I spend much of my time in my office behind my computer looking out that skylight in my garage.
It was a great summer. Many of you stopped in at the farm to visit me and Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, and we want to thank you. A few of you stayed long enough for me to run down the stairs and out of the office so I could actually talk with you. I usually emerge from that garage door you see over Marsha's shoulder. And I did have to run if I wanted to see you.
As you know, I lived on our farm --- without a garage or a wife until I was 54 years old. And when you live most of your adult life without something, when you do get it, you appreciate it. You use it every chance you get. So every time I come home, I open the garage door and put my truck inside --- even though I might be going out again in 5 minutes. A garage keeps the sun off my truck in the summer and the snow and ice off it in the winter. A garage is a good place to keep your truck. A garage is not a place to store boxes of trash that you'll never use or your kid's share of his or her divorce settlement.
When I married Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, one of the first things she did was to insist that I build a garage, with an office over it so I'd have a quiet, private place where I could work in comfort. That's a euphemism for --- she wanted me of the house. So now, when I'm not on the road, I spend most days up there in my office, at my computer, with a nice view of the driveway so I can see you when you drive in.
As you know, if you're a Maine native and you don't have three or four cars in front of your house, people who drive into your dooryard figure you can't be home. I've always thought I'd see more friends who stop in to visit if I had a junk car in the dooryard. "Oh yes, there's his car --- he must be home." But you have heard me say time and time again that if you don't see my truck in the dooryard, I'm probably home. If you see my Model T parked out front on warm days, I'm probably home.
Here's the way it used to go. I'd see you drive in. I'd jump up from my computer, run to the door, put my shoes on, run down the stairs, run out of the garage --- just in time to see the back end of your car pull out of my driveway.
I thought about getting one of those spiked parking lot devices they have in cities. Drive in and the spikes drop down. Try to drive out and the spikes give you four flat tires. But a thing like that was too expensive. So I thought I'd put a broomstick down at the end of the driveway with some baling twine on the end it. I'd tie the other end of the twine to the chestnut tree. The broom would be lying down on the ground on the other side of the driveway from the chestnut tree. At the push of a button right beside my computer keyboard at my desk, an electric device would lift the broom and pull the twine taught across the driveway.
There would be a 2 foot square piece of cardboard on the twine that would say, "I'm Home" on it. You'd have to run it down to get out. I also considered hooking a speaker under the eaves of my garage. But I realized that most people who hear a voice coming out of nowhere would be scared out of their wits. "Hello there --- I'll be right up from the crypt."
And that was too complicated, too. So now, every morning before I go up to my office, I put out a big 3 foot by 3 foot sign, right where you have to see it when you drive in. It says: 22 Seconds = The amount of time it takes you to drive in, look around, decide that nobody is home, and drive out. 25 seconds =. The amount of time it takes me to see you drive in, get up from my computer, go to the door, put on my shoes, run downstairs in time to see the rear end of your car going out.
No, you still won't get out of the car when you drive in. And you still won't toot you horn, like high school boys used to do when they'd pick up your daughter for a date. But you do read the sign which gives me that three extra seconds I need to get out there in front of your car.
But now I think I'm even going to take down that sign. Last week someone ran over my foot.
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Hi,
This is Amanda, the woman wrestler at the ACW show in Gray. We didn't get a chance to talk, what with all the running around I had to do for the show.
Tony Atlas asked me to email you. We have our own ring now and are going to run another show on Oct 26th, this time at the Newbegin Center at 7 pm. He wanted me to ask if you would like to get together with him and myself for lunch or dinner one day and talk.
thank you & take care, Amanda
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Election time is drawing near. Chellie Pingree and Susan Collins commercials are running back to back on every channel in Maine. And if you have seen many of their commercials you might have noticed that they are very similar. Susan Collins' commercials look like they were written and produced by someone who really wants Susan Collins to win, and Chellie Pingree's commercials look like they were written and produced by someone who really wants Susan Collins to win.
I make it my business to avoid political commentary on this program, but I've got to do it tonight. I don't know about you, but I want someone in office who can keep promises. Someone who says something and then does it. No fooling around. No excuses. My candidate would be Alan Greenspan. You have probably forgotten that two or so years ago even poor people were rich and only the very rich were not happy. Alan Greenspan and his rich friends realized that it was dangerous to permit working people to have a piece of the pie. So he said that our economy was in danger of boiling over and that he'd slow things down. And he certainly did.
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I see that my friend Jackson Gillman will be appearing at the Three Apples Storytelling Festival in Harvard on September 28. Years ago Jackson got me to tell stories at one of those festivals in Cambridge. I'll never forget it. The people there were products of generations of moldy old money. They dressed in hand woven clothing that you'd only see in an Ingmar Bergman movie about the middle ages. They munched on carrot sticks. The air was redolent with brown rice and raw garlic. When Jackson got up on stage and introduced me, he said that they were about to see something, the likes of which they had never seen before. I took the microphone and confessed that what Jackson had just said was true: "This is probably the first time any of you here have seen a storyteller who eats meat."
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I think it's nice to live in a country where we can enjoy a two party system. You know more about this than I do, and you could explain that for thousands of years, ever since people have congregated in villages, there have been two or more party systems. This is because you need a party that represents your interests. If you are working in a quarry digging out stone to build houses for your king and his friends, your aspirations and ways of looking at things are going to differ from those of your king and his friends.
This results in a power struggle between a political party of those who have and an opposing political party of those who would like to have. There's nothing wrong with this. It is a natural and normal function --- in even a society of baboons.
Something happened on 9-11 that illustrates this dichotomy, and every time I see a picture of the World Trade Towers or hear them mentioned, I'm going to think of it. And I'm also going to think of it every time I vote for any politician as long as I live. Remember what happened when the plane struck one of those buildings and people jumped up and headed for the exits? A voice came over the sound system telling them that the crisis was over --- go back to work. That --- was management talking.
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Public Health Announcement here. Do you pay any attention to people who tell you that smoking is bad for you? I'm not addicted to nicotine, so I know how easy it would be for me to stop smoking.
Do you pay any attention to people who tell you that you should exercise 30 minutes a day? I can remember years ago seeing video of the terrible life people had in China. Showed old people getting up at the crack of dawn to do calisthenics. What a horrible life poor old people lead there in Communist China. But there is nothing better for the human body than jumping around for 30 minutes every day. You know it. I know it. Do I plan to exercise? No. No time. On those rare, but delicious occasions when The Almost Perfect Woman serves me corn on the cob do I intend to eat it without slathering it with salt and butter? No. Even though I know that eating animal fat and not getting any exercise is almost as bad for you as smoking. I know this is true because my friend Jazz Man Ames just told me so.
My friend, Jazz Man Ames, had a stroke this week. He is 62. In 1957 when I got out of the Coast Guard, I went to Rochester where I signed up to take clarinet lessons at Eastman. I was a very homely young man and was unable to meet girls, something that I thank God for now, but which was very frustrating at the time. So I invited my friend and 4th cousin twice removed Jazz Man Ames to come to Rochester because he was a nice looking guy and I knew it wouldn't be long before there would be a whole bevy of lovelies knocking at our door. Within four days Jazz Man Ames met Sal, whom he married. So that was the end of that plan. I escaped Rochester. He didn't. Because of me he worked in the Rochester post office for 40 years instead of lobstering in the St. George River. Jazz Man Ames is one of those people whose life would definitely have been altogether different if it had not been for me.
When I called Jazz Man Ames, the first thing he said was, "You don't want this."
When you have a stroke, you find that you get your pants on backwards. It's a horror. You take putting on your pants for granted but with a stroke you can't do simple things that you used do. You can't grab nothing with your right arm. It's bad. You can't cut your steak.
I was naturally interested in what he'd been eating. Donuts and cake. He ate lots of donuts and cake. Drinks a lot of that horrible sugar free cola stuff. I'm safe there. I don't do donuts or cake or soda out of cans. Some people can eat anything and everything. And, he said, I did. My cholesterol was 340 --- should have been 200, sugar was 400, should have been 140. He says that salt hardens up your arteries.
I asked him if he knew he was headed for trouble and he said he did. One of these people who won't go to the doctor. Had to go 10 years ago for pneumonia and they said, hey you got to get in here. Your cholesterol is high. Just like that skinny woman in the TV commercial who gets out of the limo and drops in her tracks.
But of course Jazz Man Ames didn't pay any attention to cutting back any more than you or I would. Are you going to change? No. Am I going to change? No. I'm only passing this along to you so I won't have to be the only one who worries about it.
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September 27, 2002 Radio Script
October 4, 2002 Radio Script
October 11, 2002 Radio Script
October 18, 2002 Radio Script
October 25, 2002 Radio Script
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