Grandma's Rolling Pin

 Grandma Mullen
Photo taken in 1969
by my cousin, Tom Sheley
with his then-new Minolta SRT-101

When I was a youngster in Iowa, back in the late 1950s and early '60s, my mother baked bread, biscuits, and cinnamon rolls every Monday. Mothers did things like that in those days and so did their mothers before them.

My mother's kitchen on a Monday was awash in a fog of flour and the flavorful aroma that bread dough takes on in the hot oven as it evolves into something that would soon be as glorious to the taste buds as it was to the sense of smell.

This, of course, was in a day when the best things were made from scratch, nothing was instant from the package, there were no microwave ovens, and "kneading dough" did not pertain to financial requirements.

In Mom's kitchen, loaves of fresh bread plopped out of the pan larger and tastier than any package of store bought Wonder Bread. Biscuits and rolls rose like flaky, golden-crusted monoliths swelling above and over the sides of the baking tins.

You didn't spread soft margarine on Mom's fresh biscuits. You slapped on a hard pad of creamery butter and watched it melt into the biscuit served hot from the oven. Back then, cholesterol was pretty much unheard of and by God we were better off for it.

I used to help with what I could on baking day. Mostly, I just liked hanging around the kitchen, taking in the delicious smells and watching the genius of a mother's uncanny artistry unfold.

What still amuses me when I recall those days is my mother repeating the same words, week after week: "I wish I could bake like Mama did."

Then she'd go on to tell me how her mother baked EVERY day and never used a recipe or a measuring cup. According to Mom, if you asked Grandma Mullen how she did it, she would reply, "I just put in a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

My mother invoked Grandma's memory, too, whenever she baked a pie. While rolling out an absolutely perfect and tasty pie crust, Mom would mutter, "I wish I could make a pie crust like Mama did."

Although Grandma lived until she was nearly 90 years old, I never had the pleasure of eating one of her home-cooked meals, nor did I ever get a taste of her breads and rolls. At least not that I remember. I'm sure that's something I'd never forget.

After Grandpa died, a couple of years before I was born, Grandma went to live with one of my mother's sisters and I don't think for all of those years afterward that she thought of that kitchen as her kitchen. I'm sure she cooked the evening meals for her and my Aunt Madonna, but it couldn't have been the same as preparing pots of savory Irish stew and loaves of bread for her large farm family or frying up a henhouse full of chickens for the relatives who often stopped by the farm for dinner on Sunday.

The Mullen Clan
My mom is Top Row, 2nd from right

When Grandma passed on to that great Irish kitchen in the sky, she left few belongings. She had been a simple woman all her life who loved God and family, the Catholic Church, and Notre Dame. The fanciest things about Grandma were the memories we had of her, and those remain priceless.

All my mother wanted was a glass rolling pin that she remembered Grandma using to roll out those perfectly flaky pie crusts when Mom was young. Somehow my cousin, Frank, had ended up with the rolling pin and when he heard Mom mention it, he graciously gave it to her.

Grandma's rolling pin looked like an ordinary rolling pin except it was made from thick glass, was hollow and had a threaded screw-on cap on one end. Mom tucked it away with her memories and when she died, that was the only thing I wanted.

I discovered from a little research that a glass rolling pin is to be filled with ice chips. The cold glass keeps the pie crust dough from sticking to the pin and this way you can roll out a flat crust. That's why Grandma's pie crusts were so wonderful.

Now the glass rolling pin is tucked away in a drawer in my kitchen. Unlike my mother, I will use it one day. I will roll out a perfect pie crust for my family.

Then I will say, "I can bake like Grandma did." And  in that moment, I hope we'll be better off for it.


Copyright 2006 Wendel Potter

Trusting God's Voice

Why We Sold Our Snow Shovels and Moved to Florida




My wife and sons and I have been Floridians for just over a year.  We've adapted to a routine and are making our way through life as most Americans do, as we did back in Nebraska for so many years.

We're just doing it in Central Florida now.

Along the way we've been asked why we made the move when we did.  Some think I'm retired.  No, I still work a day job. 

As to why we chose to move here, the best reason I can come up with is this: God told us to.

I know what a lot of you are thinking....."Potter must have wandered south of the Mason-Dixon line and found himself some religion!"

Truthfully, I've always had religion to some extent, but I never before had I felt that God actually spoke to me.  However in January of 2011, things began to happen in our lives and I feel they happened for a reason.  

I really think it was God talking to us.

Now, let me tell you a story.

Fifty years ago, my wife was separated from her little brother.  She was seven and he was five.  There's no point in rehashing the details.   
                                                                                                                                                                 
November of 1963 was the last she saw of her brother for more than 47 years.  She ended up in Nebraska.  

As a child, and even into her teen years, Karen's pleas to be reconnected with her brother went  unheeded.

After we were married in 1978, Karen was more determined than ever to locate the little boy left behind.  The years went by and the trail grew colder.

With the advent of the Internet, she Googled her heart out.  Her brother's name was not an uncommon one, which made it all the more difficult.

Nearly a half century later it was finally time for God to play his hand.  It was a Royal Flush.

In January of 2011, Karen made a connection that put her on the right path.  She was pretty certain she had located her brother.

Karen wrote him a letter.  A carefully written missive sinks in; a phone call can shock your world with too much abruptness.

A few days later, shortly after my wife's 55th birthday, our phone rang.  She answered it.  It was her brother.

He and Karen both knew in that moment that a nearly life long load had been lifted from their hearts.  It was the best birthday present she had ever received.

Karen's brother lived in Florida.  He had been there for years.  Of all places we somehow would have never guessed the Sunshine State.

Karen and our sons flew down to visit in May of 2011.  She and her brother bonded on sight.

*************** 

This was the way things looked at our Old Nebraska Home on Christmas, 2009.  It snowed all day on December 25th, the wind  blew with a cold, crackling stiffness, and I couldn't get the vehicles out of the driveway.

My wife and our sons opened our gifts while I gulped hot coffee and the furnace lumbered along, working overtime.  My mother-in-law and her husband were forced to remain in their house across town.  Our turkey was already thawed and ready to prepare for the oven, so I promised to buy another bird and we'd all have Christmas dinner together a week later, on New Year's, if the weather improved.

Now this isn't to say that this was the model for every Nebraska Christmas.  We enjoyed 50 degree temps in 2011, our last Christmas on the Plains.  There were several Christmases dotting a green landscape, that were even warmer.

Maybe it was age nagging at us, perhaps just a midlife discontentment.  Whatever it was, 2009 left a lasting impression on us.

Karen and I had always talked about retiring in a warmer climate.  But that was still years down the road, or so we thought. 

We had no idea where that road would take us.  In our discussions, Florida had never even popped up in our cross hairs.

But when she returned from her reunion with her brother and his family, we talked.  We knew where it was we'd retire when the time came.

Once in awhile, there's something that perches on your shoulder like a comfortable bird, pecking at your mind until you finally get the hint.

"Why wait?" I asked Karen one day.  "Let's put the house up for sale and see what happens."

The housing market in Grand Island, Nebraska was not particularly a boomer last summer, in 2012.  But there was no harm and little expense in sticking our toes in the water.

Karen was working at the time in a Christian-based book and gift shop.  She told me about a very popular item that customers swore by.  It was a statue of St. Joseph and it came with a prayer and instructions.  Realtors actually recommended buying it!

We followed the directions and buried the tiny likeness of the carpenter a foot in the ground just behind the house, and upside down.  Apparently, the good saint was supposed to attract a buyer for your house with a fair offer and when the deal was done, you were to dig up the statue, which you would supposedly find not upside down as you left it, but right side up.

Not many days later, after lots of lookers and no offers, we received a phone call from our realtor.

"I have a cash buyer.  That means a quick deal, no inspection.  They want an early close so they can begin renting it out."

It appeared that the Good Lord was working too fast.  Now it had turned frantic.  Everything needed to gel for us. 

My wife was in the background in the meantime, researching townhouses to rent in Florida, the best moving rates, and airline itineraries.  We planned to sell our vehicles rather than move them.

Well, if God wanted us in Florida, we thought, we guessed He must have the rest figured out.  We accepted the buyer's offer.  Our closing date was a mere two weeks away.

I had a job I had been at for 23 years.  With a deep breath, I tendered my resignation.

So now we had a place to live come the end of July.  Yet it was only June and we had a lot of packing to do.  We needed to buy another month's time.

Back to the realtor.  "Would the buyer rent our own house to us for the month of July?"

He made a call.  Yes, he told us.  She'd be more than happy to do that.

Another problem solved.

Meanwhile, Karen was trying to procure airline tickets for us and our sons.  There was a flight from Grand Island to Dallas, connecting with another flight to Tampa.  Seats were going fast on both flights.

I contacted a trucking company in Grand Island.   For what I considered a reasonable rate, they would drop off a 28' trailer at our house.  We would load it from the front, mark off our used space, and erect a barrier to separate our belongings from the rest of the trailer.  Then the driver would return on a given date, pick up the trailer and head to Florida.

Once we had the dates secured, Karen returned to the airline travel issue.  There were exactly four seats left on the Nebraska to Texas flight and six remaining on the Dallas to Florida connection.  We grabbed them.

Everything, every detail then fell into place uniformly like a stack of dominoes.  And here we are.

In the course of our lives together, nothing had ever gone quite as smoothly for us as our move to Florida.  And now, when I see Karen and her brother together, I know the hand of God was upon us and it was unmistakeably His voice in our ears, giving us direction. 

I don't attribute everything that happens in life to coincidence or fate.  Some things you just know were in God's hands all the time.

Karen and her brother know that.

When I take a long, hard look at life, I have to marvel and say, "Thank you, God," and as the Irish say, "Saints be praised!"

And that statue of Joseph sits atop a book case in our living room, upright and smiling.

How blessed we are.


Copyright 2013 by Wendel Potter 

__________________

DON'T TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Baseball isn't baseball anymore

It's that time of year again. Major League Baseball is in full swing. As for me, I think I'll just bunt.

Each spring a bit of that baseball spirit tries its damnedest to move me, for old time's sake. But it doesn't provide much more than a nudge.

I'm residing now in Lakeland, Florida....Winter Home of the Detroit Tigers!  Yet I didn't make it out to a spring game.
 
Baseball just isn't what it used to be.   For me, "used to be" was back in the late 1950's into the early 60's.

My father was a huge baseball fan. He devoured the box scores when the morning edition of the Des Moines Register arrived with it's trademark orange-tinted sports section.
 
My brother, Donnie, followed Dad's lead. He ate and drank baseball. He collected baseball trading cards and he slept in his baseball cap. He still owns a baseball that was given to him by an Iowa neighbor and was signed by Babe Ruth.

Donnie joined Little League as soon as he was old enough, back in the days when contests were played in late morning or early afternoon and there weren't a lot of vicious parents around to threaten the ump or ruin the game for the kids.

As we grew older, Donnie moved on to Pony League, then played American Legion baseball and as a young adult was pitcher for the Town Team in Fullerton, Nebraska. I always felt he had the talent to stay the course and eventually head for the big leagues.

Whether or not he had the desire has been left unanswered. During a Town Team game, a hard line drive shattered his pitching hand and retired him from the lineup. He didn't play ball after that.

My brother worshiped the Chicago White Sox. Dad's team was the Milwaukee Braves. When the franchise headed to Atlanta, Dad's heart went with it.

Some of that fanaticism was bound to rub off on the rest of the family.

Mom even grew to enjoy baseball and she got in the habit of listening to the local radio sportscast in the morning and writing down the scores of the previous night's games so when Dad came to the kitchen table for his coffee he could cop a fast glance at the outcomes of the late games that didn't make the newspaper deadline.

After Dad passed away, Mom continued to watch the Braves' games.

I never had the ability or the zeal to play organized baseball. But I always took part in the neighborhood sandlot games and loved it.

I knew by heart the batting lineups for the Braves, the White Sox, and the Minnesota Twins. That was in the days when the Twins was a young upstart team that was heir to the old Washington Senators club and had a power hitter named Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat was their pitcher. I remember when Kaat had his front teeth knocked out by a line drive.

Today, the only Major League names I recognize are the ones who have come under suspicion of taking steroids. Or those who just signed a multi-million dollar contract.

That's another thing, or maybe the biggest thing, that turns me away from baseball these days. The money. Not even so much the money, actually, as the greed that displaces the game itself.

In 1959, Warren Spahn was making something like $9,000 a year to pitch for Milwaukee. My dad was making more than that managing a fertilizer supply company in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

People like Spahn and Mantle and Drysdale and Aaron were every bit the household names that A-rod or Cabrera or Greinke is today. And they were known the country over without the benefit of cable TV or sports bars with satellite dishes that grab the signals from ESPN and ESPN2-222.

Those old guys just didn't make the deals that this generation's ball players are putting the ink to.  But oh, how those fellas loved the game. They took what was offered and they played their hearts out.

For me, today's MLB has no grit, none of the glory of yesteryear. If you want to talk real baseball, you have to look up guys like Alan Brown, a friend of our family back in Nebraska. We call him Brownie and he used to play on the Oakland A's farm team with guys like Reggie Jackson and Gene Tennace.

Then there was a bartender over in Fullerton. His name was Bags Umstead and he played a lot of ball in his younger years and could instantly tick off just about any name and statistic relevant to baseball. Sporting a few drinks under his belt, he would show up on Sunday evenings for a Town Team game, just to offer his support.

Bags has been gone a long time now but if you hang around the home team dugout at Fullerton's baseball diamond on a breezy spring evening, you just might hear his normally quiet voice break into a rather inebriated bark: "C'mon, you guys! Look alive in there!"

Those were the days when love of the game was woven into the American fabric. That was when the voices of baseball were Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese and the still reliable Vin Scully. That's when it was a game.

It's just not like that anymore. Baseball is still referred to as America's Past time. But for true baseball fans, the emphasis is on that word "past".


Copyright by Wendel Potter

---

A Mother's Song

 by Wendel Potter

I'm 60 years old and down through the years I've been particularly close to two mothers.  One was my own mother.  The other is my wife, the mother of my children.

I've observed them both in action in the role of motherhood.  Their maternal styles differed as much as a lullaby and a dirge.

My wife was born to be a mother.  She is that first and foremost.

Motherhood is not a state.  It is an art form.  My wife is a damn fine artist.

When I look at my two sons I see their mother.  They share a triune soul. 

She lives for them.  Wherever they go in life, they carry her spirit and it is reflected in whatever they do.  

When I am proud of my sons, I am proud of their mother as well.

While "I love yous" are encouraged and often heard around our house, the love my wife has for our sons is evident even when unspoken.

Unspoken was generally the case where my mother's love for her children was concerned.  She was the product of a hardscrabble Irish-American farm culture.  Even soft-spoken displays of affection were not customary in her family.

It's no stunning admission when I say that I don't recall my mother ever telling me, "I love you." 

I'm sure she must have said it at some point when I was very young.  And I'm sure I told her the same, as children do.

I know there were times when she was pleased by my actions.  For instance,  when I was a small boy and we lived in Iowa, I would hike down the railroad tracks and stop along the way to pick cattails from a swamp.

I would return home with those cattails (really nothing more than butt-ugly weeds) and present them to my mother as though they were roses. She would always put them in a purple glass vase and set the horrible arrangement on the dining room table.

She was pleased that her little boy had picked for her what he saw as a bouquet of flowers.  She was proud enough to display the damn things for the whole family to see at dinner.

That was how she loved.

She cheered her children on in her heart and we were in her prayers, but she had a difficult time putting praise and encouragement into words that we would have cherished hearing.  She sang us a love song without music, with no lyrics.

That was Mom's style.  It was the only way she knew how to sing the song.

My sons are more fortunate than they might realize.  While they honor their mom on Mother's Day, she celebrates every day of the year as Sons' Day.

She can't help being a mother.  It's who and what she is. 

Her love song has words and music, melody and phrasing, and she sings it with perfect pitch. Our sons will always hear her tune.




**Copyright 2013 Wendel Potter**

______________

Resurrected Memories

 

 

Random Thoughts on Easter

by Wendel Potter

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. 

We lay out an elaborate feast and if Jesus was to join us, he couldn't eat the meat.
 
I like Easter. 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, along with the leisure suit.  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 (I'm pretty sure I saw him sneaking out of my neighbor's house last night....he wasn't home, but she was), marshmallow chicks and white bucks have 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 each tell an Easter Sunday story all 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 into heaven, even though no one could lay claim to having seen him?

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 our faith be if that story had not been told? If we still believed, it would be great indeed.

Just food for thought. Now pass the ham.


Copyright 2013 by Wendel Potter

______________

 

 

UP IN SMOKE

Houston, we've got a problem...and a pope

by Wendel Potter
reporting live from the Vatican
March 13, 2013


The voting process to elect a pope to lead the Roman Catholic Church turned to tragedy this morning for the sequestered conclave of cardinals who had just completed a third round of balloting.

It is a tradition of the church that, after the ballots have been counted, they are burned in a stove. When the faithful watching the chimney in St. Peter's square see dark smoke rise through the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, they know that a pope has not yet been selected. White smoke means that a new pope has been elected and a formal announcement is imminent.

Today, as the ballots burned, no smoke of any color was seen. Italian fire marshals later determined that an obstruction in the flue prevented the smoke from venting, resulting in carbon monoxide poisoning that left 114 of the conclave's 115 cardinals dead.

Only one cardinal survived the mass tragedy, which means that he will be named Pope by default. I caught up with him at the emergency center of Gemelli hospital where he was treated and released.

His name is Cardinal Guido Sarducci, known better to American television audiences as Father Guido Sarducci, the priest who regularly appeared in the 1970's on the NBC-TV hit series, "Saturday Night Live".

Cardinal Sarducci looked pale and shaken as he stood in the hospital's rear parking lot, leaning against an ambulance and smoking his trademark cigarette.

"Cardinal Sarducci, can you tell me what happened on this tragic morning in the Vatican?"

"Well, we had been sequestered since yesterday, shut off from the outside world. They even installed electronic jamming devices in the floor so nobody could call out on their cell phones and leak any information to the media.

"It was driving me crazy. I mean, I have been the Vatican's gossip columnist for a number of years and calling in a hot story is part of my life. The other cardinals had their own issues as well. Some of them needed to call their bookies, others their lawyers. For whatever reason, I don't know.

"We decided enough is enough, let's get the show on the road and get us a pope before lunch."

"So you cast your third round of ballots first thing this morning," I said.

"First we celebrated the Mass. "

"Then you got on with the voting."

"No. Then we had coffee and doughnuts."

"Then you voted."

"We kicked a few names around, then narrowed it down to three candidates."

"How did you decide who were the best candidates for the papacy?"

"We do it this way." Cardinal Sarducci pointed a dancing finger back and forth. 'Mother-Mary-told me-to-pick-the-very-best-one'."

"That's a rather unorthodox method. So you narrow it down to three cardinals who hope to become the next pope."

"Popefuls, we like to call them. Yes, then we cast our ballots and the contestant with the 2/3 majority of the votes wins the beanie and the big ring."

"So this morning you voted. Then the ballots were put into the stove and burned. Then what happened that led to this awful event leaving 114 cardinals dead?"

"While the ballots were burning in the stove, I began to feel a little light-headed, so I asked if I could step outside for some air. Nobody answered, so I figured it was okay. I went outdoors, got some air, had a cigarette. It was only when I returned that I noticed something might be wrong."

"What did you find when you returned to the conclave?"

"All of my colleagues were stretched out on the floor, face down. I felt terrible. I immediately thought I was late for worship service.

"Eventually, I realized that the cardinals were dead."

"So you called the police or the paramedics or what did you do?"

"I called no one. Remember, we were forbidden to use our cell phones. Anyway, I began feeling sick again, so I went back outside and alerted one of the Swiss guardsmen by throwing up on his shoes."

"And he called for help?"

"Later on. He's not allowed to move until after the changing of the guard."

"I understand that the authorities think the stove's flue was obstructed."

"Yes. It seems a large white dove with a golden halo had built a nest over the smoke stack."

"With the other cardinals dead, this means that you will become the next pope. How do you feel about that?"

"I like the Popemobile. I can't wait to get it out on the road and see what she'll do."

"What name will you choose. Will you be John Paul III?"

"No. No more John Paul. I'm going with Pope George Ringo."

"My condolences on the loss of your colleagues and best of luck in your papacy."

"Bless you."

There we have it. A new pope. Pope George Ringo I. And the Holy Father told me his first order of business is to return to "Saturday Night Live" where he will ceremoniously rip up a picture of Sinead O'Connor.

---

Copyright Wendel Potter

Unfair...unbalanced...inaccurate

Rit Dye and the Wearin' of the Green

______________

 

Our youngest son was born on March 17, 1987.  Our baby has grown up. I don't know where the time has gone.

I remember it was raining that morning when we checked into the hospital at seven o'clock. It poured most of the day. But by 4:30 that afternoon it was raining God's good graces. We had a baby boy.

Our intention was to name him Zachary James. When we laid eyes on him, however, he just didn't look like a Zachary at all.

Since it was St. Patrick's Day, we changed course and went for the Irish. Ryan was a name my wife was fond of, and I recalled that my Grandpa Mullen's mother's name had been Mary Ryan. It seemed like a logical choice.

For Ryan's middle name, our doctor humbly suggested Patrick -- it was his middle name -- and of course, it fit the Irish holiday theme. So Ryan Patrick it was.

St. Patrick's Day conjures up a lot of great memories for this dyed-in-the-wool Irish Catholic. Although, dyed-in-the-kettle might be more accurate.

When I was a first-grader in Catholic school back in the predominantly Irish town of Emmetsburg, Iowa, I had the distinction of being chosen to play the lead in our parish's annual St. Patrick's Day pageant. I was to portray an Irish country lad named Paddy Padraic.

I'm not sure if Sister Mary Ann Dolores picked me for the role because of my acting ability (my resume was blank up to that point -- I was only 7 years old); or perhaps it had something to do with my flute playing.

Let me explain that one. Every one in our class that year had bought little flutes fashioned with an aluminum tube and plastic bell and mouthpiece. They were called flagolets, as in "fladge-o-lets."

Lack of musical talent aside, I was probably in trouble right from the beginning because I mispronounced "flagolets." The day the flagolets arrived, we all excitedly began trying to play them. I said to the nun, "Sister, listen to our flatulence!'

One of the songs in the accompanying songbook was called "The Wearin' of the Green," so Sister chose that one for the pageant because the lyrics spoke of an Irishman named Paddy, so it fit nicely with the script. Some of the children were picked to play the song on their flagolets, others were picked to sing in the chorus. I was given an acting role. Hmmm.

In keeping with the St. Patrick's Day theme, Sister wanted me to wear a green shirt. She sent a note home to my mother.

Now Mom wasn't the type to run right out and buy her son a brand new shirt in March. Mom bought our clothes once a year, in August, when the stores offered back-to-school specials.

So she went through the shirts in my closet and came across a long-sleeved dress shirt that was pink (I believe it was a hand-me-down, probably from my sister). Then she went to the store and bought a package of green Rit dye. (Apparently they were running a March special on Rit dye).

I can still see my mother dunking that pink shirt into a kettle of dye until, like magic, it turned a lovely shade of shamrock green. Which was just fine with me because I never was comfortable wearing a pink shirt to school. I felt like a member of that girl gang from "Grease."

Well, the pageant came off without a hitch. I was one proud Irishman standing on the stage in the church basement in front of all the parishioners and wearin' my green. And Sister Mary Ann Dolores was so happy. She didn't have to listen to my singing or my flatulence.

So as the Irish blessing goes, may the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may God hold you in the palm of His hand...just pray that he doesn't squeeze.  

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

______________

Musical Memories Evolved From Monkees

 

(I wrote this column several years ago and thought I'd re-run in light of the passing of Monkees member Davy Jones.) 

 
I'm going to let you in on a secret. I had to work up my courage to put this in print. I am a Monkees fan.

Several years ago, one of my treasured Father's Day gifts was a Monkees' greatest hits CD. I asked and I received. The Bible was right…for a change.

Now, I'm as willing as anybody to admit that The Monkees was not a group that ranked especially high on the list of all-time great technical musicians, and that in the beginning they were merely four guys thrown together in 1966 for the sole purpose of creating a silly television comedy series, with the bottom line being, of course, to make money.

The newly invented pop band/TV stars did their job much better than anticipated.  In the ensuing years, their TV show not only harvested high ratings, but The Monkees sold millions of albums and endeared themselves to a generation of bubble-gummers.

This all started back when I was about 14 years old and could chew bubble gum without pulling out any crowns.

Listening to Monkees music today sparks some fine memories. Mostly of sitting in the kitchen on winter nights, listening to my favorite AM radio station -- 1520 KOMA, out of Oklahoma City.

After dishes were washed and my parents had retired to the living room to hog our only television, I'd sit on a stool at the counter, with the kitchen light turned off and the darkness illuminated only by the radio dial while the Top 40 lit up the airwaves.

Besides Monkees, there were Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Hermits, Troggs, Buckinghams, Tremeloes, Doors, and Mamas and Papas.

Music has an uncanny ability to touch the human soul and be retained somewhere in the subconscious. How many times have you heard a golden oldie that transported you back to a particular moment in your past? You suddenly remember what you were wearing, who you were with, what the weather was like, and so on. The most minute details of a tiny grain of time become perfectly clear to you again.

When I listen to The Beatles' "Abbey Road," I'm 17 years old for a fleeting instant and cruising the streets of Fullerton, Nebraska with my friend, Steve, riding in his sister's Malibu. Hearing Three Dog Night's "Eli's Coming" reminds me of after-ball game dances at the American Legion Annex.

The first time I heard Waylon and Willie's bar anthem, "Good Hearted Woman," was from the jukebox at J&L's Tavern in Fullerton, and still when I hear that song I find myself back in that bar for a split second.  Then I drink a beer as a tribute to those good times at J&L.  I like tributes.
 
Some great musical moments were spent in the kitchen, listening to KOMA. I even have to chuckle at the occasional intrusion. For instance, when my Dad would gruffly holler from the living room to "turn that thing down. I can't hear Gunsmoke!"

Or when he would refer to what I listened to as "that wild yeah-yeah-yeah music."

Dad always claimed that my music made no sense, that it was just a lot of noise and the lyrics couldn't be understood. You know, the same kind of things people my age say about the music children today are listening to.

Except we're right and our parents were wrong, that's all there is to it.

Whenever I hear The Beatles' "Yesterday," I recall an evening when a singer of Dad's generation was on television, doing a rendition of "Yesterday." My dad sat back in his chair, nodded his head, and proclaimed, "Now that's a decent song." When I told him that Lennon and McCartney had written it, he refused to believe me. "Well, they must have stolen it!"

I have to admit that, over the years, Dad was willing to give my kind of music a listen and even grew to like some of it. It must have been when Bing Crosby recorded "Hey Jude" that Dad decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

I haven't reached that level of tolerance yet when it comes to a good share of the music that today's youth is tuning in to. But then, with Golden Oldies of the 50s, 60s and 70s still playing today on FM stations all over the nation, and popular as ever, why even bother to make concessions?

Go ahead and let this generation of teenagers pierce their tongues and bang their heads to Ludacris, Ke$ha, Black-Eyed Peas, and Timbaland. 

Me? I'll be in my kitchen with the lights off and traveling back in time while quietly rocking out to "Pleasant Valley Sunday."

And perhaps drinking a tribute. Or two.

Hey hey I'm a Monkee. Yeah yeah yeah! 



Rest in peace, Davy....and thanks for the memories

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

________________

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

________

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

________

Dylan, Dog of Choice

________ 

 

 

 

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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