Rit Dye and the Wearin' of the Green

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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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