RickBaber.com

The Class of '71 Reunion

2011-10-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

High School, I’m told, is a traumatic time for some people. For others, the glory days. For me, not so much of either – if only because, back then, I just didn’t pay much attention. My goal at the time was to simply survive the ride, get out as soon as possible, and then go on about the business of becoming a rock star. How hard could that be?
Watching movies and TV over the years, I have come to understand that things like class reunions can be events filled with anxiety for many. Maybe that guy was some kind of stud in school and the rest of his life didn’t turn out like he and everyone else imagined. Maybe this other guy was not so popular in school and he was picked on by the other kids – so he holds no real affection for them now that he’s all grown up. Maybe that hot cheerleader has put on some pounds and would rather not show up so the old classmates will continue to remember her as she was. You didn’t get rich? The ones who did will flaunt it? Afraid the old cliques will re-connect at the reunion and leave you outside looking in…again? All kinds of stuff like that can go through the minds of people contemplating returning to their alma mater after so many years in the real world. Or, so I’m told.
Admittedly, I wasn’t a member of the Class of ’71, so, even if I had been the type to worry about such trivia, it was no skin off my nose. That was Becky’s class. I still had two more years to become a rock star. It could happen.
About the time we rolled across Greenbrier Bottoms we discovered a fantastic local radio station, playing “She’s a Rainbow,” by the Stones. Nothing could have been more appropriate. They followed that with Creedence Clearwater’s “Born on the Bayou,” as we crossed the bridge. We were home.
The gang was setting up the tailgate party for the Pioneers’ total destruction of the Wynne Yellowjackets when we got to town around 3 o’clock Friday. So, naturally, I took a wrong turn and got stuck behind traffic backed up at the Jr. High. (Hi Myra!) That place looked a little different than it did 40 years ago.
Once we found the spot, up next to the high school building, we unloaded our designated goodies and started to re-connect. Ironically, the first guy I saw there was the first kid I met when I moved to Batesville in 1967, James Milam. We got to do a little catching up before he had to bug out to officiate some other football game. Becky was already up there, hugging and kissing her own classmates, and the aroma of Don McSpadden’s fantastic BBQ was filling the air. It already felt “right.”
After those three years of longing to get out of that place, after the long ride, I found myself needing (if you know what I mean) to get inside. A few of us did. So we finally located an unlocked door – which didn’t even appear to have a latch on it – and immediately split up to locate our old lockers. When I left in 1973, there was still some stuff in there I’d like to get out, but I had forgotten the combination my sophomore year and never asked anybody to open it for me. The lockers had been changed out over the years, but we all found the spots where they used to be. We pointed out the classrooms of Mrs. Seibert, Mrs. Moore, Ms. Felts, and Mrs. Newton, and then decided we better get out before we were arrested for breaking and entering.
Coming back out, I was drawn to a framed picture of John Lennon on the wall, with the quote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” In MY old school! How cool is that?
That first evening was more than pleasant, and the relatively few that made it on Friday broke down the tailgate and carried off a bunch of great leftovers. I was supposed to take Donnie’s stuff back to his house, but didn’t have a truck, so Duane “Gorilla” Pearson, graciously volunteered to do that for me.
Bec and I returned to Chateau de Price to rest up for the big night on Saturday. First though, she was to attend a breakfast out at one of the hotels where some of the girls were staying, and Nick Fudge said I could come hang out at Ben Treat’s shop where The Reunion Band was practicing for the gig that night. So, Saturday morning, she dropped me off there and me ‘n ol’ Rick Satterwhite got treated to an advance screening of the sets. That was a blast. Brought back lots of memories of the years I’d spent playing music with Andy Buschmann in “Orion” while Nick was elsewhere on the road with “St. Peter’s Road Show.” Both of those guys are even more talented now than they were then, as are Rick Buford and Ben Treat. Mike Foster didn’t make practice, but anybody who’s ever heard him play the keys knows he doesn’t have to. He’s a wizard. These guys are all old pros – the best in the business. If you haven’t heard them, you should make plans to do so. And if you’re ever out Albuquerque way, catch Mike Jordan’s stand-up comedy act.
After spending the rest of the fantastic fall day driving around Batesville, checking out the old neighborhoods, the time for the dinner and dance at Elizabeth’s arrived. And guess what: it may have been the best reunion ever. No anxiety. No pretentiousness. Only a lot of happy old friends genuinely enjoying the company of each other; and it went by almost as fast as the words I get to use here… and the previous 40 years.

The Great Ice Capades of 1971

2011-10-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

From Dinner with WT; Posted here in honor of the Batesville High School Class of 1971 40 year reunion.

It’s hard to remember whose idea it was. Or even the exact date that it happened. All I know for sure is that it was the very cold winter of the first year I was in high school.
Jr. High had been pretty much a breeze. To be honest, I never had much of a problem with my grades, so I didn’t see the point of wasting valuable teenage time doing foolish things like studying. This was a time for having fun. The
only thing was, in our small town of about 7000, there wasn’t much fun to be had if we didn’t make it ourselves. That usually consisted of something that could get us in trouble. So those of us with extra time on our hands would create new and innovative ways of getting into trouble. It didn’t matter, much, if it was not exactly legal. All that mattered was that it was fun – and that nobody had done it before. Sure, we were thugs – but we were creative thugs.
The plots in Jr. High had been limited to Jr. High minds: Stealing and dumping into the river every fire extinguisher in the school district; Putting Fred in a 55 gallon barrel and rolling him down the hall – mowing the principal over as he
inadvertently walked out his door; Releasing the hand brakes on the school busses so they would roll backwards into the bayou behind the bus parking lot; Running our motorcycles gang’s flag up the flagpole, padlocking it on, and then setting the tall grass around the pole on fire when the principal climbed up there to cut the lock. Mischief. But nothing that was ever intended to hurt anybody.
With 1970 came high school. We weren’t prepared to change our lifestyles just because we had to change schools. If anything, we should be more cunning than ever now. We had the wisdom of three years of experience at our disposal. And now we could drive.
Man, the (open) halls of the High School were cold. Upperclassmen walked up and down them, carrying books and looking as if they had some sort of educational agenda in mind. It was frightening. What were they doing to these people up here on this hill? How could they have forgotten that spirit of hell raising so deeply instilled in all of us? Some things would have to change up here if we were going to be able to tolerate it. It was obvious though, that it was going to take some time. This was the age of causes. What we needed was a cause.
As autumn gave way to winter the expression on nearly every student’s face changed from “I’m an adult now, and I’m here to get a quality education” to “Man! It’s cold outside. I wish it would snow so we could get a day off from this rat hole and sleep in where it’s warm.” Complacency had given way to discontent. The basic elements leading to an insurrection were there, but the spark was missing.
Then it snowed. Every kid in the school was glued to the 10 o’clock TV news that night, with a transistor radio stuck up to one ear anticipating the inevitable announcement that all Batesville schools would be closed the following day. The
announcement did not come. It was business as usual – which was unusual in itself because, in past years, it would only take a light dusting of snow to get us out of school. This was nearly a blizzard by Arkansas standards. There must’ve been one or two inches of the stuff on the ground. There are places in the world that are equipped to deal with the hazard of the frozen white on streets and highways, but Arkansas isn’t, and never has been, one of those places. Counties and cities have better things to do with their money than to blow it on snow plows that would only be used once every blue moon. So, when it snowed even a little bit our Pavlovian conditioning had us blowing off the homework and staying up for the midnight movie on TV. It didn’t’ work this time. We were … well … unhappy.
An informal student inquisition commenced immediately. Who was the Bozo in charge, and what would it take for him to declare a snow day? Just getting out of school wasn’t all that important now. Tradition was at stake. Our cause was
born.
After a few days of tedious investigation, it was determined how the process of declaring a “snow day” worked. School Superintendent Coats had recently purchased a four-wheel drive vehicle. On any morning that there was a question as to whether the condition of the roads was so hazardous as to create a dangerous situation for the busses, he would get up very early and drive the county roads, as well as the hill to the high school. His reasoning was simple: if he could make it, the busses could make it. If the busses could make it, school was on. Therefore: if he could make it, we had to get out of bed.
This was war. In 1970 very few high school students had four wheel drives. We had ’67 Mustangs, and Camaros, and VW bugs. What made that madman think our lives were any less important than those kids on the busses? At least that was the propaganda we used to rally people around our cause.
Sometime in the next few weeks, a plan was conceived amid the smell of French fries and pizza burgers with mustard, slaw, and hot sauce, in the dining room of Tommy’s Kingburger. Some of the greatest radical minds in town, left over from the
60s, decided that what we had to do was make sure that nobody could make it up that hill. Not even Coats. It would require a great deal of effort. Much more than that used to get out of bed in the morning and drive to school. It would involve enormous risk and the requisitioning of some very expensive mechanical equipment – namely, some of our parents’ vehicles – at a particular time of the evening when we were supposed to be in bed seeing visions of sugarplums. But it would be worth it. It would be fun. It was tradition.
With 1971, winter came on strong, and there wasn’t another snow cloud in sight. It was just very, very cold. The daytime temperature hadn’t climbed above twenty degrees in over a week. What we had to do was ice the road over. And we had to do it so well that nothing could get up the hill to the high school. There was only one road, excluding the rocky trail up the back way we called the “baja.” Nobody would expect us to bring our cars up that way. The busses sure couldn’t get up there. The original plan was to release the fireplugs on top of the hill so the water would run down and freeze on the road. There were minor obstacles that presented themselves in association with this scheme – specifically, how to distribute the water over the road in such a manner as to cover it totally and completely. The guy we put in charge of stealing a fire hose failed miserably. If we had just opened the hydrants, the water would simply freeze up there as it came out and we’d have an ice sculpture as a memorial to our failure instead of our long-anticipated triumph over nazi authority. No, it had to be done better than that. We’d have to do it manually. And we’d have to do it soon. Nobody knew how long this cold snap was going to last.
Row Lake was more like a big pond. It sat on the edge of the cemetery property down where the road forked to go up to the school. The water there was relatively warm and had frozen only in a thin layer around the banks. From this junction there was little traffic up toward the school – as it was the only thing up there – on any weeknight. We would have to use the lake as our water supply, and transport it about a half mile up to the hill in barrels by way of pickup trucks. Timing was of the essence. There had been a history of school vandalisms in our town (no, it wasn’t us) so the police had begun to make regular nightly tours around to all the schools. The trucks would have to fill up quickly at the lake because there was occasional traffic down there. While the trucks were away from the lake, distributing their
loads, there would have to be a guard hidden behind one of the tombstones down by the intersection with a walkie-talkie. Another guard up on the hill to warn the rest of us if anybody was coming. With four pickups, each carrying four 55 gallon barrels, we figured the whole mission could be accomplished in an hour. This allowed for each truck to make two trips. That was a total of 1760 gallons of water, which should freeze quickly, creating a sufficient slick.
There was a bus out that night. It seems like it was the basketball team, but my memory fails me on that. This was instrumental in our plan. The bus was due back in around midnight. We would have the road impassable by the time it returned. The bus driver would, in turn, report the road condition to someone of authority within the school system, who would report it to Superintendent Coats – who would have no choice but to call school off the following day.

We did have friends and relatives on that bus, and we didn’t want anybody to get hurt. Two guys were commissioned to paint a large sign to place just up the road from the intersection, which was to read “BUS BEWARE. SLICK ROADS!”
There were maybe 15 people directly involved in this conspiracy. All of us had taken an oath of secrecy. Not in the literal sense. It was simply understood that if word got out and our plan was foiled that the bigmouth would be exposed and relieved of some part of his anatomy that he had not demonstrated the right to own. Of course, we had to tell our girlfriends so they wouldn’t think we were out running around on them all night. That was OK for me, but for some of the guys I think it might have been a mistake.
As always, we were at Tommy’s on that fateful night. Around nine o’clock, when everybody usually left on weeknights, we hung around. Already the plan was beginning to unravel. Nobody had seen the sign guys. Only two of the four trucks we were supposed to use showed up. I think the same excuse applied to both of the no-shows: “My dad wouldn’t let me use it.” But our school motto was “A Pioneer Never Quits” and by-God we weren’t about to now. About 12 of us piled into the two pickups and embarked upon our expedition to the lake. Others, not so bold as to
brave the 12-degree weather, followed in cars. Probably a total of 20 guys by now. So there was a minor security leak. These things happen. But these guys were all cool. Nothing to worry about.

I’ve always been told that water froze at 32 degrees. The water we hand dipped from Row Lake that night could not have been over five. Short bucket brigades were formed between the trucks and the water. We’d dip in wastepaper baskets and then hand the full one to the next guy to pass up to the barrel man while accepting an empty one coming the other way. It was the epitome of teamwork, dedication, and sacrifice for the cause that, if it had only been used for good instead of mischief, was the kind of thing that produced greatness.
Four of the eight barrels that were supposed to have been on the two missing trucks were split between these two. We had to work faster than we had originally planned. In doing so, nearly every one of the guys on the ground got spilled upon. When the water splashed on our green army jackets it would freeze instantly. The working conditions were lacking, at best. But we were sure our plan would succeed.
We worked our way up the hill, meticulously spilling the water from the barrels as the drivers slowly took the trucks upwards – carefully avoiding the narrow grass shoulders on each side of the road, as we were saving these for our escape routes. It was amazing. The water froze the instant it hit the street. From out of nowhere, guys appeared on foot with sleds. They would actually follow the trucks on them.
This was working better than we could have imagined, despite the fact that our walkie-talkie man had forgotten to bring them.
After the first load was applied, one of the drivers made the announcement that he had to get his dad’s pickup home. Everybody was cold and tired and wet. Most of us thought the job was done well enough to accomplish our goal, and agreed that we should call it a night. It was about 10 o’clock. Big D and Larry Jack did not agree. They felt that we should apply some more water to the road and then come down to finish off the job by slicking the shoulders as well. They convinced one of the other guys that his dad would be sound asleep, and that we could “borrow” his truck without even having to disturb him. Big D and Larry Jack weren’t the kind of guys with whom any of us risked confrontation, so we, basically, stole the guy’s dad’s truck. In about 30 minutes we were back at the lake, shivering, loading up the pickups just one more time.
By the time we loaded the last barrels most everybody (the sledders and spectators) had gone home. I got to ride back up the hill inside Big D’s truck. Little me in the middle with D driving and Larry on the other side. As we rounded the first curve through the woods approaching the hill we could see the headlights of a car spinning around in the low place just before you start up the big curve. John and Fred (brothers), Jim, and Frankie were just behind us in the other vehicle. As we approached the car on the ice, about two hundred yards away, its headlights went out. We laughed. Obviously somebody down there having fun who thought we were the cops. The car had slid a little off the road into the woods just at the foot of the icy hill. D steered over into the grass and we began our ascent. About 50 yards beyond that a blue light appeared in Big D’s rear view mirror – behind the other pickup.
“Shit!” I heard Danny say it, and I got this terrible feeling that something had gone horribly wrong.
The car we had laughed about, spinning around on the ice, was a cop car. When I turned around to look there were two of them behind the second truck. D goosed ours in an attempt to speed up the hill on the shoulder, then escape down the baja. The shoulder was rough and water was splashing from the barrels in the back. I looked ahead and saw the flashing of two more sets of blue lights coming over the hill above us. The truck started spinning out. We were caught in our own trap!
In a moment two of the police cars slid sideways in front, and behind each pickup. The doors flew open and cops appeared with pistols extended over the hoods of the cars. I think one guy had a shotgun. What did they think we were
going to do? Freeze them to death? We weren’t going anywhere. The pickups were stuck. The cops had chains on their tires. They were prepared.
“Come out of the vehicles with your hands up!” commanded a voice over one of those bullhorns.
Larry looked at me calmly, and quietly spoke in his slow southern drawl. “Do ya reckon we oughta run?”

I knew I was going to be in jail in a few minutes – if these guys didn’t just start shooting and kill us – but something about the way he said that just struck me as incredibly funny. I was laughing uncontrollably when one of the cops jerked
Danny’s door open and started dragging us out of the truck. He was the one who had been driving the car that was spinning on the ice. He obviously failed to see the humor of the situation. He grabbed me by the hair and nearly broke my nose on the steering wheel as he yanked me out. I heard Fred back there yelling “Don’t push me you ….” (Well, use your imagination.), and looked back in time to see him literally picked up and thrown into the back seat of another car.
They loaded us all up in just two cars and we headed for the police station. Our driver didn’t have anything to say to us. We could see that he was still weak-kneed from the ordeal on the ice. As we neared the cemetery, Larry leaned over to
me and said, “Tell him to turn the radio up.”
“Sir,” I said, all to happy to comply, “Could you turn the radio up a little?”
It was ten or fifteen seconds before he answered. “Shuttup!”
Danny was laughing under his breath. Larry leaned over to me again and whispered, “Tell him.”
Although I really didn’t think it was a good idea, I was more afraid of D and Larry than I was this cop. I mean, he had to live by some kind of rules.

“Sir,” I repeated, “We can’t hear the radio back here.”
You know how, when you were a little kid, you would fight with your sister in the back seat on the way to grandma’s house? Your dad would yell at you and you would continue until he lost all control? That’s what this cop did. With a crushing backblow from his right hand he violently, and blindly, swung back to hit me in the mouth. Which is, I imagine, what I would have wanted to do if I were him. I guess he was a rookie or something because he totally forgot about that wire cage between the front and back seats. A deluge of obscenities poured from his mouth almost as fast as the blood squirted from his busted knuckles. Danny buried his face between my shoulder and the back of the seat to conceal his laughter. Larry went ahead and laughed out loud.
Soon we arrived at the police station and were herded inside where the chief of police was waiting. The chief of police! Almost midnight and we got the Chief! We were big time criminals. Nobody ever got the chief this late at night. The fire chief was there too. To this day I don’t know why he was there. Our cop came in behind us, wrapping a handkerchief around his bloody hand.
“Boys,” began the chief, “I want each one of you to call your parents and have them come down here”.
He was the only one of the policemen who didn’t appear to be angry. As a matter of fact, it looked to me like he was trying very hard to fight back a smile. Maybe even laughter.
One by one we took our turns on the phone. Most of the calls were short and spoken in the low, muffled voices guys use to tell their girlfriends “I love you too Honey” when there are other guys in the room. When Frankie was on the phone he turned to the chief. “My mom’s in her housecoat. She wants to know if she can just drive up and honk and somebody’ll come out to the car.”
It was a small town. “Yeah, Frankie,” the chief replied,
“That’ll be fine.”
My turn rolled around. My sister answered the phone.
“Robin, let me talk to dad.”
“He’s asleep,” she said, “He’s really mad ‘cause it’s after midnight and you’re not home yet.”
“Okay. Let me talk to him.”
“I’m not gonna wake him up.” She answered. “You better just come on home or you’re gonna be in big trouble.”
Everybody seemed to gather around the phone to hear my conversation.
“Robin!” I was getting a little upset with her. “I’m kind of in some trouble anyway. Now wake him up!” Already I could hear snickering from the guys. She laid down the phone and I waited for what seemed like an eternity.
He didn’t sound too mad when he picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“Dad,” I began. (I thought that was a good place to begin) “Do you think you could come pick me up?”
“You got car trouble?” I always had car trouble.
“No. I’m down here at the city jail.”
It got quiet. I thought he might have fallen back to sleep.
“Dad?”
“Come on home.” He said sharply.
“No, really, I’m in jail.”
“Goddammit!” he was getting miffed, “Quit fuckin’ around and get your ass home!”
Everybody, including some of the cops, was laughing now. I handed the phone to Mr. Collins, the fire chief, and asked him to try his luck. He explained the situation to my dad and hung up.
In just a few minutes parents started showing up. Frankie’s mom pulled up and honked, and he was allowed to go home with her. Somehow, Jim got out of there too, leaving only five of us to face the music. My dad came in and talked to the chief, and it was determined that we would be charged with “malicious mischief”. (Although we later discovered a loophole in the definition that would have rendered that an inappropriate charge.) My dad cut a deal with them. If we could make the road passable by morning, and then spend the next Saturday picking up trash along the highway, they would drop the charges. An hour or so later we were riding atop two Independence County trucks filled with sawdust back out to the scene of the crime. And it was cold up there.

With square-ended shovels we emptied those two trucks while my dad walked alongside them pointing to places that we needed to cover. We finished sometime in the wee hours of the morning, when my dad told me that I’d better catch a few winks because I was going to school at 8 o’clock.
When we walked in the door at home my mother was sitting there on the steps, weeping because her firstborn had turned out to be a criminal. She’d been on the phone to my girlfriend around 10, trying to find out where I was. Becky kept the secret and, basically, lied, and told her that she didn’t know. Then mom called her back to inform her that I’d called from the jail, and a discussion ensued as to how I ever became a juvenile delinquent. The old man didn’t say anything else. He just went to bed. After I shook my mother I did the same.
School didn’t actually start until around 10 o’clock that next morning. The sawdust had melted the ice, then it froze back over with the sawdust inside it. Cars were stuck all over the hill and half of the guys volunteered to miss the first two periods to push the ones they could up to the dry pavement. A few people with 4-wheel-drives were shuttling back & forth to get the stranded students to class. It was a nice community effort. I was told to report directly to the principal’s office when I arrived. The other six guys were already there, smiling as I walked through the door.
Mr. Cross was not in a good mood that morning. He didn’t offer me any friendly greeting. No coffee. No “How’z the family?” No Pop Tarts. Nothing. I took my seat and he began his presentation, slowly and deliberately.
“I don’t believe that just the seven of you planned and pulled off this entire caper. I, therefore, don’t believe it would be fair of me to expel just the seven of you and allow the other culprits to go unpunished. Tell ya what I’m gonna do…” He stood up and wiped his hand across his face, like he always did when he was frustrated. “…I’m going to give you until 2 o’clock. At that time I want everybody who had anything to do with the planning or execution of this incident assembled in the library. You guys should not have to take the rap for everybody responsible. Now, get out of here.”
As soon as the door shut behind us we all knew what we had to do. We went about spreading the word.
When the 2 o’clock bell rang, Mr. Cross pushed his way into the library. Assembled there was a good eighty percent of the student population. Girls, nerds, boy scout types. Even the typing and bookkeeping teachers. It was heartwarming.
Shoving people aside, he made his way to the center of the big room and looked around with his hands on his hips. A disgusted look on his face. Sort of nodding his head “yes” as he looked sternly around the room into the huge crowd. He began to scream. “I WANT EVERYBODY NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED WITH THIS ICING INCIDENT OUT OF HERE NOW!”
Everybody started to leave, save the seven of us around the table in the middle.
“COME BACK HERE!” he screamed.
Everybody came back.
Cross calmed his voice a little. “If you knew about this plan, or were actively involved in it, then stay. If you didn’t know anything about it, then leave.”
Nobody moved.
He took another long look around the room, doing that nodding thing again. Then he wiped that hand across his face and stormed out the door. It slammed so hard against the outside wall as he threw it open that the glass broke.
“Well,” Larry Jack said, “I guess we can go now”.
We still had to pick up the trash, per the deal my dad had made with the cops, but we didn’t get kicked out of school. For our efforts we made the front page of The Batesville Guard under the title of “Ice Capades.” They didn’t mention our names, because we were minors. But we knew who we were.
Maybe high school wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

GENERATION FACE

2011-09-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was different with you, but when I look back through the stacks of old albums up there on that high shelf in the bedroom closet for pictures of myself when I was young and pretty, here’s what I find:

1. Family photos, in the standard triangle formation. The three kids (baby sister missed out on most of these because she was, let’s say, late for the party) low in the middle, with our parents, centered above us. There’s me, the oldest, in my bowtie and white jacket; my head resembling a peach after the previous shearing by my dad with his fancy electric clippers. My mom always insisted we look “our best” when we had pictures made. I’d argue with her that the pictures should represent what we really looked like, but she didn’t buy that.
2. Photos of just the three kids – exactly like the family photo, but with mom & dad missing.
3. Single photo of me & my bowtie – exactly like the kids photo, but with everybody but me missing. Nice bowtie, Mr. Peach.
4. School pictures. ‘Nuff said.
5. Pictures of my sibs and me, standing in grandma’s front yard. No bowtie, but the tweed jacket and little cap are nice.
6. Pictures whenever somebody got a new car or motorcycle, or a new guitar. Not often.
7. Special occasions: Holidays, weddings, family gatherings, prom, performing at the Water Carnival and riding in the parade.
8. The occasional “candid,” taken mostly within a day or two of somebody buying a new camera.
9. All of them, fading into oblivion.

I don’t think it’s because we were any less vain than the youngsters of today; but money was scarce, and back then, taking pictures cost money. Even if you had a really cool camera, like a Brownie, you had to buy the film. Then once you got those great shots, you had to wind the thing back up into the little canister, fill out the form on the mailing envelope, pay your money for processing, and send it in to Fox Photo. Then, you waited for them to mail it back. Then you threw away the pictures that were no good, which you had to pay for anyway. You pays your money – you takes your chances. Who could afford that?

Then came my foray into the business of professional photography, when I found out that it was even more expensive to develop, enlarge and print my own pictures, especially if I was going to do that “in color.” But that decision was followed in a couple of years by the invention of the 1-hour photo lab, and that kept me going. Suddenly, I was taking pictures of everything. Flowers, ducks, cooling towers, dead snakes…and then my own lit’lin doing all sorts of things that he’d never want anybody to see when he grew up. Even then, it was hard to get a picture of myself, had I wanted one, from behind the camera. So, not too many shots of the young & pretty Rick.

Turn the page to 2011, after the appearance of the digital camera, the cell phone and Facebook. I have young “friends” on Facebook who have posted, for all the world to see, over a thousand pictures of themselves. And they were all taken in the last two years. Granted, they’re young, they’re pretty, and they’re having fun – but, truthfully, once you’ve seen, say, 500 photographs of somebody, doing basically nothing special, the rest start looking the same. I mean, “Here’s me in my red bikini, drinking a beer on Friday,” and “Here’s me in my blue bikini, drinking a beer on Saturday” are not all that distinguishable from each other, particularly when they’re both displaying the same brand of beer. Granted though, they’re all beautiful. And these are just the pictures of the guys. The girls? They’re endless.

Every kid over the age of 10, and many younger, have cell phones with built-in cameras, and a way to instantly throw those out into cyberspace for world-wide perusal. Once you’ve got the equipment, it costs literally nothing to do this. And, as such, the old dinosaur photographer is fading away as fast as the paper and silver halide images in that box in the closet. Who needs to pay somebody else to take their picture when they can just flip through their own camera roll on their phone and find a shot of themselves in every conceivable situation? Here’s one. Use this.

Sure, we old people could to this too, if we wanted. But who wants to see those images?

It’s an age-old story. Every generation worries that those who come later won’t amount to anything. We old fogies may fear that these kids, about to enter the world of adulthood and responsibility, are so spoiled and self-absorbed that they’ll never do anything meaningful with their lives. But that’s their business, isn’t it? Whether or not they take the technology that is available to them and discover new energy sources or how to make seawater drinkable or find a cure for cancer…at least those who follow them into this world will know what they looked like. Every waking moment.

Burning Down the House

2011-07-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

They’d been smelling smoke for a long time. Every once in a while, he’d pull down his reading glasses and look at her over the top of the Wall Street Journal and say “Do you smell something burning?” She’d sniff, briefly, and, as she worked there at the kitchen table on her PTA speech, she’d say “Yeah. I asked you about that last week and you were too busy polishing your guns to pay attention.” He’d pull his glasses back up and bury his nose again in the paper.

Upstairs, the kids had involved themselves in one of those marathon Monopoly games – wheeling and dealing; trying desperately to survive the attempts of their siblings who were determined to score all the multi-colored bank notes and toss the other kids into the abyss of financial ruin. Another house. Another hotel. Rolling the dice. Pass Go; collect $200. Pay your rent! They’d get a whiff of the smoke now and then, but nobody was going to be the first to take their eyes off the board to see what was happening. You can’t trust those other kids to not cheat when you look away. They were busy. Besides, keeping them safe was their parents’ job.

So, the alarm goes off. She slams the greasy frying pan into the sink as he throws down his golf magazine. They run to each other, meeting in the dining room, and scream in unison “I told you something was burning!”

“Well, if you knew there was a fire somewhere, why didn’t you do something about it?” he asks.

“What am I?” is her reply, “The fire marshal? Why didn’t you do something about it?”

As the smoke gets thicker and they feel the heat of the flames about to engulf them they continue to stand toe-to-toe, screaming in each other’s face. There will be a divorce, for sure, and the battle for custody of the kids has begun – here, and now. “No judge would award those kids to you, because you let the house burn down!”

The flames have spread up the curtains, onto the ceiling, exposing the battling parents through the big picture window to the news crews gathering out in the street – arriving even before the fire trucks; even before the sound of the sirens, because these two are so busy fighting over who is to blame that they haven’t bothered to call the fire department. The stairway collapses. Giant, flaming chunks of plaster and timber crash all around the parents, who can be seen through the inferno, each still pointing fingers in the other’s face.

Meantime, upstairs, the kids are rolling the dice; trusting in their parents.

How will this story end? We’re told the answer will come by Tuesday. Who should get custody if the children survive? If the parents survive.

Does either parent deserve to have custody of those children? Would they be better off on their own, having learned everything they know from those self-centered cremains downstairs? Would they be just as well off without them?

Stay tuned. Hopefully, by Tuesday, August 2, you’ll wonder: “What is that crazy Rick rambling about now? They got the fire put out! Everybody’s fine.”

All I’m saying is this: Consider adoption.

© 2011, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com
http://www.TigerEyePubs.com

Sister Sarah's Ride

2011-06-05T10:25:00.001-07:00

Listen my children to an old man’s wailin’
Of the cross-country ride of Sarah Palin.
In two thousand eleven, ‘round the first of June;
Nary a person will forget too soon
Her account of history as her bus goes salin’.

She said to her family, “Let’s get on the bus
And roll ‘cross the country for Liberty,
Paint my name on the side so they’ll all see us
Holdin’ that paper with “The people we.”
Honk once if by highway, two if by net
I’ll look through the window shouting “You bet!”
We’ll look to the heavens and act so surprised
When the lamestream media catches our eyes,
The country folk will still hear it, knowing I’m wise.”

Then she said ‘You Betcha!” and with a muffled roar
The gawdy bus rolled up near the Seabrook Shore.
Just as Mitt Romney was announcing his run,
She stood ‘fore the cameras in the New Hampshire sun,
And spoke, changing history forever more.
T’was gun control was the redcoats’ aim
And the media here had gotten so lame
That the things they had told us way back in school
Was the reason those Liberals were such fools.

Mr. Longfellow, can you ever forgive me?

Why is it that the media can’t leave Sarah Palin alone? Here she is on a nice little donation-supported family vacation, touring the country in a huge bus, wrapped in the American flag and the Declaration of Independence; with her signature painted on the sides in giant letters – you know, incognito – and, still they follow her around asking her the hardball questions. It just doesn’t seem fair, really.

Sister Sarah wasn’t even born until 1964 – way up in Idaho – and was only a baby when her family moved to the country of Alaska. It is absurd, really, that anybody would expect her to know all the intricate little details of American history. It’s those “gotcha” questions, like “Who was Paul Revere?” that have led to her disdain for the lamestream media. And, can we blame her?

It has been a long time. Even most of us who were fans of Mr. Revere couldn’t, on the spur of the moment, recite all the words to “Kicks,” which, in my humble opinion, was the best song they ever did. Oh, sure, there was “Indian Reservation,” aka “Cherokee People,” but, now that we look at it through the tea-colored lenses of history, that was a rather subversive, anti-American song, and Sarah should be applauded for not remembering it.

Even if the good sister would have been born, say, ten years earlier, it would have likely been Mark Lindsay, the heartthrob, she recalled, and not Paul Revere, himself. Such is the nature of history; and if they weren’t so consumed with their desire to mislead the public into the misconception that Sarah is some kind of airhead political celebrity, these pointy-headed elitists in the press would realize this! They’re not so smart. I bet you could take any of them; show them pictures of the bands; and ask “Which one is Jethro Tull?” or “Which one is Lynyrd Skynyrd?” and over half of them would pick the wrong guy in each band.

What I’m trying to say is, sure, rock ‘n roll history is important, and knowledge of it should be considered as part of the qualification for the office of President, but there comes a time when we have to let the really old stuff go. If this attack mode of the press isn’t stopped, sooner or later they’ll start asking questions about Chuck Berry. Do we really want our presidential candidates on TV, easily accessed by our young, impressionable children, reciting the lyrics to “My Ding-a-Ling”?

© 2011, Rick Baber

God, Guns & Glory

2011-04-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

As we creep steadily closer to the 2012 election, new talk and new legislative efforts have come up regarding getting
guns into church and church into schools. I’m wondering: by the transitive property of firearms, does that mean we’ll allow guns in schools?

Personally, I think carrying a hogleg to church is a good idea. For one, it makes the preacher put some real thought into his sermon planning. You don’t want to bore a guy to the point of violence when he’s packin’ a nine. Another good thing is your church can be defended if, on some sunny spring morning, the Huns, for example, attempt to overrun it and take your women. Huns do that kind of thing. The third reason is, of course, that … well, it seems there is no third reason – but those two are apparently good enough for the Arkansas House to pass legislation removing the ban on guns in church, and send it to the Senate. The Senate, apparently infiltrated with Huns, rejected it. For the time-being, anyway.

Now comes the perennial effort to teach The Bible in public schools. In late March, by a 71-16 vote, the brilliant folks in the Arkansas House passed a bill allowing Arkansas schools to offer the Good Book as an elective course in “history.” It’s not “required,” they insist, just making it available if the school wants to offer it. Presumably, some parents pulled their kids from Sunday Schools because they couldn’t take their pistols – on principle – and are now looking to fill that void in their spiritual lives in a tax-supported institution.

There’s a heartwarming little story going around the Internet about a kid wanting to know how God could let some terrible thing happen in his school, and God replies to him “I’m not allowed in your school.” For an instant, it kind of brings a tiny tear to the left hand corner of your right hand eye; but then, if you think about it, you have to wonder how an all-powerful deity – an invisible one at that – could be kept out of the classroom by a sign on the front door that said “No Gods Allowed.” Don’t you? Well, I guess the House doesn’t.

Here’s some more questions: Should the Senate pass this bill, which version of The Bible will be taught in school? I understand there are over 300. What if the school decides they like the Old Testament? Can they go with that? If so, will there follow a religious movement by the students to ban pork chops on the school’s lunch menu? Will the principals, as de facto parents, be compelled to kill disobedient children? What if they selected The Book of Mormon? Could the school administrators opt out of all of the Christian versions of “history” altogether and instead go with The Analects, the Avesta, the Koran, the Talmud, the Tao, the Veda, or The Epic of Gilgamesh? Here’s a good one – Scientology. If a school was to do that, even though the course is not “required,” could we expect some rather heated input from Protestant Christian parents who didn’t want these texts even being offered to their children? I dunno. Just askin’.

Playing Devil’s Advocate here (pun intended), what if, instead of disguising a religious doctrine as “history,” public schools offered a Theology course, in which the kids studied all of the various religions? That certainly wouldn’t leave room for anybody to say that Arkansas was attempting to circumvent the doctrine of Separation of Church & State by recognizing one form of religion as teachable history while ignoring scores of others. And when the children of the Arkansas Legislature are finally restored their God-given right to carry their guns to church and they return to Sunday School (probably none of them go to Saturday School), the fact that they’re also studying Theology in public school, being a completely different subject, shouldn’t have too much of a negative impact upon their “historical” teachings there, or their religious views. Unless, of course they are attracted to something in school to which they have never been previously introduced.

Something tells me this idea isn’t going to be too well received. Hey, I’m just an idea man. I don’t make the rules.

Amen?

© 2011, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

Winter of Discontent

2011-02-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

So long, winter. Buhbbye now! Don’t let the screen door hit you.
What in the wide-wide world of sports was that all about? Twenty below…in Arkansas? Two feet of snow? Are you kidding me?

One day, back in 1983, I pulled a big U-Haul truck into the driveway of our house on State Street and hurriedly loaded up all our earthly belongings, then stood our three-year-old son up in the front seat (it wasn’t dangerous back then, apparently) and mama followed us in the black Lincoln to Springdale. It was only a two hundred mile trip, and we had made it many times before to visit my folks.

A few months later, the three of us were sitting in a McDonalds in Siloam Springs when we looked out the window to see silver dollar snowflakes floating to the ground. She wasn’t particularly happy with me anyway - after moving her away from Batesville, and her family – and by this time we had encountered many domestic battles within the confines of our little duplex across the street from where they parked the chicken trucks. This time, she didn’t raise her voice. She just calmly looked across the table, over the cheeseburgers and the pile of salty fries, and said “You’ve moved me to the end of the world.”

Of course, I laughed. And then she did as well. We weren’t that far from home. Two hundred miles west and only a couple of inches north looking at the road map. Still in the same state, for cryin’ out loud! There was no way this short distance, in the grand scheme of things, could have any effect on the experiences we would have with weather. This was only a badly-timed coincidence.

I believe it was two nights after that, with the snow blanketing everything outside, the three of us, plus Parvo the Boston Terrier, Jinglebell the kitten, and Molly the Cockatiel, huddled in a makeshift tent in front of the living room fireplace to keep warm after the power had gone out. The ambient air temperature was around zero, but the wind was howling, and they told us on the battery-operated radio that the wind chill was in the neighborhood of forty below zero. Just after hearing that, there was a loud roar and I realized we were having a flue fire. I grabbed the folding insurance adjuster ladder and scurried up on the roof to throw snow down the chimney. No way to use the water hose.

That managed to get the fire out, but the black water rolled over the hearth and soaked the floor. Instead of thanking me for saving his duplex, the landlord sent me a bill for replacing the carpet. Sweetheart, he was.

We all survived. And over the last 28 years I’ve used that winter as the standard by which all others are judged. Until now.

There wasn’t much wind with this one, but the actual temperature at our house got down to negative seventeen. There were no power outages – if only because the trees all broke and fell on the lines two years ago, and the two feet of snow was so dry, light and fluffy that it just rolled off the highline wires. But, come on. The same night we hit -17 here, and -30 in one nearby town in Oklahoma, it was only -34 in Antarctica. Antarctica!

This winter hit us on Wednesday. Today is Sunday. My IPod tells me it’s 54 degrees. That’s 71 degrees warmer than it was 4 days ago. The snow has all melted off the streets, at least, and Becky has the window open in the kitchen. No problems so far. No frozen pipes, flue fires or power outages. No landlord to send me bills for replacing carpet. We’ve grown somewhat accustomed to living in Minnesota – but then, I guess pretty much everybody in north Arkansas has.

The worst part of this one, for me at least, is listening to the same tired snarks about “global warming” from all the people who hear the words but really don’t understand the concept. I mean, it’s cute the first dozen or so times you hear it but, like the snow, it gets old pretty quick.

Spring’s a’comin’. I learned my lesson. I won’t be saying we’ll never get that cold again.

For the Birds, Part Two

2011-01-10T21:27:00.000-08:00

You know, some of this stuff, I actually don’t make up. When I saw this one on Mr. Gore’s internet, like most others I’m sure, I thought it was a gag; a ruse; a Saturday Night Live skit…but it wasn’t.

There’s an organization called “People for the American Way” (PAW) who put up a little video on YouTube of a nice lady named Cindy Jacobs making the case that the Blackbird and Drumfish deaths in Arkansas (for which I have coined the term “Avianocalypse,” but may need to revise to “Avianfishocalypse.”) may be God, showing his dissatisfaction regarding the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

As everybody knows, God has always been interested in American politics, and, apparently, not a big fan of red people.

You may ask yourself “What do dead birds and fish have to do with gays openly serving in the military?” And you may say to yourself, “This is not my beautiful fish. And this is not my beautiful blackbird!” And, you may ask yourself, “My God! What have you done?”

All you have to do is view the clip, entitled, “Jacobs: Birds Dying Because of DADT Repeal.” This lady makes such a convincing case that you’ll kick yourself for not figuring it all out sooner.

For example: The birds first fell in a town called Beebe. The governor of Arkansas is named Beebe! Also, “there was something put out of Arkansas…Don’t Ask Don’t Tell…by a former governor, Bill Clinton! And, so, could there be a connection?”
See there? Sends a chill right down your spine, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s like the Kennedy/Lincoln similarity thing! Much better than my UFO theory. I can’t make the connection between UFOs and Arkansas. Then again, I can make a connection, within six degrees, between Kevin Bacon and Arkansas! So, could Kevin Bacon be a murderer of helpless birds and fish? You decide.

Meantime, to expound on this biblical brilliance, let’s just offer up a few more points. Bill Clinton, the first black president, came up with the DADT policy. Bill Clinton was from Arkansas. Barack Obama, the second black president, is the one who repealed it. It was BLACKbirds that rained down on the town of Beebe! Not redbirds. Not bluebirds. Not yellow-bellied sapsuckers. Mike Beebe, the current governor of Arkansas, sits in (probably) the same chair that Bill Clinton sat in (sometimes) when he was governor!

The state in which Bill Clinton was governor, was part of the United States of America, and has a town called Lincoln. Abe Lincoln was also President of the United States and is known for the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he freed the slaves. The slaves, were predominately (you guessed it!) BLACK! Abe Lincoln was from Illinois, where there is a town named Clinton (zip 61313). You add those numbers together and you get 14, a one and a four. Even if you take 61 minus 31 minus 3, you get 27. Two times seven is 14! The phrase “No gays in the military” actually starts with the 14th letter of the alphabet! The video is 2:11 long. That’s 131 seconds. Thirteen plus one is 14.

Now, get this. Ms. Jacobs, in this very same video, refers to the Book of Romans (chapter 1) as the authority by which homosexuality is condemned. What verse? Yep. 27. Two times seven is 14! The number of spaces in “Book of Romans,” including spaces between letters, is 14.

Remember back (up there) when Ms. Jacobs described Bill Clinton as a “former governor”? Count the letters in that!

So, naturally, this being a biblical thing, I looked up the significance of the number 14. Here goes: Jacob worked fourteen years for his uncle Laban in order to be able to marry his daughter Rachel. The first period of seven years he allowed him to take Leah for woman, the older sister of Rachel, and after the second period of seven years, he could finally marry Rachel. And Jacob had of Rachel fourteen sons and grandsons.

I note, Jacob didn’t marry a man. But there’s no mention of blackbirds. So I decided to start with Kevin Bacon, and go the other direction. Too easy. In “Animal House” he played the role of Chip Diller, an Omega pledge who was trampled by the panicking crowd at the end of the movie. In the follow-up, “Where Are They Now” he became a born-again Christian missionary in Africa. Kenya, where Barack Obama was born, is in Africa. Barack Obama repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

I could go on and on, but what more proof do you need?

Explanation for the Birds

2011-01-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

Here’s the first meiosis (I had to look that word up) for 2011: “Last year ended up kinda weird.” Over here in west Arkansas, we had a New Year’s Eve tornado that claimed the lives of 3 people. Three more up in Missouri. Having lived in the Natural State for over half a century, I don’t recall another tornado, ever, into the winter like that.
Then, just before midnight the same night, five thousand blackbirds dropped dead out of the sky in Beebe. A day or so later, it was revealed that 100,000 dead drum fish were discovered in the Arkansas River near Ozark. I’m still not sure as to when, exactly, those fish were supposed to have died.
So far, the Game & Fish has indicated their belief that the fish died from some kind of disease. OK. I guess that makes sense – that there’s some fish malady in the big river that only affects drum. It could happen.
But, this bird thing…it’s a mystery. After first coming out and suggesting that the blackbirds (redwings, most of them) died from the stress of year-end celebratory fireworks - then, perhaps, realizing what a totally ludicrous explanation that was – they’ve now concluded that the cause of death was some sort of blunt force trauma. You think? How high does a blackbird fly? High enough to get a knot on its head after dying, from something, and crashing to the pavement? And, just to add insult to blunt force trauma injury, they’re telling us this birdocide had nothing to do with the croaking of the drum fish. Just a coincidence. Right.
I remember a time, many years ago, when there were so many blackbirds roosting in the pines beside the Arkansas College gym that they had to bring out cannons to try and scare them away. Don’t recall any of them dying from fright, or flying into those pines, breaking their little necks, as they tried to get away. Birds are actually pretty good aviators. And I can’t recollect any 5th of July morning, after an evening when my neighborhood looked and sounded like Duhbyuh’s invasion of Baghdad, that my yard was covered with the little feathered fellers.
At first, I concocted a scenario that the blackbirds, hearing the exploding fireworks, realizing it wasn’t independence day, thought it was the shock and awe of the apocalypse and kamikazied themselves into the ground. Then the fish heard about this. Knowing the river was carrying them in that direction, they all died from anxiety. Drum fish, as everybody knows, are more emotional and socially conscious than, say, trout. They wear their little hearts on their fins.
Then, I remembered the only time I ever saw a bunch of belly-up fish floating on top of the water was back when me ‘n Bob Slisher used to sneak up to the pond around 2 am and toss lit sticks of dynamite in there. From my understanding, that’s because the explosion depletes the water of oxygen. They can’t breathe, and, since they’re not witches, they float.
Coal miners used to keep canaries in cages in the mines. If there was a methane gas leak into the “hole” the gas displaced the oxygen, and the bird dropped over dead – letting the miners know it was time to get out.
So, what do these two things have in common? I dunno. Oxygen? Is it possible that the weather conditons that generated tornadoes on New Year’s Eve, somehow, sucked the oxygen out of the sky, and also out of just the part of the Arkansas River where the drum fish were hanging out? Hey, I’m just asking.
Maybe it a suicide pact between the species? Something to do with that lunar eclipse a while back?
Can you imagine what ancient writers would have penned had they witnessed the moon turning orange, as it did, and then saw this happening?
Personally, I’m hoping that the next phenom around here is mass sightings of UFOs. Ancient Aliens freaks like myself can tie all that together and deduce that the Martians are coming for us, first killing off these critters that they suspect to be threats. It’ll make for a much more interesting story than the birds and fish both eating from some common contaminated food source. And it’ll make more sense than five thousand birds being clubbed by Sarah Palin chasing them down in a helicopter or (duh) flying into trees. And, maybe it’ll boost book sales a little.

© 2011, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com
http://www.TigerEyePubs.com

REALLY FRIENDLY SKIES

2010-12-06T17:14:00.000-08:00

Not many people know this, but I’m actually in the process of working on my 17th million dollars. The first 16 attempts were such abysmal failures that I gave up on them. But, this one…this is a sure thing! Here it is: “Fly Nekkid Airlines.”

Whattaya think? Here’s the copy for the TV ad.

Uncover the beauty of Fly Nekkid Airlines.
At FNA we’ll take the hassle out of air travel. No more invasive, embarrassing X-Rays or being groped by strangers who won’t even buy you a drink first. Strip off! Liberate yourself! And leave the flying to us.

Tired of “Sky Mall”? They won’t let you turn on your cell phone? Bored beyond belief as you sit for hours on the tarmac, waiting only to get your bird in the air? Think of the hours of entertainment you could provide yourself, simply by checking out the “carry on baggage” of the other passengers. Your bird could be in the air before you know it!

Remember the man who recently was arrested for getting a little too “excited” while being frisked by airport security? Well, at Fly Nekkid Airlines, there’ll be none of that. On those cold days at the airport, there’s no penalty for early withdrawal, and never any extra charge for happy endings! We aim to please.

How about standing in those security lines, trying to hold all your luggage, a camera bag, a laptop, cellphone and two $3 bottles of airport water while you attempt to remove those rubber boots you had to buy in New York after the unexpected snowstorm? You simply can’t do it without falling down! Look! Everyone’s laughing! But not here, at FNA. You’ll glide past those angry, garmented travelers with a smile on your face and your boarding ticket in your hand! No dangerous X-Rays. No getting only one shoe back after knowing you put both of them into that plastic tub. Those shoes are packed safely and securely in your luggage, which will arrive, on-time, at your destination – just like your luggage always does with the other airlines.

At FNA, we won’t treat the captain and crew any differently than the passengers. The only exception being that the captain will be allowed to wear a hat, so he’ll have a place to pin the golden FNA wings – to identify him as your pilot.

As an added bonus, Fly Nekkid will have its own rental car service at all the most popular destinations. Your car will be equipped with seat warmers and a special “N” front license plate – indicating to law enforcement that the driver of the car will be in-the-buff, in the event you’re pulled over for some traffic violation.

It’s a long trip. Why put yourself through the ordeal of driving? Twist that little knob – the one above your head. Turn the heat up as high as it will go, close your eyes, and pretend you’re in a sauna for the next three hours. We’ll get you there in style!

At FNA, your comfort and safety are our primary concern! Come fly our really, really, really friendly skies!

Investor inquiries welcome.

(Not responsible for colds, sunburn, rash, transmission of communicable disease or parasites, scuffing, chafing, scraping, scratching, itching, goosebumps or divorce. Fly Nekkid is not for everyone. Ask your doctor if flying nude is safe for you, and call your doctor immediately upon landing if your flight lasts more than four hours. In-flight blankets and pillows provided, as supplies last, for $100 each. No seat changes after boarding pass issued. No riding on another passenger’s lap. Please eat responsibly before boarding. Excessively spicy foods or beans of any form are discouraged. Your credit card will be billed for required seat cleaning.)

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com
http://www.TigerEyePubs.com

RALLY on MAIN STREET

2010-11-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

Hey, why not? Rallies are the rage. Just stick that title on your next multi-level marketing meeting flyer and maybe, this time, somebody will show up.
OK. It ain’t exactly a rally, in the classical sense. More like a BOOK SIGNING for my new novel, “Purity.” It’ll be Saturday, November 20, from noon until 2 pm at the Paper Chase bookstore on Main Street in Batesville. We’re pretty excited, because it’s been forever since we’ve got to come home for more than one night. We’re trying to make it in on Thursday night and maybe do a little jamming with Nick Fudge, Andy Bushmann, Mike Foster, and the boys at some point before we head back Sunday. So, even if you’ve already bought the book, I’m sure Mayfan won’t mind if you’re so inclined as to drop by and say howdy, and I know we’d love to see you. I mean, unless you’re somebody who wants to come bash my skull in with a baseball bat, in which case, did I mention that signing is on Sunday?
Now, about the book…if you haven’t heard of it, well, that’s my fault for not working hard enough to get it noticed. I’m going to print a professional review here, with permission from the writer, to give you a little information you might want in considering whether or not it’s worth your trouble and hard-earned money (not much, it’s a paperback) to want to read the thing. To wit:

PURITY
RICK BABER
ISBN #: 9781453726822-Paperback
Aug 2010
Tiger Eye Publications
http://tigereyepubs.com
Trade Paperback/eBook
$9.95/ $5.95
188 Pages
Fiction/Action Thriller
Rating: 5 Cups

Jeff Davis is definitely not a candidate for Employee of the Month. He is an Insurance Adjuster with a bad attitude. Bored with his job, he routinely does the barest minimum to get by. He also lies through his teeth with creative excuses to his wife, boss and clients. Still, he is positively brilliant when it comes to extraditing himself from sticky situations. He is also unusually witty and generally sarcastic.
Gaylon Crittes is the stepson of the influential right-wing conservative Arkansas State Senator, Thaddeus Pinkley. Gaylon needs for Jeff to approve a rental because his Lincoln Town Car was badly bashed in a fatal accident the previous night. Gaylon is a weird duck and a control freak.
Gaylon quickly becomes unhappy with Jeff’s lackadaisical attitude when Jeff refuses to authorize payment on the rental until he has inspected the damage to the Lincoln. In the meantime, the accident scene becomes a crime scene as some surprising evidence is discovered that could be related to a serial kidnapping case. As Jeff plods through his insurance investigation pressure builds, loyalties are tested, and four innocent lives hang in the balance.
Rarely does a story come along that is so strangely compelling. I was hooked right from the start as Jeff procrastinated, lied, grumbled and complained to himself about practically everything. Yet, I laughed and rapidly flipped the pages almost as if I were right there with him willing him to triumph – an invisible presence captivated by his irreverent, sarcastic humor. Pick up and read this book. Rick Baber knows how to tell a story that is thrilling, funny and both politically and religiously controversial. This one is a winner; I am fervently praying for a sequel.

Laurie
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance & More
(end of review)

Huh? Whattaya think? Pretty cool review? And I didn’t pay ‘em or nuttin’! And I didn’t change anything in the review except for the book’s website address, because it has changed. By the way, that “5 cups” rating is the highest one they give. And I recently learned that the reviewer, Laurie, even won an award there for her review. Which is nice. So, if that sounds like something you might want to read, come on out to the rally – high noon on 11/20. And leave the Louisville Sluggers at home. We’d love to see ya! Really. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if nobody showed up?

Forgive Us Our Debts

2010-10-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

If you need any more proof that “trickle down economics” doesn’t work for the little guy, just look back a little ways to the bailouts of the banks and auto industries. How’d that work out for you? I mean, if you weren’t a bank or an auto company. Tried to borrow any money lately?
Here’s what I, with all my vast economic expertise, said back then: Give the money to the people, and let it trickle up. The gumment could have done that, with the qualification that if the individual who got the money owed it on a mortgage or an auto lien, they had to pay on those first. The end result would have been that the mortgage and auto industries benefited, as well as the individuals who owed the money – because, even if the money wouldn’t have paid off their liens, they would have owed that much less after making the payments. No?
But then we’d have had all these good Americans screaming that was “Socialist.” Of course, it’s not Socialism if the money is given to the corporations. That’s just another step toward the Oligarchy that is our destiny. After all, the corporations call all the shots here anyway. But, at least it’s not Socialism. We couldn’t live with Socialism. Socialism, bad.
Well, since that little plan worked out swimmingly, what do all ya’ll anti-Socialist good American citizens plan to pull the US out of this economic abyss we’re in? Give tax breaks to the big corporations…so they can…pay big bonuses to their top people, while mortgage foreclosures are at an all-time high? People are getting booted out of homes they’ve tried to pay on for years. Others, who can afford their mortgage payments, are walking away from them in what are called “strategic defaults,” because they find it economically impractical to pay more for their property than it’s worth. The Mortgage Bankers Association comes out and chastises those people for walking away from their obligations – belittling them – but, a little investigation by The Daily Show revealed that they, themselves, strategically defaulted on their own mortgage. Yep. They skated away from their bargain $41.3 million mortgage on their headquarters, because they found it was cheaper to rent. Ya think? Go back and re-read that, will you?
I’ve read editorials explaining how following the policies of this “socialist” Democratic Party are going to lead us all to serfdom. Say it again? Do you people know what “serfdom” is? Could you do us the favor of looking it up before you write something like that? When the bigshots (aka the corporations) have outright and total control of everything, and we’re all at their beck and call, what, exactly, would you call that system? Can anybody see us ending up any other way, no matter what party inherits control of the government? I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, or anything, but allow me to submit the idea that we’re well beyond the time to panic.
The solution to this crisis has to be some radical, out-of-the-box new thinking. And I’ve found it, in the form of an early 1900’s plan by an Arkansas visionary named William Hope “Coin” Harvey.
You may not realize this, but they were having some financial difficulties back then, also. Coin’s idea was to forgive all debt, and abolish credit. D’ja get that? Forgive all debt. That means, if you owe somebody something, the slate is wiped clean. You keep your house, or your car, or your boat or your big ol’ flatscreen TV, because it’s in your possession, and you don’t owe any more money on it. If somebody owes you, well, they don’t anymore. Then, we simply start all over, with none of us owing anybody anything, and nobody owing us, without credit.
“But, Rick!” You scream, “You socialist piece of something that can’t be printed here! That’s socialist, and therefore, it must be evil! What about those who are owed more than they owe? They’re getting the short end of the stick.”
You think? You mean, like, the Mortgage Bankers Association? Do you actually know anybody who is owed more than they owe? Do you think they would truly suffer from such an arrangement – say as badly as those millions who are getting tossed out of their homes, living in tents in the woods or in dumpsters behind restaurants where they can scarf up some of the food they throw away? Kind of hard to keep a job when you’re living like that, I’d guess. I mean, the co-worker in the next cubicle probably won’t stand for too many whiffs.
“But, Rick! That’s not fair to me! I’ve worked hard all my life to get all the cool stuff I have, and it’s paid for! Now you’re just going to let all these deadbeats who owe money catch up to me on the ladder to success?”
Poor you. Dig this. Every game has a winner…and an end. Let’s just say you won, and start a new game. Game over. Re-shuffle the deck and let’s see how you do going forward. Don’t worry about remaining ahead of others. There are plenty of people nowadays who don’t have anything, even that they owe for, and you can still look down on them!
Hey, it ain’t my idea. Like I said, it’s radical new thinking from the early 1900’s. I’m just tossing it out there for discussion. Tell me the downside. Try to make it believable.

--------

Book signings for PURITY and DINNER with WT are tentatively set for November 20, a Saturday, at Paper Chase in Batesville. Call them to get your books reserved. We hope to see you there!

Confessions of a Grammar Nazi

2010-10-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

No, you couldn’t tell by reading my column, or my books, or my blog, or anything else I write, but, I guess, I’m a grammar nazi. Reading some Facebook comments following a post by Alyson Low, this revelation hit me like a sack full of mud. I realize I have no right, but I get really irritated by the little things.
The catalyst for the conversation regarded the use of the word “less” in place of the appropriate word, “fewer.” It’s done all the time – even on TV commercials. This particular one was a TV network that advertised “less commercials.” Alyson explained that "Less" is a modifier for singular nouns, not plural ones. I don’t know if that’s how the rule is stated, having been blissfully unconcerned with such matters when I was expected to be learning them, but it sounds right. I’ve always applied my own rule that “less” would be used in reference to something in the abstract – say, “money” – and “fewer” would be used in reference to something more concrete – like, “dollars.” Less intelligence. Fewer brain cells.
Now, because I am so miffed by seemingly insignificant things like this, some would comment, “Rick, your a jerk.” And, this would just cause me to think “My what is a jerk?” See? The word is a contraction, joining the words “you” and “are.” I’m not angry because you called me a jerk. My wife calls me that all the time. I’m angry because you did it wrong. I wouldn’t say “My a jerk.” I’d say “I’m a jerk.”
Then, somebody might come along and write “Rick, you’re right about this, but you’re letting yourself get a little to upset about it.” And that would upset me even more. What does that mean? I’m letting myself get a little…to upset about what? I realize that the “to/too” thingamajig is an easy typo, and not necessarily indicative of the writer’s mastery of the English language, as much as, perhaps, there typing skills, but, when it happens every time it causes me to wonder. My son called me one day and told me I’d made this same mistake in my latest novel. He was right. But THAT was a typo!
Uh huh. Back up there in that last paragraph, I said “there typing skills.” That’s another one I’m seeing run rampant on the pages of Facebook. Just wanted to see if you’d catch it. Typing skillls? Where? Every time I see something like this, I instinctively duck my head, expecting to be whacked on the back of the neck with a ruler by Ms. Pittman or Ms. Felts. No, they didn’t really do that, but those red circles on the pages were probably more painful.
Come on, people! It’s a complicated set of rules, but the concept of adherence to their usage is the reason they’re there. There, there. Don’t be too mad at me for bringing it up to you, two times in the same paragraph. I know you’re aware that it’s your language, too. Truth is, if you simply want to ignore these rules, there are ways you can do it and never get caught. First, you could become a writer. We do it all the time. People who are smart enough to catch the faux pas don’t know if they’re really mistakes, or we’re using creative license – doing it for effect. Or, is that “affect”? Let the editor figure it out.
The second way to avoid this grammatical bondage is to join the texting generation. Do it while you’re driving, and maybe putting on lipstick and talking on your other phone, in a school zone, at 8 am, going 40 mph. You’ll fit right in.

“OMG ur so sweet 2 LMK iv got 2 cops OMT! Luv u 2!”

--------

Book signings for PURITY and DINNER with WT are tentatively set for November 20, a Saturday, at Paper Chase in Batesville. Call them too get you’re books reserved. We hope to see you their!

LABOR DAY REFLECTIONS

2010-09-06T15:42:00.001-07:00

This writing gig is an absolute joy, and it’s often hard to keep from feeling guilty taking money for it. For that reason, I can’t really write about this trade in reference to the Labor Day holiday. It just doesn’t apply. But, I’ve had some jobs in my life, and on this beautiful weekend here in northwest Arkansas, some of them come to mind.

The first job I had, in the 7th grade, was a subcontracting partnership between me & Chris and Rosco King, down at the Dairy Queen on Harrison Street. We picked up trash on the parking lot, way early in the morning, before school.

Following that, we landed some short gigs: working for Paralee Rust at the flower shop; stocking stores; cutting grass – stuff like that. Then, when I was in the 10th grade, we (me & Chris and Randy Tovey) discovered they were looking for some help out at Midwest Lime. I really don’t recall if we came upon that as a result of me dating the electrician’s daughter, or my dad being friends with Y.M. Mack, but there we were, again, independent contractors. Our job was to clean the debris out of the railroad cars (gondolas & hoppers), and plug the holes, so they could be loaded with agricultural lime and rock. As I recall, we were paid $2 per car, which we split between the three of us. They paid us the money whether the cars were empty to start, or half full of metal shavings, iron ore…whatever. From there, all three of us finding we liked being quarry men, expanded to other jobs, like mill operator, truck driver, loader operator, etc. We stayed for years. To this day, when strangers ask me where I grew up, I tell them “Midwest Lime.”

Being that there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to be a rock star (a job running concurrent with the Midwest experience), one day I took off my boots and, per a tip from my father-in-law who left before me, interviewed for a nice, cushy Industrial Engineer Trainee position at Arkansas Technical Industries. I figured the clean-up time after work on Friday nights would be considerably quicker, and I could get to our music gigs without all that white dust in my long, flowing hair. I walked out of that interview and got in a welding truck with James Kelly and rode to Dallas to pick up a single piece of drill steel for Midwest, never giving a thought to the idea that they’d actually hire me. When I got back, I found out that they had.

A year there, and then the layoffs came. The economy in 1974 was about as sweet it is now. But, all I had to do was ask and Mike Low took me back – rock star or no. I don’t think he even really had a job open at the time. Before I took up driving a Payhauler, they’d often find things…anything for me to paint. I painted the whole world gray.

Around ’76, I think, my dad had another friend who was running the Noland Company store out across from the airport, and got me a job there as a “management trainee.” I did a lot of training back in the day. Rock ‘n Roll continued in tandem with that job until I took off to seek a career as an electrician. But the guy we were working for got into it with Guenzel and fired him one day, so a few minutes later I quit and went to hang out with Larry at his apartment. After all, I’d get it all back when our band, Orion, had our first top 40 hit.

Then came the really lean times. Bad as the economy was, I had no concept of what that meant. There were no jobs anywhere, especially for an Arkansas College dropout. I started hanging out at a plumbing supply house on Lawrence Street (having experience with that trade, at least), and ultimately bribed my way into a job there in “outside sales” with six cases of beer. This was notwithstanding the fact that I had absolutely no experience or training in sales, but Kimbrough seemed to be doing OK back at Noland Company, so, I thought, could I. Well, it didn’t take me long to discover that I couldn’t sell a life jacket to a drowning man. Most days, I’d tell them I was going out to call on factories and contractors, then drive up to Ash Flat and shoot pool in a gas station diner until time to come back and clock out. I was in Newark one day and stopped by a little shack on a side street there where somebody told me “they” were hiring for some kind of job on the construction of the Independence Steam Electric Station. An interesting man named Bob Keller interviewed me and hired me, on the spot, to stand under an 80,000 pound hydraulic hammer, under the boom of a crane, and count the number of times it took the hammer to drive metal piles every foot down into the ground…at night. How could I refuse a job like that? Even I could count.

I rode that horse for everything I could, going from position to position within that construction testing company until, about 5 years later, the place was built and there was nothing else to do. And I still wasn’t a rock star. And I applied for emigration to Australia to work more construction jobs. And they told me to take a hike.

Enter the ol’ man again. He talked me into moving to northwest Arkansas and training (once again) to be an insurance adjuster. That was 1983, and I’m still doing that, while I wait to become a rock star.

Maybe all this “real work” does have something to do with my writing after all. They tell me you write about what you know. I’m always finding myself using characters and places and situations I’ve experienced working all those jobs in my books and short stories. And they paid me to work the jobs. And now they pay me to write about them. Is that cool, or what?

Happy Labor Day everybody!

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com
http://www.TigerEyePubs.com

Linking up with the Boys

2010-08-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

Lesson One: Always drop in the shade.

When my young, athletic son called me on Friday morning to ask if I wanted to be the “fourth” early Saturday morning I gave him pretty much the same answer I always do. “Why don’t you call Uncle Beeper. If he can’t make it, I’ll do it.”

That was a pretty safe bet. My brother, the doctor/lawyer, loves to get on the greens, and will jump at just about any opportunity that is presented to do so. With golf being near the top of the list of sports for which I have no apparent ability – such as basketball, football, baseball, ice hockey, tennis, volleyball, motocross, fishing, hunting, jogging, hiking, climbing, camping, wrestling, boxing, curling, bobsledding, billiards and Twister – and considering the fact that the heat index on Saturday was supposed to be something like 180 degrees, I felt comfortable that Beeper would jump at the chance, leaving me to sleep until noon in air-conditioned comfort.

Not the case.

It wasn’t that l’il brother didn’t want to do it. It was just that, like most doctor/lawyers, he didn’t answer his phone, and didn’t get the voice mail until after tee time on Saturday. So, late Friday night, I get the call instructing me to be at The Creeks by 8:45 am.

It’s an odd affliction, but I’m one of those who can’t get to sleep at night if I know I have to get up early in the morning. Five or six hours just seems like such a waste of effort. I dozed off sometime around 3 am. Then, I didn’t go back to bed Saturday morning after my 6 o’clock visit to the little office off the bedroom. There was work to be done.

That started with me digging through unidentifiable rubble in the garage in a frantic search for my clubs. I knew they were in there somewhere, and in about half an hour I found them, on top of one of those broken lawn mowers, underneath the giant orange plastic jack-o-lantern. So I drug the bag out the garage door and took another half hour rolling the cat hair off it with one of those sticky rollers. I’m pretty good at that, at least. Then, I rolled up my tee shirt sleeves and waded back through the junk to find a useable cooler, which took about the same amount of time to locate and clean up.

By the time I had everything loaded up into the car, with it already about 90 degrees, I was exhausted, and sweat was dripping off the end of my nose. But I still had to stop at McAdoodles for gas and ice, so I had to hurry.

I arrived at The Creeks right at 8:39 to find the parking lot full, with the only place to park being in the “overflow” section, down in the gravel lot, facing the first tee box. James and the boys weren’t there yet, but it looked like everybody else in northwest Arkansas was. Great. I love it when I have an audience. It’s so much fun to see them ducking and running for cover.

The boys, all of whom are good golfers, showed up a few minutes before our 9:15. James, being the gentleman he is, took me so neither Brad nor Bennie would have to fight with people playing behind us – or adjacent to us on other fairways. It was about 98 degrees when we teed off.

I’m pleased to report that nobody was killed on the front nine. And I still had a few balls left in my bag. Lesson One was learned by the fifth hole, and, when we went to the club house for some much-needed sustenance before the back nine, I was taking the first step in learning Lesson Two: Beer & Brats for breakfast – not a good idea when the temperature is about the same as my golf score.

Lesson Three: When you have a “thing” about hitting into water traps, don’t play at a place called “The Creeks”.

One week and one day later, I’m finally physically able to type this column.

***

Want to be a PUBLISHED WRITER? Ol’ Uncle Rick is starting up a Publishing Company – “TigerEye Publications.” Catchy, huh? We’re taking submissions for eBooks now. Check my website for details: http://www.rickbaber.com . Please take a look.

***

Late note: Our dear old friend, Ed Huddleston, the Keith Richards of the insurance claims business, formerly of Batesville, passed away this morning (8/8) in Fayetteville. There’ll never be another one like him. May he rest in peace.

Things to do today

2010-07-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

1. Let Batesville Guard readers know that “Purity” is my best book so far, and that a .PDF download can be ordered, really, really cheap at RickBaber.com, using almost any Debit or Credit Card, or PayPal.

2. Work on formatting “Purity” for paperback printing, Ipad and Kindle.

3. Call Pablo to mow the yard again, because I never got around to calling the lawn mower fixer guy.

4. Check with June, next door, to see if she has Pablo’s number. I can’t find it.

5. Buy some sticky notes, so I can leave them on June’s door when she’s not home.

6. Call the lawn mower fixer guy.

7. Look for wallet. Lawn mower fixer guy’s number is in there.

8. Dig through the trash in the car to see if I can find the money to pay Pablo if he just shows up.

9. Clean trash out of car.

10. Buy some bigger trash bags when I go to pick up the sticky notes.

11. Wash $3.29 in green, sticky pennies, nickels and dimes.

12. Buy some dishwashing soap.

13. Gas up the car when I leave, so I can make it to the store to pick up sticky notes, garbage bags and dishwashing soap.

14. Look for wallet again. Check the laundry hamper.

15. Make hide-a-key place outside front door in case I lock myself out again.

16. Add “new stuff at hardware store to fix the door I had to kick in” to shopping list for after finding wallet.

17. Take shower. Pretty hot to be working outside like this.

18. Call Water Company. Tell them I’ll pay the bill as soon as I find my wallet. Ask if they can just turn it back on long enough for me to wash the soap off.

19. Call Dr. Beeper. Ask what’s the best medicine to use for chigger bites. Also, ask
if he knows how ticks know to get in places you can’t reach to pull them off.

19. Find Jeff Foxworthy’s email address

20. Email the following to Jeff Foxworthy: Suggestion: You might be a redneck if you’ve ever mowed your entire yard with a battery-operated weedeater because you couldn’t find your wallet and the illegal alien you wanted to hire to do it for
you saw the trash in your car and caked-up hair, and didn’t think you were the kind of guy he could trust to owe him twenty bucks.

21. Call Microsoft. Ask them how to fix their stupid auto-formatting thingy that automatically numbers things when you list them.

22. Make new list for tomorrow, in case today doesn’t go as smoothly as expected.

* * * * *

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

"PURITY" Download for sale now.

2010-07-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

DON'T LET the shopping cart fool you. You don't have to have a Paypal account to make a purchase. Tell it you don't, and it'll continue to let you use Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover!

This self-publishing thing is gonna be the death of ol' Uncle Buck, I can tell. Still working on the Paperback version(s) of "Purity", and hope to have them in print real soon. Meantime, in keeping with the modern paperless age, I'm making available a .pdf download of the book, which can be ordered here, by clicking on that "Add to Cart" button over there on the right. You pull the download up on your computer and (best) view the page layout in "continuous - facing", and it's just like looking at a book. But no trees are killed for it! Also working on downloads for Ipad and Kindle, and all the other popular reading contraptions, which will be coming soon. THERE IS no automatic download when you make the purchase. I'm notified by PayPal, and then I email the download to you - so be sure to fill in the box showing your email address! Delivery could take up to 24 hours.

Lawn Mowers and Aliens

2010-07-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, this writing stuff takes up a great deal of time that normal people might use to do things like keeping their cars clean and their yards mowed.

John Harris and I used to mow yards, much bigger than the one I have now, for five bucks. Imagine my surprise, after both of my lawn mowers decided they didn’t want to run, when I called my neighbor and asked her what her guy charged. She said she paid him fifty bucks! Fifty! And her yard is even smaller than mine.

Racing against the clock to complete the editing on my novel, “Purity”, and having tried, unsuccessfully, to fix the mowers I had, I saw the dude over at Miss June’s house and went to talk to him. Upon her advice, I just asked what he’d charge to mow the front and side yards (the back’s so horrible I don’t let anybody in there) if I did the weed-eating myself, and when he said he’d do it tomorrow, for twenty, I jumped on it with both feet. Viva la Mexico! Little victories, you know?

That gave me the time to work on the book, and with the huge (and much needed) editing help from the kind and lovely Wenona Edley, from Batesville, all that remains to do on that project is design the cover and get it published.

Purity will split off into two simultaneous sequels, following both the primary and secondary protagonists into different realms, and those books will interact with each other in various places. I’m pretty excited about the possibilities, but it’ll be a while before the sequels are started. For one, I’d like to see if there’s any interest in it. Secondly, I’ve already begun writing a “tween” novel – something very challenging for me, because I’ll have to find a way to replace my normal “Arkansas adjectives” with, let’s say, more intelligent and socially-acceptable words.

I haven’t settled on a title for this one yet, but it’s about two modern-day fifteen year-olds; best friends; one black and one white, who are picked up by an alien space ship near their homes. When the aliens return them to what they believe is the same place they picked them up, there’s a little mistake made, and they’re dumped out of the ship near 1972 Batesville, Arkansas, and their adventure begins.

The plan is to use as many real names, events and places that I can remember, and get away with. At the beginning of the book the boys are given a ride from out near Cushman by my father-in-law, Von Price, and dropped off at Hedges Grocery on the north end of Batesville, where they’re offered help from Harlon and Shirley Martin. From there, once figuring out they’re “not in Kansas anymore”, they start walking toward the lights of town.

Now, I’ve asked around on Facebook for some help with things that went on during football season, 1972, and have thankfully received quite a bit. But, I’ll take all the information I can get about that time – if anybody has anything to contribute. Being stuck here in Chickenopolis, 200 miles from home, it ain’t like I can just drop by the Independence County Library and look through the Guard archives - as much as I’d like to. So, I’m asking anybody who has any info regarding places, events, interesting people, etc. around October, ’72 to drop me a line. Oh, there’s no money involved, of course. But, when you die, on your deathbed, you’ll achieve total consciousness. And I’ll be happy to list your name in the book as a “contributor”.

Meantime, please watch for “Purity” to come to a bookstore near you soon. You can still read the first chapter on rickbaber.com.

Degrees of Integrity

2010-07-05T20:28:00.000-07:00

Upon the occasion of driving the Cherokee Turnpike, at 75 mph, on the way to Tulsa the other day, I got to thinking about a wallet I found a few weeks ago. We were going to the smoke shop over in Siloam Springs to find some cigars for James to celebrate the birth of the twins. There on the road I opened the door and scooped up a long leather billfold and instantly thought “biker”. It just fit the profile, you see.

You have to open them to see who they belong to, so don’t hold it against me that I counted the money. Thirty one bucks. We went into the smoke shop and asked if anybody there knew the dude whose name appeared on the drivers’ license, along with a scary photo. Nobody did. So just as we were walking out to go check it with the casino next door, the clerk said “Hold on a minute.” She disappeared for a moment and then came back and said there was a biker at the drive-thru window asking if anybody had turned in his lost wallet. I walked outside and gave it to the guy. He was thrilled, and said if he had more money he’d give me a reward. Of course, I told him that wasn’t necessary. He thanked me again, cranked the hog, and roared out of the parking lot – back to the campground at the river where he told me he lived. I felt good about being the one who found it, assuming that many other people who did would not have returned it to the rightful owner. Karma, I thought, would surely be smiling on me, so we went on into the casino to test that theory. And Karma gave us both big swift kicks in the butt.

Until making the long, straight drive to Tulsa, I had forgotten about it. But, boredom, you know…

I wondered if the same wallet had contained, say, $3100, would we have been so quick to seek out the owner. Or, what if it was $31,000? I mean, are there degrees of integrity, or is it an absolute? Not knowing the answers to these questions myself, I was quick to pat myself on the back for this minor act of decency. But, maybe Karma did know the answers and was treating me accordingly.

What if there had been a whole bunch of money in that thing and I knew the owner, and it was somebody I didn’t like? What if it belonged to some rich jerk who likes to go around rubbing his wealth in the faces of the have-nots? What if it belonged to Ann Coulter or Osama bin Laden? What would I have done then? Sure, if it was Ann Coulter’s and it had, say, twelve bucks in it, I would have surely returned it, just so she’d know I knew she only had twelve bucks. But, twelve hundred?

If it had been Osama’s, how would I find him? Would he answer a “Lost & Found” ad in the paper? Then, I thought of a way to catch bin Laden. Remind me to tell you about that sometime.

I got to wondering, if biker dude had found my wallet, would he have returned it? That, in itself, didn’t seem to matter. And I didn’t know the guy, so I couldn’t make that judgment. But then I wondered, if I was the guy living at a campground down by the river, would I have the luxury of returning any amount of money I found? If he was to keep it, I wouldn’t hold it against him. But would I hold it against me under the same circumstances?

The miles clicked away, and my mind continued to wander. Karma, it seems, has never really smiled upon me for doing the “right thing”. I mean, not that I noticed. I’ve given rides to stranded strangers, only to go so far out of my way that I ran out of gas before getting home, and had to walk, myself. I’ve given my last five dollars to panhandlers beside the highway and had to skip lunch. I’ve been attacked by vicious turtles after stopping and risking my life to drag them out of the road so they wouldn’t get smashed by a truck. Matter of fact, I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever done anything selfless or generous and been “rewarded” for it, in any recognizable way. And yet, like a dummy, I continue to do stuff like that.

Once, about two in the morning, we picked up a female hitchhiker on Hwy. 412, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. She started telling us stories about working for the drug task force and being taken prisoner by meth dealers and them cutting her breasts off. Really more information than I needed, there on that dark highway with her practically invisible in the back seat. She informed us that her truck had broken down, and her three kids were several miles back, waiting for her to return. I offered to go back and get them, but she said, “They’ll be OK. They have a gun.” I wondered if the youngins had the only firearm the family owned, or if the other one was pointed at the back of my head, and it did tend to make the rest of the trip a tad uncomfortable. But we made it to the house where she said she could “borrow” another car to go back and pick the kids up. The payoff for that one was not sleeping at all that night.

By Saturday I had thought about it all long enough to start mentally composing this column, while driving to Bella Vista to take a photo of a friend. Just about the time I concluded that the self-satisfaction I get from doing “nice things” is worth whatever price I pay, my right rear tire blew out.
.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

Retraction, with a Bonus

2010-06-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve been called out, and I feel the need to defend myself. A visitor to my blog – rickbaber.com – has basically chastised me for abdicating my responsibility as a serious journalist (snort!) in misinforming you, the readers, with my statement that if you voted Democrat in the primaries, you cannot vote for a Republican in the general election. Note that I did not say you couldn’t vote for a Dem if you voted for a Republican in the primaries.

OK. Dude’s right. I didn’t say that outright, but it was heavily implied, and for that I sincerely apologize. What I meant to say was that if you voted for a Republican in the primary, and your candidate lost, you are barred from voting in any election again for the next four years. It’s some little-known bill that was put through Congress without much fanfare. The bright side is that you’re also ineligible for jury duty for the same period, so go ahead and ignore any notices you get from the court to show up.

Be advised that I could also be wrong about this, so you might want some independent verification. My political advisor, Joey, has been known to be almost right almost 92% of the time, so I’m pretty comfortable with it.

On a less serious note, if that is possible, after almost slaving away, almost 92% of my spare time over the last almost nine months, I have completed my third book: a novel, called Purity. If you hung out with me on Facebook, you’d know this. You’d probably be sick of hearing about it. But, if you don’t, you can still go to my aforementioned blog and read the draft of the first chapter, if you are so inclined.

Here’s the “blurb”:

Four young girls have gone missing in Arkansas in the last six months. A fifth is apparently killed in a car accident during her abduction, as is her kidnapper. When insurance adjuster, Jeff Davis, receives a simple assignment to determine if a construction crew working at the scene has any liability for the damages, he stumbles upon a, literally, “out of this world” religious sect’s scheme to save the missing girls from Armageddon. Possible involvement within the investigating sheriff’s department, and beyond, forces Davis to use the limited resources he has available to locate the hostages and return them to their families.

There’s more, involving the whacko religious cult’s belief that the apocalypse is going to be caused by an alien deity when he comes to … well, we don’t want to give too much away. They only allow you about a hundred words for the blurb.

Fair warning. The book is written by…me. That means it is ripe with irreverence and “Arkansas adjectives”. That’s what I like to call them. You may know them as “dirty words” I write what I hear, kid. So, if you are offended by such things, while I’d love to have you as a reader, it might be better if you selected some other manuscript for your perusal.

Presently, the thing is still in the self-editing stage, and I’ve found some wonderful volunteers to put themselves through the gruesome chore of reading it and providing input. Once that is done, we’ll begin the joyful process of looking for a publisher. If you want to have a noticeable impact on the future of the world, you should immediately write your favorite publishing company and ask them why in the world they aren’t calling me about this book.

Having committed this little act of shameless self-promotion, I am off now to warn my Republican neighbors about the unpublished changes in the polling locations for the November election. Seems like I have to do everything around here.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

PURITY by Rick Baber

2010-06-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

The new novel is completed (the writing part, anyway), and now we begin the tedious process of tweaking, editing, and finding a publisher. Some have asked me what it's about. So, here's the "blurb":

Four young girls have gone missing in Arkansas in the last six months. A fifth is apparently killed in a car accident during her abduction, as is her kidnapper. When insurance adjuster, Jeff Davis, receives a simple assignment to determine if a construction crew working at the scene has any liability for the damages, he stumbles upon a, literally, “out of this world” religious sect’s scheme to save the missing girls from Armageddon. Possible involvement within the investigating sheriff’s department, and beyond, forces Davis to use the limited resources he has available to locate the hostages and return them to their families.

Working on the cover art now, and will post it here as soon as developed.

READ CHAPTER ONE by clicking on the link at the top right of this page. See it?

All About Balance

2010-06-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Gather ‘round, chillerins. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Ol’ Rick ain’t as far to the left, politically, as you may believe.

When we – me ‘n mama, the only yellow dogs in all of northwest Arkansas, it seems – were walking across the school parking lot to cast our highly visible votes in the runoff election, we ran into another couple we knew. They, of course, being well-to-do businesspeople, are what you’d call “right-wingers”. So, I had to take a few moments (half hour?) of their time to harass them about…pretty much everything. A discussion ensued that served to entertain the others, passing by, on their way to cast their out of party votes against the candidate (Bill Halter) they figured had the best chance to beat Mr. Boozman in the general election. It got particularly loud when we informed them we’d be pulling the trigger for Halter. I explained to them that Blanche was a little too much like a Republican for me, and that the irony of it all was that, in my opinion, it was she who had the better chance of winning in November. “Why then,” they asked, “would you vote against her in the primary?”

Well, that’s a little convoluted, but let me try to explain.

Say, you have a set of balances with about the same amount of weight on each side. The farther out to each end you place that weight, the more leverage you have to offset the weight on the other end. From my observations, the bulk of the weight on the right end of that balance is teetering there on the edge, just about to fall off, while the weights on the left end are hanging around there on the middle of the tare plate, conforming to ASTM standards, like good little weights. See that? The balance is tipping to the right. All because those weights on the left are too scared, or too comfortable, to get out there on the edge. Some of them, like Blanche Lincoln, are closer to straddling the middle. Sooner or later, if that thing keeps tipping, it’ll be like a see-saw with a fat kid on one end and my skinny little niece, Izzy, on the other. The thing’ll go vertical and Izzy’s going to tumble into that fat kid and both of them are going to fall off.

Somebody’s got to get the nerve to walk closer to that left edge to keep that from happening, and, from all appearances, Blanche Lincoln wasn’t the one to do that. If she was to win the nomination, the scales stay tipped to the right. If Halter, who was willing to set his weight on out there, a little, was by some miracle to win, then the thing at least gets closer to the middle. And little Izzy gets to keep playing.

“But Rick,” you say, “If, by your own calculations, Halter had a lesser chance to beat Boozman, his winning the primary, then losing the election, would take all the weight off the left side, and the balance would go vertical anyway!”

Calculated risk that goes back to that miracle I mentioned.

Halter’s win in the primary, because so many Democrats are ordinary, sensible people without extreme political views, aka “moderates”, really depended upon how many sneaky right-wing Republicans crossed over to vote for him, thereby surrendering their votes in the general election. If he had won, I think, some of the other weights on the balance, seeing him prevail, would have gotten the nerve to step on out there closer to the edge, and level it out – once the absence of weight on the right (those who cannot vote R in the general election) is considered. That would have at least given him a fighting chance. If he wins the GA, then bully for me. If he loses, I don’t think the balance tips that much more with Blanche off the plate.

Ms. Lincoln has stroke. Anti-incumbency or no, it ain’t easy to unseat somebody who has spent a career building power and making friends in high places. Bill Clinton, to name one. Even after giving up the cheeseburger diet, that’s a lot of weight on the new set of balances. Pollsters are already writing her off, based primarily on the anti-incumbency factor and the number of farther-left voters who supported Halter. But not all of those were balance freaks like me. Some of them…many here, I think…were those crossovers, who are not factors in this new equation. She’ll get the balance freaks votes, if we see her scoot over to the left, even just a little.

Prediction: Blanche defeats Boozman in November. Based entirely on the pretzel logic and hopelessly mixed metaphors outlined above. And with crossed fingers.

Now, about Obama and the oil leak. You’ve heard about that? I’m confused on exactly what it is that people expect him to do about it. Best I can tell, most of the rage is in that the government isn’t doing that much to clean up the gulf and the beaches. But wouldn’t that be a little like washing your car before a dust storm? Maybe it’s better to wait on that until they plug the hole. Meantime, if you’re going to be mad at somebody, try the policies that allowed BP to set up that rig with no plan for dealing with a situation like this.

I saw some of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” a while back, and think I’ve figured out how to do it. Stop it up with that fat kid on Izzy’s see-saw.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

Double Trouble

2010-06-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

We got the call at about 10:30 pm on Monday, May 24. I had just gotten back from the grocery store, after suffering a case of late night munchies and picking up an apple pie and, since I was there anyway, a turtle cake. Seems the girls had decided they didn’t want to wait until their scheduled arrival on Thursday. And they didn’t want grampa to be clogging any more arteries for a while.

Maci Paige was the first out, at a little after midnight on Tuesday, followed closely by her little sister, Kennedy Alexis.

I’m not sayin’ that the kids are braniacs, or anything, but Maci, knowing she was first, actually held up the “Number 1” sign for the first picture her dad took of her. Kennedy, destined to be the humanitarian of the brood, showed the “peace” sign in hers. They’re not identical twins, so I haven’t had to get one or both of them tattooed for ID. Maci looks just like James and Kennedy looks just like Megan – the exact opposite of what we thought would happen, based upon their completely different activity in the womb.

They were/are, to say the least, perfect, weighing in at just under 6 pounds each and at 19 & 20 inches. I won’t bore you with the minute details. Not because it wouldn’t be like me to do that, it’s just that I’m not straight yet on all those weights and lengths and stuff.

Mom and dad are doing great, and learning the joys of three-hour feedings, times 2, in between all the diaper changing, etc. We’re trying to let them nest a while, so the twincesses can get used to their new home, but I’ve had to purchase some shackles for Grannie Bec and have some big metal hoops installed in the brick wall on the patio. Fact is, they’re so dang cute, everybody’s playing the lottery now, trying to get rich so they can quit work and sit and stare at them all the time.

They went home from the hospital on Saturday. Sunday, as we were sitting, phone in hand, waiting for the call telling us they needed some help, it came. Meg was finally willing to eat something and requested chicken strips. No problem. We can get chicken strips anywhere. We grabbed the camera and sprinted to the car to make the trip – 12 miles or so – over to their house, after driving by somewhere to pick up the grub.

There were only three cars in front of us at the first drive-thru. But when we got to the window, they politely informed us that they didn’t have chicken strips on the menu. I apologized for the trouble, and told them I’d have to keep driving.

The next place, I was sure, had chicken strips, because I practically lived off of them from that franchise in Little Rock a few years ago. But, whattaya think? Everybody’s gone to Buffalo strips and such, and abandoned the original item. We had to wait for 5 cars in front of us to get that information, after which I excused us and, again, went down the road, in a now desperate search to appease the li’l mama.

We drove another two miles, looking, before finally deciding to turn around and go back to the first place we passed on the way into Bentonville. Viola! Thanks, Zaxby’s.

Now, we’d killed about 35 or 40 minutes. We imagined that the girls, by now, had boyfriends and pierced places and cars of their own, and had hopefully at least been taught to feign an interest in saying hello and goodbye to their grandparents. We missed it! Goofing around, looking for chicken strips! They had grown up and become professional golfers and pop-music stars and business moguls and presidents. We should have pitched a tent in that field about 3 blocks from their house so we could get there faster. We should have had a cooler full of chicken strips and a hotplate in the trunk.

Surprisingly, when we finally got to the house, they were still there, and still just little tadpoles. And mama ate. And we sat holding them, staring, as if we’d never seen babies before. We’ll do it again, as soon as the phone rings.

Sure, their parents have big plans for them. But Grumpa Buck has some of his own. To borrow a theme from Jimmy Buffett: I’m gonna teach ‘em how to cuss; teach ‘em how to fuss; and pull the cork out of a bottle of wine.

Welcome to the world, Maci & Kennedy!

(c) 2010 Rick Baber

Facing Strange Changes

2010-05-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

If you watch TV long enough, any night of the week, early enough for the kids to still be up, you’re likely to see commercials featuring voluptuous young underwear models strutting around wearing barely enough to cover their naughty parts. It’s the kind of stuff for which we used to make fake ID’s and pay good money to see at the movie theater. In the words of Eddie Murphy in “48 Hours”, “TV has changed.”

And then there are some bad changes.

I was speaking with our young office assistant a while back as I was working an insurance claim for a company called “Nottingham”, something or other. Flippantly, I said something about that Sheriff of Nottingham claim.

“Who?” she asked.

“Sheriff of Nottingham”, I said, “You know, like in Robin Hood?”

When the words “Who’s Robin Hood” came out of her mouth I couldn’t believe my ears. But she wasn’t joking. The same girl had never seen “The Big Lebowski” or heard of Cheech & Chong. Three cultural icons, right there. My day was ruined.

She explained that she was a young mommy, and most everything she had to deal with was mommy stuff. That’s understandable. Robin Hood has probably been replaced with something equally as compelling in literature for young people. I didn’t have the nerve to ask her about Tom Sawyer. And maybe the Big Lebowski, and certainly Cheech & Chong, were geared for an older audience. So after a few weeks of that – or more likely my own mortality – wearing on me, I let it go.

Just about the time I was over it, last Wednesday, the wife and I were eating dinner at a local steak place and a young man (maybe 26) we knew from his previous job there, happened to be in the building and sat down to talk with us for a while. We had a nice visit, until, somehow, something was said about fried eggs.

“Fried eggs? What’s that?”

Of course, at first I thought he was kidding, and I laughed. “OK, I know you probably have a healthier diet than us.”

“No,” he said, “Is that like scrambled eggs?”

About to choke on my steak, I patiently explained the concept of fried eggs to him as he listened with genuine interest. On the one hand, I was happy to be expanding the boy’s horizons, such as they were. On the other hand, the letters WTF kept running through my mind. I started flagging over waitresses so I could point at the kid and tell them that this restaurant’s ex-assistant manager didn’t know what fried eggs were, and they all found it mildly amusing. A few minutes later, one of them came back to the table and said “I was telling (let’s say) Brandi about that and she asked me what fried eggs are.”

So I asked her to go get Brandi, and she returned to the table with the (even younger) girl in a couple of minutes. Sure enough, this girl had never heard of them. The young man started explaining the concept to her, using the information I had given him, and their conversation turned in to a series of “Eeeeww!” and “Gross!”, and “You mean that yellow stuff just runs across your plate?”

Compelled to fork out my own eyes, I resisted, if only because that would surely have been more traumatic for these kids than the mental image of some over-easy chicken embryos.

My son is a brilliant and worldly businessman who carries more information in his cell phone than all that I acquired in the first fifty years of my life. He wheels and deals, making multi-million dollar contracts on a daily basis, jetting from one coast to the other with the captains of commerce and industry seemingly in the palm of his hand. He has an inherent understanding of mysteries like “blue tooth” and “4-G” - terms that are completely foreign to me. But he recently asked me where to put the stamp on an envelope. I realized then that he had never had to involve himself with such an archaic method of communication as what we now refer to as “snail mail”. He pays his bills, sends his messages, and does God knows what else, all from that I-phone – in less time than it takes me to text back an answer to the envelope question. But the boy knows The Dude, and he’s actually met Cheech & Chong; and he’s eaten many real American breakfasts. He even knows Robin Hood and Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher, so the past is not completely forgotten, and my spirit is not totally lost.

Now, if I can get him to utilize that information to help me find some tapes for my VCR, me ‘n the missus are going to watch a movie at home tonight….in color.

* * * * *

Here’s an idea for FACEBOOK users. Look up “Digital Arts 1” and sign up as a fan.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

The 4th Amendment Follies

2010-04-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

It’s totally mindblowing (that’s an old 70’s phrase) that so many good Americans are paranoid that the government wants to control them completely, and yet, they support this recent “immigration law” in Arizona.

People are worried about Uncle Sam keeping up with their guns, asking nosey census questions, requiring them to have health insurance and wear seatbelts when they drive their cars. Here in Chickenopolis, where we’ll all be really healthy when we can barter with doctors for poultry, they’re making us inject microchips into our cats – in case there’s some kind of terrorist feline uprising, I guess.

Those are all terrible burdens to put upon white people, who just yearn to breathe free. Everybody knows the white man came to this land, with our slaves and our women, so we could round up all the red people and stick them in Casinoland, strap on our guns, and live the American dream of making boatloads of money so we could get out of paying taxes and get government bailout money. Freedom, man, freedom.

Lately, to protest these all-out assaults on our liberties by our democratically-elected government, some brave patriots - sponsored by a real American TV network - have hung teabags from their ears, painted up misspelled signs, and gathered in large, loud numbers to take our country back…from somebody.

In Arizona, at least, the effort appears to be paying off. For once, the government is picking on somebody besides the white man. They made being an illegal alien against Arizona law. Cops there are now required to stop anybody who looks like they might be an illegal and have them show proof that they’re not. Practically speaking, that means if you have dark skin, hair and eyes it’d be a good idea for you to have some papers on you. You know, like they did those skinny folks in 1940’s Germany.

Now, this isn’t too upsetting for most of us natural-born, blue-eyed citizens because, let’s face it, they’re Mexicans. They’re not entitled to the freedom from government that our ancestors fought the British and the Indians to win for us. If they want that, they can go back to Mexico – if they can get back over the fence. If the legal ones don’t like getting pulled over every time they drive their perfectly detailed cars down Main Street – well, that’s their own fault for not looking like Ken and Barbie.

Surely, once the Arizona government gets away with this, some other state – maybe Utah – won’t decide to do the same thing with Baptists. Here in the south, maybe the doors will be opened up to finally get those black folk back out of our schools….and our states. Sure, they’re legal citizens, most of them, but some could have sneaked in here from Africa or Haiti. Mexico, you know, isn’t the only place people slip in here from. How are we gonna spot those Canadians?

And why stop at nationality or religion? How ‘bout political preference? Blue states can harass out all the right wingers, and vice versa. Maybe Texas can become a whole ‘nother country, just like they’ve always wanted. Gee, it’ll be great!

More later. Now, I have to catch my tomcat and get him in that box so I can take him for his microchip injection – or pay the $150 fine. Funny. He was born in Arkansas. I guess the following language doesn’t apply to cats:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

(c)2010 Rick Baber

* * * * *

Here’s an idea for FACEBOOK users. Look up “Digital Arts 1” and sign up as a fan.

You Tube Moment - Deleted

2010-03-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

Man, ya’ll missed a funny story. I had it all ready to go for Tuesday’s paper, and it got blocked by the subject of the piece, my wife. Seems some of the few folks who got the advance preview convinced her that the column was just so humiliating for her that nobody (besides them, of course) should be allowed to read it.

Humiliating? Do these people know who they’re dealing with? I may not know a lot of stuff, but, let me tell you, I know something about humiliation. One autobiographical story in my first book was called “Golden Shower”. See if you can guess what it was about.

Then, there was another one, in the same book, about a turtle biting me on a place that, polls suggest, 27% of the half of you that have them won’t even admit you have. But, me? I just laid it all out there for the sake of humor and full disclosure. Humiliation is frequently necessary in the pursuit of humor.

By the way, I just made those statistics up.

Probably, the same people who complain that I sometimes go to far are among those laughing the hardest when they’re watching those funniest videos shows and see dad take a plastic bat to his business when Junior swings at the tee. Oh, yeah, that’s funny! Look at him rolling around on the grass, writhing in pain, cursing the day he was born. But, even dad will watch that video, one day when he’s no longer sitting around holding an ice pack, and laugh.

Now, I don’t get out much anymore. I spend about 11 hours a day sitting behind this keyboard, writing reports to insurance companies. OK, occasionally, I’ll squeeze in a little time writing columns like this. Maybe an hour or so on my old guitar, trying in vain to transform myself into Andy Buschman or Tommy Lewis or Danny Dozier or John Baxter. Working on art prints. Facebook. The occasional nap. Let’s make that 16 hours then.

The point is, I’ve just about written up all the stories from the “old days” that won’t get me whooped by the surviving participants. My budding career as a political satirist was snuffed because, apparently, some humorless prudes were “offended” by my less-than-subtle approach. Attack the messenger if you don’t like the message. Word cops.

Certainly, every embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me is in print somewhere. If I’m not getting any new experiences, and I can’t write about things that happen to Becky, and I can’t write the incriminating stories of old, and I can’t write about politics…I’m going to have to quit writing, or get out of the house sometime so I can pick up some new material. That would mean I have to get dressed. In the words of Ron Burgandy and Joe Biden, “That’s an effin’ big deal.” I’m not sure I’m up to it.

My dad told me, way back when I was a youngster, “Never argue politics or religion with people. You cannot win.” But I wasn’t really arguing with people, I was printing it in the paper. And, as everybody knows, if they put it in the paper it has to be true. So how come you people can’t just take what I tell you to the bank, make your deposits, and be done with it? It’s the paper! Believe it! Not like it’s talk radio or something.

That, my friends, leaves me only with the option of writing a satirical column on religion.
So, here goes.

Just kidding. Even I am not that stupid. Now, where did I put those shoes?

* * * * *

Here’s an idea for FACEBOOK users. Look up “Digital Arts 1” and sign up as a fan.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

YouTube Moment

2010-03-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

THIS POST HAS BEEN DELETED.
(Thanx, prudish old ladies with no sense of humor)

SICK BY VANILLA

2010-03-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

Late at night, right around the witching hour, and I’m lying on the couch, watching “My Name is Earl” re-runs, eating something called “Death by Chocolate” directly out of the box. That’s only because I’m a courteous guy and don’t see the need to dirty up an ice cream bowl that would have to be washed. That’s how I roll.

I only wanted a few bites, but after I laid down here and covered up with a blanket the cat got up on my hip, like she always does, and if I disturb her to return this thing to the freezer she’s going to be really ticked. Also, I didn’t notice, until I had consumed the delicious treat, but it’s really cold in here. If I just set it over there on the reachable turtle ottoman, it’s going to melt. It appears that, in the interest of those starving children in China my mom used to tell me about, I’m going to have to eat the whole thing. Couldn’t be more than a quart, I guess. I’m sure it says how big it is, somewhere on here, but in order to read it I’d have to get up to turn on the light. You see my dilemma.

“Death by Chocolate” seems, at least at the moment, to be an appropriate name, but maybe not the best one from an advertising perspective. I mean, if they named a bacon cheeseburger “The Angioplasy”, I might think twice about eating it. I’d probably pass up “Gasping for Breath” cigarettes for something with a more cheerful name…like, I dunno, “ChickMagnet”. You gotta wonder if they pay somebody big bucks to think up these names for them. I could do that. If the cat would let me up to get a note pad.

Speaking (or writing, as it were) of cigarettes, Earl just lit one while Joy was spraying her hair and the fumes ignited and toasted them both pretty good. Then he yelled to Randy to come see, because they looked like a cartoon. Now Joy’s not going to make it to her spokes-modeling job, where she’s supposed to get paid with a hot tub. So Earl’s gotta add getting a hot tub for Joy to his list. Poor guy. It never ends for him.

Getting paid with a hot tub is a pretty good deal. This girl here on this commercial is going to get paid in gum for babysitting. See, that doesn’t sound like a good deal to me, although everybody else on the commercial seems pretty excited about it. But, if the gum was called something like “Root Canal”, it might not be so appealing.

Once, when I was a kid, a bunch of us loaded and hauled hay from that big field down under the viaduct in the hot summer for another kid’s grandpa, thinking we’d get some spending money to take to the movies. When we were finished, he took us out to the

Tastee Freeze on Hwy. 25 and bought us all the ice cream we could eat. They didn’t have “Death by Chocolate” back in those days. It was just plain ol’ vanilla, as I recall. If they would have had it, it might actually have killed us all, and then, they’d really have something to base that ad campaign on. Sitting in pools of our own sweat on the back of that flatbed truck, in 100+ degree heat, you might be surprised to learn, a kid can’t really eat too much ice cream before he gets sick and doesn’t want any more ice cream. They should have called it “Sick by Vanilla”.

But somehow I think grandpa knew that. And he didn’t even have, I can only assume, the advantage of laying on the couch at night, eating stuff to keep it from going bad, watching commercials about somebody clipping the babysitter out of a night’s pay. He just thought it up all on his own.

There! Finished that box before they got to the unappetizing part about Joy’s swollen big toe. I hope those kids in China appreciate my sacrifice.

* * * * *

Here’s an idea for FACEBOOK users. Look up “Digital Arts 1” and sign up as a fan. It’ll mean you’re really cool, and make us look good at the same time. Nobody wants to buy art from somebody who doesn’t have any fans.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

Canine Conspiracy

2010-02-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

One day, about 15 years ago, my son shows up with a cute German Shepherd-looking puppy that he says he & his friend Adam found inside a paper sack in the middle of the road. Being the kind and compassionate kids they were, they couldn’t just leave the poor thing there to get smashed by some road hog, so they brought him to my house and named him Corona.

About three years ago, my son off in the world with a dog of his own, I found old Corona on the back patio, with hip dysplasia so severe that he couldn’t get up, and had to give serious consideration to the idea of putting him down.
But not just yet. I’m the guy who has resurrected dead goldfish. With the help of the Internet and a kindly veterinarian in Batesville, named Suzanne, I concocted a highball of drugs and herbs and had that old feller up and walking around again in about two weeks. He’s deaf as a mule, and half blind, but he still tries to jump up on me at suppertime every night.

After the kid left home, we really started ignoring the pool in the back yard. In the last two years we haven’t even opened it up and it has become a green abyss that would get me arrested if it wasn’t hidden back there by the privacy fence. Until I get it fixed, they tell me I have to keep at least some water in it to keep the whole thing from floating up out of the ground. So the green stuff is about three feet deep on one end.

During the recent freaky cold weather it, of course, froze.

OK. There’s the set-up.

Monday night we still had about three inches of snow on the ground, and the light-colored patio around the abyss was still covered in ice. I’m laying on the couch at about 9:30 pm, waiting for Jon Stewart to come on, and I hear old Corona whimpering out there, sort of like he does when he wants another dog biscuit. But this time it was different. I turned down the TV and could tell that he wasn’t just outside the door, whining softly. He was farther away and yelping like I’ve never heard him do. So I run outside, barefoot in the snow, and there he is, down there at the deep end of the pool, with his head sticking up through the broken ice, hanging on for dear life.

Becky came out and immediately started crying, as I tried to figure out how to get him out of there without getting into that nasty pit myself. He was too far down to reach by leaning over the side. The shallow end was still frozen, but not enough for me to walk on without falling through. I mean, the old dog has been with us for 15 years, but sentiment, when weighed against the fear of typhoid, only goes so far.

I told Becky to talk to him while I ran back through the house to the garage to retrieve my fiberglass stepladder. Without taking time to put any shoes on, for fear that he’d slip beneath the ice and be gone forever, I stuck the ladder down into the deep end, and she held the top to keep it from slipping while I descended to get a hold of him.

Somehow, probably due to adrenaline and frost-bitten feet, I was able to grab him by the nape of the neck and, with one hand, yank his big wooly, stinky 85 pound you-know-what out of there and back onto the patio.

He’s been embarrassed ever since and will only come into the house to eat. We try to make him sleep in the garage, where we can’t get Babykitty to leave, but he simply refuses.

This morning, while I was on Facebook, chatting with Kim Harris, down in Little Rock, I received a Summons, notifying me that he had retained an attorney and was suing me for bodily injury and “other considerations”, due to my gross negligence.

Well, of course, that’s ridiculous. I mean, he’s a resident of the household and, besides that, he was aware of the icy conditions and assumed the risk when he decided to walk so close to the edge. And I can’t help it if he’d rather lay out there in the snow than in front of the electric heater I put right in front of his fluffy soft bed in the garage.

Ingrate.

And, oh yeah, just a while back, James finally admitted that he didn’t really find the dog in a sack – he bailed him out of the pound. So, it is evident he has a record. We’ll see what my lawyer can find out about that. I bet he’s been setting this scam up for the last fifteen years.

I’ve gotta go now. There are 16 pages of interrogatories to complete.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

BLUE MOON RESOLUTIONS

2010-01-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

It was cold at 4 am on New Years day, standing between my car and that Malibu with the annoying red and blue lights, flashing in my face as I blew into the little plastic tube.

“Keep blowing….keep blowing…keep blowing…”

Geesh, dude, whatta ya think I am, a compressor? Put in another quarter!

Only three minutes before this, passing some poor joker they had nailed just beyond the turnoff to XNA, and knowing for sure that this town – only a fraction the size of Mayberry – could only have one cop, I said out loud “Looks like we got a clear shot through Cave Springs!”

Well, no.

I told the guy he was wasting his time. Over the course of the previous nine hours I had consumed maybe 6 cervezas (so I told him 3) and a single glass of celebratory champagne. Granted, at 4 am in Cave Springs, Arkansas, it wasn’t like he had that much else to do. Given the community’s reputation, I assumed he had already stopped everybody else who had driven through there in the past eight hours or so. Surely I was the last one.

So, as I’m standing there in his headlights while he called me in, providing some boring footage for his dash cam, and considering whether or not I should do something to provoke a tasing, for pure entertainment value, I began to worry about my guitar, in there, being affected by the cold. I could have been home by now and moved it to the relative comfort of my living room. I wondered if there was anything else in there that was getting frozen. And, oh, yeah, there was Becky and Martha, freaking out in the car, wondering how they were going to get home when this guy drug me off to the bighouse.

Waiting for him to return my license and registration and insurance card to me, I gazed up into the clear winter sky to see the celebrated “blue moon”. The last one of these things to occur on my birthday (New Year’s Eve), they tell me, was twenty years ago, and the next one will be another twenty. We had discussed this phenomenon earlier in the evening and determined, due to its sheer rarity, that it could only bring about good karma for 2010. For that reason, coupled with the fact that I was stone-cold sober, I wasn’t worried in the least about that anxious cop. This seemed to be the most appropriate moment I could fathom to come up with my New Years Resolutions.

Considering that in the previous 54 years I had never managed to keep a single one of those resolutions, and recalling Einstein’s definition of an idiot, this year I developed a new approach.

I resolve to smoke as many cigarettes and eat as much chocolate as I possibly can. I resolve to leave the three books I have started writing untouched until at least the beginning of next year; to put off updating my arts website; and to try and pile just a few more things into my garage. I will become complacent with the unfinished floor tile in the laundry room and pantry and embrace the appearance of that sludge pit in my back yard that used to be called a swimming pool. I will spend more time lying on the couch watching TV. I resolve to let the fingertips on my left hand go soft and smooth while my guitar collects dust in the corner. I will make every effort to lose as much money as possible on games of chance. I will never, under any circumstances, consider taking up any sort of exercise program.

That should about do it. It’ll take me all year to keep those promises.

For the moment, my quest is to get Martha to her house and make it home without getting stopped again. Then, for the next week or so, explain to my family and friends exactly why I was so stupid as to attempt to drive through Cave Springs at this hour, in any state of sobriety, and not expect to get pulled over.

Just testing the new karma, ya’ll.

© 2010, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

The Big Apple Christmas (parts 1 & 2)

2009-12-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

PART 1

The chillerins dropped word on us, several weeks back, to hold open the dates of December 17 through December 21…as if we ever have anything planned. Naturally, we assumed, given the broad window, that they were concocting some kind of trip. Being the anti-social type that I am, my first hope was that it would be to some remote corner of the country where there were very few people and maybe a lot of sand, cigars, and adult beverages. Maybe some place we could drive to in order to minimize my admittedly irrational hatred of air travel. But that was not how it turned out.

New York City, here we come.

We’ll fly straight from XNA to LaGuardia on Thursday, and by that afternoon, if, as my ol’ grandma used to say, “the Lord’s willin’ and the creeks don’t rise”, me ‘n the missus will be, for the first time in our lives, walking the streets of Manhattan with our big city-loving kids. And there will be other people there also, I assume. Millions of them.

Let me try to illustrate the gravity of this situation. A few weeks ago, James took his momma and me into a Wal-Mart in Bentonville to look at baby stuff (twins on the way in Spring), and, after about 15 minutes of being around those expanded-but-crowded aisles, I had to excuse myself and go sit in the car, and listen to a John Hiatt CD just to calm myself down. I know this is some kind of “condition”, but I swear I don’t know what you call it. Not like I’m afraid of people. Not a phobia. I just don’t like ‘em.

Is that wrong? Ya think?

After having some time to prepare myself, mentally, for this experience, I have come to the conclusion that the kids did the right thing. It is not foreseeable that we would have ever gone to the Big Apple on our own, and when the time comes to write my memoirs – like anybody would give a flying flip – how would I explain the fact that I’d never been to what is arguably the most important city in the world? Besides, I’ve about run out of stories about the other places I’ve been, and there’s gotta be new material there.

And pictures, just looking for somebody to shoot them. Above my desk here is a poster of a famous Bob Gruen photograph of John Lennon, standing, arms folded across his sleeveless white “New York City” shirt, atop the Dakota Hotel, shades on, just staring at me, like “Rick, I’m very disappointed that you haven’t been here!” You know, in a British accent. ‘Cause he was British.

People who go there seem to fall in love with New York the same way I have done with the mountains of Colorado and the Arizona desert and the Pacific Coast Highway and the narrow streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter. So, maybe it’s not such a bad place. Maybe I can put up with the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, for just a few days. Maybe.

And, who knows, maybe I’ll bump into George Costanza, and we can compare paranoien. That’s the plural of “paranoia” – I looked it up. But my spell checker still has a red line under it. Some kind of an anti-columnist conspiracy, I’m sure. Some Mafioso New York cabal attempting to shut down my rant in order to quell disparaging remarks about their precious metropolis. I’ll probably be walking down the street and get snatched up in Spiderman’s web and pistol-whipped by that buddy of Tony Soprano who plays guitar for Bruce Springsteen. Jersey guy, but close enough. After that I’ll probably develop a Bronx accent and a penchant for aftershave.

Whattaya gonna do?

Just to be on the safe side, I’m going to be traveling under an alias: Art Vandelay, importer/exporter. And my entourage can be a small but dedicated group of marine biologists. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.More on the return, youze guys. Maybe with pictures.

PART 2

You people thought I was kidding in the last column, I’m sure, when I told you we’d run into Spiderman when we got to the Big Apple. I gotta admit, even I was a bit surprised when we saw him on the very first night there – considering we were in Manhattan and Spidey lives way over in Queens. But, sure enough, there he was, on 7th Avenue, hanging out with a hot nuts vendor. You should never doubt me on matters such as this.

What I was surprised to find, after thirty years or so of swearing I had lost nothing in New York and therefore had no reason to go there, was that it’s just about the friendliest place I’ve ever been – even on the subway, where a couple of people got up and gave my pregnant daughter-in-law their seat.
No hitches. No problems. Just a good time. I mean, if you don’t consider that top ten blizzard to be an issue.

It was almost dark when we got there on Thursday, so we took off walking (that’s something they do a lot of in NYC) to Times Square and had a late lunch at Bubba Gump’s. There, we met the next pop singing sensation, Jenna Marotta, who took us to task with Forrest Gump trivia while waiting on our table. From there, we strolled through the cold and windy streets over to Rockefeller Plaza to check out the big Christmas tree and ride the psychedelic elevator to the Top of the Rock, and looked down on the lights of Manhattan, about eyeball level with the top of the Empire State Building.

After tromping through the airports and that much walking, preggo-preggo (twins, you know) was ready to crash, so we escorted her back to the hotel and took in the Hard Rock Café for supper.

Day two, Friday, they started talking about the possibility of snow on the Weather Channel. Maybe as much as 5 to 8 inches for the city. But there was still a chance it could miss us. Meanwhile, Miami was getting flooded, and the whole system was pushing north. As luck would have it, we were north, but convinced that thing would rain itself out before it got into the cold weather, we endeavored to persevere. We slept rather late, stopped off for some pizza, then rode the subway to Battery Park where we ferried out to Liberty and Ellis Islands. It was a chilly day, by Arkansas standards, but Lady Liberty was basking in the sun against a clear blue sky. I know it’s an overused word, but it was an awesome sight.

That night, after we’d worn Megan down again, Me ‘n mama and James grabbed some hot dogs at Papaya – a place our limo driver told us not to miss – and then caught a cab to Central Park, where our Turkish driver (never understood his name) and his Clydesdale, Pegasus, took us on a carriage ride through. Of course, it was all lit up with Christmas lights and the short ride would have been great, but Becky had to see Strawberry Fields, so we had to pay extra for the long one. From there, we could see the Dakota Hotel, where John Lennon spent his last days. For you kids, he was a singer, OK?

After the ride, we spent an hour or so at the ESPN Zone, enjoying some warming beverages before heading back to the hotel to pick Meg up for dinner at the Rainbow Grille. Imagine our surprise when we got there and discovered it had been closed down for 8 months. So, having brushed up on our trivia, we went back to Bubba Gump’s, snagged a window seat above Times Square and watched the people down below; and the scrolling marquee across the street, warning of “blizzard conditions” coming our way.

Saturday we slept even later. About noon we walked, as the first snowflakes began to fall, into Hell’s Kitchen for some more pizza. It’s not exactly Manhattan’s main tourist attraction and I think Megan may have looked a little out of place with her high heels and white fur coat and fuzzy white earmuffs. A lady walked up behind us and, thinking perhaps we were lost, told us if we wanted to shop they had this big store called Macy’s just a few blocks over. We thanked her and went on into Mitchel London Foods where, oddly, they sold pizza, burgers, and cupcakes. It was split up into two sections – burgers & cupcakes on one side, and pizza on the other. And run by a Mexican dude, who was so surprised to see us in there that he gave us each a cupcake when we finished our pizza. Mine was like fudge. Best cupcake I ever had. Then the girls did Macy’s while we…didn’t.

Back at the hotel, we got a black cab to take us to Pier 61 at Chelsea, where James had booked a dinner cruise of New York Harbor on the Bateaux. By the time he picked us up in the Denali, the snow was sticking, and we were glad he had agreed to come back for us at 11:30 that night, because if it was going to snow like they said it would, the cabs might have some trouble.

Anticipating some trouble with traffic, and not really having any, we got to the piers early. The driver left. The blizzard started. Waiting for our boat to board, we sat in a restaurant at Pier 59, watching the snow out the window.
When the time came to get on the boat, visibility was down to about two hundred feet. It was a glass boat, but a blanket of snow covered it pretty much completely, so it was nearly impossible to see out. We braved the arctic blizzard a few times to go out onto the deck, but got run off of there a couple of times by the deck hands, shoveling snow. James and I did get to stand out there long enough to (1) freeze half to death, and (2) watch as we went under the Brooklyn Bridge. The snow was coming down so hard when we passed the Statue of Liberty that she could barely be seen. Luckily, we had seen her the day before.

Back at Pier 61, our Denali didn’t show up. We called the hotel and they said they’d get somebody out there, but it didn’t look like they were going to make it. The snow was deep, and the wind was blowing, rocking the sailboats, whipping their flags. We decided to walk out to the street and try our luck at hailing a yellow cab (the black ones aren’t supposed to pick you up unless you call them first), but just before we got there, here came our car – a long stretch Lincoln limo. Perfect for NYC blizzard transportation.

Dude only had to stop a couple of times to wipe snow off his windshield in order to see his way to drive us back to the hotel. And, amazingly, we made it.
It had been a long day, and this old fat man was ready for a good night’s sleep. The weather channel was warning of a thousand flight cancellations from New York. My mom was texting, asking if I thought we would ever get home. My sister texted, suggesting we rent a car and drive home. I texted her back, asking for suggestions on which direction to drive – since the deepest snow was still to our south and west, and there was that ocean out there to the east. The hostile nation of Canada to the north. She told me my nephew, her son, was stuck in DC with three foot snow drifts, and he wished he would have left to go home for Christmas a day earlier. Well, he didn’t. And neither did we. As they say in New York, “Whatta ya gonna do?”

So, we got the girls to bed, and I started to undress to lie there and study the weather channel, but the phone rang. It was James. He hadn’t had enough, and wanted to take our new rubber boots (who knew they had a K-Mart in midtown?) and walk back to Times Square to see what it looked like in a blizzard. My face froze, cracked, and fell onto the sidewalk three times before we got there. It looked cool, all the neon and snow, but there were only a few people, having snowball fights in front of the NYPD building. One car was trying to pull out of a parking spot and the snowdrift tore the front bumper off. He would have kept going had we not beaten on his window and told him. That was just about as much cold excitement as I could stand, so, after shooting some more pictures, we trudged back, getting to our rooms about 1:30 am, just as I was playing off the voicemail from Becky, wondering if she was widowed and stranded alone in the big city. By that time, I had determined that it didn’t make any difference what the Weather Channel had to say about us not getting a flight out. It was what it was.

Sunday morning the snow had all but stopped. It didn’t look that bad. The Avenues were clear and traffic was speeding up and down them as if nothing had happened. 39th Street was still pretty deep and the hot dog vendors were having a time pushing those carts out of the building next door to us where they kept them. Mayor Bloomberg was on TV, telling us they were working on the highways and 6,000 miles of other streets in the city, and offering $12 an hour to anybody who wanted to sign up to help. I thought about it, but only briefly.
Our driver, Victor, who James uses on every trip to New York, showed up like clockwork, and took us on the scenic route, through Queens, to LaGuardia. There were a few minor glitches with security and an icy plane, but nothing worth mentioning. All in all, again, it was a fabulous trip. And, amazed as I am to say it, I will go back.

One thing about the trip home: Flight Attendant Jo, on American Airlines, will be Googling to see her name in print, so there it is. She has flown for 16 years and never seen a UFO. I think she’s lying.

Every story has a moral, and here’s what I learned on this trip. There isn’t a more diverse city than New York anywhere in the world. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, black, white, brown, and yellow. Put twenty people in a room and you’re liable to hear 10 or more languages. And they all seem to put up with each other. Maybe oblivious to each other but, still, in harmony.
In the spirit of the season, here’s hoping the rest of the world can catch up to them.

© 2009, Rick Baberhttp://www.rickbaber.com/

RING OF FIRE

2009-10-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

As a disclaimer, I should mention that many of the things we did “back in the day” were done before the creation of the word “stupidity” (look it up) and prior to the establishment of law & order in the territory of Arkansas. Matter of fact, should the statute of limitations on any of those acts, somehow, still be in effect, and any spunky young police officer decides to open up some “cold case” files, let me state emphatically that all of my stories are works of fiction from the overactive imagination of a semi-old man who, if truth were known, can’t remember by supper time what he had for lunch.

So, now that you kids have all those cool things to occupy your time like video games and blue tooth and 3G networks (whatever those are), you don’t have to resort to extreme acts of idiocy, like we did before the invention of electricity, to entertain yourselves. And, if you should decide to anyway, be advised that you could end up in jail or, like, dead, man.

It should also be noted that the wild bunch walking and riding the streets of Batesville in the late 60’s and early 70’s was a mere collection of wanna-bes, just trying to live up to the notoriety of those legendary ones who came before us. We didn’t think up The Great Ice Capades of 1971. We stole the idea from some older guys and were dumb enough to get caught trying to pull it off.

I could rattle off a long list of names of those older guys, dating back to the fathers of some of my friends, but, even though many of them have passed on, the truth is, I’m still afraid of them.

This story takes place in 1967, I think. Have I told you this? Stop me if I have. Directly across the street from my family’s house on Harrison Street, if you don’t count Chubby Menard’s house there between us, was Central Elementary School. Back on the west end of that property was the old school building. It seems like it was three or four stories tall – but you know how everything from your early years seems so much bigger. From the time we moved to Batesville, after the new school was built, this one was locked up and used only, I guess, for storage. The only thing I know for sure it was used for was to shield some of those 8th graders from the nosey Mr. Johnson and his meddlesome teaching staff when they wanted to have a nice relaxing smoke at recess.

One night that old building caught fire. For whatever reason, the fire department decided to just let it burn. And, man, did it burn! For days and days.

It was on one of those days that Chris’ sister, Pam, and one of her friends – Betty or Bim or Patti or Mary Jo, I can’t recall which – remembered that there was some paint stored in there that they desperately needed. The Newport game was coming up and they had to paint them some streets. So they told us they’d give us some ridiculously insignificant amount of money to go into that burning building and retrieve that paint for them. Well, we weren’t fools, so we held them up for twice the amount, maybe four bucks or so, before agreeing to their terms.
Making this short story somewhat shorter, I can attest to the fact that we both survived that expedition, maybe with some burned shirtsleeves, although I can’t recall whether or not we ever got paid.

It didn’t, at the time, seem to be any big deal. It was, after all, a rock building and we knew the walls would stay up – like those chimneys you see out in country fields.

On that same night I was sitting on the merry-go-round, watching the inferno before my mom yelled out the front door for me to come home and eat supper. I walked fifty yards or so before hearing the thunderous crash.

When I turned to look, that merry-go-round I was just sitting on had disappeared under the massive front rock wall.

But the streets got painted. Way to go Pam!

TWINKIE TAX

2009-09-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

In that corner, you got your “seven deadly sins”. This is a list of bad stuff people do, thought by many to be listed in the Bible, but it isn’t. The list was actually compiled by Pope Gregory, sometime around 600 AD. Nonetheless, it has become part of Christian doctrine and, well, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Over here, you’ve got a government, with lots of expenses, that needs to figure out ways to get “we the people” to give them more of the money that they actually print for us to use. Seems like they could just print some for themselves, but they don’t, so we just have to deal with the situation as we find it.

They get their money by taxing the people earning it. You get some, and then you take a little off the top…OK, quite a bit off the top…and send it to Uncle Sam. They take that and, after a good chunk going to administration costs, provide military protection, police, fire departments, road construction, and all kinds of good things that we need to function as a civilization. While many will argue that tax rates are too high, it is generally agreed that the concept of taxation is about the best way anybody can think of for a government to provide essential services to its populace. So, with that said, tax is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Sin Taxes” have been around for just about as long as taxes themselves. Sometimes the government decides that too many people are doing something they really shouldn’t be doing, but, rather than making that activity illegal, they put a tax on it. If that many people are participating, it must be fun. Why stop them, when you could just profit from it? Alcohol comes to mind. They tried to outlaw that once, but the people wouldn’t stand for it. So they came up with a better plan – heavy taxes. They even did the same thing with marijuana in the 1930’s and, more recently, with cigarettes. What more perfect vehicle for collecting tax revenue than addictive or habit-forming substances? Made to order for any cash-strapped bureaucracy.

Cigarettes have always been bad for people. But it has been only in the past decade or so that huge numbers of anti-smoking groups and citizenry have stepped up and made smoking truly socially unacceptable. Uncle Sam sees the polls, and grabs the opportunity to raise taxes on smokes, knowing he won’t get too much resistance from the people. It worked beautifully. Smokers keep smoking – albeit standing out in the rain, away from the decent folk – and those government coffers keep ringing it up.

Apparently, and as had been predicted by many of us not long ago, the cigarette tax increase worked so well that now they’re looking for other handy ways to raise revenue. Yard sales are just so much trouble. Enter now that list of “Seven Deadly Sins”.

Let’s take it from the top.

“Pride”. Well, Pope Gregory must have been having a bad day when he came up with that one. We encourage pride in our society. Dress nice. Mow your yard. Wash your car. Americans aren’t going to sit still for taxes on pride. Skip this one.

“Greed”. The people with all the money, and thereby, all of the power, are obviously convinced that they already pay way too much in taxes. Just ask them. So, while this is a good sin to tax according to most of the people, it probably won’t happen.

“Envy”. Seriously? How can you put a tax on envy?

“Wrath”. We have penalties for wrath – imprisonment. They don’t pay those guys much for making license plates. Not much of a tax base there.

"Lust”.“ Here’s an idea. But it may be a little hard to enforce, requiring participants to be on the honor system. Maybe it could be extrapolated to include pornography, which seems to have some correlation to lust. The 2006 pornography revenue in the U.S. alone was over $13 billion. That’s more than the revenue of ABC, CBS, and NBC combined. Let’s put this one on the “later” list.

“Gluttony”. Yes! Here you go! With all the concern about health care costs, and all the stats pointing to diet as the main reason Americans are a bunch of fat, out-of-shape couch potatoes, this sin is the number one candidate to collect the big bucks that will bail out Uncle Sam, pay off China, and make us all live long enough to see that “lust” tax imposed on down the road. So, what do we start with? Soda pop! Everybody drinks soda pop! It’s a no-brainer. Next, French Fries. Because, no matter what you order at that drive-thru, you’re going to get fries with it. Potatoes are bad. Potatoes are evil. It was potatoes that brought down Dan Quayle, if you’ll recall. The best thing about this category is that it is virtually endless. Think of the possibilities. Donuts, Twinkies, pork ribs, bacon, cheese, everything in a Grand Slam breakfast. By the time we get through taxing everything in the gluttony category, lust will probably be obsolete anyway. And people can’t argue with it. After all, it is one of the seven deadly sins. It’s in the Bible! The next thing you know, jack-booted storm troopers will be kicking down our doors, scaring our kids and ransacking our houses, looking for that stash of goodies we’re brave enough to bring out only late at night, after Colbert goes off. Patriots, one & all, we’ll declare at that moment, “You can have my twinkie when you pry it from my cold, dead lips!” And that, friends, is what they will do, because once Pandora’s box is opened, it cannot be shut.

“Sloth”. What the heck is “sloth”, anyway? Who cares? We’ve already collected enough off tater tots to render it inconsequential. Go ahead and do all the sloth you want. It’ll never cost you a dime in taxes. And, if it ain’t taxes, you won’t mind spending it.
The door is opening. Last call. Drink up, grab your twinkies, and run.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

INDOctriNATION

2009-09-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness the likes of Glenn Beck and other
great American patriots have warned us about the vast
communist-nazi-Nigerian conspiracy being waged upon
us by Barack Obama and his minions. Without these
ominous warnings, simple-minded people such as myself
would have taken this president at face value, and never
done any serious investigative reporting…like this.

You have heard, no doubt, of subliminal messaging – where your ears and eyes are hearing and seeing one thing, but your brain is registering something else. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways but two simple ones are by transmitting audio signals in a frequency that can be detected by the brain, but not recognized by the ears. Visually, images can flash on a screen so fast that, while you don’t realize you’re seeing them, you do, and they go straight to your memory.

This, my friends, is what this so-called president has planned for your impressionable school children in the “talk” he wants to give them the day after Labor Day. Probably, by the time you read this, it will be too late, because I have only just acquired this privileged information. But, thanks to those aforementioned patriots, and some really sharp school boards, many of those children will have been saved from this indoctrination.

Curious as to what was in this speech, I got online and requested a copy from the White House. Somebody screwed up and sent me a copy of the Master Speech – which includes the subliminal messages that will appear – shown in parentheses. Of course, space limitations preclude me from printing the entire speech, but just this first part will illustrate what was planned for the kids. To wit:

“The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? (FLASH picture of Obama, holding hands with Jesus) I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade.

I’m glad you all could join us today. (AUDIO: Do drugs. Rebel against your parents.)
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous.(AUDIO: The black children are your superiors. Submit to the black children.) I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go.(FLASH picture of half-naked spring-breakers, partying in Cancun) And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.(AUDIO: You can stay in bed all you want if your parents will vote for Democrats.)

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school (AUDIO: Plant drugs on the rich kids and call the police). So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning. (FLASH picture of sleepy young children watching a pole dance.)

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster." (AUDIO: Mail your lunch money to me at the White House.)

Fast forward.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.(AUDIO: Serve Obama. Obama is your only hope.) Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. (AUDIO: If your parents are against Obama they are demons who must be dealt with.)

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. (AUDIO: Taxes are good. Support higher taxes.)”

OK. That’s enough. You get the message. The point is, if you ignored the warnings and allowed your kids to watch the president’s speech, you should get them to de-programming as soon as possible. Just tune into your local AM radio station to find out how.

Also, keep in mind that the Swine Flu vaccine is a CIA-developed serum that will make you succumb to the will of the president, vote to make Nigeria the 51st state, and legalize marijuana and gay marriage.

You’re welcome.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

SOMETHING FISHY WITH WHITE RIVER

2009-09-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

The pictures my niece emailed of Lock & Dam 1 early
this week at first seemed like some kind of Photoshop
trickery, perpetrated perhaps by Clayton Cavaness –
sitting before his computer screen in a dark office,
stroking his chin, laughing under his breath.

The dam was certainly recognizable in the photos, and
there was the lock in the background, the big rocks
below that middle spillway. I could even see Josie’s
back there in one of them, so I know it was the right
place. All that was missing was a little thing I like to
call the White River.

There was only a trickle of water below the dam, that appeared to be coming from underneath it. A couple of dudes were standing out there fishing, and not even getting their feet wet.

Over the years, I’ve seen the river down low enough that one could walk out across the top of the dam. Have done it myself on occasion. But never so low that the top of the dam was completely dry. Have ya’ll?

What’s up?

I posted the question on Facebook and got some interesting, though unbelievable answers. Consensus was that it had something to do with heavy rains in the spring and a lot of generating going on at the dams upstream. I guess they made more electricity than they had room for, so they had to just shut ‘er down and keep all that water in the lakes. Scuze me? If memory serves me, the definition of a lake has something to do with water coming in someplace and going out someplace else. Did somebody put the stopper in way upstream, keeping the water out of the lake? If not, how does all that water running in there keep from spilling over the dam and finding its way down to Batesville?

No, I think there’s something else going on. They’ve held water back in the lake lots of times. I’ve known that river since 1966, and I’ve never seen it that dry.

Once, when it was very low, Magouyrk’s grandpa told him it burned in half upstream. That makes more sense to me than that phony generator story, Diane! What if there’s a hole in the bottom up there somewhere and all the water’s going underground? It could happen! What if one day we woke up and the river was gone?

I’m fascinated with wondering what might be found in that dry river bed, above the dam, in “Lake Unico”. Somewhere in there are at least three engagement rings I heard stores about years ago. A few motorcycles. An alarming number of fire extinguishers that I probably shouldn’t mention. At least one Abbey Road 8-track with a broken tape. Some personal entertainment items ripped off from those yankee frat boys at Arkansas College who thought it would be a cute idea to string piano wire across the motorcycle trails in the woods, about neck high, to keep some bothersome “townies” from waking them up at all hours with loud pipes. So I heard.

If it didn’t float over the dam, there should be the remains of a big metal cooler full of adult beverages I threw in there very early one Saturday morning at the end of a long night’s detective work Rick Reed and I were conducting – but that’s another story. Possibly a 14 ft. flat bottom boat that an unnamed accomplice (some might guess) and myself stole one night in the slough. Well, let’s say “borrowed”. We took it back to where we found it, but it disappeared shortly after that. I’ve often wondered if maybe we didn’t pull it up on the bank far enough and it broke loose and drifted into the river. But we were in a hurry to get back to my house and sneak in the bedroom window before my mom woke up and found us gone.

I wonder what else is down there. White River Monster?

Let’s hope they turn the faucet back on soon and we never find out. Some things are better left a mystery.

© 2009, Rick Baberhttp://www.rickbaber.com

Tell you 'bout Machine Gun Kelly

2009-08-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

What I’m going to do now is let you in on what is
apparently one of the most well-guarded secrets in
American politics. Ready?

Democrats don’t want to take your guns away.

Somehow, bolstered by people with right wing agendas,
the myth that Dems, if left to their own devices, will
one day kick down your doors and confiscate all of your
huntin’ rifles, has been allowed to run wild. And, in
typical Democrat fashion, nobody has just stepped up
and made the announcement that this just ain’t going to happen. It seems that the powers that be in the Democratic Party hear craziness like this, sometimes early on, but, assuming that the masses have better sense than to fall for it, they just let it go. That’s foolish – assuming the masses have better sense, I mean.

Well, what kind of position does one have to hold in the Democratic Party to officially deny this one? I mean, will I do? You can tell I’m a real Democrat, because I refer to the Democratic Party, and not the “Democrat Party”. I’ve got “O, yes we did” stickers on my cars. I created them myself. Got a long history of malicious verbal & written attacks on the loyal opposition. Have generated countless letters to the editors, and even more emails & blog rebuttals, scolding me for my tacky, often-unwarranted badmouthing of those who espouse typically rightwing views. A yeller dawg, if you will, with an indisputable resume written on re-cycled paper. And I’ve got a bunch of guns in there in my closet, and a small cannon on the headboard of my bed. What’s more, I have lots of friends (though not many where I live, here in Republicanland) who vote for Democrats and have even more firearms than I do. Nobody I know straps them on and wears them to go to the mall or take the kids to play in the park.

Nobody’s going to kick our doors down and take our guns. The difference between us and those self-proclaimed 2nd Amendment advocates who are carrying firearms to town hall meetings on healthcare is that we’re not falling for the load of crap being put forth by people who simply want to disrupt these meetings and distract from the otherwise civil dialogue that should be taking place there. One of the differences, anyway.

Let me say that I honestly believe most of these people believe their second amendment rights are being threatened. They’ve been told this by more devious people with hypnotic powers and broader political agendas, who know that these gullible ones will act up, and by doing so further spread the word. The myth. And, it’s always cool to get on TV. But, if you’ll notice, you never see Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn

Beck, or the cast of Fox News packing heat at any of the events they attend. They leave that little task to their minions.

The argument that one brings a gun to an event such as this simply because they have the right to do so doesn’t really wash.. OK. You have the right. Nobody has said anything to the contrary, especially here, where the topic is healthcare. But why do it?

What do you suppose would happen to a “First Amendment advocate” who showed up at some GOP-sponsored town hall concerning, say, prayer in school, who stood up during the discussion and started shouting all of those words George Carlin made famous for not being mentionable on TV? Over & over. Just kept on shouting. Is that freedom of speech? Does that guy, however idiotic, have a constitutional right to do that? Well, probably so. But that wouldn’t keep him from being tasered, bro, and dragged out of there by his ears. Probably arrested. Convicted, for whatever charges they could make stick. Or, maybe, even shot by that guy with the 9 strapped on his hip. Would it?

It is not “patriotic” to cause additional work and concern for law enforcement officials who are there to perform their already-difficult jobs. Why do they hate cops? Just a suggestion, but maybe instead of a sub-machine gun, these patriots could carry a little flag.

Well, of course, they’re not going to pay attention to any suggestion made by me, because carrying a flag would be contrary to their true purpose. And that wouldn’t’ get them on TV. But, these gun-toters should know that, as more & more of them show up at these events, they’re going to become less newsworthy, and eventually rendered insignificant. The only way to be sure to make the news is to, somehow, stand out in that crowd. Try this. Ignore those red and green laser dots you see occasionally appearing on your chest. Reach down there, un-strap that bad boy and pull it out of the holster. If you find yourself still breathing, shoot it up in the air like the real cowboys did in Dodge City.

Now you’re on the news!

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

Here's to your Health

2009-08-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

Watching the Healthcare Town Hall Riots on TV, it’s
pretty obvious that there is a fair number of people in
this country that think such things are too important to
be left to the government. They could be right. What’s
the government ever done for the citizens? Everybody
knows, here in our capitalistic society, that it is private
enterprise that truly cares about the people.

Matter of fact, I’d go so far as to say that the only reason
for a national government at all should be to protect our
borders and print money. So, while we’re keeping that
meddlesome uncle out of our examining rooms, let’s get serious about this and kick ‘em out of all the other activities they seem to want to get their greedy hands into.

Food inspection comes to mind. What business does Big Brother have dictating to us what kinds of bacteria and such goes into our vittles? If a man raises hogs in garbage and a few folks get sick & die from eating his bacon, the market will determine whether or not that hog farmer stays in business. If people don’t want to get sick eating that pork, then they’ll quit buying it from that guy, and he’ll go out of business. Simple as that. Then, when he doesn’t have any form of income, he’ll be forced to get a decent job, because we’re kicking the Gov out of the unemployment business too.

If Mr. Pigfarmer can’t find another job (because there will be lots of people looking), he can become a thief, or a robber, or just shrivel up and expire before we let the government give him food stamps or welfare. He should have run an honest pig farm to begin with, and, frankly, we’re better off without him. His demise will further discourage other pig farmers from making people sick with their tainted pork chops.

Now, what becomes of his wife & kids? Well, they get off their spoiled fat ham hocks and get out there and get themselves some jobs too. It’s for their own good. If they were to get sick they’re going to have to pay whatever the going rate is for medical care, or they’re going to find themselves taking untimely dirt naps. Unless, of course, they turn to lives of crime to pay for their meds.

There’s another matter. Why should our hard-earned tax dollars go to pay the salaries and expenses of government-dole jobs like firemen and cops? Every house in America has a faucet and access to a water hose. If you want extra protection, hire somebody to stand outside and come runnin’ when you call. Maybe the rest of us don’t care if the place burns down. So why should we pay for your piece of mind? And why should a big tough guy pitch in to pay some cop to keep you frail little weasels from getting beat up by roving gangs of disgruntled, unemployed, mad cow-infected thugs? You’ve got a good

job, working for that private healthcare insurer who made billions in profits last year. You can afford your own personal bodyguards. That pig farmer’s oldest boy is a big ol’ strappin’ corn-fed lad, and I guarantee you he’ll work cheap.

Speaking of “cheap”, what’s the big deal about this “minimum wage” law? If Mr. Pig’s younger kids are willing to clean your jack boots and sew the cute little armbands on your brown uniforms for a dollar a day, then the gub’ment’s got no business telling you that you have to pay them more. They don’t know anything about running a business.

Am I right about this?

Sure I am. We all know it. This great country was built on rugged individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit, and nowhere in our rich history is there any record of the evil entity we call “government” doing anything of any benefit to we, the people. All they want to do is control us. You know, like they do with “laws” and “courts”. And the irony is, they charge us (via taxes) to pay for this. Why do we need the government to create and administer laws and run the courts? Surely, those are pursuits that some corporation, having only our best interests at heart, would be willing to undertake for a reasonable fee. Then, when they convict the accused, they can sentence them to hard labor in their sister company’s prison, or “draft” them into their other sister company’s army to fight our wars for us. What bigger and more serious business is there than war? You want to leave that in the bumbling hands of those bureaucrats in Washington? I think not!

We know for a fact that there are companies out there willing to pay pretty good wages to their employees do our warring. In his wisdom, our last president tried to utilize this service to cut down on the taxpayer expense to the lesser-paid “government” military. Of course he was stopped by the same socialists who are trying to suck up healthcare and every other should-be private enterprise into some kind of massive federal takeover of pretty much everything.

Finally, I also agree with the crack political team on The Daily Show that these “Death Panels” proposed by our Nigerian-born President should be made up of corporate citizens, rather than government employees. This way, we’ll be sure to get the best available people to decide which grandmas are the least likely to purchase the goods and services that made this the greatest county in the world, and pull the plugs on the right folk.

We’re on the righteous track, people! Keep yelling and screaming and pretending you’re total nimrods, and don’t allow anybody who wants to change this perfect healthcare system we have any opportunity to present their “rational” explanations. The good book warned us about the tree of knowledge. If we realize we’re naked, the next thing you know, the government will be wanting to clothe us. We don’t want none of that ‘round here.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

POINT of ORDER

2009-08-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen that TV show “To Catch a Predator”?

Sure you have. It’s the “Dateline NBC” specials with
Chris Hansen, where they have these online fake teenie-
boppers set up old pervs who cruise the Internet looking
for young victims to help them fulfill their twisted carnal
fantasies. Apparently there are a lot more of those guys
than any of us might like to think.

Some decoy gets on a chat room and hooks up with the
sicko, and convinces him that they are, say, a 13 year old
girl who is willing and ready to do unspeakable things
with just any old fat guy that they have never even met. It just so happens that her parents are away for the weekend, and the “kid” eventually sets up an appointment time for the guy to come to her house and play. When he gets there, Chris Hansen pops out and, in entertaining fashion, informs the guy that his intentions are all on film and broadcast on national TV. So, whatever kind of life the predator had is ultimately toast. But that’s not the end of it – because when the pervert walks out of the house he is immediately nabbed by a bunch of cops, handcuffed, and hauled off to the pokey, where he can experience somebody else’s fantasy.

The whole concept seems like pure justice to me, because there is no doubt as to the intentions of these men. But I cannot help but to wonder how any of this is legal, and I cannot fathom how all of them aren’t acquitted using an “entrapment” defense.

Let’s be clear. I’m not defending these guys. If it was me, and if it wasn’t against the law to devise such a plan, I’d have something more violent and illegal waiting for them when they walked into this set-up. And when, or if, they walked out, they would no longer possess the equipment required to conduct the activities they have in mind. But, sooner or later, it would be me that ended up in jail, because even in nabbing criminals there are some laws that have to be followed.

It’s just that when I get a question like this in my head, I can’t rest until I get some kind of satisfactory answer.

First of all, these aren’t really even kids. They are adults, posing as kids. So the culprit, even though he thinks he is, isn’t even communicating with somebody under-age. When he gets to the house he is invited in by the decoy, who is, in fact, an adult. There aren’t even any kids in the house. Can you arrest and imprison somebody for what they are thinking?

What about those wackos on HBO who dress themselves or their partners up in diapers and play with rattles and lollipops when they…you know…do what they do? What goes on in their heads has to be some kind of a crime. But you don’t see them getting dragged off barefooted to the big house in their little bonnets.

Here’s another analogy. You don’t like the jerk who lives down the street. You know he’s inclined to smoke a little weed now and then, and you come up with a plan to sell him some and get him popped. (Who’s the jerk?) You arrange a meeting where you have several cops and videographers hiding in the bushes; meet him there; and exchange a plastic bag of oregano mixed with cat litter for a hundred bucks. As soon as the exchange is made, six cops jump out and slam him to the ground, and load him up into the paddy wagon.

That guy thought he was buying marijuana, which, as you may know, is illegal. But he purchased cooking spice (and whatever cat litter is), which are not. Did he commit an actual crime? Will he end up in jail for it?

How ‘bout this one? There has been just too much speeding on the local by-pass. Somehow, law enforcement manages to get all your automobiles and tamper with the speedometers – setting them so that they register 15 mph faster than the car is actually traveling. You’re zipping down the interstate at what you think is 80 miles an hour, but you are, in fact, going only 65, on a 70 mph highway. Clearly, your intention is to speed. Lawbreaker! Which little box is going to be checked on that ticket? Can you be fined?

Or this. Say you’ve been making enemies of the wrong people, and you have discovered that one of them plans to (gulp!) assassinate you. Through some clever means you manage to set up a “Blazing Saddles” sort of fake scene out in the desert. Sitting there in a rocking chair is a spitting-image plastic replica of you, reading the latest Harry Potter book. Up in the rocks, two hundred yards away, the sniper is looking through a high- powered scope. The little laser dot appears on your head and the assassin squeezes the trigger. Boom! The cops jump out of their hiding places and drag the shooter down. What is he arrested for? Murder? Attempted murder? Destruction of private property?

This is fun, and I could go on with these scenarios all day. I won’t. Just hoping here that some legal scholars out there will think this over (for free) and let me know their thoughts concerning how this “perverted justice” bunch makes the charges stick on these astonishingly stupid would-be child predators.

Then I can find something else to wonder about.

© 2009, Rick Baberhttp://www.rickbaber.com

REWRITING HISTORY

2009-07-29T12:34:00.000-07:00

What do you take with you (speaking metaphorically) on
your journey through this life? Most people, I think, don’t
want the additional baggage of the bad memories, so they
use the available storage space for the good ones. And
generally, there’s only room for the best of those.

I tend to be a packrat – never throwing anything out unless
there is just absolutely no place to put it. If you don’t
believe that, please take a look in my garage. Tools, for
example, scattered all over the place. There are cases
for some of them, and as I try to put the sockets back
into their corresponding slots, there are times that I mix them up. “Metrics” in the “SAE”
box, and visa versa. They look alike. It is an easy mistake to make.

It isn’t the packrats, like me, that have the neatest and most organized tool boxes. It is those guys that keep only the best and most useful of the things they have accumulated.

History, you know, isn’t necessarily what has happened in the past. It is simply what somebody wrote down about what happened in the past. It could be an accurate record. It could be embellished to fit the particular needs or whims of the author. Or, it could be completely false. Historians, like the late-great Wilson Powell, and his contemporary, Larry Stroud, I imagine, always had really organized garages. They research, and write accurate records of things gone by. When they do that, you can generally take it to the bank.

Not me, OK?

I’m just shooting from the hip here – trying to get the toolboxes cleaned up before somebody trips over something and sues me.

After my last column about the Landers Theater becoming a church, an epic conversation was generated via email and Facebook, wherein I discovered that I am not the only packrat in the world. This is a good thing. To paraphrase Judge Smails, “The world needs packrats, too!”

It all started when Janice (Martin) Price (SHS ’68), my sister-in-law, called me to ask if maybe I had my bouncers’ names mixed up. She thought the person I described was “George”, and not “Clyde”, as I had written.

No sooner than the words had left her mouth, I realized she was right. It was indeed George I had seen in my mind’s eye, chomping on that unlit cigar. I immediately posted a sort of retraction on Facebook, and the replies started rolling in, reassuring me that there were many others out there who carry on seemingly insignificant items when they travel. So maybe they’re not so insignificant after all.

In the discussion, it was resolved that previous to George, there was a bouncer named Claude at the Landers. Being insolent teenagers, we called him “Clyde”, just to make him mad. When George came along, for the same reason, we called him “Clyde.” So, for history’s sake, I’d like to correct that point.

Now, whether or not that is accurate will have to be a matter left for the real historians. The noteworthy thing, to me, is that so many people thought the Landers Theater was an important-enough part of their lives to take it 35 to 40 years down the road with them. I think that’s fantastic.

My BHS 1973 classmates, Ceil (Glenn) Smith and Dianne (May) Thomas were there to set me straight. They hadn’t forgotten. Another classmate, Steven Gillihan, all the way from his pulpit in Colorado, came to my defense, planting the seed in the conversation that we might have just made up our own names for people back in those days. He remembered, even after leaving for college, living all over the Midwest, and ending up (so far) as a preacher in Arvada, Colorado. And Ol’ Curt Wainwright, way down yonder in Saraland, Alabama, who has been there, pretty much, since a week after graduation day, 1973, had recollection of the sticky floors being patrolled by “Clyde”, and thought perhaps Bill Milum and Tommy Dodd were the only people who managed to sneak in the back door without getting caught. He must have forgotten about Gillihan, I guess. Lots of other memories that I’ll have to save for my next book.

And there were those upper classfolk, whose reminiscences of the place go farther back than mine. Gary Humphries (class of ’68), joined the Air Force in 1970 and spent some time in Alaska before finally settling down in Indianapolis a decade ago. But the cold up there didn’t freeze from his mind the fact that the Landers had curtained windows between the theater and the lobby, where us smokers could do our thing and not miss any of the movie. Matter of fact, I remember making RJ Reynolds rich while Becky (’71) sat alone watching “Gone with the Wind”. Then, Dana (Bone) Teichart (’71) had some ideas on where to look for those “naked lady” lights that used to hang on the walls inside.

Mine wasn’t the last class to remember roaming the dark aisles either. There were the youngsters like Barbara (Bruce) Rivera and Rene Montgomery (’75), Nancy (Sturch) Weaver (’76), Bob Wallis (’77), and even Heather Jeffries from the class of 1991 – a quarter century after “Hump” stood back there peeking through the curtains. They all had their comments to make, because the place and the people associated with it meant something to them.

Now, if any of you “accuracy freaks” find mistakes with any of those names or classes, take it up with the historians. My point is simply that any place important enough for the smallest details to be burned into people’s minds, so far down the road, deserves some sort of tribute – and while I promise this will be the last of it, this is mine.

Claude, Clyde, George. What does it matter? They knew who they were. No matter what we called them, we knew who they were, too. They were a big part of Batesville’s history. And they won’t be forgotten.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

Landers Theater Gets Religion

2009-07-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

During a quick trip home to Batesville over the weekend,
finding it necessary to make the 300 mile drive from
Westside to over near Newark, where the entire city has
apparently decided to relocate, me ‘n mama took our
customary vehicular stroll down Main Street on the way
back – just to get a look.

Imagine our surprise when we saw the gutted remains of
the Landers Theater, and a sign there proclaiming it to
be the location of a new church.

My first words to Becky were that this should not happen, because so much sinnin’ had taken place inside that building. I know this, because I was responsible for much of it, myself.

In 1967, about a week after moving to town and temporarily residing in the American Motor Inn, my folks determined it might help alleviate some of our Blytheville blues if they took my sister and brother and I to the movies. For whatever reason, they decided to take us to the Landers instead of the more… respectable Melba Theater down the street. I don’t really recall whether or not we actually stayed for the movie. All I remember is that I learned instantly that this was the place a young teen wanted to be on a Friday night in Batesville – the closest thing to the wild west this kid had ever seen.

Within a few weeks my parents rented a house on Harrison Street and one-by-one I was introduced to the guys in the neighborhood: James Milum, Chris Magouyrk, Kevin Bowie, and Randy Magar. It wasn’t long after that we would meet early on Friday nights in the Central Elementary School yard and walk to the Landers, where we’d put up our (as I recall) 35 cents and have our weekly adventure.

Once inside this cultural melting pot, I was actually able to meet and interact with kids from the other schools – Westside and Eastside. This was something that was just not done in Blytheville, and it opened up a whole new world. And the most amazing part of this experience what that there, inside that dark theater, were girls who were looking for adventures of their own. How cool was that?

Even the wild west had its sheriffs. Stealthily walking the aisles of the Landers was a large, flashlight-totin’, cigar-chewin’ mountain of a man named Clyde, who was charged with the awesome responsibility of attempting to assure the few people inside who actually wanted to watch the movie that they would be able to do so. It would be many years before I was able to appreciate the difficulty of this man’s job, but I learned the power of the flashlight very quickly.

Blinded by the light, the first time I heard his famous words, “You wanna leave the show?”, I had no idea what that meant. Kevin explained to me that, although we had paid our thirty five cents, this man had the authority to toss us out onto the street if he determined that we were not behaving properly – which, of course, we never were. So, each of us ultimately found ourselves sitting on the curb, waiting for the others to get bounced before we walked around town long enough so that we didn’t have to tell our parents that we got kicked out of “the show”.

Once, on Halloween, we even landed a job at the theater. They were showing some scary movie, and management thought it would be a cool idea to have guys dressed up like monsters run down the aisles and scare people. We put on our costumes upstairs in the projection room, and they opened up the projector to charge these illuminated, glow in the dark get-ups with the bright light. Then, in the most intense part of the movie, we attempted to run down the side aisles and freak everybody out. It seemed like fun when they explained it to us, but we weren’t considering the fact that there were a hundred other guys like us in that audience, and I think some of them knew we were coming. Maybe all of them knew we were coming, because, no sooner than we started through the doors, we were dogpiled and beaten within inches of our young lives as we fought and clawed our ways down to the emergency exits to escape.

We only took that job once.

Older now, after healing up and having a car and a girlfriend, no, a wife, of my own, me ‘n Bec and David & Tammy took in an “owl show” one night that offered up some new surprises. Apparently, they hadn’t screened the movie very well and it turned out to be something that, in the day, would have been more appropriately shown with an 8mm projector in the back room of a warehouse. From the very first scene, it was obvious that this wasn’t the typical late night movie in Batesville. But, sitting close to the front, there was no way we were going to walk back up that aisle to leave, facing everybody on our way out. It wasn’t that dark. We decided to wait it out and blend in with the crowd when the credits were showing, before the lights came up.

Of course David, being David, found much humor in the situation, and took the opportunity to introduce Becky to the ol’ pickle in the popcorn trick during one of the more poignant scenes. Well, yes, she screamed, drawing the attention of everybody in the theater to us. Now, we knew, they were all going to try to see who we were when this thing ended. But determined that we had a foolproof plan, we stuck to it.

Who knew? At the end of the movie, apparently realizing that since nobody had ever heard of any of these “actors”, there was no need to show the credits, the screen just went blank and the house lights popped on, full force. With all four of us scratching our foreheads walking out, trying in vain to conceal our faces, there at the top of the ramp, cigar stub in this mouth, grinning wildly, was Clyde.

“Well, Becky Price!” he said. “Does your mama know where you are?”

Somehow, she never found out.

Hallelujah!

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

The OBX SEA MONSTER INCIDENT

2009-06-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This is a story derived from the Into Focus column, expanded to become part of the next printing of my book, "Dinner With WT", as one of a few bonus stories. It is much more meaningful within the context of the rest of the book - which can be purchased from the publisher:
http://www.synergebooks.com. Please check 'em out if you get time!
-r

THE OBX SEA MONSTER INCIDENT

There’s something about the persistence of the ocean that’s inspirational. Maybe that’s why so many famous people come from or live on one coast or another.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is kind of a different place. In the spring of 2008, me ‘n mama took a few days to travel down to that part of Dixie, shoot a beach wedding at Nag’s Head, and seek out some lighthouse photos for our art prints. I don’t want to jinx anything – writing this from the beginning of the trip home at the Norfolk, Virginia airport, attracting much unwanted attention from other travelers – but the journey down here went about as well as one who hates to fly could expect….up until “the incident”.

You may not be aware of this, but for what it’s worth, there are no turtles mentioned in the Bible. That’s because they are such vicious and violent creatures that God booted them out of Heaven and condemned them to roam the earth for all eternity, you know, like Cain, in Kung Fu, carrying their houses on their backs. When the books of the Bible were written, the authors were so terrified of these creatures that they dared not even mention them.

For the record, I don’t really know whether or not that’s true. Actually, I may have just made it up. But that seems to make sense to me. Especially now.

Anyhow, we’re driving down Highway 12 toward Bodie Island, and I have to swerve to miss what I first thought was a dead Rottweiler in the road. As I passed it, I could tell it was what we call an alligator snapper – the biggest turtle I’ve ever actually seen outside a zoo. It didn’t appear to have been hit, so I pulled the car over and got out to go move it out of the road. The closer I got, the bigger that rascal appeared. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it had a head about the same size as that of a Boston Terrier.

Notwithstanding my unfortunate experience with WT, back in the early 90’s, my affection for reptiles, particularly turtles, remained with me. I had convinced myself that bad things sometimes happen, and sometimes nobody is to blame. The thought of leaving this big fella in the road to likely be hit, and possibly even injured, by some speeding tourist was unacceptable. Besides, I imagined, anything short of a Hummer hitting this guy at more than 50 mph was going to be totaled. So I pulled off into the tall grass beside the road and hiked back, while Becky sat in the rental car, leaning over the back seat watching me through the rear glass and laughing, to do what I could about getting him off the road.

As I walked toward him, of course, I thought about WT. And I thought of the giant sea turtle that tripped me with her big front flipper as I wandered Satellite Beach in Florida - in the middle of the night - because it was too damn dark to see it there in the sand burying it’s eggs, because the Florida Turtle Cops wouldn’t allow me to take a flashlight. They didn’t want to freak out the turtles. Freak out the turtles! For a moment, that time, lying face-down in the sand in total darkness, I considered the possibility that I was going to become a meal. It literally scared the shit out of me. But I survived. Possibly because the odor ruined big mama’s appetite and she said “to hell with burying these eggs”, and split. It’s a survival mechanism.

My vast experience with turtles has taught me better than to try to pick this big one up off the highway – as if I possessed the strength to do that - but I wanted to get a picture before I did anything. As I walked up to it, a local schoolboy, maybe 12, came up behind me with a sucker in his mouth.

“I wouldn’t get too close to him if I was you.” He warned.

“No.” I said. “I’m gonna get him to bite this stick and I’ll drag him out of the road.

“You better get a bigger stick”, he said.

Smartass. I resisted the urge to ask this little turd if he had ever lugged this guy’s cousin around by the beanbag for several hours.

A school bus already had traffic backed up southbound, and a van had the northbound traffic stopped. The bus driver was standing just inside the door, chatting with another stopped motorist, and about 30 kids were hanging out the bus windows. I could see this turning into an impromptu learning experience that they’d all be talking about when they got back to school on Monday. Here I am, making an impression on the impressionable young ones.

“Be careful”, the kid said, “These ones can jump.”

OK. I was glad the kid was trying to help, but what does some youngster know about turtles that I haven’t learned in a half century of intense study?

“Yeah. Thanks, kid”, I said, “I think this’ll do fine. I got this.”

So I stuck the stick down by the turtle’s head and he lunged at it, coming up about three feet off the ground. That was about two feet short of how high I jumped, screeching like a girl.

“These ones right here, you gotta get ‘em by the tail and drag ‘em.” The boy continued, without even saying “I told you so”.

Both of those lines of traffic, including that busload of impressionable children, were sitting there, watching, patiently waiting for me to move this monster from the road. I didn’t want to disappoint them, but, after seeing that thing jump, I was … (what’s the word?)….scared! Flashbacks. Beads of sweat dripping down my forehead and cascading off my nose. But I had to look cool…and brave…for the children.

So I hauled off and kicked him (the turtle, not the kid) in the ass. Then he pushed himself up, like a dog, and slowly walked off the road. Almost.

There was still just about enough of him in the highway to flip a car, and my conscience battled for a moment or two with my fear before I decided to give it one last heroic effort. As I approached the beast I was interrupted once again by the know-it-all Carolina kid.

“You might wanna tuck that string in,” he said, “He might think that’s a big worm or somethin’!”

He was referring to the white drawstring hanging from the front of my kahki hiking shorts.

I walked on up beside Goliath.

“Kid”, I asked, “Don’t you have to be getting on home? I think I hear your mama calling. Hear that?” I put my hand up behind my ear.

The kid threw his arms out to his side, like he was tired of explaining something to an imbecile. “I’m just sayin’, they eat eels and snakes and…”

I didn’t hear the rest. Goliath’s massive head had shot forward and to the side and his huge jaws had opened and snatched my shorts, strings and all, right between my legs. Of course. As quickly as he had lunged, he retracted back into his shell, dragging me down by the crotch toward him. I laid across this shell, front to back, with my face being beaten by his smelly tail, like a windshield wiper across my nose, as the monster raised up and took off galloping into the woods toward the Atlantic Ocean.

Through all the fear and pain, my curiosity won out, and my first thought was about how high off the ground I was and how fast he was moving. The Carolina kid and the big yellow bus and all the horrified school kids were getting smaller and smaller as the turtle banged my ass into trees on his journey, not able to see where he was going because my little friend was in his mouth and even his eyes weren’t as wide as my body. Aside from the trees, it was a relatively smooth ride. Like air shocks. And after I regained some of my composure I realized that what he had locked in his mouth was mostly a big wad of pants, and just a little bit of wiener, which popped free just before the Carolina kid disappeared from my sight, looking down, shaking his head. Four or five men were running behind us, losing ground, carrying sticks and screaming.

We broke through the tree line and into the high weeds at the top of the beach and then started down through the sand toward the water. My confidence that this fresh water animal wouldn’t carry me down into the sea rapidly diminished. He wasn’t slowing down. I could hear the waves crashing against the shore and I smelled the salt air as this gargantuan brute carried me toward my aquatic grave. In all the scenarios I had concocted over the years, I never imagined it would end like this. It was just about then that the button popped loose on my shorts, and an idea was born. With my eight seconds completed, many times over, I quickly began to wiggle out of my pants to free myself, without regard to the fact that, here on the beach I found no reason this morning to put on underwear.

Just as we came upon the wet packed sand I freed myself from my khakis and flipped over the turtle’s tail, landing prostrate - face down again among the crustaceans and assorted dead things from the ocean – ecstatic to be alive. And the monster took my pants to Atlantis. Then a wave rolled in between my legs and reminded me that there were witnesses to this rather odd event. Many, many witnesses.

I rolled to my side and, there it was, Bodie Island Lighthouse. I shook my head to clear my eyes and I could see tourists up there with telephoto cameras, pointed at me. Then, it sounded like every Saturday at the Little League park when I heard the laughter and chattering of children. I placed my chin into the sand and looked back up the shoreline, and here came all those school kids, and the bus driver, and the motorists from Highway 12. And, like a guy who had just wrecked a bicycle, I jumped up to prove to them I wasn’t hurt. That’s when the park security people tackled me back to the ground and threw a jacket over my exposed nether regions.

The Carolina kid strolled up within inches of my head, with just enough breath left to say “I wouldn’t lay down there with them crabs with no pants on.”

**********

The next day was Friday, and already the story had made the tabloids around Nags Head, complete with amazing pictures. By today, Sunday, when we arrived here at the airport, the Norfolk paper had picked it up. And wouldn’t you know, there are a lot of flight delays. People have nothing else to do but read the paper, and recognize me, and point and laugh.

A few of them even have the nerve to walk right up to me and ask “How’s the family jewels?”

And I do not hesitate to answer.

“Yummy. Want a taste?”

© 2009, Rick Baber

FACEBOOK VIRUS-updated

2009-06-08T20:48:00.000-07:00

I picked up a virus, called Koobface, on Facebook. Trying to figure out how to get back in. Now that I have (I hope) removed the virus from my computer, I seem to be locked out of Facebook.
Here's a tip, DON'T OPEN ANY VIDEOS ANYBODY SENDS YOU ON FACEBOOK! Especially if they come from me. I understand this thing will attach itself to my "friends" list, and send invitations, etc. on my behalf, and infect the computers of those who open them.

My goal in life, at this point, is to track down the malicious pigshit little bastards who created this menace and torture them an additional 48 hours after they beg me to kill them. Slime-sucking little bags of festering shit, they are.

Meantime, if you have found this website. And you're not a malicious little bastard hacker, please feel free to communicate with me here.

UPDATE: I don't know how, but I managed to log back onto Facebook today. Maybe they got my e-mails... Anyway, I hooked up with an old (44 years ago) friend there, so that's cool. I guess the hackers can breathe another day.

POWERBALL LOTTO POOL

2009-05-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

Tired as shit of working for a living, I'm gonna start up a Powerball Lotto Pool. I think I'll call it "Uncle Buck's Powerball Pool #1". Looking for 30 to 50 members willing to invest $5 per week for an equal share of any winnings. Will do Saturday nite drawings only, because, like I said, I don't want to have to work for a living. I'll be working (see, what I mean?) on drawing up the agreement between members. Leave me your e-mail address here if you're interested. I'll be in touch.

Teabagging Texans' Treasonous Talk

2009-04-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

Whew!

I’ve been looking for a valid excuse to use the term
“Teabagging Texans” ever since a trip to Dallas I took
with James Kelley in August of 1974 in that un-air
conditioned welding truck to pick up a piece of drill steel.

As Arkies, we weren’t treated very well. I should say,
“I” wasn’t treated very well. James had the worldliness
and maturity to keep his mouth shut when being insulted
by the Texicans, but, being a kid of 19, I had not acquired
that ability. All that stuff about marrying sisters and not owning shoes from those smug rednecks just rubbed me the wrong way. Of course I “owned” shoes. It was just too damn hot to wear them in that truck, in Texas, in August.

The capper, I suppose, was when we stopped at a gas station, to pay them good Arkansas money for filling up the truck, and that cow-loving three-toothed attendant growled “We don’t need your Arkansas trash here” as I carried the soft drink cans and potato chip bags from the floorboard to put in the receptacle, conveniently located there between the pumps – apparently missing the “Texans Only” sign.

When I walked briskly toward the duck-tailed greaser, screaming all the obscenities I had learned growing up in a rock quarry (a rich vocabulary that remains with me to this day), Ol’ Eli grabbed me by my flowing blonde locks, flung me back into the truck and kicked the door shut. I had no problem messing with the Texan, but I wasn’t going to tangle with Kelley.

As the years went by, I don’t recall a single good thing that ever happened to me in the Republic of Texas. The only time I was ever “bumped” from an airplane, after boarding and sitting on a tarmac for two hours, was in Dallas. The only time I ever sat for three hours in a traffic jam, in 103 degree heat? Dallas. The only time I ever stepped out of an airport at midnight with a country music fiddle player, to catch a smoke while waiting for a replacement flight crew that they had to call and wake up to come to work – and got locked out of the place? Well, you know where it was.

Jimmy Buffett was right. Pass it by.

So, on April 15, while watching clips of all the Fox News staged “tea parties”, on another network, I could swear I saw that Goober Pyle gas station dipstick in one of those crowds, still wearing the same uniform. He looked 35 years older, but I don’t believe he had washed that shirt yet. Same nametag. “Bud”. Somebody else must have spelled it for him.

Then, here comes Texas Governor, Rick Perry, echoing the now too-familiar veiled threat, as so brilliantly espoused by the well-known intellectual, Chuck Norris, that, if things didn’t start meeting with their approval, Texas might just pick up its marbles and secede from the Union. That right, Perry (and Norris) explained, is in their state constitution.

First of all, there seems to be some disagreement regarding whether the Lone Star State could legally secede from the United States. From some of the information I have read, they actually do have in that document the right to split into five separate states – which would have saved us all a lot of grief if they had done in the first place. Second, a US Supreme Court ruling, sometime around 1869, I believe, was that they did not have the right of secession.

In the middle of the 19th Century, there were seven southern states (including Texas) that declared they were bailing out because they didn’t like the way things were going politically, and they obviously thought they had the right to do that. When a bearded hippie liberal president took exception and called up troops to quash the revolt, they were joined by four more states – one of them being Arkansas, whose trash is not welcomed elsewhere.

That didn’t work out too well for the secessionists.

But I’m thinking “Can’t we all just get along?”

If the treasonous Texans want to leave, can’t we just wish them well, and warn them about Oklahoma hitting them on the rear-end on their way out the door? Can we box up Mike Huckabee and ship him down there to live with his buddy, President Chuck Norris?
And Secretary of the Interior, Bud. In fact, with all that room they have down there, and have always gloated about, couldn’t we just let all the whining crybaby losers of the last presidential election take up residence in the new country? They would all be so happy there. And, really, don’t we want everybody to be happy?

It will take a bunch of wire and even more labor to build a fence around that place to keep all them Texicans from sneaking into the United States to steal our jobs. The US will have to do it, because the Texicans will be busy working on their own fence down south. That, in itself, would probably be sufficient to stimulate our economy.

Just a thought. While ya’ll are thinking it over, I’ll be looking for a good passport photo camera. I’m seeing a potential opportunity for business expansion.

Now, where’d I put those shoes?

© 2009, Rick Baberhttp://www.rickbaber.com

Second Hand Tater Tots

2009-04-02T19:11:00.001-07:00

Not that it will do any good, but let’s try to go over this
cigarette tax thing again, shall we?

Now that the latest round of taxes has taken effect, folks
who purchase coffin nails in Arkansas will be paying a
total of $2.16 per pack, in taxes, to satisfy their cravings.
That’s $1.15 for the state and $1.01 for the feds. In taxes
alone, that’s about $1.81 per pack more than the first
cigarettes I remember purchasing from a machine, and I am
under 90 years old. (Of course I am. Smokers don’t live
that long.) After the taxes, if anybody wants to make
any money off manufacturing & distributing them, you have to tack on some more
charges. When all is said and done, here in Arkansas, the average price of a pack of premium smokes is now about a hundred bucks per pack. OK. That’s not accurate. Truth is, I lost count.

The point is that both the state & federal governments just keep piling on with the taxes on smokes.

I’m not here to argue the merits of smoking. Frankly, I don’t think there are any. I’m not even here to argue on behalf of the “poor” people who are, studies show, the ones most likely to smoke, and therefore most likely to be victimized by the burdensome taxes. I just don’t understand how it is constitutional for a government to pick an item, any item, and disproportionately tax that item.

Seems like they tried that with tea once, a long time ago.

Sure, the anti-smoking zealots will scream that the poison smokers exhale invades their personal space. I don’t disagree with that. I think, for that reason alone, smoking should be illegal in public places. I think it is OK for owners of businesses to ban smoking in their facilities, if they choose to do so. OK to say you can’t smoke with a kid in your car. OK to say you can’t smoke in the workplace. But all of those things have been done, and still, they keep heaping it on the smokers. How? Why? Every time some yuppie drives by in an SUV, I can feel myself choking on the carbon monoxide fumes, but I don’t see them piling taxes like that on V8 engines. Don’t see them raking it in on those dangerous, noise-polluting crotch rockets.

Some will say that the government is being a good big brother by making it so expensive for people to smoke that they’ll just up & quit – and that would be the best thing for them to do. That will happen. It is happening, among those who feel a genuine financial pinch from the new cost of cigarettes. But, even though the numbers are proportionally lower,

there are still people who can afford to smoke. So they do. What shall we do to stop them from puffing away in the privacy of their own Escalades?

Once the lower incomers have quit, there goes a huge chunk of all that beneficial tax money. After budgets have been set based on that money, where do they go to make up the difference? Maybe, if the state would levy another $100 per pack tax, they could keep the coffers filled up just off the rich smokers. Probably not. But what’s to stop them from trying?

So they try it. And the specially funded projects go broke because, ultimately, everybody quits smoking cigarettes. Big Brother has forced the populace away from an unhealthy habit, without ever even making it illegal! They’re going to have to find some other vice to tax now. What shall it be?

Fat, I think. That seems to be the next big bogey man on the horizon. When cheeseburgers cost twenty bucks because there’s $17 in taxes, how long will it take for the industries associated with that nasty habit to go belly-up? But we can’t let those special hospitals go down the tubes, so we seek out another victim.

I’m going with tater tots. Those things are just disasters looking for a place to happen. I mean, not only are they catastrophic to the well-being of the person who consumes them, they have a tendency to generate violent gaseous expulsions that invade the breathing space of innocent bystanders – causing babies to be born naked and old ladies to faint onto their bingo cards. Let’s say five bucks a tot, for starters.

And on it goes, until, eventually we get back to taxing tea, and eating salad. Nothing but salad. And we’ll all live healthily ever after.

Please. Spare me. The government doesn’t give a flying flip whether or not their taxes contribute to the physical well-being of the soon-to-be ex-smokers. They’re piling on the taxes on tobacco products because they need the extra money and they have found a villain, and they can get away with it. Smoke = bad. If smokers don’t like it, all they have to do is quit. Who’s going to raise much of a stink about that?

Once the monster has been let into the room, who is going to be the one to put it out?

Here’s the question. Sorry about all that leading up to it. “If smoking is such a terrible thing, why don’t they just outlaw cigarettes?”

Re-read for the answer.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

Gimme Back My Bullets

2009-03-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

You see, even when this column doesn’t make it to
print in The Batesville Guard, I still publish it on my
blog (rickbaber.com), and occasionally on
ArkansasTonight.com. And when I e-mail it out to
the editors, there’s a massive “cc” to a worldwide
cabal of very important people, called my “Focus Group”.
Some of these are of the conservative persuasion, and,
since they haven’t asked me to stop, I include them
just to get back at the voices in my head, and on the radio.
Mostly on the radio. So I get a degree of feedback.
And what that feedback is telling me is that I was just too
… abrasive with the last column, and that’s why it didn’t make it to the paper.

At first, I just thought that, with so many talented writers at The Guard, including some very good new ones, they simply didn’t have room for it. But then, the e-mails and Facebook comments started coming in, and I realized that, maybe, I had gone over the line in my criticism of “conservatives”, indicating that they were all pretty much like that Rush Limbaugh. And then I read about Batesville’s own little cabal down at the Chamber of Commerce. Who knew?

Now, I realize that the newspaper is a business and they, unlike myself, cannot afford to publish my left-wing hippie ramblings just to piss (newspaper euphemism replaced) people off for the sake of perpetuating a conversation that many people would just as soon had never been started. And I know that not everybody is a news and political junkie like I am. But, dammit , I don’t start this stuff, I just respond in print to the bullshit I force myself to listen to. At least it keeps me from climbing up on my roof and shouting it all over northwest Arkansas with a bullhorn. I once knew a guy who got arrested for that.

Maybe I picked the wrong medium and the wrong political affiliation. I mean, you occasionally hear people arguing points with the conservative talking heads, when they can get a word in edgewise, but you hardly ever hear anybody chastising them for being unfair, or too mean. Isn’t that what they’re there for? I thought I was supposed to be expressing my own opinions here. And truth is that I have a very low opinion of some people and some platforms. That doesn’t make my opinion right. But it does make it mine. That’s why they call them “opinions”. I’m just an old writer with a keyboard in my smoky office at home – a radio behind me, and a 13” TV up on the shelf next to my framed John Lennon “New York City” poster, with CNN on all day and all night. Usually with my white cat sitting up here on the desk beside my keyboard, like a Barn Owl. It’s not like I’m in charge of, I don’t know, the Chamber of Commerce or something.

But still, I fully understand that it isn’t my paper and I don’t have any say-so about what goes in it, or when. I’m just thinking “How ‘bout a little something, you know, for the effort?”. Like maybe a short statement: “Rick Baber’s column will not be published this week because he was too mean.”

Then, at least, those of ya’ll that want to read it because you agree – as well as those who want to scold me for being such a jerk – can come on over to my blog and tell me what an outstanding job I’m doing balancing the radical radio right. Or, you can tell me where to go.

I don’t care which. I’m an insecure liberal who craves the attention.

Sure, I could mellow out and watch Wheel of Fortune & Oprah, and listen to the same old songs over & over on the classic rock radio station, and tell you cute stories about my cats. But, ultimately, I would get to the parts about the cats being radical liberals and then go on to tell you that my granddog is not only liberal, but also black, and we’d be back to square one, wouldn’t we?

Can’t help it, I guess. I tried the peace & love can’t-we-all-get-along thing for a while, but it just didn’t work for me.

So, to those of you I continue to anger with my rants, let me say that I know I should apologize. And to my editors, let me say “Thank you for the times you have allowed me to express my opinions in your fine newspaper, knowing you’re going to catch it from some of your readers.”

To the Batesville Chamber of Commerce: “Dudes!”

To the rest of you: THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS COLUMN DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF THIS PUBLICATION OR ITS MANAGEMENT.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/
http://www.digitalarts1.com/

Somebody tell them they lost

2009-03-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it strange how long it takes to create anything
compared to the time it takes to destroy it? You can
take a lifetime building a home, for example, and come
back from a weekend at grandma’s to find it all reduced
to a pile of ashes. Just like that.

One of the very few things you can be sure of in this
world is that everything comes to an end. Everything.

Now, it appears that all of the economic prosperity the
good ol’ US of A built up during those eight wonderful
Bush years has, in a period of under two months, been destroyed by that evil Barack Obama. I mean, that’s the way it sounds, listening to the Republican’s talk. They’re not arguing that everything wrong with this country is his fault – just the stuff that wasn’t screwed up by Bill Clinton and, before him, Jimmy Carter. Apparently, the economy was plumb rosy before November ’08, but now it’s swirling around, counter-clockwise in the bowl under the porcelain throne.

Big Business is blowing gaskets, laying people off, slashing wages, closing facilities. Wall Street looks more like downtown Saigon in the days of the evacuation. Sean Hannity, self-appointed leader of the “conservative underground”, is preaching the end. Woah is us.

Saturday, Rush Limbaugh spoke to nine thousand rabid “conservatives” at the “Conservative Political Action Conference”. That one speech alone will have a profound influence on repairing the broken economy, because, most likely, all of those people will have to undergo knee surgery from jumping to their feet, screaming & clapping, every time their guru made some nasty insulting remark about liberals, in general – or about the “liberal media”, which the Bloated One refers to as the “drive-by media”. That should generate a lot of money for doctors & hospitals.

The top dog in that drive-by media, CNN, carried the hour and twenty minute speech live, without commercial interruption. How one-sided of them.

Anybody, such as myself, who put themselves through the torturous ordeal of watching the entire spectacle (I had my wife tie me to a chair, facing the TV, and tape my eyelids open) can take away from it that the reason the conservatives lost the presidential election was that they have not behaved “conservatively” enough. That might be an astounding revelation to some, but I spend a lot of time listening to this guy on the radio, so I already knew that.

Limbaugh defended and re-asserted this hope that President Obama “fails”. That, you see, is how conservatives show their patriotism – declaring (in a time of war!) that they want the president of the United States of America to fail. So, the president’s attempts to straighten out this terrible economic mess (the one he single-handedly created since January 20) needs to crash & burn. More businesses can shut down. More people can lose their jobs and their homes. Maybe some of them can even starve to death. Wouldn’t that be swell? After all, people deserve to suffer for allowing this country to elect somebody who doesn’t agree with Limbaugh and the rabid Neocons. That’ll show us, by golly.

It is more than a hope, however. They know that Obama’s stimulus package won’t work. Somehow, they have been imparted with this knowledge, either by their Creator, or by His representatives here on Earth – Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter - the Republican Trinity. The answer, they proclaim, is to do exactly what GWB did during his terms….only more. Those of us who were under the false impression that Bush’s policies are what brought us to this edge of depression, were blindly led here by the media. Everything was fine all along, until now. What fools we were to believe what we read in the papers and saw on TV; what we saw with our own eyes and felt in our own stomachs. There is no truth other than what is preached on talk radio. Obviously. Even CNN must have come to that realization just prior to airing that loveable little fuzzball’s sermon to the choir. Conservatives are the chosen ones. The master race. They will prevail!

Makes sense. Most of the individuals who control big business are, by definition, conservatives. If you’re the top dawg, raking in all the money, why would you want anything to change? If you’re the top dawg, you have some control over that. You can lay off people, cut wages, and shut down facilities to help bring about an expeditious end to this foolishness and get somebody back in office who’ll look out for the big guy. Big guys need friends too. Even if your business isn’t hurting, it is your duty as a fat cat to help out your fat cat brethren. Do this now, for the cause, and you will be rewarded when things return to “normal”. Rush said he just wanted it to be like it was when he was a kid. You know, back when black folk weren’t allowed to vote.

Sorry about the mixed animal metaphors. I couldn’t decide which one I liked better.

Liberals have many enemies: hunger, homelessness, despair, inequality, ignorance and greed, to name a few. Conservatives have but one: liberals. So who has the easier fight ahead of them?

(c) 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

Boom Boom. Out go the lights.

2009-01-29T17:35:00.000-08:00

This is what I always imagined it would look like at the
end of the world – strangely beautiful from a respectable
distance, but really no place you want to be.

If any tree in northwest Arkansas survives this ice
storm, I think it will be my big Spruce out there by the
street. Rather than snapping and collapsing to the
ground with terrifying sounds resembling those of
an avalanche, it just dropped it’s many arms and is
standing there, slumped, like some dejected, frozen
child who didn’t get the toy he expected for Christmas.

It was Christmas, or just after, in 1993 when I removed the lights and decorations from the tree and carried it out there to plant it by the sidewalk. Just a five-foot tall baby then, and I never really expected it to get this huge. I hope it makes it.

Three days after the frozen rains started here, I understand there are still something like 50,000 people without power. The hotels are full (some have folks sleeping in their lobbies) and, according to what I have heard from people staying in them, some have doubled their room rates. What a lovely humanitarian thing to do when so many people are displaced from their homes, freezing. There’s a conspicuous absence of public shelters, as if the few short years since have erased everyone’s memories of Hurricane Katrina. Not that I would compare our little disaster with that one, but the concept is the same.

We decided to ride this one out at home. Our power flickered a few times before going out for most of the day following the storm, but then came on for a few hours before going out again, then back again staying on all night, and so far this morning. Survival instincts kicked in while it was out, and we turned our living room into a big tent by putting up curtains and photography backdrops over the openings to the dining room, foyer and hall. This left us with just the living room to heat with the fireplace when it was supposed to drop to 6 degrees that first powerless night. The only problem with that was…. we had no firewood.

Rather than burn the furniture, (*mark this spot) we heated with the gas log lighter. I found a piece of sheet metal in the garage and bent it into an “S” shape so that the flame was hidden, under the metal. The little fire heated the sheet metal and the top of the “S” forced the heat out into the room, rather than letting it all go up the flue. Pretty clever, if you ask me.

Then we dug out the old tailgate propane cooker, left over from our son’s college football days, and made bologna melts for lunch. Odd as it seems, we were rather looking forward to “camping out” in the house.

Then the power came back on. Our disappointment didn’t last long, because it was soon off again. Then, into the night, it came on again for good – or so we thought – and we slept warmly in our own bed, in much better shape than thousands of other folks out there.

Three paragraphs up, you’ll see (*mark this spot). That’s how far I had gotten with this column before the electricity went off again, at about noon Thursday. It’s 5:23pm now and I have had just time enough since the lights came on to power up my computer and get this much more written. I wonder how columnists did this stuff back in the cowboy days when they couldn’t use their computers.

We found two restaurants open today and had Mexican food for lunch. Most of the people in that place were talking about their power still being off, and wondering aloud when they might have it back.

The sun was out, heating it up slightly above freezing today, and a lot of folks think this thing has passed. Not so. The thawing itself will release more tree limbs that will fall into more power lines, and more people will find themselves in the dark. By about Sunday, when the frozen pipes in the dark houses finally thaw out, water leaks will occur all over the place, flooding houses, ruining floors, and sending lots of already frustrated people back to hotels. Most will have insurance to cover those repairs and additional living expense, but many of those staying out now, because the power is out, mistakenly think their homeowners policies will reimburse them for the expense. That won’t happen unless a tree fell across the electrical service line on their property. There’s no coverage for such things during area-wide power outages. And guys like me have to be the ones to tell them.

That won’t be fun, and I’m not looking forward to doing it.

But the worst part of this whole thing for me is this: I came up with this scheme to win the Powerball by playing the same red ball numbers every time, until it hits. A whole bunch of white ball numbers, all with the same red ball. Of course, the odds are greatly against me on this, but I figured sooner or later “4” would hit.

Wednesday night, after all the weather problems, and the first time in forever I didn’t buy my tickets, guess what?

This year isn’t starting off so great.

© 2009, Rick Baberhttp://www.rickbaber.com

Day One

2009-01-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

As I write this, we’re passing the 24 hour mark since
Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United
States.

The sun came up today, at least here in northwest
Arkansas. In fact, at the moment, I’m gazing out the
window at a beautiful blue sky. A couple of finches are
playing on the huge holly bush outside my home office.

Quite to the surprise of many of my white brethren,
there was no knocking on the door (at least, not on mine)
early this morning by some new African-American Gestapo intending to shackle me and my wife and drag us off to work in some cotton field. I haven’t seen anything like that happening to anybody else on CNN, but, then again, that’s one of those liberal-biased networks that probably wouldn’t tell us about it until it was too late anyway. Due diligence would require me to check Fox News before writing this. Call me lazy.

It seems, at least here on this first day, that all is well with our first black president, and maybe we white folk won’t suffer the “payback” that has been talked about only in the presence of our own kind, probably ever since Lincoln emancipated the slaves. Oh, how many whites have dreaded the day that has passed without such incident!

Did we really think that day would never come? Through all the social evolution of America, and the rest of the world, did we honestly believe that only a white man could lead the land of the free and the home of the brave? Did any one of us, really, not want to live to see it happen?

Don’t answer that. I know there are still white people who will live out the rest of their lives looking back on January 20, 2009 with disgust and hate. People who really did believe that God gave America to the white man, and the white man should hang his head in shame for not being strong enough to keep it. I just, really, don’t want to know who those people are. If it helps, they can take solace in the fact that Obama is half white.

Try as I might, I am completely incapable of feeling the magnificence of the moment that had to be overwhelming to many older black Americans. I still feel pretty young, and I can clearly remember a time when black folk had to sit in the balcony at the movie theater because, apparently, they weren’t good enough to sit downstairs with us.

I remember the first black man I ever saw, in person. He was a policeman in Fort Smith, and I was a four or five year-old redneck in the making – a product of my neighborhood surroundings and of the times. I walked right up to him and, for whatever reason, just up and called him something I wasn’t supposed to call him. Embarrassed my mother half to death.

I remember the way I treated our black housekeeper in Little Rock in 1963, and how I continually ignored my mom telling me she was one of the sweetest people she had ever met. She never did anything to deserve the treatment she got from me. She didn’t have to. She was black, and I must have been better than her.

I remember my first and only black teacher, Mrs. Mathis, in the fourth or fifth grade at Fairview Elementary School in Blytheville. 1964-65. We kids didn’t know what to think at first, but she turned out to be pretty cool, and, surprisingly, she sure knew a lot about math.

I remember moving to Batesville in 1967, after the closing of Ethel O. Miller School, and sitting in class, for the first time, alongside black students. Their school was all but abandoned, and we used to take the bus over there to use the gym for off-season football practice in Jr. High.

I remember my first “black friend”, Beaver McCoy, who showed me it was OK to hang out and have fun with people that, only a few years before, I never even knew existed, except in stories told by the older kids on my block. Not good stories. Scary stories.

It’s 40 years later, and stories like that are still being told. They come as forwards to my e-mail account and sometimes as text messages to my phone. They warn the white man, me, of the perils that will befall our race now that we have given up the throne of power. And even as I read them, with a smirk on my face, I look up at the TV here in my office and see another old black man or woman, recalling the moment, with tears streaming down their face. And I try to imagine what it would be like to feel what they are feeling.

Of course, it is only day one. But I haven’t feared that knock on the door for many years.

© 2009, Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com

The Last Presidential Ticket

2009-01-11T19:28:00.000-08:00

There are still a few days left before President Obama
takes office and it looks as if the 2012 GOP ticket is
already taking form.

Let me be the first to predict the ticket – Sarah Palin and
Joe the Plumber. Literally. I mean, I think Joe
Whathisface will actually change his last name to
“ThePlumber”, for, you know, name recognition.

Right now, he’s come out with a new book and, as I
understand it, has been appointed as the US Ambassador
to Gaza – or maybe that’s “reporter”, for a web site called PJTV. Perhaps that stands for
“Plumber Joe Television”?

Joe told somebody on the news that he believes he will be safe in Gaza – God will protect him - because he is a Christian. The rationale behind that statement, when one considers he’s going to a place filled with battling Arabs & Jews, escapes me, but, hey, maybe that’s why I’m not in consideration for a cabinet position in the Palin/Plumber Administration.

In ThePlumber’s new book, it is said, he takes shots at John McCain (figuratively, of course) for supporting the economic bailout. In one interview he said, five or six times, that he wasn’t throwing McCain under the bus. While somewhat presumptive, that may be the smartest thing he has said. Throwing war heroes under a bus does not generally work well for political candidates, unless those war heroes are (how do you say?) Democrats, like John Kerry or Max Cleland.

Personally, I wish Joe all the best in his newfound career. I don’t blame him one bit for trying to take his 15 minutes and ride it for all he can. And I wonder if maybe there’s a politician somewhere I could get to come fix the float valve in my toilet. Getting tired of jiggling the handle.

Not to be outdone by all the attention Joe is getting from the press, Sarah Palin is also taking some shots at McCain and his failed campaign, as well as Katie Couric and Tina Fey. Everybody knows you’re not a serious presidential contender until you get into a real tussle with Tina Fey.

Sister Sarah was mortified when Saturday Night Live did the Tina Fey skit wherein Tina’s Palin character said she believed marriage should be “between two unwilling teenagers”. Pretty funny, everyone agrees, but nobody cleared that skit with Palin before running it. How dare they! It’s just another example of the media’s unfair treatment of Caribou Barbie. That incident may be the only time in the show’s long history that they didn’t get permission from a politician before doing a skit that made fun of her, or him. If this weren’t true, we certainly would have heard from Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or even Dan Quayle – surely Dan Quayle – by now. Palin, it seems, expects SNL to be fair & balanced, like Fox News.

Or maybe not. Could be she just wants to keep her name in the newspapers and on television for another three years, until the next presidential campaign begins. And, again, who can blame her? She was vaulted into the national light by John McCain, but everybody knows he’s washed up now. There’s nothing more he can do for her, but allow her to trash talk him and his campaign in order to keep her name, and her dream, alive. I’m doing my part.

Now comes the touchy little end-of-the-world issue, however. According to a whole bunch of prognosticators, who apparently didn’t read Larry Stroud’s fine article about the Mayan Calendar in the Batesville Guard, it’s curtains for civilization on December 21, 2012. So, while the next (and last?) election will be over by then, whoever is elected President wouldn’t take office until January 20 of 2013. So, what’s going to be the campaign platform of the Palin/Plumber ticket? Lower taxes? I don’t know about the rest of you, and please don’t leak this to the IRS, but in the event of a cataclysmic polar shift of the planet and total breakdown of world civilization and all the “important” people zipping off in a spaceship to form a new world, I’m probably going to just forego the whole income tax thing and take my chances, there in my cave.

Truth be told, I can’t think of a finer couple to preside over the good ol’ US of A in those coming hard times. Palin could teach those of us not familiar with the art how to hunt and prepare wild animals for tasty and inexpensive meals, even if we don’t have helicopters from which to shoot them. And Big Joe could, maybe, rig up some pipes in the caves so guys like me aren’t always annoyed with having to jiggle that handle.

Consider this, if you will, the first newspaper endorsement of the Palin/Plumber ticket.

© 2009, Rick Baber

Somebody Say “Geronimo”?

2009-01-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

A while back, some brainiac with time enough to play
with numbers sent out one of those e-mails that got
picked up & forwarded by just about everybody – as
a joke, or rather, some trivial thing people could read
and agree with, and then forget because it was never
going to happen. The premise was that, instead of
“bailing out” big business, Uncle Sam could just send
that money direct to the people. According to the e-mail,
each of us would receive some ridiculous amount of
money – into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That would be way cool, but the numbers were off.
Calculators aren’t built to deal with figures above 10 billion, it seems, and people sometimes get confused with decimals.

According to the economic geniuses (and aren’t they all?) on talk radio, the combined total dollar figure for the bailouts of the auto & financial industries will end up being around $1 trillion. For you poor folks who aren’t accustomed to seeing numbers like this on your paychecks, that’s a one, followed by twelve zeroes, before the decimal point.

To put that figure into Reaganomics: if you got that much money in $100 bills, and laid them end-to-end, they’d stretch about 947,000 miles. If you could lay those bills down at the rate of one per second, assuming you were going the right direction and could hold your breath long enough, a man could be on the moon in about 9 years and two months, and it would only take about ¼ of the money to get there. A woman, of course, would take considerably longer, due to bathroom breaks, and might spend a few extra bucks along the way.

If the traveling man took only the money he needed to get to the moon, and invested the remaining ¾ at 2% compounded interest, he could pick up about $146 billion while he was on his way, making that trip a real bargain. He could have that interest wired to him and catch a ride back on the space shuttle for a paltry million or so.

Reaganomics is confusing. Why would anybody want to spend over 9 years on his hands and knees in space? Besides, I’m not good with decimals either, and this could all be a crock as far as you know. Let’s go back to splitting that money up between the taxpayers.

There are about 138 million taxpayers in the United States. If each of those people received an equal share of the $1 Trillion bailout money, they’d get $7246.38 each. That’s roughly $14,500 for a working couple.

If the Treasury sent each person their equal cut, with the stipulation that it would have to be paid, first, toward any mortgage(s) they had, then, viola, the mortgage companies are out of hock. Even those individuals who had mortgages to pay on would then have that much more disposable income, with which they could buy (guess what?) cars. And, suddenly, the car companies are back in business. The factories are producing again. People are working. All is well.

Those fortunate few who don’t have mortgages, and already have all the cars they want or need could invest their money into the new booming economy. Wall Street soars, and again, all is well.

So, as ridiculous as the “people bail-out” sounds on the surface, really, where’s the down side? Some may say that the government having to print a trillion extra dollars to do this would be inflationary. Sure it will. But, they’ve got to print it anyway, in theory. So, giving it to Big Business hurts the little guy even more, because now the wee bit of money he has is worth even less than before. Then he can afford to buy less. So the economy, overall, suffers. More businesses lose revenue, have to shut down, lay off employees. More people out of work who can’t afford to buy goods and services, and even more businesses shut down. And so it goes.

Where does that end?

Near Rogers, Arkansas, submerged under Beaver Lake, hides the remains of a once-thriving resort known as Monte Ne. It was built by a man named Coin Harvey, around 1901, died in the hard times of the ‘30’s, and buried with water when the lake was formed in 1964. Harvey was, among other things, an economist who proposed a law mandating the forgiveness of all debt and the abolishment of credit. In other words, in an instant, you don’t owe anybody anything, and nobody owes you. What you have is yours, outright. It is an interesting concept, if you think about it. But it didn’t get very far because then, as now, the entities that hold the debt are the ones in control of the entities that make the laws. They really have nothing to gain by helping out the little guy.

Don’t expect these government bailouts to do that either.

© 2009, Rick Baber

The Shoe's on the Other Face Now

2008-12-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

Who throws a shoe? Honestly! (Apologies to Austin Powers.)

The Presidency is a dangerous business. Almost 10% of everybody who has ever held that office has been assassinated. Others have had close calls. Others still have simply died in office. Compare that to your line of work. Doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

Consider that, during his “farewell tour” of Iraq, President Bush narrowly escaped full facial impact with not one, but two, Rockport walking shoes. Appeared to be about a 10 ½ D, traveling at somewhere around 40 mph. And he wasn’t even wearing a helmet.

Now, some have found the violent assault on the American President amusing. In fact, one lady being interviewed by a TV reporter, laughing, said “He threw one for the world”. Another person suggested the shoes be immortalized by having them bronzed.

CNN’s Michael Ware, reported “Opinion is divided – in support and in condemnation of this action”.

David Letterman, speaking of the President’s impressive lightning-quick reaction that kept him from being nailed in the face, said “I don’t think Bush has dodged anything like that since the Viet Nam war”. Later in the show, somebody chucked a pair at Dave.

Watching the video of this historic moment, I too was impressed with Bush’s agility. He may be the only president we’ve had in my lifetime that was capable of making those effectively thrown missiles miss their intended mark. I imagined what would have happened if previous presidents had been in his place.

Clinton, of course, was accustomed to having articles of clothing thrown at him. But he was never very nimble, and would likely have been carried out with at least one stiletto stuck in his forehead. Hillary would probably have removed the other one and walked barefoot to ride with him in the ambulance.

Bush 41 would have had a coalition of support that would have never allowed this to happen. Matter of fact, that reporter would likely have surrendered his shoes when he walked in the door.

Reagan. He took a bullet! Even a pair of Shaq’s shoes wouldn’t have awakened him from his nap.

Jimmy Carter? Nobody would throw a shoe at Jimmy Carter.

Gerald Ford, I’m afraid, would have been the first POTUS we lost to footwear. Sadly, the culprit might not have even had to remove them. Ford would have just tripped when he walked into the room and strangled himself on the laces.

It is accurate to say that I have not been among President Bush’s greatest fans, but I do want to go on record, right here, right now, condemning this atrocity. I mean, you just can’t go ‘round tossing brogans at the President of the US of A. I like to think that, had I been there, I would have stepped up and taken those shoes up-side the head for my country. Which leads me to wonder “Where was the Secret Service?”

Those dudes are supposed to be ready & able to take a bullet for their boss, and here the poor guy had to artfully dodge two articles of footgear on his own? Those things could have caused mass destruction right there in Iraq. And some of you doubted the weapons were there. The whole thing reeks of conspiracy if you ask me.

I understand the shoes have been confiscated by federal authorities and will be held as evidence. Rest assured that all “foot-age” of this event will be reviewed and studied for decades. A commission will be established, but the findings will probably not be released in our lifetimes. Books will be written. Movies will be made. Songs will be sung. An American legend was born this weekend.

Laugh if you will, but this was George W. Bush’s finest hour. Years from now, we all will remember where we were and what we were doing on the day those fateful shoes were hurled at the head of our very own head of state. And, great president that he is (was), he made ‘em miss.

By far, the smartest, and coolest, thing GWB has done in his eight years in office.

© 2008 Rick Baber

Rock 'n Roll Never Forgets

2008-12-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

NOTE: If you're not from Batesville, Arkansas, this will mean very little to you. Just a word of warning....

Old rockers never die.

With too many irons in the fire, I’ve been out of the loop longer than I like to think about. But then, there are only so many hours in a day, and spending a good portion of them sleeping has always been one of my life’s passions.

Occasionally though, mama will drag me away from the computer to someplace other than our local Native American gaming establishments, and usually I end up glad she did.

Such was the case this past Saturday night when I was (apparently) the last usta-be rock singer in Arkansas to discover the remarkable talent of a guy named Darren Ray. Well, that’s not entirely true. Only a week before, I’d heard him at Cherokee Casino (West Siloam Springs) with his other band, “Big Bad Bubba”, but I was, let’s say, too distracted then to pay much attention. At this private party though, Darren was performing with his other band, “Big’Uns”, in a small venue. People, let me tell you, this old crooner was blown away. That guy had a set of pipes like I haven’t heard anywhere in a very long time, and the band itself was tight as a jug. They covered everything from Delbert McClinton’s “Every Time I Roll the Dice” to Michael McDonald’s “Takin’ it to the Streets”, and everybody involved hit every note. Then they ended up with a Beatles set, culminating with “Hey Jude”, that even had Republicans swaying and singing along. And here in Northwest Arkansas, there’s a lot of those.

So, as they were loading out, doofus that I am, I had to go up and tell ‘em how good I thought they were – keeping them from getting their work done and getting home for just a while longer. Turns out Darren also performs with my ex-brother-in-law, Travis Kidd (Tulsa, OK). That was pretty cool. But the lead guitarist looked somewhat familiar, so I also bothered him to discuss the glory days and found out that the six degrees of separation thing really does exist. His name was Ed Nicholson, and he had been playing around, basically, forever. I quickly discovered that he was from Harrison, Arkansas. When I told him I was from Batesville, the names of musicians from the area he had played with came rolling out: Andy Buschman, Gib Ponder, Mary Henry, Danny Dozier…just the ones we had time to talk about before I finally recalled through my party-fuzzed haze what it’s like to try to load out with people bugging you, and started backing across the empty room toward the door. Ed told me he had only recently spoken with Andy on the phone – and I wondered how Andy had enough wind to do that while he was running. Always running. He must use a cell phone.

The meeting gave rebirth to a longtime fantasy I have had about getting all the old musicians from the Batesville area (and the new ones, too) together for some kind of big rock ‘n roll reunion concert. Would that be cool, or am I the only one that’s interested? Maybe some charity could use a few bucks that could be raised from such an event. Or, maybe that’s already happened at some point and nobody told me about it….?

I have always maintained that there is no place on the planet that has produced as much musical talent, per-capita, as Batesville (and the surrounding area). I could list all of them I remember here, in bold print, but I’d surely embarrass myself by leaving too many out. Surely, such an event would draw a respectable crowd, even if you only consider the families produced by the musicians involved. Kids. Grandkids. Oh my God, some of you are OLD! How much extra would it cost to have an elevator installed to get up to the stage? Maybe a few ambulances standing by, just in case?

When I recall the time we worked like dogs cleaning out the old, practically abandoned AC Gym to do a show, and all the people that showed up there; the crowds that used to come up the hill on Saturday night to the Salado Community Building or to Cave City or to the Jaycee building down by the bayou; and the way we used to curse the fact that there was just not much to do (anything changed?) – I can’t help but think my little rock ‘n roll fantasy isn’t such a bad idea.

Living two hundred miles away, and being the most disorganized person in the world, I would not be able to put such a thing together myself. I’m hoping there’s some other old timer reading this, with a lot of time on his/her hands, thinking he or she might just be the one for the job.

Who knows? Maybe it could turn into a yearly tradition. “The Batesville Whitewater Revival”?

Your thoughts?

© 2008 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

Rick the Writer

2008-10-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

Hello. It’s me, again — Rick the Writer. We don’t use last names around this presidential campaign anymore. Just a first name, followed by professional pursuit, because apparently, it is important that people know what you do if you are going to speak out on behalf of a candidate. Or not.

The thing is, now, the candidates want people to know that those who support them are “hard working people,” because, apparently, if you’re not “hard-working,” you’re not worth the air you’re breathing.

You can tell this because every time one of them talks they say something about “hard-working Americans.”

Writing isn’t an occupation that is generally accepted by folks as one that qualifies, so heretofore, I didn’t use it. I started to go with “artist,” but that doesn’t really bring up an image of sweat amd toil in people’s minds either. Rick the Insurance Adjuster is just too long to say and it doesn’t roll off the tongue. And, by the standards of some of my friends, “that ain’t workin.’”

Not like their jobs.

I think that’s how the whole last name thing started out, way back around the time John McCain was born. Folks would just take their profession or their locale, and make that their last name. Blacksmiths became “Smith” — “Bakers” made pies and bread. People who blew flutes or something became “Piper.” Let’s not go there with how people named Johnson came about.

“McCain,” though, came from “the son of Eoin” — the Irish form of “John.” So “John McCain” actually means “John John,” or “John, son of John.” But we can just call him John the Hero. I assume you heard about that, somewhere. Heroing is hard work, I’m sure. So John John is OK by that standard.

Caribou Barbie’s maiden name was Sarah Heath. “Heath,” means “one who came from Heath” — which is a wasteland with low shrubs.

Uh. OK.

“Palin,” by the way, means “one who came from Paliler.” Now, I’m not sure about this kids, because you know how research hurts my head, but I think Paliler is in ... France! Neither one of those tell us whether or not those folks are hard-working, so let’s just call her Caribou Barbie. Huntin’s hard work. You betcha!

I couldn’t find anything on “Obama.” So I guess there’s another reason to be suspicious of the black guy. We’ll call him “Barack the Muslim” – which means “He who definitely won’t get a rednecks vote now.”

“Biden.”

Whattaya think? Correctomondo! Not in there either! Is there a pattern here? But we have to call him something — how about “Joe the Puppy Kicker?”

No. Puppy kicking is hard work. Better use “Joe the Gun Seizer.” That should work.

Just for fun, let’s do “Bush” — dweller at sign of the bush (usually a wine merchant); one who dwelt near a bush; and “Cheney” — one who came from Quesney, Cheney or Chenay (oak grove), in FRANCE; dweller near the chain or barrier used to close a street at night. Oddly, that makes sense. We don’t care whether or not these guys are “hard-working” anymore, because by the grace of God, they’re outta here come January 20.

Joe the Plumber’s last name is Wurzelbacher. Like Obama and Biden, that one apparently doesn’t have a meaning or known origin, but it sounds just as foreign. It is unfortunate that Joe’s real last name isn’t “Plumber,” and that may well be the reason McPalin changed it. What if “Wurzelbacher” was discovered to mean “he who bets on the dark horse?”

Safer to just stick with “the plumber.”

I just wonder, when one of these two candidates gets elected, is he going to be president of the slackers too?

You know, guys who just sit behind a keyboard, making up sentences or digital images after a dozen hours or so every day giving away somebody else’s money?

What about professional golfers? Does that qualify as hard-working? Or professional bass fishermen ... or NASCAR drivers ... or Talk Radio hosts?

What about movie stars like ... I don’t know ... Ronald Reagan (descendant of Riagan -little king)? Do Joe the Plumber or Bob the Builder or Fred the Fireman or Doug the Ditch Digger allow lazy millionaires, or people who married them, into their club?

I have this plan to win the lotto, after which I’ll probably become a world famous international playboy, like Jethro the Bodine. Jethro doesn’t do much work if you don’t count hooking up two record players to the truck so he’ll have stereo. Is he going to have a president?

For some reason, the candidates, and lots of other folk, like to pat people on the back if they get up early and go to work and keep working until late into the night and then get up and do it again. Amen.

Those who never see their own kids, because the pursuit of legal tender is the definition of being a good American.

And we all want to be good Americans. Or “great Americans,” like Sean Hannity. That’s what we’ve all had drilled into our heads for as long as I can remember. Give ’em a gold star or something, but just make sure they keep working, “like a workin’ man do.”

I’m questioning that now. Could it be that if you’re too dog-tired to do anything but work, you’re easier to control?

Just askin’.

It seems that, if a guy figures out how to survive without breaking his back and ignoring his family, he better not plant a flag in his yard. He might as well move to the wasteland with low shrubs. Or, better yet, to France.

Barack 'n Roll Revolution

2008-06-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

I tried to copyright (ala Stephen Colbert) that phrase, “Barack ‘n Roll”, on the Arkansas Times blog, but some smartypants pointed out to me that there’s a whole website by that name, so I was too late. Story of my life, I guess.

Here we go. Hillary has stepped aside and now the formal Republican trashing of Barack Obama begins in earnest. He’s best friends with some of the most radical leftists in the country - guys who condoned the blowing up of things in the ‘60’s. He’s a Muslim. Doesn’t wear a flag pin on his lapel. Refuses to eat apple pie. His wife hates Caucasians. His preacher’s a loudmouth. He’s going to put all the white people in chains. And the best one: He’s the AntiChrist.

I’ve received about 20 of those “antichrist” e-mails from various people who either actually believe it and are trying hard to save the world via the Internet, or they just have too much time on their hands. Considering the gems I have received from most of the same people in the past, I suspect the latter. But I won’t waste time and exacerbation of my already-arthritic fingers here trying to persuade any of you who might seriously entertain that thought of the likelihood that you are wrong. If you believe it, go ahead and send me all your good stuff, because the end is neigh and you won’t need money, cool cars, motorcycles, boats, rare coins, Cognac or artwork where you’re going. I could also use a couple of new computers. If my understanding of The Rapture – as learned from talk radio, bumper stickers on SUV’s, & TV preachers – is correct, only flag-pin-wearing Republicans will be sucked up into the sky. Guys like me, and all those poor jerks who live in other countries and/or subscribe to phony religions, will be left down here, scurrying around, siphoning what little gas is left in those abandoned vehicles, and apologizing daily to our Darth Cheney dartboards.

Of course, if Obama is indeed the boogieman, it is part of the Divine Plan that he comes to power, so all of ya’ll who are planning on voting against him for that reason might as well forget that, and get ready for the carnival ride of your lives.

It’s hard to understand how anybody could win a primary based on “change” – what with everything going so well and all. And, in case you didn’t know this, my preference for the office of President was Hillary Clinton. Not only because I thought she would make the best president, but also because I thought she would be more difficult for the right wing machine to discredit. They’ve been trying for about 16 years, and she’s still standing. It was so painfully obvious, listening to them as I do, that Obama was the preferred Democrat by Republicans, because they knew they’d have a better chance of waging a successful smear campaign against him. Little jabs, here & there, but no big punches until now. They were either waiting for Hillary to do that, or waiting for him to secure the nomination. Well, she didn’t. He did. Now it’s on, brother.

Republicans will try to cite Obama’s lack of governmental experience as a reason he shouldn’t be President. It just so happens that’s the same reason they can’t discredit him based upon what he actually did in government. (Like they can be discredited themselves.) That won’t work. People who are smart enough to figure out how to find a voting machine will realize that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had more experience in government than any two white men in modern history, and their counsel, whispered into the ear of that cool cat dancing badly behind the big desk in the oval office has brought us to this point in the nation’s history where, if you’re really rich, everything is hunky-dory. If you’re not, you’re actually considering the prospect that everything is so bad, the end might be just around the corner. So that is the fire they will pour the fuel upon.

It’s a frenzy. A movement. A revolution! Them youngins and black folk and homos are even voting. That can’t be right. It must be the end of the world!

From the opposite perspective, I don’t believe another four years of George W. Bush (via McCain) would bring about the end of the world. Maybe just the end of the United States as a so-called “world power”. But don’t look for prophetic doomsday e-mails from me explaining how McCain fits into the boogieman role better than Barack does. I could make the case, but I don’t have time. Busy working to get money to pay $5 a gallon for gasoline, so I can keep working to buy gasoline, so oil executives and other friends of the president can retire very, very rich in November.

Expect to hear, in the next four months, some of the wildest stories you have ever heard. Clean out your e-mail boxes to make room for the incoming revelations. Like I said, believe them, if you will. I need the stuff.

© 2008 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

OBX Jumping Turtles

2008-05-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

There’s something about the persistence of the ocean that’s inspirational. Maybe that’s why so many famous people come from or live on one coast or another.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is kind of a different place. Me ‘n Mama took a few days to travel down to that part of Dixie, shoot a beach wedding at Nag’s Head, and seek out some light house photos for our art prints. I don’t want to jinx anything – writing this from the beginning of the trip home at the Norfolk, Virginia airport – but the journey down here went about as well as one who hates to fly could expect.

We handed off our rental car to our gracious host, who’s going on to Williamsburg for a graduation, so we’ve got about five hours to kill here in the airport. Perfect for telling ya’ll about some of the oddities of the narrow strip of land we spent the last three days on.

Down here, being in the heart of tobacco country, you can smoke pretty much everywhere – bars, restaurants, grade school, church…. But the “drinking” thing is really screwed up.

Beer & wine, you can buy anywhere. K-Mart has a nice selection. Mixed drinks & liquor is a situation about as complicated as the Democratic primary process. Down the Outer Banks, toward Cape Hatteras, you just can’t get them. If you order a mixed drink, it’s made with champagne. Yummy, I bet…

Back up around Nag’s Head and Kitty Hawk you can buy liquor, but only from the ABC stores that keep, pretty much, banker’s hours. These stores are owned by the county and regulated by the State of North Carolina. The guy behind the counter is actually an employee of the county. Bars & restaurants also have to purchase liquor from these stores, and, instead of getting a discount or wholesale price, they pay the same thing a retail customer does, plus a tax of about $4 a bottle. So mixed drinks in a bar are way expensive.

The “drive-thru” beer & wine stores are literally that. You actually drive your car through the building – like a “quick lube” or something. You just point out what you want and they hand it through the car window to you.

But, it ain’t like my only interest is in the local drinking and smoking customs. As many of you know, I also have a borderline-unnatural affection for turtles. And they’ve got some weird ones in Carolina.

We’re driving down Highway 12 toward Bodie Island, and I have to swerve to miss what I first thought was a dead Rottweiler in the road. As I passed it, I could tell it was what we call an alligator snapper – the biggest turtle I’ve ever seen outside a zoo. It didn’t appear to have been hit, so I pulled the car over and got out to go move it out of the road. The closer I got, the bigger that rascal appeared. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it had a head about the same size as that of a Boston Terrier.

My vast experience with turtles has taught me better than to try to pick this big fella up, but I wanted to get a picture before I did anything. As I walked up to it, a local schoolboy, maybe 12, came up behind me with a sucker in his mouth.

“I wouldn’t get too close to him if I was you.” He warned.

“No.” I said. “I’m gonna get him to bite this stick and I’ll drag him out of the road.

“You better get a bigger stick”, he said.

A school bus already had traffic backed up southbound, and a van had the northbound traffic stopped.

“Be careful”, he said, “these ones can jump.”

OK. I was glad the kid was trying to help, but what does some youngster know about turtles that I haven’t learned in a half century of intense study?

“Yeah. Thanks, kid”, I said, “I think this’ll do fine.”

So I stuck the stick down by the turtle’s head and he lunged at it, coming up about three feet off the ground. That was about two feet short of how high I jumped, screeching like a girl.

“These ones right here, you gotta get ‘em by the tail and drag ‘em.” The boy continued, without even saying “I told you so”.

Both of those lines of traffic, including that busload of impressionable children, were sitting there, watching, patiently waiting for me to move this monster from the road. I didn’t want to disappoint them, but, after seeing that thing jump, I was … (what’s the word?)….scared!

So I hauled off and kicked him (the turtle, not the kid) in the butt. Then he pushed himself up, like a dog, and slowly walked off the road. I was off the hook.

We got our lighthouse pictures – two of four, anyway. But we were very careful walking around the marshlands to do it. You never know when a giant snapping turtle is gonna jump out of the weeds and take your head off.

© 2008 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

STRANGE HOLIDAY

2008-03-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. For some strange reason I couldn’t quit thinking about Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash.
But it was Easter, and I could smell bacon frying, so I thought I’d get up and give it a try.

“What’s for breakfast?” I asked the little woman as I stumbled into the bathroom.

“Bacon & eggs”, she said, disappearing back down the hall with an armload of dirty clothes.

When I caught up to her in the kitchen there was bacon…and biscuits… on the counter, but that’s all.

“Where’s the eggs?” I grumbled.

She looked up from the paper for a moment and said “Outside. You gotta find them.”

Not being one to be contrary, I took the little wicker basket she handed me, grabbed a piece of bacon for the trip, and sauntered out the back door to gather up my morning meal. There were some in the half whiskey barrel. Some in the opening to the pool skimmer. Some more under the lid to the grill.

I brought in my booty and tossed it into the trash, washed my hands and made a bacon and cheese sandwich.

“Not gonna eat ‘em?” she asked.

Funny. They were blue and green and red, with little stripes across them in various other colors. And they were dirty.

“You’re not s’posed to do that with scrambled eggs.” I told her, as something out the kitchen window caught my eye.

I walked out the front door, then around to the side yard, and there was a rabbit, just sitting there. As I got within 10 feet or so, it scampered off under the neighbor’s outbuilding. But, it left behind something there where it had been sitting. A white, spherical object there in the grass I mowed yesterday.

“No way.” I said out loud, walking toward it.

Nope. Don’t tell the youngins, but rabbits don’t lay eggs. Even on Easter.

It was a ping pong ball one of the kids down the street had been playing with yesterday. No chocolate inside or nuthin’. I guess the rabbit just stopped there by chance. What are the odds? Ruined my whole morning.

Later, surfing through the TV channels from my favorite prone position on the couch, I came across a special holiday presentation of “The Ten Commandments”.

On Easter? Really?

That didn’t make much sense to me. Do you think the program director for that channel had any idea what he was doing? I wondered if the special holiday presentation of “The Odyssey” was coming on next.

That Charlton Heston sure made a good looking Moses, though, didn’t he? I noticed that, all through the movie, there were no guns hanging from his warm, live fingers. If he would have had one then, he could have done a number on that Pharo and his boys. They really must not have known who they were messing with – kind of like the program director, I guess.

It got me to thinking that holidays sure are strange times. And that brought my headache back. So I went back to bed.

Monday, I got fried eggs at Waffle Hut. They were white and yellow, just like eggs are supposed to be.

JAILHOUSE ROCK

2008-03-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

Last week I saw on the TV news that, for the first time in American history, one out of every 100 of us are presently incarcerated. A full one percent. And, further, the rate of incarceration is growing faster than the population. Right now, we have a higher percentage of people in prison than any other country in the world. 2.3 million of them.
And there’s another four million or so currently on parole or probation.

Understand, this includes all Americans. So, if you were to factor out, say, everybody under the age of, I dunno, ten, and assume that none of those were in jail (with the possible exception of a few in Texas & Florida where they consider those kids to be “adults”), then that takes that percentage even higher. And growing.

If this trend continues, sooner or later, everybody will be in jail. I gotta wonder: When that happens, who’s gonna feed the prisoners? Furthermore, that just shoots the heck out of your chance for a parole or early release, because there won’t be anybody outside the bars to let you out. A week, tops, and everybody’s going to starve to death. That’s cold, man.

Say we get down to a dozen un-imprisoned people in the country. How are they going to make up a judge, jury, prosecutor and defense attorney for those last folks? Then, you’ve got to have somebody to take them down to the jail and lock ‘em up. I just don’t see how this could work.

Wha’d they do?

In 2004 – the last year for which I could find statistics – only about 52% of those folks in the orange jumpsuits were there for violent crimes. 21% were there for property crimes, and 20% were there for drugs. I have to assume, since they list them separately, that those “druggies” were there for non-violent drug offenses. If that 20% figure is current, we’re talking about 460,000 people in the slammer for buying, selling, or doing them. A big chunk of those (I couldn’t find the stats, because, frankly, I’m too lazy to look too hard for them.) includes folks involved with a recreational weed that is purported by many to be less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol. But those are legal. Go figure.

Seems like we’ve just got a thing about locking people up. You know, to rehabilitate them. Because everybody knows those people who finally get out of prison become model citizens. Prison fixes them. This may be why the town of Brattleboro, Vermont has passed a resolution to arrest George W. Bush and/or Dick Cheney, should they ever show their faces in town – for war crimes. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that one, but I really don’t see how it’s doable either. The town has something over 12,000 population (meaning, I guess, that about 120 of them are in jail), so how many cops could they have? Can you see Barney walking up to the Secret Service dudes in the dark glasses, telling them to step aside so they can snag the Dubyuh and cart him off to the pokey? But, say he prevails. GWB goes to jail, court, and then to the Big House. Cheney comes to town to rescue him and they grab him too. Now they’re both making license plates. Eventually, by the numbers, the rest of us join them.

Would they still be President and Vice President? Couldn’t they just pardon themselves? Who’s going to use those license plates? This is so confusing.

My goal, at this point, is to hold out and be the guy who slams the door on the next-to-last guy. Then, when everybody else is in there banging on the bars with tin cups, I’m going to go to all your houses and steal your stuff. What are you going to do about it?
Once I’ve got it – having nobody to sell it to – I’m going to let everybody out again.
Except Bush & Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, one little fat guy I used to work for, and that puppy-chucking soldier from YouTube. And maybe, out of the goodness of my heart, I’ll leave a few of those really mean violent bad guys in there to keep them company.

It’s good to be king.

© 2008 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

REPTILE DYSFUNCTION

2008-02-23T13:02:00.000-08:00

Although my short term memory is somewhat akin to that of a goldfish, I still have rather vivid recollections of growing up in Batesville in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. It was a fun time, and nostalgia from fun times just seems to burn deeper into whatever part of the brain that stores those things, I guess. Biology wasn’t that much fun for me, so maybe that’s why I can’t remember those brain parts.

After all these years, I’m quite sure I could recognize the faces of most everybody from the BHS classes of 1971 through ‘74. That might not be all that unusual, given that it wasn’t an exceptionally large school, but, oddly enough, I can still remember a lot of their pets as well. To wit:

When we first moved to Batesville, and were temporarily staying at The American Motor Inn, I had a Piranha named Freddy that I brought with me from Blytheville. One night we had returned from dinner at Kelly’s, and found that Freddy had jumped from his coffee can into the dry sink, committing fishicide. I guess the move was just too much for him. No police report was ever filed.

Desha Byrd had a cat that was reincarnated from Satan. I don’t remember his name, but I do know that years later he was re-reincarnated into a big white monster named B.C, who lived with my brother-in-law, Larry Price. He remembered all the harassment I dished out to him in the previous life, and every time I’d walk within twenty feet of him, he’d latch onto my leg, digging teeth and claws in as deep as he could.

Mae & Sylvia Strickland had a cat that, although they might not have known, drank like a sailor. And Randy Tovey had a Spider Monkey, said to have been snatched from the jungles of Viet Nam.

Karla Reynolds had horses, on a lot right beside her house there in town. They were large, frightening animals that I never got to know very well, but one of them once woke me up chewing on my foot as I slept in my car one night in that field. Don’t ask me what I was doing there. Like I said, I have a terrible memory.

Over on west side, Mike Roper had a little short-legged canine named Otto, and on Main Street, Curtis Wainwright had Blue, one of those cattle herding dogs.

On the east side, we had two “neighborhood dogs”. Sid was a rowdy, snarling Boston Terrier who was supposed to belong to Ginger St. John’s family, but he spent all his time running around from place to place, keeping in touch with his buddies. One of his favorite things to do was chase the swings on the schoolyards, and actually jump up and catch them with his mouth. At some point, I lost contact with Sid. Over the years, I have wondered how many teeth he had left when he went on to the big doggy swing set in the sky.

Diane May’s German Shepherd, Socks, had a compulsion for chasing vehicles. Cars, motorcycles, bicycles – anything that moved. Sitting around at Tommy’s Kingburger or the bowling alley with not much else to do, ultimately, somebody would say “Hey! Let’s go let Socks chase us!” Then, one at a time, we’d zip our motorcycles down the street in front of Dr. May’s house, just to see who would come out alive. Most of us made it, but one day forensic investigators will discover several bikes and Volkswagens buried in that back yard, and CNN will have a field day speculating on what happened. Nancy Grace will, no doubt, blame it on some man who had it out for his ex-wife, and Paula Zahn will try her best to make it a racial thing. In reality, it was just a big, big, dog, who didn’t like things moving up and down his street.

Although he was really only a fictional character, designed to get us out of typing class to go feed him, Larry Guenzel’s pet buffalo, Sid (perhaps named after the Boston Terrier), once got him into serious trouble with Mrs. Moore at school.

One day, Eddie Runyun turned up with a pet dinosaur – a huge Iguana named Boris, as I recall. Thinking that was about the coolest thing ever saw, I had to get one for myself. Strangely, I can’t remember his name, but he as a good boy. When he was still relatively small, I’d let him hang onto the inside of my army jacket and take him to school with me. Then, when he got a little too big to do that, I put him on a leash in my back yard during the day. Somehow, during warm weather, while I was away, my mom “accidentally” dropped a log on his head out there in the back yard. I really don’t recall us having a fireplace in that house on Boswell Street. But my mom is still sticking to that story.

Years passed, and my affection for reptiles remained. I had a troublesome turtle named W.T., who became the title character in my first book. When my son was a young teen, I had to get him a couple of Iguanas of his own. Cheech & Chong were with us for a number of years. Then, one cold winter night, the ground-fault tripped in the garage and they became lizardsickles. We tried really hard to thaw them out by the fireplace when we found them, but it was to no avail.

Thinking back on it, most of my reptilian pets have met with untimely endings. Perhaps it wasn’t meant for man and lizard to coexist, peacefully (as the President would say).
My wife will be glad I’ve come to this realization.

Dealing With It

2008-01-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

You know what’s annoying? I mean, other than getting lemon juice squirted in your eyes by an angry waitress? People who don’t look at the camera when they’re being interviewed on TV.

I think that all started with those local “news teams”, doing their commercials. You’d be watching them, talking to some camera, from the side. As if, you were just some bystander in a room where they were being interviewed. But, in fact, they were talking to you, weren’t they? OK. I admit it. It was kinda cute when it first started out. But now it has spread like “reality shows” and the flu. Now, I’m seeing TV commercials with people talking about all kinds of stuff – looking off in some other direction.

It’s like some prodigy TV director somewhere said “Well, that’s just fine, but next time let’s film it from over there, and you pretend we’re still here. That way the viewer will think they surfed into a channel where they’re seeing something they’re not supposed to see, and that will cause us to sell more of our merchandise.”

People imitate what they see on TV. That’s got to be obvious to purt’near everybody. So now I find myself trying to do group portraits of people at various events, and inevitably, there’s some goofus staring off into space as I count to three. That lady either thinks she’s on one of those stupid TV commercials, or she doesn’t understand the significance of a photographer counting to three. Like, “What’s he counting, birds? Let’s look up and see!”

You know what else is annoying? Of course you don’t. That’s why I’m telling you. No, I’m not talking about that guy with a heavily-pierced, tattooed face and flaming orange, spiked hair, handing you your breakfast at a fast food drive-thru as you come home from the casino at 4 am with just enough money left for the dollar menu. It’s too dark to examine that food for foreign objects while you drive and, more than likely, you’d probably eat it anyway after you took that off. (Who’s gonna know?) It’s those recordings you get when you dial a phone number, thinking it’s a long-distance call and it really isn’t a long distance call. “We’re sorry. It is not necessary to dial a one or a zero when calling this number. Will you please hang up and try again?”

Well, here’s my question: If that machine is smart enough to recognize that is a local call and I don’t need to dial a one or the area code, or whatever, why doesn’t the thing just go ahead and put the call through? What’s that gonna hurt?

I’ve tried to convince myself that there are just some things put here on this Earth that serve no purpose other than making folks lives a little more miserable. Ants, meth, and Ann Coulter come to mind. And software technical support, of course. But, try as I might to just go with it, understanding that everybody else has to deal with the same crap, sometimes it just gets to me, you know?

So I put my TV way over in the corner of the room, facing right along the wall, and left my easy chair there where it was. And, sure enough, this Ann Coulter interview came on and she was looking away from the camera, but it was as if she was looking right at me. I had outsmarted the director. I called the network to tell them about it, but forgot to dial one and the area code, and a recording came on, telling me that I had to dial one, plus the area code. Then I went to the refrigerator and got that plastic lemon and squirted myself in the eye.

That’ll show ‘em.

FIVE THINGS I LEARNED OVER THE HOLIDAYS

2008-01-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

#5. Cats are flammable. Who knew? I told Skinnykitty to stay out of my lap when I’m working on the computer, but it’s like he doesn’t listen or something. I know it’s a bad habit, but I like to have the occasional cigarette while at my desk. (You can do that when you work from your house….for now, anyway.) He doesn’t smoke, as a rule. A little spark fell off as I reached around him to get to the keyboard, and, next thing I knew there was that same smell as when Sheila sat Terry Horn’s hair on fire in the back seat of my Mustang in front of Ray’s Corner on Main Street. Skinnykitty got a little more excited than Terry did, but I got him put out OK before he bolted out of the room.

#4. That Oprah Winfrey must have some stroke. I don’t watch daytime TV since Bo & Hope sailed off to parts unknown with a newborn baby around 1980. It just made that whole show seem somewhat unbelievable. I do keep CNN on while I’m in my office, but I don’t consider that TV. Anyway, I guess I just wasn’t aware of the power a “personality” like Oprah could wield. Snatched a for-sure Iowa victory away from Hillary and gave it to a black guy with a Muslim middle name – in IOWA, of all places. Iowa folk are different, Ms. Gump. Has anybody noticed whether or not they’re all driving new Pontiacs? Personally, I have no problem with Obama, and I’m sure he’ll get my vote if he gets the nomination. But, did I mention that he won in Iowa? Iowa? Isn’t that the same place where the Huckinator won for the bad guys? Seems odd, that’s all.

#3. Red Bull doesn’t really give you wings. But it’ll sure keep a whole bunch of obnoxious drunks awake a lot longer than anybody else wants them to be. Seems this is the new thing – mixing alcohol with energy drinks. In the old days, it was sort of rule-of-thumb that when somebody got slobbering stupid, you just kept giving them drinks until they finally passed out and quit annoying people. Now, with our wonderful advances in science, we can look forward to hours of enjoyment from these hardcore partiers with amazingly bad taste buds. Thanks, food science people. Next New Years, is there anybody with your organization I can call to drive these folks home? My upholstery can’t take it again. Is that Red Bull thing, by chance, a trend in Iowa as well?

#2. If God intended for lights and decorations to be on trees and houses, they’d come that way. It might be different for you, but I don’t put those stupid things up because I’m overwhelmed with “holiday spirit”, or because I’m just plain fascinated with colored lights. As I’ve gotten older, it takes a little more than that to retain my attention. The only reason I do it is because the kids get ticked if I’m the only one on the block who doesn’t light up. And they don’t even live here. Putting them up is bad enough, but then – unless you’re a redneck girl – you have to take them down. Then, you’ve gotta box ‘em up and carry them back up to the attic on Sunday when you should be in your office, working on art prints and writing columns, trying to keep from setting the cat on fire.

And, the number 1 thing I learned over the holiday season? Global Warming is going to kill us all. I don’t necessarily believe that, but if I have to listen to some redneck Republican mocking Al Gore every time it gets cold outside, I can sure as hell give it back when I have sweat dripping down my nose as I take down the Christmas lights, in a tee-shirt, on January 6. Whatever it is – whether it’s caused by cows passing gas, or volcanoes, or burning cats – this just ain’t right. I mean, I dig it, but it’s strange. If it would stay 70 degrees until Spring, then turn off pretty, that would be fine with me. But they say storms are coming tomorrow. That means I’ll have to shut the windows and let the cats back in.

Happy New Year, ya’ll.

© 2008 Rick Baber

Don't be like Mike

2007-12-13T19:26:00.000-08:00

Mike Huckabee? Really?

Seems like only a couple of years ago….in fact, it was only a couple of years ago, when some conservative Arkies at a local watering hole were complaining to me (that’s easy when me ‘n mama are the only libs in the room….or, the county, as far as I know) how the Huckster was more of a liberal than Bill Clinton ever pretended to be. Now, lookie here. He’s the darling of that loveable far right constituency of the Republican party. Numero Uno in some polls. As far down as number two in others.

Of course, “liberal” is only what the indigenous Neocons call anybody who doesn’t do everything exactly like they want it done. If a guy doesn’t drive an American-made pickup truck with a rebel flag front license plate; a “God, Guns & Glory” bumper sticker on the left rear; some anti-Hillary sticker on the other side; and a little plastic Jesus on the dashboard…well, that guy is a liberal. Even if he did start his career as Guv’ner in an American-made double-wide. I don’t know what Huck did to get tagged with such a nasty label, but he can take solace in the fact that the same guys slapped that moniker on the Duhbyuh himself. And look what a bang-up job he’s done for us.

See, what we have here, in our second-coming of “the man from Hope”, is a bona fide, honest-to-goodness Baptist preacher. And a funny one, at that. Not only funny with his little one liners, but kind of funny (given his calling, and all) with the way he takes liberties with the truth when addressing all these folks around the country who, through no fault of their own, think the same thing I used to think: that a preacher wouldn’t tell lies like your typical politician. Well, actually, the Huckster doesn’t lie like the typical politician. He takes the art to a whole ‘nuther level.

Take, for example, his denial that he was responsible for the parole of rapist-murderer, Wayne Dumond. That, according to the Huckinator, was the handywork of Jim Guy Tucker and, guess who, Bill Clinton. How are you going to get to be a serious GOP presidential contender if you don’t blame something on Bill Clinton? Huck says it was Jim Guy who commuted Dumond’s sentence. Well. That much is true. What he is smart enough to understand is that most of America is not smart enough to understand that commuting a sentence doesn’t mean letting a guy go free. See, Governor Bill Clinton refused to make Dumond eligible for parole. It was thought by the good ol’ boys that was because the 17 year old cheerleader the guy was convicted of raping was a distant cousin of Slick Willie. In some sense, in the minds of the hard-core Clinton haters, that meant what the pervert did was, you know, kinda OK. When Jim Guy became guv, he reviewed the case and did “commute” Dumond’s sentence. That means he changed the “life plus 20” sentence the guy originally got, and reduced it to 39 years, making him “eligible” for parole. That was in 1992. So, you see, Jim Guy didn’t let the animal out of the cage.

Then, along comes the new Governor Huckabee, who planned to release Dumond outright, for lack of sufficient DNA evidence – even though the victim of the crime positively identified him. That got a bunch of folks up in arms, so he backed off his overt plan to let the rapist go, and started putting pressure on the parole board to do it for him. That eventually worked, and Dumond was set free on parole in 1999.

The next year, according to the jury who convicted him in 2004, Huckabee’s pet project raped and killed a woman in Missouri.

So, is Huck telling the truth when he so cleverly says that the Governor in Arkansas doesn’t have the power to parole a convicted felon? Sure he is. Does that mean that he isn’t lying to the people who ask him about the Dumond situation? You decide.

Kind of brings to mind the commercial that shows the car submerged in hurricane waters and the seller re-writing the ad from “slight water damage” to “new interior”, doesn’t it?

But that’s all becoming pretty well known, now that Huck’s free ride is coming to an end. And, soon, all the details of his snatching stuff from the governor’s mansion and using campaign contributions for whatever he decided, and smashing computer hard drives when he didn’t want to leave behind any incriminating evidence will be out in the national light also. He’ll have something to say about those things. It will be carefully crafted to not be a lie, while at the same time completely concealing the truth.

But none of that stuff about the Huckster is what bugs me – because the media is beginning to catch on. It doesn’t even seem to weigh heavy on my opinion of the guy that he seems to honestly believe the earth is only 6,000 years old. What really gets my goat is how he keeps saying that he is the only republican who has “defeated the Clinton political machine in Arkansas four times”. That was confusing to me, what with my caveman digital artist mind and all. So I asked Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times (the ultimate authority on Mike Huckabee) what Huck meant when he referenced those four victories against Clinton. Turns out he was speaking of victories, in his run up to the governor’s office, after Clinton was already President, against Nate Coulter, Charlie Cole Chaffin, Bill Bristow, and Jimmie Lou Fisher. OK. They were democrats. But I even went so far as to re-arrange the letters of their names, and I couldn’t get “Bill Clinton” out of any of them. The closest I can get is if I use letters from ALL of their names, and even then, I can only come up with “Bill Clinto”.

Wait! I left off the “N” in “Nate”.

The Huckster wins again.

© 2007 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

TERRIFIED

2007-11-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

Last week, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a “command center” was set up on the south side of the square. Traffic was barricaded off to the square and College Avenue. An alert interrupted the un-interruptible light-heartedness of KKEG radio – warning the classic rock audience that the unthinkable might be occurring in the very heart of Razorback country. White powder found at the Federal Building!

Had this happened ten years ago, during the “War on Drugs”, everybody would surely have suspected this mysterious appearance to be a couple million dollars worth of cocaine some South American drug lord dumped there to hook all the kids. Development expense for future business. But, we’re in a “War on Terror” now. This stuff has got to be designed to kill.

Well, maybe. If you’re allergic to biscuits.

As it turned out, those way-too-healthy Fayettevillians were having another one of their “hash runs” (another term that would have caused problems in the drug war), and they marked the trail for the runners with flour. That path went right in front of the federal building. Some deputy saw it and our tax dollars went to work.

“In a similar incident in Connecticut in August, two people were charged with felony breach of the peace after a hash run trail forced the evacuation of a furniture store in New Haven.” – The Morning News.

The Fayetteville Police Department advised in this case that no criminal charges were likely because there was no malice or mischief involved. Not THIS time.

How nice.

But don’t read that to mean that any foolish person can recklessly spill flour on the sidewalk downtown and bypass a waterboard vacation to Gitmo. When are you people going to realize that we’re approaching our 7th year of a crisis situation? We can’t be doing crazy negligent things like this. Our very survival; the power base of the President of the United States; and the campaign of Rudy Giulani are at stake. It ain’t “business as usual”.
Once, years ago, a guy tried to walk onto a plane with a bomb in his shoe, ala Maxwell Smart. Would you believe it? Now, when you take a trip, you better wear the good socks with no holes in the toes. And leave that bottle of water at home. There’ll be plenty to drink on the plane – unless you’re imprisoned on the tarmac for ten hours due to some problem with take-off, eating little bags of salty peanuts and pretzels, and the airline runs out of consumable liquids. If and when that moment presents itself to you, thank your maker that the shoe bomb guy had it where it was and not surgically implanted in some body part you might have needed when you arrived at your destination. Say, it was a leg, and you were on your way to participate in some “hash run”.

A couple of weeks before the Great Fayetteville Shutdown, California caught fire and burned to the ground. Several days into the fire, TV news stations were reporting that those fires must have been deliberately set by people with a high degree of knowledge about such things – which was why firefighters were having such a hard time putting them out. This led to speculation that those terrorists we’re so afraid of could have been the perps. But, it just so happened that the biggest of those fires was actually set by a 10 year old kid playing with matches. Apparently nobody ever told him that would cause him to wet the bed.

The point is, terrorists could set fires like that. But they haven’t, so we don’t outlaw matches. They could easily scatter a 50 pound bag of roofing nails along the L.A. freeway system any day at about 4pm, and probably net almost as many deaths as they did on 9/11. So, why are roofing nails so available? Because they haven’t done that yet. They could sneak into the nation’s zoos and turn loose all the Godless killing machine bears, who could then find their ways to our elementary schools and devour our helpless children. And yet, those zoos are still in operation, because….correct – Stephen Colbert and I are the only ones who have thought of bear liberation as a means of terrorism. In other words, if the terrorists haven’t done it yet, it’s OK. If they have done it, we’re going to freak out about that until the cows come home because we simply have no foresight and no imagination. How then, do you win a “war” on terrorism with soldiers and guns in some part of the world where everybody shoots at everybody else? What should be the preferred weapon for combating an abstract? Imaginary bombs? If you could get them all to play by the rules (and why wouldn’t they?) you might even be able to eventually kill them off. But, how would you know when they were all dead? So, how would you know when to claim victory?

Face it. Going forward, we’re just going to have to get used to being a little scared of everything, because the world just isn’t as safe a place as it used to be, and it can never be again. But it’s not good to be terrified of anything, because if we are then “terrorism”, by its very definition, has won.

© 2007 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/

LET THE MARKET DECIDE

2007-10-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

After all these years, listening to Rush Limbaugh, hollering back at the radio for three painful hours every day, I’ve finally capitulated and now agree that the loveable little fuzzball was right all along. So there. I said it.

It was the diatribe today that did it. Maha Rushie was ranting on about Hillary making “health care” a big issue in the presidential election. Dude was right. Government doesn’t belong in the healthcare business. That should be a civilian enterprise, like everything else, that is “governed” by the free market – the concept that made America what it is today. As Rush said, there’s really no difference in hotel prices and hospital prices. If left alone, without government interference, hospital pricing would adjust to the demands of the market.

For example, if a hotel has very high prices, then only the rich people can afford to stay there. The hotel has to make the business decision whether or not it is willing and able to survive on only that share of the market. If they keep their prices high, somebody else will come along and offer lodging at a better price. Then, there’s a place for the middle class guy to stay. The poor guy? What does he need a hotel for anyway? He can sleep in the dumpster behind the Waldorf, where that fat cat is staying. You don’t see the gumment interfering in the hotel business.

Or restaurants. There are those hoity-toity places with real tablecloths that serve you a wee little bit of food at insane prices. You know – the kind of places where movie stars and Donald Trump and Congressmen eat. For most everyone else, there are already places that don’t charge so much for their food. Some have open buffets, where even little kids can sneeze right into the boiled chicken while they’re scooping out more sprinkles to put on their complimentary after-dinner ice cream cones. You don’t have to be rich to eat at those places. That’s because somebody filled that niche in the market. That guy eats at the high-priced place, because he was a good businessman, and now he can afford to. The poor guy literally gets food dumped right on top of him, his wife & two kids, as they sleep in the dumpster behind that hotel. That’s what President Bush was talking about when he mentioned “People trying to put food on their family”. It’s even conceivable that he could collect enough deposit bottles to feed the fam once a week or so off the dollar menu at the local fast food joint. They got ‘em everywhere. So, you see, there’s really no need for government intervention in the restaurant business. The market takes care of it.

Rich guys – the ones who aren’t chauffeured around in limousines, can drive those cars that all us middle-age-crisis guys only wish we had. They cost too much for most people. But there are car companies who stepped in there and created affordable vehicles for the rest of us….except for the dumpster family. But, really, even if they had a car, they couldn’t afford to buy gasoline, so they’d probably end up moving into the car and living in luxury out there beside the street where they would be quite the eyesore and a considerable traffic hazard. So, it would be to the detriment of the rest of society if Uncle Sam was to dictate the price of vehicles…or gasoline for that matter. The free market works again.

So, what makes “healthcare” any different? If the medical profession prices themselves into a market share that only millionaires can afford, then that’s all the business they’ll get. How much money can one millionaire spend? After all, it ain’t like people have to go to the doctor. Some bright entrepreneur will come up with a chain of medical clinics – maybe supplemented by advertising on the thermometers and bed sheets – that the “average Joe” can afford. This will be to healthcare what the motel beside the freeway is to that high priced hotel in Manhattan. Maybe some old, outdated equipment… or better yet some brand new Chinese-made medical gadgets. Some un-approved pharmaceuticals imported from countries where children aren’t afraid to put in a good 18 hour day to see that us lazy Americans are kept healthy. Maybe the folks that made “D’s” in med school could work in these places. Think of all the jobs that could be created in the medical profession. Sure, there’s still hundreds of thousands of people who can’t afford to go, even here, but it is important to any economy that people die. What else is going to motivate that guy in the “Medical Express” lane to get over that gall bladder surgery and get back out there to work for the man whose wife is in the expensive hospital getting her lips blown up so she’ll look good in the Ferrari when the top’s down. It’s a beautiful thing – the free market system – that only gets uglied-up when the government gets involved.

Anybody with any sense knows the Federal Government should have only two functions: maintaining a military of adequate size and resources to invade and occupy any country our leaders see fit; and letting no-bid contracts to big construction companies to re-build those countries after we destroy them. Everything else can be handled by the free market system.

Thanks Rush. I needed that.

© 2007 Rick Baber

Jena 6

2007-09-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

“Things in this life change very slowly, if they ever change at all.”

So goes the theme of a Don Henley song that I can’t for the life of me remember the name of right now. But it’s true, ain’t it?

All the drama going on in Jena, Louisiana brings back some memories of my younger years in Batesville (what doesn’t?) back in the late ‘60’s & early ‘70’s. For one, there’s that tree at the school.

We had us a tree, out in front of the office at the old BJHS – which, I understand, is now some kind of kindergarten or something – down on Water Street. It was a big wide Oak, as I recall. Wide enough to stand behind and not be spotted by Mr. Caraway as we smoked those Viceroy cigarettes stolen from our dads’ dressers the night before. There were, maybe, a dozen of us who hung out there every day during the lunch break. A dozen – out of all those kids who attended that school. I honestly don’t recall if any of the “regulars” were black kids or not, but I know nobody would have had any problems with any blacks being there.

I do recall one event when one of the white guys got into a fight with a black guy behind that tree. It wasn’t because the black guy had “invaded” our space. It was because they had gotten into it over something earlier in the day and, as mentioned, the big tree was the best shield from the eyes of the school officials, and therefore the best place to resolve their disagreement. It was resolved – one on one. No guns. No knives. No cops or lawyers or political groups seeking to promote their own agendas. Just a couple of kids who had to work things out.

A couple of years later, when I was a Jr. in the “new” high school, up on the hill, I was (as usual) returning late from lunch. When I pulled into the parking lot, expecting to find that everybody else had already gone back inside, there were about ten (white) guys sitting on their cars and standing around. The “tardy” bell sounded as I opened my door. I jumped out in a hurry, thinking maybe I’d beat Mrs. Newton to class, I noticed all these guys looked and behaved uncharacteristically serious.

“Hey! Come on! The bell rang!” I said, as I took off toward the building.

Nobody moved, so, late or not, I had to go back and find out what was happening. I kept asking what was going on, but everybody just ignored me, keeping their eyes fixed on the gate up there that blocked off the then-open hallways.

As it turned out, one of the guys in the parking lot had been in an altercation with another guy – who had been hitting on his girlfriend. The guy in the parking lot, as I said, was white. The guy hitting on his girlfriend happened to be black. I say “happened to be” because I don’t think it made any difference to the dude what color the other guy was – at first, anyway. But, before lunch was over, it had apparently turned into some kind of race war.

Fearing Mrs. Newton more than I loved excitement, I got off the fender of my Mustang and proceeded toward the building. But I stopped cold when I looked up at a sea of black students – male & female – coming out the gates. I didn’t want them to think I was charging them by running up to the building, so I went back and sat on my car. Braveheart, I wasn’t.

There were, it seemed, three times as many black kids walking our direction than there were white kids in the parking lot. Skinny little cat that I was, I was certain that it wouldn’t take my pro-rata share of them to whoop me, but I had literally no place to go.

As they approached there were some words between one or two of the guys on each side of the impending battle. It was obvious that the situation wasn’t going to improve by virtue of the dialogue. They’d stop and yell for a while, then walk toward us again. When they got about 30 yards away, one guy opened the door of his pickup and pulled a hunting rifle out from under his seat, and laid it, pointed at them, across the hood.

Gulp.

Of course, they stopped walking our direction. And I quickly pondered the option of going back to Tommy’s Kingburger and playing the pinball machines, since I was already late for Geometry (or Algebra, or one of those number things). But before I could come to a decision, Mr. Cross and Coach Johnson, and Mr. Hicks (I think), and some of those other male teachers and coaches came running through that sea of black kids carrying riot clubs, looking like they meant business. The black kids split up and returned to the building. The guy with the gun stuck it back under his seat. And suddenly, WWIII was over – without a shot ever being fired.

It’s interesting to think that a guy was considering actually shooting somebody, but didn’t want to get in trouble with the principal.

After that day, although it could have happened, I don’t remember any further “racial” issues at BHS. We didn’t get any TV coverage. There was no internet to stir the pot. In fact, I may be the only person that has any recollection of the event.

I don’t know what it means. But it seems pertinent.

© 2007 Rick Baber

Secret Handshakes

2007-08-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

August 29, 2007

I think we all owe Idaho senator Larry Craig a debt of gratitude. What a swell guy! If not for him, many naïve hicks like myself might never have become aware of the double top secret mystery dance that is apparently required to make new friends in public restrooms. If I understand it properly, it goes something like this:

“You put you’re your right hand in. You pull your right hand out. You put your right foot in and you tap it all about. You look through the crack into his pretty blue eyes. And that’s what I call cruisin’ for guys.”

What is that? It’s like an episode of “Get Smart”. Being a conspiracy nut, I have long suspected there were all kinds of groups that used this sort of covert communication, thereby keeping all us outsiders in the dark. Cloak ‘n Dagger networks that carry on these clandestine conversations right in front of our eyes, without giving us a clue. Take rich people, for example. They all must have some network like that, and if you don’t know the code you’re going to keep working for the man. But somebody lets you in, and all of a sudden it’s the blue label stuff for you baby. I mean, what other explanation is there for so many rich people who also happen to be, well, stupid?

To get in to one of these secret societies, you probably have to be nominated by a member and voted on by the rank and file, then go through some torturous and humiliating initiation process. Then they tell you if you ever let their secret out of the bag they’ll do something really bad to you and your house pets – maybe turn Michael Vick loose on them. That’s how they maintain their exclusivity. Fear and intimidation.

I’m all for “outing” any creepy pervert lawmaker – especially Republicans – but I honestly can’t understand how that guy was actually arrested for the little bathroom stall dance he did. I mean it ain’t like he walked up to Undercover Annie at 9th & High and offered her twenty bucks for … well, you know what you offer Undercover Annie twenty bucks for. All this guy did was a hand & foot routine. Who’s to say that, with all the different down-low groups there are, some of those “signals” don’t mean one thing to, say, bathroom perverts, and something else to, say, this Little League 3rd base coach I was watching the other day?

The guy started off by clapping his hands. Then he touched his hat. Then he touched his ear. Then his elbow. Then his hat again. His belt. His elbow again. His hat again. Then he clapped his hands again and acted like he was brushing something off his arm. Then he tapped his foot. Right there! He tapped his foot! Nobody popped up and busted that guy.

Now, if we’re going to arrest perverts in airport bathrooms and let guys like this stand there, right out in the open in front of everybody at a Little League game, around all those children, then people, all I have to say is this is a really messed up world.

What if the good “family values” Republican (did I mention he was a Republican?) senator was just trying to tell the guy in the next stall that he should buy Wal-Mart stock, perhaps mistaking him for somebody in the Rich Club? What if he was delusional, and just trying to get him to bunt?

Even if Craig, by some wild stretch of the imagination (snort), was trying to make some “overture” to that undercover cop, how is that act illegal? What’s the difference in a gay guy walking right up to another guy in a bathroom and saying “You wanna go see Rocky Horror with me?” and a straight guy walking up to a girl in a bar and asking “Hey baby, what’s your sign?”, as long as neither of them is holding up some cash in exchange for an affirmative response? Is there some special law that applies to bathrooms? I agree that it’s just not right to talk to somebody in there any time except when you’re both washing your hands, and even then, only about football. But…illegal?

My son thinks some people will mistake my intent with this particular piece as being that of a Republican pervert sympathizer. (More concerned that I’m sympathizing with a Republican than with a pervert, per se.) Perhaps there are some low-brows out there who will. Fact is, I’m just trying to understand what laws were broken, and whether or not they only apply to bathrooms. I may need to make a citizen’s arrest someday, and I’d really rather not have to do it with my pants down.

© 2007 Rick Baber

Polysatire Boy does Medical Research

2007-08-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in the summer, when the air is still and the traffic’s as thick as Mississippi mud, and the asphalt’s cracklin’ like bacon in a pan, ol’ Rick Baber just looks Mother Nature in the eye and grins and spits and says “’Is that all you got?”

Then the fire ants carry him away to a cool dark hole where he can rest.

Hi kids! Miss me? I apologize for my conspicuous absence, but me ‘n mama have been tied up for about six weeks developing enough art to fill up the new Pinnacle Bank in Rogers, Arkansas. If you get a chance, go check out our website and see what we’ve been working on: http://www.digitalarts1.com/. We’d be proud to see you there.

But I’m not here today to write about art. Not here to chat about the weather. Muy caliente – as we say in Chickendale. I’m not even going to tick off my ol’ buddy Randy Tovey or that guy up in Cushman by writing nasty things about the guv’ment. This piece is dedicated to doing some serious research on a subject that has been on my mind for about 30 years. And I’m hoping you can help. I’m not a doctor. Don’t even play one on TV. But, my brother’s a doctor, so that’s qualification enough. Same gene pool. So here goes.

In my half century on this lovely blue planet I have known many people who have died from inoperable brain tumors. The best I could tell, these people had only two things in common: they knew me; and they all had dark hair and dark eyes. Perhaps it’s some form of denial, but I just refuse to believe that knowing me had anything to do with the untimely demise of any of these people. That leaves only the “dark hair & dark eyes” thing.

This subject has haunted and fascinated me, as I said, for about three decades. About 8 years ago, I offered up on one of my websites the theory that there was some correlation between the features described and this terrible malady. I received correspondence from maybe a couple dozen readers, and none of them had ever known of anybody to die from such a brain tumor who didn’t have dark hair and dark eyes. Of course, initially, there were those who thought they could present exceptions.

“My Aunt Sally died of a brain tumor, and she had gray hair.” Her natural hair color, as it turned out, was black.

“A friend in college died from a brain tumor and she had green eyes.” That person later wrote back to inform me that she had discovered that her friend wore contacts and actually had brown eyes.

Not one verifiable exception from that limited sampling group was given.

Now, I admit that was no scientific survey, but it piqued my interest even more. I decided that, when I had access to a larger audience, I would continue the study.

So, you’re it. Can you help a brudder out?

If you have ever known of anyone who died from an inoperable brain tumor, could you contact me with some details? Anything you could provide would be appreciated, but particularly the eye color and natural hair color of the deceased.

I don’t know if anything will come of it, other than satisfying the curiosity of this anal retentive writer, but I do know I’d appreciate any information you can offer.

Please respond to my website: http://www.rickbaber.com/; or by e-mail to cybermouth@hotmail.com.

Thanks!
© 2007 Rick Baber

BE PREPARED

2007-07-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

The sign said “Long haired freaky people…..”. No. Wait. That’s not right. It said “BE PREPARED TO STOP”. A big diamond shaped orange sign beside the highway, somewhere between Huntsville and Harrison.

So, that got me to thinking (it’s a rare event). Am I? You know, prepared to stop?

All depends on what it is they want me to stop, I guess. What could it be? Smoking? Drinking? Gambling? Consorting with unsavory people? Maybe the sign maker is some battered Republican and wants me to stop writing this column. Fat chance.

Whatever it was, I wondered if I had the willpower. I wondered if I was truly prepared to stop, or if I even wanted to. And I wondered how they knew I was going to be here on this particular day to read that sign. Is somebody watching me?

Somebody must be. Just last night, as I started to watch a pay-per-view movie, an announcement appeared on the TV informing me that the movie had been formatted to fit my screen. If they’re not keeping an eye on me, how do they know what size screen I have. Hmmmm?

Yesterday, in an office building in Fayetteville, there was a sign as I entered the door that said “Thank you for not smoking”. Was it just mere coincidence that I was not smoking at the time?

The questions were running through my head so fast it was making me dizzy. Then, as if by plan to distract me from that line of thought, a red SUV whizzed past me. On the back window, written in white shoe polish, it said something to the effect of “State Finals Bound…..Comets…. To God goes the glory!”

Maybe it should have said “To God goes 70% of the glory!”

It occurred to me that, if God was supposed to get ALL the glory, maybe these people shouldn’t have written all that stuff on their car. I’ll bet they get a little glory out of it themselves by doing that. I had to wonder (Again. I wonder a lot.) if God was driving down some street, paved in gold, up yonder, in a white (surely it would be white) Chevy Tahoe with writing on the back glass that said “Comets to State Finals! To ME goes the glory!”

I don’t know. Maybe it was trivial, but it took my mind off that “stopping” thing for just a few seconds. Then, suddenly, the SUV started to skid in front of me. There were a bunch of guys with hardhats in the road up ahead. They should have let somebody know.

The SUV, I’m sure with some Divine Assistance, managed to get stopped before smacking the road crew. After all, they’ve got a tournament to get to.

Obviously, I wasn’t prepared to stop, so I veered off the road. Next time, I’m going to pop a few extra bucks and get a car that has brakes. I can see now how they might come in handy.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ethel Martin – rest in peace.

© 2007 Rick Baber

Ol' Eli

2007-06-21T09:32:00.001-07:00

It’s hard to bring a tear to the eye of a hardened old rock quarry guy. But the obit in the Batesville Guard did it to me today.

When I was a kid, my dad wanted me to get a respectable job, like sacking groceries, and work my way up to management, maybe end up with my own store someday. It might have worked out better for me than the choices I made, but it was not to be. I, along with my buddies Chris and Randy, took a job shoveling debris out of railroad cars at Midwest Lime Company. We got paid something like $2 a car – but we got it whether the thing was completely full of metal shavings or clean and empty – so it sort of worked out. We went on from there to do other jobs like operating the scales, driving dump trucks, and running the hammermills, and we got to meet a lot of interesting people.

Among those interesting people was a rough-n-tumble Grizzly bear of a welder named James Kelley – who, along with his brothers Doug and Blake, took care of all the various welding needs there at Midwest.

Like any 16 year old rookie in a rock quarry, I suppose, I was scared to death of the man when I first met him. I mean, he just looked like the kind of guy who would rip off somebody’s head and use it for a football if he wanted to. Not a fate I was seeking for myself. But, being the semi-adventurous types we were, Chris and I decided that if we were going to work there (by this time running the scale house on the night shift) we were going to have to show these men that we were “OK”; and try to bluff them into thinking we weren’t afraid of them.

Looking back, it seems now like a strange way to accomplish such a task, but it felt like the appropriate thing to do at the time. Sometimes, James’ wife would come out to Midwest and leave his lunch. On one such night we came up with a plan to “get” him. I won’t tell you what, but suffice it to say that we ate his sandwiches and replaced them with the most vile and disgusting thing you might be able to imagine. To add a touch more humor to that, we added salt and pepper.

We waited for Ol’ Eli (that’s what he liked to call himself) to come down the hill to eat, but he was running later than usual. Chris had something to do, so before he left he rode his motorcycle up the hill and tossed the brown paper bag to James, just saying “Here’s your lunch Kelley”. Then he rode off to the relative safety of anyplace that wasn’t Midwest Lime on that particular night, leaving me there alone to run the scales.

Much later, as I sat leaned back in the office chair, half asleep, with my feet up on the desk (you know, working), talking to my girlfriend on the phone, that bear came walking into the office.

I had already told Becky what we’d done, and when he walked in she wanted to hang up, but I made her stay on the phone so there might at least be a witness to my untimely demise. Kelly took the chair behind me, and he just sat there, with a cold stare directed squarely at me, as if he was impatiently waiting for me to get off the phone so he could wad me up into a ball and stuff my broken remains into the desk drawer. And he sat. And he waited.

Eventually, Becky went to sleep with the phone on her pillow, and I continued to act like I was talking to her. But after a while, running out of things to pretend to be talking about, I said goodbye and hung up the phone. With nervous faux-laughter, I spoke what might well have been my last words.

“Whatsa matter Kelley? Didn’t like your lunch?”

He didn’t say anything. He just continued to sit there and stare at me for what seemed like an eternity. Long enough for me to watch my short life pass before my eyes. Two or three times. Then, without cracking a smile, he spoke.

“To much #*&%ing pepper!”

Blew my mind. Only the first of many times to come.

I have many more James Kelley stories, and pretty much anybody who has known me for any length of time has heard at least one. I’m sure everybody that knew him has similar stories. We could fill a book with them. Shame there’s only so much space here.

The Pearly Gates probably need fixin’. By now, I figure James Kelley has St. Peter temporarily trembling in some corner somewhere, just letting him sweat a little longer before he lets him off the hook and informs him that Ol’ Eli can weld a sweet potato to a cast iron stove. And he could. If you don’t believe me, just ask me.

They don’t make guys like that anymore.

© 2007 Rick Baber

TRAFFIC JAM

2007-05-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

Now when I die, I don’t want no coffin
I thought about it all too often
Just strap me in behind the wheel
And bury me with my automobile

-James Taylor, from “Traffic Jam”

We love our cars, don’t we? In America, that four-wheeled pony represents freedom. Freedom to hit the open road and go wherever we want, whenever we want.

I remember sitting in a beachside restaurant in Malibu, not so long ago, thinking “Man, I’m a long way from home.” But then I thought about the fact that the parking lot I could see from my chair connected to the PCH, and from there, I could get all the way back to my front door in Arkansas without ever getting off the pavement. At that moment, the 1600 mile distance to my couch didn’t seem like much.

Today, it seems far away again. Considering that my car gets about 20 miles to a gallon, and the last gas station sign I saw displayed, proudly, the price of a gallon of unleaded at $3.45, I did some ciphering. That’s about 17.3 cents a mile. So, I’m thinking. If I was out there right now, and needed to get home, could I?

I checked my wallet. $67. The 1600 mile trip would cost me $276.80 in gas alone – meaning if I didn’t eat or drink anything for 27 hours, I was only short about $210. So, how far would that get me? I mean, I might as well take off and get as close as I can before I set out walking.

388 miles. Where’s that put me? Sitting beside I-40, in the desert, about 30 miles east of Kingman, Arizona. I’m not happy about this. I’m hungry, thirsty, out of gas, and it’s 1200 miles home. If I walk, without food or water, I still never have to leave the pavement (or the shoulder, anyway). I might be able to make 60 miles in a 12 hour day. So in 3 weeks, I’ll be sitting beside my green, frog-filled pool, with an IV in my arm to replenish my fluids, eating a high carb diet, pondering why I keep hearing from Republicans on TV and radio talking about how well the “economy” is doing.

I s’pose, if you’re rich, your economy is doing swell. But considering that Wal-Mart just had its lowest profits in the company’s history, I’m going to just take a wild guess and say that folks who aren’t rich must be either spending their disposable income on gasoline, to get to their low-paying jobs so they can work their butts off to pay for the increased cost of food and clothing that will follow gas prices; or sticking a few dollars back so they don’t get stuck in the desert outside Kingman, Arizona and have to walk home. Either way, the simple truth is that when gasoline prices go up, the cost of practically everything else goes up as well, because those flip-flops and toasters don’t grow on the shelves at Wal-Mart. They have to be transported in there from someplace else. And somebody’s gotta burn some fuel to get them there.

About this time next year, fuel prices will go down, because there’s an election next fall. The jugheads who are raping this country while lining their pockets, and those of their friends in “Big Oil”, will want you to forget sitting beside the highway in the dark desert, with the moon illuminating that sign ahead that warns you not to pick up hitchhikers because they may be escaped convicts. They’ll want you to forget that the oil companies, while the government looked the other way, were taking in record profits and telling you that “supply & demand” dictated the prices at the pump. They’ll want you to forget that one reason supply was down was because the oil companies, at the peak of the driving season, decided to shut some of their refineries down for “maintenance”. They’ll try real hard to make you forget that there was a Republican administration in charge (for 7 years) while all this was going on. If history is any lesson, they’ll probably succeed. People’s memories are as short as the government’s foresight.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take the highest gasoline receipt I get this season, and stick it up on my refrigerator. That’ll do two things for me. It’ll remind me why there’s no food inside; and it will be there next November when I go to the polls – to remind me to do my part to vote as many of them as I can out of office. I’ll vote against the wimpy pandering Democrats in the primary, and I’ll sneak out the Monday night before the general election and siphon all the gas from the cars of my rich (or wannabe rich) Republican friends so they can’t get to the polls.

Just doing my part for America.

I used to think that I was cool
Runnin’ around on fossil fuel
Until I saw what I was doin’
Was driving down the road to ruin.

© 2007 Rick Baber

ANCIENT WRITINGS

2007-05-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

INTO FOCUS
May 12, 2007

Ancient Writings

Quran (9:11)

For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.

Chilling, no? It came to me by Internet. So you know it’s got to be true.

Even more compelling than that deal where you fold up a $20 bill and see the World Trade Center burning. Even more than the story of the off-duty Marine who shot the Muslim at the gas pump on 9/11, before the authorities discovered that the trunk of the Muslim’s car was filled with explosives.

Right there, by their own “good book”, written 1375 years ago, you can tell that we’re doing those people over there a favor – finally bringing them peace after thousands of years of conflict. So, the fact that we invaded the wrong country, for concocted reasons, suddenly seems insignificant in light of the grand plan; the scheme of things; the big picture. In other words, “Shut up with your griping about this war. We (the eagle) have a destiny to fulfill.”

OK. One small problem. That isn’t what verse 9:11 of the Quran says. Not even close. Here’s the commonly accepted translation.

Quran (9:11)

But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith; and we make communications clear for a people who know.

You can’t blame some clever guy for trying. The truth is that there were many writings left out of our (Christian’s) own Holy Book, when The Council of Nicaea put it together in 325 AD. Think about it. They didn’t have photocopiers or computers back then. The whole thing had to be written and copied by hand. These guys selected, from all of the available writings of the day, those “books” that they deemed acceptable and appropriate for inclusion. The rest were simply left out. Matter of fact, even more ancient writings are being discovered still today, even in what is now called The United States.

One of the more recently discovered writings, found buried in a clay pot in a cave during some excavation for the first nuclear power plant near Richland, Washington in 1954 has been named “Seifer fun Fokus”. Although the cloth had deteriorated to the point that only about 1/10 of the script was legible. Here’s the part they have been able to translate to date:

In the land of the south wind in the valley of the white water a scribe named for the Tiger labored to bring truth and light unto the people even as many doubted his wisdom and intent. And it came to pass that those who were believers outnumbered those who were non-believers and rose up and banished the non-believers from the city. On the 7th day of the 7th full moon of the 21st century the believers gathered all their worldly goods and sold them to the sinners in the port city by the white water to the east. And they sought out the scribe by the high view on the new space and each set aside 1/7 of his bounty and sent it by courier to the scribe in the west. And the scribe was made joyous and able to purchase feed for the horses that powered his chariot. And there was peace & harmony in the valley by the white water and all the inhabitants prospered ten-fold, and power finally came from the waterfall and lighted their houses and every person had fish to eat.

I don’t pretend to know what it means, but it captured my attention because my last name, in India, literally means “The Tiger”, and “Arkansas” means “south wind”. As for the rest of it……..you got me. But if you suddenly have some overwhelming urge to send me…something…I’d be glad to provide my mailing address.

Meantime, I have to go buy some of that $3.20 gasoline and go to my sister’s house for dinner.

© 2007 Rick Baber

The Koran & 9:11

2007-05-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

In case you have received that bullshit e-mail about the Koran's reference to 9:11, here's a rough translation of what verse 9:11 actually says:

Koran (9:11) - "But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith and We make the communications clear for a people who know."

But somehow, that one doesn't fit into the REpublican philosophy.

Also, question anything you get, reportedly, penned by George Carlin. His own website disputes most of what is going around.

LAWMAKERS GONE WILD

2007-04-03T19:33:00.000-07:00

I just heard on CNN that Congress is on “Spring Break”. Spring Break. Is that true? Does that include the Senate too, or is it just the House? And, since when did grown-ups take Spring Break? Back in the 20’s, when I was a reluctant member of the BHS class of 1973 (correct me if I’m wrong, but) I don’t think we even got a spring break. Maybe we got off on Good Friday and the Monday after Easter, but there was none of this traveling to exotic locations for an entire week, spending big boxes full of our parents’ hard-earned money, doing all the things that our mommas took so much joy in telling the ladies down at the church that we didn’t do. No way. We were forced to do that stuff behind the Rec Hall in College Field, and, if we wanted sand and surf, down at the sandbar. It was lots cheaper, and nobody had video cameras and phones that would lead to us being exposed (literally) on a variety of internet websites the following week.

Now, I can’t help but wonder if there’s some private beach somewhere in the Caribbean, at this moment, where Maxine Waters, Blanche Lincoln, and Barbara Boxer are having one of those teddy-clad pillow fights in their bungalow while the real Teddy, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham host a keg stand out on the beach. Vic Snyder, Barney Frank and Trent Lott are locked in a hot game of Texas Hold ‘Em, and Vic’s got a side bet on Teddy K with Elizabeth Dole – who’s standing behind him in a grass skirt and a scarf, sipping a Mojito, rubbing his shoulders like Hotlips Houlihan. Everybody’s having one for themselves and one for their homey, Nancy Pelosi, who couldn’t make it this year because she’s off in Syria trying to make some new friends. Mark Pryor? He and Joe Lieberman had to skip the fun tonight to attend their identity awareness classes.

A scene like this couldn’t happen if the good ol’ US of A wasn’t in such great shape. Everything’s just peachy. Poor GWB is about as popular as a porcupine in a condom factory, and just on the verge of packing up Dick Cheney, a facemask, and a couple of shotguns and going over to Iraq to finally accomplish the mission himself – if Congress will ever come back to work and pop for his plane fare. Coach, I would guess. If he can keep Cheney focused on the target, he might be able to pull it off too, because the war has got to be just about over. I say this, after viewing some of the latest top headlines on the news websites:

1. “Fifth-graders arrested after alleged sex in class”
2. “Landlocked Mexico City opens beach” (maybe THAT’s where Congress is)
3. “Grinning woman, 24, wanted badly as bin Laden”
4. “Woman dropped on head alleges negligent dancing”
5. “Doggie yoga leaves pets twisted but relaxed”

I’m not kidding. Those are the “top” headlines. I guess the story about the cop pushing the skateboarder into a hedge couldn’t muster up all the public outrage CNN wanted, and Paula Zahn couldn’t turn it into some kind of racism issue, so they dropped it. Let’s face it, we all secretly want to push a skateboarder into a hedge.

The only other news today was that Hillary (you know, the next President of the United States of America?) raised a hundred gazillion dollars for her campaign – so if she ain’t elected, she can just buy the country; and somewhere – France, I think – there was a passenger train that went 357 mph.

When I was a kid, my grandparents lived right beside the railroad tracks in Van Buren. My cousins and I used to get in all kinds of trouble with our parents for hanging out on the trestle and putting pennies on the tracks and letting the train wheels smash them into little copper foil medallions. They told us we could derail the train by doing that. Have ya’ll ever seen a train wreck? At, what? Fifty miles an hour? Imagine what kind of a mess a handful of French cousins could make with a half dozen Euros on that track.

I hear they’re building one of those trestles from some private Congressional beach island in the Caribbean to connect to the AmTrak line in Miami, then on to Union Station in DC. They’re going to put one of those 357mph trains on it, so Congress can wait until the last minute, after the Freshman Panty Raid, to leave from Spring Break and go back to work. I also hear that, in that part of Florida, you can get five pennies for a nickel.

I’m considering a new business venture: selling little copper foil medallions in the Orlando area.

Get well soon Larry.

© 2007 Rick Baber

PADDYCAKES ON A PLANE

2007-03-02T07:52:00.000-08:00

People say I’m crazy because I’d rather drive to California than fly there. I mean, people say I’m crazy for a lot of reasons, but that is one of them. Sure, you can get there faster by air, but if I need to be in San Francisco that soon, I’ll leave three days earlier. Capice?

It’s not so much a fear of flying. Not even a fear of crashing, really. It’s more the fact that I can’t stand being out of control. To understand how out of control one is as a passenger on an airliner, all one has to do is peruse the recent situation in New York where passengers were held captive on one, sitting still on a frozen runway, for ten hours. No, not held captive by terrorists – in the classic sense. Held captive by the Airline. Did I mention it was ten hours?

What could you do in ten hours? You could watch 1200 annoying TV commercials. Twenty episodes of “That 70’s Show”. You could drive from Batesville to Little Rock, and back, three times, then watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Unless you’re John Weaver or Larry Price, in which case you could do the Little Rock trip four times. You could play one of those marathon Monopoly games like you did when you were a kid. You could bounce about 36,000 times on a pogo stick. Get your oil changed 60 times. Have 20 pizzas delivered, one at a time. You could fight 1/14th of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. You could walk to Newport. What you’d do when you got there, who knows? But you could walk there. Or, I suppose, if you didn’t lose your way, you could walk back from there. As I recall, that might be a better idea.

One thing I’m pretty sure you couldn’t do, without the aid of the Chicago Bears’ defensive line, and/or an automatic weapon or two, is keep me on that plane for 10 hours. I can practically guarantee you that, between the 2nd & 3rd hours, ol’ Unkel Rick would have been escorted from that grounded flying machine to a nice roomy airport holding cell somewhere.

What I can’t understand is what force kept those passengers – among the screaming kids; not even allowed to watch the “in-flight” movies without paying for them; only pretzels to eat (while they lasted), and completely out of anything to drink – from rising up and slaying those who imprisoned them? Are people so regimented to goose-stepping that they don’t even recognize there is a time and place for getting out of line and saying “No thanks. I think I’ll go this way.”? Are we sheep? Naaaaaaaa!

Try locking your doors and telling the Jehovah’s Witness lady she’s not going to be able to leave until you decide it’s time for her to go. You know what they call that? False imprisonment! You think any court would convict her for knocking you in the head with a big stack of “Watchtowers” and bolting? Not on your life buddy! Next thing you knew, you’d be getting TV-trashed by Nancy Grace, and Larry King & the Jehovah’s Witness lady would be taking calls from Trenton, New Jersey about whether or not her book will be available on audio CD. You’d be joining the ranks of Scott Peterson and the Diapered Astronaut Lady and those cops who beat up Rodney King.

You just can’t do that. You can’t hold somebody against their will. Even High School kids in detention, if they wanted to pay the consequences, could just get up and walk out.

So, do you think that’s it? Do you think those folks could have walked out of that plane, but just figured it was safer to sit there than take their chances walking all the way back to the terminal in a blizzard?

OK then. I can buy that. But, if it was me, they might still be out there in the snow, digging for the man who taught the children some new words before being asked to step out of the plane for some fresh air.

© 2007 Rick Baber

CSI......Miami

2007-02-13T07:30:00.000-08:00

That Horatio is such a cocky little red headed bastard, I sometimes find myself cheering for the bad guys.
Is that wrong?

Into Focus 2/11/07

2007-02-11T16:12:00.000-08:00

WHAT BUGS ME

Believe it or not, there are some things that bug me – other than the existence of Republicans and radical Islamic terrorists. You may not want to know this. If that is the case, just put down the paper and go back to the Golden Girls rerun you were watching before you flipped over here. No harm done.

Up first, it bugs me that the “Preparation H” people didn’t think up the “Head On” advertising concept before they did. That would have been so much more interesting.

Second, there’s the guy in the “Quizno’s” commercial that says “Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm!”, when there are clearly only four “m’s” there on the screen. You’d think somebody would’ve caught that. Why do I have to do everything?

Having been a raging, wild-eyed liberal all my life, it bugs me to have to tell you that Nancy Pelosi’s eyes look like they’re propped open with invisible toothpicks.

Somebody should have explained to that crazy astronaut lady that, if she hurried, she could pee while she was gassing up her vehicle. There’s no way she could drive 900 miles without having to stop for gas. That whole diaper thing … you know what?… bugs me. If she would’ve been thinking like a real American entrepreneur, she would have used her loony vendetta as a publicity stunt, by teaming up with some hybrid car manufacturer that could actually go that far on a tank of gas. Then she might have had the extra money to pay her legal fees and psychotherapy bills. Everybody respects somebody – even somebody who’s nuts – that knows how to make money.

Unless I understand English, how in the wide wide world of sports am I going to understand some telephone recording that tells me “For English, press one”? If I do understand English, why would I have to select some other language? To me, this is as dumb as the sign at the drive-thru window that says “We have menus in Braille”; or the “Handicapped Parking” spot at Sonic; or the sign inside the elevator that says “In case of fire use the stairs”. If that sounds “racist” to you, go ahead and turn me in to Paula Zahn. She’s pretty much turning over every rock she can find anyway to find anything she can turn into a race issue. That kinda bugs me too.

Cars with “vanity plates”. Well, not really the cars as much as the people that have them displayed. We already know it’s a Jag. And if we don’t, there’s nothing you can put on that plate that’s going to impress us anyway. What if you were out to commit some kind of crime, or you just didn’t want somebody to know who you were? You think it’s harder for a witness to remember “BOBZVET” than some regular plate? If I was going to get some custom license plate, I’d make it as difficult as possible for somebody to remember. 3GZ3PDC. Let ‘em repeat that over and over in their heads ‘til the cops get there. You never know when you might not want somebody to testify that they saw you gassing up your vehicle while wearing a diaper.

Kissing your dog on the lips, or letting him/her lick your lips, is a really disgusting thing to do. If you’ll just pay attention – following that animal around for a little while – you might notice some other things that Phideaux licks with that same tongue, that would help you understand my position on this. Don’t do that. It bugs me. And, if you do that, I don’t care how long it has been since I last saw you, a simple handshake will suffice.

Sending me those “chain” e-mails that say stupid things like “If you love Jesus you’ll send this to 10 friends”, or “If you delete this instead of sending it to 20 people you’ll have bad luck for a year”…that does more than bug me. That really makes me mad. I’ve read most of the instruction book, and can’t find any place where Jesus even referenced the Internet. I doubt if the connection speeds in those days were even sufficient to use e-mail. So shut up. I’m deleting the thing. You do not control my luck. The Cherokee Nation Casino does.

© 2007 Rick Baber

2006-02-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be posting here for a while, 'cause Don is just plain overworked. This is just a little self-test to make sure I can figure out how to do it. Once that's done, all I have to do is figure out if there's any news going on in the world. It seems so quiet......