Joe's Funny Bone

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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?

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.

More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail!

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.

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.

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.