Some left-overs from Thanksgiving 2009:

*This was our first major holiday without all the kids at home.  Not easy.  Our second oldest, Taylor, stayed out east near his campus and spent Turkey Day with his aunt, uncle and cousins in Washington, DC. From the pictures, they had a great time.  Friday, he went to a friend’s house to hang out and by Saturday was back at the academic grindstone.  For us, back in the heartland, it was Wednesday night that was the most difficult.  Taylor stayed in his dorm that evening to get some homework and debate prep done.  Apparently it was rather quiet…nearly abandoned.  He talked about watching The Shining but, wisely, let that idea float away in the Red Rum of his imagination.  Instead, after his work, he microwaved a frozen cheese potato and watched The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.  Taylor said it reminded him of being home.  Not sure who is who.

**Driving home from work on Thanksgiving morning, I noticed how packed the grocery store parking lots were.  It made me think back to when everything…I mean EVERYTHING…was closed on holidays.  If you needed gasoline you’d better fill up the day before.  If you needed more yams you’d better get them the day before.  If you needed beer, cheese curds, new playing cards, coffee, new antenna for the TV so you can see the Packers trounce the Lions more clearly,  you’d better stock up the day before.  (That’s a Wisconsin list, by the way.)  The idea that you can dash off to the store for something on Thanksgiving is still astonishing to me.  Then, again, I find the idea that health clubs would be open on Thanksgiving morning to be nearly sacrilegious!

***Back in olden times, when I was just a tiny giblet myself, we always went to my Little Grandma’s apartment for the big feast.  The second we came in the door, my dad and brothers would start asking if it was time to eat, yet, and, why was it taking so long and “next year, we’ll just order chicken from Stub Lang’s diner the day before if it’s going to be this way!”  Little Grandma would just look at all of us and cackle.  It was all very Rockwell-esque:  good food, good football, good naps.  But, for me, Thanksgiving also meant one of my brothers would take me out in our oldest brother’s Corvair and let me drive around the retirement village.  It was a safe time for such under-age motoring since nobody was anywhere near outdoors.  Unlike today, when it seems everyone thinks it’s necessary to take that big, healthy walk before and after the caloric intake, in those days, you just ate until you could no longer move on your own and then collapsed into a state of semi-consciousness until the smell of coffee and shuffling of cards roused you back to coherency.  Anyway, whichever brother came to first, would take me out for a little tooling about the grounds.  A child behind the wheel with a teenager, still in a stuffing stupor, supposedly in charge cruising about in a Corvair:  Ralph Nader would toss his tofu turkey slices and range-free cranberries if he knew about it!

****Around our house, the Friday after Thanksgiving is Decoration Day.  We put on our heavy winter coats, scarves, mittens…grab the hatchet and head out to find the perfect Christmas tree.  We do this every year despite the fact that we use a fake evergreen stored in the basement.  But, tradition is tradition.  I do NOT take part in the shopping hysteria we see on the news.  I only did such a thing once…by accident…more than 20 years ago.  My wife’s family was in town and we decided to see a movie at Crown Center.  It was the Bill Murray holiday classic, Scrooged.  I had interviewed Mr. Murray in New York about this movie on one of those movie junkets I used to do for Channel 9, so, I was feeling pretty puffed up…”Yeah, Billy told me he loved makin’ this flick.  ‘Course he was asking me for my opinion and I was honest with him.  ‘Billy,’ I said ‘It’s inspired!’”  It was at that point I noticed that my entire family had left me in the parking garage.

Before leaving the house on that Friday, I thought the shopping center would be mostly empty.  I had never really heard of such a thing as Black Friday in regards to shopping.  The phrase, Black Friday, meant one of two things to me:  The financial panic of 1869…Fisk & Gould: naughty boys!  Or, just about any Friday there was a dance during my high school days because I knew I’d be sitting in the ticket booth reading a book while the rest were dancing to Color My World.

We didn’t do much shopping on the day after Thanksgiving when I was a punk.  Sometimes my dad would have to run to the hardware store and get some more hooks for the Christmas Tree ornaments.  He also would stop for a bottle of Five-Star Brandy, for medicinal purposes only,  knowing that it was time to fight that tree into the tree stand and make it appear as straight as possible. 

Flash forward  to that movie-going Friday: the place was packed.  It shocked me.  Who goes out on the Friday after Thanksgiving?  When did this start happening?  Does anybody know about this? 

Needless to say, after that, I’ve made a point of NOT being anywhere near a cash register on that day-after-day.

*****That just about does it for our holiday weekend.  Hope you had a great one with your family and friends.  Oh, I did call my mom and, when she answered–her caller ID must be on the fritz–I hollered  ”Happy Turkey Day!”  She replied, calmly, “Oh, Joel, you know this isn’t your birthday.”

Gobble. Gobble.

I’ve printed this particular bit of noshing nostalgia before but what’s the holiday season without leftovers?  So, here goes:

Thanksgiving is the day for food. Too much food in some cases, but enough about me. Not too many years back, a viewer was kind enough to share a menu that her husband had enjoyed when he was serving our country on the USS Sierra on Thanksgiving Day, 1944. Here’s what those heroes were served:

Cream of Tomato Soup
Ripe Olives
Saltines
Chow Chow Pickles
Roast Young Tom Turkey
Baked Virginia Candied Ham
Giblet Gravy
Apricot Dressing
Cream Whipped Potatoes
French Peas
Buttered Whole Kernel Corn
Parker House Rolls
Mince Meat Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Vanilla Ice Cream
Bread
Butter
Lemonade

After all those food were listed, at the bottom, were three more items:

Cigars
Mixed Nuts
Cigarettes

While most of those tasty treats are familiar to us, a few may raise a question. For example, Chow Chow Pickles. To the best of my understanding it has nothing to do with a breed of dog. I believe it is a kind of relish. Listen to me. Pretending to just know that off the top of my pointy head. Who do I think I am? Alex Trebek? I looked it up. A Parker House roll gets its name from the Parker House Hotel in Boston…half an oval of flaky goodness. As for mince meat pie…well, I know cartoon characters used to say “I’ll make mince meat outtaya!” In reality, it is a mixture of meat and fruit and spices.

The last three things on the list are, to me, the most interesting. I know a very humble man who served in the Navy during World War II. He saw action at Okinawa and many other places when he was  barely out of high school. I think of him and how excited he would’ve been to have a handful of mixed nuts and a smoke as he drifted over the waves, thousands of miles away from home. As the old song from that era put it “Little Things Mean A Lot.”

The menu is a fascinating bit of history but it is also a reminder to use part of our Thanksgiving to say thanks to all this country’s veterans as well as today’s generation of men and women serving in faraway lands. Just a prayerful thought or two in the middle of all the food and football and lighting ceremonies. It may not seem like much but…well, you know the song.

Tuesday morning on FirstNews, one of the questions of the day for viewers was: “What do you do to keep your kids occupied on a long car trip?”  Nowadays, a traveling tot has plenty of options.  Hand-held devices.  Lap-tops.  In-vehicle DVD players.  Back in my day, it was not such a potent potpourri of peppy possibilities.  Although we did tend to use alliteration more readily.

My dad had been a truck driver for a time and really enjoyed the act of driving, especially in the overnight hours.  If we had a long trek ahead of us,  we knew we’d be herded into the car about two in the morning.  In those days before everyone automatically used seat-belts, my brothers would race to the back-seat to see which of the three could really stretch out and force the others to wedge their way into some level of discomfort.  Being the baby, I often ended up sitting in the middle of the front seat…well, slumped over onto my mom’s lap, actually.  As my brothers got older and slowly left the nest, I was, eventually, able to commandeer the entire rear davenport…uh, I mean seat.

My dad’s routine was to cruise along with the radio tuned to whatever music station came in clearly.  Later, when he upgraded to an 8-track tape deck, he played a lot of Big Bands and Charley Pride.  He’d smoke Kents and drink black coffee.  Very rarely, he would pull off to the side of the road and take a couple of brisk walks around the car before getting back in gear.

There was not a lot of worry about making sure my brothers and I had “fun” during the car-trip.  Because of the hours, big chunks of the sojourn were spent snoozing.  When we were awake, we’d read or talk or tell jokes (dirty ones in whispers so our mom wouldn’t hear them…or so we thought.  Sometimes we’d hear a snort from the passenger seat and know she was in on the whole thing.) or play “Name-That-TV-Theme.”  On one trip, we started taking turns reading passing billboards in the worst, stereotypical DJ voices possible.  After about a mile, our dad acted as a one man ratings service and cancelled our program.

As I recall, we were pretty good riders.  It usually took one little look from our dad in the rear-view mirror and we knew to knock it off.  If that glare was DEFCON 3, then those four little words, “I’ll Stop This Car” was DEFCON 2.  He didn’t raise his voice.  He just said those four little words…calmly and dripping with menace.  DEFCON 1?  That’s when the car actually pulled to the side of the road.  That didn’t happen very often.  One time, before I was born,  it did.  My second oldest brother, Craig, about six at the time,  had allowed his inner Jerry Lewis to escape once too often. 

My Dad pulled over and took Craig out of the car, intending to emphasize the driver’s displeasure with the rider and, I suspect, make Craig’s sitting a little less comfortable for a time.  Instead of being corralled, Craig took off into the mid-summer cornfield.  He was a true Child Of The Corn for quite some time.  This was before the Corn Maze Craze.  Craig was, apparently, ahead of his time.  Our dad was not impressed with this particular brand of entrepreneurship.

I really shouldn’t make our family car rides sound quite so much like a scene from Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.  It’s just that my dad viewed the trip as a job to be done safely, quickly and efficiently.  He was not without his little surprises, however.  In my case, being the youngest, if he felt I’d been “a real trouper” in the car:  Sitting still…Not whining…Not asking “Are we there yet?” …Training my bladder to go into David-Blaine-In-A-Plexiglas-Box-Hanging-Over-Time’s-Square mode…then, when he ran into the Shell Station to get the thermos refilled with coffee the consistency of mud, he just might come out with a present:  A SLIDE PUZZLE!  Red and white numbered tiles!  All mixed up!  Just waiting for a brilliant kid like me to solve!

As I think about it, a better prize would have been the opportunity to accompany him into the Shell Station and make my bladder, gladder but I wasn’t about to argue or look a gift-dad in the mouth.  Especially since there wasn’t a cornfield handy.

Times are tense.  That’s not exactly a newsflash.  It is easy to  feel overwhelmed by our personal and particular on-the-job situations.  Sometimes that frame of mind morphs into taking oneself a bit too seriously.  I think it happens in every line of work including the TV biz.  Now, if you are a firefighter or police officer, nurse, doctor, EMT, pastor, teacher, mom or dad, your work in those fields is, often, life and death.  Taking it seriously, at all times, is a prerequisite.  But, in most cases, we can afford to step back and take a deep breath before deciding the world is coming to end just because things aren’t perfect around the office.

Back when I first started at KMBC, there was a guy…important guy with an important title…who used to say, about TV, “It ain’t brain surgery.”  I always took that to have two meanings.  First of all, it is not all that complicated to do interesting, engaging television:  Just Tell A Good Story!  And, secondly, at the end of the day, we are all going to survive and there sure should be other parts of our lives–like spouses & kids–that are more important to us.

I happen to see him the other day and wanted to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving.  He simply didn’t have the time.  He looked harried and hurried.  I was put in mind of the look on  Ebenezer Scrooge’s face after Marley flew into the bed chamber!  Frankly, the man looked terrified.  I sure hope all is well with him and he has not lost that healthy perspective he was so quick to share many years ago.

We all want to do well at our work and, in this economy, it is more important than ever to make that extra effort.  But, if it is killing us or our relationships, what’s the point?

Last Friday morning, after leaving the station, I got the chance to celebrate with some people who have a much clearer idea of what matters in this life than some of the rest of us demonstrate at times.  For the most part, they were not high-powered executives or exemplars of what we too often call success.  These were clients of several area mental health agencies.  As a group they had taken part in the Ten Million Step Challenge over the last three months.  It was an effort to encourage health and fitness by walking a grand total of 10 million steps!  Guess what?  These super strollers logged closer to 60 MILLION steps!

There was a true sense of community and cooperation among these pedometer-wearing wonders.  They had spent the last three months rooting for each other and that support continued on Friday morning.  Some of the trekkers shared their stories like the fellow who reported his arthritis pain had just about disappeared and the woman who felt so much more in touch with nature from her walks and the man who couldn’t quite explain how he could have actually gained four pounds with all the ambling he’d been doing.  The audience shouted “It’s muscle mass!”  (I did share that I do a lot of walking and have also put on some weight but my constitutionals are generally from the couch to the fridge and back again.)

For some of the people attending Friday’s event, any given day can be filled with toil and trouble.  Taking that first step of the morning can be the most challenging of all.  Despite those burdens, they continue to move ahead and, for the most part, do it with a knowing smile.  “Knowing” that the rest of us sometimes get pretty worked up over nothing.

Congratulations to all of the Merry Marchers who took those Ten Million PLUS Steps.  In this Thanksgiving week, you are helping all of us keep our priorities straight and feet moving in the right direction.

Paradox:  any person, thing or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature. 

Here is an example:

When I first visited my future in-laws’  home, I was struck with how amazingly clean and orderly the place was…despite having four children and many of their friends roaming about on a regular basis.  The white walls were still white.  The carpet was stain-free.  The kitchen sparkled.  Frankly, it looked like a model the day before the Parade of Homes starts. 

In retrospect, this observation is even more pungent, by which I mean “mentally stimulating or appealing” and NOT “sharply affecting the sense of smell, acrid, biting.”  Having four children, two dogs, occasional friends of both the dogs and kid in and out of our home, I can tell you that keeping the walls mark-free is a nearly impossible task.  At this point, our walls look like Alley Oop’s cave after he described a particularly harrowing mastodon hunt.  Or, add a couple of royal-looking kitty-cats and you have the inside of King Tut’s tomb.

Our carpet could be used as the Jolly Green Giant’s Rorschach Test.  Trust me, you hang around long enough outside in a loin cloth made of leaves with some twerp like Little Green Sprout angling for your job and you’d need some therapy, too!

There are times when the counters in our kitchen have so many varied drips and dribbles…coffee and juice and chocolate and salad dressing and salsa and so on…that it would be a great location for the new TV series, Betty Crocker: CSI!

Don’t even get me started on our kids’ bedrooms.  I’ve mentioned our daughter’s lair before.  It remains in the running for the Top Seven Wonders of the World.  The main question being: How can such a sweet, cute, creature (our daughter) exist in what appears to be the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius?  She’s the princess of Pompeii West.  It is, also, from time to time, rather pungent, by which I mean “sharply affecting the sense of smell, acrid, biting” and NOT “mentally stimulating or appealing.”

I’m not saying we live in a Deffenbaugh dumpster.  Just that our house looks, well, lived in compared to my in-laws’ abode. 

So far, this has all been prologue or toelogue.  The aforementioned paradox has to do with a messy little secret that my mother-in-law allowed to exist in that house I first visited way back when which has made its way to the home I currently live in.  Let’s just say that there’s no business like shoe business.

On the first floor of my in-laws’ home, the entryway, there was a huge pile of shoes.  Of course, that helped keep the carpets and floors pristine upstairs and, since they were kicked randomly into a mostly hidden area, nobody was the wiser.   In our case, this tradition is not quite so well-controlled.

Most of our family shoes get foot-flung into a heap in the garage.  Now, I keep my pair of dress shoes and my pair of tennis shoes off to the side so I can more quickly locate them but the other five in the family are just fine with inter-shoe-mingling.  Sounds almost naughty.  This pyramid of ped- coverers, seems to grow each day.  I’m afraid that if I were to dig to the very bottom of his slipper stockpile, I’d find the remains of Dr. Scholl.

Most of the time, this hill of soles and sagging tongues is just an eyesore but, every now and then, like this morning, it becomes a true hazard.  At least, for me. 

As I was leaving the house for work, this morning around two something, I did what I always do…I locked the door from the garage into the house, turned off the garage light and made my way into my car.  Yes, I do take those last few steps in the dark.  But, I’m in the dark so often, that it is usually not a problem.  Thursday morning, those last few steps almost became my last few steps. 

My shoes became entangled in a bunch of sneakers.  I should mention that all of my sons have bigger feet than I do which makes their shoes seem boat-like compared to my tootsies.  If they were put away in a systematic manner, they’d look like some luxurious port of call.  But, they are not stowed like that.  They are just everywhere.  These little yachts have been through quite a storm at sea.

This morning, I was mugged by this jumble of jumpers…this pile of pumps…this hill of high heels!  Fortunately, I fell into my car and not onto the concrete.  No, I did not invoke the name of St. Crispin, the patron of shoemakers but I did unleash something of a…well…litany of displeasure.

You know, forget about paradox.  It’s the pair a shoes that’s going to get me.

Okay.  I apologize for the pretentious title of this digital drivel.  Poet of Americana?  Who do I think I am? PBS?  Sure, I’m looking more and more like Charlie Rose…on a bad day.  But, still, this is just a barely read bloggy and not any sort of Peabody-winning edition of American Masters or Frontline or Upstairs, Downstairs or, for that matter, New Zoo Review! (Comin’ right at you.)  However, as one yogurt maker said to the other, “What’s wrong with a little culture?”

There are a lot of great American poets.  Whitman.  Frost.  Dickinson.  Ogden Nash.  Nipsey Russell.  Gelett Burgess.  What?  You’ve never heard of Gelett Burgess?  You know his work:

I never saw a purple cow

I never hope to see one

But I can tell you anyhow

I’d rather see than be one

I’d also add the great Merle Haggard to the list of American poets but, perhaps, the most prolific and insightful of  them all would be Johnny Mercer.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell, I’m sure the songs he wrote or co-wrote have, from time to time, been ringing in your head. 

Blues In The Night.  Come Rain or Come Shine. One For My Baby. Jeepers Creepers. Goody Goody. I’m An Old Cowhand. Hooray for Hollywood. I Remember You.  That Old Black Magic. Dream. Autumn Leaves. Emily.  Moon River.  The Days of Wine and Roses. Satin Doll.  Glow Worm. Laura.  The list, and song, goes on and on!

About 20 years ago, KMBC was the TV home of the Variety Club Telethon.  The Variety Club was, and is, a group that aims to help children with special needs.  I’m not sure why it came to me, but I thought it would be fun to do a concert, using Channel Niners, to make a little dough for the cause.  Our  combo consisted of an executive producer named John Novaria who was  (and is) a terrific piano player…an engineer/camera operator/editor named Raj Garner played the bass…weather producer, Jeff Gerber was on saxaphone…Bryan Busby kept the beat on the drums.  I was, more or less, the host and mostly less, the vocalist.  We did our show at The American Heartland Theatre and actually pulled in a pretty decent crowd.

It was a fun night filled with notable notes.  However, three things stand tall in my memory:

1.  After the show, a fellow approached me and said, “Don’t give up your day job.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that that was exactly what my boss was hoping I would do.

2.  On the 10:00 p.m. news that night, after showing some video from the concert featuring me warbling the song Lazy Bones, the anchorman at the time, Mike Walter, said “Well, that seems like a very appropriate song for Joel.”

3.  Best of all, was how we did the song You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby.  I sang it while carrying my second oldest son, Taylor, around the stage with me.  When you can’t really sing well, toting an adorable tot with you is a great idea.  No, I was not using him as a human shield against flying tomatoes.  He was little and calm and cute.  He fit the song.  I think about that moment a lot…especially with Taylor going to college hundreds of miles away, now.  Maybe, when he’s home for the holidays, I’ll put on a recording of the song, pick him up and sing it again.  Of course, I’ll need a truss for my hernia.  After all, he’s grown man, now.

Before we did our  show, I wrote a letter to Johnny Mercer’s widow, Ginger, asking permission to do the program for charity.  She was quite ill at the time but her attorney responded by saying Mrs. Mercer was thrilled to say “Yes!”  She had some fears, back then, that the world was forgetting about The Great Mr. Mercer.  It is good to know that, in 2009, Mercer is major.  Singers are doing All-Mercer programs everywhere.  There’s a Broadway show about him.  His words float through movie soundtracks everyday and his hometown, Savannah, Georgia, has dedicated this entire year to their favorite son.  There was also a great Clint Eastwood-produced documentary on TV the other day…all about Johnny.

Johnny Mercer wore many hats: lyricist…composer…singer…record executive.  But, again, add Poet to that list and, now that I think about it, Philosopher:

Accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

Latch on to the affirmative

Don’t mess with Mr. In-between

Good advice! 

I’ve read that, for all the great tunes from the heart and mind of Johnny Mercer, his own  favorite song was written by Isham Jones and Gus Kahn:  It Had To Be You.  Nice fit.  For many, when it comes to a personal soundtrack, It Had To Be Mercer.

When I was a very little shaver (pun will be more applicable as this cyber silliness moves along) I usually got my haircut by my Mother.  I would sit on a high metal stool in the back-door entry way with the kitchen to my back, washer and dryer to my right, bathroom to my left and living room straight ahead.  I still have that stool.  It is heavy iron, black and white with a little sticker of a man and his burro on the back.  I still sit on it when I do the bills.  It makes me feel like a kid again as I fork over the bucks.  Sometimes, just to keep the aura of childhood, I send in Monopoly money.  I have found that my creditors do not appreciate this bit of whimsy.  But, I don’t care. I still have my Get Out Of Jail Free card.

My Mother was a good barber.  (Yes, I’m returning to the original topic of this hairy hearsay…or hairsay.)  I always walked away from the iron seat with a nice, even little boy haircut.  With those memories using up a portion of my limited gray matter–sadly, as the gray matter inside my skull gets smaller, the gray matter on the outside gets more prominent–I purchased a home-barbering kit many years ago.  My sensible wife never allowed me to use it on the big boys.  She used it to do some very minor trimming occasionally but, for the most part, it has been sitting in the closet next to my beekeeper’s hat and “Best of Jerry Vale” album.

Well, on Sunday, I noticed that our youngest, Harrison, was looking rather shaggy.  Yes, he goes by Harry, but this was ridiculous.  With the economy being what it is, I decided to try, once again, to do the clipping myself.  Harrison was willing although he kept requesting things like a Mohawk or SpitSpike or “anything somebody wrestling on TV may have.”  My wise wife had serious misgivings about my turning the house into a clip joint but decided to let me give it a try.  I don’t golf or play poker with my pals (For the sake of argument, just pretend I  have “pals.”) or do serious yard-work so she kind of hates to say no to anything that would get me off the couch and away from Password repeats on Game Show Network.

Harrison got comfortable on the stool and I fired up the clippers.  Pretty soon there was hair flying everywhere.  Some of it actually from Harrison.  I’m not saying the equipment got away from me but I will admit that the dogs have yet to come out of hiding and there may or may not be a bald spot somewhere on my own chest.  My wife took one look and unplugged the machinery. 

She and Harrison got back from the hair-cut place about an hour later.

In retrospect, I think I know what went wrong.  Harrison was sitting on the wrong stool.  I had just grabbed one of the wooden ones from the kitchen. Next time, I’m going to drag that heavy, black and white with the burro on the back stool  from upstairs. 

I will also make sure to put the dogs outside and keep my shirt on.

This is what Emmy-winning anchorman and avid Tweeter, Kris Ketz, reported on Thursday morning’s FirstNews program:

Another use for Twitter this morning.  And–you may want to think twice before using it.  There’s a new Wi-Fi bathroom scale on the market that Tweets your weight.  The idea–to provide extra motivation for people trying to lose weight.

So, I guess, that means you step on the scale and, automatically, your “followers” know what you’re carrying around under that extra-large t-shirt.  This is one more reason for me not to like technology.  I don’t even like the terminology of Twitter.  A grown person spending time “Tweeting?”  Unless you’re Mel Blanc and getting paid big bucks from Warner Brothers, you should not “Tweet.”  Also, how much of an ego does it take to talk about your “followers?”  Before a “Tweeter” starts bragging about his or her “followers” it should be remembered that Jesus, initially, only had 12 and one of them turned out to be a rather major disappointment.

Why would anybody want or need to trumpet one’s weight?  What do you say in response?  “You’re 153 pounds?  Way to go!”  or “You weigh that much?  Watch out Macy’s Parade!” or the completely passive/agressive comment “You don’t look like you weigh (insert poundage here).”

I really don’t want any commentary on my girth.  I would never own one of those talking scales.  I’m pretty sure mine would say “Holy cow!  What’s standing on me?  A wholly cow?” or, dripping with sarcasm, just a simple “Really?” 

To be completely forthright, I’m feeling a little sensitive about my individual G-Factor today.  Yesterday, for reasons befitting a future bloggiana, I had to weigh a dog.  So, holding this pooch, I stepped on the scale.  Then, I put the pup down and re-weighed.  I had not been aboard the S.S. Chunk-O-Meter for quite some time.  I can tell when my adiposity is ballooning.  The collars on my shirts get tight and the blood to my brain slows way down so I become even less lucid.  Also, I have to use a large shoe-horn to get into my dress pants.  When this happens I face a choice: lose the excess ponderosity or retire so that I no longer have to wear ties or pants without elastic waistbands.  I’m leaning toward the latter.  Coincidentally, the news director here at KMBC supports me in that possiblity.

The bottom line is that I have too much of a bottom line.  Also, in honor of Thanksgiving I appear to be growing my very own waddle.  Squirrels are jealous of my jowls.  My bald spot looks larger, not just because my hair is falling out, but because my head is getting fatter.  There’s no way I’m sharing my heft with anyone.  I’ve even sworn the aforementioned dog to secrecy.

As I’ve gotten older, just about all of my self-delusions have been shattered.  I used to think I was a snappy dresser only to discover that I have the fashion sense of Jethro Bodine.  I used to think I had a good head of hair until my follicles started to leap from my noggin like the Rats of Hamelin.  I used to think I was a slender fellow until my belly button took on the attributes of Marvel Cave in Branson.  So, I am not kidding myself about myself but I have no intention of sharing this stuff, via Twitter or Facebook or My(BigFat)Space.

There was another story reported on FirstNews, Thursday morning, that made me feel better about the whole situation.  Researchers indicate that dark chocolate relieves stress.  I whole-heartedly believe this.  In fact, based on this finding, I could well be on my way to being the most mellow person in town…until someone issues an unauthorized Tweet!

As a kid, I still heard a lot of folks refer to November 11 as Armistice Day, remembering the end of WWI or “The Great War.” The end of the war happened at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. By 1978, November 11 officially became Veteran’s Day. In these unsettled times, such a day becomes even more meaningful.  All over town, flags are on display. Speaking of flags, it would be pretty great to see more flags flying in our neighborhoods, especially today. It is going to be a sunny, breezy day. Perfect for Old Glory. When I was little, every house came with a place to fly the flag and, if by some strange chance, the place didn’t have one of those brackets, you went to the hardware store and got one. These days, I know lots of homes still have the gadget necessary because I see flags in support of the Chiefs and various colleges…even some banners celebrating the arrival of fall. Might be nice to substitute our nation’s colors for the those others, even for just a day.

Just about all of us are related to or know a veteran. My nephew served as did his father, my brother. In fact, that brother was named Airman of the Year a few years back. (I’ll admit we teasingly changed that to Airhead of the Year…but that didn’t mean we all weren’t as proud as we could be.) My brother was actually due to retire from the Air Force back in 2001, but, after 9/11, he didn’t really see how he could walk away. He stayed in for about five more years.

I know one veteran who is a part of what Tom Brokaw has rightly designated The Greatest Generation. He served in the Navy during World War II, including the battle of Okinawa. Unlike the heroes portrayed in Brokaw’s book, this man never talks much about his service. He just did what he felt he should do, saw some things he’d rather not have seen, then made it back to this country’s shores in one piece. His reticence doesn’t make him any less a hero. He nurtured a talent with the GI Bill and got about the business of earning a living, raising a family and being a solid citizen of the country he had helped preserve.

Down in Branson, this is a big day. They roll out the Red Carpet for all vets. But, anytime during the year and at just about every show, they take time to ask the veterans to stand and be recognized. I suspect if the quiet man I just mentioned was ever there, he might be pretty hesitant to call attention to himself. But, I would hope he would stand up. Not really for his sake, but for ours. It’s important that we see these men and women who risked it all for our freedoms. 

Little red, paper poppies were a big part of my childhood Veterans Days.  The local VFWs made sure just about everybody in town was wearing one.  That tradition comes from the famous poem In Flanders Fields written by Lt. Colonel John McCrae, a doctor serving back in 1917.  Our town’s World War One Museum has an inspiring tribute to this piece of work.  You actually “walk” through the memories. I used to hear this verse a couple times a year when I was a kid…Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  It may not fit on Twitter but it is worth sharing…again.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

To all the veterans…from the dwindling number still around from The Great War to those coming home today: Thank you for your service. Thank you for our liberty.

Research, reported on Tuesday’s FirstNews, indicates that cell phones may affect some people’s hearts!  Should that be “people’s”  or “people’s”? Then, again, is it cellphone or cell-phone or cell phone?  Of course, if you’re Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, you’d use a Cel Phone. 

Personally, I think these mobile monstrosities are the perfect example of idle hands being the devil’s workshop.  Some inventor was sitting around, maybe Get Smart was on the TV, wondering “What can I do to further encourage the decline of Western Civilization?  Maybe something that will lead people to be constantly in touch and distracted.  I’ve got it!  A telephone from which you can never escape!”  Then, he or she laughed like Snidely Whiplash.

Speaking of idle hands, these unholy descendants of Alexander Graham Bell’s genius, too often make the hands too busy when doing other things…like driving.  When you should really be…well…idling.  By the way, as Inventor Bell was coming up with the phone back in the 1870s he famously called to his assistant “Mr. Watson come here I need you!”  At  least that’s the official story.  I’ve also heard he really said “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”  Which led to the first phone hang-up.  Next time he tried to contact Watson, Bell got an asthma attack which became the first obscene phone call.

One other historical fact I wish to clear up:  Alexander Graham Bell did NOT invent the graham cracker.  That was developed by Rev. Sylvester Graham in 1829, who believed that bland foods would make people less, let’s say, frisky.   Bell did, however, come up with a hybrid toad which he called the Graham Croaker.

It appears the real message of this e-piphany has been put on call-waiting so let me get back to the basics.  Cell phones maybe bad for your heart…due to the electrical impulses floating around.  One more reason to keep usage down!  For some, like the big shot anchors of FirstNews who report using their phones on the order of a couple hours a day, it could also mean they will begin to glow in the dark and, therefore, become their own night-light.

Personally, I am not concerned about my gadget-related health. My estimated phone usage time is less than five minutes a day.  I could  get that down to zero if certain creditors would quit calling me and, additionally, if I could stop making crank calls to other Channel Niners.  With caller-id, it’s much harder to get away with “Is your refrigerator running?  Well, you’d better catch it!”