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This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for November 23,2014

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1. David up in Washington sent me some new exercises to do every morning. It says to begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5-lb potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax. Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato sacks. Then try 50-lb potato sacks and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks.

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2. When man started to live in small communities thousands of years ago certain social rules evolved to keep good neighbors from killing each other. Ever since then there has been a general disagreement about what a government is supposed to do. Some people think that the purpose of a government is to provide security, municipal services, education and health care. These people realize that services that make life worth living cost money and that it is their tax money that makes it possible. Today the countries with the highest taxes, like Holland and Sweden, have the highest standard of living. My friends who have worked in countries like Nigeria where taxes are low, told me that the natives in the cities sit on street corners and cook over burning rubber tires. Nigerian streams are open sewers cluttered with plastic. You are escorted to your barricaded office by armed guards. You would not want to live in Nigeria where taxes are low. But in every country there are people who do not like government and taxes. They want all the benefits of good roads and a good education and a good income but wail and rend their garments when asked to help pay for it. These two groups of people naturally form political parties through which they fight to achieve their goals. Interestingly enough, no matter which party is in office, the party that claims that government doesn’t work is always doing everything it can to prove that they are right.

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3. We all have things that we can do. And there are other things that we cannot do. Perhaps an adult might be defined as: “a person who knows what he can do and what he can’t do --- and isn’t afraid to admit it.” The email I recently received said, “humble, Don't you remember what I thought of as Plan A?” Of course I don’t remember anything about Plan A. Because I’d like you to learn a little more about me, you might listen closely to the reply I sent to this person: “Please realize that I don’t remember much of anything. My talent is not in remembering, but in synthesizing that which I have recently heard and presenting it to friends as original material.”

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4. You should look forward to getting older because as you get older, life gets simpler. I called a man in Farmington who said I called him the week before and asked him the same question. It is true that you might do the same thing two or three times but it doesn’t worry you because you don’t realize you’ve already done it. And when you get old you have reached the age of impunity: nobody knows or cares if you’ve done anything or not. You probably know that I learned the word “impunity” when I first read about poor old Rip Van Winkle. I quote: “Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can do nothing with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench.” When you read Rip Van Winkle, did you see an aged man coming down from the mountains to rejoin his neighbors? Or did you ever do the math? The way I read it, after poor old Rip Van Winkle woke up from his 20-year nap and came back to town to retire as one of town elders, he was 43 years old.

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5. My friend Boon in Holland sent me a web page that is pretty comprehensive when it comes to travel in Europe. Among other things, I read that “France’s capital is home to haute couture, cozy bistros and bohemian cafés.” Are you startled by this news? What did you think you’d find in Paris? Beer festivals, sauerkraut and Wienerschnitzel? Who writes these things?

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6. I once read that Stephen King looks like a man who has all his clothes handed down to him by his older brother. I think that is one of the nicest things you could say about anyone. Why should any Maine man be concerned about what he is wearing? Does Stephen King, or any other Maine man with an IQ under 80 or over 120 give a rat’s rear end what people think about what they are wearing? Don’t comfort and efficiency account for anything? To begin with, my pants have to have four pockets on the front, one on either side four inches to the outboard side of the knee. In the left pocket you carry your wallet and comb and on the right you carry your notebook and two pens. Of course you can’t buy pants with pockets exactly where you want them, so I have one of my seamstress friends sew them on. I also take a razor blade and cut the tags off the collars of my shirts so they don’t chafe on my neck. But other than the comfort and efficiency issues, as long as I’m wearing a blue necktie and a blue shirt and a 2 dollar lawn-sale jacket when I go out to work, I really don’t care what I’m wearing. Of course, I’m not talking about the people who go out of their way to dress in weird looking threads just to make an anti-fashion statement. I’m talking about the people who really don’t think about what they’re wearing. I can remember playing a gig one time with an excellent trombone player who showed up wearing some checkered bell bottomed pants from the 1960s. I said to him, “I know that you must be a fantastic trombone player, because nobody else would wear such weird looking pants.”

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7. Table manners are changing in this country. It is getting so that if you want someone to feel comfortable when they come to your house for supper, you serve them in paper plates on a plastic tray with plastic forks and a paper cup. Without even thinking, they’ll get up when they’ve finished, dump the paper and plastic into a big barrel, throw their tray on a pile next to the barrel, and leave. The only thing that will remain the same as the good old days is the absence of a tip.

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8. Many, many years ago there was a man who would bebop into St. George with a hundred dollar bill. He’d go into a store and select two or three small items and then plunk down that hundred dollar bill. Of course they could never change the bill, so he’d charge it and tell them that he’d pay it later which was like getting it for nothing. Let me back up here. I can remember when I was a kid my father used to ask, “What is bred in old Kentucky?” The answer was, “Fifteen cents a loaf.” What I’m trying to impress you with here is that when bread was fifteen cents a loaf, $100 was much more than it is now when it takes that much to fill up the gas tank on some cars. I was told that Ralph, who was famous for being clever, knew about this $100 bill scam and he knew this fellow was coming to buy something from him. So he went around to a dozen or more friends until he had scraped together $100 in small bills. And of course when the fellow pulled out his $100 bill Ralph changed it -- and that put an end to that foolishness.

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9. I don’t watch that much regular television, but my friend Julian was intrigued by the caveat emptor that is included in each televised Viagra ad. Right there in the ad, Julian says, men are warned about the dangers of Viagra. But they don’t come right out and tell you what these dangers are. Yes, they do say that if the pill is still working after four hours, go to a hospital. Good luck with that. Can you imagine your wife letting you out the door? Yes, the ad does warn you that you can sustain damage after four hours but can you guess what it is? --- You don’t have enough skin left to close your eyes. Julian says that when you go to the hospital they fit you with dark glasses so the sun won’t make you squint.

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10. Robert in Bath says that Harvard will set tuition for students at no more than 10-percent of their family income. Just my luck to not have any kids. I could send them all to Cambridge and Harvard would owe me money.

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11. If you have listened to me telling stories for any amount of time, you know that the import of what I have to say usually hinges on the last word in my last sentence. And the significance of this story also hinges on the last word in the story I’m about to tell you now. There was once a small restaurant on a dock in Tenants Harbor. The cook, Chet Rawley, was sweating over a hot grill, cooking up hamburgers for two summercating women. And it got so hot in the kitchen that Chet came out into the dining room and opened the door to give himself a bit of the refreshing fog that was blowing in across the harbor. Finding the fog on her ankles uncomfortable, one of the women got up and closed the door. A panting Chet promptly marched out of the kitchen and opened it again. But it wasn’t long before the woman, exercising her prerogative of the customer always being right, got up and opened it again. Whereupon Chet came out of the kitchen with a screwdriver and removed the hinges.

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