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September 23, 2021

The View From Planet Kerth

The ironic joys — and jolts — of letting the world pass you by

In early July my friend Carol and I headed down to Wilmington, Illinois, for the annual Catfish Festival held there. The Festival was scrapped last year (like everything else) because of the pandemic, but this summer it was back in full force, thanks to effective vaccines that most sensible Illinoisans have taken advantage of.

It was fun to see the Festival back in fine form — deep fried catfish and country-blues bands in the beer garden of the Rustic Inn, mud volleyball out behind the Route 66 Bar and Grill, carnival rides and booths in the North Island Park surrounded by the Kankakee River, flea market on Water Street, and more. It’s the kind of “redneck roundup” Carol and I both love, with laughter, lowbrow entertainment and cheap beer.

Ticking off ways to stop the pests that tick you off

My favorite spot to sit and think — or sometimes just to sit — is in a lawn chair on the berm at the back of my yard, where the ridge rolls down through the oak trees to the meadow below. Because the ridge is shaped like an airplane wing, a gentle breeze always flows up through the shady oaks. The nearest homes are a half mile distant, past the meadow, which is home to deer, coyotes, pheasants, and other wild-welcome neighbors.

The saga of a star-steered morning

While skimming through the newspaper this morning, I happened to glance at my horoscope, which read: “Focus on practicalities. Chop wood and carry water. Maintain positive cash flow. Minimize waste. Conserve resources and energy.”

“Hm-m-m,” I said, because as luck would have it, I had chopped wood and carried water just a few minutes earlier on my way out to get the paper off the drive. (Well, I carried a watering can and sprinkled that pumpkin vine at the back of the yard, and I broke up a fallen branch lying on the lawn, so… yeah, close enough.)

When “Groundhog Day” comes home to roost

I was watching a Cubs game the other day, a slow-moving duel between two ace pitchers, and while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Getting used to this whole ‘normal’ thing

A pandemic can do horrible things to you — even if, blessedly, it passes you by.

I fall into that category. Although I was able to stay virus-free long enough to get the vaccine and become bullet-proof, the pandemic did horrible things to me.

Confessions of a later-in-life Peeping Tom

Look, it’s a curse carrying around a name like “Tom” all your life, having to endure childhood taunts like “Peeping Tom” from early school classmates. Because I was not then, nor have ever been, a Peeping Tom.

Well, at least not until recently, thanks to that video camera I recently bought, so well-camouflaged that those who are being peeped-upon don’t have a clue that I’m watching them.

I’ll get to that, but first a bit of background.

A tip of the hat to the second-best dog in the world

Last week I went to the second-best hot dog stand in the world and ordered a couple Chicago dogs with everything, including a pile of greasy French fries that would have kept a Potato Famine family of six going for a week or more. It was my first venture to that hot dog stand in a year, and it was good to find that they still put out the second-best hot dog in the world.

Don’t cry over a ‘lost year’

At the end of my junior year in high school, my parents moved us from Elmwood Park to Franklin Park. And so, on a Monday afternoon in early May, I suddenly found myself sitting in a classroom in West Leyden High School, having started the day at Elmwood Park High School, clearing out my locker.

Traveling back to normal with a vaccine passport

Thanks to the millions of vaccines being administered daily in the US, it appears we may actually be “rounding the corner” against this pandemic, to quote the words of the former Occupant in Chief.

The past is a foreign country

If you’ve done any traveling in your life, you see that folks do things differently in other lands. Some of the difference seems interesting and fun, but there are also differences that make you glad to skip back home, where folks do things “right” again. “What are those people thinking?” you think. “How can anybody behave like that and think it’s OK?”

Getting my first vaccine was as easy as Rubik’s Cube

Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you that when it comes to being medicated, I’m nearly a virgin. I pretty much stopped getting vaccines as soon as Mom couldn’t spank me for refusing to get one. I take no prescriptions, and I resist the temptation to pop a Tylenol or aspirin when my back aches or my head starts pounding. I find that Irish whiskey is the cure for (and probably cause of) most of my ailments.

The winning bid in a game of ‘thrones’

Who can say why some people do the things they do, and what value they place on worthless items that would be nothing but trash to any sane, sensible man?

Take a gander at my cluttered bookshelves sometime and you’ll wonder what possible value some of the items there could have to any sane, sensible man. The answer is “none,” but then we’re not talking about sane and sensible in this case, I guess.

The wonders — and woes — of a Brittany Spaniel pup

Winter is fading at long last, my son’s first winter in his “new” house — a hundred-year-old gem with all the charm (and harm) that a century can bring. And although Dave loves the previous owner’s bathroom renovation, he learned during the recent cold spell that there was nothing charming about the poorly insulated water pipes in the uninsulated crawl space.

Shaving away the lies with Occam’s Razor

I met a new friend a couple months ago, and after we had covered all the important topics of conversation — football, fishing, musicians we saw back when we lived a free-range pre-Covid life — he swung onto the topic of the Capitol insurrection.

“Yeah,” he said, “I hated seeing all those left-wingers posing as Trump fans smash up that building.”

Operation Hit the Beach – full mission log

December of 2019 — the last normal month any of us can remember — I spent in Naples, Florida, and when my son Dave flew down with the grandkids just after Christmas, I asked, “So what do you want to do tomorrow?”

Oh joy oh joy oh joy, it’s a snow day!

Of all the heart-breaking endings that this pandemic has wreaked upon us, add one more — the probable death of the snow day.

I’m all hat and no cows, in case you wondered

I have a lot of hats, but only one that I ever wrote a song about.

I have racks and racks of baseball caps honoring the Cubs and the Bears and just about every exotic place I’ve ever visited, but I never wrote a song about any of them.

Full moons, like fond memories, follow us across the sky

Decades ago, when my son Dave was only about five years old, he sat in the back seat of the car, staring at the full moon as I drove through the night. He was quiet, lost in thought.

Congratulations, Mr. President — may you lead our nation well

First, an admission: I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Oh, plenty of readers will say, “So what else is new?” But this time it’s different, because as I write this, it is 8 a.m. on November 3, Election Day in America, and although you know what happened next, right now I don’t.

Breaking news: Louis L’Amour is still dead

The bad news is: Louis L’Amour is still dead.

The good news: I’ve made my peace with it — a necessary healing because, after all, I’m the guy who killed him.

A burning image of bucket-list American blues

One of the special pleasures in life is checking off item by item on your bucket list.

I’ve been lucky to live long enough and to travel extensively enough to wear my bucket-list pencil nub down quite a bit. Notre Dame Cathedral, The Louvre, Sydney Opera House, Brandenburg Gate—the list has narrowed quite a bit since I was a young, wonder-eyed boy.

A tale of Daddy Warbucks and other dogs

Last week, as our nation teetered on the brink of 200,000 citizens dead from a criminally mishandled pandemic, and with my mind reeling from the never-ending stream of disastrous news, I hit the road to escape self-imposed lockdown and hopefully find someplace to unwind in relative safety.

It was Starved Rock State Park, where one could wander peaceful outdoor trails through winding canyons, as gold and orange leaves drifted down through the still air. And although I knew I might meet others seeking a bit of sanity, I felt confident that I would find enough safe social distance outdoors.

Text in your votes, because THIS … is Graven Image Challenge!

All things considered, it’s not really all that hard to obey the Ten Commandments, is it? Oh, sure, we all waffle a bit when it comes to coveting, but most of us manage to steer clear of outright murder and theft, and we’re pretty fond of Mom and Dad.

But then there’s that pesky Commandment Number Two, the one ordering us to “make no graven images.”

Are selfies covered under that rule?

A comet is just a comet, right?

One clear night this summer in mid-July, I stood out among the corn fields at the western dead-end of Ernesti Road and finally knew what it must have felt like to live during the Middle Ages.

For the record, I have always felt a touch of envy for those long-ago folks because medieval art is filled with paintings showing blazing comets in the sky, and I have always wanted to see a comet blazing across the sky above me.

The Independence Day speech we never heard

On Independence Day this year, this is the speech I wish we had heard.

I am not a racist (and you are too)

Fifty years ago, when I was a graduate student at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina, I lived in a cheap row-house apartment built during the Depression. My next-door neighbor was Mike Coe, a young, self-proclaimed redneck.

Farewell to a good friend I never met

John Prine was a childhood neighbor of mine, though I don’t think I ever met him directly.

He was a year and a half older than me, and we grew up just a bike ride apart — I in Elmwood Park, and he in Maywood, no more than five miles away. His dad was a tool-and-dye maker, shaping the steel that my dad produced in his steel mill job.

Ah, Betelgeuse, we hardly knew ye

I know, in a world so filled with death, it’s a horrible thing to wish for the death of any person, place or thing, but this time I just can’t help myself. Because just a few months ago, Betelgeuse gave off some clear indications that it will die soon — and I have to admit I’d like to see it happen.

Perfection only makes oddity more appealing

I was eating Pringles the other day for the first time in a thousand years, and I wondered: “How do they get them all to look like this, each of them perfectly nestled, each with the gentle swoop of a Panama hat brim without the crown?”

I have no idea why that can of Pringles ended up on my snack tray, because I never eat junk like that. I’m more of a health-food nut — Fritos or Cheetos. Never Pringles.