Ads Infinitum I remember the good old days when I used to fret about unloading the mailbox at the bottom of my driveway and sorting through the five thousand ads in shiny colored newspapers and manilla folders filled with requests for my money. I would slice open an envelope and discover I won a trip to Barbados.  All I would have to do was order a commemorative-plate-of-the-month celebrating...

The Most Wonderfullest Christmas Ever I have celebrated and enjoyed many Christmases over my three score and ten plus years.  Some of the very best involved watching my children dash down the stairs to see what Santa had placed beneath the tree.  Another favorite occurred a few days before Christmas when Polley flew out from St. Louis to spend time with me and my family before she returned to be...

Powerless Polley sensed the impending disaster first. “Listen to that wind!”  We were both sitting in our leather recliner watching an old Perry Mason episode.  I pressed pause on the tv remote.  Yes.  The wind just perked up from a breeze to a howling banchee.  Oh oh. A good friend of ours remembers the waters rising around his hometown of Bloomsburg, Pa. from Hurricane Agnes.  He showed me...

Mumbling Unbecomes Electra Mumbling Unbecomes Electra One of the songs I liked back in 1964 was a musical venture titled In the Year 2525 (quick, name another top ten hit by Zanger and Evans!) basically because I was a teenager self-indulging in the gloom and doom of a dystopian future.  And why not?  Political assassinations had become the norm, the war in Vietnam sapped our youth, Civil Rights...

Drive-ins, the New Normal The other day I was having one of those rough times.  You know.  Corona virus preventing me from dining at our favorite restaurant----even our non-favorite restaurant.  A President in “debate” exhibiting all the class of an orangutan in heat at a buffet dinner at a classy establishment.  Smoke from the California fires blocking the sun from my sky.  As usual when I slip...