Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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My electronic key fob is putting more mileage on ME than on the car. For the past several months, I have tried to build up the nerve to do a thorough search of the contents of my trunk. I am hoping against hope that an overly sensitive trunk-release button on the fob HASN’T left several of my childhood keepsakes strewn along the roadside. Granted, a neighborhood raccoon has already done a PARTIAL job of searching through the trunk (kindly forcing me to scoop up scattered belongings from the driv...
My son Gideon has now finished both his ACT and SAT college entrance exams (scoring at an impressive percentile somewhere between “It’s …it’s…go ask my wife” and “Never you MIND what his father’s score was”), but I wonder if the tests will still be relevant when HIS hypothetical kids reach college age. Hundreds of colleges dropped mandatory test scores this year because of COVID-19 disruptions, but standardized tests were already falling out of favor with admissions officers long before the v...
Realizing that September 25 marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of “The Partridge Family,” I am reminded that time moves more swiftly than a 45 RPM turntable. It seems like only yesterday that I was a fifth-grader and my mother was teasing me because 10-year-old Danny Partridge (played by Danny Bonaduce) was in love. Unless you were alive back then, it’s hard to explain the mass hysteria that greeted songs such as “I Think I Love You” and “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted?” When...
For most of us, Labor Day will be an occasion for relaxation and contemplation. (And MORAL DILEMMAS, because our contemplation will be complicated by the fact that the little cartoon angel on our right shoulder and the little cartoon devil on our left shoulder aren’t allowed within six feet of each other.) For others, even in the time of pandemic, it will be “just another manic Monday.” My afterschool job required me to work EVERY holiday, so my sincerest empathy goes out to those truck drive...
“Shower the people you love with love/ Show them the way that you feel.” - James Taylor With all due respect to the five-time Grammy Award winner, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain and I’ve seen sunny days when I wished people would put their advice where the sun DON’T shine. I think most homo sapiens do a serviceable job of unbottling our emotions when a special person is terminally ill or going into a battle zone. But some well-intentioned buttinsky is always trying to guilt us into openin...
Much of the nation is experiencing a prolonged heat wave, so of course your humble columnist counterintuitively conjures up WARM MEMORIES to comfort himself. When I was in college, I sometimes supplemented my income by helping my late father with deliveries for Easy Pay Tire Store (the tires-and-appliances store where he worked for the Ritter family). One delivery should have been routine (installing an air conditioner for a countryfied elderly couple I had known since my high school job at...
Dear pandemic-battered readers, As you try adapting to the New Normal, just hope no diehards are waiting to confuse you with a plethora of ADDITIONAL configurations. It's best just to suck it up and accept the NEW Normal rather than navigating a world of Classic Normal, Zero Calorie Normal, Satin Finish Normal, Fun-Size Normal, Gelcap Normal, Crunchy Normal, Non-Clumping Normal and Extra-Absorbent Normal with Wings. Ever since getting assigned to inventory control at my day job, I've suffered in...
My wife and I experienced some vicarious living when our son Gideon (finishing up his junior year of high school) attended the senior prom. (Yes, VICARIOUS living. It’s not like we got him out of the house, jumped with glee and yelled, “Date night!” It was more along the lines of “Aw, but I yelled ‘Date night’ LAST time. Can’t YOU say it this… ZZZZZZ… .”) You see, we had to experience a high school milestone through Gideon’s eyes because neither of us went to our proms. My wife’s high school ho...
One of the most awkward, self-conscious incidents in my life occurred when I was shopping with a group. One of my companions blithely continued browsing long after the store was locked. I have done assembly-line work, junkyard work and freelance writing. But I have also punched enough cash-register keys and worked around enough clerks and sales associates to know that the retail life isn’t all skittles and beer. (Okay, maybe there IS a lot of Skittles and beer, in the sense of “Cleanup on ais...
One of my biggest pet peeves: people who can’t hold up their end of a conversation. Oh, I’m not saying that every single human being is obligated to bring jaw-dropping factoids, whimsical quips and provocative perspectives to every mundane conversation. But listeners could at least honor speakers with something more interactive than banal “filler” material like “Uh huh,” “Well, I’ll be!” and “How do ya like that?” If you reveal, “I lost my wallet on vacation, but a former U.S. president v...
On a recent Saturday afternoon, 86-year-old Uncle Doug shared a bit of family lore about his grandfather (my great-grandfather). When great-grandpa Henry Lee Gipson was four years old, a stranger came knocking on the door. The visitor introduced himself and went inside to conduct his business. As he was leaving, he apologized for using a pseudonym and confided that his real name was Jesse James! (This was when Jesse and brother Frank were living in Nashville, and three or four years before...
The recent death of actor James Drury (star of the 1962-1971 TV Western “The Virginian”) adds insult to injury when one considers what will occur next month. When the networks announce the shows they’re canceling and launching, yet again there will be no true Westerns in contention for a coveted spot on the fall schedules. The year I was born, there were 30 “horse operas” spread out across three broadcast networks in prime time, and that culture left an indelible mark on me. (Not in the publi...
According to the Associated Press, Michael Schur (creator of the critically acclaimed NBC series “The Good Place”) has signed with publishing house Simon & Schuster to write the humor/philosophy book “How To Be Good: A Definitive Answer for Exactly What To Do In Every Possible Situation” (scheduled for fall 2021). In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with negative messages such as “Only the good die young” and “Nice guys finish last,” it’s uplifting to see the concept of goodness analyze...
I hope the document remains locked away unused for many years, but my brother and I finally got around to meeting with a lawyer and helping our mother make out her last will and testament. I’m not going to knock it if you download a cheap do-it-yourself template from the internet, but don’t be surprised if your Hummel collection winds up in the hands of a Nigerian prince! Yes, a professionally prepared will is the second-best way to make your explicit wishes known to your family, surpassed onl...
“Middlebrow.” I sitˆ typing this column on the 20th anniversary of the massive heart attack that took the life of my father, and “middlebrow” is one of the words that pops into my mind when remembering Dad. Except for learning the skills of a medic during his year in the United States Army and taking a Dale Carnegie “How To Win Friends and Influence People” course while in the insurance business, Dad had no formal education beyond being the salutatorian of the Marshall County (Tennessee)...
Readers of fine newspapers may recall that last July I unleashed a tirade titled “Slow drivers: are they driving you insane?” Several readers offered a “Yes, but…” response. They acknowledged the irritating nature of slowpokes but suggested I should devote equal (or greater) time to denouncing speed demons. So, for the sake of fairness (and because my son is currently taking Driver’s Education and because I’ve started pondering how many of my clobbered pets would have died of natural cause...
A recent “Wall Street Journal” article touted New Year’s as one of the optimal “clean slate” times to draft a financial plan. (“Ahem…unless that plan involves something foolhardy like cutting back on a newspaper that costs four dollars an issue. Just wing it. YOLO.”) The Journal cited a survey from Fidelity Investments, showing that 67% of Americans are considering a New Year’s resolution that relates to their finances (especially saving for retirement). Alas, half the people who made such res...
Most of my Christmases have become hopelessly blurred together, but Christmas 1969 holds a special place in my heart. In fact, back in 1998 my very first yuletide column took a whimsically nostalgic look at that holiday. But as the 50th anniversary of Christmas 1969 approaches, I feel compelled to write something with more gravitas. There were two main things I implored Santa for that year. One was a selection of toys from a yellowing 1927 Montgomery Ward catalog that my mother the collector...
Maybe it’s because my first viewing of “Rudolph” occurred when I was four years old and my first viewing of “Frosty the Snowman” happened when I was a worldly wise nine-year-old, but I’ve always been extra cynical about Frosty. The animated TV special (based on a 1950 song introduced by Gene Autry) will doubtless garner oodles of affectionate attention when it turns 50 on Dec. 7, but it remains troubling on multiple levels. For starters, how did this goofy nobody rate designation as Frosty THE S...
If you’re tired of running around in circles to find a Christmas gift for the dog lovers on your list, I know just the thing for you to fetch. The charming softcover book “It’s A Dog’s Life: Tales from A Dog Named Max,” by Max, with help from Nina Hershberger, is now available from Amazon. For the sake of full disclosure, besides working at a farmers cooperative and writing this syndicated column, I have had a freelance business relationship with Hershberger (founder of MegaBucks Marketing) for...
The words weren’t aimed directly at me, but I was recently flummoxed by an unexpected undercurrent of animosity. In an online post, a military veteran refused to confine his anger to people who spit on veterans or ignore veterans. He vented about citizens who actually pause to ACKNOWLEDGE the contribution of former servicepeople. Echoing the recent gun-control backlash against “thoughts and prayers,” the veteran expressed disdain for people who are satisfied with flying an American flag, shaki...
What can you say about the eavesdropper wannabes who sigh, "I wish I could be a fly on the wall for that conversation"? Why is becoming a disease-spreading insect their "go to" position for spying? Why isn't their first impulse to daydream about invisibility, superhuman hearing or a microphone hidden in a rhododendron arrangement? Do they crave a compound-eye view of their boss conversing with the company narc? Do they have a fetish for rubbing their legs together and dodging spider webs? I've...
Do you long for the days when the only outbursts our delicate ears had to worry about were the Z word ("Zoinks!") and the J word ("Jinkies!")? Then you might want to pop open some Scooby Snacks and celebrate the fact that Sept. 13 marked the 50th anniversary of "What a Night for a Knight," the first episode of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" Yes, the generational torch (of viewers and creative personnel) has been passed time and again during the past 50 years (and I can only hope that the more...
First, some disclaimers. When my son Gideon was in kindergarten and first grade, I indulged him by recording countless hours of hyperactive, unseen-outside-the-family DVDs he called The Gideon Channel. For more than seven years, we have made annual trips to the local radio station to cut commercials for my retail day job. But that's as far as I exploit him (outside of this column). So, I was flabbergasted to see a CBS News report about the phenomenon of "kid influencers" dominating Instagram,...
"Took away our native tongue/And taught their English to our young..." — from "Indian Reservation," by John D. Loudermilk. According to the United Nations, there are about 6,500 distinct languages (not just dialects) spoken throughout the world. And HALF of those languages are in danger of disappearing by the next century. That's right: one language becomes extinct every two weeks! Which means somewhere, right now, someone is smacking his forehead and muttering, "I KNEW I should have read the s...
