GROWING OLD IS...
A FUNNY THING.  When you're young, it seems that folks always want to listen to your stories, especially if you happened to have played professional baseball like I did.  But when you're young like I once was, you don't have the time nor the inclination to tell them because you're far too busy dating girls and hanging-out with the guys.  And now  I've got all the time in the world, it seems that nobody wants to listen.  And yet, I still like to think about them.  So I am about to tell you an awful story, but those are the ones that last the longest, and it is my hope that you'll stick around long enough to hear about the end of a dreadful year I once had many years ago in the minor leagues, and about an older guy by the name of Barton Faraday, who was one one of finest position players I have ever seen...


  ...It was only ten years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier when it all began.  The rules were still the same.  They don't change.   And the little rituals were pretty similar, too.  Back then, nobody would have been allowed to wear their cap cocked to the side, or curve the brim, and your hair had to be neat and short, but some players still crossed themselves before they stepped into the box, or drew in the dirt with the heads of their bats before taking up the stance, or jumped over the baseline when they were running out to take their positions. Nobody wanted to step on the baseline, it was considered bad luck to do that; and in those days the uniforms were made of wool and we scratched where it itched the most, which happened to be around the jockstrap area but were too embarrassed to give it a truly good scratch.  Television  had started to come in, but only on weekends.  Compared to the way they do today's games, it was all pretty amateur.   Radio was better, more professional, but of course it was local, too.  No satellite broadcasts, because there were no satellites.  The Russians sent the first one up on the 4th day in October of 1957, during the Yanks-Braves World Series.  

  Baseball players weren't such a big deal.  There were stars like Musial, Aaron, Burdette, Williams, and of course The Mick - but most weren't as well-known coast to coast like Alex Rodrigues and Barry Bonds are today (who turned out not to be all that spectacular when it came to being men of honor).  And most of the other guys?  They were pretty much working stiffs.  The average salary was fifteen thousand dollars, less than an average retail worker makes today.  If you were a 30 year-old outfielder with a wife and 3  children and maybe had another 7 years to go before retirement.  Ten if you were lucky, and didn't get hurt.  Carl Furillo, who played right field with the Brooklyn Dodgers during their glory years, ended up installing elevators in the World Trade Center and moonlighting as a night watchmen after his career had come to an end.  The deal back then was simple:  If you had the skills and could do the job even with a hangover, you got to play.  If you couldn't, you would get tossed back to the minor league scrapheap and be forever  forgotten.

  We had a catcher by the name of Bobby Donner on the Kearney, Nebraska Cubs when I was playing.  He had been sent back down to the C league minors after having 1 good year in AAA ball in the Pacific Coast League and 2 bad years after that.  Bobby was also a big drinker and quite a womanizer.  He loved the ladies and his rum and coke.  And one afternoon he ran over a woman on Main Street and killed her while his girlfriend was attempting to give him a blow job as he drove along the street.  Bobby then tried to run.  But there happened to be a County Sheriff's cruiser parked on the Corner of Elm and Main, and the deputies saw the whole thing.  There wasn't much doubt about Bobby's state either.  When they pulled him out of the car, he smelled like a brewery and could hardly stand-up.  One of the deputies bent down to cuff him, and Bobby upchucked on the back of the guy's head.  His career was over before his puke dried. 

  Bobby's backup happened to be a guy named Aubrey, whose last name I cannot for the life of me recall.  Aubrey was not bad behind the plate, but a lousy hitter.  His average at the plate was about .150, which put him at risk.  Aubrey also happened to be a compulsive masturbator who loved to whacked-himself-off on our bus road trips because he said he couldn't think of anything else to do with his hands.  But Aubrey was all we had, so we called him either "Mister Sticky Finger" or "The Kid with the Come-stained Skivvies," and put up with his rather odd behavior, which is why I probably cannot recall his last name.  Anyway,  Aubrey was behind the plate when we played the next game, which was near the end of the season, against the McCool Junction Reds, whom we were tied with for last place in the league.  There was a squeeze play put on.  The Reds best hitter was at the plate.  Another of their players was on third base.  Their best hitter punched the ball right at the pitcher, as the hulk of a player broke for the plate, all 250 pounds of him.  Aubrey was as skinny as a man could be, and was standing with one foot on home-plate as the pitcher grabbed the ball and tossed it toward Aubrey.

  Boy oh Boy, what a play it was! Aubrey hung on to the ball and got the out.  I'll give him that, and although it was only a baseball game, not important in the great scheme of things, but our team was at last out of last place.  It was, however,  the end of Aubrey's baseball career, too. He had one broken elbow and a concussion and a smashed nose after he had tossed his mask aside in order to make the play and was smacked in the face by a cleat.  I do not know for certain what became of Aubrey, other folks later told me that he had wound up washing windshields at an Esso station in Omaha before he was forced to take a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and then sent away for awhile, but I am not certain whether or not that was true.

  But the point was this:  We had lost both of our catchers within the space of 48 hours and still had several games to play before the season's end.  What our manager Mike Mullins did was get to work finding us another catcher, since we happened to have one facing manslaughter charges; another in the hospital, wrapped in so many bandages that he looked like Boris Karloff in The Mummy; a pitching staff either not old enough to shave or about ready to go on Social Security; God-knows-who the manager could find to put on the gear and squat behind the plate for the remainder of our season.

  Oh, for the life of a manager, huh?  Mike Mullins had a thankless job; things only got worse as the season rolled-on.  Walking back and forth with his arms folded so tight he looked like he was trying to keep from exploding, he was mad as hell as we lost game-after-game, tearing off a fresh piece of chew while he was drumming his fingers along the side of his pants, then chewing the  wad of tobacco so hard and fast the juice would squirt from both sides of his mouth and then run down his chin just before he would look up-and-down the bench at each-and-every-one of us and yell, "You guys have any idea how bad you are?!  No?!  I'll tell then!  You  guys stink!"  But by the next day, before one of our final series of the season with the McCool Junction Reds, Mike said that he had hired an older guy who had been with the Davenport Cardinals until they gave him his unconditional release, saying that his speed was gone and his arm was about to go, too.

  I got to the park early the next day and there was an older-looking guy sitting on the bumper of an old Chevy truck in the player's parking lot.  An Iowa license plate dangled from the back bumper on chicken-wire, and he introduced himself as Barton Faraday, as he shook my hand.  As he let go of my hand he said, "  I'm 39 years-old, I know I look old and beat-up, but I'm better than I look."  Faraday was slim like Aubrey, and slim is the way you want your shortstop and second baseman to look, but not your catcher.  Catchers should be built like fireplugs.  That was not Bart.  Not by a long shot.  He was skinny from the waist up, but looking at him going away, I recall thinking that he reminded me of an aged plow boy with a somewhat wrinkled-sun-tanned face and bowlegs who had recently arrived in town straight from a day of picking corn under the blistery sun of an Iowa field. 

  There was something distant about him, something a bit off, something that made the rest of our team a little nervous probably because he was older than most of us were...but something that made people take to him, too.  Bart had a great smile and a good laugh and a wonderful sense-of-humor; and with Bart behind the plate, we won the next 8 games in a row, mostly due to the fact that the players on the other teams could not steal home like they had done with both Bobby and Aubrey, due to the fact that Bart would knock them flat on their asses or step on their leg with a cleat whenever they attempted to do so.  It didn't seem to matter to Bart how big the other guys were, and he didn't seem to mind that there were bruises over certain portions of his body after each and every game, as long as he got the other guy out. 

  With only a couple of games to go before the season ended, we had risen from 7th place to 3rd place in the 8 team league and were only 1 game behind the Ogallala Braves, the team that was in 2nd place.  We would be playing our last 2 games against Ogallala.  Bart was like a ballet dancer behind the plate.  No balls got past him.  He threw one base stealer out after another. And, of course, no one even dared to steal home.  We won both games and ended the season in 2nd place, 1 game out of 1st. 

  Barton Faraday was the best catcher I ever saw and one of the nicest men I had ever met.  I honestly think that I might have known that the first time I laid eyes on him, sitting on the bumper of his beshitted old  truck with his worn-out gear stowed in the back, and to this day I have still wondered why Bart never made it up to the Big Show, even though he had been a decorated hero as a bomber pilot in World War Two, and perhaps his best years lay behind him when he arrived back home in 1947; and if so, that is a real shame because he was the best all-around baseball player I ever saw with my own eyes...

  ...You bored yet?  No?  Good.  Me neither.  I'm having the time of my life, awful story or not.

a birthday ovation for the woman I adore...

BORN IN A CITY AT THE RIM OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN RANGE IN COLORADO...
SHE HAS LIVED THE MAJORITY OF HER ADULT LIFE ON THE LONG SKINNY Island of Manhattan and with any luck at all, she says that she hopes she dies there.  She seems to have an irrational love for the place, and when I hear her say that, I often think of William Faulkner's remark about his native Mississippi, and how he loved it "in spite of, not because."  Down through the years, she has faced a city of daily exasperation, occasional alarm, hourly tests of will and even courage, and huge bits of pure beauty.  For her, it has been a place infused with a mixture of memory, myth, lore, and a history bound together in an extraordinary, instinctive way.  That mysterious mixture is why so much of this portrait of her is personal to me.  Past and present are merged together in my memory of her.  But something else is in the mix, too.  Something magical.  And certain moments are always present tense.  She is my daughter.  She is now and has always been amazingly miraculous and  magical to me.



  In one of my earliest memories, she is 3 years old cuddled between my knees on an old black sofa in a Colorado parsonage, back  in the days when I was a Lutheran Minister; and I am also with her in memory on the eve of Christmas in the falling snow on the parsonage front porch, as we both await the arrival of Santa Claus.  In the safe darkness of night I'd never looked upon such an innocent and expectant face.  She takes my hand and smiles up at me, knowing that if I said that Santa would come, he most definitely would arrive soon; and he did, immediately after I had tucked her into bed.  The following morning, she is laughing and exuberant, clearly made happy that I kept my promise to her, and that Santa had arrived with special gifts just for her.  And as she grew older, nothing seemed to dismay her. 

  Why? 

  Because. 

  Above all, because her journey as a young girl to the woman who she would one day become began on the stage of a Houston grade school, where she welcomed the audience to the show by saying: "Welcome, welcome, welcome to our show..."  The acting bug had truly bitten her.  She would go on to excel not only  in her grades, but in swimming and volleyball; and, of course, with perfect timing, the art of acting; where she would win award after award.  My daughter's world seemed to have no  limits.  She was a quick swimmer, determined volleyball player, excellent actress, good student; and in her world she learned the only way to get to know yourself was by walking various avenues of the talents you were born with.  She was quick, determined, and always expanding her frontiers, showing me visions that would remain with me for the remainder of my life. 

  To my astonishment, I have now known her for 51 years. 

  In each and every one of those 18,615 days that have now come and gone since her birth, she has forever given me pleasure.  Through a combination of her mother's genes and sheer luck on my part, I saw her life quickly soar the moment she moved from Houston to the City of New York after a stint at the University of Houston.  Manhattan was the perfect symbol for the future she one day hoped to have: it was noisy, plural, brash, vulgar, always shifting, filled with rejection and disappointment and slightly dangerous.  

  I was fortunate enough to join her in the city of Manhattan shortly thereafter. 

  And new memories were born. 

  She would soon be playing Detective Agnes Farley on Law & Order Criminal Intent and Doctor Elaine Schuller on As The World Turns, with guest spots on Sopranos, All My Children, and One Life To Live,  along with voice overs for MTV and Lifetime and HBO, to  name only a few.  She also became the voice for Bravo and Noggin and Mack Jr.  She now is attempting to have a play she has written called Texas Reckoning, produced. 

  And on one magic evening that she probably does not even recall, the two of us happened to be walking hand-in-hand in the rain down 2nd Avenue heading home, when she suddenly came to a halt.  As she pointed to the spires aimed at the sky, all gilded by glistening rain  beneath the darkened clouds above as a Shooting Star sped by just beyond the horizon giving a brief moment of light to the deepening night, and she said, It's all so miraculous.  I asked, What is? in a stupefied way.  She smiled: This city.  All of it, Dad...

  ...And so was she.

  Her name is Traci Lynne Godfrey. 

  She now has a son named Keeko. 

  And he is showing her what she has forever meant to me. 

  Although she has now resided in New Jersey for a short period of time:  It is my hope, that on some fine future exploration uptown on an evening near the end of the day, with the hint of rain in the air as the sun heads for New Jersey and the sky is turning deep lavender, that  my daughter and my grandson will be holding hands, looking up  at the magic of the spires and the bridges and the endless roll of rooftops moving north and west and east and spot a Shooting Star  soaring high in the clouds  above, heading downtown, leading the both of them back home...

  ...penned in honor of a life well-lived from
     a father who adores her and honors her
     for being who it is that she has become...
     And asking her to forever remember the
     Hemingway quote: "The world breaks
     everyone and afterward many are
    strong at the broken places..." which is
    something you have shown me all of
    your life.  You are a woman who has
    come through your struggles, and have
   always been stronger and more
   resilient because of it...and that, my
   daughter, is a lesson you have taught
   me...and I thank God each and every day
   you for being you and putting up with
   me along the way...

it has been said by one pundit that: 

"HE IS THE STANDARD PAR-FOR-THE-COURSE INSANE RACIST... 
WHO IS FILLED WITH BIZARRE RIGHT-WING FANTASY."  Our pundit was, of course, speaking about one of those upper-middle-aged-white guys you see being interviewed on the Fox News Network, with their stone-cold faces and ice-cold eyes, who fill us with the fearful visions and apocalyptic solutions of the newly-minted and somewhat stained Tea Party; are always desperate for a new enemy; and, as usual, it is other Americans who happen to be of a different color than they happen to be  or want to alter their views on how the world actually works. 


  So allow me to begin by saying that he man mentioned by our pundit has determined, all evidence to the contrary, that there are terrorist organizations - who are somewhere, somehow -  concocting schemes to send their pregnant   Black Widows to our American shores, spawning natural-born terrorist who will then use their U.S. Citizenship Cards to house and coddle and raise their terror babies and somewhere down the road about 20 or 30 years from now, begin to destroy the American way of life.  But that's not all: He then goes on to say that Jesus hates taxes and that gun control will lead to bestiality and that Barack Obama wants to Muslimize America because he hates us.  This accomplished idiot is, of course, from Texas and follows the Texas' long and well-deserved reputation of electing eminently stupid people to Federal office.  




  His name is Louis Buller "Louie" Gohmert, Jr. and "Lunatic Louie" just happens to be the United States Representative from Texas's 1st Congressional District since 2005.  He was born in Pittsburg, Texas and received his Juris Doctorate from Texas A&M which is located in the appropriately named city of "Waco."  Now age 60 and never one to let his fanatical fans down, he once gained fame as the least funny reenactment ever of an SNL sketch by playing both Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton, which caused one commentator to say, "He's a racist moron whom a civilized nation should consider institutionalizing for our own safety." 

  Gohmert is a born-and-bred Southern Baptist who believes that if the republic is to be saved, the enemy must be cast into eternal darkness, which is why he stood firm with the  Mississipi bigots following the passage of a state-sanctioned LGBT discrimination bill by saying, "You've seen it first hand, there is nobody more intolerant in this country than those that are screaming for tolerance.  Christians are not intolerant but whoa, goodness these people have their leftish agenda which is intolerant and I thank you for the courage to stand up." 

  "Loony Louie" dismisses all who stand against his views, firm in his belief that he has discovered the truth.  His common enemy is that vague concept: leftist.  Therefore, he has the right to use any illogical fact to say whatever he chooses to say knowing that the mutton-headed nincompoops in his audience who are listening to what he has to say will accept it as the gospel truth.  He doesn't need proof, or sourcing, or the ability to back up a claim other than the vitriol in his voice and the consternation in his gut.  All he needs is a microphone and away we go.

   Here's another example of Louie's style: Back in 2012 in the 112th Congress, the least-popular and least-effective in history, Louie wanted to excise the word "lunatic" from federal law because no one believes the moon makes people crazy anymore, and the word insults those with mental illness.  He said that he seemed to be the only one in Washington who defends lunatics.  Which proves the old adage "It takes one to know one." 


  Thus far, we have learned that Louie is terrified at the sight of black babies, disgusted with intolerant gays, tells us that our President hates us and understands the mind of a lunatic better than most folks do...

   ...But there's more:  He also seems to be an immense lover of animals.  While addressing the punitive reality that caribou, for some reason that only a rural Texas might understand, would be unable to enjoy the warmth of an oil pipeline when they went out on a date and headed over to the pipeline, if we humans did not have the ability to see how adversely affected the caribou might be if the warm oil ever quit flowing.  

  At the heart of his deplorable crusade is pathetic stupidity, and therein lies the danger.  Like the wonderful people who came before him and brought us prohibition and the Mob, both he and his fellow Texan Ted Cruz want to impose their rules on the entire country, urging their colleagues in the Senate and the Congress to make their furious, fear-driven visions into the law of the land.  If Louie's torrid vision were true, you would be forced to lose all hope for the nation; there would be almost nobody left who was not part of The Confederacy of Dunces, led by a guy who frets about the dating habits of the caribou... 

allow me to share a dream I recently had which I will call "The Sad Ballad of Sarah P.":

WHICH HAPPENS TO BEGIN WITH SARAH PALIN BEING AWAKENED...
 BY THE FLATULENT SOUND OF HER OWN ESCAPING RECTAL GAS as she slid herself of of the bed and moodily began to make her way into the kitchen to make herself some peppermint tea.  The hallway was claustrophobic and ill-lit so Sarah paused for a moment and leaned back against the wall as something which looked as if it were a rather pudgy elephant flew past her with a nasty scowl on the way toward the bathroom.  It turned out that Newt Gingrich had gas too.  He clambered through the bathroom door and found himself in a small room, which was also ill-lit.  An acrid odor was drifting up from the seat of the toilet, so Newt backed out of the bathroom and farted in the hallway, only to see a frightening reptilian creature heading his way who turned out to be Dick Cheney whispering, You too?  Yes, Newt replied and then Dick said, Do you think it was the boiled moose meat or the au gratin potatoes ?
  

  Reince Priebus who was the guest of honor and Ted Cruz happened to be in the kitchen at the same time that Dick and Newt were in the hallway and Reince was saying to Ted, I don't know about you, but I find that being around Sarah is pretty exhausting.  I mean, she never says anything at all that makes any sense.  It's like her tongue is full of junk mail.  Besides that, I've never had such godawful food, she's a lousy cook.  It was then that Ted immediately whirled around in his chair and stared into the utterly vacant eyes of Sarah who had just entered the kitchen with a rifle in her hand.  Reince suddenly had strange jumps in his brain-wave patterns and Sarah just stood there in stone-cold silence with the rifle pointed at the both of them and then she felt as if she were about to have another case of escaping gas and quickly departed.


  All along what one would normally call normal had yet to happen.  It had been confusing.  Particularly when each guest had nervously read the sign on the front door: Enter At Your Own Risk on the evening before and saw Sarah sitting inside in the darkened living room  quietly glaring at them and saying to each of them as they entered, I'm not altogether sure that I want you here.  Let's be straight here.  If you say something that I can't understand or am unable to pronounce or know something I don't know anything about, I'm afraid I couldn't have that, so I would suggest that you don't point it out to me.  And last but not least, whenever I say that I can see Russia from here I want you to scoot to the window and look out and pretend that you can see Russia too. 

  After an initial flurry of opening hellos later that afternoon, Newt and Dick and Reance and Ted greeted the new arrival in the living room as Sarah began preparing lunch in the kitchen.  It soon became apparent that the new arrival had taken note of the odd odor which emanated throughout the entire house.  You must have eaten her moose meat last night, Michele Bachmann said.  She then took a sandwich out of her purse and unwrapped the paper towel around it and laughed and stepped forward and added, I always bring my own food whenever she invites me over to eat.  They sat for awhile, peacefully waiting for her to chew on her tuna sandwich and swallow.  While all of this was happening in the living room, Sarah had just about finished preparing her cream-of-possum stew and Dick Cheney swept his hands through what was left of his blow-dried thinning hair, tugged at his upper-lip in order to keep his upper-denture in place.

  He then stood up and walked to the corner of the room and made a secretive cell phone call.  They all knew that he was the most miserable bastard on the face of the Earth and that he was up to something and whatever that something was it wasn't good.  Lightening flitted through the darkening sky through the window behind him as he sat back down and made him look even more evil than ever.  It was then that Sarah entered the dining room with a huge plate full of creamy possum with a side dish of stewed-tomatoes.

  After a disgusting lunch spent attempting to hide small portions of possum meat in their napkins, and being forced to eat more of it than they wished to eat, Newt tried everything he could think of to excuse himself from the table, and the more things he tried, the less successful he was.  Reince and Ted just shrugged and kept on eating and Dick pretended that he had fallen asleep while Michele  sat on the living room sofa and smiled at all of them.

  And then, a mere five-seconds after the dishes had been cleared by Sarah, the sound of helicopters were heard flying overhead.  The room began to wobble as the copters sirens began to blare and the rapid-fire cannons blasted at random out in the yard.  This prompted Sarah to go and peer out the window as  Cheney opened his eyes and gave a small smile.  Newt, like most of the overpaid and unscrupulous politicians, made a point of diving under the dining table only to find that Ted had gotten under it before he arrived.  Stunned by this realization, he headed toward the corner of the room where Reince sat crying like hell as Michele went down on her knees and folded her hands and began to pray.  So Newt joined her.  He prayed too.  Everything went terribly still for a moment before the dog went berserk with barking, prancing up and down, yapping its little heart out, beside itself in ecstatic rage just before Sarah turned away from the window and grabbed her rifle and shot at it just as the dog disappeared around the corner and headed for the kitchen. 

  It was at that moment when Dick Cheney stood up and announced: That was just a warning, Sarah.  A shot across the bow, so to speak.  The next time you invite me into your home I had better be the guest of honor or I'll blow all of you to hell-and-back!   Sarah then slowly lifted her rifle and aimed it and fired it at Dick.  Dick grabbed at his shoulder as he flew across the room and bounced off of the wall and then landed on top of Reince, who was still crying like hell.  The wounded Dick had a startled look on his face and Reince was gasping or air because Dick had not only landed atop his face but allowed a smallish fart to escape as he did so and it was then that Reince began to wet himself.  Ted was crawling out from under the dining room table and  Sarah was now staring down at Reince and Dick with such intensity that she hardly seemed to notice the gaping hole in Dick's  left shoulder.  Then suddenly she shook her head, dropped the rifle, and disappeared quickly into the bathroom.  She emerged a moment later, all smiles and wearing a red-white-and-blue sun hat and came tripping into the dining room with extraordinary lightness.  I just had to pass a little gas, she said.

  Sarah looked around and sensed that something was wrong and was somewhat disappointed to see that nobody else was in the room.  She popped another Gas-X tablet into her mouth and began to chew.  She peered out the window.  It was raining now.  A moment or two later she heard the revving oar of an automobile engine and saw Newt attempting to shift the gear of her Range Rover and then spotted her other guests squeezed into the front and back seats.  The rain was making a dirty spatter against the windshield.  Swish flop swish flop swish flop swish flop and then one of the wiper blades flew off.  Newt pounded at the steering wheel, kicked the floor, and swore and swore and swore and swore.  His fury was peaking and he told Reance to stop crying and Dick to stop complaining about a little shoulder wound just as the radio began to play a speech by Barack Obama. 

  It was at that very moment that there loomed in the headlights, hardly visible through the splatter of rain, a figure by the roadside.  Newt rolled down his window a bit to get a better look.  The poor bedraggled figure turned out to be Rick Perry wearing a rain-soaked Stetson who immediately recognized Newt. Am I too late for the party? he asked and then added, It took me awhile to figure out where Alaska was.   He peered into the car and then said, What the heck's wrong with Dick?
  


  Newt shook his head grimly, gave a heavy sigh, rolled up the window, and sped-off as he said, The poor miserable bastard doesn't know what he's in for.  And Michele added, What do you expect?  The little prick is from Texas.  George Bush and Ted are both from Texas, said Newt.  That's exactly my point! replied Michele.  Ted thought it best not to reply to her remark because way down deep he was afraid of Michele after she once informed him that she was certain that he was a poof-ball hiding  in the closet and thought she might tell on him and when Ted told Newt about that a moment or two after her remark Newt began to laugh so hard that he almost pooped his pants.  Luckily there was a 7-11 ahead and he quickly pulled to a stop.  


  Newt hadn't done this sort of thing for a while, at least not deliberately, he now had to use a public toilet. The trick, he thought to himself, is to just close his eyes.  He did.  And a moment later he slipped off of the toilet and fell to the floor.  He opened his eyes and saw a Snickers bar wrapper floating above him and after a seemingly long moment of doubt and indecision he finally figured it out.  If the wrapper was some sort of a sign from God then it was probably time to give it another try.  This time with his eyes wide-open.  It worked.  He now felt he could speak about public toilets with authority and perhaps make a little extra coin by writing a book about it.  It was then he stepped on something that was wet and squidgy.  It was the Snickers bar wrapper.  He stepped on it again.  He wriggled and turned and once again fell flat on the floor.  Newt had broken his ankle.  An ambulance came.  The Alaskan State Police arrived.  The police saw the wounded Dick inside of the car.  And they were all placed under arrest.

  Meanwhile, Sarah was still at the window when she spotted Rick Perry trudging through the mud up toward the house. She immediately ran out her back door and skipped through the rain and into the barn .  Luckily, there was a stall in the barn where she had hidden a yellow and green scooter that Donald Trump had given her.  She hopped on it and revved it up and drove out the rear door.  She knew that she could longer cope with things at home. 


  And, in an astonishing reversal of normal practice in the conduct of such matters, after the police had caught up with her in Anchorage a couple of days later because Newt had ratted her out  and after she had been arrested for attempting to kill a former Vice President of the United States and after  she had gone to trial and after been convicted  and after she had served her 25 year prison sentence and after her husband divorced her; when all of that was over  done and with, it seemed to her that all that had happened to her on her trek around the track of life that the  music had forever gone out of her and she would never have rectal gas again which eventually would cause her belly to balloon-up like crazy.

 
  If there is a point to this story, it is the rumor that Rick Perry wandered about inside of Sarah's house for almost a month with Sarah's dog constantly snapping at his heels  before he finally figured out that there was nobody home but somehow failed to find his way back to Texas and later lost his bid to become the Governor of Alaska with Sarah's dog at his side and then went to work as a short-order cook at an Anchorage Denney's while   Reince and Ted eventually became partners in a fertilizer store just across the street from where Rick worked with the sign above the door: "Come On In: If you want bullshit, we've got plenty." 

  As for Newt, for many years thereafter he would be spotted eating nachos as he gazed out at the Atlantic while making sandpipers along the margin of the shore, idly pawing in the sand hunting for candy wrappers in the hope that he would one day get another sign from God; and would then toil in the evening as a stand-up comedian in Michele's book shop after she had paused to lead everyone in a moment of prayer.  It was filled with shelves that were decorated in tasteful interior-designed pinkish colors and a couple of odd three-legged tables with circular tops filled to the brim with copies of the one-armed and 99 year-old Dick Cheney's latest book, "I Will Give You A War If You Will Fight It For Me - a beginners guide on how to become a guy like me," which had yet to sell a single copy...

  ...Curiously, however,  the question as to whether or not the somewhat familiar-looking  lady with the considerably  bloated belly eventually became a Nun in Nome or a Madam in  Moosejaw remains unanswered to this very day...

a small tribute to the invisible man who has kept me forever young:

 POSEIDON PAPADOPOULOS...
WAS MY BEST FRIEND.  This was hardly surprising.  When we first met I was 6 years-0ld and he immediately insisted that I call him "The Ancient Traveler" due to the fact that he was much older than I was and said that his favorite poem happened to be "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and informed me that he was named after the Greek God of the sea; or whether it was because he loved to eat pop corn balls and fudge and chocolate-covered raisins and salted peanuts just like I did, was more adventurous than I ever hoped to be, which he said would not have been apparent to the casual observer because there were no casual observers in the place where had originally come  from  since it was near Timbuktu somewhere in the Sahara Desert and it wasn't the sort of a place most folks would like to go if they wished to remain alive.

  Needless to say, I was more than fascinated.  He then went on to say that the place he had actually come from was not only awash with crazy crazy hawk-like creatures, heavily armed Nazi soldiers, innumerable numbers foreign saboteurs and spies, as well as hoards of men in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion.  It was then that the salmon-colored and  evil-looking cockatoo by the name of Burt suddenly popped his head out of the top drawer of my dresser and immediately  stopped screeching out the names and addresses of Japanese dignitaries and other foreign agents who were thought to be spies before they were deported from American soil in order to listen to Poseidon talk about the place of his birth.  At that point, Poseidon calmly announced that the two of us were about to embark on our first secret mission.

   One of my favorite memories was the time that Poseidon and I were in his automobile, with police sirens blaring behind us and rapid-fire machine-guns spraying bullets at random into the street.  He weaved terrifyingly up one street and down another, and once clear of those who had been following us and  since his automobile hadn't been damaged too much he was able to trade it in for a first-class ticket on the next ship leaving Berlin.  This had been almost as fun as when we had to shoot our way out of a den of thieves in a Shanghai ghetto a couple of weeks before that and then had to disguise ourselves as Japanese soldiers in order to make our escape; and as the  ship blinked silently across the distance of the darkened Atlantic, we settled into one of its huge and well-appointed cabins,  ate chocolate-chip cookies and drank two glasses of milk to celebrate our escape.  Poseidon smiled with a curious kind of manic joy as he said to me, Good job, Kid.  Because I was only 6 years-old and World War Two had just begun, that meant a great deal to me. 

  Then his eyes began to flutter, his head jerked once, and he was sleeping peacefully.  When he awakened, he made sort of a grumping noise, looked at me again, and the very next thing I knew we were hitchhiking back home from Washington D.C., where Poseidon had gone to inform President Roosevelt that our Berlin mission to spy on Adolph Hitler and his mistress had been a roaring success and said that President Roosevelt had given a hearty laugh when he had told him how huge Eva Braun's hips were.  



  We then made our way into a small village somewhere Vermont, when he announced that he was a bit out of touch since the recent events were what they were and that he wanted me to go into a small café and order a fried-egg sandwich and that I would have to do the ordering due to the fact that nobody else in the entire world could see him unless he wanted them to and that this didn't happen to be one of those times.  He waited outside while I ordered his sandwich and was sitting on a step when I walked back out of the café and took his sandwich and ate it rather rapidly.  I wondered for a moment what he was going to say next and that was the moment he said, Since our tour-of-duty together has almost come to an end, as we both knew it would one day,  I think we ought to do something spectacular, don't you?  Yes, sir, I said.  With a wink of his eye and a smallish smile he added, Although he did not grant me permission,   I firmly believe that President Roosevelt would like this one, if I choose to tell him about it, that is...

  Not long after that, I awoke feeling wonderful, absolutely fabulous, overjoyed at the thought of being back home, bouncing with energy, but hardly disappointed at all to discover that I was actually on my way to the planet Mars.  When we arrived, it looked like a wrinkled old shirt that had just come out of  the washing machine.  The wind flicked around a little, like the tail of a burro who is attempting to determine whether to bray or take a bite out of himself.  Poseidon was blowing his nose into a swanky monogrammed silk-white  handkerchief and said that he always seemed to get the sniffles when he traveled out into the Milky Way.  Just after he finished that he looked directly at me and added that he thought it was about time for me to begin reading books instead of going on adventures with him and that our short-lived escapades immediately must come to an end, that it was time for me to begin leaving my childhood behind.  And with that, he completely evaporated and I was back home in my own bed...

...My imaginary friend was forever gone...

  ...And yet, I thank God that the long-ago memory of Poseidon Papadopoulos rambling about inside of my rather immature mind has remained very much alive somewhere deep within me for almost 70 years and that portion of my being will forevermore remain childlike because Poseidon  happened to be a part of it...