For some reason, poets put up with me reading prose at poetry gatherings. Maybe it’s because I’m such a snappy dresser. Over the years, I’ve learned that there are many good writers at these gatherings who excel at capturing sensitive moments and feelings, especially while walking on the beach or in the woods. They frequently write lush lines about robins chirping and flowers blooming.
Still, at times, I wish the poets tackled more down-to-earth subjects, common things that happen often in everyday life.
I mean, Poets, how about some poetry that deals with situations such as these?:
“Ron looked to be in great shape, and everyone was shocked when he died of a heart attack while struggling to take off his compression socks.”
“Carol had a wonderful life with a wonderful husband, Carl, or so all their friends thought until she killed herself. In reconstructing what set her off, police revealed Carol never could get over Carl’s insistence that she always had to ride on the back of their tandem bike.”
“Harold had a warm smile and very white teeth. He had never flossed a day in his life and was proud of it. He was such a braggart about it that people despised him, even his wife and kids. Not only that, tellers at the Chase bank would suddenly disappear when they saw him approaching their station.”
“Mildred was in her late 60s when she found love again, and Eugene kept his promise and for her birthday gave her a new vibrator. Who knew that the folks at Betty Crocker now made vibrators?”
Come on all you poets who love challenges, let’s hear from you.
(Posted February 28, 2024)
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THANKSGIVING DAYS
It’s over, all ten guests have left. My son-in-law and grandson-in-law are both handy and know I’m not, so when they visit they fix things or point out things that need fixing. We now have two new overhead lights in our driveway, and a new bulb in the oven—our son-in-law seemed amazed I didn’t care whether there was a working light in the oven. He also vacuumed part of the basement floor where’s there a green rug. It seems greener than before, maybe because most of the green was hidden by white splotches. Who knows what those were.
The morning after Thanksgiving I discovered one of our visitors had unearthed from somewhere a set of handsome silverware that didn’t look like ours but apparently was from way back.
So far we’ve only found one new spot—from red wine —on our living room rug. That’s not bad, considering our recycling bin is overflowing with empties.
Hours before Thanksgiving dinner, my wife Irene and I went for a walk. One of our neighbors was in his yard. and I introduced Irene to him. About a year ago I had got out of my car and shook the hand of this neighbor who lives four or five houses away. We had never talked before.
I told Irene that day I had finally met the Hispanic man I frequently saw outside his house. His name was Jose, I said.
That’s how I introduced him Thanksgiving Day. “Irene, I want you to meet Jose.”
“Jose” said, “my name isn’t Jose. It’s Roberto. Actually it’s Froberto with an 'F' in front of it."
Both Irene and I said, “Froberto” a couple of times because it’s a fun sort of name.
The man, formerly known as Jose, said he was from Puerto Rico and his father had trouble saying “r”s. Plus, “he was drunk when I was born and he gave me the name Froberto.” Way to go, Dad.
We laughed about that and chatted for a while. I should have apologized, but didn’t, for getting his name wrong.
The day before Thanksgiving I went to a bagel place with instructions from our daughter to get a dozen bagels, at least half of them plain, plus cream cheese and nova. This son of Indiana didn’t grow up with bagels, but Irene and I now have them a couple of times a week for breakfast.
This wasn’t the bagel place where I normally go. While waiting for my turn, I noticed a bin full of red and green bagels. Rainbow bagels, a sign said. Yikes. Who would buy them?
After Thanksgiving dinner, I asked our two younger granddaughters—one 16, the other about to be 20—“Please tell me you’ve never had rainbow bagels”.
They both said they had and that they were good. I’ve tried to be a caring, considerate grandpa but somehow I’ve failed these children or they wouldn’t be going around eating rainbow bagels and admitting it.
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A SONG WRITING CHALLENGE
There are days when I head upstairs planning to write, but, after turning on my computer, I just sit there listening to country music. Song after song. Before I’m through. I usually have clicked on something by Vern or Emmylou (as in Gosdin and Harris) or both.
The other day my listening included “Tell Ole I Ain’t Here, He Better Get on Home.” How’s that for a fine, clear, clever English sentence? Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley sang it, but the hard work, the writing, was done by Wayne Kemp. I only know this because I looked it up. I had never heard of Mr. Kemp before, and he certainly had never heard of me before he died seven years ago.
“Tell Ole I Ain’t Here” got me to thinking about drinking, and why, as far as I know, more smartass journalists haven’t written country songs about it. Drinking was a big part of life at United Press International in Chicago when I started there in 1960. After my shift ended on UPI’s National Radio Desk, I often went to a bar before heading home.
Most of my shifts ended at midnight or at eight in the morning and to unwind I frequently went for a drink or two or more. One favorite place after midnight was also popular with policemen, and some delicious mornings you could be drinking after hours with no one in the joint but you and a bunch of cops. Someone named Jack from UPI used to go with me to this bar, and, on nights when he wasn’t with me, the bartender got a kick out of asking, in a voice louder than necessary, “Jack off today?”
My guess is that many of the sick out calls made in those days at UPI were from guys either out drinking or trying to recover from being out drinking. So, I ask again where are the gripping honkytonk songs about journalists and drinking?
As a public service, I donate these possible song titles for country tunes about newsies and boozies:
You Flirt All Day Then Butcher My Copy.
Ya Got A Champagne Body, Baby, But A Bud Light Mind.
If the Boss Catches Us Doing This, Do We Have a Plan B?
Girl, Stop Wiggling That Thing. I Got a Story to Write.
I Know All Your Passwords Except the One to Your Heart
Trust Me, Sugar. One Taste Is All You’ll Need.
She Was Foxy with Great Legs and Went to Fox.
Who’s Gonna See Us? It’s the Overnight. We’re the Only Ones Here.
Close Those Bright Blue Eyes, Honey. It’s Time for Your Performance Review.
Days and Nights with “Slugs” and “Sluts.”
How About I Run My Hands over Your Keyboard?
Here’s hoping at least one of those gets the juices going and some rewrite wretch (if such an individual still exists) will write us a good country song, and it will go viral before the next virus hits us hard.
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(Posted December 13, 2022)
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Car Talk Or Don't Forget the Watermelons
This morning, March 17th, I cancelled a reservation for a car and condo for a trip to Hilton Head next month. I offer the following essay as a diversion from thoughts about virus, bank accounts, jobs, futures and will there be a baseball season this year. This appeared on my website years ago but who remembers years ago?
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THE INS AND OUTS OF GETTING IN AND OUT OF A MITSUBISHI
Introducing the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder! It was the car assigned to us when we got to the Avis counter at the Savannah Airport. (Excuse me. The Savannah/Hilton Head
INTERNATIONAL Airport. Under a little known FAA regulation, any airport that serves either Colombian coffee or French fries is entitled to squeeze the word “International” into its name.)
According to my Avis profile, I prefer a stodgy, mid-size car, and the first thing I saw in row F in the Avis lot when I came out of the airport with two large suitcases on a baggage cart, a knapsack on my back, two computers hanging from various limbs and the car keys and contract stuffed in my cargo pants was a Chevy Lizard or something. I assumed that’s us and pressed the door zapper on the key. There was a chirp but the doors didn’t unlock. I put down one of the computers, pressed the door opener button again, again heard an electronic chirp but the doors on the Chevy were still locked.
The third time I pushed the zapper Irene, who is always ahead of me, said “it’s the convertible, here.” Sure enough, the lights flashed on the car next to the Chevy, the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, a convertible. I had not asked for a convertible. Although it was close to Irene’s birthday, this trip wasn’t planned as a special vacation, merely a week at a condo complex in Hilton Head.
My first close look at the Eclipse Spyder was its trunk. I am happy to report it does have a trunk. I must also report one (1) piece of luggage takes up the entire trunk. It would hold, I reckon, one piece of luggage or three watermelons. Having forgotten to bring any watermelons with me, I squeezed the one bag into the trunk and then went to
the driver’s door.
The Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder has a back seat, but I don’t know why. No one over the age of 15 months could fit there. Even if a small person would agree to try to get into the back seat, I doubt that they could. The seat belt for the driver’s seat forms a webbed barrier to the back when the seat is pushed forward. There being no such obstacle on the passenger's side we managed to maneuver, twist and shove the second piece of luggage into the back seat along with the two computers and the knapsack.
Ah ha. It was now time to get into the car, to put our butts on the seats like people do in normal automobiles made by the Japanese, the Swedes, the South Koreans, the Germans, the Italians, the Indians, and the Americans. There would appear to be no graceful way to enter the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder at any age let alone at age 71 +. To say the seats were low to the ground is to say the sand in Hilton Head is low to the beach. The best technique I found was to squat as though you had been on a long walk in the woods and suddenly had to go to the bathroom very badly. From the squatting position, you immediately pivot to the right - there should be as little time as possible between the squat and the pivot or otherwise the air can well be punctuated by small, unwelcome man-made rockets. After pivoting, you collapse sideways into the seat, taking care to duck your head and watch your arms and elbows so they don’t strike the gear shift.
(You will be pleased to know that, yes, the engineers of the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder did find room for a gear shift. And it’s in the front not the back.)
After a self-performed census of your body parts and adjustments to various pieces of clothing that have become entangled on features in the interior of the car, you put the key in the ignition. As the car starts, you take an inventory of the dash board, finding the windshield wipers, the gas gauge, the lights, the radio. Then it’s time to adjust the mirrors. That’s when you notice that instead of a rear window the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder has an oval peep hole about the size of an omelet. Not believing this is possible, you turn in the driver’s seat and look back. In most cars, there is a lot of glass in the back,
affording a view of what’s behind you. Not on this baby. When you look back, what you see is lots of convertible top. That means your view of what’s behind you is limited to what you can see out of the clear omelet these brave Japanese designers have given you.
Well, this will be interesting you say. You then adjust the side mirrors.You know you can compensate a little for your inability to see anything through the back window by looking into the side mirror by the driver’s seat and turning your head to the left to double check before changing lanes. There is no such easy fix for your lack of vision on the right hand side of the car. The right hand mirror states the truth when it says, in little lettering at the bottom ,“Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” So that giant Mayflower moving van you just passed looks 20 feet from you in the mirror when in fact it is two feet away.
If I didn’t have a convertible at home I really like - a fairly roomy VW Cabrio - if we weren’t going to warm, sunny Hilton Head, I might have gone back to the Avis counter and said, “I know you’re busy. I appreciate you have upgraded me to a convertible, but how about I just be my usual unadventuresome self and stick with that Chevy Lizard next to the Mitsubishi?”
I didn’t do anything like that. I put the car in “Reverse,” asked the brave co-pilot-
navigator to check on her side of the car, and began to slowly back up. There was a sharp beeping sound. On the dash there was a light flashing under an image of the convertible top. Perhaps the sharp beeping was a warning that the top was about to blow off. I pushed a “Close” button next to the light. The beeping continued when I backed up, so one of us pushed the light itself. Still beeping. It stopped though when you stopped the car. You put the car in “Drive” and the beeping resumed. This was when you took a lap around the lot and find someone in a red Avis uniform. The man I found showed me how to adjust the mirrors, using the grid with arrows on the dash. I asked about the beeping but whatever it was he said I didn’t understand. Maybe he didn’t understand what I was asking, or, if he did, he didn’t know the answer.
Oh the hell with it, I thought and off we drove. The beeping always stopped after a few seconds, although for the first several days we kept pushing “Close” and “Open” as well as the light showing the convertible top. None of that did any good.
Twice during our trip I put the top down for the drive to the Rec Center to play basketball. It’s hard to beat that. Cruising along with the sun and wind on your face, the latest U2 album in the CD player. With the top down you discover something else, this is a very loud car, about as loud as that mammoth Mayflower moving van, which is now
only two inches away from your bumper.
Like most rentals, an owner’s manual was not to be found in the glove compartment. That might have told us how to stop the beeping. Many cars - most cars – also have slots or compartments on the inside of the front doors, places where you can put a map, sunglasses, a couple of tapes or CDs or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder comes with an extremely tiny slot on the inside of the front doors, a good place to get a finger stuck should you want to practice your talent at one-handed driving. Should you be planning a long drive, this slot looks just big enough to hold one Oreo or, if you are trying to cut back on sweets, one thin gherkin.
There was another curious feature of this car. When you turned on the ignition,
the clock above the dashboard briefly displayed the word “Eclipse.” I have read that the Eclipse was named after an 18th century race horse but wasn't there anyone at Mitsubishi who stood up at a planning meeting and said, “Listen, Numbnuts, one definition of
’Eclipse’ is totally or partially obscured?” That certainly described the car I drove.
Perhaps you are wondering if getting out of this vehicle was as difficult and as
humiliating as getting in. Not by a long shot. For one thing, there was no squatting. I would swivel my legs out of the car, put both feet on the concrete and then begin a series of rocking and pumping movements to lift myself from the seat. A “series” in this case defined as about 20 to 25 rocks and pumps.
Once outside the car I walked in a hunched position for only about 50 yards before regaining the normal gait of an aging man - crooked and wobbly. Who knows how Irene with her two metal knees got out? Hell, as far as I know she may still be in the damn thing, riding around with someone else.
