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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for August 3, 2014

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1. Back before the days of sea legs when Maine restaurants made real lobster rolls, a real estate agent was asked to sell a house. This real estate agent was 100 percent honest and he knew his business. When it came to selling houses, there wasn't anyone this side of the County who could touch him. One day he got a call from a man in Boston who was going to come up from Boston on the train. He was going to arrive in Rockland at quarter past five, and he wanted to see that house. At quarter past four on the appropriate afternoon the agent had his friends in the fire department come over and pump two tank loads of water into the well. The Boston man was no fool, and he knew that unless wells were spring fed, they very often went dry in September and October. So his first question to the agent as they walked onto the property was, "How's the well hold out in the fall?" As the agent slid the cover off the well he said, "Why not check it out for yourself?"

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2. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, has been cutting my hair for years. She started doing it way back when my friend, George the Barber, refused to prohibit smoking in his barber shop for fear of offending his gasping customers. I had to give up playing bass because the smoke drove me out of restaurants and clubs. And smoke even drove me out of my favorite barber shop. But Marsha's days of cutting my hair are over. Smokers have been legislated out of public places so I can go back to my barber. As you know, Marsha is a perfectionist. Whenever she does anything, there is nobody who can do it better. And therein lies my problem. Marsha cuts my hair so perfectly, that on the street I am often mistaken for a corporate lobbyist, and without the obscene financial remuneration I choose not to live with the shame.

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3. My Facebook friend Claire Perry asks, How tall is Marsha? I don't know. But I am 5 foot 7 1/2 and she is just the right height for me. There is nothing more frightful than hugging one of Marsha’s friends who might be six-foot two. It gives a runt of a man the impression of being smothered by pillows in a horror movie. Whenever one of these towering beauties shows up, I always rush outside so I can extend my welcome while I’m standing on the bottom step.

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4. Our dump yielded up a nice sturdy piece of pipe with 90 degree angles on both ends, so I got Wayne Hilt to shorten it on 3 ends and put flanges on the ends. The other day, when I was too weak to do anything else, I drilled four holes in the concrete wall, put in those plastic bolt holders, and bolted the rig to the cellar wall. Marsha has been lobbying for a handrail on these steps for a year or so. My brother tested it out and says it is just right. I should have filmed the project for my TV show. You would be amazed at the number of tools and boxes of stuff I had to assemble on these cellar stairs just to do this simple project. The project didn’t take as long to do as it would have if some expert had showed up to show me how to do it right.

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5. If you do not attend the annual St. George Fire Department’s annual fundraising potluck, you are missing the greatest culinary event of the year. Admission is by donation. The money collected helps pay for the ambulance that hauls you to the hospital when you drop, so I figure it is money well spent. I think I’ve been hauled away in it once already, and unless I’m very lucky it won’t be too long before I get to ride in it again. But the food. The chicken was cooked to perfection. White meat almost two inches thick. Incredible. I don’t know where they found the bird. It was so good I asked the grillmeister what his name was so I could tell you. He said his name was Rick Freeman. I went back for seconds.

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6. You know that I do not have the ability to recognize faces unless I have seen that face many times over a period of several months or years. I thought I recognized a face at the St. George Fire Department’s annual fundraising feast, so I asked the woman behind the face who she was. I said that she looked familiar. She reminded me of Edna Polky. I will not tell you her name, but I will tell you that she was tall and slender and that she told me that she had just lost 150 pounds. Wow. That impresses me. You have been told over and over that more than one-third of U. S. adults are obese. We’re doing better than that here because we read that only 25% of the people in Maine weigh a lot more than they should. A friend of mine had the flu last week and lost six pounds. Eight years ago I went to a radio convention in San Antonio and I gained six pounds. And right then, when I couldn’t tie my shoestrings, I decided to give up sweets. Oh I can eat one cookie, you say. Everything is ok in moderation. But there are those of us for whom that doesn’t work. We cannot eat only one dish of ice cream; any more than some people can’t have one drink of gin. And because I think I met a woman the other day who knows what you and I are talking about here, I’m going to track her down and see if she will tell you and me what she had to do to lose 150 pounds. I admire this woman, don’t you? Wouldn’t you like to hear what she can tell us? I hope she’ll talk with me on camera. Probably all she did was give up sweets.

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7. You know you live in Maine when you can see 53 degrees on your thermometer on August 19th. The hourly forecast also gives me 53, so we agree on something. Where else in the world but on the coast of Maine can you drive by a Bed and Breakfast in the middle of August and see a sign that says, “Heated Room. Enjoy a Hot Shower”?

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8. If you are married to a type A woman, as I am, you are likely to find the lexical item "but" firmly embedded in any of her syntactic strings. This was called to my attention yesterday when I put the hand rail leading to the solar radiant heated cellar/office of Maine Private Radio on the right hand side going down. Affixing a hand rail to a concrete wall is a bit above any chore that would be required of your average husband/handyman as it necessitates a specialized tool that will drill holes in a concrete wall. ... And sometimes the patience required to bore a hole through not mushy concrete but an egg-sized piece of granite. If Mumtaz Mahal were a type A woman, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, might have heard his wife say, "It is a very pretty building, but...."

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9. Marsha was at a party hooting and hollering around until almost midnight. She had a good time. I waited up for her and when she came in she wanted to know why I put baking powder on my face and leg. Well, right about dusk while turning over a piece of plywood I use for mulch in my rhubarb patch, I was stung twice by hornets that lived under the plywood. Of course I went on Facebook at once and asked what to do for hornet bites. Katy Burns from down in Friendship told me to put hot water on it. And Pegg said to put baking soda on it. I found baking powder in the cupboard and thought baking powder might be another name for baking soda. So I made a paste of baking powder and put it on my face. Marsha said I should have used baking soda and that she has some of that, too. Who in the world would know these esoteric things? That there is a difference between baking powder and baking soda? We are talking here about an area of some pretty specialized knowledge. Seems as baking soda came in a yellow box or tin can with an arm and hammer on it, but I didn't see any of that in the cupboard. The hot water must have worked on my foot because that bite is much better, but the one on my face, Marsha says, is still quite swollen. So I have to thank Kathy for getting right back to me on that. I know even if I get stung again, I won't be able to remember if it is baking powder or baking soda I am supposed to put on it. So it would be a good idea to have a sticky label on one of the boxes that says, "For Stings" on it. It is nice to have friends who know these things. And it is nice that they get right back to you when you need help with something. Stay tuned. Thank you for listening.

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10. My truck was skipping so I limped into see Larry Oakes on three cylinders. I figured a spark plug might have worn out. When your truck has well over 299,000 miles on it you have to expect to shell out a bit from time to time on maintenance. I believe in servicing my truck on a regular basis because it’s much cheaper than making impossible payments on a new truck. Sometimes the wiring harness goes, too. Did you know that "... it's important to replace your spark plugs from time to time. Fortunately, high-quality spark plugs should last tens of thousands of miles, so replacing them is not something you'll have to do often. Even if you don't put many miles on your vehicle, it's something that should be done at least every few years. "So how long do they typically last? Well, standard copper plugs are said to last anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 miles, while more expensive iridium or platinum spark plugs can last 60,000 miles or more. You might be interested to know that looked in my truck’s service book and see that I last changed the plugs on my truck on December 12, 1998. They had 101,321 miles on them before the top rusted off the top of one of them and shut me down. The porcelain was cracked and missing on another one. I can hear you saying it now: “They sure don't make stuff to last like they used to.”

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