To My Cousin Matt on His 42nd Birthday

The Untold Saga of Piggy LaBunk As sports stories go, Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, Red Smith and others of their ilk have their stories that will live forever in the hearts and minds of Americans as they sit in the stands to enjoy their own National Pastime, whether on the baseball diamond, the football gridiron or even the forest green of a soccer or rugby field. This story is about one player, not very big, not very fast, not even very nimble, but he made up for it on the field with the heart and soul of a true athlete. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Outlined against a darkening October sky, the stadium lights were flickering on as the football game reached the final quarter of regulation. Most of the players on both sides of the field were feeling the pangs of hunger, muscle cramps, bruises and contusions as they butted heads and slammed into a seemingly endless supply of unyielding linesmen. The home team was behind 21-3 and feeling it worse. There were no high-fives like on the opposite side of the field. As Ernest Thayer would say, there was no joy in Mudville…only a seething atmosphere of impending doom and frustration. These were smart players on the home team, smart enough to know it’s not within the confines of human nature to intentionally run into another human being, much less one who was dolled up in enough padded gear to survive a grizzly bear attack. That was one of the things that had to be drilled into you at Spring Practice and the Two-A-Days preceding the official start of the season. Some people were meant for that. I’ve known of a couple who literally salivated at the thought of a head-on collision. These quickly became candidates for the Butkus Award for the top college linebackers in the country. Right now it seemed like most of the top-rated candidates had gotten their fill of Wheaties and were working on the second course of quarterbacks, running backs and receivers. What the home team needed was someone who could run and carry a football at the same time. There is a special breed of man for this job. You had to have nerves of steel to start running in the direction of Neanderthals whose only thought was pushing men out of their was till they found the one with the ball. These men of the defense were lions with their eyes locked onto dinner and you had ‘wildebeest’ tattooed on your forehead. This is when you take what fear you have inside you and put them directly into your feet. Now, we all know it’s physically impossible to go 1-on-11, but if you could work your way through maybe two or three of them with your teammates blocking the rest as they should, you stood a chance of getting through. Tough and fast was the secret with this crowd. Unfortunately, the player being carried off the field was neither. The coach scowled. ‘Send in LaBunk!’ he roared. No one really knew what his real name was, but he wasn’t called ‘Piggy’ because of any weight issue…far from it. He was, by most football standards, a tiny thing who made the anemic place kicker look like an Apatosaurus. The largest muscle in his entire body seemed to be his head, which was precariously balanced above his padded shoulders. He was never in the starting lineup because the coach didn’t want to be accused of intentionally sending a man to his own execution. He earned the nickname because he was from Arkansas, land of the Razorbacks. His style of play harkened back to the days of UA coach Hugo Bezdek, who told the press after Arkansas beat LSU in 1909 that his team performed ‘like a wild band of razorback hogs’ (the team was still known as the Cardinals back then). By 1910 though, the fans had latched onto the Razorback name and it stuck. Piggy LaBunk did not know the meaning of the word ‘fear’. Of course he had his detractors who chided that he didn’t know the meaning of a lot of words. Piggy laughed in his good-natured manner because he knew most of those naysayers were sportswriters with the ‘loyal opposition’, i.e. the other schools in the conference. He would make sure those jibes quieted down as he did his thing on the field. You see, Piggy’s secret did not come from any diet or training regimen. He was naturally intense. He was known to give 110 percent because he always seemed to find an extra reserve of energy when everyone else was all but drained. If he wanted it, there was no power in Heaven or points below that would stop him from getting it. He went through the motions in the off-season, which sometimes got him on the bad side of the head coach. But when the whistle sounded for the opening kickoff, he prowled the sidelines like a yard dog catching a whiff of Mailman Con Carne. As soon as he heard the coach yell his name, he slipped the seemingly oversized helmet on and screwed it down tight as he lopped onto the field in place of his fallen comrade. The first play called for a slant right. The quarterback, a seasoned veteran even by collegiate standards, deftly handed Piggy the ball and whispered a silent prayer he would survive the experience. To no one’s surprise, the defense quickly crowded near the sideline to give him a greeting he wouldn’t forget. The surprise was all theirs as Piggy almost gracefully leaped into the churning mass of muscle and seemingly body surfed over the crowd for an eight-yard gain. The next play was straight up the middle in an attempt to make the first down. To see it from the stands, it looked like the entire defensive front stepped back a couple of feet as Piggy LaBunk plowed into what used to be the nose tackle’s position, picking up the first down and a couple of more yards for good measure, taking the front line with him. As one who clearly remembered the dreaded Four Horsemen of Notre Dame…Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden…Piggy LaBunk may have looked like the odd man out, but no one denied he had a firm hold of the reins. Another call up the middle and LaBunk nearly flew over the end zone, pausing long enough to place a foot down on the colored grass. The extra point made it 21-10. The visitors were startled by this diminutive player who galloped like Red Grange and soared like Lynn Swann. What was worse was LaBunk was now placed on the kicking team. He wasn’t tired. He was just starting to have fun. Sure enough, as the other team’s tight end caught the ball, LaBunk had tracked him from the side and blind-sided him, the ball squirting from his hands straight up in the air, floating for what seemed like an eternity and then falling back into Piggy’s grasp. A quick scamper and an extra point later, the score stood at 21-17 with a minute left in the game. The visiting team’s high-fives had seemingly been replaced by a row of frost-eyed men staring gloomily from the sidelines. What was a sure thing no more than a few minutes ago had vanished in the excitement of Piggy’s antics, leaving only a tenuous grasp on the score board. The ensuing kickoff landed deftly on the 15 and rolled down to the five, where it would be first and ten. As the team broke the huddle to try to run out the clock, 24 offensive eyes stared in astonishment through the facemasks. Piggy LaBunk was standing in the middle linebacker’s position, a sapling among redwoods with an insane smile on his face. Modestly prevents this reporter from stating whether or not there was a fear-enhanced scent of urine from the visitors’ front line. Nevertheless, as the ball was hiked, the tiny form of Piggy LaBunk was sailing over the center, his eyes feasting on the prize in the quarterback’s hands. The QB tried to dodge the crazy little man, but a grasp on his leg told him he had nowhere to go but down in his own end zone. The safety made it 21-19. To add insult to injury, they now had to kick the ball to the home team, the dream of a walkover victory turned into a nightmare attempt to escape with their dignity intact. The kicker made a solid contact with the ball as it sailed over the linemen of the home team and into the hands of a familiar sight. Is there a position little Piggy can’t play? Apparently not. Piggy started with a slow jaunt before kicking it into high gear at about the 35 yard line. His teammates tried to put up a solid front against the incoming horde, but Piggy sailed past them. The defensive machine tried to put up a wall before the speedster, but it was like literally trying to catch a greased pig. The final score: Visitors 21-Piggy LaBunk 25 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kevin, Patrick, Barry and Richie were getting up from the carpeted hallway, their knees red and sore. In order to play against their six-year-old cousin Matthew, the older kids had to get down to his level. Little Matt loved to play Hallway Football. He would take the regulation football and plow into the much older cousins. The boys, meanwhile, would lift Matthew onto their feet and flip him over their own defensive line to have him land on the other side, the closet door/end zone in plain sight. Matthew’s mother was yelling to keep the noise down, a position echoed by Aunt Marian, the Grant boys’ mom. Patrick craned his neck over the brood. ‘Can we keep it down a little bit?’ he asked. Matthew looked back at the far end of the hall, the ball still in his hand and the glint of his nom de guerre, the great Piggy LaBunk, in his eye. ‘I’ll try’, it said.

Animals (and other family members)

With few notable exceptions, the Grant family was hardly known for its association with the animal kingdom, domestic or otherwise. There were enough animals in the house as it was. Oh, we’ve had our share of pets through the years, but few of them lasted longer than a year or two. The creature-in-question would be swamped with the onrush of the children to see their new plaything/toy/dress-up doll and logically fly into any means of escape. The ones that were able to keep up with us were all but certain to have a crossed wire in their cranial system. You’d have to be to keep up with us. I tried to introduce exotic pets to the household. My first attempt was a garden snake that didn’t last one day. Dad tried to play a practical joke on Mom, asking where my snake was. I knew. She didn’t. She made sure I wouldn’t from then on. The second was a Texas Brown tarantula I named Harry (cause that’s what it was). I took it to school for a speech, only to have it fall from the podium onto the teacher’s desk and make the entire first row move back in their seats about three feet. It died on a Thanksgiving when it fell from my bed, broke its exoskeleton and bled to death. In memory of my lost Harry, I was able to get one more tarantula, a male that was inbred with the need to escape and find a mate. One night after I got home from school, my sister Mel had left a hastily scrawled note on the now-empty terrarium saying ‘IT is out of the cage. Where is IT?’ Of course when Mom found out, she refused to go to bed until I had no choice but to lie and tell her I found it so she would get her rest. This was after tearfully emptying everything out of my bedroom onto the front porch. I continued the search the next two days with no success and considered him lost for good. This is the part where God played the joke on me. The sucker had been hiding in the hall closet and decided to take a leisurely stroll one night while I was out with friends. Mom didn’t talk to me for at least a month. The first real official pet in our family, many years before, was a black and white collie mix named Bullet, and my memory of him consisted mostly of stories retold from Jackie and Kevin…which I have just shared with you in their entirety. Two cats were able to make it into our house. The first, a black kitten named Midnight, didn’t last long as we soon discovered Mom had an allergic reaction to it. The second was a striped outdoor tabby that adopted us shortly before our move to Conway. It did not complete the trip with us. Dad tried to explain it jumped out the window on the Interstate, but we pretty much concluded there was something a little more sinister than what he let on. I suppose it could have been worse. Down the street, Kevin’s friend Rusty told us the Harrison’s dog was able to leap from his dog house over a fence with his leash still attached to the structure. Poor little Camilla found her pet hanging in the back yard when she got home from school. There was no mention of a note left behind. For a while after our move to Conway, we actually had a purebred Siberian husky named Natasha. I suspect that her lineage was not quite true. There may have been a little badger and mole tossed in for good measure. We had more craters in our back yard than the dark side of the Moon. Natasha wasn’t her full name (that was on a document Mom showed me only once). She was a beautiful animal, medium sized with dark hair flecked with silver tips, a white face, chest and paws and bright blue eyes. She never barked. When excited, she would start with a high-pitched whine that lowered to something that sounded like ‘ROW-row-row’. Someone told me Tasha’s blue eyes meant she was a human in a past life. If she was, she was a reincarnated hooker who had a thing for German Shepherds, and the only one on the block that fit that description was Hans, the Johnson’s pet/mercenary and former ‘panzerkampfwagen’ across the street. In short order, Tasha became the mother of eight cute, adorable little screaming things who were all, to a pup, nocturnal. At least three nights out of the week, Mom would get me up to head to the Utility Room to amuse the darlings till they fell asleep, usually around 4 a.m. My somnambulism continues to this day. Eventually, the pups (and Tasha) were all given to good homes with lots of acreage for them to romp and play to their heart’s content. At least that’s what Mom said. She traded them all for enough dirt to fill in the craters. Another dog that came into our lives was a small mixed breed thing we called Lulu. She was found wandering around the street one day and eventually made her sleeping quarters near us, since we were so adept at petting. Dad eventually relented only because all of our bicycles were stolen one night (who in their right mind would want six bikes, outside of an adolescent chop-shop?). During Lulu’s stay, one more dog entered the picture…one that would endear us more than all the others. He first entered the house crooked into Mom’s elbow, a shaking quaking thing, a nearly hairless thimbleful of a black Chihuahua with eyes that bulged out each side of his skull like a chameleon hiding in creosote. Mom placed a plate of finely-chopped hot dog on the floor beside the sofa and set him gently down. All of us gathered into a close-knit circle to watch the little thing rustle down some grub. The tiny waif looked up (at least, we THINK he looked up), emitted a long tinny growl and suddenly snapped at the closest person to him. That was the first and last time we watched him eat as a group. Naming the tiny terror was next. I wanted to call him ‘Criquito’, which, I thought, meant ‘little cricket’ in Spanish (only to recently learn from a website ‘criquito’ had no meaning and ‘little cricket’ literally translates to ‘pequeño grillo’ which wouldn’t work for most human infants either). My siblings would have none of it, thank goodness. However the name they saddled him with only belies the inherent lack of sanity somewhere down the ancestral line…‘Taco’. Despite the damaging sobriquet, Taco quickly wormed his way into our hearts and, on one occasion, into some long-lost record book. One cold November morning, it was discovered Taco had gotten out of the house. No idea how this was accomplished. Melanie sat on the kitchen floor and cried for her lost dog as Mom tried to make our pre-school breakfast. I went out into the back yard, where Lulu made her home under the foundation. I climbed inside and found Taco, a dirty smudge on the side of his nose, gamely treading his way out. Following closely behind was Lulu. It’s hard to tell with dog faces, but I would swear she had a smile. Sure enough, about nine weeks or so later, Lulu gave birth to three puppies, Tom, Dick and Harry (Harry later became Harriet once we learned what to look for underneath). Two of the little darlings were mixed brown and tan and one was black with brown spots. I picked up one of the pups, who gave me a little baby lick on the tip of my nose. I picked another, who nonchalantly bit my face. I didn’t touch the third. We were all too young and overwhelmed by the arrival of the trio to think until years later exactly how their conception was accomplished. A step-ladder? What? Additionally, we learned to our horror that Taco wasn’t satisfied with the one conquest. Many was the night we would watch late night TV sitting on the floor propped up by our arms, only to suddenly feel the grip of a pair of front paws locking into place and what can best be described as an ‘ungodly squishy thing’ making contact about an inch or two lower. With a squeal of disgust, we would quickly extricate ourselves from the floor and watch as Taco stood where he was uprooted, humping air. Apparently the absence of a warm body did not matter one iota to our little horny rat-dog. Besides chronic masturbation, Taco was also a gourmand. Whenever dinner time was upon us, we would call out, ‘Taco, wanna eat? Wanna eat?’ He would then begin looking up, tail wagging to the point it nearly broke off of his butt. What followed was a circle around, look up, circle around and look up again. The faster we repeated the question, the faster he spun, a little mini-tornado in the den. Unlike Lulu and the pups (Dad claimed in a tirade one day he sold them all to be raised as guard dogs), Taco made the transition to Conway with the rest of us. We, of course had to be on the lookout for our visiting new friends, lest they find themselves in Taco’s love grip. Within a few years, though, he began to get old and the spinning was making him puke. His hair, what little there was, began falling out and sores began showing up in weird places. We would find indescribable piles of Lord-knows-what on the rug and were certain we didn’t feed that to him. We placed a footstool next to the sofa so he didn’t have to jump as high to get to us (we abandoned sitting on the floor years before). He died on a Thanksgiving Night after trying to fitfully gnash down on some white meat turkey. It was a safe bet we all lost a part of us that night as well. He may have been tiny, but he did some amazing (and still as yet unexplained) things in his little life. Would that we could live our own lives that way.

The Earliest I've Ever Been Late

I’m a latecomer. That’s it. No ifs, ands or buts. I have been perennially late for just about everything in my 30-plus years of gainful employment. It’s not tremendously late, mind you, only 5-10 minutes with the occasional semi-annual ‘really really bad overslept’ kind of late. There were exceptions. One was spending the last two years getting up at 3 in the morning to get to work at 4:30 at a radio station 30 miles away. There was simply no nagging phone calls, no vacuum cleaner sale reps, no traffic on the Interstate and no emergency calls from the Mrs. to get the kids to school…no obstructions at all. Picking them up was another matter. I often lagged behind in getting my stories on the air, finding the right sound bite, finding the right verbiage to tell the story and putting it all down for someone else to decipher. Sometimes I would be on the road covering political debates, election coverage, snow and ice storms and the like. In that case, Mommy would have to hit the road in the middle of her work day to get them. In my present place of employment, there are no qualms about bringing the babies up here for a while if the need exists, and it exists a lot. The staff loves them and they love the computers. I love this place, because all I have to do is start at point ‘A’ and work my way to point ‘B’ when I depart for home. Even with changes in between semesters, Finals Week and the holidays, it’s all cut and dried. Still, the lateness continues to plague me. I think the problem is I simply do not have a viable eight-hour window in which to get my beauty rest. I normally work from 3:30 in the afternoon to midnight. When I get home, there is the ‘wind-down’ period, usually comprised of watching the late news, Adult Swim on Cartoon Network and the occasional movie on my recently-expanded cable system. By the time I do get to bed, I have somewhere between 3-4 hours before I have to get up and take my daughter to the bus. Many has been the time that I simply stayed up all night and waited until the sun came up to surprise the family with bacon and eggs I learned to make from the local Waffle House. After the first kidling is delivered, I return home to make sure the other one is getting dressed, but at least Mommy takes him to school on her way to work. This leaves me with another wind-down period and about 6 hours. It doesn’t sound bad at all, but the part where I have to be awake enough to operate heavy machinery takes its toll. My body still wants the entire eight, unimpeded. As a result, I am usually in a rush get to the office. My wife finally suggested I start making use of my alarm clock. Now there’s a novel concept. Did it work? For a while, then things started getting in the way again. Let’s use today as a typical scenario; 2:40pm…the alarm goes off the first time with National Public Radio news, in which the newscaster drones on about the Pope’s visit, the recent slump in the economy and the mortgage crisis. I hit the snooze bar. 2:45pm…N.P.R. continues with ‘All Things Considered’, which makes the MacNeill-Lehrer Report sound like ‘WWE Friday Night Smackdown’. Snooze bar again. 2:50pm…The buzzer goes off this time, which offers the first serious rustle from Slumberland. At the same time, the phone rings. Now I’m up across the bed to answer, only to get a dead silence on the other end. 2:55pm…In the shower, wondering if my hair is too oily or too encrusted with dandruff today. I eventually conclude it’s too smelly, so I borrow the kids ‘Horton Hears a WhoBerry’ Shampoo and Conditioner. 3:02pm…I quickly grab a towel (never mind the fact there is no one in the house, modesty prevails) to answer the phone again. My son is calling to remind me he does not have Cub Scouts today and he will have to be picked up. He left a message on the machine while I was in the shower, which means he’s panicking a little. He has gotten me with this on at least one other occasion, prompting me to call my wife at the office, so she can tell me the babysitter already knows this and will get him at the regular time. I feel like a total goof for being left out of the loop on that situation. 3:08pm…Blow dry hair, followed by teeth brushing and further de-odorizing. The Axe Super-Sexy, He-Man scented, Women-Will-Follow-You-Anywhere stick is in the other bathroom, so I settle for my wife ‘Secret’, followed by a brief bur shrill WOOOOHHOOOO…a wee bit on the chilly side today (the last phrase courtesy of Berkely Breathed). Truthfully, pleasing my olfactory senses really doesn’t make that much of a difference, since I’m lighting up a cigarette as soon as I start the car. I always wind up smelling like an aroma-therapeutic chimney. 3:10pm…I’m dressed. Dressing had never been a problem, since I freely admit to wearing some of the same material for two days in a row (which material is best left unsaid), but I do pick out the new stuff before hitting the sack. Still, it involves at least five minutes standing in the laundry room, ankle-thick in dirty clothes, shouting, ‘Someone has stolen my socks’ to no one in particular. 3:15pm…Open the front door, unlock the car and check the mail, making sure to return the mail to the house and memorize what we got. The wife always asks me what we got once I get settled and let her know I am once again among the living. If I don’t know the contents of the mail, she gives out with a little sigh as if to suggest, ‘What am I going to do with you?’ 3:17pm…Lock the door, head to the car, remember the forecast calls for rain, reopen the door and get the umbrella. 3:19pm…Re-lock the front door, head back to the car, realize the trash can is still on the curb, return said container to its rightful place and finally close the car door. Fumble for my keys, mistaking the house key for the car key. 3:21pm…At last, I hit the road, swamped in a massive traffic tie-up of other parents getting their children from the same school where my son is now waiting for the sitter. We pass and feebly wave at each other before moving on. I avoid the main thoroughfare, mindful of parents and teens departing the high school down the block. 3:25pm…Errantly pass by another elementary school and a middle school, which doubles the traffic, plus there is now a car in front of me going 10 mph with a tuft of blue hair barely discernable over the steering wheel…old people (the last line almost verbatim from an article by P. J. O’Roarke, but aptly applies here). 3:30pm…I hit the parking lot and get out. From here it takes about four minutes to get to the office. 3:34pm…the supervisor is opening the door to run an errand, sees me approaching, looks at her watch and frowns disapprovingly. Curses! Foiled again.

Up Yours, Thomas Wolfe

I spent early part of my childhood in one of the smaller houses in the 4500 block of Grand Avenue, located between Tulane and Princeton in southwest Little Rock. It doesn’t look very big and, in truth, it wasn’t. The big front window was formerly flanked by two conical cedar trees, which were eventually cut down for a flower bush. That window opened into the living room. On the west side of the big window were the three bedrooms where Mom, Dad, four boys and three girls daily fought for the one bathroom located in the center of the hall. I still remember the day we installed the showerhead over the tub. It made Saturday night bath time go a lot quicker. A floor furnace was situated in the little square hall around the bedroom doors, where on particularly cold mornings you would find most of us straddled over the grate, the rising heat blowing up our pajamas and nightgowns. In the summer, there was a single large air conditioner on the east side that cooled the whole house. The rest of the time, we relied on open windows. The porch window to the east gave us a view of the street from the dining table, while those looking in could see past it into the galley kitchen and washer/dryer hookup before exiting out the only other door to the outside world, our backyard.For the record, it wasn’t always pink. Sometimes it was a dark brown. It depended on my dad’s mood and his relationship with my neighbors. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to paint… just the porch, the east side of the house and the framework around the windows and under the roof. The rest of the walls of the house were made up of a material similar to our roof, meaning it was covered in tiny glass-like granules, meant to reflect the heat of the sun away from the interior of the house. A friend of mine recently said that material might have been a form of asbestos…always good to know 30 years after the fact.My first memory in this house was climbing out of a crib in the front bedroom to catch my mom watching her afternoon soaps. This is also where the only phonograph record player and radio were located. Sometimes the TV was directly underneath the main window, other times, it separated the living room from the dining area. Since it then faced away from us, we soon became acclimated to eating in the living room and the dining table was relegated to laundry, homework and the occasional game board. I remember the occasional times I couldn’t sleep and snuck out for some late-night viewing. Back then, of course, there were only four stations to choose from and they all signed off after a certain point. Then I was forced to stare at either an Indian-head test pattern or static. I would turn the set off, watching as the glowing screen shrank to a tiny dot before fading away completely in the dark.Other times, I woke up extra early. Usually it was on a Saturday, where I had to suffer through farm reports before the cartoons commenced. On rare occasions, my parents were watching something of special interest. One morning in July of 1969, I poked my head around the corner to see Apollo 11 take off from the Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon. A few days later man set foot on another astral body for the first time ever. Since it was late at night, I don’t remember if we were allowed to stay up and watch.There was a lot of growing up in that house, not just for me but for all of us, parents included. We learned to cook, some better than others. One time, Mom tried a recipe that called for beer to sauté hamburgers. There was a little too much beer in the mix, so on at least one occasion, some poor cow died in vain. A sister once tried to make brownies that literally bounced off the floor. Another sibling was doing Lord knows what with tomatoes and at least one found its way to the ceiling, where I think it stayed until the day we moved.I still don’t know how Mom and Dad were able to get all us kids up for school without killing at least one kid a day. The girls were allowed first dibs on the bathroom, then the boys. We made our way to the dining room where, depending on the time of year, we had cereal, buttered toast, oatmeal and, occasionally, eggs and bacon. My parents not only cooked for us, but would sometimes feed some kids down the street who they felt didn’t get the nutritional start they thought they needed. We were then all packed into the family station wagon and taken to a nearby parochial school, listening to the Mighty 1090, KAAY, along the way. Not everything was indoors, mind you. There was plenty of play time in the front or back yard or further down the street to play with the Lehmans, the Tedders, the Swindells, the Pattersons and the Greens. Often was the time the grass under the shade of the house was worn down to dirt level by the scamper of growing feet. In the winter, the same shade kept a sliver of ice-hardened snow on the ground long after everything else had melted. Among our favorite games was ‘Hot Lava’ where we took advantage of the two or three swing sets at our disposal and swung off them to stay off the ground, lest we burn our feet. Variations of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ or ‘World War II’ often had one or both parents stepping outside to see at least two children lying in a heap on the ground, not daring to show any sign of life until the all-clear was given by the winners. ‘Red Rover’ was also a big hit when there were enough of us, which was often. We got pretty tough trying to break through each other’s line. Street football was also a big hit. We pretty much kept to the ‘touch’ rules, but couldn’t resist the occasional foray into someone’s soft grassy yard where a full tackle was too impulsive to resist. We moved from the neighborhood in the summer of 1973. Rarely was the time we ever found our way back there, but it did happen. This past weekend, I took my family to the Old Mill in North Little Rock for our annual holiday pictures. As we looked for a place to have lunch, the attraction was simply too great for me to pass up. I crossed the Arkansas River to 12th Street and turned at my old Catholic school. As an anchor-reporter in Little Rock two years before, I attended the official closing down of the school after over 100 years of parochial education. The church where many of us received our First Communion remained open, but the windows of the classrooms were now covered in black paint. Finding the house from there will forever be imprinted in my head, having walked that mile or two to the house every day for seven years. A few blocks later, we came into the neighborhood. I mentally noted passing a LRPD squad car doing some investigating before we hit our old street. It had been over 30 years since we stayed longer than a few minutes, but I couldn’t help staring. So much had changed. I expected the row of tall pine trees down the street to be gone or at least pruned to some degree, but not removed completely. Many of the formerly pristine lawns were threadbare and dirty. Cars were parked not only in the driveways, but on the lawns of many houses. City trash bins were left out on the curb, regardless of what day pick-up was. Nearly all the houses had a fence. The street was barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass each other. I pulled into a house at the end of the street to turn around and noticed the place where our neighborhood ‘old lady’ lived. Every street had at least one lady who would yell at the kids to get off their lawns and was never home on Halloween, then would surprise us by being legitimately nice to you around Christmas. Ours was named ‘Old Lady Lydle’. I looked at her house…or rather, where it once stood. I saw a grass-and-debris covered plot of land with a walkway leading to two concrete steps going nowhere.I stopped the car in front of the Patterson’s old house and looked across the street. The house I grew up in was no longer there, not as I knew it. The new owner(s) had expanded the front porch east, enclosed it, replaced the walls with some sort of rock/shale siding and allowed Mother Nature to cut loose on everything else. Where there was a front lawn was now a forest. My wife tugged at my sleeve, motioning forward. Three rather tough-looking guys were sitting on the corner of the Green’s house (now a dirt mound surrounding a fire hydrant) glancing our way. I quickly took a shot of my past with my cell phone and drove off.

Why I'm A Hairy Guy

For the past year or so, I have been striving to do my best as a husband and father, keeping the bills paid with my checks, doing my chores around the house, guiding the young ones with my wisdom and common sense and being as good a partner to my wife as I can. Yet, in this same time period, a lot of questions have come my way regarding the ever-increasing length of my hair…you know, like it was still back in the 60s or some junk. Totally groovy, far out, solid and right on, baby. That’s pretty much where it started. I’ve mentioned spending my youth watching Chad Everett and his flowing locks in the opening segment of ‘Medical Center’ and the Harvey Cartoon where Katnip the Cat sings about his tresses until it started coming out in bunches and he has to rely on Buzzy the Crow to make it grow again. I reveled in reading the exploits of the Mighty Thor, who was never known for his crew cut. Then, there was that poem by George Carlin about ‘being fair with your hair’ and the song by the Cowsills about letting your hair grow until ’it stops by itself’. I used to daydream about how far it would go. Sadly, it was not to be for a long time. My father (who went prematurely bald in his 30s, so I have to rely on VERY old photos to see him with any hair at all) made sure all the boys were close-cropped, parted down the side and sometimes even shaved just above the ears. Fortunately, I seem to have inherited my maternal grandfather’s hair so there was a chance for me later on. In my teen years, I had the chance to let it grow out a little, but not enough to cost me a job or attract the vile ribald jests of some local yokels with whom I had to share the classroom and work area. Even so, one Christmas shortly after graduation, I clearly remember night cruising with my brother and some friends. At that point I had what was properly known as a full-blown Mullet. The exhilaration of feeling the hair on the back of my head blowing up to cover my face was never forgotten. It went out pretty far in college (where I suffered the remark from my mom about being a cross between George Harrison and Charles Manson) until I left the sanctity of home and campus to fend for myself and, eventually, my family. From then on, as a representative of whatever business I was associated, I would periodically head for the nearest tonsorial establishment and suffer the ‘rape of the lock’. At one point, I had a supervisor who was an ultra-conservative paranoid survivalist type who steadfastly refused to cut his own hair until President Clinton left the White House, hence after eight years and a near-impeachment, his hair fell fairly down his back. It irritated me that he, in his position, could pull if off, but required…nay, commanded me to continue the periodic shearing. It was the kind of hair I always wanted, but I can’t say I liked it on the hard-line hypocrite who wore it. (It’s okay…that was a bridge that needed burning.) When I came back to the Ivory Tower that was my alma mater, I took the phrase ‘long-hair intellectuals’ to heart, but first I made sure it was okay with my boss. Folks, I would take a bullet for this guy. I have since avoided beauty parlors, barber shops, clip joints and the like in a last-ditch attempt to see exactly how long I can get the follicles to grow and flourish. I also found something interesting to do with my beard, shearing the moustache off and leaving what one of my son’s GameCube games called a ‘partial beard with soul patch’. I guess it’s the combination that has gotten gums flapping. I feel like I’ve gotten as much attention as my wife’s new car. So who would play me in the movie? Some people think I look like Albus Dumbledore, but I don’t know if they mean the one portrayed by Richard Harris or Michael Gambon. Certainly the reading glasses add to the image. Then there are others who are certain I’m Ian McKellan’s Gandalf from ‘Lord of the Rings’. Of course there are the radical ideas ranging from Christopher Lee in the ‘Star Wars’ saga to Jeff Bridges in ‘The Big Lebowski’.I’d have to add some Grecian Formula to get back to that, though.What does my wife think, you ask? She had gone on record with Tim Curry in his ‘Rocky Horror’ days, but I really think she would like a little Sam Elliot from ‘Road House’.At this point, the hair is the longest it’s ever been. And yet, I have not relived the experience I had that one magic Christmas night. I have, however, managed to partially eat my hair with an errant bite of a Big Mac. Not the same thing.

The ABC Music of My Life

This is by no means a complete list, but if there was ever such thing as a soundtrack to my life, these songs would certainly be included. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A. America – Steppenwolf This was really the first political protest song I ever heard. That’s not saying I heard them before, but this was the first to tell me point blank it was protesting something. In this case, it was about the treatment of Native Americans, which is rather funny coming from a group whose main members originally came from post-Nazi Germany. B. Ballad of the U.S.S. Titanic – Jamie Brockett This was my favorite song from KAAY’s late night alternative show ‘Beeker Street’ that I listened to after everyone was supposedly asleep. I needed a tiny portable radio with an earplug to enjoy this anachronistic masterpiece. C. Come On Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners The first song I ever played (as a disc jockey) on CD, about 1981 or so. It skipped. Having never heard a CD skip before, it freaked me out. D. Daisy Jane – America I played this as a dedication to Carla one night at the campus radio station. It worked. E. Electric Eye – Judas Priest I would start my late-night rock shift at the campus radio station in my most polished voice with ‘This is KUCA, Conway’s elegant radio station, featuring the world’s most beautiful music at 91.5 on the FM dial’, then rip into this bad boy. F. Flashlight – Parliament/Funkadelic I tied for 3rd place with this song in a dance contest on Graduation Night 1978. Part of the intricate dance moves involved falling flat on my butt. G. God of Thunder – Kiss I heard this (along with the flipside, ‘Flaming Youth’) on a jukebox in a greasy spoon on Harkrider St. across from the old Sonic Drive-In, where I got my first job as a carhop and, later, as a fry cook. My love of all things rocking, theatrical and covered in greasepaint and fake blood was sealed. H. Honey – Bobby Goldsboro My siblings and I have a penchant for exceedingly sad songs…the sadder, the better. This was the pinnacle of that genre. We used to have endurance tests to see who would cry first when ‘the angels came’. I. I Knew You When – Joe South I heard this song in late 1968-69 after going to the Monday night wrestling matches at the Robinson Civic Center and seeing Cowboy Bill Watts get his clock cleaned by Waldo Von Erich with his ever-present riding crop. It left me with an uneasy feeling. I haven’t been able to listen to his music the same way since. J. Jingle Jangle – The Archies I actually got to hear this song as it was attached to the back panel of a box of Kellogg’s Corn Pops in the late 1960s. The grooves were made in a hard plastic slightly less resistant to damage than vinyl, but it worked for about a week or two. K. Kicks – Paul Revere & the Raiders Remember back in the 60s when everyone who was someone dressed up in some historic motif? These were the guys who got that little ball rolling. Paul (which was his real name), teen heartthrob Mark Lindsay, Phil Volk (better known as ‘Fang’) and the others became popular enough to sway my big sister to tune in ‘Where the Action Is’. I can’t help but think of bright sunny days and feathered tri-corner hats when I hear this. L. Little Brown Bat – Burl Ives The first cut of the first album I ever received as a present. My mom bought me this collection of classical folk songs from the guy who voiced Sam the Snowman in ‘Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer’. It also contained ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike’ and ‘The Streets of Laredo’. I still have the album. M. Magic Man – Heart After we moved to Conway in ‘73, Dad redesigned the garage into a super-huge bedroom, which Kevin and I took over at one point. We began living what can best be described as a bohemian lifestyle in the same house as our parents and siblings. We had two beds, but we also had a legless sofa in front of a makeshift stereo/TV system under the window facing out into the driveway. Many was the time we left the windows open (and the air vents closed) to see if we could stand the winter cold. We were much hardier (and vastly more stupid) back then. One night I woke up on the sofa in 20-degree weather and Ann Wilson singing about that ‘cold late night so long ago’. The image and the feeling stuck with me. N. Nights in White Satin – The Moody Blues I had heard the song before, but only as a single. There was a Little Rock radio station that used to play entire albums late at night, so I made plans to be up the night they played ‘Days of Future Passed’. Hearing the entire album, and ‘Nights’ place in the scheme of things, it cemented its place as one of my favorite listening experiences. O. One Less Set of Footsteps – Jim Croce I first heard this song on the first cold night of Autumn in ’73, shortly after Croce’s death. Nowadays when I feel the first chill in the air following the long hot summers Arkansas is known for, and see the vast number of stars well enough to recognize the spiral arm of the Milky Way, I think of this song. P. The Prophet’s Song – Queen Before the introduction of headphones, I used to lay on the floor of my living room with two gigantic speakers on either side of my head. I was listening to ‘A Night At the Opera’ when the slow strum of the koto gave way to the scream of Brian May’s guitar. It was an awesome experience. Q. Quentin’s Theme – Charles Randolph This was the eerie hit song that sprang from a gramophone in the gothic soap opera ‘Dark Shadows’. Quentin Collins (David Selby) was a werewolf who at one point approached the popularity of vampire Barnabus Collins (Jonathan Frid). R. Randy Scouse Git – The Monkees I love the vast majority of this group’s repertoire, but this song (from the album ‘Headquarters’) gave me a fear of bass and kettle drums. Maybe it was the juxtaposition with the otherwise light rock theme before they break out in their harangue against the Establishment. It just made me feel spooked out of my head. S. Send My Picture to Scranton, PA – B.J. Thomas There is a lost art in what’s known as ‘the B-side’. The hit singles of the 60s and 70s were, in fact, not singles at all, but duos. There had to be some sort of recording on the other side of the little vinyl disc. Many record companies would intentionally put ‘throwaway’ songs on the flip side to make sure the ‘A-side’ gets the playtime (this has been documented to have backfired on many occasions). ‘Scranton’ was the B-side of Thomas’ hit, ‘I Just Can’t Help Believing’. I deemed it was not a throwaway by any stretch. The song, about a high school loser who made it big, was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. T. Tiger in the Rain – Michael Franks My favorite song from the jazz collection at KUCA. Best played on quiet rainy nights. U. Upstairs, Downstairs – Herman’s Hermits It was Halloween night, 1968. The outside was dark and still wet from a recent storm, which made for perfect trick-or-treating conditions. Jackie was playing the ‘Blaze’ album while the rest of us were getting into our costumes when I overheard this. The song is a little ditty about two lonely people in the same apartment building who didn’t know each other until one hears crying from the room below and comes to the rescue. There are lots of other great songs on this album, but this one stuck out the most. V. Valleri – The Monkees This is one of those songs that everybody in the house would listen to except me. I preferred the flip side, ‘Tapioca Tundra’ (see my listing for ‘S’ on this topic). W. What Goes Up – The Alan Parsons Project I bought this album (‘Pyramid’) with the money from the one day I spent as a factory line worker, drilling holes into bus bodies at Ward Bus Manufacturing. It was the middle of summer 1977 and I had to wear a flannel shirt to keep the metal shavings from hitting my body. I didn’t last two hours. That shirt weighed about 10 pounds when I finally got it off. X. Xanadu – Olivia Newton-John Sorry, this was the only song I could think of starting with ‘X’. I know the Queen of M.O.R. had the help of Jeff Lynne (of E.L.O. fame), but beyond that, it did nothing for me. Y. You Were Made For Me – Freddy & the Dreamers The first 45 rpm record I remember hearing in my home. The first British Invasion was going strong (about 1964-65). I thought for the longest time that Freddy was a girl from the way he sounded. Z. Zorba the Greek – Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass I performed a mime routine in a Senior Year high school drama class to this song as a rooftop sniper picking off innocent passers-by with every beat of the bass drum. If I did that nowadays, I know I’d be facing several days of suspension from school (if not outright expulsion) and having some psychiatrist trying to get to know me intimately.

Compromise at the Dixie Café

(The following was overheard New Year’s Day, 2009) ~~~ How are the mozzarella sticks? Good, Mom. Can I have some chicken sticks, too? In a minute…let your brother have his share. Aw, do I have to? Daddy gets to eat all the fried mushrooms. That’s because no one else likes fried mushrooms, including you. Oh, yeah. Daddy eats fungus! (giggle) Hey…a lot of fungus can be very nutritious. Yeah, but they also grow on dead things, so you’re eating the dead things, too. (Abruptly drops mushroom) Well, that’s it for me. Honey, if you think about it, everything on this table is dead…the chicken used to have feathers, legs and a beak. Yeah, and your pork chops were attached to something that weighed nearly a ton. Madame, please… Sorry. …but that’s what food is, basically…something that used to be living, but is now used to make us stronger. Lots of plants are good food if you’d try them. I like corn-on-the-cob. Good! I like baked squash. I do, too. I like pinto beans and ketchup. Yuck. No, it isn’t. I also like cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with cheese or butter. Gross! It’s not gross. It tastes great. Black-eyed peas are good, too. You eat those on New Year’s Day for good luck. Yes. You can also eat lettuce, cabbage, collard greens, noodles, lentils or fish. Why do they bring good luck? Because the lentils look like coins, all the green stuff is the color of money and the fish moves forward, so they all mean good fortune in the coming year. What about the black-eyed peas? Because if you don’t eat them, someone’ll give you a black eye. Mom!!! That’s not what that means. It’s a southern thing…I really don’t know how that started. But you eat enough of them, right? That’s only because no one else here likes them. We eat them, too. No you don’t. You take one bite of one pea and you give me the rest. Isn’t that enough? Do I have to eat them all? How about a pea for every day of the year? I would throw up. Sir, please… Sorry.,. Why don’t you eat more? Because they suck. HEY! No language at the table. Sorry, Mom. I’ve heard worse from older kids. I know, but you’re not older. Can’t I use the word every once in a while? No. Please? Why don’t you use ‘whomps’ like they do on the cartoon,‘Recess’? Dad, I quit watching that show years ago. More like YEAR ago. It’s a baby word. Can I use the ‘C’ word? Absolutely not! Where did you hear that?!? Honey, I think she means ‘crap’. Oh. What’s wrong with ‘poop’? It’s not as grown up as…the ‘C’ word. I don’t think I want to hear this conversation. Neither do we… Sorry. Mom, they’re not ‘bad’ cuss words. We hear them every day. That doesn’t make it right in mixed company. What about just around you? What do you mean? If I only say cra…the ‘c’ and the ‘s’ word around you and Dad. I have to agree, hon. They are too old for baby words. I don’t want someone like a teacher calling us at home about our kids. If it’s the case of them learning them sooner or later, why not learn them from the people you trust most…US? We’ll teach them when and where it would be appropriate. Please, Mom? Look…she may be old enough, but he’s not. He’ll feel left out if we don’t…and he’s not that much younger. Do you know what you’re asking me? Yes…to let the kids know what they say before they say it…and use it in the proper context. Food’s here! Let me think about it, okay? Okay. What did you get? I got baked Cajun catfish and collard greens and black-eyed peas. Hedging your bets are you, dear? A little insurance never hurts. What’s that smell?!? That would be the greens. Ew, that su…um…Mom, please lemme say it!!! No! The last time we let you use a word like that it quickly became every other word in your vocabulary. You were starting to sound like Bart Simpson and Sam Kinison had a child. Bart and who? Never mind. (dejected) Okay, I’m sorry. Okay, I’ll tell you what…you can say it once a day, but only around me and you father. What about the ‘c’ word? I think we can do two words a day there. Dad, that stuff really sucks. See? Already you’ve used it in the wrong context. You can’t know it sucks without tasting it first. But it smells like crap. Okay, now that’s better and it fits, but you’ve already used two of your words for the day. I’ll trade you two ‘craps’ for a ‘suck’. NO! I WANNA USE MINE LATER! SIR, PLEASE!!! Sorry… This is not a conversation to have in a public restaurant. You’re absolutely right. This is the wrong place. Wait till we get home, okay. So I can start fresh when we get home. Um…no. Crap.

Ranking the Seventeen (and a half) Rankin-Bass Christmas Specials

At this joyous time of year, the television screens are lit up by the sights and sounds of the Christmas season. We all have our favorite holiday movies (‘Miracle on 34th Street’, ‘A Christmas Story’, ‘Scrooge’, ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, etc.), but, of the stand-alone Christmas specials, a select few stand out from the rest of the pack. ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ has remained among the perennial favorites since its debut in 1965, mostly through the child-to-adult thinking process that Charles Schulz mastered as his alter ego, Charlie Brown, ponders the true meaning of the season and the faithful adaptation of his work by cartoonist Bill Melendez, who died earlier this year. The dialogue is perfectly countered by the timeless jazz-inspired holiday music of Vince Guaraldi. Three years later, MGM released a half-hour cartoon version of Dr. Seuss’ ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, narrated by the unlikely Boris Karloff, who also voiced the Grinch through his plan to take the holiday from the residents of Whoville, only to discover Christmas is not a thing, but a feeling that really doesn’t need toys and trinkets. These two stand out for their adaptability to the small screen for which they were made and the one-shot message they conveyed to us and our kids a generation or two later. This not to say that a couple of people didn’t try on a consistent basis. For nearly 40 years, the team of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, along with such writers as Romeo Muller, Julian Gardner, William Keenan and Jerome Coopersmith, among a host of others, put out over 30 animated specials for children of all ages, 18 of them (okay 17 and a half) specifically for the Christmas season. Now, when I say ‘animated’, I refer to either the hand-drawn cartoon everyone knows and loves or the use of stop-motion dolls made famous by the likes of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhousen. Each one was usually marked by a well-known talent stepping down a bit from the Silver Screen to narrate the tale-in-question. They were also blessed with voice actors who were true masters of their craft in the cartoon field, most notably the great Paul Frees and the lovely June Foray. Some of the specials seemed to center on a specific flavor-of the month (mostly eggnog or peppermint), but others transcended the material to rank with Schulz and Seuss to fit perfectly with the tinsel and presents of the holiday. I may be stepping out on a limb here, but here is my own list of Rankin-Bass specials from worst to first. This is my humble opinion only, and some of it is tongue firmly placed in cheek. You may have a special place for some shows that simply did not hit me in the right vein at the time. If such is the case, I apologize to you and hope this will not put a humbug in your Christmas Spirit: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 17. The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold (1981) stop-motion Faith an’ Begorrah, but Art Carney (as Blarney Kilakilarny) breaks every Irish stereotype in the book as he brogues his way through a tale of leprechaun’s special gold that is made only on Christmas and a horrific Banshee that wants it. This is more suited for Halloween than Christmas. In that case, check out where Rankin and Bass did much better with Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller in ‘Mad Monster Party?’ in 1968. 16. Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979) stop-motion Take the two most popular Rankin-Bass characters and put them in a whirlwind whodunit complete with a sinister reindeer and an evil king who wants to take control of the North Pole from Santa Claus. Even with the talents of Red Buttons, Ethel Merman, Billie Richards and Jackie Vernon (Rudolph and Frosty, respectively), Mickey Rooney and ex-‘Laugh-In’ regular Alan Sues, this plot is a bit complicated for even the kids this was aimed for. Its only draw was seeing Frosty as a stop-motion doll for the first and only time. Still, it’s far superior to 2001’s computer animated straight-to-video ‘Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys’, which, you will be pleased to hear, was NOT an R-B production. 15. Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980) stop-motion This production stars Alan King as the Maestro Fire-Eater, and George S. (Heat Miser) Irving as Gepetto. From what I remember, this pretty much skirted several Disneyesque issues in the puppet-boy’s search for a Christmas present for his father-creator. Lesson learned: ‘Don’t mess with the original’. 14. The Stingiest Man In Town (1978) cartoon The placement at this level is not for the content or its stars (narrator Tom Bosley as ‘B.A.H. Humbug’, Theodore Bikel, Dennis Day and Walter Matthau as Scrooge), but for the level of advertising. For all its worth, this animated remake of a 1956 TV musical was barely heard about till long after it was gone. That alone puts a waste to all the artwork and talent. Such a great show that no one got to see…twice. 13. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985) stop-motion This rendition of Santa’s early days is a far cry from ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’. Based on a story by L. Frank Baum (‘The Wizard of Oz’), this much darker version tells of Claus (Earl Hammond) and his battles with King Agua in his quest for immortality to continue to spread joy and presents to children everywhere. It looked a lot like their animated version of ‘The Hobbit’ back in 1977. Not necessarily bad…just a far cry from their regular Christmas fare. 12. Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (1976) cartoon Andy Griffith recounts the tale of how the kids of a small town took it upon themselves to build a snow-wife (Shelley Winters) for a lonesome Frosty (comedian Jackie Vernon, reprising his famous role from seven years before), much to the chagrin of a feisty Jack Frost (Frees). I don’t know…it all looked right, but it just wasn’t the same without Jimmy Durante. It also seemed someone was in a hurry to slap something together story-wise, including (shudder) extra verses to the classic song by Griffith. This show really made me cringe, in a ‘Frozen Biology 101’ sort of way. 11. Santa Baby (2001) cartoon A little girl makes a Christmas wish to get her song-writer father out of his slump. This is a showcase for the song made famous by Eartha Kitt (who stars in the show alongside Gregory Hines, Patti LaBelle and Vanessa Williams). For the first Rankin-Bass cartoon in 16 years (and the last one to date), it tried a little too hard to mix an African-American beat into the Rankin-Bass feel of Christmas (check out 1994’s ‘A Cool Like That Christmas’ and Boyz II Men’s version of ‘Silent Night’ for a far superior product). 10. Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (1976) stop-motion It’s nice to know that Billie Richards (Rudolph) gets regular work from Arthur and Jules, but this was a bit overblown. Rudolph has to be on the lookout for the Baby New Year, who has run away because people kept laughing at his enormous ears. With the help of a crusty knight (Frank Gorshin) and a caveman (Morey Amsterdam), they must find the baby and deliver him to Father Time (Red Skelton) before the evil vulture Eon (Paul Frees) get his claws on him to stop time forever. Confused? You weren’t the only one. 9.5. Jack Frost (1979) stop-motion Okay, this is technically NOT a Christmas tale (it takes place on Groundhog Day). Pardon-Me Pete the Groundhog (Buddy Hackett) tells the story of the Man of Frost (the versatile Robert Morse) achieving human form to join a maiden with a brave knight against the evil ventriloquist-obsessed Cossack Kubla Kraus (Frees again). Kind of a sweet story with a sad ending since Jack also falls for the maiden, but has to return to his frozen invisible state to keep Winter going. I include this in the list solely because ABC Family kept putting it in their ’25 Days of Christmas’ festival. 9.0 Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977) stop-motion This is another story of a big-eared character, only with a lot more pathos. This harkens to the ‘Christ’ side to Christmas, from the point of view of a donkey named Spieltoe, (singer Roger Miller), the only resident in Santa’s stable without antlers. As it turns out, his ancestor, Nestor, who was harangued by everyone for his enormous auditory appendages, was the donkey that carried the Virgin Mary to the stable where Jesus was born. Along the way, Nestor is helped only by an accident-prone cherubic angel named Tilly (Brenda Vaccaro). Seriously, this is a well-crafted, but exceedingly sad tale, on par with ‘Bambi’ and ‘Grave of the Fireflies’. Bring your hankies for this one. 8. The Little Drummer Boy: Book II (1976) stop-motion Ted Eccles (reprising his role as Aaron, the anger-management poster child Little Drummer Boy) has better control of his issues, but has to contend with some nasty Roman soldiers (led by the great Zero Mostel), who want to lay claim to a bunch of silver bells meant to proclaim the birth of Christ. Also returning is Greer Garson as the narrator. 7. The Story of the First Christmas Snow (1975) stop-motion Yup, someone on the writing staff evidently went to Parochial School for this story. A young shepherd named Lucas is blinded in a thunderstorm looking for a lost sheep and takes shelter in an abbey headed by Sister Theresa (Angela Lansbury), where he befriends a girl named Louisa. Just in time for the Christmas pageant, he regains his sight and finds his sheep. If you can’t find the video or DVD, just read Luke 15:3-7. 6. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974) cartoon ‘Lonesome’ George Gobel finally has a family to call his own as Father Mouse, who is stirring through the quiet house because he has to contend with a braniac kid named Albert who was able to get a letter to Santa saying the town doesn’t believe in him. To keep St. Nick from passing them by, the village clockmaker (Joel Grey) builds a clock tower with a special song (‘Christmastime Is Calling’)…except Albert breaks it trying to find out how it works. There are some very special moments in here, including the sweet song ‘Even a Miracle Needs a Hand’. There’s also a handy cameo by veteran actor John McGiver as the town mayor, which fits his stolid blustery character to a ‘T’. 5. The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) stop-motion You know, I really miss Shirley Booth. She would have fit perfectly in some of the great TV show of the 80s and 90s, besides her immortal stint on the 60s sitcom ‘Hazel’. Here, she plays Mrs. Santa. When her husband (Mickey Rooney again) says he is too sick to get on the sleigh, she sends a couple of misfit elves, Jingle and Jangle, south to drum up support for the Jolly One. Along the way, they get arrested, a reindeer gets sick and they run into the infamous Miser Brothers (Broadway legend George S. ‘Heat Miser’ Irving and comedian Dick ‘Snow Miser’ Shawn). Incidentally, the ‘brothers’ apparently stole the show enough to get their own cartoon, ‘A Miser Brothers Christmas’ in 2008, but, like ‘Misfit Toys’, it was not produced by Arthur and Jules. Shawn, best known for his stint in the original film ‘The Producers’, died in 1987, so ‘Snow Miser’ is now voiced by Juan Chioran. After some intervention from Mother Nature, a young boy named Ignatius Thistlewhite and a soulful rendition of ‘Blue Christmas’, all the wackiness makes sense and things get back on track. All in all, this is a very enjoyable hour for kids everywhere. 4. The Little Drummer Boy (1968) stop-motion Oscar-winner Greer Garson steps down from ‘Mrs. Miniver’ to tell a parable from the old Biblical days of a boy named Aaron who has just about every bad, nasty thing in the world happen to him. His only friends are animals (specifically a dancing lamb, camel and donkey…no, not Nestor) and his sole worldly possession is a drum made by his parents, Frees and Foray (before they were murdered by nomads…get the picture?) He is kidnapped by the evil Ben Haramad (Jose Ferrer) and his cackling henchman, Ali, to perform for people to make money for Haramad, but escapes long enough to join up with three wise men looking for the new Messiah. Because he doesn’t have any presents, he plays his drum for the Holy Family, who, inexplicably, doesn’t complain because some kid is doing his Lars Ulrich impression in front of a newborn. Just kidding. This is truly a great story about how even the worst anger is washed away by the Love of God. 3. Frosty the Snowman (1969) cartoon For its time and place, it was a welcome respite from the humdrum holiday variety show it replaced. Now it’s an animated marvel that still has a place on network television after 40 years. Movie legend Jimmy Durante relates the tale of a snowman who comes to life due to the magic hat of a hack magician (TV jack-of-all-trades Billy DeWolfe). If you never heard of DeWolfe, you will never forget him now. His trademark punchline of repeating words on a number of sitcoms (‘Silly, silly, silly…’) are now etched forever with the green-faced Professor Hinkle, who strives to get his hat back from Frosty (stand-up comic Jackie Vernon). With the help of a schoolgirl named Karen (Foray, who also did the voice of Cindy Lou Who the year before), Frosty makes his way up north to cooler climes with Hinkle on his heels (I love when he says ‘Think nasty…think nasty…think nasty…). Finally Santa (Frees) intervenes after Frosty is seemingly melted in a greenhouse, only to learn that Christmas snow is not like the regular frozen precipitation. This is truly a cartoon that has just about everything for the holiday spirit. 2. Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970) stop-motion Movie legend Fred Astaire is a postman at the North Pole who is set to answer as many kids questions as he can about the birth and making of the man named Santa Claus. We learn that a young baby, wearing the name tag ‘Claus’ is found at the steps of the Sombertown mayor, the Burghermeister Meisterburger (Frees, in perhaps his best role ever), who sends him off to the orphanage, only to be lost in the woods near the lair of the Winter Warlock (Keenan Wynne). He is found and raised by the Kringle family of elves, who were toymakers to the King, and is raised in their loving environment. When he comes of age, he wants to deliver toys to Sombertown, but because the Burghermeister recently broke his funny-bone on a toy, he has outlawed them. The now-young adult (voiced by Mickey Rooney), who has taken the name Kris Kringle, brings toys to the children and falls for a young teacher named Jessica (Robie Lester), but runs afoul of the Burghermeister and his henchman, Grimsby (also voiced by Frees). He is later caught by the Warlock, but wins his friendship with a toy train, which leads to a great song ‘Put One Foot In Front Of The Other’. Because Kris is now wanted by the law, he dons a beard (as do all Kringles) and sneaks toys into homes through the attic before being caught. He escapes with the aid of the Warlock, who can make reindeer fly with magic dust (borrowed from Cheech and Chong?) and hightails it to the North Pole, but not before marrying Jessica is some weird sort of civil hippie union under the stars. He finally gets back to the baby nametag, redubs himself ‘Santa Claus’ and eventually age forces him to curtail his toymaking and giving to once a year. There are a couple of moments where the plot gets painfully dated (the song ‘If You Sit On My Lap Today’ would probably never be sung in this day and age), but this biography of the Jolly Old Elf will do just as well as anything you may have heard before. 1. Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) stop-motion The first special remains the best of the lot. Sam the Snowman (Burl Ives) tells the story of a young reindeer (Billie Rae Richards), the son of Donner, who has to make his way through a world that considers him a freak simply because of a glowing red nose. His only friend is Hermie (Paul Soles), a social outcast from the elf community because he’d rather study dentistry than toy making. Together, they leave the North Pole for parts unknown with the aid of Yukon Cornelius (Larry D. Mann) and discover the Island of Misfit Toys, where other outcasts made their way. Eventually Rudolph finds he has to go home to face his family (and his destiny) and runs into Bumble, the Abominable Snow Monster, but Yukon and Hermie arrive to save the day. When a terrible blizzard threatens to cancel Christmas, Santa finds that Rudolph’s phosphorescent proboscis is the only thing that will cut through the haze of the storm and save the holiday. Because of a letter–writing campaign, there was even an addition made a year after the first showing to display a happier ending for the Misfit Toys, who were rescued by Santa. This special has hung around long enough to cement itself into the Christmas psyche of young and old viewers alike with songs like ‘Silver and Gold’, ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’, ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ and ‘The Most Wonderful Day of the Year’. The writing, animation and music all blend together to create a fairyland that became the cornerstone of the Rankin-Bass domain.

The Turkey Bowl Recap

“The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never ever introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.” -Kendall Hailey -------------------- “Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of your aggressions without going to jail for it.” -Heywood Hale Broun ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Springdale, AR (Family Press International) – A great nephew, though vastly underrated by the high school team he plays for, caught two fantastic touchdown passes to lead the Ahsweepes to a 14-7 victory over the Butholays in the Upteenth Annual Turkey Bowl, played on the front lawn of Uncle Larry and Aunt Jackie’s residence this past Thanksgiving. Junior center Jonathan ‘the Mean Machine’ caught the first of the two TD passes from his father, Geoff ‘Living his Second Childhood through his Children’ midway through the third quarter of play, beating out several defensive members of the secondary, including his brother, Brian ‘B-Ri’ and cousin Gage ‘Ewh Newh’, into the end zone, which was marked by a lamp post. The final TD came at the end of regulation when the Mean One connected again under heavy coverage, this time almost spilling out onto the street corner. The Ahsweepes’ offensive front lines were solidified by the imposing figure of ‘Uncle Nature Boy’ Barry, who has been known to be offensive on many occasions through no fault of his own. While Thanksgiving dinner put a noticeable crimp in his speed against the Brian-Gage combo, it was enough to hold back the attack of sack-master brother Patrick ‘The Neurotic One’ throughout the matchup (in fact, both brothers were the only ones who went back for seconds that day). Helping out their dad on offense were the famed ‘Terrible Twins’, Alex ‘Twilight Princess’ and Nikki ‘the Future Mrs. Cullen’, who played alongside Cousin Katie ‘Nail Breaker’ in the backfield. Katie also doubled rushing for several carries, but the defense of the Neurotic One, who quit smoking only three weeks before, held her to short yardage and stopped at least one embarrassing spill on the front steps. Assisting the Ahsweepes in the backfield was a harassing defense from Aunt Mel, ‘the cook from ‘Alice’’, whose sharp wit and sarcasm sent at least one opponent crying to Mommy, but she’s all better now. The Butholays were led in rushing by nephew Jeremy ‘Soy Un Perdedor’, who brazenly crossed over onto the sidewalk on several failed attempts before scoring the team’s lone score in the third quarter on a solo scamper around the front porch into the neighbor’s driveway. A review of the play showed him clearly staying within the sideline set by the Gus the Dachshund’s last constitutional. Contributing to the rushing attack for the losing side was ‘Speedball Jay’, who also played in the secondary against his wife, ‘Two-Fisted Amy’, who was playing for the Ahsweepes. Butholay center/nose guard Charlotte ‘the Virtuoso’ was instrumental in several defensive tackles, including what was supposed to be an easy run for ‘Lil’ Morgan’, but nobody told her she was supposed to get through. She was later called on a penalty for grabbing Aunt Mel’s bra-strap. Meanwhile, ‘Marvelous Mark, the Red-Headed Stranger’ was also part of a solid Butholay defensive line. Under the tutelage of Brian and Gage, the 3’6” bundle of M-80 exploded through the Ahsweepes front line several times, mostly sneek-sneek-sneeking around his dad, to harass the QB on several occasions. In a rare display of caution among all parties, the usual abrasions, bumps, sprains and broken garden pottery that set the standard for the game were noticeably absent, although Butholay line-person Aunt Leslie ‘The Eliminator’ nearly took out Amy on the sidewalk right in front of ‘Granny’ and ‘Papa’ Bill. The hosts for the affair, Uncle Larry, ‘the One True Hog Fan’, and Aunt Jackie, ‘the Second Coming’, sat out the game this year nursing a bum knee. Aunt Carla, ‘the Great Earth Mother’ was also sidelined as son Peter ‘Wii Man’ was beset with ennui because he couldn’t play video games with no one in the house. The victory puts the Ahsweepes into no post-season bowl contention, but the team did get first dibs on the sweet potato and egg custard pies at the conclusion of the game. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -Story submitted by sportswriter ‘Red’ Ruffansore-

A Not-So-Pleasant-Valley-Sunday (or Up Yours, Thomas Wolfe)

(As it was then)

Within the walls of this house I spent early part of my childhood. It’s one of the smaller houses in the 4500 block of Grand Avenue, located between Tulane and Princeton in southwest Little Rock. It doesn’t look very big and, in truth, it wasn’t. The big window was formerly flanked by two conical cedar trees, which were eventually cut down for the flower bush you see here. That window opened into the living room. On the west side of the big window were the three bedrooms where Mom, Dad, four boys and three girls daily fought for the one bathroom located in the center of the hall. I still remember the day we installed the showerhead over the tub. It made Saturday night bath time go a lot quicker. A floor furnace was situated in the little square hall around the bedroom doors, where on particularly cold mornings you would find most of us straddled over the grate, the rising heat blowing up our pajamas and nightgowns. In the summer, there was a single large air conditioner on the east side that cooled the whole house. The rest of the time, we relied on open windows. The porch window to the east gave us a view of the street from the dining table, while those looking in could see past it into the galley kitchen and washer/dryer hookup before exiting out the only other door to the outside world, our backyard. For the record, it wasn’t always pink. Sometimes it was a dark brown. It depended on my dad’s mood and his relationship with my neighbors. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to paint... just the porch, the east side of the house and the framework around the windows and under the roof. The rest of the walls of the house were made up of a material similar to our roof, meaning it was covered in tiny glass-like granules, meant to reflect the heat of the sun away from the interior of the house. A friend of mine recently said that material might have been a form of asbestos…always good to know 30 years after the fact. My first memory in this house was climbing out of a crib in the front bedroom to catch my mom watching her afternoon soaps. This is also where the only phonograph record player and radio were located. Sometimes the TV was directly underneath the main window, other times, it separated the living room from the dining area. Since it then faced away from us, we soon became acclimated to eating in the living room and the dining table was relegated to laundry, homework and the occasional game board. I remember the occasional times I couldn’t sleep and snuck out for some late-night viewing. Back then, of course, there were only four stations to choose from and they all signed off after a certain point. Then I was forced to stare at either an Indian-head test pattern or static. I would turn the set off, watching as the glowing screen shrank to a tiny dot before fading away completely in the dark. Other times, I woke up extra early. Usually it was on a Saturday, where I had to suffer through farm reports before the cartoons commenced. On rare occasions, my parents were watching something of special interest. One morning in July of 1969, I poked my head around the corner to see Apollo 11 take off from the Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon. A few days later man set foot on another astral body for the first time ever. Since it was late at night, I don’t remember if we were allowed to stay up and watch. There was a lot of growing up in that house, not just for me but for all of us, parents included. We learned to cook, some better than others. One time, Mom tried a recipe that called for beer to sauté hamburgers. There was a little too much beer in the mix, so on at least one occasion, some poor cow died in vain. A sister once tried to make brownies that literally bounced off the floor. Another sibling was doing Lord knows what with tomatoes and at least one found its way to the ceiling, where I think it stayed until the day we moved. I still don’t know how Mom and Dad were able to get all us kids up for school without killing at least one kid a day. The girls were allowed first dibs on the bathroom, then the boys. We made our way to the dining room where, depending on the time of year, we had cereal, buttered toast, oatmeal and, occasionally, eggs and bacon. My parents not only cooked for us, but would sometimes feed some kids down the street who they felt didn’t get the nutritional start they thought they needed. We were then all packed into the family station wagon and taken to a nearby parochial school, listening to the Mighty 1090, KAAY, along the way. Not everything was indoors, mind you. There was plenty of play time in the front or back yard or further down the street to play with the Lehmans, the Tedders, the Swindells, the Pattersons and the Greens. Often was the time the grass under the shade of the house was worn down to dirt level by the scamper of growing feet. In the winter, the same shade kept a sliver of ice-hardened snow on the ground long after everything else had melted. Among our favorite games was ‘Hot Lava’ where we took advantage of the two or three swing sets at our disposal and swung off them to stay off the ground, lest we burn our feet. Variations of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ or ‘World War II’ often had one or both parents stepping outside to see at least two children lying in a heap on the ground, not daring to show any sign of life until the all-clear was given by the winners. ‘Red Rover’ was also a big hit when there were enough of us, which was often. We got pretty tough trying to break through each other’s line. Street football was also a big hit. We pretty much kept to the ‘touch’ rules, but couldn’t resist the occasional foray into someone’s soft grassy yard where a full tackle was too impulsive to resist. We moved from the neighborhood in the summer of 1973. Rarely was the time we ever found our way back there, but it did happen. This past weekend, I took my family to the Old Mill in North Little Rock for our annual holiday pictures. As we looked for a place to have lunch, the attraction was simply too great for me to pass up. I crossed the Arkansas River to 12th Street and turned at my old Catholic school. As an anchor-reporter in Little Rock two years before, I attended the official closing down of the school after over 100 years of parochial education. The church where many of us received our First Communion remained open, but the windows of the classrooms were now covered in black paint. Finding the house from there will forever be imprinted in my head, having walked that mile or two to the house every day for seven years. A few blocks later, we came into the neighborhood. I mentally noted passing a LRPD squad car doing some investigating before we hit our old street. It had been over 30 years since we stayed longer than a few minutes, but I couldn’t help staring. So much had changed. I expected the row of tall pine trees down the street to be gone or at least pruned to some degree, but not removed completely. Many of the formerly pristine lawns were threadbare and dirty. Cars were parked not only in the driveways, but on the lawns of many houses. City trash bins were left out on the curb, regardless of what day pick-up was. Nearly all the houses had a fence. The street was barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass each other. I pulled into a house at the end of the street to turn around and noticed the place where our neighborhood ‘old lady’ lived. Every street had at least one lady who would yell at the kids to get off their lawns and was never home on Halloween, then would surprise us by being legitimately nice to you around Christmas. Ours was named ‘Old Lady Lydle’. I looked at her house…or rather, where it once stood. I saw a grass-and-debris covered plot of land with a walkway leading to two concrete steps going nowhere. I stopped the car in front of the Patterson’s old house and looked across the street. The house I grew up in was no longer there, not as I knew it. The new owner(s) had expanded the front porch east, enclosed it, replaced the walls with some sort of rock/shale siding and allowed Mother Nature to cut loose on everything else. Where there was a front lawn was now a forest. My wife tugged at my sleeve, motioning forward. Three rather tough-looking guys were sitting on the corner of the Green’s house (now a dirt mound surrounding a fire hydrant) glancing our way. I quickly took a shot of my past with my cell phone and drove off.

(As it looks now)

Why Old People Don’t Like Birthdays

As a child of the 1960s, I often wondered what my life would be like in the year 2000. I know I would be 40 for most of that magical year, but, other than that, the possibilities were endless. I, like most kids dreaming of the future, imagined Jetson-like cars soaring overhead, robots and computers serving humanity, wearing suits that would make Ace Frehley jealous, space travel for the masses (with at least one lunar base) and public relations with some alien race. I myself would be a tall man with a well-trimmed beard and flowing dark brown hair. As of last week, I officially became one year short of the half-century mark. Now, well into the 21st Century, I am a ‘big and tall’ man with flowing grey hair and a beard that reminds anyone over the 7th grade of ‘The Big Lebowski’ and under the 7th grade as Santa Claus. The only thing soaring over my head are gas prices for the still earth-bound cars, humanity serves the computer, no lunar bases, only a select group of rurals who CLAIM contact with aliens and Ace Frehley now dresses like me. A tradition in my family is that the birthday boy or girl gets to pick the restaurant where we celebrate. My son hasn’t gone beyond McDonald’s. My daughter likes a local ritzy spot called the Market Place that gives away a free dessert called a ‘Chocolate Mess’ (basically a tall glass covered in fudge with vanilla ice cream, whipped topping and a lit candle). My wife also liked this place, but I imagine would prefer a couple of other ritzier joints in town that serve wine with no kids. Me…I go for the Japanese hibachi. I like the personal surroundings as the master chef literally plays with our food, creating huge bursts of flame from the sautéed onions, slicing and dicing our meal with expert dexterity. …at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. We filed our way into a spacious eatery named for the famous dormant volcano that most people envision when they hear the name of Japan. We entered over a bridge spanning an indoor waterfall and stream filled with large orange and white koi that looked like goldfish on steroids. To the left were a set of tables for those not intent on the hibachi experience, while on the right was a sushi bar with a few patrons enjoying the nutritional benefits of raw fish and the sharp tang of wasabi. If you’ve never tried wasabi, it is a green concoction that makes horseradish taste like mayonnaise in comparison. As a comparison, at a wedding once, I accidentally put an enormous slab of what I thought was mayonnaise onto a cracker. I spent the next ten minutes trying to claw my brain out through my forehead. We were first informed that this was a members-only restaurant (being in a dry county, establishments that serve alcohol must be registered as ‘private clubs’), so we dutifully paid the membership fee and made our way to the chef’s table, where we then had to wait until the area around the hibachi (or cooking surface) was filled. Apparently, the chef doesn’t play to a partially packed house. We made our orders. I noticed an item called ‘Sukiyaki Steak’ and asked for it. I was familiar with the song ‘Sukiyaki’ from many years ago, the first in a foreign language that reached the top of the American music charts. I also knew the word itself had nothing to do with the song. It was placed there by a stateside producer so the American audience would recognize it. Before I describe our hostess, I want to emphasize first and foremost I have the utmost respect for Japan, its people and its culture. Their traditional music is melodic and serene, the realm of theatre, especially Noh and Kabuki, is awash with originality and pageantry and the Shinto faith is a religion of honor, love and peace of mind. Despite being bitter enemies in my parents’ day, the ability of the people to rise from the atomic ashes to take their place as a world power mere decades later stand as a testament to the enduring spirit of the Land of the Rising Sun. Having said that, our hostess was a cross between a Stepford Wife and Mrs. Roboto. She had a face that seemed to be surgically fixed in a permanent smile, reminding me of the character of Joo Dee, the ever-agreeable tour guide of Ba Sing Se in the cartoon series ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’, only not as personable. A request by my daughter for a glass of apple juice was met with the curt ‘One serving only’. Smile. My son ordered chicken strips from the kids menu. ‘We don’t cook that at station. We bring to you’ she replied. Smile. My wife asked for boiled rice instead of fried. ‘I bring to you later’ she said. Smile. A frequent patron sat next to me and wondered if the red-hatted chef would work at our table, which made me turn to notice the three or four chefs did, in fact, all wear different colored hats. The patron said the one in red was notorious for setting bonfires in the dining hall. Thankfully, once the area was filled by another family, our cook, wearing a yellow hat, rolled his wares to our spot. ‘Hellloooo, how are youuuuu? Heh heh heh! We’re gonna make some goooood fooood tonight. Heh heh heh’, he said in a voice that made me fidget in my seat and the womenfolk squirm. I’m almost positive that, in his native language and among his fellow countrymen, he is a bright, hard-working young man intent on making each meal the most enjoyable and delectable. When using English in his shtick, however, he emanated a personality that college professors would call ‘spooky’. Even if he wasn’t wearing the red hat, he must have placed second in the ‘Commit Arson in Your Own Workplace’ competition. Within minutes, the metal surface heated up and a quick spraying of cooking oil and a liquid I could only guess was nitroglycerin was squirted on and ignited. I noticed out of the corner of my eye the patron next to me moving his chair back rather quickly. I did the same. The rest were caught in the heat and blinding flash of the fireball. The chef then placed a couple of eggs on the grill, spinning them around and balancing them deftly on his spatula before breaking them and chopping them up. Then, without warning, he said to my wife, ‘Ooookay, catch’ and flipped a blob of egg at her face. I think the idea was for her to catch it in her mouth. Instead, it bounced off her right cheek onto the floor. The kids, of course, wanted their chance and met the same fate. I was adept with tossing the occasional movie popcorn, so I had a little more success, with only a stray strand lodging in my right eye. In short order, the vegetables, shrimp, chicken and beef were on the grill, spreading a mouth-watering aroma around the dining area. This was quickly quashed by the addition of some heavy syrupy substance that I could only guess would be the famed ‘sukiyaki sauce’. It all but blanketed the smell of the steak and veggies, which were then shoveled onto my plate. Lesson learned. My son had already received his chicken strips and wolfed them down, only to now be forced to sit and watch as the rest of us got our All-Star produced meal, so he sat, head bowed, as we began eating. I felt exceedingly sorry for the little guy, as did his sister and mother, who all cast sideward glances as we dropped a spoonful of our meals onto his now-empty plate. Throughout all this, the chef asked my wife at least three times ‘No friiieed rice for youuuu, right?’, to which she replied in the affirmative. Still, after he had concluded his routine and carted his ensemble away, she had not received her rice. She brought this up to the robo-hostess who came to check on us. ‘I have not yet received my boiled rice’, my wife said. ‘You sure?’, the hostess asked. Smile. ‘Yes’, my wife said. Five minutes later, the hostess came back with a small bowl of white rice. ‘Sorry’, she said. Smile. We left in a hurry once the bill was settled. No tip. I apologized to my family for the ordeal they endured at my expense. Next year, we’re trying the Gyro place downtown near the bank. Hopa!

The Cat-Hater (and the Cats who love her)

Look carefully...this is a photo that, by all rights, should never have been taken. The serene look on her face...the hand gently brushing the fur of the animal on her lap, purring in its pleasure like a well-tuned motorboat. What you're seeing is as close to a miracle as I've ever experienced. There is apparently no single animal on earth that instills as much love or hate among human beings as the cat. Famous cat lovers include Sir Winston Churchill, Muhammed (who once cut off a sleeve of his shirt to avoid waking a sleeping cat), Ernest Hemingway, Sir Isaac Newton, Raymond Chandler (whose cat reportedly doubled as an editor by sitting on his manuscripts), Florence Nightingale and a host of others, including myself (not famous, mind you, but a cat lover). There were just as many on the other side of the fence. President Dwight Eisenhower and composer Johannes Brahms took great pleasure in killing, or having killed, cats from their homes (the composer of the great Lullaby was rather adept at a bow-and-arrow in this endeavor). Noah Webster was not kind in his appraisal of cats in his dictionary, calling them a "deceitful animal and when enraged, extremely spiteful." Napoleon Bonaparte was once found sweating and on the verge of a nervous breakdown over the sight of a small kitten. Add my wife to this latter group. Growing up with three brother and a plethora of dogs in her childhood, she became quite acclimated with their playfulness and loyalty. (that's the dogs I'm talking about, not her siblings). Her reaction to cats was another matter. I don't know what occurred in her past that gave my Best Beloved such an intense case of ailurophobia. Simply put, she has no use for them and was more than likely to use a foot as a hand when getting said creatures out of her way. (Okay, a retraction...my wife would NEVER intentionally put the boots to any living thing, except maybe me, but only because I can fight back). I knew this when I married her, but like cat-loather James Boswell and his famous subject, cat-lover Dr. Samuel Johnson, we mostly kept our opinions to ourselves. In the early years of our union, the subject of pets never materialized because we were simply too busy as DINKs (Double Income, No Kids) to lend time for a muzzle to feed. It never occurred to us that other people in our close-knit family unit would ever have a say. Sure enough, within a decade our beautiful children came into the debate. Once our kids reached the age of reason, pets became an ongoing part of our daily conversation. We 'experimented' with a Siamese fish named Wally for about six months till it died and we tearfully buried it in in the back yard. Pets of the four-legged variety were not at the top of our list. My daughter was jumped by an overzealous retriever in the first grade and, hence, did not trust dogs any further than she could throw them. My son, who is asthmatic, cringes at anything on four or more legs that took the even most remote passing interest in him and shedding. A recent family reunion did quite a bit, however, to further discussion. My kids spend the better part of an evening in the same house with several dogs and cats, a number of which were of the long-haired variety. Both came away with nary a sniffle. A close family friend of ours have children in the same age group with at least two dogs. Both our kids have slowly dropped their guard faced with the overt friendliness of the pair. Mom, however, remained steadfast in her stand that while the discussions will go on, no cats will be involved. Ever! That was, until the arrival of Felix.

Felix is a yellow-eyed black cat...the kind one avoids on Friday the 13th and, sadly, falls prey to the more demonic components of the human population around Halloween.

He found his way into the neighborhood over the past summer with two others...'Dude', an overweight, green-eyed black cat with white fur on his chest and feet, much like the famous 'Socks' of the Clinton administration, and 'Kramer', a blue-eyed Siamese of equal girth.

While it appeared his compatriots were getting their daily requirement, Felix was definitely not in the 'well-fed' category.

He eventually made (read: crawled) his way to our lives in the heat of July and August. He would make his way through the neighborhood scrimping and scrounging for anything that was the least bit palatable. This included roaches (or 'water bugs' as our Terminix man calls them) and the occasional lizard. Within a week of his presence, my wife responded in a way I had not thought possible for her. Not with a swift boot to the backside or even a restraining order.

She personally went out and bought a bag of Friskies and a pet bowl.

She confided to me that, as much as she hated cats, she couldn't stand by and let Felix starve. I found this a side to my wife I had not seen before. Sure, she had always been on the front lines when it comes to compassion for those less fortunate, but this was a new one on me. As much as she detested the creatures that walk by themselves, as Rudyard Kipling famously wrote, she refused to let this cat suffer.

Soon the children became enraptured by this new-found friend, who in turn allowed them to pet him and, through the discovery of a simple shoelace, play with him. This became a good thing...the kids weren't stuck playing video games, as was the norm, but were engaged in active play with an active pet. This fact was not lost on the Mrs., who continued to supply the cat with '9 Lives', 'Purina Cat Chow', 'Meow Mix' and even a brand connected with the Disney movie 'The Aristo-Cats'. Anything but 'Iams'...that stuff is EXPENSIVE! Finally, in early September, my wife did the unthinkable...she let Felix in the house. He promptly threw up in my daughter's room, but the point had been made. After about a month, Dude and Kramer made their presence known. Sensing that there was food about, the two have habitually stopped by for a quick snack at Felix's expense (we, of course, make sure Felix is not neglected). One night, we were all watching a movie when we heard (and felt) a quick series of thumps against the front of the house. Being that all three cats are male, there was some jockeying for position in the household between Kramer and Dude, an argument which Dude won. While Kramer maintains a respectful distance from the house, the kids quickly discovered that beneath Dude's bloated exterior lies a cat very much in need of some lovin'. When petted, he responds with heavy cuddling and a purr that can be heard from yards away. While Felix curls up in a neat circle for his nap, Dude will splay himself prostrate like a frog ready for disection, as if to say, 'Pet me'. My wife will still puts her foot down on a few things...she still gets a shiver down her spine if a cat rubs up against her, which is now often. If we're sitting down to a meal or if we're going out or even ready for bed, the cat goes out. Still, there are instances of further softening of her dislike. The photo above, for instance. While one cat made his way into her heart through his sorry plight, another had charmed even the most savage breast. That's not Felix in her lap...that's Dude.