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1. Do kids know how to have fun nowadays? My home town has certainly changed since I was a kid so you know for sure that what kids do must have also changed. Wilder Oakes says, “I was also thinking today of the time I took one of my high school girlfriends to the town dump for a date, and we shot rats with a .22 pistol. “Too bad you can't rat hunt anymore these days it was great for the reflexes.”

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2. One can only wonder how many men in the US pound on their wives every day without anyone saying a word. One wonders how many people have actually killed a spouse without having a neighbor or close relative even raise an eyebrow. The only thing that does not surprise us is the large number of young women eager to move in with a man who has wives that died mysteriously or that can’t even be found. Let us move on to the almost 800,000 dog bites every year that are serious enough to receive medical attention and the 30 or so people who are killed by dogs in this country in any given year. All of this we take for granted, but a chimp who attacked a woman made the national news.

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3. Here’s an update on a problem encountered by many senior citizens in Knox County today. If you are one of these people, please understand: we are not laughing at you --- we have compassion. I should begin with the old story about the elderly Friendship couple who went into a Rockland bank to buy a house for their son. When it came time to pay, the woman shyly produced a brown paper bag and gave it to the banker. The banker counted the money, looked up, and said, “I’m afraid there’s only $148,000 here. The house is 175.” And the old man said, “Darn it mother, you brought the wrong bag.” These stories have their roots in truth, and this was demonstrated last week when a Port Clyde man heard that one of our local banks might be in trouble. And, because he’d seen banks lock their doors during the depression, nothing would do but what he had to rush up to town and draw out his money. He did this easily enough. But then he had a problem. The federal government only insures bank deposits up to $100,000. After that, you’re on your own. So the man said, “Mother, where are we going to put this money? We can only have $100,000 in a bank. Anything more than that is not insured.” And she said, “Why don’t we put it in this other bank over here?” And he said, “No, we’ve already got way over $100,000 in that one.” After a great deal of thought and discussion, they finally found a bank where they didn’t have $100,000 on deposit and went in there. The banker showed them the rate card and pointed out that the longer they left the money in, the higher the percentage rate would be on the interest. But the Port Clyde man said, “We’ll put it in for only 6 months at the lowest percentage rate. I want to be able to get this out quick in case I want it. And besides, any more income from interest would put me in a higher tax bracket.”

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4. Is there really any point in being a rich, handsome and famous man? Is it worth the bother? If you are not rich, famous or handsome, you don’t need to feel that you’ve missed out on something. A friend of mine in Camden, Maine, who has devoted most of his adult life to reading Hollywood movie magazines tells me, that the only advantage in being a rich man is that it enables you to find a very attractive woman who will marry you and then leave with half of everything you have. Here in Maine we have thousands of average men who have married very unattractive women who have done the very same thing.

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5. A Knox County grandmother is in trouble today for giving her grandson money to buy a car. A friend of the grandson got hurt in the car and then sued the grandmother. He collected because it was proven in court that she was negligent. She shouldn’t have given money to an irresponsible teenager. Legal minds are wondering where this need to affix blame to someone else will end. Suppose a landlord rents a house to a family of four. Both parents smoke. The two children often have respiratory problems and miss a lot of school. Should the children be able to sue the landlord for renting the confined space? Email me with your answer or comments. We value your opinion.

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6. What do you think of that libertarian woman in California who just had 8 kids? We have heard a lot about it on the news lately. Should single-mother libertarians be encouraged to have 14 children? Before making a comment, do remember that she provided us with 14 more souls that can be saved. It is my understanding that in China there was a time when you couldn't have more than two kids. Of course, if you have enough starvation and wars, you don't really need to limit family size to manage an out of control population. You have read of cultures where, to keep from dragging down the entire community and destroying it, children and old people were left outside to die. In other societies some have suggested that the same program be revived with Wall Street bankers.

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7. Why is it that every time we see the scene of a murder in Maine, the yellow tape, the police car --- in the background is a mobile home? Consider the case of Angela Langberry. Every time she’s invited to a party, somebody gets murdered. Wouldn’t you think her phone would stop ringing? I certainly wouldn’t want to risk inviting her over to my place to meet a few friends, would you? Last week a man in Boston wrote to the police department that many, many people were getting mugged on a certain street in Boston. The man suggested that the police could stop the mugging by making the street one way. Then the muggers would lose their usual route of escape and would be driven to honest jobs in law or banking. The man was obviously one of Boston’s more astute thinkers. Employing his reasoning, you could eliminate half the murders on TV by making Angela Langberry stay home. We could also eliminate all of the murders in our state by getting rid of the mobile homes. Let’s think about it.

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8. Last week a poor derelict showed up at a local church right after the service and asked if he could have $50 to get him to New Bedford so he could get work on a fishing boat. When the three deacons assembled to consider the case, one of the deacons, a teacher, recognized the man as one of the most troublesome kids he’d ever had in school. Another, a prison guard, had fingerprinted the fellow when he was admitted to the state prison. The third, in one of those coincidences that you only hear about on Paul Harvey, had been the man’s prisoner advocate and parole officer. None of the three deacons let on that they’d ever seen the candidate before and he didn’t let on that he knew them. They gave him the $50 to get him on a boat 200 miles away in New Bedford and figured it was the best money they had ever spent.

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9. A man in Union who studies soap operas claims that they do not portray real life. For example, last winter he says he was standing by a big picture window overlooking his front lawn. His arms were around his wife and he was about to kiss her. Snow was falling gently outside. Little birds hopped happily about the bird feeder as the hills in Hope faded in the evening dusk. His lips moved closer to hers. The camera moves in for a close-up. But then he had to belch. He turned his head slightly to the left and quietly did so in his wife’s ear. He’d just been eating spiced spaghetti sauce, which is not a romantic smell, unless you were born somewhere between Genoa and Naples. This man claims that he has seen on the TV screen almost every other bodily activity known to primates. Producers argue that they must show all these things to be true to life. But he has yet to see someone burp in a soap opera. He hopes that someone will do it soon and make it fashionable so his wife will come back.

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10. More and more Knox County women in their mid 40s are dating men in their early 20s. A local sociologist, considers this to be a most unusual and unhealthy phenomenon and is hoping to discover what the two groups can possibly have in common. He says, “You would think that a 45 year old woman would seek out a 60 year old man who could satisfy her intellectual needs. Yet we see many of these women, accompanied by no more than children, out on the town six and seven nights a week. One would think that a woman over 40 would know that you can’t trust a man until hair grows in his ears. Whatever do they find to talk about? What is it about these young men that older women find so attractive?”

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11. Police pulled 145 nasty looking marijuana plants from a dirt road in Friendship and are looking for the owner. A Cushing logger had complained to police that the 12-foot plants were interfering with his cutting operation. Although the street value of the plants in Bangor is in excess of $50,000, the logger said it would be a waste of time for him to cut them because, unlike firewood, there is no ready market for marijuana in Knox County, Maine. The owner of the weeds is urged to call the police at once, as the plants are drying out rapidly and, unless they are claimed, will soon have to be thrown away.

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12. Most Maine people live way down on the southern tip of Maine. But people from northern and eastern Maine think of that area as being part of Massachusetts. The natives who live way down east in Washington County and way up north in Aroostook County, which is referred to as just “The County,” don’t think or operate like their Maine neighbors way down south. For a while I recall hearing about a big sign you’d see when entering Washington County. I can’t remember what the sign said, but I do remember that the words were spelled out with toilet plungers. And it was only a year or so ago that a beautiful young girl from up in The County and her fiancé asked me to officiate at their marriage ceremony. They had been living together for two or three years, and when I mentioned to the assembly that Alison and Steve were standing before them today to get married, the bride’s father hollered, “It’s about time.”

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