Word Back: In America, We're All Bozos on This Red-White-And-Blue Bus

Part 2 of Word Back: America

I explore word choice in "Make America Great Again."

What was America like in my youth? Was it all fun and games?

Yes and no. 

The Wayback Machine takes us back to my collegiate years, 1969-1976. Yes, I was on the seven-year B.A. Plan. 

I remember the legendary Firesign "I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus" Theater perform at the UF Gator Growl in 1975? And wasn’t I there physically although my mind was wandering due to cannabis? I looked it up. Yes, Firesign Theater performed at the ’75 Growl. As I looked up the event's history at the HardyVision Institute of Pop Culture, I found this header: “Frequently Asked Questions: Gator Growl’s Stand-up Comedian History.”

Wow. That was my question. Thanks, WWW. Sometimes hummingbirdminds are glorious. I scrolled down to this:

When did Gator Growl start hiring big-name stand-up comedians?

In 1970, UF alumnus Buddy Ebsen (of “Beverly Hillbillies” fame) was invited to be the Gator Growl emcee. Of course, he’s not a stand-up comedian, but he did show up and lent a celebrity flair as he told showbiz stories and talked about how nice it was to be back.

In 1974, the musician Jim Stafford was the emcee. The Independent Florida Alligator reports that the Winter Haven native opened the show with his song “Wildwood Weed” blaring over the loudspeakers, and later in the show “he sang his big hit – ‘Spiders and Snakes,’ accompanied by six dancing girls.” 

In 1975, the show was emceed by the comedy duo of Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman of the Firesign Theater.

But it was Bob Hope in 1976 who was Gator Growl’s first nationally known stand-up comedian headliner. He would return to headline Gator Growl in 1979 and in 1983 at age 80.

I was right about Firesign! Jed Clampett was a UF grad – who knew? And Bob Hope hosted three times, once when I was allegedly in the crowd in ’76?

Instead of continuing my research into Firesign, which was the day’s assignment, I scrolled down to a video: “The Bob Hope Collection at the University of Florida.” Really? The Smathers Library has a huge Hope collection willed it by the Bob and Dolores Hope Foundation, most of it previously displayed at the World Golf Hall of Fame Museum at World Golf Village off I-95 west of Ponte Vedra Beach where they do a lot of golfing. The new World of Golf Museum is now in Pinehurst, N.C., near swanky Pinehurst C.C. Its largest display is a women’s locker room with more than 160 lockers of famous women golfers.

So comedian golfer Bob Hope’s collectibles are now at the UF Library? That is something. This is the same library where I spent hundreds of hours learning how to be a writer. I read through the reading list former radical Nelson Algren handed out in my creative writing class. I read Harry Crews' Esquire column because I couldn't afford my own subscription. I read it all. I wrote thousands of words in my journal. I wrote and wrote. 

And now I remember. In my youth, Bob Hope was my favorite comedian. And I wasn’t alone. As quoted in the 16-minute library video, Time Magazine’s Richard Schickel said he admired Hope’s “rapid-fire patter” and “as a kid growing up, I thought he was terribly funny as did most of the nation.” Me too. He and Bing Crosby were hilarious in their “Road” pictures. I loved how they broke the “fourth wall” to comment right at the camera, right at me sitting in suburbia. He had his own TV show. He traveled the world entertaining our troops fighting fascists and commies or just confused about why they were so far from home. He cracked me up. At one point, he was a starving artist in Vaudeville. The photo of that hopeful kid is in the UF collection.

I became a know-it-all college kid and Hope was out. He was part of the establishment. He was buds with Nixon and supported our foray into Southeast Asia. He was going to get us killed. He wasn’t funny anymore. I threw Bob Hope under the bus (the Bozo bus) because he was too establishment. 

Bob Hope tear-gassed me. Not him but him and his pals at Honor America Day on the National Mall on July 4, 1970. I return now to the American I was that day, a 19-year-old confused U.S. Navy midshipman on leave. I told the story in a 2019 blog post:

There were lots of fireworks at the July 4, 1970, event, not all of it in the sky. American Nazis attended to protest Vietnam War protesters and the Yippies staging a smoke-in at the Washington Monument. Police tried to maintain a DMZ between the protesters and Silent Majority picnickers. When that failed, park police fired tear gas at the rowdy hippies and gas clouds drifted over the multitudes. This led, as one reporter wrote, to a "mad stampede of weeping hippies and Middle Americans away from the fumes." At the same time, the U.S. Navy Band played the Star-Spangled Banner from the Lincoln Memorial stage.

I was in that mad stampede. I picnicked with my buddy Pat's family. When the fumes reached us, Pat and I scrambled to lead his grandmother and younger sisters to safety. Pat and I had been tear-gassed several times that spring at the University of South Carolina during protests of the Kent State killings. It was no fun for young people but could be dangerous for the elderly. We made it out of the gas cloud and, when the hubbub died down, we returned to our picnic. Later, we listened to Honor America Day jokes from Bob Hope and Jeannie C. Riley's version of Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me." Then, despite the chaos or maybe because of it, we admired the bitchin' fireworks display. 

So this is America, all of it, all of us, me and Bob Hope and you. We're All Bozos on This Bus.

Word Back: America, Part 1: More a circus than a country

I began to write this Word Back column as Memorial Day weekend began. I was making fun of what America has become in 2025 but forgot about what America has been in my lifetime. I kept hearing the voices of all of those departed family members who served their country. They are gone but not silent. Their voices still ring out in the bardo.

If I attached no value to my lifetime on Earth, 1950-present, how could I value the present or maybe what the present should be? If I let the Trump years define my view of my country, well, then I will be stuck with that the rest of my days. That may be the source of so much anger among my Boomer friends. We remember a different country.

Really, though, what is the America I am mourning? Some of that is one forged by the family, the church, the Boy Scouts, and Catholic school. I can bore anyone of the younger generation with tales of the ‘burbs. “I remember when…” Not a conversation starter at a holiday gathering. MEGO! It’s just a part of our transitions along life’s timeline. We are forgettable and boring. Not to all. There is always one person who is curious about times gone by. I can see it in their eyes. The crowd will thin out and there’s one little person left, high school or college kid. I mention something that makes him/her think. A book, a film, an event. Maybe it’s my life as a writer, my career as an arts worker. It sounds more exotic than it really is but it’s my life, my truth. It is being destroyed daily which really give it a nostalgic feel.

What to make of America? Strangely enough, it may be Bob Hope. He was America’s comedian, a stand-up before stand-up was in the dictionary. I was looking for a list of performers at University of Florida’s Gator Growl, a homecoming ritual at Florida Field. I had been looking for a comedy skit that featured a chorus of “God Bless Vespucciland,” a satiric take on “God Bless America” substituting Vespucciland for America or Americus Vespucci, namesake of Americans North and South.

I thought: that sounds like something Firesign Theater would do. Remember them? Of course you don’t. They were part of a wave of satiric performers who emerged in the late-60s and early-70s as part of the counterculture. They were the stage-version of National Lampoon, a less druggy Cheech and Chong, a more buttoned-down version of Saturday Night Live and Second City. Firesign’s skits were edgy and brainy.

To appreciate “God Bless Vesapucciland,” you have to know America’s origins which you knew from school, home, and Scouts. You might ask here: what version of American history are you referring to? Is it Lynne Cheney and Newt Gingrich version or is it Howard Zinn’s? Is it the Christian Nationalist version wherein Jesus rode his dinosaur to an all-White private school? Or a world that’s millions and billions of years old and The Big Bang gave us the building blocks of homo sapiens with a few hiccups along the way?

Read Part 2 Friday

Love in the Ruins is not just Another Roadside Attraction

I awoke thinking of Walker Percy's "Love in the Ruins or The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World." I finished the 1971 novel late last night. It has a satisfying ending which I won't divulge. It's set five years after the main action of the novel. It wraps things up but I was still left with this thought: This is a satirical sci-fi novel about loss and grief. 

It struck me in the same way as the movie "Arrival." I had to watch the film a second time to understand the ending as well as the beginning and middle. I felt a bit dim that I didn't get it the first time around. The second time I wanted to cry. 

They gave Dr. Louise Banks the same gift the Tralfamadorians gave Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse Five." She became unstuck in time, gift from the Space Octopoids who came to warn Earth and seek our help for a future calamity. Dr. Banks saw her future tragedy but lived it anyway, a brave thing. 

In "Love in the Ruins," set in some future time, the 45-year-old Dr. Thomas More has already experienced tragedy in the cancer death of his young daughter followed by his wife leaving him. Oh yeah -- he also faces the end of the world. He does his best to assuage his grief and fear with scientific inventions, sex, and gin fizzes. Nothing works. "To be or not to be?" What does he decide?

Percy was the son and grandson of suicides. After a bout with TB during the World War 2 years, he became a doctor and then a mental patient at the same hospital. Percy suffered from Depression and PTSD just as war veteran Binx Bolling does in Percy's 1961 novel "The Moviegoer." 

He is well-known as the writer who helped publish John Kennedy Toole's "The Confederacy of Dunces," another award-winning New Orleans-set novel about an unhinged character. Toole, of course, committed suicide allegedly despondent when nobody would publish his novel. Suicide, I'm told, is more than a passing sorrow. It figures heavily in literature, especially Southern lit.

I almost quit reading this novel. Several times. It's wordy and Percy does a lot of showing off with language. In places, his humor is more Keystone Kops than dark satire. I did laugh out loud in spots. Dr. More keeps getting into messes he causes himself. A Buster-Keaton-kind of hero. 

I first read this novel when I was 23. I am now 74. In 1973, I saw it as a romp, the prof's great example of the dark humor of the ages. We also read Tom Robbins' 1971 kaleidoscopic novel "Another Roadside Attraction." That too was a romp with deep undercurrents and portents. Robbins was born in North Carolina and grew up there and in Virginia. He referred to himself as a hillbilly and his editor called him "a real Southern Gentleman." Both his grandfathers were Southern Baptist preachers. Later on, he discovered Washington state where he wrote his books. 

I should reread Robbins' novel and see how I react 52 years on. It may mean something different to me in 2025. 

We say hello to Florida

 Let's get the preliminaries out of the way. It's hot and humid here. It's more crowded than I remember. The college football season starts today so the barbecues flare and the liquor stores are swarmed. The Governor did another stupid thing yesterday. The sunsets over the river are gorgeous and I hear the same thing about the sunrises. I've seen two Trump signs and two for Harris/Walz. So far, a 2-2 tie.

We almost got creamed by a pickup truck. We waited at a light in front of Sushi Fugu. That is a bit ironic as Fugu the pufferfish can kill you if not prepared by an expert chef (read the darkly humorous story "Sorry, Fugu" by T.C. Boyle). I thought about that and watched the couple on the Harley in front of us. I heard something and looked over just in time to see a pickup roar off the bridge, jump the curb, and come right at me. It was a nice truck and it was coming my way at a high rate of speed. Luckily, the truck wheels hit the median next to us and the driver steered by and raced away. 

I remember Chris screaming and the pickup passing a few inches away from my Nissan. I thought, "I can reach out and touch it." Time slowed and the truck took forever to blow by and continue down River Drive. "We were almost killed," Chris yelled. "You were almost killed." I acknowledged this but kept remembering my hand reached for the automatic window lever and I was ready to touch this truck as it flew by, inches away. It was a magical moment and I never felt terror. 

There is something wrong with me.

Police officer: "Son, you were almost killed by an F-250 driving crazy down the bridge. You escaped death by inches."

Me: "I just wanted to reach out and touch it."

They might have sent me to the county hospital's 1400 ward where I worked as an orderly when I attended the local community college in the 1970s. That's where certified insane people go. I could have been DOA at the Ormond Memorial ER. I was both blessed and lucky I could go on my way, cross the bridge to the other side of the river, and drive home.

Chris: "We were almost killed."

Me: "I just wanted to reach out and touch it."

Chris: "You're crazy, dear. I mean that in the nicest way."

Welcome to Florida.

Poetry Monday: The Letter is in the Wind

The Letter is in the Wind

I could dry up and blow away before

A letter arrives

I drag a lawn chair to a breadbox of a mailbox

The kind 1950s teens used for bathing practice

I sit, and imagine letters

Dear Mike: My love is like a red, red rose.

Mike, I miss you terribly I ache with it

I would gladly read whatever missive lands here even

The bad or sad news

Michael, dear: F--- you and the horse you rode in on

Note: my asthma acts up around livestock

Mike: Grandma died today. She was surrounded by

Friends and family and you

Were not one of them

Mike: Our dog Zeke got run over by the truck delivering

Your Christmas package, the box containing the latest

Brautigan book and a chew toy for foundling Zeke.

I would read them all, even the letter that promised

A scholarship in a far-off place and an ensign’s gold bar

A job as reporter in a strange city that will have

Plenty of stories and you will be lonely.

Dear Sir: You too could be a winner!

As I said, I will read them all perched along the

Lonely rural blacktop named Expectations Road.

In Flannery O'Connor's Garden of Life, chickens walk backward

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the intersection of writers and gardening. I mentioned that Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, had gardens and peacocks. Yesterday, as I looked up writers with Savannah ties, I came across the fact that O'Connor was born and mostly raised in Savannah. Her childhood home is now site of a museum and gardens. Now I have two O'Connor-related gardens to visit next time I'm in Georgia. One of the more interesting facts on the museum's web site, was a snippet about a 6-year-old O'Connor and her trained chicken. She trained a chicken to walk backward. This apparently caught the attention of Pathe News Service and they came to Savannah to see for themselves. They filmed O'Connor and her talented chicken and it ended up in a 1931 newsreel that theater patrons would see before the cartoon and double feature. The writer sarcastically noted later that this was quite an event for her and everything that followed was an "anticlimax." The writer died of lupus at 39. Her anticlimax included some fine writing. She's influenced thousands of us with her spare style featuring "grotesques" (her term) of the South. Plenty of humor too. Not sure if any story or novel featured a backward-walking chicken. Who would believe that? The Misfit?

I discover Donald Westlake's novels and reminisce about John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee

I found Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books and they are fantastic. Always a caper going on. Always sharp dialogue and lots of humor. Westlake passed away in 2008 but I can see he's in the same school as Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Janet Evanovich and Jerome Charyn. Maybe a dash of Don DeLillo too. So far I've read two of the volumes, "The Road to Ruin" and the first Dortmunder novel, "The Hot Rock." It was published in 1970. I didn't look that up until I finished but there were clues placed throughout. The cars they drive, the characters' language, ubiquitous phone booths, no personal computers. Its throwback quality didn't bother me. He had a skillful way of incorporating all of that into the narrative.  

What other crime-adjacent novels of that era would show such wit? I thought of John D. MacDonald, for instance, and his Travis McGee character. McGee probably had too much machismo for these times. He could be funny and ironic. He called himself a "salvage consultant" and lived on his "Busted Flush" houseboat docked at the Bahia Mar Marina. McGee's erstwhile sidekick is Meyer, an economist always ready for a McGee caper. He dwells on a neighboring boat named for his hero, John Maynard Keynes.

I worked at a Florida bookstore in the '70s and I brought MacDonald's novels to my mother Anna Shay (R.I.P Mom) and she devoured them. Me too. Travis and his Busted Flush houseboat. I could always see McGee's houseboat through MacDonald's imagination. Back in the '80s, my brother Dan and I visited Bahia Mar and stopped at Slip F-18. We thought about the McGee we knew from the books. Slip F-18 was declared a literary landmark in 1987, a year after the author's death. 

I did my usual Google search for Travis McGee and came up with an article by Kris Hundley on the Visit Florida site (couldn't find a pub date). The second paragraph about the Bahia Mar Marina set the tone for the story:

There's little room left for a boat bum like Travis McGee. 

She described present-day Bahia Mar in gritty detail.

Bahia Mar touts its ability to accommodate yachts up to 300 feet, even squeezing in a 312-footer recently for a month-long stay. The marina's 3,000-foot dock along the Intracoastal sports one mega-yacht after another. flawlessly polished hulls gleaming, white communications domes looming 50-feet overhead, docked so closely together that the uber-rich could step from one vessel to another without ever touching the ground. Not an inch of precious real estate is wasted.

Bahia Mar must have considered the literary landmark plaque dedicated to MacDonald as "wasted space." It now sits in the marina's office. Hundley wraps up the piece this way: 

A boat bum might seem forgotten among such glitz. But inside the marina office, the woman behind the desk said that not a week goes by that someone doesn't wander in, looking for the slip once occupied by Travis McGee. She is not sure what the fuss is about: she's never read the books. 

Made me want to bang my head against the desk. MacDonald and McGee would have had a few things to say about the wretched excess of 21st century Florida. As a self-described "salvage consultant," McGee usually was coming to the aid of a trusting soul who had been ripped by someone who would own a 312-foot mega-yacht. His price was always half of the recovered loot. When the client objected, his usual response was "half of something is better that nothing." MacDonald also wrote the best-selling "Condominium" which tore into the thoughtless development going on in coastal Florida which has not abated in the 46 years since the novel's original publication. 

During his lifetime, MacDonald got great reviews from the likes of Hiaasen and Kurt Vonnegut. Here's what Vonnegut said about MacDonald's work:

“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen."

I feel a need to reread Travis McGee, see how he holds up in these fast-moving and confusing times.

Mike Miller posted an updated article on Travis McGee on Jan. 28. It was on the Florida Back Roads Travel site. In it, he writes about how he first came upon MacDonald's character when his father visited him in Florida in 1964 and gave him a copy of "The Deep Blue Good-by." His father was reading the latest novel, "Nightmare in Pink." Miller read "Deep Blue" and was hooked. He's read the entire series, some of them twice, and is a devoted fan. Read Miller's essay to understand what makes McGee tick, and why his books are still in print. 

My mother died too young in 1986, a McGee fan to the end. Mike Miller's father died in a St. Cloud, Fla., nursing home in 1986, the same year MacDonald died. Miller Senior's dying message to his son was "Nightmare in Pink." 

Now that's a fan.

The day after St. Patrick's Day 2022

I don't have a hangover, that's the main thing. Many prior St. Patrick's Day holidays involved drinking and then hangovers. Some stray guilt feelings. Calling in sick to work.

But not this time. I attended a family-style party last night. Wife stayed home with a sick daughter. We recited Irish poems. Remembered trips to Ireland -- friendly people but kissing the Blarney Stone is a rather disgusting ritual. Devoured Irish Stew and a delicious Guinness chocolate cake built to look like a pint on an Irish pub bar. I drank one Irish Ale made in Kansas City. Stayed away from the Writers' Tears Irish whiskey as I have enough of my own. We sang along to "Zombie" by the Cranberries and remembered Dolores O'Riordan who died too young.

Calm as these things go. Someone asked if they celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. Apparently, it's a religious holiday there. They ratchet up the festivities for American tourists. The Irish seem bemused by American spectacle. I've never been to Ireland so haven't had the chance to embarrass myself in person. But apparently the American idea of drinking green beer and singing fake Irish songs is not appreciated. U.S. tourist money is. 

I've blogged before about my mixed views on the holiday. Read those here and here and here. My grandfather from Roscommon Martin Hett (no, not O'Hett or McHett) never returned to the old sod. As a teen, I was pontificating about the legendary cruelty of the Brits to the Irish and my grandfather interrupted. "The English treated me better that the Irish ever did." That shocked me due to the fact that I was 16 and knew everything there was to know about the world. Grandpa went on to explain that his evil stepmother kicked him out of the house at 12. He made his way to England and worked in the coalfields until he saved enough money to sail to the U.S. at a 15-year-old. He worked hard in America and ended up in Denver where my mother was born and later, me. He liked being an American more than he liked being Irish. 

What, exactly, is an Irish-American? There is no easy explanation. We come in all shapes and sizes and all political persuasions including Trumpian which is disgusting -- recall how many wackos with Irish surnames served Herr Trump -- Flynn, Bannon, McCarthy, etc. Most of us mark St. Patrick's Day in some fashion. Corned beef and cabbage is a family favorite not always enjoyed by everyone in the family. My mother didn't like it probably because she ate a lot of it growing up. When she had food, which wasn't always the case during the Great Depression. One Christmas, she woke up to an orange in her stocking. That was the only present. I'm not sure if this is true because the Irish embellish almost everything.

I like to think that my proclivity for storytelling was passed on to me by my Irish ancestors. None of my immediate family are writers. Readers, yes. Writers, no. No aunts and uncles or cousins are writers. I am probably the only English major they know. We are known for our cutting humor, which seems to be an Irish trait. And my siblings and I all look Irish and our DNA attests to it. My red hair and freckles earned me lots of ridicule and a few fights. "Red on the head/like the dick on my dog." That's one taunt I remember. Red, Freckle Face, Rusty. They're all good. Shows some creativity. I don't think I sustained any permanent damage growing up white and freckled in America. 

As we read poetry at last night's party, I noticed it was rather light-hearted. I wanted to read something by Eavaan Boland ("The Lost Land") or Yeats ("The Second Coming") but never got the chance. Good Irish writing seems to balance the horrible and the humorous. Roddy Doyle is a great example. So is Flann O'Brien, whose satiric novel "The Poor Mouth" is one of my favorites. Flannery O'Connor too, who combined Irish-American wit with Southern Gothic grotesque to create her unique style.

Go read an Irish writer today. You will probably be glad you did, although it's hard to say.  

Farewell P.J. O'Rourke: The best humor illuminates hard truths

Satirist P.J. O'Rourke passed away this week. His humor writing, especially during the National Lampoon era, influenced my writing. National Lampoon gave us Baby Boomers something to read that was as cantankerous as we were. O'Rourke was at the center of the mag for most of the seventies. Then he set off to be a freelancer and author, referring to himself as a "Republican Lounge Lizard." I was entranced by his 1988 essay collection, "Holidays in Hell." I laughed out loud at his misadventures in war-torn Beirut and in Managua during the Contra War. His takedown of the Sandalista Liberals giving aid to the Sandinistas was hilarious and heartbreaking. 

The year of the book's publication, I spent Super Bowl Week in Nicaragua delivering supplies to Habitat for Humanity projects. My Liberal self was accompanied by a group of Habitat volunteers from Denver and my Republican brother Dan from Florida. The most fun Dan had that week was setting off with a couple other gringos in a gypsy cab to find a place to watch Super Bowl. He saw about five minutes of the Super Bowl (Denver was wiped out by Washington) but got wildly drunk. I stayed back at the motel and watched (sober) most of the game on a tiny TV. 

The oddest moment happened when my brother get hauled out of a so-called informational meeting with Sandinista cultural ministers. I thought we had lost our one GOPer to the gulag but he returned 15 minutes later and said he'd been asked a bunch of questions such as whom had he voted for in the most recent U.S. presidential election. Reagan was the answer, probably the wrong answer, but Dan survived the trip.

He might not be so lucky now. The current government, headed by former revolutionary Daniel Ortega, specifically targets those people who openly criticize Daniel Ortega. In September, the U.S. State Department placed Nicaragua on its highest Level 4 alert with this warning: 

Do not travel to Nicaragua due to COVID-19. Reconsider travel to Nicaragua due to limited healthcare availability and arbitrary enforcement of laws. Exercise increased caution in Nicaragua due to crime.

On the other hand, the waves are bitchin'. 

O'Rourke pointed out the ridiculousness of the human condition. You could hear him at his best on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me." I sometimes bristled at his comments on Bill Maher but I think the iconoclastic host was delighted with the humorist because he kept bringing P.J. back. He had the Irish in him, the likes of Jonathan Swift and Flann O'Brien. He also had the English in him, some George Orwell from his "Homage to Catalonia" days. Orwell had his own holidays in hell during the Ethiopian War and Spanish Civil War. Later, he was at his satiric best in "Animal Farm." 

My writing has been influenced by O'Rourke, Woody Allen (his books), and Alan Coren. Monty Python, too. But the biggest influences were New Yorker humorists S.J. Perelman, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and Ring Lardner. These city slickers knew how to turn a phrase. This suburban kid, whose only NYC experience was "just passing through," loved this work. I see it also in Grace Paley's stories. Humor transcends the telling of jokes to enter into some hard truths. And then we laugh.

Satire is not for the timid. You are often misunderstood and not understood at all by the Blunt Skulls. 

Nevertheless, he (O'Rourke) persisted.

A salute to those books that taught me humor, satire, and the absurdity of being human

All this book-banning makes me think of all of those books I read that might meet disapproval now from the GOP Know Nothings. 

When I was in the fourth grade, my father told me I could read any book in his library. I tackled the war books, first, Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis, Brave Men by Ernie Pyle and Up Front by Bill Mauldin, which included his Willie and Joe cartoons. He had some boys' adventure books from his childhood, Treasure Island and Ivanhoe. But I was more interested in the WWII books, as my father had been a radioman with an infantry unit in France, Belgium, and Germany. They seemed like boys' adventures to me. I read all of the Life magazines that my grandparents had saved for my dad while he was overseas. I watched war movies with my dad, as did my younger brother. We played war with our friends. 

None of my teachers ever assigned books on 20th century wars. They reached into the heroic past. The Revolutionary War had spawned books such as Johnny Tremayne and tales of Paul Revere and George Washington. The Civil War was acceptable reading as we all grew up knowing that the Yankees were the good guys and the Rebs the bad guys. This was way before we moved to the South and heard the term War of Northern Aggression. So many of the books I read as an English major and later were by writers of the American South. Their Southern Gothic tales owed their existence to the region's tortured history which included the Civil War, whatever you want to call it.

Now in my 70s, I look back on my reading as nostalgic. I also know more about the workings of the world. War can be heroic. It's also nasty, brutish, and final. Soldiers carry their experiences into old age, if they make it that far. There are brilliant antiwar books told from the warrior's POV. And books by observers, such as Red Badge of Courage and Dispatches, Michael Herr's wild book about life among the grunts in Vietnam (Herr got writing credits for Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket). 

Just about every book I ever read could be fodder for the book banners. My non-authorized reading at my Catholic high school included three oft-banned novels that influenced me more than anything I read in class: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They are now considered classics and are read in some high school classrooms when Know Nothings are not disappearing books like Dunbar. They were telling me a truth that I barely knew at 18, that the world is a strange and terrifying place. 

Humor, satire, and sci-fi are great vehicles for getting at the truth. I passed Catch-22 along to my Class of '69 pals and we laughed at the absurdities. The dead man in Yossarian's tent. Major Major Major's name. Orr's pastime of ditching his bomber into the ocean to practice for his escape from war. Hilarious. We only felt a small tremor of the earthquake beneath. We could have watched the absurdity of televised military reports from Vietnam. Body count, Vietnamization, destroy the village in order to save it. It was all right there in front of us but we didn't know. 

Reading good books gave us a bit of a head start on adulthood. Still, you have to live it to really know. You can be an absurdist and still be an engaged human. You can love satire but also fall in love. Humor makes the ride fun even when it's challenging. 

I'd have none of that without the reading.

Get out there and vote while it's still permitted

A new year brings new challenges, such as how are we going to save our republic from the Trump Cult and The Big Lie? Voting is a good start. Getting involved in the process is another. I contemplate a return to serving as an election judge. Judges are trained, paid, and eat pretty well on election day as retired volunteers fortify workers with brownies, cookies, and assorted goodies. A pleasant way to spend a day.

BUT... service at a polling place may take on bigger risks in 2022. Trumpers continue to promote The Big Lie, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and Biden is not the real president. Reality-based Americans know this is BS but the lie continues. And state legislatures in red and contested states are working overtime to rig the election process. In Wyoming, voters must show a valid ID to vote. No big deal for most of us. I just went out to the county office at I-25 and College to renew my license and to get a new and awful photo of myself to take the place of the old awful photo. The clerk was nice enough to let me reject the first photo in favor of a second photo which made me look like an aging mobster which I am not. 

The ID, for better or worse, will let me vote. Newcomers may have a problem coming up with the proper documentation and may sit out the election. Voter intimidation is the Republicans' main tactic as they have no real platform of their own. Their main voter suppression targets are urban populations which include lots of liberal young people and voters of color. I live in the state's primary urban center and I am in neither of those categories. I am white, over-65, and cranky -- the penultimate Republican voter. But I'm a registered Democrat and plan to vote that way until my time expires.

Republicans regularly complain that dead Democrats vote but it has never been proven. I will be cremated thus my unearthly body will have no appendages to vote with. So there. 

A smaller voting pool works in favor of Republicans. Fewer people vote. That leads to right-wing loonies elected especially to our state legislature. We can expect a slate of bills this next session that will address such crucial topics as finding new ways to keep voters away from the polls, banning books from school libraries, prohibiting transgender women from competing in high school sports, ensuring that toddlers have the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteeing the sanctity of life unless you are an actual living person, shutting down any talk of Medicaid Expansion, quashing state employee pay and benefits, and making sure that coal will remain king until the whole world (except Wyoming) is underwater. Quite an agenda.

So Happy New Year. And get out and vote while it is still permitted. 

Snowbound and Covidbound all in the same week

We received 31 or 36 inches of snow in our weekend blizzard, depending on who's doing the reporting. Anything more than 30 inches is a lot so I won't quibble. What I can say is that I haven't been out of my house since last Friday when I ran a couple of errands on a cloudy day with all the weatherpeople saying that you bastards are really in for it with this Snowmageddon. Pshaw, said I. But they were right. 

Our governor announced on March 12 that most Covid restrictions will expire on March 16. On that day, residents from Cheyenne to Casper were practicing weather-enforced social distancing. Cheyenne doctors and nurses were shuttled to work on a snowmobile belonging to a 17-year-old high school student. You can still get around our neighborhood on snowmobile.

By the time the snow abated on Monday, I could not open our front door. Snow on the porch was piled at least two feet of hard-packed snow. A winter snow is usually what they call "champagne powder" at Jackson Hole Ski Resort. It's light and airy enough to blow into a ground blizzard when the wind blows. When stacked up, it's great to ski in. You can glide and carve into it, blowing up white clouds as you make your way downhill. 

Snowmageddon snow is like concrete. I say "is" because it's almost a week later and our neighborhood is a snowscape. A plow made its first appearance yesterday afternoon. It made one pass down the street and then was gone. It created a path wide enough for one vehicle flanked by four-foot walls of snow. The mounds block our driveways so we're still stuck. Not sure what comes next. Melting is going to take a long time. Our food is running out. We are going stir crazy. 

In days gone by, I would have been out there with the shovel as I was in so many other storms. After the Christmas Eve Blizzard of 1982 in Denver, I was outside with my shovel on Christmas Day, shoveling my walks and those of my neighbors in City Park South. Chris and I lived on the top floor of a 100-year-old two-story house. We shared it with a lesbian couple who were our son's first babysitters three years later. We sometimes barbecued together on the tiny front porch. I never knew our neighbors in the basement apartment. 

Our landlord was the one-man Danish counsel for Colorado who owned a tie store downtown. His lavish City Park home had a security gate and was surrounded with cameras just in case the Swedes decided to invade. We sometimes drove over to pay our rent just to see how the other half lived. We wondered how working for Denmark in a remote outpost and selling ties led to such opulence. We imagined that a tie shop on a side street might be a perfect cover for a drug dealer or arms smuggler. We wondered what they made in Denmark that might find a black market in Denver. Cheese danishes? Fjord photos? Reindeer antlers? We didn't know much about Denmark.

So here it is Thursday and maybe I will get out of my driveway and maybe I won't. I haven't shoveled snow since my heart attack in 2013. I rely on a walker (a.k.a. personal mobility device) now. It's possible there exists a walker equipped with a snow blower but I haven't yet looked that up on Amazon. Even if I get in my car and get out of my driveway, I'm not sure about the condition in the rest of my neighborhood. I'm really stuck if I get stuck. 

Our neighbor Mike sent over a couple of teens to clear our walks. They did a good job and we paid them $20. We wanted to make way for the mail delivery person but we haven't got any mail since Saturday. I've been missing those fliers for vinyl windows and life insurance. I might have received a St. Patrick's Day card or two but won't find out for a couple more days. Over the years, I have seen USPS vehicles chained up and struggling through the snow. But chains won't help them get through big drifts of concrete snow.

Daughter Annie has been staying with us during spring break. She has many assignments due next week so we don't see much of her. She ordered a grocery delivery yesterday but didn't tell us. The Instacart person drove up in a massive SUV. She dropped off three 12-packs of Diet Pepsi and packages of toilet paper and paper towels. For edibles, she delivered a family pack of Chips Ahoy cookies, a bag of Cadbury mini-eggs, and a carton of eggs. We quizzed Annie about why she had paid a person to collect Cadbury mini-eggs and Diet Pepsi and drive these crucial, life-giving items through snow clogged streets to our house. We wondered why she hadn't asked us if we needed anything from the store such as bread or peanut butter or soup or spaghetti. You know, necessities for the snowbound.

We're still waiting for an answer.

Dark times demand dark humor

We live in absurd times. A Reality TV show star is president. He is a narcissist who is never wrong about anything but is wrong about everything. He enlists creepy people, straight out of a Dickens' novel, to do his dirty deeds.

You gotta laugh. How did we get into such a mess? If I was a serious columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper, I could dissect Trump's faults with a litany of facts and figures. Real journalists do that.

I'm a blogger so am not constrained by facts. I do know truth from lies and I try to adhere to them when it matters. I'd rather turn a nice phrase or get a laugh. I'm a fiction writer, too, which gives me a certain leeway to embellish, maybe even lie.

What makes us laugh at serious topics? It's in our genes, a human response to inhumane acts. How else can we deal with a monster like Trump, a ghoul like Stephen Miller? How can we tolerate war and pestilence?

It takes some talent to get us to laugh at human foibles. It takes skill and wit. Wit in the old-fashioned sense. A person with wit has "the ability to relate seemingly disparate things so as to illuminate or amuse," according to Merriam-Webster. Here's another: "a talent for banter or persiflage," persiflage meaning "light or slightly contemptuous banter or mockery."

A good stand-up comedian has wit. A bad one just tells jokes. A witty politician can turn a phrase, helps us laugh at ourselves. A bad politician heaps scorn on helpless people, afflicts the afflicted.

There's a darkness to good humor. And it takes skill to tease the humor our of war and pestilence, sex and death. The Seven Deadly Sins, a.k.a. capital vices, are as serious as the name. A good comic writer can find a lot of fun in "lust" and its sister, "envy." I've heard many a comedian describe their lustful ways -- failed relationships, oddball sexual practices, the inevitable heartbreak that comes with opening up yourself to others.

A novelist gets thousands of words to show you heartbreak. It can come in many ways. The pursuit of love. How love of country or religion can turn out badly.

We could blame war on "wrath," another deadly sin. For those who experience war, heartbreak may best describe its aftermath.

In the film version of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a platoon of heroic U.S. soldiers back from Iraq are celebrated at an NFL playoff game. The pageantry of a big NFL bash is juxtaposed with Billy Lynn's memories of Iraq and the guilt he feels at not saving a buddy. One of the scenes involves Billy Lynn and the team owner, played straight by comedic actor Steve Martin. The fatuous owner chides Billy for his uncertainty and notes that his platoon now is bigger than Billy Lynn -- it belongs to America. So America gets to celebrate by playing a football game and shooting off fireworks. EDM beats power the costumed dancers who writhe around the stage while the soldiers stand and get appreciative applause from the crowd. The pageantry and pathos of America on stage.

Dark humor and satire are cousins. Often, dark humor is poking fun at a cataclysmic event. World War II was not a laugh riot but some amazing books came out of the struggle. Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. Same goes for World War I. The Good Soldier Svjek is a great example, a book that set the stage for later war books and movies all the way up to the present. In the hands of a good writer, one with wit, the most serious war novel can yield some laughs. All Quiet on the Western Front is a good example.

Vietnam was my generation's heartbreak. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato with its magical-realist elements. Meditations in Green by Stephen Wright is another darkly comic take on Vietnam and its aftermath. The movie Full Metal Jacket came out of a novel by Gustav Hasford but took a darkly comic path in Kubrick's hands. No surprise from the director of Dr. Strangelove. Michael Herr, Hasford and Kubrick collaborated on the screenplay. Herr wrote the memoir Dispatches which was part of the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, which has its own absurdist moments. Herr was a correspondent in Vietnam for Esquire Magazine. Although Herr has admitted that he invented some of the characters and did not actually witness some of the events and dialogue, he contends it is all true. In France, Dispatches was published as a novel. In Vietnam, it was all true and it was all fiction.

Fiction writers yearn to go beyond the history into a place of story, a place where the reader is compelled to move on and possibly laugh or shake their heads or both.

In the spring of 2020, we live in an absurdist novel

People are struggling. They are sick and dying; their businesses are shuttered or they are unemployed, either for the duration or for good. Many are caught in a virus hot zone such as New York City or New Orleans. Health workers battle it out with an invisible enemy every day. Sometimes, the enemy wins.

Sometimes you eat the bear and, sometimes, well, he eats you.

As in The Big Lebowski, the world is, at turns, hilarious and deadly serious. Creative types take to Zoom and Instagram to sing, dance, and read poetry. Poetry, especially, is a balm for hard times. I've been reading a lot of it. It's also a counterweight to the heavy and feckless hand of Trump. Whenever he weighs in, I feel like Atlas with the weight of the celestial heavens on my shoulders. Trump should be like Roosevelt or Churchill, sharing the weight with regular folks and, sometimes, removing it altogether. But he lacks all empathy and compassion and leadership skills.

For now, we're stuck with him. His minions, too, like Turtle-face McConnell and the right-wing wing of the Supreme Court and the knuckleheads with guns who barge into state capitol buildings. All this repulses me. And, as a writer, it fascinates me. I am a big fan of absurdist lit with big themes: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Good Soldier Schweik, anything by Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, Candy, etc.), Fran Liebowitz, National Lampoon writers, Lewis Nordan and other writers whom I can't remember right now. As I said, though, I'm reading poetry which is more about feelings and images that ripping off the mask of contemporary society. It's about that, too, but primarily the power of words. So much great poetry is short.

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell:

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"The Pool Players: Seven at the Golden Shovel" by Gwendolyn Brooks. 

Sylvia Plath wrote "Poppies in October" on her last birthday following several suicide attempts. Her next attempt would be fatal.

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly – 

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky  

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.  

Oh my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Not many of us could write so movingly of deep depression. And we can forgive her for palely and flamily, her turning strong adjectives into pale adverbs. But they work with carbon monoxides and eyes dulled to a halt under bowlers. She wrote this while living in London in the 1950s when men wore bowler hats. It invokes a grey day in London, crowds of faceless men wearing bowler hats.

You could say that these are depressing poems, and you would be right. But life is not a sitcom or a stand-up comedy routine. I take that back -- it is those and a thousand other things. Plath's last stanza echoes what happens to most of us if we live long enough and experience enough horror. Late-blooming poppies that "cry open" amidst the frost while dawn brings beautiful cornflowers.

I leave you with a Dad joke. These are the dumb jokes Dads tell which elicit groans and may be remembered fondly by their kids. The joke, as always, is on us.

Helvetica and Times Roman walk into a bar.
"Get out," shouts the bartender. "We don't serve your type here."

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming

Homebound. For a week. Only ventured outside to drive to credit union drive-up and library book drop-off. Never left the car. Never interacted face-to-face with another living creature. A new way of living in the time of coronavirus.

I'm retired so I don't have to be anywhere on a regular basis. I'm at high-risk during the current crisis because I'm 69 and a heart patient. I am also writer and reader so long stretches of indoor time is not a hardship. Annie and Chris are here with me. Chris, 64 and a diabetic, is off work for the foreseeable future. Annie underwent surgery on Monday and is recuperating. From my office, I can hear Chris exercising to YouTube videos. Great part about 2020: YouTube exercise videos. I do chair aerobics with Hasfit duo Coach Kozak and Claudia. I could go to the YMCA, which is still open, but I'd be paranoid the whole time that I would inhale a spiky COVID-19 germ. No use risking it.

I cancelled this morning's appointment with my podiatrist. I no longer travel to my acupuncture appointments in Fort Collins. Medical appointments have been postponed or cancelled. I won't be volunteering in March at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The city ordered that all volunteers 65 and older and those with serious medical conditions to stay away. Yesterday, the Botanic Gardens announced the closing of the conservatory and children's village. This gives kids out of school fewer things to do but parents are probably keeping them home anyway.

One aspect of the pandemic I hadn't counted on was a mad dash to the grocery store for everything from toilet paper to milk to boxes of mac and cheese.I had those very things in mind Sunday when I shopped King Soopers online. Toilet paper not available. Deli was closed. It listed the rest of the items I ordered groceries to last us at least until the next paycheck. I opted to pick them up but no times were available through Tuesday. Instead, I opted for a delivery on Tuesday afternoon. As my shopper reported Tuesday, many of the items I requested were gone. She texted my photos of empty shelves in the toilet paper and pasta aisles. When she finally left the groceries on the front porch later that day, some items were missing and some substitutions were a bit sketchy. A First World problem, to be sure.

As for sports -- spring training is cancelled and the MLB season is delayed two weeks. March Madness has been cancelled as has the NBA season. A bummer but they both take second place to the pandemic. High school tournaments have also been cancelled. As of this morning, our county now has two confirmed coronavirus cases. That puts Wyoming's count at 15.

The local community college is on spring break but is still deciding what to do when the kids return as pale as when they left -- No Cabo this year kiddos! Actually, some students are at beaches for spring break. A few were interviewed at Florida's Clearwater Beach. One young guy was asked about the risks associated with major partying and much touching. His answer was priceless. He and his cohorts were spending all their time in the sand so they didn't have to worry about touching doorknobs and other nasty things. I had this image of the kids spending day and night in the sand, all alone but for the crabs and the sand fleas and sandpipers which we know aren't COVID-19 carriers.

That's not how I remember spring break.

Levity is welcome relief during these trying times. Lord knows we've had enough bad news. If you listen to the president and his lackey Mike Pence, all is well in the U.S.A. as we have two such capable people in charge. No advice from Melania lately, not even BE BEST!

Rest easy, America.

A dry spell comes into the life of every blogger

It's been more than a month since I posted here. I guess I could say that I'm in the midst of a dry spell. That wouldn't be accurate. I've written some blog posts on healthcare and politics that bored me so much I couldn't finish. So, I turned my attention elsewhere. wrote five feature articles for Artscapes Magazine. I started a piece for Studio Wyoming Review on Wyofile. I revamped the last section of my historical novel and almost finished it. I discovered halfway through the last section that the narrative didn't make sense in its present form. Maybe I should have waited until I actually finished because finishing is the goal. But no -- I had to be different. I do have most of a final chapter, my third attempt. I have read about other authors who begin the book and write the final chapter so they know where they're going. Those are the same writers who outline the book before they write. They're called plotters.

Writers like me are called pantsers because we write "by the seat of their pants," making up the story as we go along. I believe I'm in that group due to my early training in daily and weekly newspapers. Sports reporting, especially, makes writers write down what they know because there is 20 minutes to deadline. It's a handy way to learn writing as you always have the score to fall back on. "Cheyenne Central shellacked Cheyenne South Friday night 52-0 to cinch its record at 10-1 and win a trip to the high school boys' football regional playoffs." All the 5Ws are in there. I used fun action verbs -- shellacked and cinch -- that aren't usually seen elsewhere in daily news writing except in election season. That lede gives you a gateway into the rest of the story that you will keep writing until time is up. Often the ending can trail off into noweheresville as you throw in stats or add a lame quote from the winning coach or quarterback. You're finished. On to the next game!

Ledes aren't always easy to come by in feature writing. You're lucky if some attention-grabbing quote or fact can be fished out of your notes. You really have to dig sometimes, depending on the pizazz of the interviewee. In fiction, I usually start with an image. In my novel, I wanted to put my two main characters on a train together. Nothing too exciting about a passenger rail car in 1919 Colorado, although there are train fans out there who might disagree. My characters, however, are so different that they clash in interesting ways that might (you never know) lead to romance somewhere in the middle of the book. It works for me. No telling if it will grab the interest of editors.

I began writing this because writing is something I am invested in. Not so politics and healthcare. I love to read and talk about those topics. Debate them, too, as long as its a two-sided contest. But tackling these topics rally requires some research. The Internet is key to that. I know which sources to turn to for facts and which to turn to for snark. I like both, so sometimes I turn to opinion pieces in newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Miami Herald. Carl Hiaasen of the Herald is the best columnist in the USA. I also look to conservatives mouthpieces such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and others. For liberal snark, you can't beat Wonkette. I often wonder where Hunter S. Thompson would have plied his trade on the WWW. The Trump Era was made for him.

In conclusion, let me state that I needed to write and post something that interests me so I can move on to the next things. Finishing the novel. Watching the NFL conference finals. Eating lunch.

See you in the funny papers.

"OK Boomer!" is a good retort. A better one might be "Go, Boomer, Go!"

OK Boomer!

It's a thing now, a quick retort by members of a younger generation when a Baby Boomer rambles on about the good ol' days and why youngsters are causing the USA to go to hell in a handbasket.

First question from a Millennial: What's a handbasket?

Baby Boomer: A basket carried by hand.

Millennial: We don't believe in hell.

Boomer: The hell you say.

We're always talking around one another. That may be the case until every last Boomer goes to his/her/its heavenly reward.

Millennial: We don't believe in heaven.

OK Millennial, what I'm actually pointing out is that the Baby Boomer Death Clock at Incendar shows that a Boomer dies every 18.2 seconds and that already today (as of 11:47 a.m. MST), 4,746 Boomers have died. As of right now, 64,914,430 Boomer are "still alive" and 20,443,571 are "dead." Percentage-wise, this is 23.9503896% of available Boomers. In the world of demographics, this is known as "cohort replacement."

A better Millennial chant might be: Go, Boomer, Go!

Meanwhile, we waste precious time in clashes with each other instead of concentrating on the real threat which, of course, is Donald Trump and Trumpism. We can find common ground here. I am a Boomer Liberal and many Millennials are liberal, much more liberal than their parents and grandparents. This is especially true if you are an urban dweller. Wyoming is much more rural than urban which partly explains Trump's continuing popularity. I live in the state's largest city, Cheyenne. But even here, I am an anomaly. Cheyenne is located on the cusp of blue-state Colorado, but it is almost as conservative as the rest of the state. County Democrats were devastated in the 2016 legislative races. MAGA hats are not everywhere but there are enough of them to make a Liberal pause before launching an anti-Trump tirade in public. Being a blowhard is a Trump thing. But liberals can be obnoxious, too. When I was part of a Democrat/Republican panel interviewed on radio the night of Obama's 2008 win, the radio host said the worst thing about Obama's election was having to listen to remarks from his liberal friends for the next four years. Eight years, as it turned out.

And then came Trump. His diehard fans haven't STFU since.

OK Millennials, listen up. I won't give advice to, or cast aspersions on, your generation if you do just one thing: get out and vote in 2020. If Millennials registered and voted for the Democrat a year from now, Trump would be history. I realize that I am an elder giving advice, and that it's appropriate to roll your eyes and then say "OK Boomer." I can handle that. What I can't handle is another four years of Trump.

Can you?

Democrats hold Chili Cook-off Fundraiser Nov. 14 in Cheyenne

When I tell people that I make a killer no-sodium-added red chili, they are dubious. To compare, your average canned chili on grocery stores shelves packs a thousand kilotons of sodium, maybe more. And I've eaten my share, no doubt contributing to my 2013 widow-maker heart attack. Most recipes don't skip on the salt. So I took it as a challenge to make good-tasting chili sans salt. That means salt such as that found in nature and that found in cans of beans, chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, etc. If I was a more dedicated cook, I would use fresh ingredients. Soak the beans overnight (without salt). Use my own tomatoes, onions and peppers. Butcher my own meat.

But I'm not. When you think about it, it's easier today to be a lazy cook that ever before. My local Albertson's stocks salt-free cans of nearly everything. Low-sodium foods, too, such as Amy's Kitchen soups and some Progresso offerings that for some unknown reason are always on the bottom shelf. The Salt Lobby -- handmaiden to the Illuminati!

I use fresh herbs and a variety of spices to exorcise the blandness of the saltless. People like it. So I'm making a batch of it for the Nov. 14 events explained below. At past events, cooks have brought in vegetarian, vegan, beef, chicken, turkey, and varieties of green chili. While I have not followed this path, a few cooks add fire to their recipes causing watery eyes and much munching of chips, tortillas and cornbread. Not for the weak-hearted! And neither is being a Democrat in the reddest state in the union.

Read on...

Democrats hold Nov. 14 Chili Cook-off fundraiser at IBEW Hall

The Laramie County Democratic Grassroots Coalition invites you to a Chili Cook-off Fundraiser on Thursday, Nov. 14, 6-8 p.m. at the IBEW Local 415 Hall, 810 Fremont Ave., Cheyenne. Tickets are $15.

Attendees may enter their homemade food items in three categories: chili, salsa, and dessert. You can enter one, two or all three categories. Vote tickets will be available at the door for $1 or six for $5. Framed certificates will be awarded to the winners. People can also bring other side dishes.

The LCDGC planning committee will provide all the condiments for the chili, homemade cornbread, and beverages including iced tea, lemonade and coffee.

LCDGC will raffle a bottle of Maker’s Mark Whiskey. Tickets will be $5, 5 for $20. Must be 21 to win. There also will be a 50/50 raffle.

The night’s speakers include Ben Rowland, president of the Laramie County Democrats, and Rep. Sara Burlingame. There will be time for any Democrat who has announced a 2020 campaign.

All proceeds from the night’s event go to Democratic Party candidates running in the 2020 election.

For more information, contact Michael Shay, 307-241-2903, or go to laramiecountydemocrats.org 

My sporty new rollator walker is safe at any speed

I own a  Drive Nitro Euro-Style Tall Aluminum Four Wheel Rollator. It's one of the new breed of assistive devices that allow people like me to get from one place to another. Commonly known as a walker. A device to help this injured biped walker walk.

On the last snowy day in May 2018, I fell on my rear end in a Fort Collins parking lot. I got up and brushed the wet snow off of my butt and continued the day's routine, which included moving my daughter into an apartment. My wife noticed my wet jeans. "Your butt's wet," she said. "And so is yours," I said in a playful retort. We laughed, our daughter looking on in bemusement and a little bit of love, although impatient to get on with the task.

You think that there are days that don't matter, They all matter.

Four days later, I awoke with a terrible backache. I don't believe in backaches. I've had them after long backpacks up steep slopes, many miles on my racing bike, a series of pickup b-ball games on the asphalt. But this was a raging backache, one beyond my ken. A few days later, I began to limp. A few days later still, I had trouble walking and I dug out my knee-replacement cane for balance. I grew worried. I consulted my knee guy. He x-rayed my knees and hips and said all was well with those parts. I was relieved as I didn't want to revisit the pain of another knee replacement. The doc prescribed PT. Ten days later, the PT guys saw me limping into the center using a walker, me dragging my left foot. They grew alarmed.

"We sent you out of here two years ago and you were walking just fine," they asked. "What happened?"

"Fell on my keister."

They conducted a few exercises and pronounced that something was wrong that they couldn't address. "We have to talk to the doc," they said.

The doc called me at home the next day. He had made an appointment with a neurologist and urged me to go. I went. The neurologist conducted some tests. She thought my brain was fine but my spine may be injured. She sent me to a spinal surgeon in Fort Collins who operated on Aug. 1. A few days later, I felt more mobile, especially mu upper body. That was the part I was most worried about. I had nightmares about lifeless arms with fingers that couldn't type. That was not to be the case. Read my post about the surgery at https://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-return-trip-to-mind-eraser-may-help.html

Eight and one half months later, I still use a walker. I started with a standard aluminum walker with four rubber-tipped legs. You could always hear me coming. I lifted the walker, smacked the floor a couple feet ahead, and then moved to catch up with the device. You could hear me coming from one end of the house to the other. I stooped over because we borrowed the walker from a short person. My arms and shoulders hurt. I looked like one of those old guys slouching across the retirement home cafeteria. I located a taller walker at a retirement center, this one with two wheels on the front axles. I could stand tall and move faster. I thought I had reached the pinnacle, walker-wise.

I had seen four-wheeled walkers and thought this was the next step. I wanted my next step to be on two feet with any assist coming from my cane. That wasn't to be. I tried the cane for a few days and abandoned it when I fell getting into my car. I tried to get up but couldn't. A young couple driving by saw me sprawled in the street and guessed I was having a problem. They rescued me, guided me into the car, probably wondering "this old guy drives?" If asked, I would have told them that my right leg is fine but it's just the left leg and back and upper spine that torment me.

The world looks a little different when looking at it from a walker. Back when I was fully abled, I remember resting my eye upon someone in a walker as they passed. I walked, my legs perfectly fine. I barely noticed people using assistive devices. Now that I've joined the club, I see them everywhere. They were there all along but I looked through them or over them, barely giving them a thought. As a bleeding heart liberal, I feel empathy. But the dirty truth is this: you don't know the pain of disabilities until you're disabled. We don't want to admit that it can happen to us. And then it does, and you get a glimpse of what some people face their entire lives.

War, disease, accidents all leave damaged bodies in their wake. I read recently that 5 percent of adults in the U.S. use helper devices such as canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. Our town has an older population. We also are home to a major military base and a V.A. Hospital. Back when I swam laps at the YMCA, I would encounter the disabled vets from the V.A. doing their water exercises. Some of them had to be plucked from their wheelchairs and lowered into the water using a crane bolted to the side of the pool. I would watch without really watching, as I was sure these men got their share of stares when they were out in public. The other day as I rode one of the Y's stationery bikes, the swimming pool director told me that I could use the crane in the pool if I wanted to get back in the water. I thanked her but cringed inwardly. Is that why I had been avoiding the pool? I didn't want to be one of those disabled guys who needed the crane?

People do stop me to admire my colorful ride. I was putting Nitro in my trunk at Olive Garden the other day when a middle-aged woman stopped and admired it. She said she wanted to upgrade her mother's walker. I told her how to order and she left. The humor in my situation is pretty obvious. My Nitro walker is fire-engine red and vampire black. People admire it as they would a cherry '57 Chevy or bucket-T roadster. In some future place, old people will stage races that pits Nitro against Lightning. These are short-track races, sprints. A Daytona 500-style race would go on for months. We could fill in gaps in NASCAR's off-season schedule.

This reminds me of a story from my first collection, "Safe at Any Speed." In it, Florida retirees soup up their golf carts and stage races at an abandoned airstrip near Ormond Beach. Lest you think this complete fantasy, golf carts are now called golf cars. And for good reasons. You can spend $9,500 on one designed like a sky-blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air. This is a couple steps up from my Nitro, I can see myself tooling around in something similar when I retreat to a retirement village.

My disability is short-term, or so I tell myself. It has taught me one thing: people go out of their way to offer me assistance. This is especially true as I haul groceries to the car. One woman, possibly older than me, didn't ask as she edged me aside to load groceries in my trunk. I thanked her as she buzzed off. I got the impression that she is not a person who waits around for permission. Airmen, elderly, mothers with kids -- all have offered help. I usually refuse as I stubbornly avoid accepting assistance.  Humility is at risk. Humility can be dangerous. It  can lead to empathy and, God knows, we could use more of that in these cruel times.

Part VIII: The Way Mike Worked -- Saga of a Dying Mall

It's no news that suburban malls are dying. Young people avoid their manufactured atmospheres. Families may go into the multiplex to see a movie but venture no further. Elders, me included, walk circuits of the mall when the snow flies and the wind blows. Heart attack rehab, not shopping, is our goal.

In 1977-78, I worked part-time in a dying Florida mall, a trendsetter when it came to obsolescence. I clerked at a Paperback Booksmith Bookstore. Remember when all malls had bookstores? You had PB, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Books A Million, Borders, Barnes & Noble. Our store, owned by a friend of a friend, was located strategically inside the mall's main entrance. Surrounding us were a women's clothing store, a cut-rate department store, a diner, an ice cream emporium, and a shoe store. If you ventured further, you could find the triplex movie theater that still showed first-run films but also midnight shows for stoners, Rocky Horror and Clockwork Orange among them. A karate studio was the lone store along one of the mall's corridors. It could be kind of spooky there at night, although the sensi, a U.S. Marine black belt, never seemed worried.

We all knew each other. How could we not? We were passengers on a sinking ship. Some nights were totally dead. Bored employees wandered the stores, trading gossip and making small bets on which place would close next. Matches happened. I dated one of the staff at the women's clothing store. Two college kids on our staff became an item. Customers sometimes interrupted them as they canoodled behind the counter.

My boss, Dave, was still smarting from his divorce but dated one of the part-time waitresses at the diner. His wife had come out as a lesbian and had moved with her lover to the other end of the state. They shared custody of their two kids. The duo had opened the bookstore in the early 1970s, when the future seemed bright for them and the Sunshine Mall.

We all knew books. I'd say that's a rarity now. It might be true at some of the Barnes & Noble stores still standing. It's usually the indies that have knowledgeable owners who hire knowledgeable staff. At our mall store, we sold a lot of best-sellers, romances, and mysteries. Magazines too. Not much demand for Tolstoy or Proust. My job was to man the register, gather up titles to be shipped back, stock the shelves with new books, and watch out for shoplifters. We stocked some skin mags, but the most-stolen were biker mags such as Easy Rider. The Daytona Beach area obviously was bigger on vroom-vroom than pulchritude.

When we returned paperbacks, we ripped off the covers and mailed them to save postage. We chucked the books. Sometimes I found one I liked and took it home. This was OK as long as I didn't try to sell it. I saved money that way but some bookstore somewhere was missing a five-bucks sale for a Conroy or an Irving. I took some to my family. There was always one of my siblings draped over a couch, reading. Mom and Dad were both big readers. None of them seemed to care that the covers were missing.

I lived with Carl, an old high school acquaintance. He was a mechanic at Ice Cold Auto Air, a very important place in steamy Florida. He fixed auto ACs at work, would roll back your odometer on the side. He offered several times to do mine but I doubted if anything would help my rusty Ford Torino. Carl was what you would call a player today. He dated lots of different women. A good-looking guy with a smooth southern accent, he could talk the talk and dance the dance, which was helpful in the dawn of the disco area. Carl blasted southern rock in his truck cassette player but, well, the chicks were digging KC and the Sunshine Band and the BeeGees and so was he. I sometimes accompanied Carl, figuring I could engage some of the women that gravitated to him like planets circling the sun. I was OK looking, but not much of a dancer and a better writer than conversationalist. I also discovered I could be an opportunist, if given half a chance.

I tired of working two jobs for peanuts and decided to move to a city where opportunities abounded. Choices were Denver, my birthplace and a city where I had family connections, and Atlanta, kind of a shining city of the South for young people. Like most Americans, I thought that the next big thing was just over the horizon. After being under-employed for a year, I was ready for a challenge.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, 1977, Carl and I hosted a party featuring five bushels of Apalachicola oysters and several kegs. It was a full house. One of Carl's coworkers fell into the half-barrel oyster fire; neither he or the oysters sustained permanent damage. One of our two toilets backed up. Cars overflowed our yard and onto our neighbor's driveway. W hen he came to complain, we invited our middle-aged neighbor to join us in beer-swilling. He graciously declined.

I met my future wife Chris when she arrived with Cathy, one of Carl's women friends. She thought she was a special friend until she discovered that Carl had many other special friends. Cathy tried to pull Chris out of the door and away from the party. But Chris and I had already developed a special friendship that would continue through four decades, all the way into the present. Turns out, she also was planning a move to New Jersey, where she  had lots of relatives, or Atlanta, where she had no relatives but ventured there often with friends. If we had made a Venn Diagram of our choices, ATL would have been the place we had in common. That would be the logical place to go.

So we moved to Denver.

Next: Rocky Mountain High