We Miss YOU Already... Um... Let Me Explain, She Just Moved Away!

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      We Miss YOU Already...  

                   Um...  Let me Explain, She Just Moved Away!

An aircraft arrived, one of its passengers returning home from Israel.  We weren't aware of it, of course, or its impact upon our lives, not until Fred arrived at our door to suggest we wait a bit, wait for his good friend.  "She'll be here very soon.  She'll stay at the Astor until her furniture and piano arrive, a baby grand piano."   

"Wait?" SweetHeart and I asked, sort of in unison.  We were poised to rent our upper flat to an interested couple eager to submit payment and then schedule a move.  

"Hmmm..." SweetHeart mused, an index finger pressed along her jaw line.  "A baby grand piano!  She'll probably live here for a very long time!  That's a good thing."  She remained our very best tenant, becoming a best friend in the process, for 23 years.  We've long referred to her, to Joan, as "The One Above."  That piano gave us sweet music for many of those years as it sang, its black and white notes and chords penetrating through hardwood floor boards and a high ceiling.      

"She'll be the best tenant you could ever have," Fred stated with emphasis, quite insistently, his hand and arm gestures a convincing argument.   "I guess we'll wait," I said in reply, or maybe SweetHeart did.  "I mean, all the way from Israel to rent OUR upstairs flat."  That last remark was definitely hers.    

"She used to live on this street, north of here.  She loves the neighborhood.  You won't regret it for a moment...  best tenant you'll ever have," Fred repeated with even greater emphasis, his warm smile a reassuring promise, a kind of excursus or a codicil to his testament.  

The herald, Fred, arrived at our door in April of 2000.  The "best tenant," Joan, took up residence in June of the same year, or perhaps it was earlier in the year, April or May.  I can't find a record to verify the exact time.  Not terribly vital to this narrative, I suppose.

Don't know if it's a kind of phenomenon, as perhaps not all landlords / landladies and their tenants become friends.   So often, we're told by others, those relationships become more adversarial rather than warm and fuzzy and friendly, with cultural and social interaction mixed into the recipe.   But, after all, 23 years with the "best tenant..."  As landlords, we've been exceptionally fortunate.  

She became our surrogate "Auntie," sharing our cell phone provider, for example.  For 23 years, we've backed her car into her side of the garage.  Joan was never very good at backing.  Didn't matter.  I casually mentioned to her family, a son and two daughters, other relatives and friends, "I've driven Joan's cars for 23 years, but only backwards."  She's had three different automobiles over the years, the first was blue, one green, the current motor, a compact, is silver-grey.

Of course, there were a few challenges in our relationship.  Joan was, still is, an ardent devotee of The New York Times.  For quite a long period of time, the paper arrived sometime between 5:00 and 6:00AM.  It arrived with a resounding thud against the wall of our porch, as if hurled by a beefy shot-putter with great muscular arms.  The wall was just outside our bedroom, the noise of its arrival nearly catapulting us out of our warm bed. We spoke to Joan.  She spoke to the delivery people.  In a couple of years' worth of newspaper arrival explosions we forgot all about it.  (Or was it three years?  I probably exaggerate a bit!)

Joan has been, in the main, a quiet and considerate tenant, neighbor and great friend.  Except when she dances.  Or is it clogging?  Old houses tend to magnify sound, from floors through ceiling to the ears of downstairs denizens.   Things that fall or drop have contributed, over time, to certain evidence that Joan is in residence.  

Only once was there a sort of atomic blast, when a huge mirror dislodged itself from the single nail that held it in place.  We had trouble identifying the source, wondering if an aircraft had crashed into the neighbor's attic.  Glass and debris covered the floor of Joan's bedroom.  She was traveling to visit her daughter in Minnesota.  SweetHeart and I helped clean up the shattered glass and other resultantly exploded material, books and artifacts!  The mirror has not been replaced.

SweetHeart has helped Joan over the years with eyedrops, television issues, cell phone and land-line-phone matters, physical challenges.  I've carried up her groceries and other supplies over the years -- all of the above simply labors of love!  Keeps one in shape, of course, so not a complaint, you understand.  Repairs, too, of course...  plunging and plumbing, paint, knobs that come loose, carrying up, supplying and moving of chairs, leaking downspouts, outdoor umbrellas, luggage, spring and winter window manipulations...  But all of that goes with property-owning territory.  Mustn't grumble...  Exercise is beneficial...     

At 90 years of age, soon to be 91, Joan is moving into an apartment that does not require her to climb stairs, something she's done with grace and, recently, somewhat decreasing ease.  Her new place has an elevator and gorgeous views of Lake Michigan, watercraft and surrounding structures, grassland, the traffic that crawls or speeds along Lincoln

Memorial Drive.  The "crawlers" are cruisers looking for fun and places to park.  The "speeders" are eager to get home or to the tavern, a restaurant or shops, using the Drive as a kind of unintended expressway, unless, at times, when sirens and their official user-occupants intervene. 

We'll miss her terribly, that is, the proximity of her, of Joan, the ease with which we can see her and follow her activities, her travels, her wonderful poetry.  She has published volumes attesting to her poetic talents.  Joan is a rabid reader.  Her books, a mountain of them, will leave with her, or find homes with other avid readers.  Joan is very generous, kind and thoughtful, and funny, too.  She has a terrific sense of humor!  

Happily, she's not moving far.  We'll visit; we'll see her whenever we can, whenever she feels up to hosting her former lower-flat neighbors and friends.  We'll make plans to collect her for a trip to one of our favorite coffee houses, or for a spot of breakfast or lunch.  Errands perhaps, possibly a visit to our local bookseller.  Joan never forgets our birthdays and wedding anniversaries, gifts and treats of breakfast or lunch always part of the celebrations.   

We've grown to love Joan.  To be accurate, or to be honest, we grew to love her almost from the start of what "initial-ists" termed "Y2K."  It only took us a day, maybe two at the most.  She's easy to love, attested to by her many friends, her family, her grandchildren and great grandchildren, her poetry and Shakespeare groups, neighbors and so many others.  Stay well, Joan.  Settle in.  Enjoy your new digs.  We'll see you again in a couple of days!    

Humbly Submitted 12-08-2022...  Joel K.  

   

  

  

 

 

What Was That I Said?...

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:

What Was That I Said?  or, One's Brilliant (mis-) Understanding of Foreign Tongues!...   More Travels / Overseas Edition!

Heartburn and other stomach disorders are not exclusively the province of the elderly, or those of us currently experiencing the joys of GeezerHood!  

SweetHeart was at one point in her various superb careers, a Flight Attendant.  She flew for United Airlines.  As such, in our early years of marriage, we could fly like pelicans, unfettered by such impediments as airfares...  well, practically!

On our honeymoon -- that was prior to the onset of GeezerHood, but, after all, one can still recall those blissful days of callow youth -- we decided to jet off to Greece, or Hellas, visit the glories of Athens, as well a few of the Greek Islands.  What the heck does that have to do with HeartBurn??  Well...   lemme explain.

Athens is replete with what I call "Sidewalk Emporiums," at which one can purchase an array of necessaries, including remedies for the body.  On a particular evening, out for dinner and a stroll near the Acropolis, I had a nasty bout with heartburn.   Never traveling without my handy language guides, including a Berlitz Book of Greek, on this occasion, perhaps needless to add, I looked up "heartburn."  No listing.  I then paged to the index to find "antacids."  No listing.  Trying a few other obtuse combinations of Greek words, I finally settled upon the words, "Heart" and "Fire."  

I announced in my finest baritone broadcast voice, hand over my left chest, "Heartfire"!  The young woman who staffed the emporium looked at me as if I were making an unwanted romantic overture, her face a mask of shock and discomfort.  SweetHeart yanked me by the arm and hustled me away from the young woman and her sidewalk shop.  "She has to think you're some kind of crazed masher," said SweetHeart.  "Let's get the heck away

from here before she calls the local police!"  We departed briskly.

 On a subsequent evening, enjoying an "Athens By Night" adventure, along with an international throng of fellow visitors to that ancient land, we told the story of "Heartfire," with many translations and belated laughter arcing and echoing through the crowd.  As the merriment began to diminish, an English couple approached SweetHeart and me, and deposited several antacids into my open and grateful palm.

********************************************************************************

Our elder daughter spent a couple of years in Estonia during her Peace Corps tenure.  We visited her in the month of February, early in the 2000's.  Estonia was not in full bloom at the time, but seeing our wonderful daughter, a photogravure palette of grey and a continuous whispy snowfall made the entire experience delightful and beautiful, an artwork of muted color.  

We settled into Saaremaa, the island off the west coast of Estonia, in the Baltic Sea, where our daughter was based.  She taught, sang and volunteered her time and talent generously for young and old alike, anyone in need.  After seeing the sights and delights of the Island, we ferried ourselves to the mainland, rented a vehicle and motored off to see her fellow Peace Corps friends in Tartu and Tallinn.

On the road, we passed through a small village, a bit too fast, and were halted in our progress by an Estonian policeman who "waved" us down using a long pole, at the end of which was a circular symbol.  I believe the symbol indicated excessive haste!  I did not have a phrase book of Estonian.  No one spoke.  Using a kind of friendly sign language, the policeman and I, that is, I agreed not to speed anymore while the nice official agreed not to assess an enormous fine!  It was the first time in my driving experience that I was "pulled over" by a standing policeman armed with a long pole and a sign at the top!  

Pannenkoeken!  Oh, and Berries!

Our daughter, Bethie, was with SweetHeart, our Peace Corps daughter, Alie, and me.  Bethie made a great and loving impression on everyone we encountered, building relationships and friendships that have endured, even today, nearly 20 years after the fact!  We met Alie's wonderful and talented friends, learned a bit of Estonian, had a kind of pizza in Tartu and generally enjoyed a delicious and highly memorable adventure.  Oh, and "pannenkoeken"! A kind of bread-y pancake-y treat that's found everywhere in Estonia...  (The Netherlands, too, we're reliably told!)  And, we met Alie's Estonian host family.  Wonderful people who enjoyed Alie, her sense of humor and her sometimes stumbling efforts to learn the Estonian language, something she eventually mastered, still uses speaking with native Estonian friends. 

I should mention that Alie was in Estonia and Saaremaa during the "Nine-Eleven" crisis, and was told to "maintain a low profile," as Americans were thought to be in peril during that period of time.  She didn't.  She wrote and recorded her own compositions, including a couple of Estonian folk ballads, and created a wonderful CD of songs.  She was interviewed and landed on the front page of certain Estonian newspapers.  Not exactly a low profile, but she achieved well-deserved fame and praise, donating the proceeds from the sales of her CD to the Estonian Children's Fund. 

*********************************************************************************

Sometime in the mid 2000's, following her time in the Peace Corps, Alie and her now husband, Tad (a remarkably fine man, I have to admit!), decided to cross the Atlantic and visit her various Peace Corps veteran friends.  She had a place to stay everywhere they went, except for France, where the friend, living with parents, did not have suitable accommodations to house

her family.  She asked if we might be interested in a trip to France, specifically the Dordogne Region, the "Smile of France," demarcated slendidly by the river of the same name.  We billeted in an old bakery building, containing an enormous fireplace, lots of bedrooms for all of us, and even a swimming pool in the back garden.  The "all" included grandson, Coen, at the time not quite three years old, and a terrific traveling companion! 

We, SweetHeart and I, took a few basic lessons in French before departing on our journey.  The airline lost all of our luggage, or most of it, necessitating a shopping episode in Paris.  Thanks to the lessons, we navigated rather successfully through the shops and markets.  At one large department store, we stopped to purchase...   Well, I asked a clerk, "Avez vous une costume du plage?"  To which the patient shop attendant responded in perfect English, "You know, we do have a word for bathing suit, monsieur."  

"Uh, " said I, a bit red in the face, "Ou est le cabine d'essayage?"  I don't think she was impressed, but pointed me to the "fitting room."  I also found the underwear department, with a little help from my phrase book!  "Vetements pour ma femme?...   Tout coton, s'il vous plait!"      

And...   a very memorable occasion on which the use of the French language bore sweet fruit:  SweetHeart drew a warm hug from an older woman in Tremolat, asking first, "Do you speak any English?"  The woman shook her head, confused.  Then, SweetHeart asked in perfect French, "Ou est le bibliotheque la plus proche?"  The old woman beamed, and embraced SweetHeart as if she, SweetHeart, were a long-lost daughter!  (The small village did not have a library, however!). Such are the rewards and wonders of attempting to communicate with native people in their own language, especially meaningful and important when in their own lands!!  The village of Tremolat, by the by,  had some of the most delectable baked goods we'd ever tasted!  "Ou est encore cette le boulangerie?"

(Special Note of Dedication:   To all the good and gracious people of countries visited over the seas whose patience and understanding made our travels so satisfying, gratifying and edifying...  We thank you most sincerely!  You enriched the experiences far more than we can adequately express!) 

Humbly Submitted, 12-07-19 -- Joel K.  

             

Is Work Really Character Building... or What?

     

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    The Benefits of Labor -- Is Work Truly Character Building...  or What?

    I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
    Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
    The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
    The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
    The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat--the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
    The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter singing as he stands;

    The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at     sundown...            
                                                                    --  Walt Whitman...   from:   I Hear America Singing     

What a load of...   Hey!  Is it true that work enriches us, builds character?  Do we work solely to enjoy our leisure time?  Are the "joys of work" merely a clever piece of propaganda foolishness propagated by the wealthy -- the "mine and factory owners" -- to keep the working classes plodding along?

As I stand atop the wobbly tower of Geezerhood," I tend to gaze back upon the many strange and wondrous occupations I've had over the years.  Examples...  

I'm moving a Hot Tar Kettle into
position at the roofing Job Site!

"Bobby L." had a flat-roof-hot-tar roofing business in which he somehow hypnotized the none-too-bright to enlist their labors, certainly not their talents.  He even paid us once in a while!  I was one of his "Kettle Rats" who struggled in the blazing heat of high summer, filling buckets of hot tar and hoicking them up a giant step ladder to the roof above where Bobby "mopped in" and sometimes mopped scalding tar over the edge and onto the tender backs and chests of his faithful if misguided Kettle Rats.  "Hot!" he would holler.  That was the signal to fetch more hot tar up onto the roof!  Sometimes the kettle became overheated and caught fire.  Then we had to stop for the day and go to an air conditioned tavern.  Such misery!  To have to leave the inferno for the cool of a gin house!  Of course our wages were often burned up in beer, booze and bar dice!!  (I no longer take alcoholic beverages internally, and I have a horror of ladders!!)  

Then there was window cleaning on relatively tall buildings, true high-rises too, sometimes working with belts, crossing from one window to another, unhooking one end of the belt, re-hooking on the other side of the window, reaching for the hook on the next window, stretching in terror to cross the gap...  "Don't look down," says Baltazar, my Greek co-crazy.  "Good hooks!  Real safe!  You shouldn't worry much!"  Once a dentist pulled me into his window when a hook came out of the wall!  Oh, the joys of gondola lifts or "elevator" lift platforms...  I think we also called them "slip stages!"  Sometimes they'd slip...  Working on them in high winds was real exciting!  As a young college student, I actually survived and made lots of money one summer; was able to pay a large portion of my tuition.  Played cribbage with the boys during lunch hours, when we had them!  (Now I'm terrified of heights!)

Fritz was our favorite tavern-keeper when I worked for a company he lovingly called, "Hair Felt."  The company had a more professional name; they made indoor-outdoor carpeting.  We unloaded box cars, lots of them.  I was smaller, shorter, and was treated to the joys of crawling into boiling hot, cramped spaces to shove 12-foot bales of carpeting out and down into the space between the two stacks of bales in each rail car.  The bales were then hefted onto specialized wooden hand trucks to be ferried into the warehouse.  Two men, one on either side, "walked" the bales onto their ends to stand in enormous stacks against the warehouse walls....  waiting for orders!   They looked like cigars for giants or concrete freeway bridge supports!  We sweat a lot...  buckets.  Eventually, after numbers of injuries to our fellow workers, including a 12-foot bale that fell down and landed on the head of "Carlos," we organized and started a union.  A great triumph!  A boon for the working classes!  (Today I prefer wood floors and small rugs!)  

Road crews!  What great fun!  "Jumping stakes," puddling in concrete, setting and pulling forms...  I did a lot of sewer cleaning on those jobs too; one had to keep the sand and gravel from clogging them, and there was often the bonus of traditional sewer content that had to be

removed along with construction debris.  I mean, you couldn't really separate the intermingled stuff while filling buckets to be lifted to the roadway surface...  could you??!!  (Recently, I tried to repair the mechanism of a toilet...  I removed a few parts, scratched my head, called the plumber!)  

Factories, foundries, shipyards, even a mine!  When I graduated from college and took to the road, I was able to find more elegant employment.  Hotel and restaurant labors in the absence of work in my chosen field.  Newspaper and radio jobs too.  But, back to the hospitality trade:  At a major hotel near Tacoma, Washington, I started as a lowly banquet bartender, then became a "bar-back" (schlepping cases of beer, re-filling coolers...), then a day shift co-bar-manager, then beverage manager, even ascending to catering management.  What a success; what a climb up a more prestigious ladder!!  (At my present age, once in a while I put pop in the ice box!)     

As a truck driver for a major metropolitan newspaper (like that guy on television with the blue long johns and red underwear he wore on the outside!), I was a mild-mannered news medium employee.  I made a great many "state runs" with the fat Sunday paper.  On one occasion I happened to be assigned a rental truck that had a canvas and chain tail gate.  Unbeknownst to me, all of the papers fell out of the back as I motored north.  A traffic cop rather easily followed my trail and made me retrace the route and retrieve all of the "jettisoned" paper bundles...  or pay a large fine.  I went back.  Oh, my yes, the character-building joys of work, the personal gratification and self-esteem enhancing glories of the workaday life!!  (These days I prefer to read the "free press," and discarded newspapers!)     

Oh well...  (this could go on far too long!)  I guess it must be true that work makes us better citizens, makes us appreciate the value of our labors and able to see the contributions we make to this great land.  My sweet and talented wife, for example, wrote manuals on "legal advocacy" and "child custody" while working in the domestic violence arena, manuals that, I'll wager, may still be the standards in use today!  My brother designed a couple of bridges -- one that serves dually as a runway -- and buildings that stand and function to this day!  Me?  I'll betcha the "electric blankets" I built when doing temp work at "Knot Labor Force" still melt ice on the bridge they were designed to serve.  I'll betcha motorists still silently praise my valorous effort as their tires gain purchase on what otherwise might have been a skating rink!! 

And so this, my friends, is my humble homage to work, labor and meaningful employment.  Today as I sit staring at a computer screen -- "sit" being the operative word -- I long for the fresh air of the gondola on a 70-story building, the sweet aroma of the factory floor and the lilting rhythms of the punch press, the ambiance of the sewers, the insults of drunken hotel bar regulars...  not to mention the angry growling of the dribbling, corpulent chef who'd holler, "No beverage host vermin in MY kitchen...!"  Verily, The joys and memories of labor echo in my skull, as do Whitman's elegant and elegiac * refrains  (* ...Walt's dead!  So are the "Singing Workers" of his verse, and so too may be the nation's respect for labor and ordinary working people)!  

(Special Note:   The perpetrator of this Blog wishes to make it abundantly clear that in no way is this posting intended to denigrate work or labor, or the value and dignity of work, in any of its multitudinous forms.  The objective is to poke a bit of fun at his "careers," and to make sport of the perhaps rather fatuous choices made over time by the writer...  who's kind of fatuous himself, sometimes!  The writer, by the by, is happy to have survived his many noble occupations!) 

Humbly Submitted 08-20-15 -- Joel K.          

      



      

         

                                                      

Newspaper Chronicles -- The Many Labors of a Young Reporter!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    Newspaper Chronicles -- The Many Labors of a Young Reporter!

The roadway was impossibly dark and twisted.  Headlamps reflected blazing green-eyed beasts at every turn, causing electric shocks of panic and frenzied braking.  Once even a specter, bald and wrinkled, walking in the middle of the endless blacktop.  Each a brief slap of awakening from dangerous exhaustion.  Monolithic sentries cast their stony glances of disapproval on the lone traveler.  Or were they being protective, eyes intent and guiding?  Seeing, at last, a turnoff, I pulled over and slept.  Some hours later, a brilliant rising sun re-ignited the odyssey, and I moved on, obsessively eager to reach a destination both frightening and alluring.  

Next morning -- it was sometime in the very late 1960's -- I arrived at the offices of The Southwest Gawker Talker!  It's masthead proudly announced, The Only Newspaper in the World that Gives a Hoot about Our Portion of the Metroplex! The owner and publisher, Ferd Fozzlefinger, bade me sit.  I sat.  I produced my credentials, including a bound diploma attesting to a BA degree in Journalism, along with my Honorable Discharge from the US Armed Forces, something upon which Ferd insisted.  The interview lasted maybe five minutes.  Ferd looked pleased; I offered silent thanks to the Colorado Press Association.

"Can you start today?" Ferd Fozzlefinger asked.  

"You mean like right now?

"Yes, today, right now.  Can you do it?" Ferd asked with emphasis.

"Sure.  I guess so."  

"Good," said Ferd,  "You're hired."

"Where's the rest of the staff?" I inquired.

"You're it," said Ferd.  "Well, naturally we have our typesetter and graphic artist, Gimel Sneedby.  You'll like him.  He's good, real professional.  Also too, you'll be editor and head writer of The Big Bugle, a Legion Post newspaper.  I own that one also too."  (I enjoyed "total staff" status on that one "also too"!)

I met Gimel in the typesetting and reporting office.  Ferd showed me to a small desk, and I had my first real newspaper job.  Ferd provided a set of verbal instructions, including how to cover my daily beat, whom to call upon for advertising revenue, a listing of advertising prospects, addresses and directions for the local police department, fire house, municipal offices,

Young reporters must always keep
eyes wide open for big doings and
scoops (free ice cream and
important breaking news!)

area elementary and high schools, snitches, neighborhood people he termed "sources for anything of importance that's going on in our portion of the region."  So much to learn, so quickly.  I frowned purposely for dramatic effect, making sure my eyebrows were contorted with anxiety, my forehead a plowed field!    

"Don't worry," said Ferd.  "I'll be with you every step of the way."  I never saw him again.  Gimel and I -- he told me to call him "Gibby" -- became an effective team, collaborators, even great pals.  He operated a kind of photo-headline-making machine, a typesetting device that created neat columns of newsprint and something flat that whirred quietly and applied adhesive to strips of newsprint.  I was enthralled.  Page templates, chart packs, adhesive dingbats and black lines, "Press-Type" and sharp little picks with protective corks for placing graphic elements on the page.  This was newspaper compositor technology at its zenith!  

We did everything, just the two of us, to produce fine weekly editions of The Southwest Gawker Talker.  Eventually I established a beat, discovered news sources; I acquired some advertising contracts, got to know a police sergeant who became my primary source for crime news, an assistant fire chief, grocers, school officials, a pharmacist, city personnel, backyard gossips, a plumber, malcontents, neighborhood politicos, a guy who chased stray dogs and cats and told me he once roped a coyote in an urban public park.  And, of course, "Guttural Gus," my personal "rat-stoolie" who somehow collected vast material on sexual peccadilloes and nefarious tittle-tattle.  (More about "Gus" in a future edition, perhaps!) 

After a period of time had passed, I asked Gibby, "I mean, is there compensation involved with these fine career positions of ours?  Are there, like, paydays?"  

"Hey, don't worry," said Gibby.  " 'Ferdy the Finger' -- that's our pet name for the boss -- sends checks to the office.  He's not real consistent, but we get paid, ya know, like kind of regularly."  

"When?" I asked

"Lemme see...  I think we can expect some pay, well, something like next Wednesday," said Gibby.  "I'll make a note to call 'The Finger.'  He listens to me when I threaten to walk out.  I'll threaten for you too!"

"Good," I said.  "My room is small and cheap, but the landlady expects rent occasionally.  And food," I continued.  "I find that I must eat occasionally too."  Gibby thought this amusing.  He chuckled, raised a hand to his face and smeared his mouth with printer's ink.

As time passed, Gibby and I decided that we'd become, among our other duties, "Auntie Muriel," the advice columnist.  "We have to have a little fun around here," he insisted.  I agreed.  And thus we re-launched a column that, he said, "had been too long dormant, and it's an essential feature of the weekly newspaper format."  What a hoot, it was, and we loved writing or editing it, some entries real, most fictitious.  Here's an example:

Dear Auntie Muriel...  I don't do work, you see.  It's an agreement my lady friend of 12 years and I have.  She likes to work.  I distain work; I find it demeaning and undignified, and I have gout, I think.  I'd like to marry the woman, my dear lady friend of 12 years, but I worry she's a bit flighty and can't seem to commit herself to a single job for any purposeful length of time.  I worry a lot about this, and I try to tell her we need stability, money.  I mean, let me elucidate:  she's been a shrubbery trimmer, a gandy dancer, a coal dock worker, a governess, a butcher's apprentice, an underwear designer, a saloon keeper, a taxidermist, a rubber chicken packer, a mahout, a mob assassin, a tweedy wife of the drunken vicar of Islington, a deep sea diver, a communist infiltrator, an exterminator, an attorney, a garage door installer...  I could go on.  I once even threatened to purchase a girdle and become the tweedy wife of a drunken vicar myself.  Nothing works.  I'm a fine companion, after all.  A frightfully decent sort of chap.  I clean our living spaces at least bi-monthly, well, sort of.  I dress nice; I own a selection of handsome argyle sweater vests.  I once in a while cook excellent frozen dinners on aluminum platters.  I buy her the finest cleaning supplies.  Metal buckets, powders and self-squeezing mops.  I leave detailed instructions for her cooking assignments.  Recipes too; I clip them out neatly for her.  What can I do, Auntie Muriel, how can I convince my lady friend to find a position of permanence with real good pay?  (Signed)...

   Agonized in Argyle!

Dear Agonized in Argyle...  Shut up!  Whiney, obtuse fool!  Go out and get a job of work, you supercilious gnat-brained buffoon!  I obscenitize in the soured milk of your impotence!  I'm astonished the woman didn't leave you eleven and a-half years ago!  She's either a saint or an idiot.  You're certainly an idiot!  Give the woman some time to discover her true self, her real identity, her joie de vivre, her forte (the "e" is silent, you contemptible snot-nosed baboon!), her metier, her bag, man!  Instead of whining about your lady friend and her magnificent achievements, her attainment of varied, extraordinary skills, you should be on your knobbly knees in adoration of such a remarkable woman whom you clearly don't deserve.  You should bury your needy, reedy and haughty nose in the want ads, or at least get on relief, you brick-headed issue of a dung beetle.  (Don't take offense -- merely constructive criticism)...  But I believe you ought to take some responsibility for the economic sustenance of the relationship.  Jerk!  Thanks for your interesting and nicely-composed letter!  (Signed)...  Auntie Muriel!

The two Aunties Muriel discuss
Advice over greenery, biscuits
and booze (the latter pretending
to be weak tea!)  

Among letters actually published?  Whether or not is up to you, gentle reader.  Gibby and I enjoyed our "Auntie Muriel" correspondence enormously, both the real and the manufactured.  Over time, he and I produced a significant number of weekly editions of our newspaper; I edited and helped produce only two issues of The Big Bugle.  We received erratic payments from Ferb, but I never again saw him in the flesh.  Once he Fax'ed us a photo of himself eating snails in a French bistro, greasy dribble on his chin.  

Eventually, in the passage of journalistic time, I was lured to Cheyenne, Wyoming and a daily newspaper for which I served as general assignment reporter and erstwhile sportswriter and editor, all for the princely sum of $75.00 a week.  I covered and photographed a rodeo from a barrel...  (that, too, is a story for another time).  Other newspaper, broadcast journalism assignments as well, were 
joined like boxcars to my resume whenever the itch and unexplored geography beckoned.  

The weekly newspaper is, or was, an exceptionally good training ground for a young journalist.  That is, for a young reporter who worked in the field some 40 or more years ago.  Being long removed, one is not now an authority on the present status of the weekly press.  Never quite achieving fame or fortune in my journalistic career, I am lavishly enriched by the overall experience, having gained a treasure of knowledge and adventure, now zealously guarded in a cerebral vault, that I'll keep and cherish -- brain function willing -- all the way to the tomb.

(Special Note of Attribution and Gratitude:   The perpetrator of this Blog extends enormous thanks to his great friend, teacher and mentor, Larry Lorenz, a man of exceptional talent in the written word, author, broadcaster, educator, whose love of the profession of journalism and the power of the printed word is an enduring gift to all who have benefitted from his wisdom and intellectual generosity.  Thank you, my friend, for your most valued influence, and for sharing ideas, at least one of which led me to recall and recount some adventures in newspaper journalism!) 

Humbly Submitted 11-05-14 -- Joel K.