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November 3, 2016

TR Kerth

An early morning walk out where the sidewalk ends

I took a walk this morning out where the sidewalk ends.

Ask any city kid how to get to the end of the sidewalk, and he will thumb his nose at you, because any city kid knows that the sidewalk has no end.

Where, oh where, has our craftiness gone?

Americans don’t seem to be as crafty as they used to be, do they?

Finding the right footing just a step ahead of disaster

Some twenty years ago, when our kids were grown and my wife and I determined that our family had finally grown out of the hand-to-mouth stage, we decided that with a bit more hand-to-mouth sacrifice we could afford to splurge on buying a vacation property.

Too much to check out in a slow, sad checkout line

It’s never comfortable standing in a long checkout line, but this one was more uncomfortable than most.

An alarming tale and some hard-won advice

It was a few minutes past two in the afternoon when the smoke alarm went off. And then the next alarm, and the next, until all five alarms in the house were screaming.

I leaped to my feet and almost stepped on the dog, who was also leaping to her feet at the time. She looked at me with an accusatory glance, as if all the noise was my fault. But I knew better.

What’s a mom to do when the channel-changer is way over there?

Let’s face it, we’ll never make America great again until our politically correct legal system stops harassing good parents.

I speak, of course, about the McHenry County woman who was charged with a misdemeanor and forced to plead guilty of endangering the life of her children, just because she fired a pistol shot into the TV where the kids were watching a music video.

It’s simple human nature to be so complicated

Nothing could be more simple. Which is exactly why it’s so complicated. After all, what could be more simple than the decision to save a little boy’s life?

Just another day at the office — for an angel

I wanted to buy Patty a little something to remember us by, but when I turned around, she was gone.

Sometimes the best way to honor the vote is to sink it

Democracy can be frustrating — especially when you hold a free election, expecting the citizenry to vote according to their time-honored conservative principles, but they instead cast a landslide of cartoonishly absurd ballots.

Easy to say “Let them eat cake,” when you never eat at all

Just when I thought it was impossible to be shocked by anything that came out of a politician’s mouth, the bar got raised today. (Or maybe it got lowered. I can’t remember if we’re trying to high jump over the bar, or limbo under it.)

Never been here before, but it’s nice to see it all again

When I was younger, I often experienced feelings of déjà vu, but it’s been a long time since it’s happened to me.

Hey, America, what part of ersatz don’t you understand?

I came down with a cold this week, the kind of epic head-pounding, nose-geysering, throat-blazing, lung-honking cold that could cause a guy to get exiled from a shopping mall — or maybe even an emergency room. A lesser man might have buckled, but not me.

A holiday explanation for when a calendar just isn’t enough

It was one of those falling-asleep moments in bed long ago, when my drowsy wife mumbled to me, “Is Easter two Sundays from now or three?” We had plans for a family gathering on Easter Sunday that would take some preparation, but that was at least two weeks away. Maybe three.

I don’t know how anything works anymore, do you?

When I was a kid and I was baffled by how something worked, Mom or Dad could explain it to me in a couple short sentences, and then I was up to speed.

Just when you thought you had heard from the biggest idiot…

Several weeks ago, I told you what an idiot I was when it came to the stupid things that leaped from my mouth when I met celebrities like Meadowlark Lemon and James Brown. It was a simple bumbler’s confession, and I thought that would be the end of it.

Hold onto your asterisk, it’s going to be a bumpy ride

Whenever I used foul language when I was a kid, my grandmother Nani would sit me down and explain, “People who use words like that are too ignorant to think of a better word. You’re not ignorant, are you?”

Welcome a new president to the Celebrity Stumblers Club

Misery, they say, loves company. And now I have proof positive that idiocy also loves having a club to belong to.

A memorable pizza with a bit of Lemon on the side

Millions around the world were saddened by the recent passing of Meadowlark Lemon, the basketball “crown prince” of the Harlem Globetrotters — the only man on the planet to be inducted to both the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Clown Hall of Fame.

Shoveling snowy memories for the land of sand and sun

Not long ago, I spoke to a friend who has lived his whole life in south Florida. He said to me, “I’ve never seen snow.” Mind you, this neighbor isn’t in kindergarten. He isn’t a junior-high-school boy hoping to get an X-Box for Christmas.

‘Tis the season to be noggy, fa la la la la

I hope you’ll pardon my waxing poetic, but the very thought of finding the grocery shelves fully nogged once more at this time of year makes me go all iambic.

Avoiding the inevitable SNAFU when PDA meets NRA

You send your kids off to school every morning with a hug and a kiss, hopeful and trusting that they will get through the day without being assaulted by some sociopath in the hallways.

A birdhouse by any other name would squeak, not peep

Go ahead, call it a birdhouse if you want to. But you’d be wrong.

It’s time to get your garden-team MVP into the game

Ah, the joys of late October—giving treats tomonster-clad kids, glorying in the trees’ technicolor display, putting in the first plantings of my 2016 vegetable garden… Wait… what? Planting veggies in October?

Debating the lowdown on the latest shower-door craze

My buddies Mike and Bill swung by last week to pick me up for a round of golf—a happy surprise, because lately Mike’s life has been held hostage by home remodeling.

Letting the eclipse tell his side of the story

A lady walked up to me recently, shook my hand, and stared deeply—searchingly—into my eyes. “I just wanted to see the other half of your face,” she said.

Seeing the world through a good-guy’s eyes — as I see it

We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are. I think that might be the most insightful line I ever came up with—even though Anais Nin came up with it first. But still, I’m taking credit for it because I don’t think Nin should get all the credit just because she was born almost 50 years before me and got to say the line first.