Author: David Iseman

Can writing a story ruin it?

I think so. There are some tales better left to bubble up by chance orally, when the same people who experienced an event — or heard about it —  recall it together.

You’ve seen this happen. It usually starts with “Do you remember that time when Uncle Tommy ended up  …”

Eyes light up. Everyone starts talking at once. Some rush to the best parts first. Some try to act out the crazy parts. They argue over details. They shout that their memory is the best.

Some insist they know exactly what happened even if they were not there and heard the story second- or thirdhand. Kinda like the Bible, maybe.

Or all religion?

I’ve watched and heard the story of Uncle Tommy and the Potato Gun told many times, and enjoyed them all. So why write it?

First, I owe Tommy one. He once threw me out of a swimming  pool on my head.

Also, like a couple of those questionable Bible stories, this potato story is starting to morph and mutate. It needs to be documented.

The last time I saw Tommy, he was trying to weasel out of some of the more embarrassing parts.

I was a key witness to this one though, so I’m going to take on this responsibility. Call this Uncle Tommy and the Potato Gun, Book of the Spud, (chapter 3, verse 4) Disciple Dave’s First Epistle to the Monongahelians.

First thing: You need to have a picture of Tommy in your mind, know a bit about him.

Some of his old nicknames: Saber-tooth Tiger Tom (dental issue) Algit Kabomb (some old cartoon character I couldn’t find with Google) and many others describing mental capacity or incapacity that have long ago become politically incorrect.

He loves his kids and nieces and nephews, especially when he can make them laugh.

 

He and other concertgoers once jumped off a high steel bridge in Pittsburgh (nicknamed the Bridge to Nowhere) because it took so long to finish) into a wide old river. They made the 11 o’clock news.

As I mentioned, for no apparent reason one summer, Tommy threw me backwards out of a small swimming pool even though I was his partner in Chicken Fights. Asked why, he shrugged.

His five brothers say to never fight with him. He does not register pain, and will never give up. They once heaved him through a plate glass living room window in their home. My wife, their babysitter, locked him out, more concerned about what he would do back inside than whether he was hurt.

OK, that covers Tommy.

Now, you also need to have a picture in your mind of Luke, the builder of the potato gun.

Our oldest son, he is very smart and has always liked to blow things up.

His mom’s brothers, some of whom occasionally and proudly transform from uncles to drunkles, teased Luke mercilessly when he was very young.

Luke loves science in part because it has helped him blow up stuff. He once cut off the heads of a gazillion wooden matches, stuffed them through a slit in a tennis ball, taped up the slit and made this really cool looking swirly, sizzling, exploding mini-fire ball like a special effect in a Star Wars movie.

He made his first potato gun when he was about 8.

Like Tommy, Luke also loves to make little kids laugh, especially if that involves embarrassing any or all of his numerous uncles.

When I was a young father, during all the interactions between my five kids and the drunkles, I took on the role of security guard or safety officer. Maybe bouncer is the best term.

But, by the time of this story all the kids were adults and my role had diminished. I was less like the cop with the Taser  and more like one of those flashing neon road signs that says: “Drive only in marked lanes.”

Did you ever fire a potato gun? A big one? The kind that sends a full-size potato hurtling?

That’s the kind Luke built years and years ago, with my help.

It was about 8 feet long and made of PVC pipe, most of it about 2 inches in diameter. Think medium-sized drain pipe, which is thicker than most professional baseball players’ bats. One of the coolest things about the gun is the fuel, the stuff that makes the explosion to send the potato flying. It’s just regular ol’ hair spray.

You unscrew the top of a Y-shaped PVC part, spray the hair spray in there, quickly close it, make sure the barrel isn’t pointing at anyone, hit the trigger (an igniter like those used on a propane grill) and the hunk of potato you have stuffed into the open barrel rockets away, more than a hundred yards — usually.

I personally credit our gun with helping at least three of my kids become better baseball and softball players. They would stand at least a football field away from me and Luke (usually I also had the baby, Adam) and we would fire potatoes their way, sky-high, so they could try to catch them with baseball gloves.

Talk about a twisty turning fly ball. Those potatoes took some nasty loops and swirls in mid-air. Catching a real baseball was a piece of cake after that.

Of course, with any kind of explosive device, something can go wrong, which is why I insisted on wielding my full bouncer powers.

But, on this particular day, the day of Uncle Tommy and the Potato Gun, my only job was to shoo away anyone younger than 5 who appeared to have no responsible parent nearby.

I don’t recall whose idea it was to fire the gun, but I do know that some of the younger cousins had never seen one and were intrigued.

“C’mon you guys. It’s getting dark. You said this would be cool.”

The crowd was getting restless and Luke, or someone, had promised pyrotechnics. Luke had taken over logistics at this point, and Tommy was still in the house, unaware of what was happening out on grandma’s patio.

That back patio, in suburban Pittsburgh, had a wooded hilly expanse behind it. Though not the best spot, the patio had been commandeered as a launching area, and at least six kids and at least that many adults now wanted a payoff for time spent waiting.

Everyone seemed to have a thought on why the first couple launches fizzled out. Luke busily and efficiently fixed leaks and called for more hair spray. That’s when Uncle Tommy sauntered outside.

“Oh-oh, a spud gun,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Let me do it.”

Luke, as was his typical approach with his uncles now that he was bigger and stronger than them, ignored Tommy until he thought of a demeaning comeback. Something like: “Why don’t you go stand over there and I’ll shoot your cigarette out of your lips.”

Then, Luke shouted “Stand back” but it was another misfire. A potato flew low, plopping only about 15 feet away onto the grass. It was hard to see, because the sun was now set.

“You’re a dork, Luke. This is dumb, because you’re not going to be able to see it,” Tommy said.

I suggested smearing lightning bugs all over the next potato, as Luke, ignoring everyone, realized there was still a leak, probably near the igniter, that hadn’t been sealed.

Tommy, standing by the lawn mover someone had failed to put away, started gesticulating and saying one word, over and over and over: Gas.

Now trying to flex myself back into full bouncer mode, I tried to talk over Tommy, changing the subject. But too many people heard him. And, Tommy was already unscrewing the cap to the gas can, still with his cigarette in his lips.

Dumb. Stupid. Dangerous. Cool. Exciting. “I’m telling Grandma,” one of the littlest, more nervous children threatened.

But the gas-potato-pyro idea had caught on. Tommy poured gas on a couple of the fattest spuds, not caring or oblivious to how much he was spilling on his hands and shoes.

I continued to lecture Luke on how he really wanted no part of this one, and, with images of hair afire and everyone screaming “Stop, Drop and Roll,” I scoured the crowd for those littlest kids to corral.

Now, it was really getting dark. The first launch proved that the vacuum chamber with the hair spray worked. Schwooooop! We presumed something flew into the night sky. Someone said they a blue flume above us. We didn’t hear anything hit the ground.

“More gas,” was all Tommy said.

I shouted that we really didn’t want it to hit the woods hundreds of yards away. We didn’t want to start a forest fire. We needed to aim a little more vertical.

I reminded how close we were to the airport.

Yup, just like one of those flashing road signs. Ignored.

I moved the gas can to the side of the house, trying to hide it behind a lawn chair.

Schwoooooshh, chucucuczzzzzz!!!

Everyone looked up. I pushed my crowd of littler ones under a porch overhang and stood beside Tommy, secretly hoping for a fiery potato rocket streaking above us. Hands on his hips, Tommy looked up, waited, looked down and then looked defeated.

No streak in the sky. No Tommy’s Comet. No fireworks show today.

Kids disappointed. Not even the thud of the spud landing somewhere. Lots of groaning.

Then, a much louder groan. More like a wince.

And a very odd sound, like someone slapping away a wasp trying to sting. A big wasp.

I also felt a spray, and smelled gas. Time to move away from stinky Tommy, who was no longer standing.

Bent to his knees, he asked me why I punched him.

As he looked up at me, there was just enough light from the porch lamp to see the welt forming on his forehead, and the rainbowy reflection of oil. In his hair and near his ear was what like shredded potato au gratin.

He swiped at the injury, gassy hands now spreading the fuel near his eyes. He stood holding his head but then started flapping his hands, realizing he was adding, well, fuel to the fire of the potato that had just returned to earth to whack him in the head.

I fell to my knees, unable to even laugh, just wheeze. I couldn’t even share the news with the others. After they saw me fall to the floor in laughter, though, they began to realize what happened. At least a half dozen of us lay on the floor paralyzed by the poetic justice of the potato hitting the protagonist. Some curled into fetal positions. Even Luke, who had perfected stoicism in order to never let his uncles think they did anything cool.

Tommy still couldn’t figure out why — or if — I had punched him. The welt was bigger now, but he could walk and talk.

One of my daughters, still doubled over, tried to get back in the house to tell those inside to get out to the patio to witness this ridiculous Three Stooges-like scene. She remembers “trying to climb up the basement steps into the main floor of the house to tell people to come outside and see what happened. .. Was Scott there with me on the steps? Alex maybe? Adam?”

“But I was laughing so hard on the way that I couldn’t really convey the story properly to Grandma up there or several aunts.”

Every time I started to recover from my laughing fit, I imagined Tommy as Mr. Potato Head with the potato from the gun knocking his plastic eyebrows kerflewy, or bouncing his brown ears off his bumpy oblong head.

The injury proved minor. The embarrassment was major. And it was time to rub it in.

Unfortunately, Tommy is humiliation-proof. He just went back to his beer, giggling and looking at the potato gun, contemplating a new approach.

Everyone who could talk screamed “No!”

I asked Luke to please put the gun away, hide it, get rid of it quickly.

I asked the kids if anyone else got hit with anything. I looked around for small brush fires.

Then, seeing Tommy still rubbing at his eyes, I grabbed the lighter. I thought about asking: “Hey genius. Want another cigarette? I’ll light it for ya.”

But, the journalist in my decided instead to ask everyone what they saw, to get the moment embedded in their memories. I knew right then that this tale would be told again and again.

At least two years later, during one such oral recounting, Tommy seemed surprised we were still talking about the potato. He did not understand why this was still, sorry for the pun, seared, in so many memories but not his. He asked:

“We used gas? That was probably Luke’s idea, right?”

Then, reminded of some details, he had the gall to ask: “What do you mean the potato hit me. I just remember …”

Get the picture? See what he’s trying to do? I could’a predicted it. I’m way ahead of him, though.

Who ya gonna believe?

A trouble-making uncle who still, if  you look closely, has a knot in the shape of a spud on his forehead?

Or, Dave the Disciple and all those Monongahelians?

The night before, i dreamed of zombies.

Actually, it wasn’t a dream because I don’t think I actually slept. I worried I’d be awakened at any moment, rousted by the moaning and the banging.

I envisioned a bloody crowd attacking the garage door, with their hands, their elbows, their stumps — dollars clenched in gangrenous fists.

No, I hadn’t been binge-watching Walking Dead or taken too many painkillers. I had advertised a two-day garage sale.

Tossing in bed, I knew those early-bird shoppers could be ruthless. It had been years since our last sale, in another city, but the bargain hunters there jumped the gun, pushing in through side doors, shrubs, gates.

In fact, the evening before our Springfield sale, a guy sauntered in through my open garage and began to walk right past me. I had planned too be rude if that happened. I just said coldly that the sale started Friday. Unfazed, he pushed further inside, asking for antiques and guns.

“Tomorrow.” I just kept saying, over and over as I ushered him out and shut the door.

Zombies. Just waiting to chew and rip and tear apart my old, cool stuff. I couldn’t believe this had me so nervous.

So, I took action. Got out of bed. Hung a rope across the front of the driveway with a sign announcing “no early birds.” Put a “no trespassing” sign on the back gate. Figured out where to hide the cash box. Put on my stern face. Told my wife she could not hide all day in the house like she had secretly planned.

She hates garage sales. She knew we had no choice, though. Trying to downsize, we just had too much stuff. Almost a decade in our Springfield house without such a sale.

Still, she kept repeating “I hate this.” She explained she just cannot stand snooty buyers hovering over what had been part of our home, our daily life — to find flaws, just sneer silently or haggle down to pay near nothing. This was OUR STUFF!

It didn’t bother me that much. I was more worried about security, keeping crowds under control, and trying to maintain a poker face for haggling. I was terrible at that.

I buckled under any pressure whatsoever.

A lady struggles to grab that second quarter out of her purse? Forget it, 25 cents is fine. A kid pulls on mom’s sleeve trying to get the cash for the toy car? Just take it, kiddo.

A kindly senior citizen asks: Will you take less for that? Gee, I dunno know (short, awkward silence) OK. Sure, a used diabetic test strip will do. I understand.

This added to the tension between my wife and I. She passionately described her frustration at seeing people get out of a fancy Lexus or Cadillac determined to argue over a 50-cent saucer, or a $1 knickknack. My wife made it clear to me, and I agreed, that we’d rather donate items to charity than let rich people have them for pennies.

So now, in addition to all my other worries, I had to try to remember which cars belonged to which people. This was getting complicated, quickly.

Add to all this, my bizarre belief that I could quickly and magically incorporate theories of retail store design into our driveway setup, if I thought about it long enough. Bouncing around my brain were quickly developing theories of aisle design, foot traffic patterns, rack height, the allure of color, sign distance.

I did find this with some research on my phone: Shoppers like hugs.

A retail website called “Entrepreneur” says:

“People are attracted to round and U-shapes. … To get shoppers to stop at a display, try hanging a circular sign from the ceiling or placing a U-shaped background, such as a low wall with small sides extending forward, behind it. These make people want to stop and enter the space, which resembles a person extending their arms for a hug.”

I recruited Alex, our Norwegian foreign student, to do some more rearranging. He had helped drag a lot of stuff around already, but we promised him a part of the profit, so he was all in. I tried to explain a revised foot-traffic plan still hatching in my noodle, but he looked at me like he usually did during the months he lived with us.

A kind description would be, well, quizzically.

He did create some more space for me at some crowded spots in the driveway. With zombie-like crowds in mind, I wanted to leave enough room for people to get around but not enough room for them to escape the aisles too easily. I read that each turnaround, according to handicapped specs, should be at least 3-by 3-feet.

But, I wanted a little more room, remembering Missouri’s reputation for obesity and how big the lines get at Cheddar’s, most all-you-can-eat buffets in Springfield and Andy’s frozen custard. Some rather large people did show up in our aisles.

I fixated on one lady, for pure retail research purposes, of course, trying to measure with my eyes the breadth of her haunches — almost the width of a sheet of plywood, I guessed — trying to get closer. I was so focused I almost missed the older couple walking up the drive behind her. He caught my attention only after he swooned and one leg buckled, catching himself on an end table.

He didn’t need a hug; he needed an ambulance.

Arms bruised from recent IV’s. Portable oxygen hung over one shoulder. His wife like a church mouse compared to him, but she held on tight as he leaned precariously, stopping every couple seconds to catch his breath.

He had just eaten something like Pop-Tarts, or taken some kind of chalky medicine. His lips still held the color, and crumbs or reddish flakes fell as he tried to ask me something. It sounded like this: “Grrmbbbb, scrizz, reeegh, errrz.”

I looked for a chair to slip under him.

Meanwhile, it was probably just about that time someone saw how distracted I was and stole my “flask tie.” A present from my daughter, it was designed to hold liquor, say for a football game, and allow the wearer to drink surreptitiously. It disappeared and my wife doesn’t recall selling it.

I sat the red-lipped man on one of our kitchen chairs that wasn’t for sale and loaned him my old cane from knee surgery. But he wouldn’t stay seated. I tried to just let him go but he kept leaning so hard on his wife she actually started letting out little crying sounds like a mouse caught in a glue trap.

They eventually bought a rug, reduced of course, and only after I agreed to help stuff it into their car — a big fancy one, by the way. I also gave him the cane for free. I just wanted him out of there without having to pull my “Hillbilly Recliners” out of the way of the EMS vans.

Soon afterward, my only customer was a random Terrier who loped by to leisurely chew on a little toy stuffed shark that was supposed to be bought by some friendly dog owner. The lull in the action gave Alex and I a chance to redesign the layout, drag some yucca plants to create a corridor ending right smack at a giant trophy lamp I had built years for my oldest son out of his old awards and athletic trophies. It stood almost 6 feet tall, dominated by a spelling bee trophy of enormous clout. He lives in a shipping container so I should have known he would never have room to actually take it to his own home.

It was one of my few special items I really thought would excite sale-goers. Others included two neon-green alien Halloween costumes and those aforementioned “Hillbilly Recliners.”

More on them, later.

The lull didn’t last long. The Amish (or were they Mennonites?) had arrived.

They were the closest my zombie dream came to being realized. Not that they were dirty or dazed-looking or anything nefarious. There were just a lot of them.

They spoke in what sounded like German. They weren’t there for trifles. One lady asked to buy my blue, plastic garbage can used for recycling. That, even though it was half-filled with cardboard waste had a big crack in the bottom.

Fascinated with a stepper exercise machine, some of them played on it, giggling. At one point, I snickered at one of their big-bellied women trying the thing out — she could use it, I thought — but then I realized her belly was actually an infant swaddled tightly to her body as she bounced up and down, giggling, on the stepper. I hoped the kid was too young to have eaten real food yet.

They never plugged the exercise machine; I wondered if that was against some sort of ban on the use of electrical power, but i was too embarrassed to ask. They ended up buying an old sewing machine and some pretty glass beads in a wooden case.

I almost didn’t get to complete that sale because — I’m convinced now in retrospect — I was being targeted by scam artist.

Here’s how the old guy worked it: Catch the homeowner running the sale while busy, sidle up close, pretend you cannot hear, keep saying the same price over and over, point to your bad ears repeatedly and don’t back down from that really low price. Worked on me.

Later, i think I caught him giggling and whispering to his cohort as they exited the sale. His big score? A foot-long piece of heavy chain for 50 cents, rather than $1.

More than a couple people seemed rude. But, they were far in the minority.

Garage sales are a good thing for a neighborhood.

Usually all buttoned up behind our high fences and automatic garage doors, we are forced by these sales because they force us to toss — or is it vomit? — our personalities into our driveways. If some of your close neighbors stop by, you get to know them a little better. They stay and chat. Maybe some bartering gets going, or some beer gets flowing.

 

My wife and I spent hours getting ready for our sale, but we still ran out of time. I just dumped a box of old Halloween costumes on a plastic tarp, hanging some from a clothesline. My wife left me some hastily filled boxes of clothes and drapes and sheets and blankets. I did my best to spread them around in some fashion to be viewed.

Once the Halloween box had been dumped, I remembered what was in it and blanched. Headless dolls spilled out, some of which had burned bodies. A couple doll heads rolled out too. It’s a bit of a long story but suffice it to say I had gone to a costume party once simply as “Hell” and another time as a head hunter.

Ozarkers surprised me, though.

Me joking to prospective buyer: “You look like you could use some decapitated Barbie Dolls?”

Buyer: “Wow, how did you know? Those will go great with my collection at home of Barbie Doll heads.”

I warned another guy who showed up with his young son that the tarp had some gory Halloween stuff. He brushed me off. He said his kid breaks the heads off his sister’s dolls all the time. The kid was eyeing up an old rusty hacksaw for $1.50.

I realized as the two days wore on that I made more than a couple mistakes in this garage sale endeavor. First off, anticipating the zombie early birders proved to be pure paranoia. Only a couple professionals showed early and they stayed behind my rope and sign.

I also didn’t mark enough prices, and didn’t realize how many my wife had posted. (It’s tough to see the price when you repeatedly leave your glasses over by the radio or the cash box.)

The biggest mistake?

I put up a poster of Donald Trump as a warning to not go in the house, and another boasting of the sale’s deals.

I thought it was clear i was using his face as a joke, mocking the goofy billionaire, but some folks saw the sign as a show of Trump support.

That led to a first-tense but then illuminating conversation with a middle-aged lady who was glad to hear I wasn’t voting for The Donald. In fact, the poster was from a drawing I had made of his face to use as an insulting Trump Scarecrow I built in our garden.

What was our best garage sale maneuver?

Definitely the sign that said “Hillbilly Recliners.” But the downside was that folks seemed more interested in talking about them than buying them. The chairs had enough of a story behind them to discuss, for sure, but that didn’t really helped sales and telling the story took time.

They had been in our yard for months.

One, I had brought all the way from Pennsylvania, my only real chair in coming to the Ozarks. It had been my dad’s recliner, worn and torn but serviceable and comfy.

I stripped it, thinking I’d reupholster it, but then found an almost identical one along the sidewalk, discarded. Both became long-running projects, stripped to wood, painted, rubber coated wheels added from old golf carts, throw rugs stapled over the springs, and, with cushions, they worked well — at least in my opinion — as sturdy lawn recliners, weatherproof too.

Recycled recliners? Re-recliners? Maybe I had a business idea.

However, mid-project, I made the mistake of spraying insulating foam on the wooden arms to look like cushions, but the foam was very hard and uncomfortable when it dried. I was able to cover that up with more throw rugs, though, again adding to the improvised allure — at least in my opinion.

Anyway, come sale days, there sat the “Hillbilly Recliners,” getting some sneers and at least a couple thumbs up.

To add to the shock value, I put my two alien costumes — also made from lots of spray foam. I guess that was my fetish that year — on the recliners. It was as if the aliens with giant foam heads and small green baby doll bodies (one reason doll heads were stored in the Halloween box) had descended to earth to take over a holler near you.

The trophy lamp stood tall nearby, and at least one lady seemed to appreciate all these novelty items, even if she didn’t realize I had lured her into my sophisticated retail corridor that led the eye from one odd sale item to the next, to the next.

She bought the aliens (sadly, I had to go down to $1 each) but I couldn’t convince herself to take the lamp.

She didn’t have room for the recliners, and no one seemed to like them enough to make room in a car or truck to take them home. I worried they would have to be relegated to the “free” area near the curb. Thank god for the guy from Table Rock Lake with the pickup and an eye for, well, industry and inventiveness.

The chairs will live on, the buyer said, on the shores of the lake, where adults will recline to watch kids bounce on a giant inner tube, and my dad will smile down from his special recliner in the sky.

 

Suffice it to say, however, with the profits from both recliners and the aliens, I could not afford even one can of new insulating spray foam.

Ahh well.

At least my wife was still talking to me by the end of the two days.

It was touch-and-go for a while.

Especially after she found the silver platter.

I had noticed it inside the house, on a counter in the house with other stuff she simply forgot to put out. Or, so I thought.

She found it later on a “for sale” table without a price. “Seriously?” she asked, loudly. “Seriously?”

I figured the only visitor in the garage at the time, a balding man perusing stuff in the garage, had done something rude or crazy to trigger this outburst from wife. But, she was looking at me. He tried to pretend he hadn’t just wandered into a domestic dispute.

“Seriously?” was all she kept saying as she rushed me to show me the platter. It was etched with something but, as usual, my glasses were nowhere near my body.

Me: “What? Marked too cheap? Just put a different sign on it?”

She: “Look at it!”

I realized Trump had stolen my glasses and left them over by the door to the house.

The platter, in fancy script, was inscribed with these words: “Lynn and Dave 25 Years.”

Oh boy.

Now, the guy in the garage was a full-fledged witness, as Lynn railed about my insensitivity, my failure to heed her pre-sale warnings and my all-round dumbness.

Our visitor was torn, I could tell, between loyalty to his gender — I know he wanted to speak up in my defense — and the logic of my wife’s argument. He simply said: “Have a nice day” and slipped away.

I apologized profusely to Lynn. I tried lamely to argue she hadn’t strictly adhered to our plan to put specific things that definitely were not for sale in certain places inside the house. She had me, though, so I decided to just take my lumps.

I got lucky, though. She got paged in to work.

This was late on the second day, and, even though Alex had done all the lifting, my ailing body hurt so bad I could only sit outside with a coffee, hoping I would not have to get up again.

I should have had a sign saying something like: “Buy something or i’ll shoot your dog.”

But, other than pain, I had nothing to really complain about. We had done better than I thought.

I told Alex he was relieved from duty, unless he wanted to wear a sign that said: “For sale. Slightly used Norwegian student.”

He scurried off on my bike.

Though we gave away a lot of stuff at the end of the sale, we made some money. I discreetly headed over the hiding place for the cash box to count up the profits but stopped when I heard a small motorcycle pull up. It parked by the only Yucca tree in the drive that hadn’t sold.

The young slender driver sauntered up. We were alone. He didn’t take off his helmet, which covered his entire face. His clothes were paint spattered. Or, was that blood?

I thought of the evil character Bane from one of the Batman movies.

I hadn’t anticipated this.

It was late afternoon, near the time I had advertised as closing time for the sale. Last day of a two-day sale, no  less. The motorcyclist had probably been casing the house, waiting for this moment.

I tried to see if he had a gun.

I also looked for my steel 3/4-inch pipe I had put out with the stuff for sale from the shed. But, I remembered the pipe sold along with the wax toilet ring and that jar full of old corks.

I braced myself.

“Did you do OK?” he asked, referring to the sale’s profits. Now I was sure he was after the cash.

I barely grunted, packing up stuff, trying to remember where I left my cell phone.

He fiddled with some Christmas decorations and said he had been by the house before. He liked the hillbilly recliners.

I ignored him, shouting inside to pretend like my wife was home, telling her I’d be closing up soon. I found a pair of pliers as a potential weapon. Yeah right. What was I gonna do? Pinch his nose while he knocked my block off?

I pretended to talk more with my wife, mentioning our son’s wrestling trophies, how he was so strong. By the time I looked back to see where the robber was planning to launch his attack, he was back on his bike — then gone.

Like I said, zombies on the brain.

No one ended up seeking to bite me, tear my flesh, or feast on my entrails. No robbery either. It was all my overactive imagination.

Of course, though, I wasn’t home free.

There was still the matter of the 25th anniversary platter.

Just hoping we don’t have to get through another of these sales until we hit our 50th.

 

 

Dishwashers suck.

Rather than help families, they have hurt them. Cleaning those dinner dishes by hand used to bring families together. Somebody washed; somebody dried; somebody put the stuff away.

Bonding time, you know.

I was reminded of this the other day when I blindly grabbed a CD and popped it into the player. To my surprise, a very old song played: “Oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’ Clementine.”

Neil Young had refashioned the mining ballad as part of a collection called Americana.

But I didn’t hear Young’s voice. I heard my late father’s.

He stood at the kitchen sink, dish towel and frying pan in hand, crooning. Mom was there, too, rosy cheeked from the steam rising from the faucet, taking a break from her part of the duet to grab some more pots from the stove.

As soon as dad’s song ended, she started right up.

Or, she probably interrupted him. She was the always the main event. He was backup.

The scene, of course coming back to me only through nostalgia, was certainly not an everyday occurrence in our household. We were not that lucky. But, the sink-side performance happened often enough to create a peaceful pigeonhole in my memory that opens with the right trigger.

Like Neil Young’s Clementine.

My dad, who grew up in a mining town in Pennsylvania, liked the tongue-in-cheek song about the big-footed miner’s daughter, and other ballads that seemed to try to make sense of the struggle of life, or poke fun at it.

Mom entertained us kids with some goofy kids songs like you would expect but she seemed to most enjoy songs celebrating love or romance. She got very serious, her whole persona would change, while gearing up for a song like “Some Enchanted Evening” or “Unchained Melody” or “You Keep Coming Back Like a Song.”

She had the extra lyrical drive that came with being Irish, I believe. As a teenager, she wanted to be a nightclub singer and even performed at least once in a club. I think she could have been successful.

Others with more musical savvy saw her talent, too. She could captivate a room. Beer often flowed — and spilled — at the kitchen table in her parents’ home. And if you were there and couldn’t come up with a lyric or two, you were worse than a failure. You were boring.

She was anything but.

For many years, her zest for music and life itself kept her family from predictability and malaise.

We needed distractions like those after-dinner song fests; life could be tough, and very confusing.

My parents, neither of whom had grown up with money, went on to raise six kids of their own with very little financial help from relatives. This was also the ’60s with its complicated upheavals and almost constant clashes of culture, protest and race.

As an urban Irish girl, mom had been exposed to bigotry young, so she had a jump start at dealing with bias. She taught us not to judge people by their skin color.

Dad, who grew up in the country and went on to serve in the Navy, had little youthful exposure to non-whites of any kind so he harbored prejudice against blacks, until mom harangued it out of him. He also distrusted Asians, maybe because he served when Japan was an enemy.

Neither of them could avoid the era’s overriding prejudice and ham-handed attempts to deal with bias against minorities. TV shows were racist; commercials were racist; songs were racist and sexist, and most people didn’t realize they were keeping bigotry alive.

Of course, ditties making fun of blacks at the time were commonplace. But it took me until much older to realize how many songs of that era also ridiculed Hispanics, Indians, Native Americans and Asians alike.

Not only did our relatives sing these, but they taught them to us, even acting some out with  vaudevillian flair. One of my middle-aged uncles with a penchant for lots of beer for some strange reason pretended to be a big-lipped black girl nearly every time he saw me and my younger brother. He told us he – she? – was our girlfriend and slobbered all over our necks asking how many nappy headed pickaninies we were going to raise.

So, while TV played real-life, deadly, gritty clashes between blacks and whites, and assassinations dominated the news, Americans across the country were still two-steppin’ and shuckin’ and jivin’ to lampoon blacks, talking like the cartoon character Speedy Gonzales to ridicule Mexicans and pulling their eyes into slits and deliberately saying R’s instead of L’s to poke fun at yellow people.

You know, like “I rive in America. I am rucky rittle china man.”

Did I mention these were confusing times?

Nothing seemed to get much clearer as the years passed, or get much easier.

Adding to my our family’s struggles were needy relatives who seemed to pop up out of the blue, the decline of the neighborhood where we lived, the jobless ’80s and some pure unadulterated bad luck. When dad finally started making a little more money, illness struck and mom and dad spent their latter years fending off disease, both physical and mental.

Again, mom tried to turn to music for solace. She and song remained entwined like a g-clef wrapped with flowery Con-Tact paper.

She joined a choir. My sisters helped her document old Irish songs. She made a CD for her kids.

 

But, it didn’t last long enough. As she aged, mom’s mind faltered — eventually becoming pocked and loose, and unpredictable. She meandered between reality, a film noir version of what had been her life and loops of the past.

My dad stuck with her, though, until he couldn’t walk or very well, or control her. He struggled to keep her from hurting herself, or him.

Some of the saddest moments came as my sisters and father tried to use music to calm my mom. It would work for a bit, as the angry lines in her face softened to mouth lyrics, only to harden again as she lashed out with even more venom in surprise attacks on dad.

My sisters tried to keep my parents together but we had to convince my father he was too feeble to be with mom all the time. He suffered strokes and a big heart attack, which left him near death, a pump like a pulsating bratwurst keeping his life-blood moving, a tube down his throat that he clawed at while opening and closing his mouth like a baby bird trying to be fed.

This was in a crowded intensive care unit, with little space and nurses and doctors and technicians moving about officiously, some stopping to reassure his red-eyed, adult children that dad wasn’t really feeling the pain, or the dry mouth, or the bruising that seemed to be everywhere.

Some of us wondered whether he would want to live like this. His doctor said he could survive, though, so we tried to do what we thought he might like, presuming he could hear or feel anything around him.

We wheeled mom in, and she held his hand tethered by IV tubes and tape. One of my sisters said he might enjoy hearing her sing. Mom didn’t really seem to realize how bad he was, but she kissed him, told him not to worry, asked if a priest had been to visit and started singing an old love song.

She seemed happy to perform.

Doctors and others in scrubs bustled about. A dark-skinned Indian man adjusted dials on a machine that looked like a vacuum at a car wash. A sharp-featured Chinese nurse used two fingers to flick one of the clear bags above dad’s head.

A brown woman who spoke like she was from the West Indies reassured me dad wasn’t going to remember pawing at that dry throat – or those moans.

Mom finished one song and launched right into: “May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight Mister?” a ballad of betrayal and heartbreak that my dad learned young and could sing without pause despite numerous verses.

My sister and I took in the moment – our gray parents, a husband and wife of decades, hands entwined, her singing and him seeming to calm into some semblance of peace.

It soothed us. My mom saw we were pleased and smiled like she was still 35, deftly dealing with six kids, a couple vagabond relatives and a hard-working husband who just got home from a hard day’s work.

As the long ballad ended, mom seemed confused about what to sing next. My sister suggested she try an old hymn, but my mom’s eyes lit up as she recalled one of my dad’s favorites.

She launched into it with gusto.

“Oh, once there was a China man. His name was Chinka Challu Chapan. His nose was short and his feet were long and this is how he walked along …”

Uh-oh.

I knew that song well. It not only included every possible racist lampoon for Asians you could imagine, it also usually included a little dance that was a bad combination of Bruce Lee moves and waddling like Penguin from Batman cartoons.

“Danny Boy, what about Danny Boy?” my sister said excitedly, walking over to mom to try to drown out the racist lyrics. Though a dirge, and certainly not the best song for an intensive care unit, Danny Boy had always been one that mom could remember and sing with great emotion, and pride.

Anything would be better, at this point, than letting those caregivers hear, really hear, what she was singing.

“His nose was short and his feet were long and this is the way he walked along. All-apee, all-apee, chinka chal-lall-a-pee …” Mom was stuck on that bizarre China man song we had all sung as kids, after my father taught us it on some long drive somewhere. Though highly insulting, those lyrics were catchy, and fun to sing, difficult to stop.

It took some quick talking but, before any sort of mutiny by the caregivers, we got mom to move onto Danny Boy.

 

Dad survived that bout but suffered major repercussions and died months later.

We played charades with him on his death bed.

Mom outlived him but deteriorated quickly. She died with my sisters encouraging her to sing. She could barely speak. At one point, though, with one sister prompting her with a song made popular by Frank Sinatra, mom piped up, surprisingly, with some of her final words:

Sister: “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you ….”

Mom: “If you’re young at heart.”

Got a heart? Got a mom? Got a family?

Got a dishwasher?

Shut it down, at least one night a week. Consider trying something for fun that we did out of necessity. Call it “Sing at the Sink Tuesday.”

Trust me. Time is shorter than you think. Try it this week.

Do it before the music dies.

 

 

 

By David Iseman

I’ve been a newsman more than three decades.

Watching Donald Trump beat up on my fellow journalists ticks me off.

I’m not actively writing for a publication right now, so I’m free to write some opinion, not just facts. I don’t have to turn the other cheek at Donald’s hate, as many journalists do every single day.

Let him take his shot. Fume quietly. Go back to work. That’s part of the job.

I have written some angry words about Trump in a blog; this is not more of that.

This is an attempt to say what I hope many other journalists are thinking, to touch on root causes for the friction between this virulent, pandering swellhead and honorable journalists.

I hope this brightens the day for some newspeople out there. I know you probably cannot even react or share this, out of fear of running up against ethics policies. That’s OK.

Just getting this off my chest lowered my blood sugar.

Why Trump hates my hard-working colleagues

1) We  expose bullies. You try to bully.

2) We strive for truth. You push it off to dark corners.

3) You say political correctness has made Americans afraid to speak out. You try to muzzle us when we speak out.

4) We stand for clarity in complex, important matters. As far as I can see, you stand for it only in wine.

5) You like to sue. We work diligently to avoid being sued.

6) You say you want America to be great again. We want the world’s people to have the chance to be great again.

7) Our ethics prohibit us from stereotyping and bias. You feed on premeditated bigotry.

8) You speak out of both sides of your mouth. Most of us have to prove what we have gathered in order to share it.

9) You try to be crude. We try to be polished.

10) You ban us from your events. Still, we reach out to you for words.

11) Having lots of money, to you, should bring automatic respect. Having lots of money, to us, should bring automatic questions.

12) The best of us are willing to risk our jobs over principle. You are unprincipled.

 

And, lastly, a question: You say you have hate in your heart for us. We want to know, does that leave room for anything else?

 

Note from author: I’m no longer an active journalist with Gannett, and these writings are my own opinion.

After meeting with the evangelicals this week, Donald sidled up to one he knew would keep a secret.

“Hey, got a question for ya. But, do me a favor, keep this between us. Deal?”

“Shoot.”

“You really believe in the Big Guy up there? That miracle stuff?”

“Well, of course, the Bible in Corinthians …”

“No, please, short answer. I’ve had enough of that Scripture stuff for one day. Believe me. I just need to know one thing: Can you get me a meeting?”

“A meeting? With who?”

“The Big Guy. The All Powerful. The one with all the wings and halos and gold. Frankly, I need some cash. That freakin’ Hillary, the freakin’ god’s gift to women, has me outgunned like $42 million to $1. Can you do this or not?”

“Well … uh. All I know is folklore, something about Billy Graham sneaking off in that hallway with Reagan and coming back with …”

“Reagan. Perfecto. Beautiful. C’mon. Hurry. Show me. Puleassse, step it up? You Southerners are slower than the Lincoln Tunnel.”

They walked to a tiny elevator off a narrow hallway. Inside were no numbers, only a lighted arrow pointing up.

When the doors opened, even Donald’s orange face turned white, bathed in pearly light.

The two men had to squint to try to figure out who was standing in front of them.

He was huge, with a rooster on his shoulder. He boomed, “NO! NOT HIM!” and motioned toward a second elevator to the right, red arrow pointing down.

Unseen arms lifted Donald off his feet, escorting him in to the elevator car, alone. After a whoosh, it opened to a dank room that smelled like wet dog and fireworks.

“Please allow me to introduce myself,” said the goateed man seated in a large blood-red recliner.

But Donald was no mental slouch and cut to the chase. “Listen Lucifer, or do you prefer Beelzebub? I heard about you. In fact, the other day, I was talking with my very, very good friend Newt Gingrich. You know he loves me. He really loves … but, nevermind. That’s a story for another time. Right now, I need cash. I’ll trade you my soul for $100 million.”

Lucifer clapped his hairy hands to summon someone. In shuffled Joe Paterno, dressed like a Venetian gondolier, carrying a big dusty book.

“Um, minor problem Mr. Trump. You don’t have much capital in the Soul Department. I know you pride yourself on your deal-making but your bargaining power … Excuse me.”

Adolf Hitler goose-stepped in, bent and whispered something in the devil’s ear.

“Mr. Trump, we must hurry along. I have other appointments. It is the political season, you know.”

Hitler stared haughtily but Donald stared him down.

“Loser,” Donald muttered, before turning his attention back to the devil.

“OK. OK. I knew I shouldn’t have fessed up to that adultery crap. C’mon, tho. That was so long ago, so very very long ago. There’s gotta be something we can work out here. I’m gonna be president for Crissakes.”

Lucifer winced at the C-word. “Please. Watch your language. Come to think of it, there is something you could offer me.”

“Beelzy baby, just spit it out. Time is money.”

“I would like you to kill 200,000 people. By my estimation, about 60 percent will be in state of sin, so I can add a few souls to my wailing entourage. Some of those Baby Boomers really reformed themselves after the ’60s. My percentages are down right now.”

Donald’s wheels started turning. Presidents have armies. Armies have guns. Wars are easy to start.

“Sure Beelzy. Can do, my friend. In fact, I’ll go ya one step further.”

“You’ve got my attention Mr. Trump.”

“Did you see me on TV the other week? When that slimeball Rubio questioned my manhood. I told the world there was no problem ‘down there’ but there is, well, a little one. Ya get my drift?”

Lucifer resisted a chuckle and asked, “You want a little help in that department?”

“Who doesn’t, eh? Except for my bitch of an opponent, maybe, but then again she’s already married to a big …”

“Spare me the obvious, please, Mr. Trump. Yes, I can help, but what are you offering me?”

“I’ll see your 200,000 dead and raise ya 200,000. Just endow me down there, baby. Make me as big as I feel. Give me something to shake, rattle and roll.”

They stood.

They shook hands.

Donald smile broadly until he started to realize what was happening. His face went pale and he rocked on his heels. The burgeoning mass in his nether regions sent him completely off balance. He toppled forward — face-first into Lucifer’s pointy, razor-sharp, prehensile tail.

Lucifer looked down, bemused. He clapped again.

“Adolf, feed him to the eternal fire, quickly. I’m booked today and need this room. Joe, get ready to send in that Gingrich fellow.”

Hitler bent toward Donald, sprawled and lifeless.

With a harrumph, in broken English, he said, “Dumkoff. Now who’s fired. Get it? Fired, like with da flames.

Ha! Dumkoff.”

 

Not everyone who slaughtered small animals as a boy ended up a serial killer.
Some of us city boys had no outlet for our natural hunter instincts, so we resorted to searching for something to kill wherever we could find it.
The backyard. The crawl space under the house. Aunt Max’s basement.
To be clear, I’m not disputing that some of us needed more parental guidance. We were probably not the best bunch to be left on our own to find prey. Regardless, I don’t think my early days of hunting showed any sort of predilection toward homicide.
I was just trying to get better at throwing.
See a robin, scare it away with that marble. Crab apple in hand? Why not try to whack a pigeon?Wow, a rabbit! And a nice flat rock nearby. Send it flying like you’re trying to make it skip across water. The whistling of the wrinkled thrown stone scares the bunny but — aha! — it flees along the same path as the stone spins and sails and dips for 20 feet, then farther, then more, then, as the animal darts right, the rock curves just … no way!
The impact sends the rabbit somersaulting — its last act.

Impossible throw.

Impossible result.
I remember feeling somewhat bad while burying the bunny, but excited at the same time. If this kill had happened 75 years earlier, my tribe would have honored me with the exalted Eye of the Eagle sling or given me a cool name, like “Throws to Kill” or “Slays with Stone.”
It was the second best throw of my life.
—–
If you’re ever at a party and you get tired of hearing the guests talking about the weather, their workout routines or the St. Louis Cardinals, ask this question:
“What was your best throw?”
Folks might look at you a little strange until you explain, and some will undoubtedly excuse themselves to head back over to the potato chip bowl, but don’t give up. I’ve done this a couple times and, after some prodding, the memories flow. I think it’s primal. You just cannot forget that time when the stars aligned — like the bunny’s temple and the sharp edge of the rock.
Many people will talk about their most memorable sports moment, say a basketball goal, or a throw from the outfield, but that’s OK.
Don’t fret. They usually have good cause to recollect those moments; there’s often a neat backstory. Maybe the base runner thrown out at third by the right fielder had just stolen the outfielder’s girl or guy. Maybe that improbable long shot, the game-winning basket, put some smart aleck on the other team in his place. Or, maybe the touchdown pass went to the chubby kid always picked last.
The best of the stories, though, involve activities that aren’t traditional sports. I’ve heard some good ones about hatchets perfectly tossed; a steel-tipped dart finding, say, the floating eyeball on the back of the $1 bill taped on the board for a bet; a snowball putting the neighborhood bully in his place, and on and on.
Boomers have better stories. We played lots of games than have now gone by the wayside as too dangerous.  “Prisoner Release,” which was basically fighting not to get dragged into a “prison” set off by lines on the concrete. “Buck Buck,” made popular by Bill Cosby’s monologue, involved jumping in the air to come down on other players’ backs to try to make them fall. “Hide the Belt,” which essentially involved finding a belt and hitting everyone around you with it.

—-

In my neighborhood, one of our more more sane games was a relatively non-violent one that regardless has not survived passage of time and political correctness. Wasteful and environmentally noxious, the neighborhood “egg battle” admittedly involved throwing food around the streets.

We’d make up teams, grab a couple dozen of Grade A ammunition, set some rules, and run the neighborhood arguing over who had been “killed” and who was still “alive.”
Of course we didn’t clean up the splatter left behind — we didn’t even realize how bad eggs stunk when left to dry on a sidewalk — and we gave utterly no thought to the kids in Africa who could have subsisted on those eggs for, at least according to our Catholic nuns, a couple lifetimes.
Nope, this was just a cool way to pass the time, with some strategy, skill and an element of pure surprise: the eggs’ unpredictability. They were tricky to throw because of their insides. I’m sure a physics professor could explain this using words like torque, inertia and mass. All we knew was the eggs danced through the air en route to targets, never following a straight line like a baseball or football.
The best players could get a feel for how they could corkscrew through the air. In setting up a team, you needed to know who those players were.
Also important was matching your teammates’ skills with their role in the game, kinda like putting your biggest guy on the line in football. I prided myself on being nimble enough to sneak up to the other team and still dodge a couple eggs fired at my head.
It was dodge ball with hard projectiles that could hurt. It was paintball before paintball. With no goggles and lots less accuracy.
Add to all this the chance of getting ratted out by one or more of the neighborhood snitches and you had quite a thrilling way to spend part of a hot summer afternoon, or night. Of course, this activity had no parental sanction.
One particular night, almost everyone was eliminated as dusk settled in. Playing under the streetlights added another challenge, so I wanted to win quickly and get on to the boasting part of the ritual.
But, I had to call time as a group of passersby approached. We set the eggs behind bushes or hid them in pockets, at least until we learned who was coming, friend or foe.
Three of them got closer but two turned down a side street. That left a chubby boy approaching alone. Once close enough, I saw his dark curly hair, big belly and distinctive waddle of a walk and I realized it was Danny P. from up the hill, a sissy, a bigmouth and a rat.
He shouted something like: “What are you guys doin?”
We ignored him.
“Prisoner release? Can I play?”
“No,” I said. “Just hanging out.”
“Up here? Why way up here?” His grating voice was naturally aggravating but also just too damn loud, all the time. It had to bounce around his belly to build up speed before getting out his fat mouth, like gas escaping a constipated clown. Something to do with inertia and mass, I’m sure.
He burped out more: “You’re usually down by your house. Hey, why’re yins sweatin’?”
We stayed silent and started walking away but he followed, struggling to keep up. He didn’t see a smashed egg on the sidewalk and slipped, chortling as he realized what we were doing.
“Ha, an egg battle. Didn’t you get in trouble for that last week. Ha! You were trying to hide it. Ha! An egg battle so close to Mrs. Pack’s house? Oh boy. Ha! She’d call the cops if she saw an egg battle.”
“Be quiet you idiot,” I sneered. “You know she sits on her back porch.”
“Whaddya gonna do about it?” he taunted, even though he knew full well I had already beat him up twice. He seemed ready to make it three.
But, he was Italian with a big family and I wasn’t quite sure how angry his cousins could get.
He would not shut up. I took an egg from my front pants pocket and held it up for him to see, hoping the unspoken threat would shut him up. He backed away but slipped again on the same broken egg. This time, he fell in it.

Angry now, he stood and shouted: “Mrs. Pack!”
I ran at him. He continued to call for her but backpedaled, so I ran at him some more, giving the other players time to slip away. At the corner, now out of the hearing of the infamous Mrs. Pack, I had to make him pay.
Only about a pitcher’s mound away, I had him in my sights. I fired an egg with full force sidearm at his torso. He tried an awkward dodge — he wasn’t athletic — but I scored a direct hit. Bouncing off the softest part of his belly, though, the egg fell intact onto the soft grass near the curb. He picked it up, eyes now wide and nostrils flaring. He saw I was out of ammo.
No way I was running, though. Not from this goofball.
I stood my ground, figuring my chances were good. He threw about as awkwardly as he ran. Trying to throw the egg like a fastball, he held it too loosely. It slipped upward, lobbing toward me. Ha! I could not only catch it but fire it back again, this time at his fat head.
I needed one long step backward to get under it. But now it was my turn to slip on a slithery yolk. I looked down long enough to catch my balance then looked back up. Splatt-t-t-t, the airborne egg fell into me forehead and Joey let loose with a belly laugh. With his physique, he did that well.
I considered chasing him, but I remembered we had stashed other eggs. By the time I ran back for one, though, he’d have time to hustle up Anthony Street, a long steep hill, and get closer to his house.
I risked it.
Joey ran like he was trying to catch the ice cream truck. When I returned with my ammo, he was almost a block away, in the shadows and very close to a couple nice parked cars.
It was more than a long shot, uphill, and what seemed like a football field away, but …
I remembered thinking how I had to keep my footing, like our baseball coach taught me when trying to throw out a runner tagging for third base … I would have to throw high, higher than the streetlamps.
The arc took the egg above the light, out of sight.
Hopeful but not confident, all I could do was stare at the oval silhouette that was Joey’s round body and the rounder silhouette that was his head.
The egg landed with no sound. I was too far away. But a streetlamp further up the hill helped me realize I had made a throw like the one that killed the rabbit. Much different ammo. Much slower prey. Same body part.
The head.

The insides of that egg exploded off Joey’s curly noggin like fireworks, that uphill streetlamp giving the spray the bright, gelatinous glory it deserved.

My only regret was that no one was there to see it. Maybe that’s why I’ve etched it so dramatically in my memory. Well, that, and, of course, it was the best throw in the entire history of egg battles.
The No. 1 throw of my life, bar none.
Joey P., of course, probably still says the same thing about the throw right before mine.

Nah, his was luck. Mine was pure skill, just plain beautiful. And, best of all, I didn’t have to carry that lug away to bury him.

I’m probably breaking some unwritten man-rule by writing this.
I’m supposed to poke fun at my mother-in-law. But, I consider this, crafted as Mother’s Day approaches, a tribute to Kay Bladel.

I met her one sunny day outside the big, busy house where she raised her eight children, six of them boys. I was dating her oldest girl Lynn, and had come to pick her up. We had met and become close in college but I had not met mom yet.

Kay looked shocked when I drove up. Stupid me, I had not considered the potential effect of my mode of transportation in this part of Pittsburgh. I grew up in a poorer part of town, where plastic and duct tape instead of a window wasn’t that uncommon.
Kay looked horrified. And she didn’t hide her feelings.
“You’re not going in that,” she announced to Lynn, as I pushed aside the plastic and crawled out the driver’s side passenger window. Lynn had warned me to try not to engage mom too much, so I just stood there, until my eventual-wife-to-be spoke up.
“It’s fine. It’s just the window and a little bit of the door. A lady ran a red light and hit him the other day,” Lynn said.
Kay shrieked her rebuttal: “But look at it!”
I was trying to get Lynn’s attention to hurry her into getting her bags.
But we weren’t going anywhere yet. Kay inspected that car like an NFL agent investigating a first-round draft pick. She even called Lynn’s dad Lou out to look at it. He just laughed and stayed on his porch. His oldest daughter — he called her his “Princess” — kissed him goodbye.
Kay turned  that inspector’s eye toward me, actually walking around me in a circle, asking about my beat-up shorts, my unkempt curly hair, my weight.
“You are skinny.” “Don’t you need a haircut?”
She knew she only had a few minutes and did her best to ensure her daughter wasn’t leaving town with a serial killer.

If I remember correctly, Lynn interrupted her mom as Kay asked where we were going to church on Sunday.
“C’mon mum. We gotta go,” Lynn said, tossing her bags in the car.
I thought of crawling back through the window but decided I better slide in through the passenger seat before Lynn got in. Kay grimaced as she walked up to the broken window but she leaned in close to me anyway.
I wish I could remember her exact words. For a great number of years they were etched in my mind like an epitaph. The exact quote eventually faded after I earned Kay’s trust — I swear that took about a decade after Lynn and I were married.
That day, closing out our inaugural meeting, she whispered something that made it very clear that she disagreed with premarital sex, and that it could be dangerous for anyone going out with her daughter to have a different opinion. She explained in terse, street language about my genitalia not necessarily remaining connected to the rest of my body.

No kidding.
—–
It was just a summer family gathering at the home of one of Lynn’s relatives. So, dress was casual.
I didn’t have a lot of nice clothes so I decided to wear one of my newest T-shirts. My mom said the blue background complimented my eyes.
That was lost on Lynn’s mom. She didn’ts see the background. She saw the silhouette and shouted: “He’s wearing a naked lady on his shirt!”
It was actually only an outline of the body of an American icon, Marilyn Monroe. One of my sisters had gotten it for me. No one else had thought it obscene.
By the time that party was over, Kay had everyone at the party convinced that it was.
—–
I was pretty skinny back then and bought my shorts from the thrift store. They didn’t always fit well.
Now, I’m certainly not saying I started the fad that became so popular with teenage black kids, but I did walk around for years with sagging shorts.

So, eventually, Kay discovered I didn’t often wear underwear. She grilled me about that — in public, no less — so often that I had to buy more.
I was getting better at dealing with Kay. I was blushing less. I even fired back on occasion.
On this particular fall afternoon, I didn’t even flinch when she casually announced to the crowd on Lynn’s front porch that I probably wasn’t wearing underwear. But, in assessing my sagging shorts, she noticed something else — the round bulge in my back pocket. She asked loudly:
“Dave, when did you start to chew?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, until I reached into my back pocket. Then, I not only turned beet red, I stood there mute, frozen, searching for a plausible lie.

I simply could not tell the truth about this one.

Kay asked again as I stammered, speechless, trying to find Lynn to bail me out. Everyone stared at me.

—-

To understand, we need to back up a little.
You men out there probably remember a time in your lives when you were younger and more lusty — when you would do just about anything to ensure your girlfriend stayed in the right mood. To ensure your … well … needs were taken care of. To keep from running into traffic like a rutting deer.

This porch scene happened when I was in my early 20s. Back then, when it came to certain situations, I did whatever my beautiful girlfriend told me to do, without a whisper of complaint.

This included, on this particular day, letting her slip something into my back pocket that should have been carried more discretely. In her purse. Inside a shirt pocket in a backpack. Anywhere but where it was.
But, no, my lovely, shapely girlfriend wanted me to carry it. I think she was sending a message. Like, “I have to worry about this thing all the time, so you can be responsible for it for once.”
She hadn’t counted on her mom’s eagle eye.
Kay thought the bulge meant I had a new vice. She didn’t realize her daughter and I were practicing a very old one.

---

Back on the porch, Kay expected I would simply pull out a tin of tobacco. She pressed onward. She wasn’t going to let this go.

This was so traumatizing I have blocked out specifically what happened next.

I know it went something like this. Lynn, finally out the front door and to the rescue, goes on the offensive.

“Let him alone, mum. It’s just candy you goofballs. It’s mine. I didn’t want him to let you guys see it.” she says.
“Why?” Kay asked.
“Because you pigs would eat it all,” Lynn said. Those brothers — did I mention there are six of them? — knew they couldn’t argue with that.
I finally breathed again, as I stuffed the object deeper in the pocket above my right glute and fled to the car. Driving away, I handed Lynn’s diaphragm back to her and asked her, nicely, to hide it in one of the bags.
—-

Right about now, you might be thinking this doesn’t sound like a mother-in-law tribute, as promised at the outset. Think again.
Kay’s motherly instincts were right on target.

She thought I was sneaky, and I was.
I had to be, growing up where I did. She helped keep me on the straight and narrow, at least when it came to her daughter.
And she did it with unflagging resolve.
I saw over the years that I wasn’t the only target, either.
She cared enough about all her kids to challenge those who would enter the Bladel inner circle. Dinner at Kay’s house always included an abundant array of tasty stuff but also an inquisition.
If the newest invitee was amorous with a Bladel offspring, watch out.
Of course, none of them showed up in a half-crashed car, or looking like a reject from a homeless shelter.
So, I believe I was honored with the most extensive Kay cross-examination on record. Seemed like a grueling gauntlet at the time but it helped me earn her friendship. And once you got past the interrogation, she loved you and protected you like one of her own.

That paid off big-time. Help with our five babies. Help with money. Help making vacations happen.

She even became my best audience, laughing at all my jokes.
As a bonus, every time she came to visit our home, everything in the ironing basket ended up pressed and hung in the closet before she left, even after arthritis had curled her fingers and stiffened her ankles.
Kay has passed now, but her legacy lives on.

The surviving kids continue to grill newcomers to the family, sometimes with aggressive candor that rivals their mom’s. I have to admit I have joined in on occasion, too.

No questions about underwear or pocket bulges, though. I wouldn’t inflict that on anyone, unless he or she reminds me of me.

Then, of course, all bets are off.