My Life As A Hobby

It’s the sound more than the smell that takes me back. Not a loud sizzle like bacon, but quieter, softer. As a kid, when I heard a low hiss from a cast-iron skillet, I knew what it meant: supper was going to be hot dogs.  Hot dogs - also known as tube steaks, franks, weenies, or coneys, is a food that’s so deeply American we practically wrap them in the flag and give them a seat of honor at every Fourth of July barbecue. It’s hard to believe the hot dog, which we rank right up there with baseball and apple pie, actually came from German immigrants. Leave it to us to take another country’s wurst and make it our best.  Hot dogs established themselves as street food in New York City about 150 years ago. At first, it was a quick lunch for working men. Soon, their popularity grew to Coney Island and beyond. Summer officially marks the beginning of hot dog season in America. But growing up, it was a year-round meal in our house. My dad fancied himself a coney connoisseur, so th...

It began innocently enough. Most bad things do. Nobody ever says, “Hey, I’m let’s go to the bowling alley and see if you can suffer an injury in front of your grandchildren.” But there I was, standing under the glow of fluorescent lights and the smell of rented shoes, about to learn yet another important lesson about aging. It wasn’t my intent. I had just stopped by because I knew my son was at the bowling alley with three of my granddaughters. I decided to make a surprise guest appearance and watch them bowl. And that’s when it happened. One of them asked me to bowl a frame. One frame. That’s two rolls of a bowling ball. Two. Not climbing Mount Everest. Not competing in the decathlon. Not wrestling an alligator. It’s bowling - the . sport most commonly associated with pitchers of beer, chili-cheese fries, and men named Earl. In fairness, I used to be a decent bowler back in the day. I even bowled in a league when I was a kid. I owned my own bowling ball at one point in life, which...

  There are moments in life when the distance between an ordinary day and tragedy is measured in inches. I’ve thought about that a lot today - with good reason.  Yesterday started out as a good day, even though it centered around a funeral home. My wife Carol, my oldest son Matt, and I had gone to pay our respects to the family of lifelong friends. As strange as it sounds, it turned into one of those bittersweet gatherings that reminds you how deeply connected your life is to other people. We saw old friends we hadn’t laid eyes on in decades. There were hugs, old stories, laughter, and the kind of catching up that somehow picks right back up where it left off. A wonderful event, though it was obviously wrapped in sadness. Afterward, the three of us went to eat. Nothing fancy. Just a pleasant meal and good conversation before heading home. It felt like a completely normal evening. Ordinary in every way. And then, within a matter of seconds, it almost wasn’t. We pulled up...

  I’m in my bathroom, standing in a nasty puddle of water, with a plunger in one hand and a bent coat hanger in the other. It’s hard to believe that just twelve hours earlier, I was eating breakfast on a cruise ship, while a man in a white jacket asked me if I wanted more smoked salmon with my omelette. Now, I’m at home trying to unclog a toilet - talk about a fall to earth.  After about an hour, all I had managed to do was slop disgusting water everywhere. So it was time to move out of the  coat hanger era of plumbing and into the 21st century.    I went to my laptop and booted up Chatty Cathy - my name for ChatGPT. Despite having no real world plumbing experience, which still puts her slightly ahead of me, she suggested that I bail out the toilet, then pour in a cup of dishwashing liquid and a half gallon of hot water.  Ol’ Chatty was right - it unclogged, until the next morning, when it backed up again. That’s when I gave up and called a plumber - after...