Riding Harleys with Jesus Christ and Nixon

Not long ago, a friend and I were discussing world-famous personalities and he asked me who would be my choice if I could sit down in private conversation with one celebrated person.  Without hesitation, I  answered "Warren Buffett!" 

Then I qualified my pick:  he had to be drunk and in the mood to give away money.

So my friend redefined his terms. Historical and dead. 

Well, then.  An obvious pick might have been Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, when the fellow asked me to select a figure from the past, I immediately said, "Jesus Christ!" Then I added, "That's a tough one."

Of course, there are those who would take exception to placing Jesus on the Dead List.  Jesus is risen!  they would say.  He's alive!

But if we're going to split fundamentalist hairs, Jesus was dead from Good Friday afternoon to Easter Sunday morning.  So technically speaking he earns a spot on my friend's "historical and dead " list.



But actually I wouldn't want to waste a pick on Jesus, since I plan to one day meet him anyhow. And it won't make any difference whether or not he's drunk and giving away money.

So after much pondering, I went out on a limb: I told him my choice would have to be Richard Nixon.

Either my friend was astounded by this or he, too, was voicing his preference for Jesus Christ.


"Richard Nixon," I told him, "had a great and twisted political mind. It would be a hoot to slam down a few beers and shoot the breeze with Tricky Dick. Besides, it was said that Nixon understood the game of football better than most NFL coaches."


So there we have it. Nixon was my final answer. But that wasn't the final question.


As we talked about past history (is there any other type of history, by the way?),  the "what if" game got more interesting when we started discussing our teenage years in the 1960's.


I mentioned that it would have been fun to hitchhike cross-country and have seen San Francisco during the Summer of Love, when hippies converged on Haight-Ashbury and bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead were changing the face of music and ushering in the psychedelic age.

My friend asked me, "What if you could go back and do things differently? Would you have tried LSD?"


I guess he was just assuming that I've never actually dropped acid. 


"Yes I would," I replied. "But only before 1966 when it was legal and widely used by the CIA and the United States Army for mind control experiments. I'm still an upstanding citizen and a patriot at heart."


Then we talked about moments in history that we wish we could have witnessed first hand. My friend mentioned such diverse events as the parting of the Red Sea and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.


Me? Woodstock. Those were three magical days in history that will never be duplicated in any way, shape or form. 

I would like to have been there,  listening to the music in the midst of those 300,000 young people peacefully pressed together in the heat and the rain and the mud the sweat and... I guess, on the other hand, watching the video isn't too bad, either.


And I would like to have stood along the mourning route and saluted when that train passed by, carrying Robert Kennedy's body on the journey to his final resting place,  along with America's hopes and dreams that had been derailed while the train rolled on into the Senator's last sunset.


I've wished, too, that I had learned to drive a motorcycle. Movies like "Easy Rider" and books such as "On the Road" instilled a wanderlust in many of us in our younger years and we could see ourselves cruising the byways of America on our Harleys with life clipping along, our faces set hard against the wind.


Actually, the only time I ever drove a motorcycle was when I was 16 years old and a friend just bought a Honda 90. I lost control of it almost immediately, starting in an alley and ending up in my friend's back yard where I repositioned his little sister's swing set.


I never tried again. I should have.


In reality, we can't go back and change things. Choices and decisions are made as we go along and they become like handprints that harden in the concrete of the sidewalk we follow through life. Good or bad, we've made our mark. That is how history develops.


But playing what-if can be kind of fun. For a brief moment we can go back. We can change things in our minds and make them turn out the way we want. We can even ride Harleys with Jesus Christ and Nixon.

Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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How The Game Is Played

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I don't like bars. That's not to say I'm against drinking. I'm half Irish. Often, my cup is at least half full.

I love football. You'd know that only from talking to me about football and only if you brought up the subject, or from reading a column such as this.

You wouldn't know it because you saw me in a drinking establishment with a gazillion bar stool quarterbacks watching (and coaching) the game on a Big Screen TV.  No, you won't see me there.

I will watch any NFL or Division I-A college football game any time. It's not a personal prerequisite that I be a fan of one team or the other.

I watch from home where I am the sole football fan (and beer drinker). I will adjust to any chair in front of any TV in the house. It makes no difference. 

Over the years, bars have become too trendy. They have become Theme Bars, usually called Sports Bars and they have cute names like "Sluggers" and "The Dugout" and "The End Zone", and any town of any size has them.

As Jimmy Durante used to say, "Ev'rybuddies try'n ta get into da act." Everybody has a gimmick. I guess that's just part of the Wide World of Commerce.

When I first drank legally and socially, it was in a bar in Fullerton, Nebraska, the town where I lived. Fullerton boasted a population of less than 1500 citizens and the bar was called, quite simply,  J&L Tavern. That was before the age of cable and dish TV and Pay-Per-View and if J&L Tavern even had a television set above the bar, it was probably a 19" Black-and-White model.

If you wanted to talk sports, you could talk baseball with the bartender, Bags Umstead. He was a good bartender with a great memory. Once you'd drank at J&L, Bags could match any face with its drinking pleasure.

Bags knew baseball. That's how his nickname originated. He not only knew the sport, he could have played it. Instead, he ended up tending bar at J&L Tavern in Fullerton, Nebraska, population 1400-something.

There was probably a sad story there. But that's what life is. People and their stories, happy or sad.

Hoisting a couple of beers at the bar or in a booth at J&L was tolerable.  Pleasant, actually. The tavern had that small town ambiance and the patrons were good company.

Mainly, no one there put on airs. I don't like putting on airs.

In his memoir, "A Drinking Life", writer Pete Hamill recounts how he got through his first few weeks without booze by reciting these words every morning: "I will live my life from now on, I will not perform it."

I've thought about that often. We are performers.

Even Shakespeare said, "The whole world's a stage".  He knew.

Sometimes none of us are real. We all have an innate talent for acting and that's how we react to life and its slapdash twists of fate.

Perhaps when we get to heaven, there will be an Academy Awards type of ceremony and we'll all be nominated. I hope I don't win.

When I sat in a bar like J&L Tavern, I didn't feel like I was waiting in the wings. My friends and I conversed, we listened to the jukebox, we played shuffleboard. It would generally be a quiet, good time.

Beer was two bits a draw and if we were hungry, a buck and a quarter could get us a good burger and some pretty tasty French fries. No nachos, no tortilla chips and salsa, no fancy drinks with paper umbrellas and snickering ha-ha names like "Sex on the Beach", "Hanky Panky", or "Flaming Volcano".

The Sports Bar today offers a much different milieu than the small town J&L Tavern of yesterday. With fully staffed kitchens touting grand Tex-Mex menus, bartenders who will concoct anything you want to drink and offer up a name for it as well, and a half dozen ESPN-locked TVs viewable from any chair in the joint, the Sports Bars are rocking.

But one thing they lack is intimacy. Because people don't live life, they perform it.

People like to be on and a Sports Bar is just another backdrop to act out life against. There will be a stage full of noisy fellow actors there, brimming with liquor and hot wings, and the Big Game will bring out the worst of both insecurity and arrogance in the room.

Each play will be sent around the tables for review and a subsequent faulty analysis by some of the most brazenly vocal, yet unknowledgeable fans in the city. The biggest and most empty barrels can be found on any given Game Day in any given Sports Bar.

Not only do they not know how to enjoy a game, they don't know how to drink. But the Sports Bar is their stage. So they act.

And I stay home, where I can enjoy a few beers in peace and listen to the play-by-plays and analyses of qualified professionals.

If I want to have a drink with friends, I'd just as soon seek out a bar like J&L Tavern, where there is no pretentiousness, no Big Screen TV, no fancy cocktails, and no roaring crowd.

And if I want to talk Sports, I'll talk to the bartender who has a sad story and doesn't tell it. But he sure knows the game.

---

Copyright Wendel Potter

Humor Put On Hold

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This column appeared in the Grand Island (Nebraska) Independent on September 12, 2001.  At that time, I was writing a weekly humor column for the newspaper and the 9/11 attacks occurred just as I was putting the finishing touches on that week's column.  

We all have memories of where we were when we heard the dreadful news.  This is the column I ended up writing for publication:

Good morning.  It's Tuesday, September 11, 2001 as I write this.

This morning, I was about to email  my editor with the final draft of this week's column, a screed about the state of this past weekend's college football events.

It was infused with humor, the type of writing I generally perform in this space on Wednesday.  It's what's expected of me.  I had worked many hours on the piece and was happy with the outcome.

But prior to hitting the send button,  I glanced at my TV which was tuned to MSNBC and what I saw and heard numbed me. You know the story, and it will have been updated thousands of times between now as I write this and tomorrow when this column appears in the hands of my readers.

While humor can be a saving grace in difficult times, and it has always been the proud American way to carry on with a brave face, I felt personally that it would be unconscionable to greet my Wednesday morning readers with tongue in cheek, and so asked my editor to extend my deadline that I may produce something more palatable, given the horrific times in which we are now awash.
 
At this time (Tuesday), I have no idea what lies ahead for our country in the face of the heinous and blistering attacks that have served lethal notice on the United States. It just isn't a time to laugh.

At this early point in time, there is no "best medicine" to bind the wounds that have been inflicted by such inhuman savagery. And what concerns me is the aftermath.

And that aftermath, folks, will perpetually linger in the seams of a dark, dragging cloud of fear and hysteria because the United States is a symbol for all that is good and free and that makes it a target for everything that is evil and corrupt and barbaric.

This morning, in the midst of trying to make sense of this jagged puzzle thrust on us by terrorists of the worst variety, I received word that Grand Island Senior High had been evacuated, but had not heard why. Having a child enrolled there, I jumped in my pickup and headed across town, thinking that students were probably being dismissed early, as a precaution, in light of the attack on our country.

When I drew near to the school, I spotted a city police officer involved in the task of keeping traffic off that stretch of College Street that runs past the south side of the high school. I pulled over to the curb and got out of my truck to ask him about the details of the evacuation, as it appeared that now throngs of students were re-entering the school.
 
The officer confirmed that school officials had received an anonymous bomb threat.  He assured me that everything was all right and classes would be resuming according to routine.

I suspect that this won't be the only bomb threat phoned in to schools and institutions across the nation today. There are sick people out there who thrive on this type of malevolent upheaval and disorder and while they may have no intention of actually carrying out their threats, they have murderous hearts nevertheless.

I am appalled, perhaps naively so, that this type of thing would happen in this community--here in the Heartland, in the middle of Nebraska The Good Life--and that, while we watch our national state of affairs with nail-biting interest and unease, we also have to lend credence to the catcalls of a lame and twisted mindset that apparently exists right here in any one of our neighborhoods.

What has happened to our society that we must not only dread the sophisticated treachery of the outside world, but also must have our fears and anxieties compounded by the psychotic actions of a few degenerates existing unworthily as fellow-citizens within the fabric of our very community and who get their obscene jollies from disrupting the lives of school administrators, faculty,  and a couple of thousand students -- not to mention their concerned families -- in the wake of a national alert?

This is a time when Americans need to stand together and work to somehow get past this tragic episode in our nation's history. It's certainly not a time to mine some kind of perverted humor by creating even more calamity for our countrymen. And those who do are criminal punks of the lowest order.

I wish we could have shared a laugh today. But nothing is funny.

Maybe next week. I'm afraid it's going to take a little time.

__________

Applesauce and Arthritis: A Hands On Experience

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My dad had it.  He took pills.

My mom had it. She suffered in silence.

And now, I must have it. I don't take pills. But I refuse to be silent. So I'll get it out of my system now: "OWWWWWW!"

Next weekend, I'm having another birthday.  No, birthdays are not what my dad took pills for. Well, if he did, they must have worked. He hasn't had a birthday in 25 years.

I don't want any pills, though. I don't want to stop having birthdays. I just don't want any festivities.

Every year, my wife celebrates my birthday by baking a Black Forest Cake. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a two-layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, cherries, and whipped cream. For that, it would be worth having several birthdays a year.

But, I've reached that age now when birthdays have begun to serve notice on the human condition. Oh, it's nothing that magically strikes you on the very anniversary of your birth. It happens gradually over time, but birthdays are a reminder that you're getting older. 

And you're experiencing pain.

The thing I feel I have that my parents both had is arthritis. Or maybe it's rheumatism. I've never been real clear on the difference between the two. Who knows? Maybe I have both.

Whatever it is I have, I'm convinced I have it because it hurts.

"Where does it hurt?" you might ask. That's what a doctor might ask, too, if I bothered to see a doctor.

To you, I'd respond, "In my joints." End of response.

If I saw a doctor, I'd respond, "In my joints ... and now my pocketbook."

So you see, it's less painful if I tell you and not a doctor.

And if my doctor is reading this, now he knows where I hurt. And he can't charge me for it.

Now, the reason I bring all of this up is because of the heck of a time I had the other evening while trying to open a jar of applesauce.

I was making my famous Applesauce Pork Chops. Obviously, my recipe calls for applesauce. I had just purchased a large family size jar of it that morning at the grocery store.

I prepared my chops in my special coating and laid them out on a baking pan. The final step before baking was to spread applesauce over the chops.

I gripped the fat jar of applesauce in my left hand and grasped the cap in my right hand and twisted. The lid didn't budge.

After several unsuccessful twists, my right hand was aching. Which it does when I grip anything for any length of time.

Not to be defeated, however, I held the jar in the crook of my arm for more leverage. I twisted. More aching. The jar lid was stubborn. My hand was growing weaker.

I ran the jar under water. I rapped the lid with the handle of a table knife. All the tricks my arthritic mother taught me.

This baby was definitely sealed at the factory for freshness. And I was losing my grip!  


Finally, the lid worked loose and we had applesauce on our pork chops. Of course, my dear wife had to cut up my chops for me because I couldn't hold a knife in my aching hand.

So what are the applesauce manufacturers in America thinking when they screw the jar lids permanently on their product? Do they want us arthritic folks eating their applesauce or not?

Oh, we could buy the cutesy little six pack of applesauce in the 2-ounce plastic tubs with the easy, tear open foil top. But have you compared the price of those six-packs to a family size jar? You get a total of 12 tablespoons of applesauce at three times what you pay for the big jar!

But you can't open the big jar! Your hand hurts too much! And now you've wasted the money! So what good is it?

That, folks, is the trick! You're forced to buy the more expensive applesauce. And you may as well take the big jar and give it to a food drive and pray to God it doesn't end up in the hands of some penniless, arthritic nomad who dies of starvation in a back alley somewhere while desperately trying to pry off the lid!

I don't know about you, but I've decided that, as I get older and my hands get more arthritic, I will live without applesauce rather than pay through the nose for the easy-open six-pack. There are other, more accessible fruits, you know!

Anyone for my famous Banana Pork Chops?


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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WENDEL AND THE OPEN ROAD: DRIVING DRIVES ME CRAZY

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Call it age, call it my own surly brand of nonconformity, call it what you will, but I'm getting to where I just don't care about driving long distances anymore. 

Given the ever-increasing volume of traffic in our congested city, I can get a little uptight just driving across town. At times, a trip to the grocery store can seem like a road trip to hell.

Of course there's the usual mindless maniacs who reinforce these notions. You know, like people who are paying more attention to their cell phones than to the middle of the road down which they are driving. 

Then there's your average tailgater who's just an accident waiting to happen -- and I hope it doesn't involve my tail gate. I don't need that kind of tailgate party.

How about the motorist who sees fit to haphazardly toss a burning cigarette out the window and into the street -- where it rolls under my vehicle! (Hey! I drive junk! I could have a gasoline leak, you know!) 

And let's not leave out the knuckleheads who've decided that stop lights are not meant for them.

These are just a few examples. It's not that we've never had drivers like these before out there on our roads. It's just that there's now so many of them. They have multiplied like rabbits and there's just not enough blacktop to accommodate their species.

I have to admit, though, that my wife apparently doesn't consider me to be the greatest driver on the road, either. I noticed she's put a bumper sticker on my car that says, "How's my driving? If you don't feel I'm driving in a safe manner, then please call my wife and she'll come and get me." She has her own 800 number for just such an emergency.

It also doesn't help that I can't see as well as I used to. Oh, I can pass the DMV's eye examination with flying colors. But then, so could Stevie Wonder.

Driving at night is particularly bothersome. So I avoid it as much as I can.

Thirty years ago, there was just nothing like driving at night. If I was heading out on a trip, I'd opt for taking off in the early evening and driving throughout most of the night time hours. It was relaxing.

Not these days, my friends. If I can help it, the car is going into the garage at sundown and staying put until dawn.

Now when I retire, I'd really like to do some traveling around this great country of ours. I just don't know if I'll be up to driving at all by then.

The Greyhound Bus company used to advertise with this slogan: Take the bus and leave the driving to us.

That sounds tempting. But I've just never liked buses. You always end up surrounded by the same assortment of characters on a bus: a screaming child, a wino who's wet his pants or a half-crazy person who mumbles incoherently and thinks he sees bats.

In the movies, the bus' passenger list always included a playful little boy in a cowboy hat, a subdued hippie with a guitar, two nuns and a Marine. They were always harmless.

I've never ridden on that bus.

Former NFL coach and retired football broadcaster John Madden prefers the bus. He hates to fly.

But John Madden OWNS his bus. And it's like a small ranch-style house on wheels. He probably keeps two nuns and a Marine on retainer just to ride along.

And John Madden doesn't have to drive the bus. He pays someone to do that. And it's not Stevie Wonder.

I've always had a fascination with the Open Road. But I guess I should have pursued my journeys long ago, when I was younger and the highways and the byways were safer. And the Road was much more Open.

Charles Kuralt was one of my journalistic heroes. Or maybe I just envied him.

Kuralt drove around in a motor home (I'm sure it was at the expense of the CBS television network) and filed heartwarming little stories from towns all over the nation, some that weren't even a dot on a map. 

But while putting in all that windshield time, he saw the country and met its people and that was called work. Nice work if you can get it.

Now that Charles Kuralt is gone, maybe there's a lane open somewhere out there on the road for a wandering writer, one who wants to see every corner of his native land and meet interesting people and file heartwarming stories.

I'm ready to go. All I need now to fulfill my dream is a motor home, a map (forget the GPS--I'm old-fashioned) and a laptop computer.

Oh, and a driver. Anybody know what Stevie Wonder is doing these days?



Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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Dylan, Dog of Choice

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It's been five years this week that we let our dog go.  This is the column I wrote shortly afterwards.

Dylan, the coal black Retriever, died a couple of weeks ago. He was over 13 years old, but he hadn't lost much of his step. Then he got real sick in a real hurry. We barely had time to tell him goodbye.

We got Dylan when he was a day shy of five weeks. My wife and sons begged for a puppy.

They had to beg because I was never a dog person and was adamant that we not have a pet. I grew up with a fear of dogs, then developed a plain dislike for them.

You might understand how pathetic it is to see two small boys and their mother begging. You finally cave in just so they'll stop following you all over, crawling on their knees and wringing their hands.

It was embarrassing. Especially at the supermarket.

So I gave them the green light and they located a gentleman across town who was giving away puppies and they brought one home. He was a tiny, trembling ball of fur so black you could barely see his eyes. They named him Dylan.

"How did you happen to choose this one?" I asked my youngest son, who was six at the time.

"I didn't choose him," Ryan said. "He chose me."

Then Dylan chose me.

We became friends and it lasted a long, long time.

I could tell you all kinds of stories about Dylan, but most of them would mimic stories you've heard time and again from other dog owners. It's like the proud father who never stops showing wallet pictures of his kids. There's no point in being overbearing about my dog and his canine antics.

Besides, I made Dylan famous in the pages of the Sunday edition of our local newspaper.  I wrote a weekly column for the paper for nearly ten years and many, many times I wrote about my dog. Folks in this community got acquainted with Dylan.

In those newspaper stories, Dylan was always smarter than me. He was philosophical and wise. He spoke a language I understood and he drank beer.

I may have stretched the truth in those columns, however. Although, he really did like beer and in some respects he really was a hell of a lot smarter than me.

Spring and summer with Dylan were my favorite times. I would spend a lot of time in the back yard. He was always perched next to my lawn chair. I could sit there and pet him for hours. He would let me.

Dylan slept in the garage in his big pet carrier. I let him out every morning. I let him in every night. Over 13 years...that's a lot of mornings and a lot of nights.

My oldest son, Adam, fed Dylan every afternoon right on schedule. Over 13 years...that was a lot of afternoons.

I still have to remind myself not to go out to the garage in the morning and let the dog out.

Some afternoons, Adam still catches himself on his way to fill Dylan's supper dish.

My wife still glances out the kitchen window looking to see if Dylan is curled up in his favorite spot along the shady side of the garage.

On his way to work in the mornings, Ryan still stops at the gate and looks twice before he realizes that Dylan isn't going to come bounding up for a goodbye hug.

Dylan's water bowl and supper dish, his leash and his rubber ball, along with his big pet carrier, are all in the garage.

It's the back yard that's so empty.

---

Copyright 2006 Wendel Potter

WENDEL'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE CONTINUED: THE HERNIA CHRONICLES

________

 PART TWO

 
(If you haven't read Part One of my adventures in surgery, please scroll down.  Part One is published below, following Part Two)


The echocardiogram was done later in the week at Saint Francis Medical Center, our local hospital.  I always feel more confident when a hospital bears the name of a holy person. 

Being a Catholic and a great believer in saints, I was a little miffed that Francis himself couldn’t take the time to stop by and wish me well.  I guess he was too busy out in the meditation garden shaking those damn birds off his finger.

The echocardiogram required me to lie on my side, with wires taped to my chest.  The technician then rested an ultrasonic wand on various parts of my upper torso while she dialed up digital images on a machine.  My heart in all its beating glory appeared on a screen.

There were reds, blues, and greens shooting across the image.  “It looks like the Weather Channel’s Dopplar radar,” I said.

My wife, who was watching from a chair across the room, said, “And I think you’re suffering from an upper level disturbance.”

As it turned out, the echocardiogram revealed nothing serious.  The worst part were the jitters leading up to it.

I had imagined the worst, which as I understood, would be a leaky heart valve.  That would require surgery far more serious than a hernia repair.

But that was not the case and I got the okay to proceed with the surgery I had signed up for.  Suddenly, I was ecstatic that I was having my hernia repaired.  In no way did I want to title this column The Hernia (and Heart) Chronicles!

So I was told to report back a week later to Saint Francis (the hospital, not the guy) for the real deal.  I was given my instructions and sent on my un-merry way.

Surprisingly, these days the pre-op restrictions aren’t that bad.  I didn’t have to begin my fast until midnight.  I always fast after midnight.  It’s fasting during Lent that kills me.

The evening before, we enjoyed our routine Sunday chicken dinner.  I have to admit, my appetite wasn’t particularly whetted. 

I did not relish the idea that, within 14 hours, I’d be anesthetized.  That would be a new experience for me. 

Painless?  Oh, sure.  Waking up afterwards?  Sorry, no guarantees.

I began to wonder if this could be my final meal! You’d think, with that in mind, I’d take seconds or maybe even thirds. 

Just in case this truly would be the last supper.

But when the meal was over, instead of breaking bread and giving it to my disciples, I told my wife,  “I want pie.”

And there was pie.  And it was good. 

I ate the last piece at 11:59.

We arrived at the hospital bright and early the next morning.  I was immediately shown to what would be my recovery room. 

Oh good!  Apparently, they expected me to recover!

The nurses stopped by to check my blood pressure and my pulse, to draw blood and to bore a hole in my wrist.  This is where they would put the IV (or 4, as I like to call it) that would relax me just before they killed me.

Before long, I was led to a comfortable bed with warm sheets.  The IV was started and within seconds, I was truly relaxed. 

I can’t tell you much about what happened next.  I remember a mask being placed over my face.

If they asked me to count to ten backwards or some such nonsense as that, I didn’t hear them.  I had my own recitation prepared:

“Now I lay me down to sleep……..”

An hour later I was back in the recovery room and was offered coffee and toast.  The coffee was a welcome beverage after the fast.

The toast was a different story.  I think St. Francis himself baked it, back when he was still alive in the 13th century.

My wife said I dozed off a lot during the course of the afternoon.  One nurse was concerned that I wasn’t responding as brightly as she would liked to have seen.


Well, excuse me!  I'm sorry I couldn't have been more chipper...maybe performed a song and dance for the entire surgery ward!

Then there was the matter of plumbing.  She told my wife that they wouldn’t dismiss me until I had peed.

I’m here to tell you.  When you’ve had very little to drink over a 12-15 hour period, and you did your stand up latrine duty a few times, the last just before being taken to the surgery room…..well, the bladder is empty and it’s sending no signal to the brain or anywhere else.

Not to mention that every time I stood in that cold hospital john, I started getting the shakes so bad, I was questioning whether this was actually St. Francis Hospital or the Betty Ford Center.

By late afternoon, the nurse ordered a bladder scan.  I was hooked up to a machine and the technician proceeded to move a wand around my abdominal area.

“Hmmmm,” she said.

I’ve never liked the word hmmmm when used by someone in the medical profession.  It often telegraphs concern.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m not getting a reading,” she said.  She smiled.  “I guess you have no bladder.”

“It’s probably shriveled up and turned to dust,” I said.

Finally, she hit pay dirt.  Yes, I had a bladder and, while not much, there was something sloshing around in there.

So the nurse called my surgeon with the report.  He explained that I wasn’t holding enough to create any urges and to send me home.

Which she did.  And late that evening, Wendel’s Waterworks returned to a normal state.

Had I known the nurse's home phone number, I would have called her at home and got her out of bed, just to report the happy news.

It’s been nearly three weeks now.  I’m returning to work on Monday.

I’ve gotten kind of used to hanging out at home, resting in a recliner and hitting the correct buttons on the remote without even looking.

I’ve made friends with Regis and Kelly, the ladies from The View, and got to see Oprah’s Farewell.   I’m getting caught up on the news and my reading.  I’ve had some great conversations with my friends on Facebook.

But now its time to return to life as I knew it, which was doctor-free (and there are two words that rarely go together).

I’ve had enough excellent adventures to last me the rest of my life.


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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WENDEL'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE: THE HERNIA CHRONICLES

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PART ONE

Inguinal hernia--hernia in which a loop of intestine enters the inguinal canal; the most common type of hernia in males
                                                                            ------Webster’s Dictionary

“This f**king hurts!”
                                  -------Noah Webster





It all started a couple of weeks ago when I paid our family physician a visit because I had developed a noticeable bulge inside my pants.  Unfortunately, this bulge wasn’t of the nature that would make most men proud.

My doctor told me to drop my drawers.  He put on a latex glove with that clinical, resounding snap that brings you to attention and then he proceeded to examine the….well, testicular area.

In the old days, doctors always prefaced this examination with this command:  “Turn your head and cough”.  My doctor apparently felt I was well mannered enough not to hack in his face, so he just said, “Cough”.

“You have a hernia,” he told me.  “And next time, turn your head before you cough.  It’s the cold and flu season!”

I asked him why, if a hernia appeared to pop out in the pelvic area, was it necessary to feel my gonads.  He said nothing but wore a glimmer of a smile.  I hoped I wasn’t being scammed.

Of course, I knew what the next step was.  He was going to prescribe magic pills that would cause the hernia to disappear in 3-5 days to never return.

That step was bypassed.  He recommended surgery!

“Well,” I told my wife, “this shoots my track record all to hell!”

58 years old and I’d never spent a minute inside of a hospital except for visiting.  Visit the sick is what the nuns told us to do in Catholic school.  I didn’t mind that rule, because it made it good to be the visitors and not the patients.

Visiting the sick was one of the “corporal works of mercy” that the Catholic church said we should perform.  The Church also said, “But stay out of the goddamn hospital gift shop.  Those prices will eat you alive!”

This is why I like to do my hospital visiting shortly after Memorial Day.  On the way to the hospital, I can drive through the cemetery and pick up some really nice flowers.  Quite affordable that way.

So the next day, it was off to the surgeon for a consultation.  Actually, my wife chose this particular doctor because she knew him and his family personally. 

He seemed pleasant enough, but what bothered me was his name:  Dr. Goering. 

Goering, Goering….hmmm.  My mind was racing through its index and checking its files under “World War II”.

Ah, yes!  I thought, Could he be related somehow to Hermann Goering, the head of the German armed forces during World War II and sadistic henchman to Adolph Hitler?

Possibly from the same family as that same Hermann Goering who was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and who cowardly committed suicide by taking cyanide rather than face execution?

Well, at least he saved the taxpayers a few bucks, I’ll give him that.

So I tested the "good" doctor.  “How are things in the Luftwaffe?” I asked craftily.

He looked at my wife and asked,  “Is he currently taking any medication or perhaps fallen on his head recently?”

My wife twirled her finger in a big circle alongside her head and rolled her eyes in my direction.
 
Surely there could be no family ties between the evil Goering and this surgeon, I tried convincing myself.

But then…. he got out the latex glove, slipped it over a pair of vise grips and latched on to the fellas down below like there was no tomorrow!  He didn’t even ask me to cough, let alone turn my head!

Good thing, too.  I couldn’t have coughed.  My esophagus was paralyzed.

He squeezed some more.

Now that my cahones felt like a couple of tangerines in a Cuisinart, I decided that there was no way Dr. Goering could share the family tree with the notorious Hermann.  This guy was way too brutal.

[Note to reader:  the following italicized remarks are my thoughts only and not audible, verbal expressions.  This was not because I didn’t want the doctor to hear me.  Rather, as a result of what felt like having my testicles run over by a dump truck,  I was rendered speechless and barely able to take a deep breath for several hours.]

“You have two hernias,” he happily announced.  “What I’ll do is a laparoscopy.”

There you go, talking secret German code!

“First I’ll make an incision under the belly button.”

Ah ha!  A naval attack!

“Then I go in with a camera…”

Oh crap, this is going to be on YouTube!  All it will take is one Tweet from this guy and my hernia surgery will go viral!  Broadcast throughout the Nazi underground!

“Once I can see the hernias, I’ll make two smaller incisions and go in and repair them.”

“How do you repair them?” my wife asked.

“When I’m inside, we’ll inflate his abdomen with gas.”

Couldn’t I just drink a couple of beers?  But no, he’s using a special gas!  The Nazis know all about those things!

“This allows me to see what’s going on inside his body.  I’ll push the protruded parts back inside the cavity, then insert a mesh lining.”

Sounds like he’s trying to catch mosquitoes!

“The mesh serves as a protective patch.”

Oh sure!  A patch that will systematically release an agent to my brain that will make me spill top government secrets!  Well, Goering, you’ll get nothing from me!

Dr. Goering asked me to hop up on the examining table.  He turned away and grabbed a stethoscope.  “You can sit up,” he said.  “You don’t need your feet in those stirrups.”

I told him the Kentucky Derby was coming up that Saturday and I was into interactive participation and I was getting into the feel of things.

“I just want to listen to your heart.”  He told me to take some deep breaths.

You’ve got to be kidding!

“Did you know you had a murmur?” he asked.

“Isn’t that one of those guys who dresses in black face and women‘s clothes?  They have a big parade in Philadelphia every New Year‘s Day.”

“That’s a Mummer,” he said.  “I’m hearing a murmur.”

The only murmur you’re hearing is the one sweeping through the Nazi-hunting crowd that’s gathered outside your door with pitchforks and bloodhounds.  They’ve found you out, Dr. Goering!

“What I’d like to do,” he said, “is make an appointment for you to have an echocardiogram.  It’s like an ultrasound of the heart that can show us how well the blood is pumping.  I don’t want to proceed with surgery until I know your heart is in good condition.”

This brought me to attention like the snapping of no latex glove could ever do.  Suddenly I felt no pain below my waist.  As a matter of fact, I felt nothing below my waist.

“My heart?” I asked.  “No doctor has ever heard a heart murmur inside my chest.  What does it mean?”

“Generally nothing, but for a murmur to develop this late in life, it’s best to check it out before we put you under anesthesia.”

Suddenly, Dr. Goering seemed like a decent, concerned individual.  He made some notes on my chart, then told us that his nurse would contact me with the day and time for my echocardiogram.

“The truth, doc,” I insisted.  “Do you think it’s anything serious?”

He shrugged and said, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

COMING SOON:  THE HERNIA CHRONICLES,  PART 2

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Wendel's Easter World: Random Thoughts and Resurrected Memories

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In honor of Easter Sunday, I've resurrected this column from my newspaper days.  I hope you enjoy it and a Happy Easter to you all.

There is a weird irony about Easter.

Easter Sunday is one of the most devoutly observed high holy days in the history of organized religion. It is a solemn celebration of the glorious return from the dead of Jesus, who has been proclaimed as the one, true King of the Jews.

And how do Christians honor the greatest Jew of all time? We serve ham.

I like ham. I've always liked Easter, too. When I was very small, Easter meant getting up early and searching for my Easter basket that had been filled with chocolate eggs and jelly beans and then skillfully hidden by my parents, under the pretense that the Easter Bunny had stopped by.

When I became old enough to go to church and began hearing the true Easter story, I just figured that the reason Jesus got up and out of the tomb early in the morning was so he could go hunting for his Easter basket.

Easter was always more than just a religious observance, though. It fired the starting gun for the spring/summer fashion season.

When I was growing up, everyone trotted out their best "Sunday go to meeting" finery on Easter. The church service, admit it or not, was nearly as much a festival of big fancy hats and a parade of new bright dresses as it was a worship session.

That was the women. Where men were concerned, Easter meant it was time to put away the dingy charcoal gray suit and sport a new blazer and lighter colored slacks.

Then, when the early 1970s rolled around, leisure suits made their grand entrance, along with spiffy white dress shoes. "White bucks" they called them in the 1950s when Pat Boone made them his trademark all year round.


Mercifully, their rebirth re-died after a few years. And there has been no resurrection since.

But the crown jewel in the Easter basket is the Resurrection story. While the colored eggs, a mythical bunny, marshmallow chicks and white bucks have all figured heavily into the holiday over the years, the biblical account of a man rising from the dead 2,000 years ago remains the bottom line for celebrating Easter Sunday.

I've been pondering the Resurrection of Jesus. If you read the New Testament's four gospels closely, you'll notice they tell an Easter Sunday story each a bit differently, one from the other.

The conflicts are slight:Who saw Jesus first? How many women went to the tomb? What time of morning was it? How many angels appeared at the tomb? What exactly did the women go to the tomb for? Were the women wearing their new spring hats?

Some historians say that the Gospel of Mark originally had no resurrection story, abruptly ending after the crucifixion, and that the final chapters were added by a different writer.

The apostle Thomas got the worst rap. We've all come to know him, traditionally, as Doubting Thomas, because he insisted he would not believe in the risen Lord until he had seen him and touched his wounds.

But no one else appeared to believe, either, until they themselves had seen Jesus. None of them really seemed to think he was coming back. As a matter of fact, in one gospel, Jesus chides all eleven, not just Thomas, for their lack of belief.

Of course, Thomas was disdained for other reasons. He was the only apostle to wear white bucks and a leisure tunic before Passover.

Now what if there had been no Resurrection story in any of the gospels? I'm not suggesting that there was no Resurrection, just wondering how we would react if Jesus had not bothered to appear in risen splendor to anyone?

Would any of his followers have still concluded that he had risen?

Would we today just naturally assume that Jesus had come out of the tomb and ascended to his father in heaven, even though no one could lay claim to having seen him?

Or would we conclude that he saw his shadow and went back in to the tomb for another six weeks of winter.

He said during his life that he would rise again on the third day. For a true believer, shouldn't that have been enough? He said, "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe."

The Easter story is one of the greatest stories ever told. But how great would the Christian faith be if it had not been told?  If Christians still believed, it would be great indeed.

Just food for thought. Now pass the ham.


Copyright 2004 by Wendel Potter

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Incredible Journeys: Wendel's World on Two Wheels

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When I was a kid there were two kinds of bicycles: boy’s and girl’s.

Oh, there was also the English Racer, that incredibly sleek bike with the thin tires and the ability to shift multiple gears, but that didn't really count.

The Racer was a rare commodity where I grew up. I can only remember one kid who had one and he was snooty.  He never even wore blue jeans.

There wasn't anything too exotic about your standard bicycle back then. Once in awhile, we'd go a little crazy and hang colored plastic streamers from the handle grips, or fasten a playing card to the wheel with a clothespin so the spokes would flick the card with each revolution and make, well, a flicking sound.

I never owned a brand new bicycle. My first bike was a hand-me-down from my brother and it served me well.

It didn't have training wheels. My friend Mike who lived across the back lot, had training wheels on his bike. I envied that sense of security.

But I learned without training wheels. I took a few spills, yet I had enough pride to ignore the scraped knees and elbows and climb back on the bike and try it again.  Each time, I travelled farther. Eventually, all the way through my boyhood.

For me and my pals, growing up in the 1950s and 60s in the heart of America, a bicycle was not just a vehicle of convenience that took us to school on a spring day or made quick work of a trip to the gas station for a bottle of pop. Having a bicycle enabled us to explore new avenues in our world.

Back in Iowa, that first bike of mine took me to a place on "the other side of the tracks." About two blocks from home, we crossed the tracks of the Milwaukee Railroad, then followed a dirt street that stretched for several blocks, where it intersected with the Rock Island tracks.

Once we had crossed over the Rock Island Line, we were pretty much outside of the city limits where we came upon a strange, square block of old houses, shabby and time-worn. Some were inhabited. Some were vacant and missing windows.

We dubbed this odd country neighborhood "Bums’ Camp," because as we explored one of the vacant houses which we imagined to be haunted with ghosts, we found the very real traces -- empty tin food cans and liquor bottles -- of hobos who had put up for the night in that house. We could easily imagine those grizzled old men eating beans for supper to settle the hunger in their stomachs.

We were too young, too innocent to consider how the hobos might take a long pull from a whisky bottle to whitewash their loneliness and dull the memories of the lives and loves they'd left behind them, distanced now by thousands of miles of steel rail, but quickly called to mind at the sound of a freight train chuffing through the night, its long, low whistle sad and mournful like muffled, lonely sobs.

When I was 12, we moved to Fullerton, a quiet rural town in Nebraska.  There our bikes took us to the river to fish. We'd hang a can of worms from our handlebars, then set off on our bikes, steering with one hand and holding a fishing rod with the other.

We had to trespass in order to reach our fishing hole. It was a matter of lifting our bikes over a barbed-wire fence and riding across a pasture among the farmer's cattle. If the farmer ever saw us, he didn't say anything or make his presence known. The cows didn't seem to care one way or the other.

We even rode in high school. Of course, I had graduated to a bigger bike by that time, but most bikes were still built pretty much in that same standard design. You got on them, pedaled and rode away.

When I was in my junior year, there was a group of us, guys and girls alike, who rode together all over town.  I think we called our outfit The Bike Club.  Damn catchy.

Often, when the weather grew warm and the daylight hours increased, we pedaled northwest of Fullerton to a bluff on the northern edge of town that overlooked the Cedar River Valley.

The place was called Lover's Leap, so named for Indian lovers who, according to legend, met their death when a fierce herd of buffalo forced them to leap from the top of the bluff. At least that's the story I once heard.  Nobody seemed to care what happened to the buffalo.

From Lover's Leap, which was marked with a big wooden cross, you could gaze for miles across the tops of pine trees, over rich pasture land and a shimmering river bed. In the evening you could watch the sun set for a long, beautiful time as it lazily slipped behind the green bluffs that rolled west into the next county, and perhaps on forever.

I couldn't begin to tally up the miles I've biked over the years. No matter. It was the destinations that counted.

It was where I went, what I saw, what I imagined, what I dreamed, what I learned. Those old sturdy, single-speed bicycles I rode over the years took me on short, but incredible journeys that forged enough memories of boyhood to fill a scrapbook for a lifetime.


Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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A Ghost of a Chance Of A Chance Of A Ghost

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"Starlight, Star Bright, we hope to see a ghost tonight!"

We were kids back in Iowa and we'd shout that phrase like an anthem when the summery dusk had swept through the neighborhood. I'm sure that some neighbors, the older early-to-bed-early-to-rise folks, were often startled out of a peaceful slumber when the late evening crackled with our twilight call to arms.

"Starlight, star bright" was actually nothing more than a game of tag in the dark. But it went a step farther. It gave character and definition to the child who was "it." He (or she -- we were not a misogynous neighborhood) was not just "it," but played the role of a menacing ghost who lurked among shadows in a bushy thicket or behind Mrs. Orsborn's white-washed garage.

When the children came roaming, hoping to see a ghost, "it" would pop out and run down whichever players he could catch and tag them. I'm not sure what the end result of all this nonsense was.

There probably was none because as I recall, the game was always left unfinished after mothers and fathers on doorsteps throughout the neighborhood, with hands cupped around their mouths, hollered out the names of their respective children, serving notice that the hour was late and it was time to come home. 

"Jimmy! YooHoo! It's getting late, son!"....."Nancy dear! Time to come in!"...."Ann!  Your milk and cookies are ready!"...."Wendel!  Hope you get home before the serial killer comes out!"

Darn, and just as the elderly neighbors were once again settling in for the night. Those folks just couldn't buy a decent night's sleep in the summer.

Ghosts, or the notion of ghosts, entered in to a lot of our youthful games and adventures. On Saturday afternoons, we went to the movies to see the latest ghost or monster film and reveled in being terrified out of our wits. And when we camped in the backyard, no sleep-out was complete without exchanging spooky tales and bits of ghostly lore. We loved being scared!

I'm a somewhat spiritual person and I've never discounted the possibility of visits from another dimension. Some of this may be rooted in my Irish Catholic upbringing where stories of visions and sightings of long-dead saints walking the earth were commonly discussed.

However, it was actually my dad's side of the family, the English Protestant side, that made some pretty marvelous claims on the subject of spiritualism. 

The most popular story was that of my Grandma Potter's sister, Aunt Fan. Fan had the uncanny ability to look into the bottom of a teacup and foretell the future by studying the tea leaves.

It is Potter family legend that one morning Aunt Fan sat in the kitchen of my grandparents' farmhouse and told my grandmother that she saw a man, blind and bloody, coming in to her life. Not long after that, Grandpa made his way to the house after a morning of blowing up tree stumps with blasting caps.  I don't know if that was his job or if he just enjoyed blowing things up with blasting caps.

Now, apparently one of the charges appeared to be a dud so Grandpa approached the stump and it promptly exploded in his face. When he stumbled into the kitchen, his face was bathed in blood and his eyes were filled with dirt and tree stump shrapnel.

Coincidence? You decide. All I know is that Aunt Fan was a decent God-fearing woman who obviously had psychic powers of some sort. Or it could have been hallucinations from drinking too much tea.

Fact or fantasy, stories like these made childhood fun. It was a part of growing up.

Even when I was in high school, we delighted in ghostly legends, real and imagined. There was a house over in Fullerton, Nebraska (where we moved to in 1964) that could have been the model for any haunted house movie, as old and ramshackle as it was with weeds growing up around it. It sat away from the road, back in the trees, on the very edge of town.

An old man and his spinster daughter lived there, so they say. Although we never saw the gentleman (or the daughter, for that matter), we dubbed him "Candleman" because it was said that if you stood along the lonely road in the dark and watched long enough, you would see the flame of a candle flickering about the inside of the house, floating from window to window.

Apparently, the guy was not a supernatural being, he just had no electricity. And on many dark, moonless nights we wandered down that road and kept vigil. We never did see the candle or the man (or the daughter, for that matter), but it made for a great story.

I'm not sure what it was in our psyches that found spooks and spirits to be so attractive, but the supernatural world certainly seemed to be an inherent part of our culture growing up. Nowadays kids seem to opt for the cheap thrills of graphic horror movies or video games, the slash and gore stuff, that requires only Hollywood's special effects rather than the viewer's imagination.

Or maybe it's just that kids today take no pleasure in classical old-fashioned scares because they're daily being been exposed to the reality checks of our modern age -- of nuclear and chemical threat, outbreaks of strange diseases, and terrorism in our own backyard. 

Perhaps back in my day it was just plain fun to let ourselves be scared of things that go bump in the night because we knew that those bumpy night things, along with ghouls and ghosts and goblins were made up and weren't really to be feared.

Sadly, the world these days has become a terrifying place and contrary to what Franklin Roosevelt once told Americans, there is plenty to fear besides fear itself.

I often wonder what Aunt Fan would have to tell us about our future if she were alive today and read our tea leaves. Maybe late on some summery night, when the moon is hidden in the shadows of the universe and a warm whispery breeze murmurs like a lost soul, I'll ask her.

I'll let you know what she says.

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Don't Forget To Move Your Sundial Ahead

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That's right. It's the second Sunday in March. And some early risers may be reading this in the dark.

Well, not in total darkness. Of course, you have a light on. But that's my point. 

Yesterday morning, at this hour (by the clock), we didn't need to turn on the lights. Today we do.

Obviously, I'm talking about the dawning of daylight-saving time. It began today and so far I've saved no daylight. As a matter of fact, I've lost an hour's sleep!

I've always questioned the term "daylight-saving time." Sure, by the new clock setting -- spring ahead! -- we gain an hour of brightness in the evening. Yet what have we saved? We lost an hour of brightness in the morning! Do the math!

Back in the 1960s, when daylight-saving time was first instituted in Nebraska, it was agreed in the state legislature that by moving our clocks ahead one hour in the spring, our farmers would be able to work longer in the evening.

But don't farmers traditionally get up really early in the morning to start work? Now suddenly it's pitch dark when they get up. And to benefit from the displaced daylight, they have to work an hour later at night. 

If it were not for daylight-saving time, they could knock off at 9 p.m., have their dinner, sip a couple of brews, and see what's happening on "Criminal Minds".

My Grandpa Potter would not have approved of daylight-saving time. I never knew him, but it was said that he was a cantankerous sort. And being a morning person, he expected his brood to be up and working by 4 a.m.

Now when evening came, Grandpa went to bed with the chickens. That's because Grandma made him sleep in the henhouse. I'm serious. Winter and summer, he turned in at 7 p.m.

Six months of daylight-saving time would have severely maladjusted his body clock. He would have grown more cantankerous than ever. 

Thankfully, cantankerousness was not a trait that was passed on to his grandchildren. (And according to spell check, cantankerousness is not really a word.)

Now, I'll give the farmer his due. And I understand that moving that hour of daylight from morning to night benefits the evening golfer or fisherman or even the guy who has no other time to mow his lawn.

As for me, I was always a morning fisherman, my golf game could not be any worse if I played in the dark, and if I don't have time to mow, well a guy can always spray a little Round Up across the yard.

You also have to take God into consideration when you introduce something like daylight-saving time. The whole time concept was his thing to begin with. So who are we to mess around with it?

You don't read anywhere in the Bible where God tells Noah or Abraham or Moses, "Now on the second Sunday of every March, you guys have to get up at 2 in the morning and go out and move your sundials ahead one hour. You'll notice then on Sunday night that the sun will appear to set an hour later than usual. This will give you some extra daylight so you can slaughter a few more sheep and burn them on the altar for the Sunday Night Summer Sacrificial service. I think you're going to like it."

I have to admit I'm a morning person, especially in the spring and summer months. I like to get up early and have my coffee and listen to nature as it greets daybreak.

Well, that's a little difficult to do right now when day doesn't break until it's time to rush out the door to work. And since I don't go to bed especially early, I resent missing "Letterman" jsut because the sun is casting a glare on my television screen.

But I seem to be in the minority where daylight-saving time is concerned, so I'll have to keep making the best of it. And I guess I'd better start working on my next column since I'm already an hour behind and I haven't even begun slaughtering my sheep for tonight's sacrifice.

Copyright by Wendel Potter

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Give it up! It's Mom's Macaroni and Curdled Cheese Casserole

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When I was a kid, many of my parochial school buddies gave up going to the movies during Lent. Being a compassionate fellow, I didn't want to see the guy who owned the movie theater go out of business (even if he was a non-Catholic), so I continued patronizing his place on Saturday afternoons between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.

Besides, in a way I, too, was giving something up -- companionship at the movies! While my friends were off playing ball or riding bikes on Saturdays, I was sitting through a double-feature ALONE!

I'm telling you, when John Wayne was having it out with the bad guys or the girl in the haunted house was about to be strangled by Vincent Price, not having a friend in the seat next to me to share the excitement with was almost unbearable to an 8-year old boy.

But I suffered through it in silence. It was my Lenten duty.

Some kids gave up eating candy during Lent. For me, that wouldn't have really been a major sacrifice.
My mom -- or as we called her, Mother Most Frugal -- rarely bought candy or sweets. So eating candy wasn't a habit. To my way of thinking (or what's known as Catholic rationalization), giving up something that you didn't eat on a daily basis wasn't really giving something up.

Besides, that poor guy who owned the movie theater didn't survive on ticket sales alone. Why, he might have gone belly up before April if folks like me hadn't plunked down our nickels for a Slo-Poke sucker or a box of Boston Baked Beans to get us through the movie.

But while giving something up for Lent was encouraged by the Church, it still remained an option. One thing that did not was abstaining from eating meat on Fridays.

Today, the Catholic no-meat-on-Fridays rule applies only during Lent. In my younger days, it applied to every Friday. All year. No exceptions.

That rule never really bothered me. While I love fried chicken or a good slab of roast beef, I would be just as content to eat a catfish dinner or a plate of spaghetti smothered in sauce (meatless sauce, of course).
What did bother me was the macaroni-and-cheese casseroles my mother used to make every third Friday. This is where the Lenten suffering came into play.

Growing up Catholic, our Friday evening menu rotated. One week we would have tuna and noodles (tolerable). On another Friday we had salmon and baked potatoes (not bad). But the third Friday on the rotation was the dreaded macaroni and cheese.

Don't get me wrong. Mom wasn't a bad cook. The problem was my dad. Mom cooked to suit his taste (and when it came to macaroni and cheese, he had pretty poor taste).

I remember the big brown baking bowl. Mom would bring the macaroni to a boil on the stove, drain it, then dump it in that bowl. I'm not sure what kind of cheese she used -- Velveeta, I think, but I remember she used enough of it to bind up a small continent. Then she poured in the milk. Lots of milk!

The brown bowl went into the oven where the casserole baked. And baked. And baked. Until it was done to Dad's liking.

When it came to macaroni and cheese, Dad's liking meant the casserole was covered with a thick, crusty brown skin and all that cheese and all that milk had bubbled and boiled and blended into a curdled soup.

Come and get it! Dinner's ready! Mmmmmmmmm.

Well, you can imagine.

So there you have it. Maybe I didn't give up movies or candy during Lent, but believe me, when "Crusty and Curdled Macaroni and Cheese Friday "rolled around every three weeks for as long as I care to remember -- how I did suffer!

Copyright by Wendel Potter

Forty Years in the Desert: Is There Pie at the Next Oasis?

The Lenten season will soon be upon us. It's the time of year that one of my friends, also a Catholic, refers to as his "desert journey".

I thought he said "dessert journey" and I told him I'd be glad to go along with him and have some pie. He pointed out that maybe, since it's Lent and all, I should take my own desert journey and give up eating pie for 40 days.

We Catholics are notorious for sacrificing or "giving up" during Lent. Personally, I've always felt that rather than deny myself something pleasurable over the course of the holy season, it would be much more righteous of me to do something unselfish for others.

I thought perhaps I could start by sharing my pie. That way everyone wins. Of course, I'll need to get more pie.

Now the idea of the 40 days of Lent being likened to a "desert journey" is a reflection on the 40 years that Moses spent in the desert, leading the Israelites to the Promised Land. We've managed to narrow it down to 40 days for our own purposes because someone must have figured out that it should never have taken the Chosen People that long to get from Point A to Point B.

The only reason it did was because Moses was so fiercely stubborn.
That and he walked slow. His bunions really bothered him. And the Lord, with his wonderful sense of humor, led him to Mt. Sinai and said, "Here, Moses. Take two tablets and call me in the morning."

So it's no wonder the people were getting so testy on their desert journey. And at one point they had had quite enough and turned on Moses.

"Come on, Moses! It's been almost 40 years and we're getting nowhere! Day after day, the same thing. Tear down the campsite, trudge through the heat, up one sand dune and down another, step in camel poop and ruin another pair of sandals!

"And what do we get to eat, Moses? A bunch of weird, stale cookies that fall out of the sky. Then you do that trick where you tap the rock with the stick and--presto chango--we all get a drink of water! Whoopee!

"Well, yesterday we noticed something when you tapped that rock. It's the same rock every day! We've been walking in circles! We're lost, aren't we? And all because you refuse to stop at an oasis and ask for directions!

"This is why we build golden calves! For something to do! We're going crazy out here, Moses!

"Then to scare us, you come down from that mountain looking like you've seen a ghost, you've aged about 90 years, you're muttering some nonsense about a bush that's on fire, then you tell us that you've got some new rules for us that are written on a couple of slabs of rock! Is the heat getting to you, Moses? Well, we can't take it anymore!"

After putting up with all of that, it must have been disappointing for Moses to find out that God would not let him enter the Promised Land. Everyone in his group was jumping up and down, whooping and hollering, "We made it! Yay! It's the Promised Land! There it is!  Come on, Moses. We'll race you!"

"No, that's all right. You guys go on ahead and I'll catch up later."

Now that was probably one of the most unselfish acts of all. To lead a whining, belly-aching, and faithless throng on a desert journey for 40 years, without cable TV, while knowing full well that he himself could never cross over into the Land of Milk and Honey.

Sometimes it probably did appear that Moses had no direction, that he didn't know where he was going. Yet he forged ahead on his desert journey with no map, but only faith.

And often that's what life is like, isn't it? We seem to wander aimlessly, without direction, wondering if we're really getting anywhere. But, like Moses, we don't stop to ask for directions, because if we have faith, that is our road map. We know we just have to keep moving.

So when Lent rolls around,  have a good desert journey and take time out for a piece of pie. 

________

Copyright by Wendel Potter
 

The Great Phone Booth Escapade

In some circles back home in Fullerton, Nebraska the "Phone Booth Story" became legend.

As it often happens, and it did in this case, a tale can take some bizarre twists as it travels from one ear to another. But I'm going to clear things up and tell the story the way it really took place.

I remember it well. And I should. As it turned out, it was my first brush with the police.

Every small town has its "characters," usually colorful folks who, for one reason or another, stand out from the crowd. Helen Harper was one such citizen. The main reason she stood out was because she weighed upwards of 400 pounds. There was a lot to stand out.

Helen once paid a visit to our town doctor and he ordered a physical exam. They needed to record her weight, so they sent Helen down to the grain elevator. It was the only place in Fullerton where there was a scale that would support her.

I would guess that Helen, at that time, was somewhere around 35 (which also happened to be her shoe size). She was married to a wiry little man in his 70s and they had at least eight children. She could have been hiding at least one or two more. Helen always looked like she was about to give birth to octuplets.

And talk about pushing her weight around. Rare was the person who messed with Helen.

Bell Telephone tried it. Helen was behind in paying her bill, so her phone was disconnected.

Take that, Helen! Yeah, right.

Upon discovering why her phone didn't work (I wonder if they called her to tell her she had no phone service), Helen ripped the telephone off the kitchen wall and wildly drove her blue Plymouth station wagon downtown to Ma Bell's business office where she slammed the phone down on the manager's desk, and told him quite plainly where he could stick his dial tone.

And that is where the Phone Booth Story begins.

It took place on a summer evening back in 1968. There were four of us young men who had wandered downtown, probably to get a Coke at Clara's Cafe, then to walk the small town streets looking for harmless adventures.

We had passed by the telephone company's branch office and turned at the corner where there sat, fittingly, a phone booth. We ventured on about a half block when we stopped and turned. The blue Plymouth station wagon had driven by and pulled up to the curb on the corner.

Helen Harper jiggled out from the driver's side and headed for the phone booth. Without phone service at home, this was her only alternative if she wanted to place a call.

Our curiosity got the best of us. We were extremely interested to see how this woman was going to fit into that phone booth. We figured it was worth watching. After all, teen aged boys will be boys.

Helen pushed on the glass doors and began stuffing herself inside the booth, filling every square inch. It reminded me of that famous old college prank where fraternity brothers would see how many of them could fit inside a phone booth. With just Helen in there by herself, it looked like the entire university.

What happened next was totally unrelated to our mission and, to three of us in our group, totally without reason. But, as Helen dropped in her dime and began dialing, one fellow among us, on a strange and fateful impulse, reached down and, in one fluid motion, scooped up a handful of gravel from the parking lot where we were standing. He reared back and let the rocks fly in the direction of the phone booth.

My two innocent cohorts and I stood frozen, watching in amazement. It unfolded like a slow motion movie. The spray of gravel pummeled the phone booth and that was followed by the sound of breaking glass. We could actually see the glass shatter and hear the bellowing of the woman inside the booth.

Suddenly we unfroze and began running. That's what level-headed teenagers do when they smell fear. They run like panic-stricken dogs.

After a couple of blocks, we stopped to gather our wits and three of us asked the perpetrator why he had suddenly decided to kill Helen. He had no reasonable answer. So we figured, he's on his own. We went our way and he went home.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Later, we couldn't help returning to the scene of the crime. I guess we wanted to make sure there was no blood. Fortunately there wasn't, although glass was everywhere (along with four or five candy bar wrappers) and there was no sign of the station wagon.

The next evening, I was over to the house of one of the friends who had been with me the night before. We were alarmed when his dad sought us out and told us that one of our local policeman was in the living room and wanted to question us.

Sam the policeman was an aging, friendly sort and when we walked into the room, it showed in his eyes that he knew we hadn't done anything wrong, but he needed to know who had. He told us that Helen hadn't been injured in the incident the night before, but when he had arrived, she was standing on the corner violently shaking glass out of her big cotton tent of a house dress.

It seemed Helen had spotted a couple of girls across the street from the phone booth. Sam had tracked them down and asked them if they had seen anyone in the vicinity. They obliged and gave Sam our names. So we obliged and gave Sam the name of our friend who had launched the preemptive strike.

Now, come to find out, Sam had already been down to my house, so it wasn't long before my parents showed up to join the festivities. My dad was fit to be tied, mostly because I hadn't already mentioned anything about the previous evening to him.

He explained to me that running away was the worst thing a guy could do in that predicament. Somehow, I begged to differ. I just couldn't feature myself walking up to an angry 400-pound woman covered with shattered glass and saying to her, "Excuse me, but my friend over there took a sudden notion to watch a phone booth implode with you inside and I'll be glad to call a cop and have the lad sent up the river if you'll just promise not to sit on me."

Well, I think I was grounded for a week after that. The boy who threw the rocks had to make restitution. And, fortunately, Helen Harper never found out where I lived.

So, in a nutshell, that's the legendary Phone Booth Story, just the way it happened. And (sorry, Dad) but if I had it to do all over again, I'd still run like hell.

____

Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter