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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for June 22, 2014

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1. Today we are going to talk about nostalgia. The good old days. Do kids know how to have fun nowadays? How long has been since anyone listened to Froggie The Gremlin on the radio? St. George Maine where I live 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. Any number of up-to-date soul enriching philosophies are now available to anyone able to turn on a radio or TV. The latest one to capture my attention was touted by a man in California who had taken the mystery out of his life by consulting chicken bones. A middle-aged woman, who very wisely brought her problems to the bones, reported that her husband had run off with a 17-year-old girl. Then, realizing his mistake, he had repented and come home for a 30-day breather, only to run off again with a 19-year-old. The chicken bones did not hesitate, but immediately observed, "Cheer up, he's starting to like older women." (950419)

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3. If your grandfather has something that he says he's going to give you someday, tell him you want it now. Stick out your hand and say, "Please put it right there, thank you." Last week I misplaced my grandfather's watch which I have been planning to give to the only one of my sister's kids who has evinced an interest in having it. For years that watch lived in a drawer, but one day when I went to look for it, it was gone. I had hoped he'd be by this summer to get it. I've dug around a bit, but it didn’t turn up for days. It is not valuable, so I don't know who would want it. I've seen old watches just like it on ebay for $10. How do these things happen? Do these inexplicable things only happen to senile, old people? Have you ever been promised something by some old geezer, only to have it fall into the hands of someone less worthy, simply because you didn't step up and say, "I want it now."

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4. Richard Warner, who is a very astute person indeed, once pointed out to me that every time we see the scene of a murder in Maine, the yellow tape, the police car --- there, in the background, is a mobile home? I never forgot it and you and I have seen the yellow tape in front of the mobile home over and over ever since. Consider the case of Angela Langberry. Or Columbo. Or Monk. Every time any one of them are invited to a party, somebody gets murdered. Wouldn’t you think their phones would stop ringing? I certainly wouldn’t want to risk inviting Monk over to my place to meet a few friends, would you? One day 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 as Wall Street bankers. 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 or Columbo stay home. We could also eliminate all of the murders in our state by getting rid of the mobile homes. The only loss would be to the people who manufacture that yellow police tape. Let’s think about it.

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5. I Left home at 0600 in a pouring rain to get some wire so Mike could hook up my last 8 solar panels. 10 miles from my destination in Liberty on 220 the big flashing sign said, "Use 105." I knew they were working on the bridge at the stop sign so I used 105. And in 10 miles I was right back where I started. I was not happy. So I went on 220 and got through. Bought 14 gallons of gas. I'd gone 310 miles on the last tank for 22 mpg. I've never put that much in before. I must have been running on the fumes. I was afraid I was going to run out in the woods in a pouring rain. Gas was 13 cents a gallon cheaper up in Searsmont area than it is in Rockland. Got the wire and parts I needed in Liberty and came home. Mike hooked up my last 8 panels and now I have 5300. Mike is fast and he knows what he's doing. I'm amazed that more people don't have solar panels on their homes.

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6. At 4 this morning I was singing" "I got shoes, you got shoes, everybody's got to have shoes, but there's only one kind of shoe for me-good old Buster Brown shoes!"" 0400 is too early to be singing about good old Buster Brown shoes, but there you are. Back around 1945 if you turned on your radio you might hear Smilin' Ed say: "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" I can still hear the magic twanger and I can still hear Froggy's evil laugh. A guest would be on the show and Froggy would get the guest to say something silly. "The green puppet, Froggy the Gremlin, appeared in a puff of smoke ("Hi Ya, Kids, Hiya, Hiya, Hiya!") and was always interrupting the story and causing trouble. On the original programs, Smilin' Ed McConnell started the show with "Hiya kids" followed by the audience singing the sponsor's song (Buster Brown Shoes) "I got shoes, you got shoes, everybody's got to have shoes, but there's only one kind of shoe for me-good old Buster Brown shoes!"" "After his death, Andy Devine then took over the show and it's "Andy's Gang" that most people remember." Speak for yourself, my child. by 1954 some of us had already been sworn in as fighting men for our country (right or wrong) and we never saw the Andy Devine show. But we never forgot Froggy or his magic twanger. I don't know if there is anything that can even approximate Froggy and his magic twanger today. Qué lástima.

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7. Years ago I spoke at some New Hampshire agricultural meeting. The man running the meeting was a good guy who got me to do several things over the years. I think his father had been governor of New Hampshire at one time. Thompson rings a bell. At that meeting I remember meeting a farmer who told me a funny story that I used on the stage for years afterwards. My first impression of him was that he exuded the sweet smell of fresh milk and hay in general and ruminating cow in particular. There is something about the bos magna that adheres to one's person for days after one has collected fresh nutrients for the radishes. Scrubbing and showers don't help because it gets under one's nails and in one's pores. A person so anointed can unknowingly lend a sweet ambiance to an entire small room. Stop by my office this summer and tell me if this is not so.

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8. Let’s talk about our friends who have all of their things stolen. They call us or send us an email from Turkey asking us to send them money so the hotel owner will let them leave their hotel. My sister said she got a call like that a couple of years ago. She said, The person called me "Gram" and said he was in Mexico to attend a friend's wedding and needed money sent to him as he had been in an auto accident and didn't have the funds to pay for the damage to the car and also his trip back home. She said, When I asked him what happened to his "Maine accent" he hung up. Well. Let me tell you what I’d do if I got a call like that. I would say, "Look, you went through the last million I gave you in two months. You ain’t getting another cent until your birthday."

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9. Years ago the Booger Boy gave me a huge plastic wall calendar that showed all 12 months. I wrote all my speaking jobs on it. There was a time when I was annoyed when I'd be offered two jobs on the same day 1,000 miles apart. Now I only have two years (24 months) on a piece of paper that is 3 by 4 inches. The letters are so tiny I can only see them with glasses. So I've been making a lot of mistakes with dates when I make my radio program. Now that I think of it, I don't even have my month calendar on a wall here. This happens when you move every six months. Some things get lost in the shuffle and my calendar seems to be one of them. Is it significant that I don't have a calendar on the wall? Or that I didn't realize until now that I don't have one? I don't wear a watch, either. The battery dies in your watch and batteries cost more than watches so you don't even bother to wear one. You finally come to a point in your life when the day, month or time have no meaning because every day is the same. You morph into an earlier type of animal that eats when it is hungry and goes to sleep when it is tired and nothing in between really matters. My calendar for 2014 and 2015 is on my computer beneath the screen. The fact that I can't see the numbers on it doesn't matter. You might have read that Bix and Pee Wee had a car. It didn't run, but if you lived out in the country you had to have a car so the fact that it didn't run didn't matter. .

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10. I built my own solar water heaters, and I also have 5300 watts of solar electricity generating panels. Because this should benefit you, will you permit me to mention the following? Just paid my Time-Warner monthly Internet cable bill. $39.99 Just paid my CMP monthly power bill. $9.36 Just paid my monthly telephone bill. Ooma $3.82 Next year there should be next to no heating oil bill because we will use electric heat. I make it $53.17 for our electricity, computer cable/Roku commercial-free television and telephone bills for a month, which, unless you sit in a lotus position and dispense wisdom from the mouth of your mountain cave, must sound to you like a fairly small amount in this day and age. There might be people in Maine who pay more than $53.17 for any one of the services I mentioned: electricity, cable and telephone. With commercial-free Roku television thrown in for good measure. I know there was a time when my bill for the three was several hundreds of dollars. Although you can't be mentioned by name, may I thank the person/s who introduced me to Ooma, Roku and solar energy? And, should you ever decide to take me seriously and save more money than your neighbors by going this route, it doesn't matter to me if you forget that it was your buddy humble who encouraged you on your way. I'm just happy to see you get ahead.

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11 . My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, just came home with a pretty jacket that cost her a pretty penny at the Salvation Army thrift store. We have been invited to a swanky (that's a Gramp Wiley word --- he was always talking about something swanky) --- We have been invited to a swanky private art show somewhat south of here and Marsha says she plans to wear this jacket along with black pants. It is really quite a bit south of here, so there's not much chance that someone will come up to her at that swanky art show, look at her pretty jacket, and say, "I was hoping that someone would find a use for that..." +

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