are very vulnerable to hypnotists. You just
pick them up, put them above your head and swirl them around a few
times. Set them down and they are in a trance. Unfortrunately, they
are not under your command. One, they are fairly stupid. Then the
other thing is, they don't talk our language. You have to talk
Chicken Talk if you want them to do anything. But, still, it was a
hoot to have a hen in a trance.

The second pet chicken I had was a rooster who was half-blind. He had
a habit of wandering under the house in the middle of the day. It was
dark under there and he thought it was night time, so he would roost.
And roost. And roost. When I finally missed him, I would have to
crawl under the house and drag him out into the daylight.
Immediately he would start crowing as loudly as he could. (I told you
chickens were dumb.) He was not very reliable as a wake-up call
unless you were working on the second shift.

Once I got to a certain age, it became my responsibility to kill the
chicken for Sunday
dinner. It was a big responsibility for a 10 year old boy having to
make life and death decisions. especially when it involved some of
your friends. (I was an only child so
I befriended anything that breathed, except snakes. )

I would toss out a few pieces of dried corn and all the chickens would
come running.
They would start pecking at the corn and I would have to decide whose number was
up. Sometimes I would say "inny-menny-minny-moe" and use that method to choose.
Sometimes I would ask God to guide me in my decision. After all, he
knew which chickens had been good or bad. But usually I just had to
make a quick decision or the corn would run out and they would run
away.

I learned to grab one by the neck, grit my teeth and wring its neck.
Sometimes I wrung it so enthusiastically that the whole head would
come off in my hand and the chicken would go running around in the
yard like...well...a chicken with its head cut off. That was always
amusing to a 10-year-old boy, but not to his Momma. If we were having
people over for supper, I'd have to kill two chickens. Or if they
were big eaters on my father's side of the family, I'd have to kill
three.

Killing them was gruesome, but it was the easy part. After they had
quit running around,
I had to boil water in a big pot in the yard, then I had to dip them
in the water...get the chicken really wet and then pick the feathers
off.. There were always some small feathers left, but I could singe
them off. Again, fairly amusing for a young boy.

I had a step grandmother who lived with us from time to time. She was
Jewish, we were told. She insisted that all the blood be drained from
her chickens before they
were cooked. So I would usually have to chop the heads off of these
chickens which was more dangerous than it probably sounds. I was a
nervouse boy, you see, and
to hold a flapping chicken on a chopping block, hold an ax and swing
it at the neck of
the chicken was intimidating. I was always certain I would chop off a
few fingers for killing all those other chickens. I figured there was
a Chicken God someplace just eager
to settle the score. But it never happened. My step grandmother made
me hang her chickens upside down on the clothesline while they dripped
blood. That was a spooky
sight but, again, fairly amusing for a yung boy. And even his friends
who would come by
and say, "I see your step grandma is in town again."

I have a couple of chicken feet now, but no chickens. Chicken feet
are powerful charms
in the Voodou World. A friend and I went to a voodou shop in New
Orleans and the woman had a pile of chicken feet. I asked her how
much for two of them. She said
$10. I said, "I can buy two whole bar-b-qued chickens at Ingles for
$10." She said, "Sure, but you don't get the feet and that's where
all the power for warding off evil is." So I got two. So far, so
good.

I would have chickens here at Lake Sheila. But we have covenants that
don't allow any
undomesticated animals. I suppose if I walked my chicken on a leash,
I could claim that
it was domesticated.

Joe Adams

Re-Inventing One's Self

2009-02-23T13:11:00.002-05:00

I've never thought that one should have the same career for 40 or 50 years. That's why they invented retirement. Give it up! And then re-invent yourself, I say.

In fact, a guy I know up in Asheville did a movie about people who have re-invented themselves...a socialite who now does Tupperware-like parties, but she sells sex toys...a computer guy who now uses spare parts to make into artwork. It's amazing really.

I personally worked very hard in my primary career in order to quit early. I didn't want to retire. I just wanted to try some other things without being under the pressure of making money from it. I was eager to re-invent myself. I became, among other things, a newspaper publisher, a custom home builder, an antiques dealer (open only on Saturday, whether I felt like it or not), art dealer, a public speaker, a portrait photographer specializing in tongue portraits (more on this at another time), an award-winning playwright, a newspaper humor columnist, an ordained minister (so I got my ordination through the mail...so what! I didn't have to study for 8 years...I mean, everything you need to know is in The Book).

The list goes on. I enjoyed all of the new careers although some of them were short-lived due mainly to a lack of interest on the part of the buying public. It's true of most inventors. Edison invented hundreds and hundreds of items,

but we remember him most for the lightbulb and his movie projector. (I like Edison. Although he was the first person to

have an inground swimming pool, he never exercised. Well, he exercised his brain. He rarely slept;he would have ten minute naps on a cot in his lab.)

As I minister I did unusual weddings. One in particular was called JUMPING THE BROOM. In early days here in the Sea Islands, black slaves weren't allowed to marry. But they did and it was signified by the couple whooping it up and then jumping across a broom. My part of the ceremony was simply bringing The Broom. The Broom was decorated with

various voodoo symbols.

For a short while I was also a pornographeer of sorts. This was way before the internet made it easy to find risque material. I have this information by heresay understand.

My career in porno was more than 50 years ago when I was a struggling college student with a wife and child to support.

One day I was getting a haircut in a real barbershop. The barber had a couple of deer heads mounted to the wall. I

was reading a magazine for men...popular mechanics or

something similar. I came upon the idea of advertising and selling "wild stag photos. Send $3 cash." I got myself a post office box and I was in business. Money came rolling in! I was true to my promise...I sent each respondent three

black and white photos of deer in the wild. I never had any

complaints, although I started thinking that someone would

be at the post office waiting for me so they could beat the tar out of me. But I stopped selling the wild stag photos for a different reason. I was afraid St. Peter would question me about it when I got to the Pearly Gates. I'm not sure he has a sense of humor.

Oh, yeah. I was a fortune teller. And I also wrote resumes by mail. My motto was: I Can Make Anyone Look Good. Even Attilla the Hun. My first rule was: Never put your picture on your resume if you are ugly. Save it for the interview.

LOSE FAT WHILE YOU SLEEP

2009-01-22T12:53:00.001-05:00

That was the headline on an advertisement I saw 55 years ago when I was a portly
young teenager. Probably the best headline I had ever read. Imagine?
Lose weight while you sleep. I try to dream of exercising now hoping
that the dream
will actually build my strength and make me lose weight.

When I saw the ad, of course I got together $12.95, bought a money order and
sent away for this miracle weight-loss product.

When it came and I unwrapped it, it looked like a bright, rose-colored shower
curtain...with arms and legs. It was plastic and had a long zipper down the
front. The whole idea was that you slept in these plastic pajamas, and since
your body is mainly made up of water, you would sleep and sweat it away.

Made sense to me. The instructions didn't say how fast this worked
but I worried
that I would wake up the next morning with a skinny body, a fat face, fat hands
and fat feet. But I could live with that. So I zippered myself into
my shower curtain suit and went to bed.

I didn't wake up skinny. But I did wake up wet. At first I thought I
might have
pee peed in my bed, but then I remembered the suit and thought, "It's working.
It's working. I'm melting away."

Every day I dried the suit out and would put it back on that night. I
was on to something here and was very excited. The fifth day,
however, when I took off
the plastic suit, I realized my skin was the same bright reddish color
all over my body as the suit was. Heat rash! Nobody said anything
about getting heat rash. But I was red all over except for my face,
hands and feet. Bright red!

I thought to myself, "How can I possibly get undressed for gym and take a shower
with this Indian-red body?" Of course everyone would want to know
what had happened to me. I couldn't think of any disease that caused
a rash on your body,
but left your feet, hands and face faultless.

Some kind soul in the gym shower solved the problem for me when he
declared: "Some bitch of a birthmark
you got buddy."

About the same time, the zipper broke on the front of my plastic suit
so I had to
decide whether to invest some more money and order another one or to trash it.
I trashed it. Now I have a suana.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO FRUITCAKES?

2008-12-27T13:21:00.002-05:00

Fruitcakes used to be as common as Christmas trees in December. But they seem to have gone out of culinary style. I still get one every year from a friend of mine in Pennsylvania, but he is a die-hard traditionalist who refuses to quit making them. He's down to making only two a year now...one for himself and one for me. I look forward to its arrival...it weighs a ton because he loads it with rum. If you slice one piece you can usually squeeze out a jigger of rum. Now that's what I call fruitcake.

My friend wraps the cake in cheesecloth and selects a nice tin to mail it in. The cheesecloth takes on a rusty look and I keep thinking it is The Shroud of Turin... I keep expecting an image of Jesus to appear. Or at least the Virgin Mary who was supposedly a great fan of fruitcakes.

Scientist thought they found a large fruitcake in King Tut's Tomb, but it turnned out to be a jelly doughnut.

My father's church sold fruitcakes every year for years and years. Claxton Fruitcakes. He was suppose to sell the cakes to raise money but instead he would buy 5 boxes of them and then he gave them away to people intead of selling them. If you were his son, like I was, you would get at least l0 of these babies. They were shaped like big sticks of butter. I tried my best to offer pieces or even whole cakes to people, but no one bit. I could eat one a month so I took to freezing them and breaking them out as the year progressed. They could have used a little rum but since it was a Methodist church that was selling them, rum was a no-no. One summer I used one as fishing bait. The fish didn't bite.

At Christmas I used to buy two round fruitcakes...one large and one small. I would put them on a cake plate, small on top of the other one. Then I would drizzle white icing over them and put a large red candle in the center hole. It made a magnificent centerpiece for the Christmas dessert table, although no one ever cut into the cakes. I got the cakes at the dime store...and whatever happened to the dime stores?? Well, they have Dollar Stores now so maybe they sell fruitcakes.

I should have signed up for The Great Fruitcake Toss they have every January in Colorado. Those people know how to get rid of unwanted fruitcakes...throw them over to Utah.

One of the best teleplays I ever saw was based on Truman Capote's story of making fruitcakes every year with his crazy cousin. They would make one and send to the President of the United States. They had to collect nuts and shell them; get the waxed fruit; go to some old Indian to get some booze to soak the cake in. Then they would wait to get a thank you letter from the President. Sweet story.

I know companies are still making fruitcakes...Assumption Abbey is one of the most famous. And Collins Street Bakery in Texas makes a nutty one that's really delicious And Dancing Deer makes a "harvest" cake that's a more contempory type of fruitcake. But as long as my friend Charlie from Pennsylvania keeps making them, I am set in the fruitcake department. And in the rum department as well.

GET THAT MAN OUT OF THE KITCHEN!

2008-08-23T12:17:00.003-05:00

When we invited people over for dinner, they never ask "What's cooking?" Then ask,

"Who's cooking?"

If I am the Cook Du Jour, they invariably find some lame excuse like: I think my Mother

died today. Huh! I've heard that one before.

As Marie Antoniette said, "Let them eat cake...from Ingles."

I'm creative in the kitchen. I think of it as a chemistry lab with pots and pans. Just because a potato is white doesn't mean you have to serve it that way. I learned that

years ago when I was in college. I would get home from school oftentimes earlier than

my wife got home from work. I made mashed potatoes, but I discovered food colors so I would make them green with pink gravy. I thought it looked great but my wife turned away in disgust. And she threw away the food coloring.

I admit that I am sort of messy in the kitchen. A chef needs assistants. Check the ones on TV...they are never washing dishes as they go or worrying about how many

pots and pans they are using. My oven has so many drippings on the bottom, I could

make a meatloaf. And I think I might.

I love meatloaf. (The Saluda Grade Cafe has fantastic meatloaf, by the way.) I come from a long line of meat eaters and meatloaf is our meat of choice...perhaps it's because not everyone still has their God-given teeth and meatloaf is easy to gum.

Everybody in our family loves meatloaf and we have an annual meatloaf cooking contest. We even have a shirt that says: Don't Let Your Meat Loaf.

I am ashamed to say that I have been eliminated more than once. Last year I made my meatloaf in a muffin pan....12 perfect little meatloafs. My oldest daughter is very bossy when it comes to competitions. She put herself in charge and immediately

eliminated me without the judges even getting a taste.

"This is NOT a muffin-cooking contest. It's a loaf we're looking for and these are

meat MUFFINS. You're out of the race!" she announced.

Guess who won? She did with a Mexican meatloaf. I have to admit that it was very

tasty, but she should have shaped it like a sombrero.

We also have a chili cooking competition. I have a placque in the State of Virginia for winning the chili competition there. My chili is called "My Lips Have Taste The Glory of

The Coming of the Lord" chili. I also won for Longest Name.

But in my family (with the same Bossy Judge) my chili got eliminated. Why? "Because it is not red, and everyone knows that chili has to be red."

I made White Chili. I know it sounds like some sissy thing from California but it had real buffalo meat and three types of white beans. And it was darn good.

"But it isn't RED!", my daughter proclaimed.

"But it will burn the hairs out of your nose and the tequila will make you hallucinate.

That's what counts."

"No cowboy would ever eat this," she countered.

"If he rode side-saddled he might".

PHAT PHIL FROM PHILLIE

2008-08-03T17:31:00.003-05:00

When I was in Basic Training at Fort Jackson, S.C. years ago, we had a guy in our platoon named Phat Phil From Phillie. We didn't call him that to his face. But that's what everybody called him when they talked about him. He was fat. He was from Philadelphia. And his given name was

Phil.

He was what people called a Whop. We didn't call him that to his face either. He was Italian. We

were friendly with Phat Phil for one reason alone: His Mother, a fine Italian woman herself, would send him huge boxes in the mail. They were stuffed with all kinds of delicacies---cookies, cakes, salami, pasta sauce in jars, cheeses. We thought pizza was the only food that Italians ate, but Phil's

momma introduced us to a world of good eating.

When the mailman called out Phil's name at mail call and we would see the big box from home, we would quickly gather around his bunk in anticipation of his opening the package. We were like little birds waiting to be fed. Little vultures.

Phil liked all the attention so he generously passed out samples, telling us what each thing on the menu was. Usually everything was eaten within half an hour and poor Phil had to go back to being an ordinary fat soldier until the next package came from home.

The packages gave us a great idea. My friend Blair and I wrote to our mothers, aunts, cousins and most of the girls in our senior high school class. We told them we were in the War. (Actually we enlisted three days before the Korean War was technically over.) We told them the Army was

starving us to death and begged them to send anything that wouldn't spoil en route.

My Mother came through right away (I was an only child). We were smart enough to pay the mailman to put our packages into our laundry bags which hung on the end of our bunks. We didn't want a throng of guys attacking us like we attached Phat Phil.

I can't tell you how happy we were to come in from a day of marching and see the shape of a

box in our laundry bag.

We already Had a plan in mind. We would carry the bag out as if we were going to the laundromat. But instead of going there, we both crawled under the barracks which was about

two and a half feet off the ground. We dragged our goodies behind us. When we got under the building far enough not to be seen, we sat and carefully opened the box.

My Mother wasn't Italian but she was Southern, so she knew how to put together a satisfying

CARE package for her only son. She had cans of Vienna Sausage and Potted Meat, Crackers of

various kinds, sardines, bananas and peanut butter. She sent pimento cheese sandwiches already

made and wrapped in tinfoil. They travelled surprisingly well.

Our big problem was the height of the barracks. We could take a bit of a sandwich, but our necks were bent over so much we couldn't swallow anything.

I sent Blair back into our barracks to get our two field shovels. When he came back, we dug

a hole large enough to sit in with our heads held high. We called it our "Dining Room" and dine,

we did.

Every day more packages arrived. Some were just cookies or candy. But we also started

getting canned hams. We needed to get our dining room better organized for opening and slicing

ham. I wanted to make a little table but we couldn't find any scrap wood. So we started wearing

our ponchos to keep the grease off of our clothes. One person asked what kind of laundry detergent we used because we always smelled so edible when we came in from one of our feasts.

We didn't share our food with anybody, nor our secret dining spot. If you went to Fort Jackson

today, the hole is probably still under the building with a lot of empty Vienna Sausage cans. Our

mailman started making us give him monthly payments to keep his mouth shut. We should have stuffed it with one of Phat Phil's salamis.

YOU WANT A ROOM ON THE ROAD OR A MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCE?

2008-06-11T09:05:00.001-05:00

I used to travel a lot; mainly on the road. And if I was travelling by myself, I didn't care what kind of room I got as long as it was clean. And I actually rejected a couple of rooms that looked like there might have been a chainsaw murder in them. Maybe it wasn't blood on the carpet, but it looked scary.

I had never stayed in a motel until I went in the Army. When my family went anywhere, we

travelled at night. My Father wouldn't stop at a motel. He just assumed they cost a lot of

money and my Mother wasn't keen on sleeping where "who knows who" has slept and done

other things. My Father would say, "Sleep in the car." So I did.

I have since stayed in a lot of motels and hotels, including very upscale ones. My wife likes

to travel first class so whenever she goes I have to upgrade my accommodations. It's actually

ridiculous what some places charge now...$300 to $400 a night in New York is considered

mid-priced. But I don't go to New York that often or stay that long, so I usually bite the bullet and pick something unusual. A big price doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a great place.

I like to stay at new hotels when they open. We stayed at one years ago...it was so fancy,

they didn't even have a sign on the place; you just had an address. And when you arrived,

handsome young men in black escorted you in. It was designed by Andre Putnam, a hooty

tooty French designer. Everything in the hotel was done in black and white. We had what

was fondly called a Loft...a bedroom, sitting room, bath all done in black and white. Cher

had an apartment there. It was one of those places that you go to be see and be seen

although I don't think we were chic enough to be seen.

The same hotel group opened another hotel in the theater district, so we booked there once.

The rooms were tiny but the lobby was huge and filled with designer furnishings...enormous

modern chairs that were very uncomfortable. And there were mirrors everywhere...when the

elevator doors opened, the inside was covered with mirrors. When they got to your floor and opened, there was a huge mirror right in front of the door. People who stayed there not only

wanted to be seen, they wanted to see themselves as well. They had a menu in the room for ordering rental videos...x-rated, gay and straight. They would bring them to your room. We

didn't order any. I didn't think they should know what we were doing in our spare time.

Now the big thing is providing guests with a "meaningful experience", not just a firm bed and a good night's rest. One meaningful experience, for example, is a 6-hand massage. It's

not included in the room rate; it's extra. And not cheap. I mean, it's very difficult to find massage help that has six hands. Other meaningful experiences include aroma therapy

whereby they shoot exotic smells into your room.

Mainly I just want a place to sleep peacefully. Years ago I started staying at Hampton Inn

when I was on the road. When they first started opening them, the motels were fairly reasonably priced...then gradually (well not all that gradual actually), they started bumping up the prices. A place I stayed at in Atlanta was soon more than a hundred dollars a night.

I thought that was a lot for one old guy to sleep and park. So I soon downgraded my choices

and looked for bargains.

But last year I switched back to Hampton Inn. My wife told me she had stayed at one and

the rooms and bedding were so luxurious. I thought, "How luxurious can they be?". So I

decided to stay in one...price be damned (plus I have an AARP card). Well, let me tell you,

they are luxurious...the beds especially. They are so nice, in fact, that I started stopping

after only being on the road for a couple of hours. Normally I drive for 7 or 8 hours before

stopping but I was coming back from Mississippi and I started stopping before I had even

gotten on the road good. Not all the Hampton Inns had been redone at the time, so one time

I checked out when I saw the room was the old standard.

You have to be careful with budget motels. Years ago I stopped at one in Columbia, S.C.

When I checked in, she asked if I wanted a telephone. It was extra. I'm deaf so I passed on

the phone. Then she wanted to know if I wanted a TV. I did, but they added it to my bill.

She wanted to know if I wanted toilet paper. I asked, "Does this place have a bed with the

room?" She said, "Yes, but sheets and pillow cases are extra." Talk about your ala carte

services.

CAN A 70 YEAR OLD MAN OUTRUN AN ALLIGATOR?

2008-05-27T15:50:00.002-05:00

You betcha!

I live on a lagoon in South Carolina and in the lagoon is an 8 foot long creature called an

alligator. He is so sneaky. He moves very slowly through the water with only his nose

and his big eyeballs showing. He looks slow, but he's only trying to get you to come closer

so he can jump out of the lagoon, grab your leg and stuff you under the bank of the lagoon

so he can eat you later. I know how these devils work.

I was out one morning checking on our alligator and an old, old woman came by. She saw

me looking at the gator so she came over and said, "Be careful. Those things are fast. They

can run as fast as a galloping horse."

I looked at her and said, "You know I have a feeling that if that alligator was chasing me, I could run faster than a galloping horse...by a good bit."

She said earnestly, "You have to zig-zag. They can run fast for about 50 yards, but they

have trouble zigging and zagging. So you zig-zag as much as you can."

I asked her if she had outrun any alligators and she just held up two arms and said, "I still

have both of my arms don't I?"

I have always remembered her warnings. So far I haven't out to outwit an alligator. I have to

walk with a cane now, so my plan is to hit the sucker in the head as soon as he makes a

move toward me.

An alligator down here actually ate an old woman last year. I sort of wondered if it was the

person who had given me life-saving instruction. She might have zagged instead of zigged.

Signs are posted everywhere down here no to feed the alligators. But tourists are fascinated

by the things and they feed them no matter what the signs say. An alligator remembers forever where he has been fed, so they keep coming back to that spot. And if they see a

person outdoors they just figure it is dinner time.

They will eat anything, too. They have found all kinds of strange things in alligator bellies:

cigarette lighters, coke bottles, tin cans, other alligators, baby toys. They are scavengers.

They're like Billy Goats (except it is not true that goats eat tin cans...when you see pictures

of them with cans, they are trying to eat the paper off the cans and lick the glue...the alligators eat cans!)

Alligators hate poodles. They hate their bark which is rather high pitched. So they catch a lot of poodles. When they catch their prey, they hold them under water until they drown.

That's when they can safely tuck them under the bank of the lagoon and come back later to

eat them. There's a lot of poodle fuzz in my lagoon. I can appreciate why alligators might

want to eat them. Poodles are cute but they are so bossy. I had friends who had a poodle.

The dog hated my guts. He growled at me the whole time I would visit them. And all because I suggested that they might want to have him stuffed and made into a nice foot

stool. He understood every word I said, even though I told him that I didn't mean "now" but

after he croaked. He loved to chase female dogs...he was ancient but when he was on the

move, he could jump a 5 foot high fence to get into see his girlfriend. But then he didn't have

the energy to jump back across to go home. The neighbors would have to call and tell my

friends to come get Casanova.

Maine Is a Long Way to Go for a Lobster Roll

2008-04-05T11:11:00.002-05:00

I spent the summer in Maine a few years ago. I had always wanted to go but it is so darn far. And when I finally went, I drove all the way up to the highest point in the state.,.,,.and also the

eastern most point in the U.S. I rented a "camp" in a 5,000 acre wildlife preserve. Camp is what they call cabins. It was remote and primitive, although it was right on a body of water and I could watch the lobster boats working the area every day.

The wildlife preserve had originally been owned by a bunch of Philadelphia millionaires...they had cottages throughout the area, plus a hotel and a little chapel. This was back in the early l900's.

They would come up by train and spend the summer there. Wisely the heirs to the cottages had

decided to donate most of the land to the government for a preserve and keep their cottages and a small tract of land. That way they didn't have to pay taxes on all the property.

My camp was a long log cabin with two bedrooms on each end of the house...two living rooms with fireplaces and a single small kitchen. It was June, and still cold up there. My granddaughter went with me. She had one end of the house and I had the other. We would load every quilt we could find on us at night and then stay in the same spot without moving.

I don't know where I was when they taught campfire building, but I could not get fires started in the big stone fireplaces. I had logs but I was using newspaper for "kindling". I had some friends coming to visit from Maryland...and the man was a longtime farmer. I knew he would know how to build a fire so I asked him to bring some kindling wood and to teach me to make a fire. He arrived with a trunk load of kindling.

Maine was as beautiful as I expected but you could hardly enjoy the outdoors because of the pesky Black Flies. They are big suckers too and they bite. You can't kill them with a fly swatter. You need a rifle to blow them out of the air. And the Maine Tourist Bureau never mentions the darn things. Why would they?

The people who live way up in Maine where we were are fairly...stupid. If you doubt me,

read the book, THE BEANS OF EGYPT, MAINE. Everybody in the book was nutty. There

was so much cross-breeding (and gross-breeding), not a single person had two eyes of the

same color. The cattle didn't either. They made our Southern Hillbillies seem like rocket

scientists. Fortunately there were not a lot of locals left. Anybody that was reasonably smart

had left years ago.

The county were I was staying was the biggest producing area for wild blueberries. They

were truly a sight to see. I had been accustomed to blueberries that grew on bushes. These

wild blueberries grew on very short ground cover. The hills literally turned blue when the blueberries came on. And then the migrant workers all the way from Florida showed up to

pick them. We had them growing in the wildlife preserve so I picked quite a few for us to eat.

But it was back-breaking work, more suited to midget laborers.

We had a little chapel in the preserve so anytime people would come visit we would take

a tour of the grounds and I would insist on taking a picture of them as bride and groom. There

were a lot of plastic flowers there for real weddings so I would outfit the couples accordingly.

I have some same-sex photos although I did not actually marry them. Just took pictures.

I sort of expected that lobsters would be cheaper in Maine. But they weren't. They were plentiful, but not cheap. Most of the cafes made lobster rolls...a delicious treat using pulled

boiled lobster from the shell and tossing it ever so slightly with mayo. Then they would put

it in a roll shape and serve it on a grilled hot dog bun. Even McDonald's had lobster rolls.

And they were $7 each even at McDonald's.

There were lobster pounds everywhere...places you could buy live lobsters to take home

and cook. So my granddaughter and I decided to buy a big lobster and take home. She sort of grew attached to it and was not too keen on cooking it. But I had paid too much to turn it into

a pet. You cook them while they are still alive, like you do with crabs. Problem was, we could

not find a pot that was as big as the lobster. But I found a tall one and heated some water. He

had to go part way and be cooked, then turned and be cooked on the other end.

I asked my granddaughter, "If you were going to be boiled, would you rather go in head first

or tail first?" She didn't want to be boiled at all, but thought we should put the lobster in head

first or we would hear him crying out for help if we put him in tail first. So we put him in head

first and actually managed to get him all the way in once he was relaxed. We used him to make

Lobster Thermidor. But it was easier to buy lobster rolls.

Since we were so remote, we didn't have a lot of traffic unless we tried to go to some place

interesting. Then every tourist in Maine was backed up on the roads into towns. Maine is a very artsy place so we found dozens of interesting galleries and artists. We also went sailing on a

Tall Ship...these are big wooden boats with high masts. Even on a sunny day, it was cold out on the water which of course they didn't mention until you were out on the water.

There was a ferry service from the nearest town over to Nova Scotia. We had to get up at

4 AM to get into town and get the car on the boat. I decided to book a stateroom so I could go

back to bed seeing as how it was still dark and there would be nothing to see.. I loved Nova

Scotia. They had no black flies. I went to the Bay of Fundy which is the scallop capital of the world. I love scallops more than I like lobsters, so was able to have them for breakfast, lunch

and dinner.

Once I was back in Maine, my wife came to visit from South Carolina and some friends came from Arkansas. My wife immediately declared that my camp was "a dump". I thought "primitive" was a better word. I mean, we had two indoor toilets and showers and, by then, I had learned to build fires in the fireplace. I think the mail problem was that my friends from Arkansas

took us to see a friend of theirs who "takes a house every summer" in a town not far away. It

was a 14 bedroom house, not exactly a "camp". My wife isn't what I would call "flexible". That's what she thought I should have rented but I explained that it wasn't available. I like contrasts...high life, low life...both interest me. And to prove it, I took them on a tour of a famous sardine factory. I called it famous because it is my brand of sardine and I as so happy to discover that they were packed near the camp. They had their logo ... a 20 foot

high statue of a seaman...out front. When we arrived they claimed they didn't allow tours, but

I sweet-talked them by telling them I had driven all the way from South Carolina (which I had) to see the sardines being packed (this wasn't exactly the truth...I had gone out of my way to see

the ice cream factory at Ben and Jerry's in Vermont). I had always wondered how they got those little fish in there so perfectly. You know, head-to-toe, toe-to-head so to speak although they don't have heads. I could not figure out how they could get them packed like that with a machine and they don't. They have women (see previous note regarding The Beans of Egypt Maine) who work by conveyor belts clipping off heads of sardines...and other ones grabbing the slimy little things and putting them in the cans, head-to-toe. They finally allowed us to go inside but told us not to take pictures. The women might have been sardine factory slaves is what I was thinking Can you imagine walking home from work after a long day in the sardine factory and having every cat in town on your trail? Life's not easy in Maine.

I'm never going back to Maine in this lifetime. But you can go. Everybody should go at least once.

The Robots Are Coming! They're Coming!

2008-03-26T20:44:00.001-05:00

It's bad enough we have to worry about illegal aliens taking our jobs away here in America. Now we have to worry about Robots taking them. The Japanese are planning to send more than 100,000 our way by 2010. And what are they going to be doing? Caregivers for the elderly!

I'm an elder and I didn't ask for any shiny robot to take care of me. I want some HUMAN contact not some whirring mechanical robot bringing me my coffee. And what do you think they'll feed me for lunch? Sushi, probably. And sushi is not real food. The name doesn't sound like anything you

would want to put in your mouth that's for sure.

I don't think the Japanese have really forgiven us for dropping The Bomb, so I especially wouldn't want to trust a Japanese robot

I realize that we are far behind Japan and China in terms of our use of robots. General Motors

had them as early as 1960 but then the robots joined the union and there went that idea out the

factory window.

Robots are already big in Japan and China...mainly working to build cars. Now they'll probably put aprons on them and send them over here as caregivers. I need someone who can

shave me and I'm not trusting some Japanese robot to do it, especially one that's singing show tunes from Sweeney Todd. In Japanese.

I might look more favorably on the robots as caregivers if they made them look more human.

I could see me having one that looked like Aunt Bee, for example. Nice little old lady robot with

a bun on the back of her metallic head and pinch-nosed glasses. And she would have to be able to cook stuff like chicken fried steak, catfish and biscuits. Although if they're going to make them

human like, I'd pay extra to get a caregiver that looks like Pamela from Baywatch. I live on a lake and having one that's a good swimmer would be handy. She wouldn't have to cook; we could go down to the diner for breakfast and lunch. Or I could get two robots...one that looks like Pam to be my lifeguard and one that looks like Aunt Bee to do the cooking and cleaning. She would need to go to bed early.

One of the advantages I see in having a robot caregiver is that you wouldn't have to feed them.

Just give them a squirt of WD-40 ever once in a while.

We've been very slow here in the U.S. to adopt the use of robots. It's really no wonder. We

sent one up in the latest space shuttle. It had to be sent in three parts and assembled once the

space shuttle landed. It's 7 feet tall. And it has arms that are 15 feet long. They don't know what they will have it do. Maybe he can play first base if they start a baseball team. With 15 foot arms he wouldn't miss many balls that came his way. I know the government does some dumb

things, but why would they send a robot with l5 foot arms out in space with no plans for what he

was going to be doing? His name is Derek, if you want to send him a postcard.

There may be a lot of people out there who want a robot. I googled the word on the computer and 57,400,000 entries came up. Some people are apparently buying kits to build their own

robots. That's a do-it-yourself project that could go bad. They even have a flying robot competition...birds and insect robots. I have enough trouble with termites and rats. I don't want

to have to hire Terminex to get rid of my insect robots. But I didn't see anything in all the googled entries of any old guys wanting caregiver robots. If the Japs send all those robots over

here and nobody wants them, I guess we could modify them slightly and we could put them

to work waiting tables at Hooters.

MOVING ON UP

2008-03-07T11:13:00.001-05:00

When I was twelve years old, we lived in the tiny hamlet of Dallas. Life was sweet. We didn't have indoor plumbing because we lived a half a block from where the town sewer line stopped. But we were happy.

Then suddenly we were moving to Washington, D.C. My father was always in a quest for Big Money and he heard that he could make Big Money as an electrician in Washington. We didn't sell our house or move our furniture because this was going to be a test run to see how we liked it. The Big City awaited.

All the avenues in Washington are named after states...so being from North Carolina, we moved to North Carolina Avenue and it had a lot of people from North Carolina living there so we weren't the only dumb ones.

Our first apartment (and I use the word loosely) had one room and a closet that had been converted to a little kitchen. It was a basement apartment. We weren't all the way underground. When we sat in our room we could see people's legs as they walked by. And every five minutes or so, a big streetcar would go clanking by rattling our windows as it flashed by. We didn't have streetcars in Dallas; we didn't have buses either.

There was no bathroom in our apartment. We had to go upstairs and use a bathroom that was also shared by people on the first floor of the building. At least it was indoors.

We had no furniture so we went to a used furniture store near the apartment. My father bought a double bed, one rocking chair and a small table to hold our radio. We used to gather around the radio to listen to our favorite programs...my mother and I sat on the bed; my father in the rocking chair. We would sit and stare at the radio as if it were a tv. I liked radio. You had to create your own mental pictures of what was happening and I was good at that. We ate our dinners sitting on the bed since we didn't have a table.

Actually we had one other room and that's where I slept. It was the furnace room and I slept on a roller way bed. There was just enough room to open the bed beside the furnace. I had never seen a furnace before in my life and especially not one that big. There was a pilot light but when the furnace came on, it was with a blast of fire that lighted the whole room and made me sure we were all going to be blasted back to North Carolina. Scary. Scary indeed.

The apartment had roaches which we all hated. These weren't little roaches...they were big and they could fly. We tried spraying them but they would grab the spray can and squirt us with it. We put out Roach Motels, but they ate them. They came out mainly at night and when I was sleeping in the furnace room and the furnace would blaze on, I could see them scurrying all over the place. I slept with a broom and in the morning, I would use the broom to turn on the lights and give the roaches a chance to go wherever they go in the daytime.

My mother cried and wanted to go home to North Carolina. But my father was studying to get a journeyman's license and it was time for me to go to school.

The school was gigantic and it looked like a big brick castle. It had high chain link fences all around the building and the playground. On the first day of school, I went to three different front doors and they were all locked. I could see kids on the playground but I couldn't figure out how to get into the school. I went home and told my mother and father that there was no way to get in. My father didn't like that answer and just said, "Well tomorrow you will find a way in." And I did. You went onto the playground and they let everyone in at once. I was really so frightened. I was a nervous kid anyway. But eventually I found the office and they welcomed me. I had to take tests for most of the day. They had what they called a "track system". They had a college-bound track; a business track and a I-Hope-You-Can-Find-Work-of-Some-Kind track. And each track had two sections: smart and smarter. I got put in the college bound, smarter track. This was the greatest blessing that probably ever happened to me because it gave me some direction in my life. I was college bound!

The Worst Salesman in the World

2008-02-27T16:42:00.000-05:00

Years ago when I was a student at the University of 'Wisconsin, I got a call one day from a good friend of mine who announced that he has become a salesman.

I yelled through the phone, "You can't be a salesman." He wanted to know why not. I said, "You are totally devoid of personality. A salesman has to have personality."

But George insisted that someone was going to teach him everything he needed to know to become a successful salesman. I wanted to know if he was selling encyclopedias. Those were popular with door to door salesmen back then although we didn't get too many of them because we lived on the third floor of an apartment building and carrying those books was too much for most of them.

George said he wasn't doing door to door sales. He was selling only by appointments and he would be selling something every household needed: Kirby Vacuum Cleaners. I laughed out loud. We certainly didn't need a vacuum cleaner. We had no rugs and very little furniture. We were lucky to be able to afford a broom.

He wanted to make an appointment to come and demonstrate the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner but I

told him in no uncertain terms that we were not buying one of the things under any circumstance.

He told me he really needed some practice so he wasn't expecting us to buy. But I figured that was what they had trained him to say. Then he said he would give us a free case of Pepsi's if I would allow him to demonstrate the machine. I was still reluctant but in my heart I knew he would never be able to talk me into buying anything so I finally said o.k. He wanted to know if the "lady of the house" would be there for the demo. I said, "You mean my wife, Carol?" He said we both had to be present in order to qualify for the free drinks.

When he came over he really had to struggle to get the Kirby up the steps. They weigh more than a set of encyclopedias...and I made him go back down and bring the Pepsi's up. I didn't

trust him. I wanted the Pepsi's in the apartment before we started.

I kept laughing as he got his equipment out because he had memorized the sales pitch word for

word. He said we would be amazed at how much dirt the Kirby would pick up out of the rugs.

I reminded him, pointing to the floor, that we had no rugs.

"I'll do the couch then," he said, "You'll be amazed at how much dirt the Kirby will pull out of the

couch." I reminded him that the couch was brand new; we had just got it from Sears the week

before.

"No matter. You will be amazed. I'll put the upholstery cleaner on and show you how filthy

and germ ridden your couch is."

He turned on the Kirby and it sounded like an airplane engine. He made one swipe down the seat of the couch...and it sucked four buttons off!

"Look what you've done, you nut. You have ruined our new couch. This is going to cost you more than a case of Pepsi's." I yelled.

He told me he could get the buttons out of the Kirby. But getting them back on the couch was

what I wanted.

Next he wanted to do our mattress and moved into the bedroom. I had painted the room. I wanted a bold pink color but it came out more red, so I had painted watermelon seeds on the

wall. He wanted to know if I wanted him to suck the seeds off the wall. I made him move out

of the bedroom.

We went into the kitchen and before I knew what was happening, he turned on the Kirby to

do the curtains...and it sucked them right off the rods. "I guess I should have put it on low",

he said. He also sucked up a three foot high bean plant. I had been studying about germination in botany class and had germinated some pinto beans. The bean plant was like Jack in the

Beanstalk. It had taken off right toward Heaven and I was encouraging it by having daily talks

with it. But now it had been sucked into a Kirby along with all the bean seeds and what little

dirt was left in the pot.

"You've got to leave," I yelled at him.

"But we haven't talked about price yet," he insisted.

"We don't need to talk about price, George, because I have absolutely no intention of buying

one of these things. It sucked the buttons off my couch, you idiot."

"Other than that, how did my presentation go?" he wanted to know.

"You were incredible. Incrediably bad." I felt like I was speaking from the heart.

George kept trying to sell the Kirby's using the free Pepsi's as a foot in the door. He worked for

about four months and after not selling a single Kirby, he decided to quit. He owed the company

$l87.00 for all the Pepsi's he had given away. Probably the first salesman that had to pay his own company. And that's bad.

The Art of Robert 7

2008-02-17T23:48:00.000-05:00

CAROLINA VOICES

2008-02-06T16:55:00.001-05:00

I DIDN'T SEE HOW I COULD RESIST

The direct mail flyer said "12 Pair of Eyeglasses Only $12...free shipping." I couldn't believe my eyes. Twelve pair of glasses...a

dollar each. Sure, I know they are those cheap magnifying glasses,

but still...a dollar a pair was unbelievable.

I never have my glasses with me when I want to read something. I'm always looking for them. Last year I bought those plastic cords that you hook onto your glasses so they are always hanging around your neck. Then when I would go to read, I had to read through my breakfast oatmeal and other foodstuff. And the cords broke within a week. They aren't made like cafeteria trays.

This was the answer! I could put glasses everywhere I roost during the day...back porch, nightstand, bathroom, kitchen, computer, car,

pocket...and I would still have five other pair to misplace. You had

a choice of 5 strengths...I've bought these things before and the lower

strengths don't do that much good. But I was nervous getting the high

powered ones for fear they would make me cross-eyed.

Long ago before eyeglasses became a fashion statement...when I was a teenager...there was a saying that "boys never made passes at girl's who wore glasses." You could tell which girls really needed glasses however...their dogs were a sure giveaway. Actually my first love interest in the 8th grade was a girl who wore glasses. But believe me,

nobody noticed her glasses! She was built like a brick...well, you get the message.

I really hate it that glasses have become such a fashion statement because it means the frames now have designer logos and prices to

match. When you go to an eyeglass place they've got hundreds to

choose from. You make your selection only to discover that the price on the board only covers the frames. The glass part is extra.

Last year I needed new prescription glasses. I went to the doctor to get my eyes checked, but I went to Wal-Mart to order my glasses.

I took my old frames because I like them and they were still good. So

when I talked to the salesperson, I told her I wanted new prescriptions put into the old frames.

She said, "We can do that, but it's still going to cost $180."

I said, "Why?"

She told me because I had not bought the glasses at Wal-Mart, they

would have to charge me the full price. But I complained and told her

that I had in fact bought them at Wal-Mart. Then she said, "Yes, but

it was more than a year ago, so I'm still going to have to charge full

price."

Usually at this point, smoke starts coming out of my ears and I start

ranting and raving...making a public spectacle out of myself. But I

decided to try a different tact.

I looked at her very calmly and said, "You know, you are probably going to go the Hell for this."

She got so flustered...tried to explain to me that it was management's

decision and not hers.

I said, "Well, management is going to Hell, too. There will be a whole

EyeWear Section in Hell."

When she wrote up my order, she said very quietly, "I'm only charging you for the glasses, not the frames."

I told her, "O.K. You aren't going to Hell. But management still is."

My wife laughed when I told her the story...but she was nervous because she claimed I would try to send people to Hell anytime I

didn't get my way.

"Damned right, Missy," I said.

"Why do people think you have the power to send them to Hell?" she

wanted to know.

I told her I had a very persuasive manner...that when I talked about Hell, I pointed to "down there" for emphasis. Of course everyone isn't a Christian...but at Wal-Mart they are.

CAROLINA VOICES ARTICLE

2008-02-06T11:00:00.001-05:00

Oh, Mother! What's Your Kid Doing on the Computer?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that YOUR kid is doing anything strange on the computer. But hundreds of kids are. Probably millions.

The computer games are bad enough. But they should probably be the least of your worries.

You've no doubt heard of MY SPACE; you might even have a page of your own. Seems like everybody does. It's one of the new and very

successful "friends" sites. You put a picture of yourself and a brief profile, then people all over the world can write to you and offer to be your friend.

Alyss wants to be my friend. I can't imagine why since I posted a picture of Millard Fillmore on my site. Of course maybe she likes the

way he looks. I listed my age as 99. Maybe Alyss is thinking, "It worked for Nicole Smith. She found a multi-millionaire husband who

was 89 years old. And found him just in time." I don't think she met him on MY SPACE. I think it was in a pole dancing place.

People put pictures on their sites because they can easily now with their cell phones. And, who knows? They might be taking pictures of a checkout woman at the grocery store. Friends are always asking for "unusual pictures" and there's where the trouble begins. I can't imagine there's anything unusual left to show anymore. Not that I personally look. People have told me about the pictures (he says,

lying through his teeth). I am really nervous about looking at pictures on the internet. I'm afraid I will see one or more of my loved ones.

I wouldn't believe anything I read or saw on these sites. People fib

about their age. They fib about their jobs. They post fake pictures.

(I am not the only Millard Fillmore on MY SPACE...there are at least

eleven of us. Will the real Millard Fillmore please stand up?)

You are encouraged to chat with your "friends". I put that word in quotes because I doubt that they are really friends. They won't come to your funeral or lend you a few bucks when you are short of cash.

And I don't like the word chat. I wouldn't talk to anybody who came up to me and said, "Let's chat." (A friend and I used to go to a greasy spoon cafe in Maryland called CHAT AND CHEW. He loved the name. There's a place near me in S.C. that's called SQUAT AND GOBBLE. You don't have to chat there unless you really want to.

You just squat and eat.)

The thing about chatting is that notices come through the computer while you are working on line that say: "Marie wants to chat." I'M WORKING! And Maria knows I'm busy so why does she think I want to be interrupted to chat.

The thing that really gets me is that the people on MY SPACE sound so perfect. They are all beautiful. They all have a great sense

of humor. They all love to cuddle. They all cry at sad movies. If they are so ideal, why don't they have friends in their neighborhood? Makes you wonder.

I have a friend who writes to women all over the world. I keep telling him that anyone west of the Mississippi and across the Atlantic Ocean should be considered geographically undesirables. But he

persists and he has a dozen Russian women begging him to send them money so they can come to America. Scary.

He doesn't send them any money. He doesn't have any. But he has travelled many, many miles to meet women. And at today's

gasoline prices, you need to have honest people before you go driving off to Ohio. He doesn't like chubby women (and that's a shortcoming

on his part)...but the woman from Ohio who sent him a picture and invited him to come visit was surely going to be overweight. Her picture was a real close-up of her face...she looked thin. How many

times have you heard, "She has such a pretty face" meaning the rest of her is B-I-G. He wouldn't listen to me...drove up to see her and was surprised that she was B-I-G. He said, "But she was a great cook."

Sure, and so is Denny.

The Whole House Was Shaking

2008-01-24T16:23:00.001-05:00

For two days, I felt this continuous vibration. I'm deaf so I couldn't hear anything but the house was vibrating as if we were living in a trailer on a major earthquake fault line. Finally I went upstairs to

investigate. My wife was in her office shredding everything in sight. She had bought a heavy duty shredder and was systematically eliminating every evidence that we existed.

She claimed she was protecting us from identify theft. But I tried to tell her if she shredded everything, we wouldn't know who we were. She said in a couple of years we wouldn't know anyway and she wasn't so sure that I even knew now.

But I hated to see all the stuff shredded...she was loving the whirring sound of the shredder and she

was stuffing things into it. She was mesmerized.

"Is that our marriage license you have there?" I asked.

She said, "Sure. We don't need it. We've been married more than 50 years and nobody has ever asked to see it."

I said, "Your Father did."

"He was a very suspicious man," she said, "And the license is written in German. Nobody can

read it except Germans. We might have registered to vote over there."

I tried to tell her that she might have to show the marriage license in order go get any of my goodies when I die. But she said she planned to shred any of my goodies that would fit in the

shredder. The woman has gone crazy!

She did the same thing last year with dozens of photo albums. she ripped out pictures of our

daughters and gave them to each of the girls. The rest she was going to throw out. Fortunately I was able to get them away from her. I know that in a few years I probably won't be able to remember who the people are (there are some now that I don't recognize!) but the photos are hard evidence that we had a life...and in all the pictures, we were smiling so it looks like a good

life.

She says people always smile when they see a camera and it doesn't mean we were having a good time just because we were smiling. I suppose she's right. A camera does sort of say, "Cheese". Although prisoners don't smile when they get their pictures taken. And my Grandmother never smiled.

I love the photo albums and I now have them hidden from The Grim Reaper. I look at them and it's like a stroll down memory lane.

I also have a drawer full of pictures that people have sent me at Christmas time...mainly photos of their kids at various ages. I never throw any of them away. I may need to lock them up now that the shredder is in the house. I think it will be a good mental exercise when I am old and in a nursing home, trying to figure out who's who. I have a Chinese friend and I can always recognize her daughter, Gloria. And I have pictures of her from age one until she just got ready to go to Harvard.

They sell a lot of shredders at Staples so my wife probably isn't the only one that's into shredding. My wife shreds all of our junk mail. She doesn't want anyone to know we buy

our clothes from Haband.

I caught her shredding a box of old love letters that I sent her years ago when I was a lonely G.I.

over in Germany. I couldn't believe my words were being ripped apart.

"You're shredding my love letters?" I asked.

"I've already read them," she answered.

"I know, but you saved them for more than 50 years, so why are you shredding them now,"

I demanded to know.

"I didn't have a shredder before," she said with a shrug.

I should have written them on unshreddable paper.

"Why don't you just burn them? That would be more romantic."

"Bad for the environment. Pollution, you know,."

I was beginning to take this personally. "I didn't shred your love letters," I told her.

"You probably threw them away," she said.

"No. No. I recycled them. I gave them to other G.I.'s who never got any mail of their own.

"I'm surprised that none of them ever wrote to you," I added.

I guess I should be more concerned about identity theft but the world has given me so many other things to be fearful about. I'm afraid I'll start shaking like the shredder. I'm not really afraid of anything and I don't want to start.

"I'm coming in your room next," my wife yells, "and I'm shredding all of those old newspaper

clippings you have from junior high."

"Those are MY clippings," I yelled back. "They were the first things that I wrote for publication and you might need them if someone wants to write my life story later."

"You were the editor of the junior high newspaper," she said. "And that's the only reason they

got published."

She's right about that. But what's the point of being editor if you can't publish your own stuff?

TIME TO MAKE YOUR RESOLUTIONS

2007-12-31T12:17:00.001-05:00

I am very good about making New Year's Resolutions. I'm just not worth a darn in keeping any of them.

Five years ago I decided to simplify my resolutions. But the list down from 43 or so to just 5 good ones. I had way too many. I wanted to pick 5 that were really worthwhile.

Here it is five years later and I have the same resolutions. Each year I just scratch out the date at the top of the page and insert a new date. 2008 coming up!

My number one resolution is always to lose weight. I don't put how many pounds I want to lose. But it's a lot. A friend told me I was so fat it was like carrying an overweight housewife around all day. Along with her Kirby vacuum cleaner. Those things weigh a ton. I keep gaining weight every year but I think it's the woman that's gaining the weight. It's no wonder I move slowly. It wouldn't be so bad if she would vacuum once in a while while I waddle around.

My number two resolution is always to clean my office and get organized. I don't really care about this one. I just put it on the list mainly for my wife. She thinks I need to get organized. She's afraid I am going to die and she will have to deal with all the stuff. Personally I think being organized is highly overrated. You file stuff away and you have no idea what you have or where you put it. Last year I hit upon the idea of putting everything in stacks and putting the stacks behind me so they are out of sight. This way I feel organized. Out of sight; organized. I used to have an assistant and she filed all my stuff. Or so I thought. She put it in file drawers chronologically. When I would ask her for a certain thing she would always ask me, "When was that Mr. Adams?" And then she would start searching.

One of my other resolutions is to read one good book a month. I've since scratched out "a month" and also the word "good". That should make it easier.

My goal to get healthy is giving me a lot of trouble. I've had cancer surgery, six eye operations, and a stroke which I have been recovering from for the past five months. Don't get me wrong. I'm not whining. I know that doo-doo happens. And I was brought up to accept things as God's will. But I am beginning to wonder, WHY ME?

What I really want to do this year is WAIL. I want to build a Wailing Wall out back. I admire those old middle eastern women who are out wailing their lungs out. They are not crying. They are wailing. And I think it's probably very therapeutic. I've tried it a few times. It always makes the dog bark and my wife yells, "Stop that wailing you crazy old man." But so be it. I plan to wail if my newspaper gets wet. I'll wail when I misplace my keys. WAIL, WAIL, WAIL. I may let my neighbors come over and wail at the Wailing Wall. We might have to have certain hours for

wailing so we don't become a public nuisance.

I've joined a gym and I have a personal trainer now. This is part of my quest to get healthy and fit. I almost didn't join because they had a 5-page questionnaire you had to complete. One question was: have you ever been on a diet? I said: Yes. Then they asked: Did you lose weight? I said: Yes. They wanted to know how much weight I lost. I said: 3 pounds. They asked: How long were you on a diet? I said: 32 Years. Which is the truth.

My trainer is a cute woman so I will probably continue to go. My therapist before this was a guy who looked like a chipmunk. He was a drum major in school and wore a kilt. He wouldn't tell me whether he wore underwear or not. But I'm sure he did. He wouldn't be a high-stepping drum major without his drawers on.

At the gym they have big colorful rubber balls in the back. People use them to exercise. I thought they were training seals. When I found out that people lay across these balls and do various exercises, I told her flat out that I wasn't getting on a ball. And I want to take this opportunity to say publicly to the person who invented these balls for exercise: STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. Whatever happened to touching your toes?

I JOINED A GYM THIS MONTH TO AVOID THE RUSH

2007-12-20T16:22:00.001-05:00

I decided to avoid the January rush and join a gym in December. Nobody joins a gym in December with the Christmas table laden with goodies. But recently I saw a boxing match on TV and when they showed the fighters' statistics, one weighed 140 pounds and one weighed 142 pounds. I thought to myself, "Jez. I'm so fat it's like carrying a full grown boxer around with me all the time. No wonder I move so slowly. Or like carrying a full grown housewife. And her Kirby vacuum cleaner." That thought was all the incentive I needed.

I'm in Phase VI of recovering from a stroke back in July. I not only joined the gym, but I got a Personal Trainer named Amanda. She's cute. Mainly she giggles as she leads me from one

torture chamber to another.

I got the distinct impression that the gym works much like used car lots...they assign cute young

women to sell to old fat guys. And they assign male hunks to sell the women who come in. But that's o.k. I don't mind having some Eye Candy while I work out (which is a euphemism since I have not yet sweated). Amanda has a sweat shirt that says FIT HAPPENS. She bounces around so much I was sure she had been a cheerleader in college. I asked and she

was. I asked her to do the splits and prove it. But she did a cartwheel or two instead. That proves it in my book. I often wondered what happens to cheerleaders once they grow up. I

think a lot of them peak early although they were always highly prized Date Bait when they were active.

Before you can get on a machine at the gym (which in itself requires a lot of dexterity), you have to fill out a 5 page questionnaire. Health things and personal questions. One was: Have

you ever been on a diet? I answered: Yes. Another question was: How much weight did you lose? I answered: Two pounds. Another question was: How long were you on the diet? I answered: 32 years.

Then you have to sign a complex 5 pager legal document promising that you will not attempt

to sue the gym in the event that something terrible happens to you. I wouldn't sue them. All

they have are a bunch of exercise machines.

This gym is rather sedate. At the moment. the place is scheduled to expand into one of those

Disco-type gyms...the ones at which half-naked people go to meet other half-naked people amid loud music and flashing lights. I don't think my membership allows me to go on the Disco side. I know my heart wouldn't allow it.

Right now there are more women than men. I guess they care more about their appearance. But they are Old Chicks and mostly very skinny.

One lady rides a stationary bike next to me. If it were a real bike she would be in Santa Fe by

now. But she doesn't go anywhere. She watches TV news as she pedals that sucker. Next

to her is another woman who rides the bike and is reading a Stephen King novel which takes longer than pedaling to Santa Fe. I don't know how she can read and ride.

Another personal trainer was working with his client (that's what they call us...clients, not

customers...not even members). He had her on a table and had twisted her legs around so

much she looked like a human pretzel. Without salt.

(This is an aside so I will put it in parenthesis. But I have a certificate as a Certified Pretzel

Maker. I got it in Pennsylvania years ago where they have a Pretzel Making School. You laugh, but it's a lot more difficult to make a pretzel than it looks. You don't lay them flat and

twist them. You roll them out like a worm...pick up the two ends...and you flip/twist while they

are in the air...and if you are lucky, they turn into a pretzel. This is all done in one move. My graduation certificate remains one of my proudest accomplishments and I hope my family remembers to include this in my obituary. I think I should probably write my own obit now because I feel as if the family might have forgotten some other good stuff. People do write their obits ahead of time and some file them with the NEW YORK TIMES. My lawyer said he would die if he doesn't get a big piece in the NEW YORK TIMES so he updates his obit every year and files it along with a photo from his college yearbook. He's now 87 years old, but he's still

using his college yearbook picture. So much for obits. Except for the fact that long ago, newspapers used to run them on the front page of the newspapers. This was before they really had any Hard News.)

They have clocks all over the gym...and time does not pass quickly when you are grunting and groaning. I may be the only person who grunts aloud. I'm deaf and I can't hear when I groan.

But apparently I am scaring some of the other "clients". But other clients are scaring me. In

the backroom they have about a dozen big, big rubber balls in bright colors. I thought they were

training seals back there. But, no! They make clients get on these balls...stretch across them

to do exercise routines. I told the trainer right off that I was not getting on a ball. First of all, it

might explode and wouldn't that be embarrassing? She claimed they would hold 500 pounds but you never know and I'm not taking any chances. She tried to play Dodge Ball with me but I could not dodge a ball that holds 500 pounds.

In the new gym we will have changing rooms. I think I am past my getting naked even in front

of a bunch of other men. I think I might fit in better on the women's side, even with my beard.

We have a snack bar in the current gym. Well right now it's more like a candy store. They have all kinds of candy bars that all have the word POWER as part of the name. And drinks

that are called POWER AIDE. I guess power is what we all are looking for. I know I am, and I always want to start my routine in the candy store.

In the new gym, we will have a Karaoke Juice Bar where we can sing and meet people. I can't

wait. But I'm not drinking carrot juice, even on a bet. I'm not that desperate to meet people.

I AM A PRINCE. I'M PRETTY SURE OF IT.

2007-12-19T20:33:00.001-05:00

My birth certificate says I was born in the Gastonia hospital. It doesn't say anything about my royal personage. But, of course, how would they know? I mean, Royals aren't born with a silver crown in their mouths. It has to do with your blood line. My guess is that I came from a line of Royal Gypsies, perhaps The Count of Gastonia in Transylvania, who lost his right to move up to kingdom on the Royal Ladder of Gypsy Heritage.That's just a guess. Sure, you might laugh at me and wonder how I ever got sired by the Count of Gastonia. Gypsies travel you know and it's a well documented fact that the Count of Gastonia came through here in 1935 via a Trailways Bus. He got off here because the town was amazingly named after him. He was traveling incognito at the time as gypsies often do. Apparently he was a sperm donor at a local clinic. It's the only way we can explain it because my Mother claims she would never have taken up (in the Biblical sense of the word) with a gypsy who was just passing through, even if swore on a goat that he was royal. My feeling is that there might be a whole string of Royals living among us because the Count of Gastonia supported himself by being a sperm donor in the various places he travelled. Do you feel royal? You may be a

Prince or a Princess, and chances are good that you are not being treated like one. You've got to stand up for your rights!

I felt royal from the very beginning of life. When I was born everybody was so elated because my Mother previously had six miscarriages before she finally had a healthy me.

Also, three of her sisters and my grandmother lived with us and they all adored me and made over me as if I were a little Prince.

I was spoiled rotten. My wife says, "They didn't do you any favors", meaning she doesn't

intend to treat me like a prince. If this were the olden days I would probably remind of of what happened to Marie Antoinette. It was a wicked way for Louie to get her to shut up, but it worked. When you are King you can have the Royal Ax brought out on a moment's notice.

It's also not sinful if you are King. It's one of your many perks. I'm not sure that this right applies to Gypsy Royalty however.

I was treated royally for the first five years of my life. But then I had to start school and

Miss Abernathy, my first grade teacher at Victory School, had never had a Royal in her class.

And without a crown or proof of some kind, I was just another snotty nosed mill kid.

Later in life when my third daughter was born, we had a sure sign of royal heritage appear. She was born with two thumbs on one hand..and everyone knows --- well, every gypsy knows --- this is a sure sign of royal blood. Plus it makes thumbing a ride much easier when you grow up.

Actually the double thumbs has been showing up every other generation on my Mother's side of the family. My Mother had double thumbs. She also did not have hair under her arms

and neither does Queen Elizabeth, so I am told.

We had my daughter's extra thumb surgically removed so she would not be self conscious and because my wife did not think it was a royal appendage. When my daughter started kindergarten, she came home the first day in tears. Apparently, on the bus to school, my two

older daughters told everyone about the double thumbs and they called my little darling a freak.

Everyone wanted to see it.

I took her out on the back porch to console her and I told her that I was going to tell her a

secret and she had to pledge never to tell anyone else. I explained to her that in another time

and place, the double thumbs would have signified she was a sign of royalty and she would have been a Princess. Or maybe even the Queen. She perked up at this revelation and got

a royal look as if she were sitting on a throne . I warned her not to tell others because they would be jealous.

I watched when she got on the school bus the next morning. She ran through the bus with her crooked thumb held high yelling, "I am a Princess., I am a Princess. Get off my bus!"

So much for family secrets. I still treat her like a Princess and she's now 37 years old. She doesn't wear the crown I got her. She says it falls off so easily when she has to vacuum. I don't think other Royals do their own cleaning. I can't imagine Queen Elizabeth with a vacuum.

Although she may have a Dirt Devil in her room to suck up cigarette ashes when she smokes.

I also can't imagine Queen Elizabeth going to the bathroom. Or having sex ever. It would be

easier imagining her with a vacuum.

WHO IS THAT MAN IN THE RED SUIT?

2007-11-27T11:09:00.001-05:00

I like Santa Claus. But I never liked the fact that my parents lied to me about him being the

real thing. Even when I was five years old I could figure out that some fat guy in a red suit wasn't going to be able to land on our roof with a herd of flying raindeer. And then to come down our chimney with a bag of toys. I had a vivid imagination, don't get me wrong. But I remembered that the wolf that tried to blow down all the little pigs' houses had decided to come down the chimney of the one who had built with brick and he ended up in a pot of hot water and the three pigs ended up with Wolf Stew. Besides, we didn't have an open fireplace and Santa would have ended up in a kerosene heater. Now explain THAT to me Dad.

Actually I never spoke aloud my thoughts about Santa being a fake. I mean, why should I? Somebody was putting gifts under the Christmas tree every year and if I turned the spotlight on

him, the gifts may have stopped. So I kept my little skeptical mouth shut...I think I was 22 or

23 years old when I confessed that I was a non-believer.

But parents tend to lie about everything. Think of the Tooth Fairy. Now why do they have to

think up such a stupid fairy. Thank goodness he didn't give much for a tooth or I would have

pulled out every one in my mouth just to get the money. I remember distinctly the first time

I went to the dentist...we lived in Charleston...I was 8 years old. We went on the bus and as

we rode in to town I asked my Father where we were going. He said to the dentist. I wanted to know if it was going to hurt. He laughed and said, "Of course it's not going to hurt. Don't be silly." Well, liar liar pants on fire. It did hurt because he yanked out one of my teeth. And then I had to sit beside that my liar Father on the bus.

That's not the only time he lied. Another time we took the bus one Saturday and when I asked

where we were going he just said, "We're going to see a man about a dog." Of course this got me excited thinking we were going to get a dog as a pet. But when we got off the bus we went into a doctor's office. As we waited I tried to whisper to him about what was going on. He didn't want to go into details but just said they were going to cut off a little of my penis. "FOR WHAT?" I said too loudly. It didn't make any sense to me. None at all. We went into the

doctor's office and he made me take off all my clothes, even my underwear. He had me get on a table/bed and they started to give me ether. I was suppose to count backwards from 10.

After one whiff and the count of 9, I jumped off the bed and ran out into the waiting room. Sure

I was naked, but I didn't care. My Father chased me and took me back in. They had to get a couple of male volunteers from the waiting room to come hold me down while they gave me the

ether again. I wasn't counting, but I was out before I knew it. I didn't sit next to my Father on

the bus home. I didn't speak to him even after I got home. He tried to make up by offering to get me ice cream. This wasn't like losing one tooth, you know. I had a mouth full of teeth but

I only had one penis. And to tell you the truth, I think the doctor may have cut off more than he had to because he was so angry at me for running off. But there's no use crying over a severed...well you know the phrase.

As I was recovering, my Father came into the bedroom one day, sat on the bed and said,

"You still my boy?" I didn't answer him at first. But he asked me again. Then I told him,

"I'm not going to be your boy if you keep lying to me."

When my daughters were growing up and had their first visit to the dentist, they wanted to know if it would hurt. I told the truth. YES! I didn't lie. I told them it would hurt really badly...that it wasn't as bad as childbirth, but it would hurt. I remember my oldest daughter

came out of the office saying, "Liar, liar. Pants on fire. It didn't hurt at all."

When I was 5 years old we went to my Grandfather's house for Christmas. We had a housefull

of people...all my cousins. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and when we went to answer it, there stood Santa Claus. A real live Santa Claus. He was carrying a bag of toys

and a guitar. Before he handed out stockings with our names on them, he played the guitar

and sang, "I'm Back In The Saddle Again". I knew it wasn't Santa but thought it might be Gene

Autry in a Santa suit. When he told me to get on his lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas, I knew for sure it wasn't Santa. I could smell the bourbon on his breath. It was

Uncle Johnny for sure. But, again, I didn't admit that I knew it wasn't Santa. Maybe I am just

as big a liar by not admitting what I knew...but, you know, there were all those gifts every year

and I hated to risk them stopping. I was just a boy after all.

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An Herbal Remedy That Might Kill You 'With Joy

2007-11-20T11:11:00.001-05:00

Medical people are now saying that lots of guys with erectile dysfunction are taking herbal remedies that are causing them to have heart attacks and dying. Well it's a big price to pay

but if you die with an erection, you'll probably have a smile on your face.

Dogs From Baghdad

2007-11-20T11:03:00.001-05:00

I love dogs but, honestly, I have never heard of such a stupid idea. Someone has decided to

collect stray dogs in the city of Baghdad and they are shipping them to various places in the world to be adopted. It's costing $4,000 a dog! They must be flying First Class. Of course they might be using some of that money to teach them to speak English.

what's In Your Medicine Cabinet?

2007-10-31T16:32:00.001-05:00

You better check it out because if you don't, one of your visitors will. Everybody wants to look in other people's medicine cabinets. And most people do. Admit it! If you haven't looked in another

person's medicine cabinet, you've certainly wanted to as you stand there washing your hands and wondering what's behind the mirror.

It's called CURIOSITY. The same thing that has killed all those cats.

I look. I don't mind saying it.

But I look very carefully. A friend of mine puts about 200 loose marbles in her medicine cabinet.

So if you take a peek without knowing what's inside, hundreds of marbles come bouncing out

and hitting the sink and her tile floor. And she's usually outside the door laughing and asking,

"What's going on in there Nosey?" She makes you pick them up. I know because I've opened

the cabinet door before. More than once. I have a short memory.

Another friend of mine has a big sign inside that says: WHAT HE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Another one has a big assortment of Adult Store "toys" just to get the neighbors talking.

My medicine cabinet is dull by comparison. And I don't care if people look in it. It's filled with

dozens of half-used prescriptions....all of them are way out of date and I don't know what most

of them were for anyway. Half the doctors who prescribed them are dead now. I've got enough

prescription medicine to start my own drug store. If I could only remember what they were for.

Must have worked however because I'm still alive.

I have a lot of stuff in little bottles with droppers. But I don't know where you drop the stuff or

why. There are two partially used bottles of Caldarom. I think it's an herb of some kind. A

naturepath doctor in the mountains sold it to me to cure a hand disease that had baffled four doctors who had prescribed various expensive hand creams. The naturepath guy made me quit taking vitamins and other stuff...then I took the Caldarom drops in water. And like a miracle, my hands were clear again. (Sadly he got arrested soon after for murder...he was treating a young girl and had her quit taking her regular medications. She died and he went to the clinker.)

I have a bunch of grey whiskers on the top shelf. A stack of them. II was saving them for an art project but have forgotten exactly what the art project entailed. But it will come to me one day...and I hope I can

remember where the whiskers are stored.

On that shelf I also have a tube of DARKIE TOOTHPASTE...it's suppose to whiten and brighten

your teeth. But I think you have to paint your face black like Al Jolson to make it really look

effective. The guy on the tube of toothpaste looks like Al and it always makes me break out in

song. Usually "Mammy".

That's pretty much it for the medicine cabinet itself. But we have about l0 drawers. My wife

keeps her assigned drawers sort of neat. She knows what's in each one. I just sort of open

a drawer and throw whatever I have into it. I have an unbelievable collection of crap in the drawers.

One drawer has seven razor blades. All used. I am taking a blood thinner medicine now and the doctor advises against using a razor to shave. So I have grown a beard. I could throw the old razors away, but I don't really need the space.

I've got quite a collection of motel soaps, shampoos and lotions. I figure you pay for all the

stuff they put out, so I take it with me. I don't think I've ever used any of it. For one thing, you

can't get the wrapper off the soaps. I can't imagine how they seal them so tight. And if you

do get one open, the pungent odor breaks out into the room and your bathroom then smells

like a cheap motel for eternity.

I have eyewash, mouthwash and three partially used cans of shaving foam...a Dry Look hair spray(but I don't have any hair so it would make my head dry looking...I must have had this left over

from when I did have hair...and nobody can remember that far back). I have Herbal Ed's salve

but I'm not sure where to apply it. I have a pencil sharpener and a pencil with white lead...you

use it to put the white under the tips of your fingernails when you want them to look neat. Then

I have about four different fingernail clippers in various sizes. Yet I can never find a single pair when I want to clip my nails. I have some dog shampoo...although we haven't had a dog in years. I guess I could really get rid of that but who knows when a dirty stray dog may wander

by and need a shampoo. I want to be ready to clean him up.

Getting Ready for Fly Season

2007-10-31T15:47:00.001-05:00

I hate flies. And I hate them most at this time of the year because as the weather gets colder

they start dying off. And because they know they are going to die anyway, they start opening the door and coming in the house...flying around and landing on your nose...they know no fear. They are like Kamikazi pilots with four feet.

I am not a hateful person by nature, but I sure hate flies. I must have had a swarm of them attack me when I was a baby out for a stroll. They probably ate my ice cream cone.

I am a collector. I collect lots of different things. If you have three of something, technically you have a "collection". So I have a fly swatter collection. My fly swatter collection includes one that

functions as a wall clock. There's a big black fake fly on the second hand...so as the clock ticks

away, the fly moves around. I have another one that's shaped like a big screen hand. Then I have some home made fly swatters...a friend of mine calls them "make do" fly swatters because they

were put together by poor people who had to use whatever was at hand to make them. One of my make do swatters has a ruler for a handle. And I yell, "Joe Rules!" when I smash a fly with it.

I spent a summer in Maine one year...in a wildlife preserve. And I think it must have been dedicated to preserving dreaded black flies. They are the biggest and meanest flies I have ever

met. And you never see a word about them when you read Maine tourism literature. They are always writing about their lobsters, but their flies are bigger than lobsters.. If they showed the dreaded black flies in their literature, their tourism business would die out. You need more than a regular fly swatter to combat these things. I tried to hit one with a regular swatter and he grabbed it, swatted me on the head and flew away with it. You can see why they aren't featured on Maine's website.

If you mention these black flies to somebody from Maine, the person will absolutely deny their existence. It's like people from the coastal area of South Carolina who deny that we have huge

flying cockroaches. We call them Palmetto Bugs. But a roach is a roach. And you can't kill

these things with a fly swatter. It's no use to put out one of those Roach Motels where the roaches

check in but they don't check out. These South Carolina roaches don't check out because they

eat the motel. I tell my wife, "you just have to learn to live with them." But she still jumps up on the couch if one goes scampering by...as if they can't jump up on the couch. The minute

she goes to bed, they all jump up in her spot, sit and watch tv.

The last time I was in Jackson, Mississippi, I stayed in a Brand Name Hotel. My daughter makes my reservations and I have told her if the person who answers sounds forgeign, not

to make it. I know this sounds discriminatory..and it is. Quite a while ago, Indians (not

the American kind but the ones from India) have started buying up motels. First it was the

Mom and Pop type, but now they own chain and name brand ones. When I got to Jackson

and checked in, there was a young college-looking guy at the desk...but the lobby was filled

with flies. I mentioned this to the guy. He just shrugged and said, "The place is owned by

Indians. They don't kill anything. They have a goat in their room." I don't think people should be in the hospitality business if they keep goats in their room. And his comment is not

true about them not killing things.. They kill chickens. And if they can kill chickens, they can damn well kill flies. When I

went to my room, it too was filled with flies. I went back to the lobby and asked to have

the manager come down. He did and I explained about the flies and that I wanted him to go

to Wal-Mart and get me a fly swatter. But he started that routine about the fact that they might

be reincarnated relatives, etc. I asked him, "Does your grandmother have big buggy eyes and

four legs with poop on them? Because if she does, she is flying around in my room and I'm going to swat her with USA TODAY unless you get me a fly swatter." He said he would come and collect the flies. He actually shooed them out of the room with a towel. I thought he would probably bring the goat down and let them light on him.

Why Can't We Have Everything?

2007-10-25T14:54:00.001-05:00

People often wondere why we can't have it all.

We can have it all. We just can't have it all at the same time. And if we did have it all at the same time, we wouldn't know what to do with it.

I MIGHT DIE TONIGHT

2007-10-20T09:47:00.001-05:00

Or maybe not. My doctor says I have sleep apena. It's some new thing they've come up with to make you worry. People who have it quit breathing while they are sleeping...and they die. But generally they start breathing again...and start living again.

The doctor said, "You could die in your sleep."

I told him I wouldn't mind going that way. If you die in your sleep, you don't even know you're dead.

The conversation got me to thinking about death and dying. Mainly the different ways one could die, and the many ways I don't want to go. Not that you have control in the matter.

I would not want to be sucked into a batch of quicksand like Tarzan was always doing. Fortunately he had his trusted monkey,
Cheetah nearby (star of "Are You Smarter Than a Hollywood Monkey"). Cheetah would run get a vine that allowed Tarzan to
get out. Sometimes the bad guy would fall in, but Cheetah would not get the vine...he would just laugh hysterically. I have
a feeling he would get the vine for some dried banana chips.

I wouldn't want to be run over by an l8 wheeler. Even at a slow speed. Or by a 4-wheeler for that matter. No head-on crashes
either. Or being suffocated by a white air bag. (I got hit by a car once and my air bag came out. Once the car settled, I was
fairly certain I was in Heaven and that the air bag was a white cloud.)

The ocean scares me. And the things that live there. I wouldn't want to be eaten by a shark, a barracuda, or an octopus.
Or even a gang of hungry crabs. No piranahas or anything else that lives in the water. I especially wouldn't want to be eaten by an alligator. And don't say it couldn't happen because an 83-year-old woman here in South Carolina got eaten except for her feet.
I don't think the alligator liked her Crocs.

I hate snakes and wouldn't want to be eaten by one. I've seen pictures of them swallowing live rabbits so somewhere there may be a snake that could swallow me (that I would almost like to see!). No snake bites and no choking by a snake. I cut off my friendship
with a guy who bought a pet snake...a big one...and insisted on bringing the snake with him to social gatherings. He was soon gathering by himself.

I wouldn't want to fall out of a tall redwood tree or have one fall on m. Or be sawed in half at a sawmill...or by a poorly trained magician.

No beatings and no muggers, please. I wouldn't want a brick building to fall on me...or even one brick.

I wouldn't want to be nailed o a cross or burned at the stake even if it meant that someone would make a movie about me or
that I would become a saint. I'd rather help the poor.

I'm afraid of being put accidentally in a coffin while I am still alive. I am a shallow breather, so I have told my cousins to
put a mirror under my nose when they come to the funeral home and make sure I am not buried alive. It happens more
than you might imagine.

I don't want to be burned up (why do people say houses burn down, but people burn up?). A friend of mine wants to be
dro. pped into an active volcano when she passes on. I just think she is too cheap to pay for a regular cremation.

No poison arrows, please. Not even a plain one. I can't believe that William Tell actually let someone shoot an apple
off of his head.

I'm not crazy about dying from natural disasters --- floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes. They seem to
be happening all the time. One deaf man like me got hit by lightning and it restores his hearing. But there have been
thousands of others who were fried like a big piece of bacon, so I'm not standing out in a storm flying a kite with a key on the
string.

I don't want to die after a long illness at home...or worse yet, aftere a long illness in a nursing home that would bankrupt mr.

I don't want to be hit on the head with a baseball at a Braves game. Or even at a Little League game. Or run over by a loose
racecar at the track.

I know you can't control how you are going to die unless you do it yourself which isn't my style. But I hope it will be quiet and
painless with a smile on my face without my tongue hanging out. (Have you ever noticed that funeral homes never put a smile
on anybody's face? The dead always look so....dead. I want a smile on my face with my teeth showing...maybe even have
my hand in my pants.)

F

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EATING YOUR HEART OUT...FOR PRIZE MONEY

2007-10-18T16:17:00.001-05:00

I remember fondly when Ranlo Mill would set up long tables under the shade trees and bring in a truckload of ripe watermelons for their annual Watermelon Eating Contest.

I don't know why I thought I could win, but every year I dreamed of winning. Nobody ever remembered who won even a week later so fame was fleeting. But yet I yearned to win.

Men would slice up dozens of watermelonons and we would gather around the table and start

eating, saving empty rinds to prove what we ate. I don't think I ever ate more than two pieces.

Maybe three. I also don't remember girls eating, although I'm sure they were welcomed. But

having an eating contest to your credit isn't like being Homecoming Queen.

I thought of these contests recently when I watched the International Hot Dog Eating Contest

on TV. It was the sixth annual one and it was held at Nathan's on Coney Island. Nathan's Hot

Dogs aren't those skinny little finger dogs. These are MAN SIZE DOGS. And you have to eat

the bun and condiments including kraut. It's also a time-based competition to see how many you can eat in 12 minutes.

Last year's winner was on hand. He was a little Japanese guy. I thought he would at least

look like a sumo wrestler. But, no. He was small. And apparently most of the competitive

eaters aren't big and fat. Fat people can't hold as much. It's something about fat people having a small "first stomach". But the Jap didn't win again this year and I was glad. I still

haven't forgiven them about bombing Pearl Harbor. I know this guy didn't bomb us, but his

grandfather might have. And why is a Japanese person eating Nathan Hot Dogs? Let them

eat sushi, is what I say.

Anyway an American guy won. Guess how many he ate? Wrong! He ate 66 1/2 and it makes me gag even to write it. And I love hot dogs.

Soon after the contest I found that eating competitions have become a big thing. It's not an Olympic sport (yet), but it's a sport of sorts. They even have MAJOR LEAGUE EATING, a

franchise just like baseball and football. And you wonder why America is obese! There's even an International Federation of Competitive Eating. The name fills me with visions of members getting together eating everything in sight...paper plates, napkins, floral centerpieces, trays of bones. Even tablecloths.

My oldest grandson was glad to discover there is a wing eating contest. He thinks he might be able to win it. I told him about the watermelons but he's still confident. Last year's winner ate 146 buffalo wings in 12 minutes. That really doesn't seem like a lot. My grandson could probably eat that many but I'm not buying him a tray of wings to practice which he is hoping I would. When he was 8 years old he entered an apple eating contest and won. It was suppose to be an applie pie eating contest but they had already eaten all the pies so they

switched to plain apples. I was afraid my grandson was going to choke himself to death because he took huge bites and I don't think he chewed them much before swallowing. I guess that's what you have to do to win. The prize was a bucket of apples. We booed.

In the U.S. there are more than 4,000 sanctioned competitive eating contests each year.

And the number is growing. I guess people find it amusing to watch people stuff their faces

and overindulge. Many of the competitions are telecast on SPIKE and I imagine ESPN will

soon have a channel devoted to eating.

Here's just a sampling of what you might see: SPAM, hamburgers, cow brains, pizza, chili, corn dogs, cheesecakes, hardboiled eggs (winner last year ate 65 in 7 minutes), burritos,

blueberry pies, meatballs, corned beef and cabbage, grits (they had the contest in Louisiana

but South Caroline is the Grits Capital of the World...the winner ate 21 pounds), waffles, jalapenos, french fries. I wonder if they have Spring Training Camps?

Think you could win one of these? Get out your eating bib!

Richard Shea says competitive eating celebrates the individual freedom to strive and achieve;

to express the innermost self and ideals found only in the laws of nature. Sounds awfully high faluten for competive eating. Maybe this quote was about Dancing With the Stars.

HANGING WITH MAD MEN

2007-10-17T15:09:00.001-05:00

Jack Kerouac said he liked to hang with people who were mad. I agree. I do, too.

Not the kind who hqve to be put in straitjackets, but the kind who are funny-mad, not scary-mad.

My wife thinks all my friends are crazy. That's her term.

I used to tell her, "They're just not like you and me."

I noticed lately that I've been saying, "They're just not like you."

I may have gone over to the other side.

PILLOW TALK

2007-10-17T14:55:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid, as an only child I would hold a pillow over my face to see how long I could hold it without suffocating to death.

I know that probably seems a strange thing to do. But, mind you, we were poor and I had few

things in the way of store-bought toys. So attempting to suffocate myself was just one inexpensive way of playing.

I could go for about a minute and a half back then. Then I would yank the pillow off my face and gasp loudly for air. Just seconds longer and I would have been a goner. At my own hand.

My Mother, when she would hear the gasps (we had a very small house with very thin walls),

would yell out, "What are you doing in there?"

What did she think I was doing, I wondered.

I never answered her. I just tried to gasp quieter the next time. But it's difficult to gasp quietly if you have a real pillow on your face.

I would usually do the pillow thing four or five times trying to better my time, much as a swimmer might do. I pretended to be in training for underwater swimming. I had no intention

back then to end it all.

I still put the pillow over my face now that I am very old. But now I'm practicing to put myself away when the time comes...mainly if things get any more shitty. And I'm not apologizing for saying shitty.

You be the judge.

I am completely deaf.

I am blind in one eye.

I have had eye surgery on the so-called good eye four different times.

I had colon cancer that left me with a belly scar so big people think it is my ass crack.

I had a stroke.

I am bald.

I am fat.

I can't sing.

I will never get on DANCING WITH THE STARS unless they do a segment for physically challenged people...which they probably will do. (Wayne Newton looked physically challenged...he's had so much plastic surgery, he can't turn his head and he moved like

a robot that needed oil.)

My friends are dying like flies on the first cold day of autumn.

Add it up!

It comes to "shitty".

So I now put my pillow over my face after taking what I think might be my last breath. I pretend it is my wife that's doing it. Who could blame her.

I can hold my the pillow there for two minutes most. Then I yank it off because, really...in

spite of all the aforementioned, I still condider myself lucky. Especially with such a wonderful caregiver.

But I must say, I get a little nervous when I see her changing the pillowcases and coming

toward the bed with a fluffy pillow. I start to cry out, "NO! Not the PILLOW." But who would

hear me.

MR. GOODFOOT

2007-10-17T10:35:00.001-05:00

I am recovering from a stroke that paralyzed me on the left side. With therapy I am learning to walk again but with the aid of a walker. The walker does me no good on steps so I have to hold on for dear life and take one step at a time. Surprisingly I am suppose to lead with my bad foot first.

When it is safely in place, I follow with my good foot. Going up, I lead with my good foot.

I got in the habit of saying aloud: "Bad foot first. Now good foot". And I started affectionately calling my right foot Mr. Goodfoot.

But then I feel psychologically I should stop calling he bad foot "bad". It was like scolding a dog

for soiling the carpet. "Bad foot. Bad foot."

Really now, Mr. Goodfoot had not done anything to actually deserve being called Mr. Goodfoot,

although I certainly appreciate its support, literally and figuratively. Yet it was truly just the regular foot that it had always been.

I felt as if I were undermining the comeback of my geek foot by calling it "Bad Foot". I did know how to reward it. Maybe I could yell, "Way to go boy," evereytime it made a step. But

it still needed a name of its own.

I decided to call it Mr. Not-So-Good-But-Getting-Better-All-The-Time Foot. Of course now

I am much slower going down steps with that monoger.

TARZAN: KING OF THE TALL GRASS OUT BACK

2007-10-15T10:44:00.001-05:00

I loved movies when I was a kid. I started going to town on my own when I was only six. I took the bus and I usually had fifty cents to spend.

My friends and I liked Tarzan movies and were always pleased when one was playing. They were so exotic

compared to Gastonia. They had big snakes. Alligators. Elephants. Quicksand.

It seemed that Tarzan would step in quicksand in every single movie he made. We would yell out,

"Oh, no. Not again." Today people would call him mentally challenged. We called him stupid.

The quicksand was like a magnet that drew Tarzan to it. Thank goodness he had a monkey, Cheetah,

who was always handily nearby.

"Get the vine, Cheetah," Tarazan would yell. "Get the vine!" Cheetah would run off and soon come back

with a glass of chardonnay.

"I said get the VINE, stupid, not the wine you dumb cluck."

Meanwhile Tarzan was sinking deepeer and deeper into the quicksand. He should have known that flapping his arms only made him sink faster. Here's a tip from the book THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE GOING TO

THE JUNGLE...if you are in quicksand, you try to float. And try to get a human to help you instead of calling a monkey. Even a Hollywood monkey.

We liked to play Tarzan after we had seen a movie of his. We would play in the high grass behind my house.

That's as close as we could come to simulate a jungle. We had to hand out parts. Almost everyone wanted

to be Tarzan. (We called him TAR-ZAN...it made him sound more like an action hero.) I wasn't personally crazy

about being Tarzan because you had to wear a loincloth. If it had been made of tiger skin I might have liked it.

But we usually used a piece of oil cloth from a castaway tablecloth. Plus I didn't like the idea of wearing a homemade loin cloth without my underwear, and especially if I had to climb a tree. Some boys didn't care.
Just like Hollywood today.

Cheetah was a popular choice. If you got to be Cheetah, you could jump around and roll around like a fool....pick your nose and flick the boogers...show your genitals inappropriately. You know how monkies
are.

Sadly nobody really wanted to be Jane, not even the girls. She was very pretty in the movies and she was often an highly trained scientist of some sort and it made you wonder why she would take up with an Ape
Man. But put her in some kind of animal skin and she reveerted to a ditsy housewife every time. Even in
a treehouse without a gas stove. She tried to make Tarzan and Boy eat oatmeal for breakfast every day
and pick up around the treehouse after breakfast. And she kicked poor Cheetah out. She said monkies didn't belong indoors. And that they were very smelly, and I'm sure she was right about that.
If we had no girl to play Jane, we would try to make a Sissy Boy play the part. Preferably a blonde boy.

The main thing we did was hack through the high grass whicH was filled with man-eating snakes (so we
said). Well, maybe not man-eating but certainly ones that could eat a monkey which, of course, made the
role of Cheetah slightly less desirable.

Remember in Tarzan movies how a big snake would swallow another living thing and you could see the
form of it in the snake's body. Scary, huh?

If we whacked through enough grass, we would come out at a little store where they sold penny candy.
The storekeeper would usually say to Tarzan, "Why you got that tablecloth on you, boy?"

And Tarzan would say, "I am not Boy. I am TAR-ZAN, King of the Jungle. And this is a loin cloth."
Neither one of them knew what a loin cloth was.

We would conduct our business as quickly as possible before the storekeeper looked under Tarzan's
loincloth.

Back home we would run into cannibals. My grandmother washed clothes in two big black kettles
over open fires. My friends thought she was a witch when she would be outside punching and stirring
the clothes. But she didn't wash on the weekends, so the big black pots were perfect for cooking a
cannibal meal.

We always wanted to cook Jane figuring she would be the most tender. Our other choice was the
Sissy Boy playing her part. We certainly didn't want to cook the monkey, and Tarzan was the star.
So we would pick Jane up and put her in the pot. We really didn't cook her although I am sorry now
that we didn't try at least once. Of course I would be writing this from Juvenile Jail.

We pretended to cook her and Tarzan would beat his bony chest and proclaim, "Sweet ribs tonight."

Oh, those were glorious days before electronic toys and computers. And that, dear readers, is why
we grew up with FAMILY VALUES.

Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!

WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT

2007-10-15T09:43:00.001-05:00

I'll tell you what he hath wrought.

I have to dress myswelf with a pair of giant tweezers.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Tweezers!

I"m recovering from stroke.

The Occupational Therapist (O.T. as they like to be called)

prescribed the Tweezers.

The Tweezers are like a long stick with pinchers on the end.

The O.T. says you can amazingly pick up pennies with them.

But why would a stroke victim need to pick up pennies?

I pick up my underwear.

I pick up my socks.

I pick up my shirt.

I pick up my glasses when I accidentally drop them.

I pinch my wife inappropriately.

(Heh, these things are more fun than I thought.)

Anf I would pinch the O.T. if she were here.

I just hope none of my friends from my former life

don't see me dependen on big Tweezers.

I mean, I used to be somebody.

Mr. Somebody, they called me.

Now I'm putting on my underwear with Tweezers.

Amazing tweezers to be sure.

I'm Edward, Tweezerhands.

FRAGILE

2007-10-13T11:39:00.001-05:00

I feel like a package being tossed around the post office of life.

Put a FRAGILE sticker on me dammit.

I can't take much more.

At least give me a HANDLE WITH CARE sticker.

I'll never get to my destination in one piece.

Couldn't you have asked for EXPRESS MAIL.

Or Special Handling.

Where am I going anyway?

WAILING

2007-10-12T10:28:00.001-05:00

I admire those old MIddle Eastern women you see on tv.

They are always wailing their hearts out over the insane killings and bombings.

Sometimes they are wailing over the rotten fruit in the marketplace.

But the whole idea is that they wail when they are pissed.

I think we should have Wailing Walls here in America...

Someplace to go and wail when things don't go our way.

Maybe have one in every backyard instead of a plastic pool.

I would like to wail, and I would do it even without a wall

but it scares the dog and sets him to barking...and my wife yells

"Stop that wailing you crazy old man".

I suspect that wailing is quite healthy.

But I would do it over all kinds of stuff.

I wouldn't want to have family members killed

just to get in a few good wails.

I would wail if my morning newspaper got wet

and I couldn't unfold the pages.

I hate that.

I would wail if the lightbulb goes out on the stove.

(You can't reach the damn thing!)

Or if one of the kitchen flourescent lights goes out

and has to be replaced.
I do in fact wail when this happens.

Fortunately flourescents last for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

On the Road to Recovery

2007-10-09T23:16:00.000-05:00

Remember those old Bob Hope-Bing Crosby-Dorothy Lamour movies? The famous "road" pictures that were so funny? My recovery from a recent stroke would make a great road picture. Or one of those stupid reality shows. I used to tell my children when something bad happened: "Two years from now, you will be laughing at this". They never believed it. Some things took longer, but they were girls.

I always believed the sooner you could find humor in a bad situation, the sooner your got over it. But don't laugh at funerals. Unless they drop the casket. I am trying to apply my philosophy to my stroke recovery and I am laughing already. I laughed first when my wife was trying to find a medical transportation company to take me from North Carolina where I had the stroke down to a rehab hospital in Savannah, a distance of about 300 miles. They wanted $7,000! I told my wife to go down to Main Street in Saluda and find some guy who had a pick up truck and see if he would put a mattress in the back and haul me home. But she was smarter. She called a limo service and found someone to take me in a limo for just $432. My grandson wanted to ride with me. When we got to the hospital, they thought a rock star had arrived. The hospital was very, very nice. They have won awards for 6 years now as one of the top 100 employers in the country. They treated me like a prince...the nurses were so nice and so were the therapists. I can't say much for the food but the night nurse made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a snack. All the patients were stroke victims since that's what the hospital specializes in. The doctor said I should have a fast and complete recovery. But his idea of fast is a lot different than mine. I was in the hospital for six weeks and I've been out for six weeks...and I am still recovering. I am making progress, but it is very slow. I'm trying to be a patient patient. My wife is my primary care giver...when she came to get me from the hospital I reminded her of saying "for better or for worse" some 50 years ago. I said, "This is worse." Actually she's been very good at it. She's been trying to get control of me for all these years so now she has my checkbook, my car, my credit cards. I don't even get an allowance. Plus I think it brings out her mothering instincts. At first we had therapists who came to the house...one suggested getting Amazing Tongs, those things that are like giant tweezers...you squeeze the top part and these claws come together like those machines in convenient stores where you try to get toys. She said I could pick up pennies with it. Now, why in hell would I want to pick up pennies? Honestly. Stroke victims don't need pennies...we need hundred dollar bills. I am using my tweezers to pinch my wife inappropriately. I go to a regular gym now for outpatient physical therapy. It should be decorated like a dungeon because the machines are designed to torture people. I was hoping they were machines where they strapped you on, turned on the switch and the machine did all the work. But no such luck. I think my therapist guy came over here from Parris Island, at the Marine base. He doesn'r put up with any whining. YOU CAN DO IT! he bellows. And when he bellows, I do it. A lot of people come to the gym who aren't doing therapy. I have noticed that the older women are in much better shape than the men. The guys arrive at the gym in walkers or with canes. The women skip in. They have cute clothes and nice shoes. They jump right up on the machines and start moving. My personal take on this is that the guys are in recovery and the women are on the prowl. They are probably recently widowed and want to get back in the game. They aren't the least bit interested in the guys in recovery. Why should they be? They have televisions on the stationary bikes, but none of the programs are as interesting as watching Chicks roll around on huge colored balls. I always want to throw them a fish when they finish and watch them clap their flippers. They have so many balls around the place but I've already told the therapist that I am not getting on one of those balls. He says they hold up to 500 lbs. I'm not worried about the ball exploding; I'm worried about rolling off. I threw myself out of bed the other night, accidentally of course. But as I slid off the side I was smart enough to take a pillow with me. I could not get up and I didn't want to wake my wife in the middle of the night so I just snuggled up on the floor with my pillow and slept until she came downstairs and found me. I am deaf so I have to read lips. But lying on the floor and trying to read her lips was difficult. So she stretched out on the floor beside me so I could read her lips. I said, "How in the world did we ever come to this?" And I do wonder. I want to recover but sometimes I think it would be easier to become an invalid. You could get one of those modernized scooters that are advertised constantly on television (and I don't believe for a minute that those people are crippled! They're models and they probably have a champagne party after the filming.) If I were an invalid, I could catch up on my reading. People could come visit me (but would they?) and bring me food. I could eat anything because as long as I had the scooter I could get fatter and fatter. And if I got too fat for one scooter, I could get a double-wide. But I'm not ready to give up yet. You have to keep at it if you want back in the game. And I want back in the game. Soon.

Joe's Chicken Room

2007-08-12T19:34:00.000-05:00

My Grandson, The Basketball Player

2007-02-27T17:39:00.000-05:00

My grandson, Davis, is determined to be a star athlete like his older brother. He's back on the basketball court this year, running from one end of the court to the other. But never getting to touch the ball. Poor guy. He's always yelling, "Throw me the ball! I'm in the clear!" And he is in the clear because the other team members don't bother to guard him. They remember him from last year. He practiced all summer shooting baskets in his driveway and he actually made 8 out of 10 shots. I know it's easier when you don't have another 5 people hounding you on the court. But still, 8 out of 10 is good. Four of us go to every game to watch him not get the ball. We watch as he sits on the bench with his hands on his knees so he can jump up the minute the coach calls for number 40, his number. I"ve started going to the games a little early. I take a fistfull of dollar bills. I don't try to bribe the coach. What I do is offer any kid --- on either team --- a dollar bill for every time they throw the ball to Davis. I know it probably sounds like a disgusting form of bribery but I figure, what's the point of having money if you can't enjoy it. GO DAVIS, GO.

"I Want My Foreskin Back!"

2007-02-27T17:02:00.000-05:00

It's a cry that's being heard all across America as millions of guys who were circumcised as babies without their consent suddenly want their foreskin back. They fear, rightly so, that their foreskin probably ended up on a tray of calamari somewhere. They are pissed. The good news is, if you are one of those guys, you can get your foreskin back. You can grow a new one! Wait...wait...this isn't one of those offers from Canada to grow a bigger penis with the aid of a pump. Although a foreskin will certainly enhance the look and even make you appear to be European. Non-Jewish, of course. This is legitimate. A guy has invented a product that will grow a new foreskin. He's looking for an appropriate name. (Email him at: WhatDoICallThis.com). He swears that it works. But, with all new products, there are a few kinks to work out. One, the foreskin grows back in color. And, as yet, you are not able to chose your color. You have to take your chances. You could become Ralph, the Red Penis Guy. But look what a red nose did for Rudolph. The other bothersome side effect is that once the foreskin starts growing, it doesn't stop. It keeps growing. But it's slow growing. Yet you don't want a long foreskin and a short aft skin. Or do you? The inventor says the continual growth shouldn't be a problem. He says you can safely clip it at home. "Like clipping your toenails," he proclaims. Well not exactly. It's not so easy to reach your toes.

Mason Jars: You've Got to Love Them

2007-02-24T12:47:00.000-05:00

I just read a wonderful collection of stories by Gary Carden in his book called MASON JARS IN THE FLOOD. Carden is a great storyteller in the tradition of mountain people in Western North Carolina. Some people call them "Rememberers" and I love that name. Much better than raconteurs. (Someone introduced me once when I was giving a talk as a wonderful raconteur. I had to rush home afterwards and look it up in the dictionary. It sounded like someone who ran the roulette wheels in Las Vegas. The dictionary just said it meant: storyteller. As a Texas friend of mine used to say, "Those French. They have a word for everything." And they do. Most of their words make you pucker when you say them --- like "we, we madame". And I honestly think that's how the French got the reputation as being lovers. They are always puckered up like they are ready to kiss somebody.) But back to Gary's book. I bought it because of the name. I love Mason Jars. I love the name. I love the way they look. I love the memory of what my Mother and my Grandmother used to put in them. They called it canning, but there were no cans involved. They should have called it "jarring". When fruits and vegetables started coming on in the summer, I would start washing jars. Actually I boiled them. They had to be clean and germ free. Then the women started filling them with peaches, green beans and tomatoes mostly. But also jellies and jams. My Mother's prized possession was a big pressure cooker which made canning quicker and easier. But it spit steam and sputtered like it might blow its lid and kill us all. She wouldn't let me in the kitchen when the pressure cooker was cooking. She claimed she knew a woman whose cooker exploded and took the roof off the kitchen. I doubted it even as a kid because she and my Grandmother were given to exaggeration. We didn't call it lying because they would say this stuff to make a point that would stick in your head. Once when I was grown and had teenage daughters, my Grandmother came to visit and was alarmed that they had electric blankets. I heard her telling them later about a friend of her's who got "fried" by an electric blanket. "She was like a crisp piece of bacon. With a head on it." It was an outrageous story, but none of my daughters would sleep under an electric blanket after that. Canning gave my Mother so much satisfaction. She would stack the jars on the pantry shelf and stand there admiring her handy work. And it was work: all that snapping and stringing of green beans; and the peeling of peaches and tomatoes. We were never allowed to eat the food in the jars when it was first canned. There were still fresh vegetables in the fields. "Wait for cold weather," my Mother would admonish. And when cold weather set in, she would start opening the Mason Jars. She would open a jar of tomatoes and say, "Smell this. It smells like summer." And it did. And it tasted like summer and made all the hard work of filling the Mason Jars worthwhile. I have a lot of Mason Jars sitting around my house in the mountains of North Carolina. A lot of them are filled with marbles. Some with buttons. Some with flower seeds. I've actually got some that are filled with food. All of them were winners in the Western North Carolina State Fair. The whole peaches look like art; even the green beans look like art...much too pretty to eat. My wife --- a city girl --- has always been afraid to eat home canned foods. I told her they found a jar of canned pickles in King Tut's tomb...more than 2,000 years old and still crispy. She said, "You lie like your Mother and Grandmother." I do. I'm a raconteur. I never learned to can, I regret to say. It's something that I could have passed on to my own children. It's doubtful they would want to do all that work. I guess I can leave them all my Mason Jars filled with marbles and stuff. You don't need a pressure cooker for filling jars with marbles.

Preaching at the Holy Church of Juanita

2007-02-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

My friend, Juanita Leonard, invited me down to Louisiana to preach at her church. She's got her own church in her back yard. It makes it eaiser to go to church on Sunday morning. It's right there! And you can go in your pajamas if you don't want to get dressed and if you have nice pajamas. Juanita is a black folk artist who paints somewhat in the style of famous Clementine Hunter who lived nearby. But Juanita doesn't limit herself to a canvas. She has painted the inside of her church with people picking cotton and with big, big chickens. Neither of these images have religious significance as far as I can determine, but they are both images that she has mastered and has down pat. She has two houses on her property and she has painted these with cotton pickers and chickens, both inside and out. And on the floors and on the ceilings. I don't think Juanita really believed that I would come to preach at her church when she invited me. But I am a Holy Man Without a Church so I have to go where I am called. Plus, she promised me a pot of Chicken Gumbo. I made darn sure I got the gumbo right before I went all the way out there to preach. I've been tricked before. But Juanita had the pot of gumbo, indeed. And she served it to me in the pot, right off the stove. I ate it sitting on a Lazy Boy Lounger that she had recently rescued from the side of the road. It only had one setting....flat out. And I can testify that it's hard to eat a pot of hot gumbo --- even good gumbo --- when you are on your back. She served the gumbo in the pot with a big potholder to keep it from burning my stomach. After we ate, we went out back to her church. It has two pulpits...and two chairs. "Where does the congregation sit?" I asked. "In those two chairs. If they get here early. Otherwise it is standing room only." "And where does the choir sit?" I wondered. "Over in the corner," she said as she pointed to a single chair. "It's not a big choir. We only have one person who has a decent singing voice. But we have a Karioka machine and a tape of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She sings with the Mormons and it shakes the roof on Sunday. When they sing The Messiah, people can hear it all over town. "Well, what time does church service start?" I wanted to know. "When someone shows up," she said. "You can start your sermon at any time. We don't have to wait." "But who am I going to preach to?" I asked. "My daughter is here. I'm here. Who were you expecting...the twelve disciples? I could put the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on low." So I proceeded. After it was over, Juanita apologized for her congregation and such a poor turnout. "I had my daughter call the Associated Press with a scoop that Father Joe was coming to preach today. I should not have told them you are white. My people don't think y'all know anything about the Lord."

A Non-Tradditionalist, Except for Thanksgiving

2006-10-19T19:46:00.000-05:00

I'm not a traditionalist about most things, but I've always been a traditionalist about Thanksgiving. The bird. The mashed potatoes. The lumpy gravy. The cranberry sauce. Spiced apples that decorate the turkey plate (and I've never seen anybody actually eat one. I've accused my wife of putting them back in the jar and saving them for next Thanksgiving!). Pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie. The works. We do not have those greenbeans with the soup and canned onion rings on top. We don't go that far. This year we're really breaking with tradition. We're going to Eleuthera. an island in the Bahamas. We'll probably be chewing batter-fried conch. It's as rubbery as a big rubber eraser and about as tasty. One of my daughters decided we needed an adventure. And I think it will be an adventure. She thinks she's taking a couple of frozen turkeys on the plane, but I told her they would more than likely think they were terrorist bombs. They don't even let guys take after shave lotion nowadays, much less two butterball turkeys. But I'm old enough to know you need to be FLEXIBLE when you're looking for an adventure. I've been to Eleuthera before. They don't even have running water. They catch rainwater in a cistern on top of the houses. But it's a beautiful place with beautiful people who all know how to bake coconut pies. This isn't the first time we have broken with tradition at Thanksgiving. Two years ago, we went to Washington, D.C. to spend Thanksgiving with our unmarried daughter. Just my wife and I went so my wife told my daughter, "Don't get a whole turkey. Just get a turkey breast. Nobody likes dark meat anyway." (She's the one who doesn't like dark meat!) My daughter got our turkey from QVC. A boneless breast of turkey that had been infused with Cajun spices. She got two...and they looked like small sheetcakes without the icing or candles. "It doesn't even look like a turkey," I complained. So my daughter went to the store and bought two wings and two legs. And she hooked them to the double breasts to fashion a bird. Wings make a bird, not legs. Once the double breasts were on the platter, I put prune nipples on them. Let me tell you, it was the strangest Thanksiving centerpiece I ever saw, but those Cajuns sure know how to infuse a bird. It was delicious; so juicy. We've never had better turkey! So to heck with tradition. (I'm convinced that all the people who used to watch Tammy Faye and Jim Baker on TV and donate money to their park now watch QVC and buy Cajun turkeys, Joan River jewels and what have you.) Now that I think about it, we broke with tradition last year as well. We had a Turduchen from QVC. I guess you have to be the kind of person who watches QVC to know that things like this even exist. A Turduchen is three birds in one...they start with a boneless turkey...stuff it with a boneless duck...and then stuff that with a boneless hen. I know it sounds repulsive and it looked like an oversized footbal, rather than something you would eat. But it was very tasty. It too had been injected with Cajun spices so I believe it was the touch of those crazy CAjuns that made it so good. I think I'll pack some Cajun spices for our trip to the island...see if we can make Cajun Conch Fritters. I hope all you readers have a wonderful Thanksgiving, traditional or non-traditional.

Chinese Food Like You've Never Seen

2006-10-19T17:57:00.000-05:00

I took a friend of mine from Alabama to a real Chinese supermarket in Washington, D.C. It's a big market and has one of everything you've never seen or eaten. My friend loved it. He likes Bitter Melon and exotic teas. I went to the meat market where they had chicken feet, duck feet, pig dicks and pig uteruses. They had a section where they had cooked versions of most of the meats. We got some bar-b-qued chicken feet (they had clipped the toenails). I can't say they were very meaty but they were cheap. They were fresh out of pig's dicks and uteruses. I asked her if she would be cooking uteruses the next day. She said, "You must come very early you want pig uterus. Pig parts very popular. Go faster than Egg McMuffins at MacDonald's." Who would have guessed it?

70 Year Olds Doing the Jitterbug

2006-10-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

I just went to my high school reunion in Maryland. I was graduated in 1954 and I had not seen many of the people in more than 50 years. They had made name tags with your photo from the yearbook thinking this would help us remember. I thought most of the women had aged fairly well. They take better care of themselves I think. There were a few old guys who had obviously dumped their first wives (or been dumped!) and they had young "chicky babes". You could spot these guys without seeing their wives. They were the ones with big smiles ear to ear and the ones who were popping Viagra pills like they were Chiclets. One of my old girlfriends asked me to slow dance but I am deaf and both of us were walking with canes. I suggested that we should probably sit the music out since it would be like dancing with six legs. Being from the 50's, we were a patriotic group. We had a Navy Chaplain lead us in songs. The Star Spangled Banner. The song for each branch of the service: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. I didn't remember the Army song. But a friend of mine years ago had given me a secret when you are group singing and you don't know the words. You just mouth the word "watermelon" over and over again to the general beat of the song. I think I may have inadvertently sang out WATERMELON, WATERMELON a couple of times because people turned to me with questioning looks on their faces. We had a dance contest. It was really strange to see so many oldsters doing the jitterbug. A few of the ladies had on poodle skirts. Remember those? I won first place in the nostalgia competition. This wasn't a dance. I brought pictures from high school days made into a poster. I had given numerous inappropriate captions. I noticed in some of the pictures my wife had given me (she was a year behind me), she was cuddling with two different guys. I had gone off to war and they moved in on her. Both of them are now dead so it sort of serves them right. Every time I asked about an absent classmate someone would say, "Oh, he's passed on." Or "she's passed on". I think one woman actually brought her husband's ashes. It was a no smoking building and the ashes had no cigarette butts in them. Part way through the evening someone passed a note at our table that said: THE BUS TO THE HOME LEAVES IN HALF AN HOUR. Most of us laughed. But one couple said, "O.K. Thanks. We'll be ready." A fraternity brother of mine whom I had not seen in 52 years suggested that me and my wife should come to Florida to see him. I said, "I have not seen you in 52 years. I have had no Christmas cards; no birthday cards; no e-mails, not even "forwards". And you seriously believe I would jump in my car and drive 7 hours in that horrible Florida traffic to visit you? I'll see you back here in another 52 years. And it will probably be another 52 years before I go to another reunion. The reunion was like a New Year's party where everyone is grunting to have a good time. There were lots of jewels and wigs. The women had some too. It seemed as if every old man had gold bracelets and gold chains. One friend told me the bracelets have magnets that help you improve your golf swing. I told him not to get too close to one of our friends who had a steel plate put it in head because of an accident. It would have been awful if his wrists were jerked up to the guy's head like those little black and white magnet dogs we used to have as kids. Actually it would have been funny. I shouldn't have mentioned it. The table conversation was mainly about various maladies that people had...toenail fungus, open heart surgery, cancer, restless leg syndrome. We talked about living wills. One guy said he had told his wife he did not want to be kept alive on a machine or with fluids being pumped into him. So she unplugged his TV and threw away all his beer. One person came in a long stretch limo. A white one being driven by a young woman in leather pants and a leather hat. He had been a high school drop out, but he was probably the most financially succesful person there. He finished school in the marines, then went to college and got two degrees. He owned his own computer company and now he spends his days counting his money. Everybody was excited when the limo arrived and the buzz was: "Who is it? Who is it?". I said, "Ringo Star." Someone else asked, "Did he go to our school?"

There's Too Much News!

2006-09-25T09:01:00.001-05:00

An old friend of mine said, "I hope that you are reading a GOOD newspaper every day now that you don't work." By this he meant THE NEW YORK TIMES or at least THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. I told him I didn't read a newspaper every day...only on Sunday when I do buy and read THE NEW YORK TIMES. I explained to him that Sunday is a slow news day...nothing traumatic and earth-shaking happens on Sundays...not since Pearl Harbor got attacked in 1941. If any bad stuff happens during the week, by Sunday they are analyzing it and it doesn't seem so bad like it would have been as hard news. There's too much damn news anyway, and it's the same old stuff day after day. Our hometown newspaper even repeats obituaries. When I spend the summer in the mountains of North Carolina, THE NEW YORK TIMES is not readily available even though they own the newspaper in Hendersonville. If you want to be certain of getting a copy on Sunday, you have to sign up at the Harris-Teeter supermarket and they will hold a copy for you. It means driving almost 50 miles roundtrip to get one but reading the Sunday paper is about the only ritual thing I do, so I go every Sunday morning. When I went the last time, I forgot to take my money or my credit cards. The manager that's normally on duty was off and a co-manager was on duty. I explained the situation and figured he could let me take my newspaper and I could pay him the next time I was in town. It seemed like a simple thing to me, but he was having no part of it. Stern faced and non-negotiable. I told him he could see by my records that I always showed up on Sunday and always paid...even bought some groceries from time to time. But he just shook his head in the negative. So I said, "O.K. then. You lend me $5.35. (They charge TAX on the newspapers which I think should be against the law!). He was quick to reply, "I'm not lending you any money." I asked him if he thought I was a bum or something just because I had dried oatmeal on my beard. He said I had oatmeal on my shirt too and that he had seen a lot better looking bums. (I'm not buying my groceries there any more.) When I went outside there was an old, old Knights of Columbus guy collecting money for retarded children. I told him about the situation of not being able to get my NEW YORK TIMES...finally he said, "I'll give you a dollar to get your newspaper." But then I told him it was $5.35. He said, "What kind of newspaper is it anyway?" He obviously doesn't read THE NEW YORK TIMES. He wasn't so interested in giving me $5.35. I suggested perhaps I could take it out of his can of money...he had wads of one dollar bills. But he said, "Oh, no. We can't do that. This is for retarded children." I said, "Hell man, they are retarded. They don't know a one dollar bill from a five dollar bill. Besides, look at this oatmeal on my beard and shirt. I'm retarded myself so you can give me the money directly." He said they had warned him about people trying to hoodwink him. I thought seriously about grabbing the whole can of money and running with it. But somebody in the parking lot would have caught me and I could just hear the co-manager telling the cops, "I knew he was up to no good...came in here trying to get a NEW YORK TIMES without paying. And I think he stole two jelly donuts on the way out." I didn't steal the donuts, but I thought about it.

Remembering the Geranium.

2006-09-23T14:13:00.000-05:00

I am profoundly deaf. That means I'm deaf as a rock. I wasn't always. When I lost my hearing it was fairly traumatic. I owned three companies, all in the communications business. So being deaf and being in the communications business was sort of a tough concept to grasp. I struggled to learn to read lips and got pretty good at it. But I didn't venture out into public settings unless I had to. A friend of mine was giving a talk on public relations at a workshop in Boston. I wanted to go, so I signed up and went. The first speaker on the program turned out the lights to give his talk...a slide show. I could see the slides, but I couldn't figure out anything he said since the room was darkened. It was sort of a slap in the face...and it threw me into a instant funk. I left the workshop and went across the street from the hotel where there was a beautiful park. Although it was October, flowers were still in full bloom. I sat there staring at this red geranium that was at its peak. Without thinking, I started talking to the geranium. I told it, "Sure, you're blooming. But winter is almost here, and when it comes you are going to freeze to death. You'll be gone." I got no reply. But as I was watching this fully blooming geranium, I realized that it didn't care if winter was going to take it. It was going to bloom right up to the minute a frosty night would take it. I thought to myself, "Damn. That's what I want to do. I want to be blooming no matter what. I want to be in full bloom even if I am deaf and blind and ninety years old. I think of the red geranium often...and I blossom and grow.

Are You Creative?

2006-09-23T14:07:00.000-05:00

Don't say "no"! If you say "no" you will never be creative. We all have creative potential. If you say "yes, I am creative", you WILL BE creative. It's that simple. You've got to believe you are and the creative side of your mind will go into gear. You'll be creative in everything that you do. It's not just about art or music. Creative is a way of living. And when you let the creative side of yourself lead the way, you'll discover who you really are...who you were meant to be.

I"ll Have the General Tso Cat

2006-09-23T11:20:00.000-05:00

When I would go visit my cousins in North Carolina, we would often meet at a great little Chinese restuarant. The food was always wonderful. After years of visiting the place, I went to visit and my cousins told me the place had been closed down by the Health Department. It seems they were serving CAT instead of chicken in many of their dishes. What? Is it against the law to eat a cat? My cousins said it was against the law if you called it General Tso's Chicken. False advertising. I don't care what the Health Department said, it was damn good cat.

Up, Up and Away!

2006-09-23T11:09:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine has an old cat...handsome guy. He got sick and had to be taken to the vet. She misunderstood what the vet said...she thought he said it would be costly...900,000 dollars. He actually said $900 to a thousand. She's a religious person who believes in "the rapture" so I suggested that it might be time to rapture the cat up to Heaven. But she was quick to tell me that cats cannot be raptured. I couldn't believe she said this...but she insisted that animals cannot be raptured. I was very disappointed and told her that if my favorite dog wasn't going to be in Heaven, wagging his tail to greet me, that I wasn't so sure I wanted to go. What kind of place can Heaven be if you don't have your pets with you. She says it's because dogs and cats can't profess their belief. But my dog was baptized...he baptized himself a couple of times a day in the summer. He did it in a pond down by the golf course. We could always tell when he had baptized himself because he was white normally, but he would come home green. Covered in pond algae. I'm fairly certain he's laying on the floor next to God. Or maybe chasing women.

Stop Bugging God!

2006-09-23T11:01:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but I think people are on the phone with God way too much... asking for stuff...begging, even. I believe we should be thanking God all the time for whatever we have. Thank you, Jesus! It's o.k. to ask him for blessings...for yourself and for others. But let him decide how he's going to bless you. He's smarter than we are...he'll give us what we need, not necessarily what we want. Amen.

Not So Damn Fast!

2006-09-17T14:06:00.000-05:00

I was on the road and stopped at a rest stop. As I walked in, I noticed a sign that said, "Automatic Toilets". It made me nervous to tell you the truth. I imagined some machine yanking down my pants and pushing me down on the toilet seat without even wiping it. So I asked the attendant what the deal was. He said that when you wash your hands, you just put your hands under the faucet and the water comes out automatically. And if you have to go into one of the stalls...when you get up to leave, an electronic eye in the wall knows you have left and it flushes the toilet automatically. I asked him, "You sure there's not somebody in the wall watching me?" He swore it was an electronic eye. With his assurance, I went ahead into the toilet to do my business. I leaned forward slightly to get some toilet paper and the damned toilet flushed violently...it was like a bidet (or what I imagine a bidet would be like!). I yelled, "Wait a damn minute. I'm not finished here." But the eye was quick on the trigger. I know there was somebody in the wall. I heard someone laughing.

What's That In Your Ear, Lady?

2006-09-17T13:58:00.000-05:00

I keep seeing these people with gadgets in their ears...they aren't hearing aids. I think they are telephones. But the people sure look silly walking around with these phones in their ears. And so far, none of the people who I've seen wearing them look like they are ever going to receive a call from anybody. I told one woman, "It looks like you lost one of your earrings." She said, "No. This is not an earring. This is a telephone. I can get a call anywhere without having to use my cell phone." They are stupid...and whoever invented them should have a couple implanted in their asses. That's my opinion, and I'm sticking with it.

Give Me That Old Time Convenience

2006-09-15T17:59:00.000-05:00

We didn't have convenience stores when I was a boy. But we had REAL convenience because a lot of the merchants came to us. My favorite merchant by far was a guy named Tony. He came once a week in the summer time and you could hear him coming long before you saw him. He rang a bell that was attached to his ice cream truck. It was more like a little room with glass windows than a truck and it was pulled by a horse who seemed to know exactly when to stop and when to go. I imagine he stopped when he saw at least five kids with their eager tongues hanging out. Tony came to our neighborhood once a week and I'm sure he covered other neighborhoods the days he wasn't at Osceola Mill. He drove his ice cream truck standing up. Even as a kid I could tell how delighted he was to be selling ice cream. He didn't hurry you if you couldn't make a decision among the flavors he offered. Sometimes he would suggest one scoop of each...he would mix the cone up if that's what you wanted. We always got cones of ice cream. My Mother and aunts would get cups of ice cream with little wooden spoons. They didn't think licking ice cream cones was lady-like. We didn't care because we were boys and we could lick faster than the ice cream could melt, even on the hottest day. On other days --- but not as often --- kids would run down the street yelling, "The Jew is coming. The Jew is coming." They didn't mean anything deragotory. Everybody called him The Jew, and not behind his back. The Jew owned a dress shop on Main Street. But many of the mill ladies rarely made it into town. They didn't have cars. If they went to town, they had to take a bus. The Jew drove a black van. The sight of it got the ladies off their front porches, especially the ones who cared about looking good and the ones who went to church regularly and needed something to wear. Going to church was the main time women got dressed up. I never knew any other woman other than my Aunt Hattie who actually "went out". She was a clothes horse and The Jew loved her for it. He would let her buy clothes even when she didn't have money. And even I --- a kid --- could see right through his sales pitches to her. He would say, as he held up a nice dress, "This is what they are wearing in Charlotte this season." He might as well have said Paris or New York. I don't know who "they" were but apparently my Aunt Hattie did because she would get the garment from his hands and hold it up to her body and look in the mirror he had hanging on the back door of the van. If it was good enough for Charlotte, it was good enough for Aunt Hattie. She had closets full of clothes; a room full actually. She was a "Looker" and she knew it. Groceries got delivered to the door. Not all the time. If you bought just a few things, you would carry them home in a poke. But if you were getting a week's worth of groceries, you could ask the store to deliver them. In this case, they packed the groceries in wooden boxes and then they would deliver out to your house and even bring them in an put them on the kitchen table. The service was free of charge but the delivery man would always stand around and wait for a tip. If you had money, you could pay for the groceries. But if you were short of cash (which most people were), you could charge the food until next pay day. That's where the song, "I owe my soul to the company store" came from. Except the store wasn't owned by the same company that owned the mill. But you still owed your soul. We rarely got meat unless you can call fatback meat. Once in a while we got stew beef which my father said was "tough as a horse, and might be one." We never asked him if he had eaten a horse before. We just assumed he did when he went off in his early life to live on the railroad as a hobo and to work in a circus. He might even have eaten an elephant. My father would sometimes say he had steak in his eye but bologna in his wallet. We actually didn't have bologna that often, just on pay days when they delivered a lot of groceries. I haven't even touched here on the convenience of having a Sears and Roebuck catalog. It's not that we bought that much. It was more of a "dream book". But when you did your order came right to your mailbox. My friends and I loved it most when the ice man cometh. Not too many people had refrigerators back then. There were a few electric Kelvinators around. But mainly we had ice boxes which served the same purpose but without electriicty. There was a big metal box and the ice man delivered a big block of ice which would then cool the whole ice box as long as the ice lasted. We had a carboard sign with numbers that would hang out to tell the ice man how many pounds to leave. But he generally knew without looking at the sign. Our ice box was up against the kitchen wall. There was a door in the wall that the ice man could open from the outside and put the ice in the box without actually coming inside. But the main reason we liked the ice man is because he would give us chunks of broken ice. We would suck on it. And if it was really a hot day, we would sometimes rub the ice all over our chests. And somebody would always remind us that Eskimos lived in ice houses. And then somebody else would say, "Yeah, but not in Gastonia, North Carolina in August."

Don't Spin Off the Earth

2006-09-10T17:49:00.000-05:00

Not that I don't have enough to think about, but I just read an article that the gravity pull is getting weaker. I remember when I was a kid and found out that the earth was round and revolving, I was so sure we were going to spin right off...go flying through space. In fact, I started walking by grabbing on with my toes...and I still do. I wear out my shoes from the inside but so far it's kept me from flying away. Now we might really fly off! I'm sure some of Bush's people will hire their friends at Halliburton to make all the Americans (well, maybe not illegal immigrants) special shoes with magnets that hold us onto the earth's surface. . I just hope they're as comfortable as my Crocs.

The 95-Year-Old Killer

2006-09-08T16:46:00.000-05:00

I read about a guy who had just celebrated his 75th wedding anniversary. He was 95. He came down one morning for breakfast; his wife was eating her oatmeal. He shot her in the head and killed her. He called 911. The police came and he told them that he had killed her. They asked him why and he replied, "I just couldn't take it any longer." I'm sure an all-male jury will understand and let him off.

Skiing in the United Arab Republic

2006-09-08T16:41:00.000-05:00

They have built an INDOOR ski resort in Dubai, United Arab Republic. It looks like a space station on the moon...huge. It's 120 degrees outside but they have fresh white snow inside...men skiing with towels on their heads. But they can afford to be frivolous when we are paying $3 a gallon for gasoline.

Shopping for Organic Eggs at the Chicken Ranch

2006-09-08T16:36:00.000-05:00

My wife pays my Visa bill each month and she carefully looks at where I've been spending money. She wanted to know what I was doing at The Chicken Ranch. I told her I was buying eggs. She said, "You spent $200." I told her they were organic, free-range eggs and the ladies at The Chicken Ranch have to look all over the desert to find the eggs. Half of them are hardboiled from the heat by the time they find them. It's not easy work.

Cows Can't Tell You Whether It's Going to Rain or They Would Be TV Weather Women.

2006-09-08T16:31:00.000-05:00

It's an old wive's tale that if you see cows sitting down in a field that it's going to rain shortly. They sit down because their feet are killing them. If it's going to rain, they put on their raincoats or open an umbrella.

Temporary Sanity

2006-09-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

Did you hear about the guy who killed his wife. He's pleading "Temporary Sanity".

Tell Me You're Kidding.

2006-09-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

I saw an on-line advertisement for RENTING designer handbags. They've gotten so expensive, I guess a lot of people can't afford to buy them. So now you can rent them...return one and get another one. I've heard of some stupid things, but this is super stupid. Most of the handbags are ugly...so I guess that's how people know they are authentic. .

Billy Graham's Getting Nervous

2006-09-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

In the summer I live in the mountains of N.C., not far from where Billy Graham lives. My wife loves Billy and when he is on TV, she always wants me to watch with her. Not too long ago, he was being interviewed on a talk program. The host said, "You are getting up in years. It won't be long until you are in Heaven, sitting and talking with God." I was shocked that Billy Graham answered, "I'm not sure that I have earned the right to sit with God." My wife and I both gasped. I turned to her and said, "If Billy doesn't think he has the right to go to Heaven, we are in deep shit, honey." She said, "Speak for yourself. I'll be there. I've earned my right. I clean brass at church once a month." And I said, "Yes, and that's what you will be doing in Heaven...except I am sure they have a lot more brass than St. Luke's does." She said that Billy was getting nervous because he used to play golf with Richard Nixon and pal around with him. I don't really think that's enough to keep him out of Heaven. But I'm hoping he's not thinking he'll be able to play golf with Nixon up there because I'm sure Nixon's in Hell playing with the Devil.

"Are you Oral Roberts?" She Asked.

2006-09-01T12:26:00.000-05:00

I used to go visit my mother-in-law in the nursing home...I'd go and give her a whirl in her wheelchair around the place...or take her for a drive in the country. We would sing songs as we drove along since nobody could hear us. Once when I had her out and took her back to park her in the main room, I put her near the big TV set. There was an old woman there with her hand raised in the air repeatedly saying, "Help me. Help me." Poor thing. I took her hand and said, "Do you want me to help you?" She said, "Yes. Are you Oral Roberts." I thought for a moment and then said, "Yes. How did you recognize me?" She said she had seen me on TV. She was in a wheelchair and her foot was crooked. I had read a book about "faith healing"...the laying on of the hands. So I was looking for a chance to try my new skills. I asked her what seemed to be the matter. She pointed toward her legs and said, "My foot." I got down on my knees between her legs and I lightly touched her foot. She SCREAMED. I was so sure the nurse would come and find me down on my knees with my head between the old lady's legs. But fortunately, the nurse was snoozing as usual. I said to the woman, "Did I hurt you?" She said no. I asked her if she really believed because that's one of the essentials of faith healing...you've got to believe that you can cure them; they have to believe that you can. It takes two to faith heal as well as to tango. She said she believed. So I said, "Well, let me try again. I'll put my hands on your legs and I'm sure you will be able to walk again." She said, "I don't want to walk again. My foot has gone to sleep and I just want you to wake it up." I jumped up and yelled, "My God, woman! You think Oral Roberts goes around waking up old feet??" I'm a Faith Healer. I can make you walk again! "Please," she begged, "Just wake my foot up." I yelled, "Yee of little faith. Wake your own damn foot up. I'm out of here."

The Christian Right; The Christian WRONG.

2006-09-01T12:21:00.000-05:00

I think they should rename the Christian Right...call it The Christian WRONG. They are getting so crazed lately. It's one thing if they want to tote the Bible every place they go, but now they have taken to shaking it at you if you do or say anything they don't like. It's scary! These are the people who elected President Bush. They should be shaking their Bibles at him.

Keeping an Open Mind

2006-09-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

I always thought it was good to keep an open mind...it showed you were open to other people's opinions. But the trouble is, as you get older and you have an open mind, stuff starts spilling out. I've always been the kind who put my foot in my mouth all too often. But now that I'm really old, I'm shocked at the things that come out of my mind when it's open. And if I am shocked, think how shocked listeners are likely to be.

Chewing the Fat

2006-09-01T12:07:00.000-05:00

Where in the world did an expression like "chewing the fat" come from? When I was a kid in the South, my Mother would cook "Fat Back" every morning. She cooked it and saved the grease in a can so she could flavor her green beans and other vegetables with the taste of the fat. We would have the fried Fat Back pieces on biscuits for breakfast. The fried fat is very, very tasty. From time to time in Southern cafes you'll find it on the buffet or the main menu as an "entre". It was easy to chew the fat. What wasn't easy was to chew the sliver of pig hide that the fat back was attached too. In fact, we used to see how long we could chew it...sometimes I could chew it all the way to school which was a two mile walk before it disintegrated...or before I spit it out. In Frederick, Maryland, a friend and I used to love to go to a cafe called, CHAT AND CHEW. My friend loved it more than I did, and he definetly loved the name. In the little town of Bluffton, S.C., they have a place called the SQUAT AND GOBBLE. I keep trying to get my Maryland friend to come down so I can take him to lunch there. I know he would like to chew the fat at the Squat and Gobble.

The Fish Are Biting

2006-09-01T12:03:00.000-05:00

I live on a mountain lake in the summer. And the fish are biting. Not biting the worm, but biting ME. Everytime I try to go in the lake to swim, if I slow down at all the fish start trying to bite moles off my legs and back. These moles don't look like worms, but they apparently look very appetizing to catfish, mountain trout and big-mouthed bass. It's not that their bites hurt all that much, it's just that it scares me. It could be the Loch Ness Monster, you know.

Dragging Main

2006-09-01T11:44:00.000-05:00

It always amazes me what THE NEW YORK TIMES puts into its Style Section. Mostly crap from Hollywood. But recently they had an article on "Dragging Main" in Asheville, N.C. For those who don't know what Dragging Main involves, it's an old Southern custom (which I am personally surprised is still alive) in small towns all over the South. On Saturday nights, boys gas up their cars and go to town...the girls go to town, but they walk down Main Street. Strool actually. The boys slowly drive by checking out the parade of young women....making appropriate and inappropriate remarks to them trying to lure them into their cars. It's sort of a pre-marital mating game. I'm surprised that guys can still drag Main with the price of gas hovering around $3 a gallon. I'm sure there are some Southern towns where Main Street is on a hill so they can coast down without having to turn on the motor. I used to go with my cousin Howard to drag main when I was a teenager. Howard drove because (a) I was too young to drive and (b) I didn't have a car. My job was to sit in the seat by the driver, roll down the window, hang out the window and say cute things to the passing parade of young women. Some of them wouldn't even look our way. (I didn't take this personally because I figured it was the CAR they were rejecting, not me.) But most of them would look my way, smile and giggle. Our objective of course was to lure them over to the car for some serious conversation. The girls always walked in twos...and the boys drove in twos. Howard would feed me "lines" that I was to say. His lines were corny, but they usually worked because he was an old hand at dragging Main. He wasn't looking to net two young women...he was going for a special type who wasn't just going along for the ride, so to speak. When we captured a couple, we would usually take them to a hamburger joint on the outside of town...and then to the Drive-In Movie. He always carried two folding chairs in the car and he would make me and the ugliest girl sit outside to watch the movie. I'm not sure what he and the other one did, but they never knew anything about the movie we had seen. I don't think anybody drags Main Street in the town where I used to live. All the stores are closed now...Main Street is dead. But I may go over next Saturday night and just double check.

I Don't Trust a Doctor With Zits

2006-08-30T09:54:00.000-05:00

Call me old fashioned...but I don't like young doctors. Especially when they still have zits. I don't think they know enough to be treating me. A young doctor bought my old doctor's practice. (Why do they call it "practice"? It's as if they are learning at your expense!) On my first visit, I asked the nurse if the guy was certified. She said she thought he was. But I asked to see his diploma. It was fresh...and he was fresh. He said, "You are way too fat. You've got to lose some of this weight." I told him it was "baby fat" but he said my records showed that I was 65 years old. But some people don't lose their baby fat when they are young. My old doctor never bitched about my weight or my blood pressure. I guess he was old enough and smart enough to know it wouldn't do any good. The New Kid on the Block uses a computer to help him diagnose illness. I went in with a hand rash...he made me put my hands up beside a computer screen and he kept calling up photographs until he found one that sort of matched. "I think this is it," he said gleefully. I told him I could get his computer program and could do the same thing on my computer at home. And "I think I could get rid of those zits of yours."

Buy One, Get One Free

2006-08-30T09:46:00.000-05:00

It's become popular for grocery stores to run weekly specials whereby if you buy one jar of peanut butter, you get a second one free. I love these promotions although I have to admit it makes me buy stuff that I really don't need. But I can't resist. My pantry looks like it belongs to the Doublemint Twins...two of everything. Or like Noah stowing away rations for the big flood. Two peanut butters. Two pork and beans. Two cans of green beans. Two Duke's mayonaises.

William Thompson, Visionary Artist

2006-08-30T09:32:00.000-05:00

William Thompson lives in a castle in Spartanburg. He likes living in a castle. This is the second one he has lived in. But what really makes him unique are the fantastic paintings he creates. He was a business man who had never painted in his life. But he came down with a terrible nerve-related disease...he could barely walk and his hands were so crippled that he could hardly hold a spoon. He was in Hawaii recuperating from the disease when God spoke to him and told him to paint. It was such a clear message, he went right out and bought canvases, paints and brushes. And he began painting as God had instructed him to do. He said the first paintings were so ugly he thought he had misunderstood what God had said. So he prayed for God to speak to him again...and God said, "Yes, Thomas. I want you to paint." So he went back to painting. One of the first paintings he did when he got back home was a 300 foot painting (yes...you got that right...a painting as long as a football field!) depicting the entire Book of Revelations. It was so big it had to be worked like a scroll. When the American Visionary Art Museum was doing a year-long exhibit called "The End Is Near", they selected his painting to be displayed. It was draped from the ceiling. They had Army ambulance stretchers on the floor...you would get down on the stretcher and use a pair of binoculars to view the painting. This one painting put him on the art map...at least in the world of Outsider Art. Although it's difficult to find places that can display a 300 foot painting, his work has been shown throughout Europe and also here in the United States. Right now he has been commissioned to do 7 paintings for the American Visionary Art Museum on "creation"...the first seven days from Genesis. These will be put on permanent display at AVAM beginning in October. Just recently, two art books on Thompson's work have been published...available I'm sure through Amazon.com.

Living in Kudzu Country

2006-08-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

If you don't live in the South, you may not know about Kudzu. It's a wildly rambling vine that covers everything in its path. Stand in one spot too long and you would be covered with it. Actually it's a beautiful vine, but wild, wild wild. Here, where I live in the mountains of North Carolina, it completely encases huge trees...covers entire valleys. It dies down in winter and comes blazing back the very next year. People brought it here from Japan back in the 30's to help stop erosion, especially where they were cutting away hills to build new roads. It stops erosion alright! No one has come up with anything useful to do with Kudzu. Some people make jelly from the beautiful little Kudzu flowers. I've heard that people make baskets with the brittle vines. And I know a woman who uses the leaves to make paper. She dyes the paper...cuts it into various shapes and creates quilt-like wall hangings. But there's still a lot of Kudzu left if you've got any ideas. And I think it is moving north like the fire ants and the armadillos.

Freaky, Freaky

2006-08-21T18:46:00.000-05:00

I've always loved freaks. When I was a kid my mother would always say, "Don't stare. Don't stare." But I couldn't help it. I wasn't crazy about midgets because they came to the N.C. State Fair every year. They had a sideshow tent and they dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. I had to give up five rides in order to buy a ticket, but I always went to the midget show. At halftime they would come out into the audience and sell stuff...you could buy autographed photographs signed with a midget hand. One year they sold midget Bibles which didn't even have one chapter. And then the next year they sold straight pins with the Lord's Prayer engraved on the head of them. So they said. I bought one. I was one of those "a sucker is born every minute" kids. I was so eager to get home and tell my Dad about my treasure. He held the pin under the light and turned it slowly. He squinted. Finally he said, "There's nothing on the head of this pin, son. You've been screwed by a band of midgets." I was sure he was wrong. I took the pin back and turned it slowly and read, "Our Father who art in Heaven....". "You're just making that up, son," my Dad said. "If I were you I would go back over to the fair and kick some tiny butt." I said, "Would you go with me?" He said, "They're midgets. You're as big as they are. You can take them." They were little alright, but one of them smoked a cigar so I figured they were probably fairly strong. I just put the pin away and swore I would never go to a midget show again. But I never lost my fascination for midgets or other freaks. My daughter just bought me a book titled FREAK BABYLON...it's filled with real pictures of real freaks. Many of them are in the movie, FREAK. The movie that was made in the 30's and was considered so scandalous that MGM pulled it. The book talks about the movie, but also about freaks and the people who loved them. I knew that Diane Arbus, the photogapher, became enamored with them toward the end of her life. She would go to 42nd Street and take pictures of them. In the book it said that Catherine the Great loved giants...she had them brought to Russia so she could have sex with them. But being unsatisfied with giants, she took to having sex with horses. The book claims she died having sex with a horse. A friend told me it was the horse that died.

Judging Miss America

2006-08-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

I always wanted to be a judge for the Miss America pageant. Because of my work with the USO, I did get invited to be a judge at one of the preliminary pageants in Maryland. There were two guy judges...and six women judges. They instructed us very carefully that Miss America is not a beauty contest (what???)...it's a scholarship program with the victor being the best all-around young woman. I whispered to the other guy who was a judge and said, "I don't know about you, but I've voting for the one with the biggest hooters." He said, "Me, too!" I told him that's probably why they had so many women judges. They all voted for the opera singer and she won. Of course breathing in and out deeply so you can sing opera develops fairly sizeable hooters, too, so in a way the two guys won as well.

Sleep Your Fat Away

2006-08-21T11:15:00.000-05:00

It seems as if I have always been searching for ways to lose weight. Especially ways that allowed me to do it easily while I continued to eat, eat, eat. When I was about 15-years-old, I saw an ad that said, SLEEP YOUR FAT AWAY: Lose Weight While You Sleep. Now that's what I call a miracle way to lose weight. I sent away for this "suit" that your wore at night. When it came, it looked a lot like a shower curtain. It was a bright pink plastic thing, sort of like pajamas. You zipped yourself into it before you went to bed. The whole idea of this invention was the fact that the body is mainly water...so you would sweat your fat away. It sure made you sweat. I woke up the first morning and thought I had wet the bed. The suit was stuck to me from all the sweat. I thought, "Damn, this is working. I will be thin in no time." I worried that I would have a thin body but a fat head, fat hands and fat feet. But I didn't worry enough that I stopped putting the plastic suit on every night. After a few days I noticed that my body was as bright pink as the shower-curtain pajamas. I had a heat rash all over my body where the pj's went. I had to shower after gym class and I caused quit a stir. They re-named me "Pinkie". I probably would have kept using the sleep-your-fat-away pj's even with the rash. But fortunately, they ripped. And I still feel ripped for paying $14.95. Maybe I can find them at a good price on eBay.

The Famous Meatloaf Cook Off

2006-08-20T19:29:00.000-05:00

My family is very competitive. We don't play touch football like the Kennedys when we get together. We have cooking competitions. Last New Years when we gathered with our family and some friends, we told everybody to bring their favorite meatloaf recipes. I don't know anyone who doesn't like meatloaf and I'm so happy that it has made a big comeback in even fancy restuarants. Everybody thinks their recipe (or their Mother's recipe) is the best. So we had everyone cook a meatloaf for which we offered prizes and trophies. My oldest daughter was in charge of organizing the cookoff. She eliminated me from the competition! I made MEAT MUFFINS, little meatloafs that were cooked in muffin tins. They were so cute and so tasty, and they cooked much faster than the normal loaf. But she said, "It's a meatLOAF competition, not a meatMUFFIN competition. You're out." Well it pissed me off because the meat muffins were eaten up like...muffins. My daughter knew my meatloaf would win...she eliminated me so she could win. She did. I have to admit that her meatloaf was pretty good...a Mexican Meatloaf. One of my other daughters made Greek Meatloaf (stuffed with feta cheese and spinach); another one made Italian Meatloaf. And a lot of the other people just used their Mothers' recipes and none of these even made it to the top three. Some of our health-nut friends made Tofu Meatloaf. They did not win. Nobody even wanted to taste it except them. You couldn't eat Tofu Meatloaf even with a bottle of catsup on it. In fact, their meatloaf got booed. My latest meatloaf venture is MEATLOAF WELLINGTON...it's a meatloaf wrapped in crescent roll dough...it not only looks beautiful, it tastes great. Once I made a meatloaf in a bundt pan. Once it's baked, you turn it out on a platter then fill the middle with peas and put mashed potatoes around the outside edges. I'm sure my daughter would eliminate this one, too.

An Untraditional Thanksgiving

2006-08-20T19:16:00.000-05:00

I like traditional stuff for Thanksgiving...cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and a turkey that looks like a turkey. Last year my wife and I spent Thanksgiving with one of my daughters...since it was just the three of us, my wife instructed her to get a "turkey breast", not a whole turkey. My daughter found boneless turkey breasts that had been injected with Cajun spices...on the internet, yet. She wasn't sure how many people one breast would feed, so she got two. They were flat and rectangular; looked more like loaves of bread. They didn't look like anything we had ever had for Thanksgiving before. I complained just looking at them. I wanted something that looked like a turkey. So my daughter bought two wings and two legs which she tried unsuccessfully to hook to the double breasted flat breasts she already had. It was one weird sight! I decided to put two prunes on each breast piece, sort of like nipples. That improved the looks of it tremendously, although my wife and my daughter both insisted that turkeys don't have nipples. "You don't know," I said. "Maybe they do! This one certainly does." I"m glad to report that the turkey tasted much, much better than it looked. Now that tradition has been broken, my daughter is planning to have a Tur-Duc-Hen this year. What? You've never heard of a Tur-Duc-Hen? It's three birds in one...a turkey stuffed with a duck that has been stuffed with a hen. Poor things. We treat our barnyard birds with such disrespect. But it has Cajun spices so it will probably be delicious, too.

Watch Out! He's Coming Your Way

2006-08-18T08:48:00.000-05:00

My friend Robert Frito Seven, a well-known folk artist, musician, minister and man-about-town, is about to embark on a cross-country tour in a great ART CAR he has created from an old ambulance. He's leaving from Asheville, N.C. shortly...heading to Nebraska where he hopes to participate in the world's longest art car parade...it crosses the whole state and stops in various towns. His ambulance --- Emerge N See --- is devoted to creativity...and Robert hopes to open the minds and hearts of children as well as adults to the joys of being creative. We all have the potential...we just need to hit the right switch and get connected. He will be going on to the famous Burning Man Festival north of Reno where he will dance, sing, make music on suitcases that he has turned into musical instruments, cook bar-b-que...and probably run around naked at night when the temperature drops from 110. If you see a strange ambulance pass you by, wave. Better yet, toot your horn and give him a few bucks for gas and his mission. Do NOT wave your Bible at him. He is not a Heathen. He has come to save you...for yourself.

One Leg at a Time

2006-08-17T16:38:00.000-05:00

Some famous person --- maybe Mark Twain or Harry Truman --- said that they got over being intimidated being around famous men because they always remembered that every guy puts his pants on the same way...one leg at a time. I remember this line every day when I try to get my pants on and both legs go into the same hole! I did not always have this trouble...I'm old and my sight is failing...plus I have LONG toenails like all old guys do. The long toenails are partially to blame when I'm trying to get my legs into my underwear. Invariably when my feet do get through, they are sharing the same hole. I am thinking seriously of cutting the crotches out of all my underwear...then I won't have to aim my left foot into the left hole, etc. Or do them one leg at a time like the rest of the guys.

Show Me Your Tongue

2006-08-17T16:02:00.000-05:00

I am a renowned tongue portrait photographer; the world's most famous and perhaps the ONLY tongue portrait photographer. I realized years ago that no one else was taking pictures of tongues so it was a wide open field. At first I would approach people on the street and say, "Give me some tongue." After being hit a few times, I changed my approach. I opened a Tongue Portraiture Shoppe and advertised in the Yellow Pages under "Tongue Pictures". In the studio, I had many empty picture frames. When customers would come in, they would select a picture frame that pleased them. I would have them hold it up and put their face in it before sticking out their tongues. This way when the picture was developed and printed, it already had a frame on it. Basically I followed the Wal-Mart practice of giving them a "package deal" whereby they got one 8x10, two 5x7's, and a hundred wallet size pictures...all for $l9.95. Business was slow at first because many people did not understand the signifance of an extended tongue. It is a sign of hospitality in New Guinea. When someone approaches you, you stick out your tongue in welcome...they stick there's out back at you. This is much more sanitary than shaking hands and much, much better than doing what dogs do. (What are they doing when they sniff each other's ass?) I might also add that the tongue is a much better sign of hospitality than a pineapple. To appeciate the tongue, one must understand that tongues do NOT age...they are forever young. Go to a nursing home and check this out. Most of the people there can't keep their tongues in their mouths so it is easy to check. They look old, but their tongues are young looking. Tongues are like snowflakes...no two are alike. For this reason, I wrote to the FBI and suggested that they make Tongue Prints for finding criminals and for ID purposes instead of doing fingerprints. With fingerprints, you have to do TEN images, whereas most people only have one tongue so one tongue print will do the trick. Of course it means that those who are tongue printed will go around with black tongues for a long, long time. But this is better "profiling" than doing racial profiling. I also wrote to the State Department suggesting that they use tongue portraits instead of regular mug shots. Nobody looks like their passport pictures anyway. But with tongue pictures, it would be quick and easy to check them out...people just stick out their tongues as they pass quickly through the gates. And because tongues don't change, you would never have to renew your passport. I have not heard from the FBI or the State Department. But oddly enough, I have seen Men in Black near my house. I'm going to try and get a photo of their tongues. I am seriously considering franchising my idea: TONGUES R US. We could expand into doing school photos...think of having pictures of your childrens' tongues at all ages and grades. And, of course, we could offer Christmas card photos with the whole family --- and the dog --- with tongues extended in holiday fashion. Want a picture of MY tongue? I bet you do, you pervert.

It's a Grand Time to Be a Hobo

2006-08-09T17:33:00.000-05:00

I wonder if they still have Hobos. I know they have homeless people, but Hobos chose to ride the trains and lead the life of nomads. Now when I see trains go by, all the cars look like sealed boxes; not as easy to slip inside one. My Daddy was a Hobo for a while. Back in the early days of the Great Depression. He said there were too many mouths to feed at home so being the second oldest mouth in the family of six boys, he decided to leave home and ramble. I love that word "ramble". I realize that my Father tended to romanticize his life on the rails by the time I came along, but he said he wouldn't trade those years for anything. He claimed Hobos didn't beg or steal. They weren't like gypsies who came to town. They were willing to work for food. I have an idea that he was talking about himself and not all Hobos. Once my Dad joined a circus. Now that was romantic. I imagined him taming wild animals, riding horses bareback, flying on a trapeze high in the air, dancing with the bearded lady. But he didn't do any of that stuff. He packed and unpacked the tent and helped put it up. He was not in the Talent Department but, as he explained, it was important work that he did. No tent. No show. He was a roustabout. Then he worked quite a while as a hired hand on a big farm in Iowa. He lived in a bunkhouse just like cowboys did. He had never seen a farm so big and land so flat. It was here that he encountered his first tornado. The farm owner had an underground shelter where the family and the fieldhands went when they got warnings about a tornado. But being fearless and a little bit stupid at the time, he wanted to stay above ground and see what a tornado was like. But the farmer made him come below. It's a good thing he did or he would have been blown all the way back to South Carolina. When I was in the grocery store recently, I noticed how conveniently so many foods are packed. This would be a great time to be a Hobo. They have little flip top cans of peaches, ready to eat. Little cans of spinach and green beans. (I think they are made for Senior Citizens who are living alone, not Hobos. But Hobos could still carry them and eat them.) They have SPAM SNACK PAKS. It doesn't taste anything like traditional SPAM (not that SPAM doesn't taste great...we used to live off the stuff and I still like it, but my wife says "Your upbringing is showing".) It looks like pate. A very pale pate. But it's not like Potted Meat. We used to eat Potted Meat, too, until I read on the can that it's made from unidentifiable animals (read "roadkills" and "armadillos") and chickens that have been mechanically picked. The poor things! I hated the thought of a bunch of robots mechanically cleaning my chicken, so I am boycotting Potted Meat. By the way, we used to "dress it up" by adding chopped celery, onions and mayonaise. The stores now have peanut butter and jelly "rounds", little sandwiches that are stamped out of the center ofa peanut butter and jelly sandwich; no crust. My grandson introduced me to this treat. And if you are on the South Beach Diet (and who isn't?), you can get packages that have two tiny tortillas, ham, cheese and mayo so you can rip open the box and make a couple of roll-ups. My wife keeps a "Hurricane Survival Box" because we live on an island in South Carolina. So far we have had to evacuate three times but have not been hit (Praise the Lord!). But she keeps a food supply that would make a Hobo drool. When I get hungry and can't find anything decent to eat, I sneak into the Hurricane Survival Box and steal a few Hobo treats. She gets upsets and warns me, "We're going to have to go to a Shelter." On TV, people in the shelters always look like they're having a grand old time...playing cards, watching TV. My wife says if we go to the Shelter, we will have to eat Potted Meat. Twice I have had Hobo Picnics for my children and their friends. Once we went to the dump and spread out newspapers and ate our lunch with buzzards flying overhead. I brought canned foods with flip tops, but I didn't bring any forks or spoons. When they complained, I told them that Hobos don't travel with forks and spoons. They eat with their tongues. Then they wanted a napkin, so I ripped off part of our table-cloth newspaper and handed it to them. Another time I packed each lunch in a bandana and tied them on long sticks so we could hike over to the railroad tracks and wave to people on the train going to New York. I could read their lips, "Oh, look! A Hobo and his family." (It was a slow moving train.) This time I had sardines in cans. I love sardines. But I was the only one that did except for a kid that was with us from California who thought it was Sushi. Just when everyone was turning their noses up at the sardines, my wife arrived at the tracks with a big bag of McDonald's hamburgers. She saved the day.