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Why Don’t They Just Quit?

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  Most people who know me know I have an addiction. It’s a weakness for old music. If one of my favorite artists from the ‘60s or ‘70s is within driving distance, there’s a good chance I’ll be sitting somewhere in the audience. However, I’ll admit there have been a few concerts where I leaned over to my wife and whispered, “It might be time for them to hang up the ol' microphone.” Earlier this year, I paid to see a couple of the biggest acts of the sixties, only to walk out shaking my head,  frustrated that I shelled out good money to hear something I barely recognized.  But I’ve become a little less critical. Think about what we’re asking these performers to do. Most of them are in their 70s or 80s, yet we still expect them to sound like they did when they were 22 years old. That’s a pretty big ask. As I aged as a golfer, I've moved up beyond the senior tees to the super senior tees. It was the natural thing to do because Father Time has  diminished my skil...
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Treasure in a Briefcase

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    We started cleaning out our basement the other day, and I quickly realized this wasn’t going to be a Saturday afternoon project. It was more like a long term archaeological dig, complete with dirt, dust, and relics from a long lost  civilization, circa 1987.  Our basement has become the official storage unit for everything we couldn’t  part with: toys (old and new), tools (useful and otherwise), gas cans, car parts, Christmas decorations, quilts, and boxes labeled “Important Papers”, which were tax returns from the seventies.  Apparently the Statue of Limitations expires before my wife’s filing system does.  Our basement is full of postponed decisions.  As we sorted through decades of accumulated treasures, or junk, depending on who was doing the evaluating, my  wife picked up an old leather briefcase. “What are we going to do with this?” she asked. It was moldy from years of sitting beside the air-conditioning unit. “I’ll deci...
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Thin Skin and No Spine

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I recently got an interesting e-mail from one of my newspapers. Well, it’s a former newspaper. You see, a couple of years ago they strangely discontinued my column, and when I asked why, I was told by the editor they decided to “go in another direction.”  A cliche reason if there ever was one, but I let it lie.  Well, since it’s been a while, I decided to e mail the publisher to see if there was any possibility of me being reinstated. I also mentioned to him that I didn’t really know why I had been uninstated to begin with.  To his credit, he gave me the reason. He told me that an article I wrote about buying cars had offended a large auto dealer, who happens to be one of their larger customers. He had to apologize to them which hacked him off, so he dumped me. In other words, this guy had to kiss the butt of a big customer who obviously has problem taking a joke.  Just so you know, the column ran statewide, and no one had a problem with it - with one patheti...
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