Life (and possibly death) as we know it

Writes THE GRAM WITH A THOUSAND RULES: “Have you ever encountered an annoying person who keeps popping in and out of your life at intervals? I have.

“I don’t know if there is an actual name for this type of person, but to protect her privacy, I will refer to her as a Mitzi.

“I first met my ‘Mitzi’ back in the early Forties, after we moved to the country. I was a shy 9-year-old riding in a school bus for the first time. I was forced up against her by the acceleration of the school bus, and we locked eyes. She was sitting. I was standing. There was nowhere to escape from her piercing near-sighted eyes and her nonstop chatter. Eventually she moved away, and my morning rides to school were less traumatic, but the memory still lingers of this daily, suffocating close encounter.

“A decade later, she returned to my life. I was working as a copywriter for a small country-music radio station, and to my dismay she was the Singing Cowboy’s Greatest Fan. His show aired every Saturday, and Mitzi was the first to arrive. It was a busy morning as fans lit up the switchboard with requests for a song and the thrill of having their name read over the air by their hero. Luckily for me, I only had to work every fifth Saturday to endure her smothering attention. Mind you, she was a very nice person, but ‘Please, can’t you back up a foot or two? I am trying to operate a switchboard here.’

“Why did I work only every fifth Saturday, you ask? The Fifties were a Sexist society. The newspapers’ help-wanted ads back then were even separated as to Men or Women jobs. Since the switchboard was considered to be a female job and we had only five females employed, each of us had to work every fifth Saturday. The Bookkeeper, the Manager’s Private Secretary, the Music Librarian, The Receptionist and me, The Copywriter. In return for giving up a Saturday morning every fifth week, the Station Manager generously told us we could leave a half-hour early on our designated week. Wow! What a big reward. That meant we had to scramble like the devil to get our daily work completed in seven-and-a-half hours instead of eight.

“In the Seventies, one of the technicians at the television station where my husband worked brought his newest wife to the Christmas Party. Yep, it was my Mitzi, still nearsighted, still a chatterbox. I remember she caused quite a sensation because she came prepared with a large grocery sack. Having been told by her new husband of the generous display of goodies available at the Dessert Table, she walked along scooping a huge sampling of each item into her own ‘take home’ bag.

“That was my last Mitzi sighting. As expected, this Independent Living Facility where I live has quite a regular turnover of residents each month, and I admit I do look over the new listings with trepidation. Nah . . . she was a few years older than I. I think I’m home safe.”

The highfalutin amusements

DOCTOR FRIENDLY reports: “I got my first LOL of the day with a Big Tech fail.

“I was looking for a picture of a DeMayo instrument, which is a simple medical device for measuring a patient’s fine sensation. So I put ‘DeMayo instrument’ into Google, clicked on ‘images,’ and got a page full of results like this.

“It took me several seconds of puzzlement before I figured out what Google had gotten wrong. IT THOUGHT I WANTED CINCO DE MAYO INSTRUMENTS!

“What I was actually looking for (and eventually found, with more focused search parameters) was this:

“I’m not too worried about Big Tech being able to read my mind.”

Our ducks, ourselves

LOLA: “Introducing Jimmy the Muscovy Duck.

“He started hanging around my patio about six weeks ago, and I left food and water out for him. He comes by every day and is very tame. I was sitting on a bench about two feet from him when I took this picture.

“After eating and drinking, he walks back to the pond not far from my house.”

Where we live

ISAAK writes: “Subject: MY QUEST — Minnesota At Last.

“I was the only one in the boat who couldn’t catch a fish. I used the same bait, traded poles with my mom and uncle, even tried spitting on the bait like he did. ‘Won’t anything work?’ I thought. ‘Why can’t I? Why can’t I?’ I can still feel my panic on that hot summer day — and the tears I fought not to let fall. Finally I felt a tug and jerked a 6-inch perch into the air and onto my uncle’s lap, much to their relief. We returned to the dock then to get the fish ready for dinner. I was so happy at that moment. In a twinkling, I became a ‘Compleat Angler’ for life — everlastingly, forever, and for good. A cloned Isaac Walton.

“When I was 11, I read Ray Bergman’s ‘Fresh-Water Bass.’ I fell in love with his story of fishing in Deer Lake outside of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Thus began my quest: to fish and die in Minnesota. I’d buy a pack of 50 penny postcards and send for resort brochures throughout the state. They were my comic books. I would read them over and over, imagining myself in the pictures of all the fish caught.

“When I was 18, I finally made it. I wanted to go to a Catholic school, not too far from Chicago. I sent for brochures of three schools: Loras, Creighton, and St. John’s. The choice was a no-brainer for me. I totally disregarded the first two schools! St. John’s in Collegeville had a LAKE on campus. In Minnesota, no less. I could fish between (or instead of) classes. Shangri-La at last!

“Several years after school, I was teaching in Chicago, where I met my future wife. Coincidentally, she happened to be from Minnesota. Kismet? Her family lived on St. Albans Bay of Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior. I don’t know how much that influenced my intense interest in her, but I sure looked forward to our visits. After we married, we’d spend our vacations there — traveling from as far away as Arizona with six kids in a VW bus. When we got ready to go, people would even ask if we were moving. It’s a prelude to Purgatory or beyond.

“Finally, when my job in Chicago was reaching its end, I had a brainstorm. Instead of vacationing in Minnesota, why not get a job there? And that was in 1978. And I did. And here I am. Here I have been. Give or take a sojourn here or there, Minnesota’s been my home.

“At last. Phew.”

Life as we know it — Music and Politics Division . . .  including: Till death us do part

RUSTY of St. Paul writes: “There are not many genres of music I don’t care for (Opera, anyone?), but I don’t listen to a lot of Country.

“We have a vacation home five hours away in a neighboring state. Half the drive up is through farm country, which then shifts to mixed forests up north (which have lately been so colorful, my brain can’t catch up with all that beauty).

“In my St. Paul neighborhood, there are a lot of yard signs for the candidate that I am comfortable with. As I get into farm country, there are large signs for the candidate I am not comfortable with.

“Halfway on my drive there is a dead spot for public radio (which I often listen to). When I tuned in to the Faith station to give it a go, I was told I was going to hell if I didn’t vote for the candidate I’m uncomfortable with.

“In that neck of the woods, that leaves Country, and I figured: ‘When in Rome . . .’

“Most of the tunes don’t do that much for me, but there are a number with catchy music. A year or so ago, on a solo drive up, one that caught my ear had the usual woes of losing his girl, losing his job and his dog ran away [Bulletin Board interjects: Well, not really. The song, Tim McGraw’s “I Called Mama,” is about a guy who gets a call from a friend saying that another friend has died, too young!] but in the chorus he went into the gas station for ‘a Slim Jim and a Coke,’ and his world was all right again.

“On the next trip up, with my wife, that song came on, and she was dumbfounded when I could sing the chorus, as she knows I rarely or ever: sing out loud; listen to Country; drink Coke (I’m a Diet Coke guy); or eat Slim Jims (I haven’t eaten meat in 52 years).

“She then laughed, as the premise of the song was so silly, but she agreed that the music had something going for it.

“If that candidate I’m not comfortable with wins, I just might have to go to the gas station for ‘a Slim Jim and a Coke,’ to make my world tolerable again.”

The vision thing . . . Headline Division

Belatedly, RANCID BEEF of South St. Paul: “Emily Litella weighs in on the July 25th article in the Pioneer Press, ‘WHO documents spreading disease in Gaza.’

“What’s this I hear about documents from the World Health Organization spreading disease in Gaza? Why isn’t WHO more careful with its documents? Shouldn’t they be sanitizing them?

“And what kinds of diseases are WHO’s documents spreading? Chicken pox? Strep throat? Cholera? Oh, I hope it’s not Cholera. All that puking and diarrhea and —

“What? What’s that you say? The World Health Organization isn’t spreading diseased documents? They’re documenting the spread of disease? Oh, well, that’s different.

“Never mind.”

Joy (or Otherwise) of Juxtaposition (Hurricane Helene Division)

A dispatch from BOB WOOLLEY (who now lives in western North Carolina): “Yesterday I sat in my car watching ‘Richard III’ (Laurence Olivier) on an iPad, via Amazon Video, as I charged my phone through the cigarette lighter, while in the trunk was a 5-gallon bucket of water I had fetched from a creek, ready to be carried upstairs for toilet flushing.

“It was the oddest juxtaposition of modern tech and feral living I’ve ever experienced.”

Hmmmmmmmm

Sometime during the reign of Helene or Milton, we heard from THE DORYMAN of Prescott, Wis.: “As is the custom, the storms that are parading up the East Coast are being emceed 24/7 by the requisite insufferable disaster reporters.

“This trite ritual has fascinated me for decades. Is there a required class on this in journalism school? ‘Tomorrow, students, we are going to learn the proper Leaning Tower of Pisa pose while spewing disaster babble in front of an 80-mile-per-hour wind machine. Please wear lightweight, flappy jackets, and don’t forget your network-logo baseball cap’ — the cap that miraculously stays put over squinting eyes and shouting voices as signs, branches and roofing material fly by for cameos.

“These stunt people apparently have received total immunity from evacuation mandates, and while they are heroically satisfying our need to fully appreciate the heartbreak, grief and fear of others, I always wonder how they are chosen to run this gamut. How is it decided who’s in the barrel for the next segment of Nightmare on Flying Elms Street? Is it a prerequisite for advancement to implanted war correspondent?

“And what about the poor camera person — tasked with who knows how many hours of setting up and portraying the most descriptive shot of chaos possible while experiencing it in real time?

“How much longer will we continually be subjected to this journalistic equivalent of pro wrestling? Until a splintered 2-by-4 with some poor reporter’s name on it takes reality TV to new lows? Maybe that will introduce an era of cage-match reporting.”

Out of the past

JOHN IN HIGHLAND: “Who Could Forget That Voice?

“One of the highlights of attending a Minnesota Gophers football game at the old Memorial Stadium was hearing the unmistakable voice of announcer Julius (Jules) Perlt. Jules had a unique way of reporting scores of other games: ‘Iowa 14, PURDUE 21!!’

“The game against Wisconsin was always the last of the season, late in November. One year we had a snowstorm. The temperature was perfect for making snowballs and throwing them at the players. Jules was clearly irritated at the fans’ behavior and said: ‘This is a Big Ten football game! STOP THROWING SNOWBALLS!’”

Out of the mouths of babes

JULIET ROMEO of Roseville writes: “At Mass one Sunday morning, we heard the familiar call to ‘offer each other a sign of peace.’ My son forcefully replied: ‘No peace!’

“If that’s not a fitting thing for a rambunctious 2-year-old to say, I don’t know what is.”

BAND NAME OF THE DAY: STOP THROWING SNOWBALLS!

Your stories are welcome. The address is BB.onward@gmail.com.

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