Below is a rough draft of humble's rants for your Maine Private Radio show for October 2, 2016

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1. When I was a kid I knew a lot of old men who talked to themselves. Lou Robinson would talk to his cow. Forrest Wall would sing. As a kid, I thought this strange. Now that I am closer to 90 than I am to 70 and hear myself talking out in the barn, I realize that what children hear is the very necessary articulated cogitation that keeps an old man from forgetting what he is doing.

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2. And here’s someone who thinks that crime can be eliminated in Bangor by tearing down rat-infested buildings that provide shelter for a certain segment of our population. This is not an original solution to the elimination of crime. Years ago someone said that the best way to eliminate crime on a certain Boston street was to make the street one-way. Their reasoning was that you’d be cutting off the available escape route by 50 percent.

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3. One does not need to drive racing cars or climb Mount Everest to live on the edge. When it is summer in Maine we have the unfortunate but ubiquitous news items about kayaks, ATVs and motorcycles. In the winter it is snowmobilers or skiers who warrant space when they slam into trees. Outside of someone going through the ice in the spring or getting shot in the fall, there isn’t much in Maine papers unless you count reports of drunken brawls, drug induced insanity or the fruits of mental illness. Was it my friend Lawyer Crandall who told me of the Millinocket woman who flipped a snowmobile after hitting a bump in the trail? Her horrified husband quickly shut off his motor and rushed over to make sure her machine wasn’t damaged.

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4. Men. Do you jump up and obey every time your wife barks a command? If you are newly married you might. But those of us who enjoy marriages that might be compared to a butter nut squash just before the first frost --- that is men who have marriages that have mellowed and ripened to a satisfying state of perfection, ---- well, we do not jump up at her first words. Any experienced husband will tell you why. No matter what my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman says, you can bet that as soon as she says it the little cogs and wheels in her head start to move --- you know --- to evaluate all of the attendant ramifications --- and within 30 seconds she has changed her mind and says just the opposite. On the other hand, she thinks that I am wishy-washy --- that is, that I don’t really mean something when I say it, because --- should I say, “two helpings of chicken is enough,” she always says, “Are you sure?”

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5. Did you read about the woman who pointed a pistol at her adult son and told him to get out? A reader very astutely pointed out, “As a precaution, a few firearms were taken from her home" .....what about the kitchen and hunting knives, or the pitch fork in the garage and other household objects that can be used as weapons?” --- Yes. Down here in Midcoast Maine when there isn’t a clam fork close by, we have read of people being bitten. It is my understanding that when you go further east and get down Machias way biting is not an option.

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6. I just got an email that says, “Find Asian singles meant for you.” Is this ad meant to capitalize on a young person’s insatiable desires? Although there might be a few Rasputins out there, would not most any normal mature person be amply satisfied with the company of one pleasant companion for the evening? But notice that the ad specifies the eyebrow-raising more-than-one --- “singles.” You would need to know French to come up with suitable words to describe this complicated kind of --- household-of-three --- social arrangement, just as it takes an Italian word like imbroglio to adequately describe unimaginable disasters. My only reason for mentioning this ad for Asian singles is a question I have about the simple logistics of supply and demand. Think about this. How many people are there in Asia, anyway? If it is four billion, that is 60 percent of the planet’s population. So wouldn’t you think that with two billion people of the opposite sex to choose from --- without going to the expense or bother of travel --- something must be fishy when Asian entrepreneurs are offering us a package deal on their home grown singles?

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7. We understand that because elderly people cannot drive as well as younger people, they are involved in more accidents than people who are in their 40s. We understand that because they are prone to texting, young people cannot even drive as well as a tottering, retired welder who burned out his eyes. Thank goodness there will be no gasoline left on the planet in 50 years. Would you want to venture out onto the highway in 2060 when every senile old fool behind the wheel will probably be looking at the keys on his cell phone?

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8. Just in case you’re in Iowa, just in case you are listening to this program as it is streamed on the Internet, just in case you are far away and know nothing about Maine, I’ll mention that Matinicus is a small island about 15 miles from my home in St. George, Maine. A woman who gives her address as Matinicus recently wrote a very witty article on how the Matinicus school board recruits teachers. Google The Free Press and you’ll find it. As you might remember, my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, taught grade school for 25 or so years. I told her that I’d just read an article on how Matinicus gets teachers, and she said, “They bind and gag them?”

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9. Did you read in the paper that a young man who was put in the back of a police car kicked out both back windows and when they put him in the back of a second police car, he bent the frame? Do you find it hard to believe that a young man could bend the frame in a police car? Isn’t that caliber of damage more likely to be the work of an unhappy woman?

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10. Did you read the story about the dog that wandered into a man’s yard, curled up and took a nap? Every day the dog would walk into the yard, curl up and take a nap. One day the man put a note on the dog’s collar that said, “I’d like to meet the owner of this wonderful dog who takes a nap in my yard every day.” When the dog came back the next day there was a note on his collar that said, “He lives in a home with six small children. He’s trying to catch up his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?

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