"Going old school"

Sometimes I wonder if the generation of teens who are in high school now have as much fun as we did when we were in school. Maybe they have more, who knows? They are certainly much better "armed", technology-wise, than we were in the seventies. Kid's today have cell-phones, which can do just about anything from sending messages to each other, or looking up answers to questions via inter-net, to launching a strategic missile attack on seedy sections of Siberia. I'm guessing that these kids could actually "text" answers to test questions back and forth to each other. This alone is a huge advantage over my personal method of "passing tests", which was to try to sit next to Lori Rorabaugh and frequently compare the answers she had chosen with mine. I also had a brilliant "back-up" plan in place for the "off"-chance that I couldn't get a seat next to Lori, as most girls would have rather had an escapee from a leper colony sitting next to them than me. My back-up plan was merely to look at almost anybody's test papers, because I could be reasonably assured that whoever it was I was sitting next to had put in much more time studying and paying attention in class than I had, even though some of these classmates were a little on the "uppity" side, and seemed to convey the message that they didn't really want to share the efforts of their hard work with anyone else by "slumping" over their test so low that you would have had to literally pull them off of it to get a good look at their answers, which generally wasn't allowed during many of the more serious tests. In our usual "non-test" seating arrangements, I generally sat at the back of the classroom with my buddy, Darrel Shellito, where we could only be described as "models" of discipline, and generally hung on every word our particular teacher said. Whoops! My fault! I was thinking of two other kid's obviously. What I meant to say, is that Darrel and I generally sat at the back of the class, where we had friendly competitions for the title of "class clown", while the other student's were busy reviewing chapters and mixing numbers together and such. Due to the strict friendship policies that we maintained, Darrel and I would never sit by each other during a test, thereby curtailing any opportunity to cheat off of each other, especially during a "surprise" test, as they all were to us, even if the rest of the class had known about it for two weeks. I don't really know if school would have been any more or less fun for us, had we had cell phones, just as I'm not sure if Lori Rorabaugh would have texted me the correct answers to test questions. I am sure that she would have sent me many text messages of a different content, though, such as "please sit somewhere else", or "do your own work, you beer-swilling heathen"! I guess a cell phone would have been a handy little device for keeping up with my friends when I was in "isolation", or had just taken a day off from school, as I really never bought in to the custom of going to school on a daily basis, like some of the snottier kids did.

Independence Day

It's finally summer! This means that very soon there will be 4th of July celebrations in just about every little town and lake in the state of Kansas. I always loved the 4th of July, though I find it ironic that our great nation chooses to celebrate it's independence by distributing enough explosives to the civilians to blow it up. I don't know if kids today have as much fun as we did in the 70's, though, what with the bottle rocket and roman candle wars. Back then, even a dorky type kid with glasses and a pocket protector could fend off a sizable bully with just a coke bottle, lit punk, and a handful of bottle rockets. Roman candles were a favorite weaponry to those who had no access to an empty pop bottle. Almost all fireworks came with these sissy little warnings on them, such as "light fuse and get away", or "Do not hold in hand", but few of us ever adhered to these cautions, as it would have been hard to be taken as a serious warrior in the battles if one were just to light a fuse and run. Besides, you had to aim them at one of your friends that you cared little about. In those days, David Princ and I hung around each other quite frequently, probably because we were both really "cool". We obtained this cool status from our parents, meaning Dave's dad Pete, owned the local bar, my dad owned the gas station, and mom sold fireworks, and due to somewhat relaxed methods of book-keeping in the 70's, David and I always had plenty of gas, beer and fireworks, which automatically made us somewhat popular during these particular seasons. Despite our much practiced "innocent" look, many of the towns adults tended to look at us in a suspicious manner whenever some sort of minor vandalism occurred, especially if firework remnants and beer cans were found on the scene. I personally blame David for this, as he never really mastered the "innocent" look, and after seeing his picture on facebook, I believe he still looks somewhat guilty to this day. Fireworks gave countless hours of fun to all of us kids, and had many practical uses as well, such as blowing up nasty red ant hills with black cats, which would blow surviving red ants far enough away from their homes that they would have to start a whole new colony, on the basis that they would never live long enough to find the old one again, especially traveling on foot, as most ants had to do in those days. Some of our friends from rival "gangs", also found out that a 25 cent bottle rocket could harvest about a hundred acres of wheat in just a few minutes, especially on a windy day, making the farmer who owned the wheat-field blush with shame at the money he spent foolishly on his new combine. Now that we are parent's and grand-parent's, we have a whole new generation of kid's who will be learning to have fun with fireworks! I say let them have fun! I would like for my own grandkids to learn firework safety from "responsible" adults, so I have decided to sit this one out, and let their parents teach them.

Country Music Blues

In my opinion, "country" music is nowhere near what it used to be. When I was a kid, they were called singers, as opposed to nowadays, when they're called performers, largely due to their antics on stage during live concerts, which generally involve more shouting and obscenities than actual singing. In the 60's and 70's, the country music singers sang meaningful songs of lost love, prison, and alcohol, forcing many of us to switch to "Rock and Roll", wherein you couldn't understand the words anyway, but at least it wasn't as depressing as country, plus many of us learned how to play the "air guitar" by listening to rock music, though I'm not sure if I have any friends who make a living from it. I stayed fairly true to the country music throughout high school, straying to rock only occasionally, and I miss the old songs that told stories within them. Tom T. Hall was known as the story-teller back then, but it didn't really matter, because all the country artists told a story in each song, and you could understand what they were saying without punching it up on youtube and searching for "lyrics". I don't really know what time period it was when country music and rock music seemingly inter-mingled and became one and the same, but if anybody's got an old "time-machine" laying around that they're not using, I would be happy to go back and and try to stop it, via stern warnings and lectures. It's getting worse every day too! Now we have songs about people praying for flower pots falling on your head, and songs about "big dogs", "hillbilly bones", and "rain", none of which would have been sung about by Johnny Cash, Vern Gosdin, or George Jones, all of whom were able to have successful music careers by just standing there and singing, without the aid of fireworks, obscenities, or half naked women appearing in their videos. I believe that the only thing keeping country music alive right now, is the female artists, such as Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Taylor Swift, and Laura Bell Bundy, all of whom sing songs that have little to do with standard country music, but do a good job of making up for it by being pretty. I would go to a Carrie Underwood concert even if she were a deaf mute. Only out of respect, of course.

Bob's and Blondes

After living in Ellis and working for a contractor out of Hays for the last ten months, I have made a few observations here that I've not noticed anywhere else, namely, that almost all of the females in Hays are blonde! Quite possibly the only thing that surprises me more is the fact that my spell-check function on this computer is telling me that blonde is spelled without the "e" on the end, in which case I will ignore it, as I am much older than this computer, and pretty much set in my ways. Getting back to the subject, almost every female I see, whether driving, riding a bike, running, walking, or ordering a batch of "chicken gizzards" at walmart is blonde. This doesn't upset me or anything. I like blondes. I even married a blonde, who, come to think about it, is from this area. I'm just baffled, I guess. Hays IS a college town, so perhaps there is some kind of federal mandate for schools that I'm not aware of, stating that most of ninety percent of female students must either be blonde, or dye their hair as such prior to the beginning of the first semester, as well as become a minimum thirty year full-time resident of Hays after graduation, while maintaining blonde hair and extremely good physical fitness programs. Don't get me wrong! There are a lot of beautiful dark and red-haired ladies here too, it's just that you don't see them out "power-walking" or jogging during the day. In an effort to cover the first part of the title to this column, I also notice that a very large number of the male population here is named Bob, which is a name that I believe went out of style shortly after World War 2. Nevertheless, almost everybody I meet on any job-site is named Bob. I even went to Dollar General after work today to get my dad a Father's Day card, (Sorry dad, it'll be late again unless I drive it up there myself, cause this is saturday), and the guy that waited on me at the checkstand had a tag on his shirt that stated "Hello, my name is Bob"! I personally believe that we have been invaded by alien beings from another galaxy, who have obviously gained information from our society by watching old television shows such as "Newhart" or the "Brady Bunch", which generally featured attractive blondes and guys named Bob. This also leaves me deeply concerned about the FOX news network, which has an abundance of blondes who couldn't possibly be as intelligent as they are if they were indeed human, and had grown up being that pretty. I say, that on the good chance that all Bob's and blondes are indeed beings from another planet, we should take action immediately and ban all "Bob's" from our society, making exceptions only to the ones we've known all of our lives. I also believe we should let the blondes go for a few more years, if only in the name of research, but that's just me.

Thank God for "Experts"

Sometimes we, as Americans, become spoiled by our way of life, and forget to give thanks to the people who gave it to us, the "experts". Experts are generally studious people that have little or no hand's on experience in whatever particular field they are deemed to be experts in. For example, experts on raising children tend to not have any of their own, which automatically makes their personal "child-rearing" ideas highly educational to the people who actually have kids, and will probably land them a government job and an interview with "Oprah" very soon. Now don't get me wrong! I'm not against anyone being an expert on anything! I just think they should have some actual experience in whatever field it is that they're giving advice in, as many of these type of people basically hide from reality like a ground-hog, only coming out of their holes occasionally and hoping they don't see their shadows, which scares them back into hiding for another six weeks. A few years ago, some dietary experts deducted that coffee was very bad for us, but after meeting with several rich executives from coffee bean plantations in Colombia, they decided that they were just joking, and that coffee is actually a very healthy substitute for drinks such as Jack Daniels and Coke, as well as it is for grapefruit juice. Basically, all meat is bad for you, even though our own bodies would be proven to be made from it, at least under close scrutiny. As for myself, I'm extremely happy that tobacco, ( such as cigarettes and chew), are still considered a healthy option to pickled turkey gizzards, at least that's what I interpret by the fact that our government does not subsidize the pickled turkey farmer, but still does the tobacco farmer. At least we can be assured that no money exchanges hands in that agreement. Myself, I say "hat's off" to the experts in our world, and maybe one of them can actually plug the oil leaking into the water. I've decided that I want to be an expert on something, but I don't know what yet. It would have to beat the heck out of working for a living though, and I would be willing to appear on "60 Minutes" to convey my expertise to all of you, who may not understand me, especially if I use big, intelligent sounding word's and phrases, such as "global warming", or "natural disaster".

Germany is "Wunderbar"

Several years ago, (from 1985-1989 to be exact), while in the Army, I was lucky enough to be stationed in Kirchgoens, Germany, with my first wife Delores and our three children, Diana, Cuyler, and Nathan. Germany is an absolutely beautiful country, and was also filled with a great number of beautiful German women, which should basically give you an idea of how Delores is mentioned of as "my first wife". As a family, we had a great deal of adventure there, as it was the first time any of us had been in any other country besides the U.S., and we wanted to make the best of it. One of the first things we noticed, was that the German people had very different beliefs than we Americans did on what they considered appropriate public behaviour. Now don't get ahead of me, cause it's not us that I'm talking about. German people, no matter their age, tend to view nudity in the same way a run-of-the-mill American two-year old does, meaning it's no big deal to them, as became evident the first time I took my family to a swimming pool. I guess that as we first approached the pool, being used to our own country's culture, we weren't paying that much attention to the various stages of swim-wear and non-swim-wear that was being presented to us by the home team, at least not until a very attractive female came up out of the water only a few feet in front of us, wearing absolutely nothing, then grabbed a towel and dried herself off, got dressed and left. Nathan was only two years old at the time, so he thought nothing of it, and may not even remember it. Cuyler, on the other hand, was possibly scarred for life from this ordeal, and is still smiling today. Delores says that the look on Cuyler's face at that awkward moment was one that she'll never forget. "Did you see the look on your son's face", she would ask. "No honey, I didn't", I always replied, because myself, being a highly trained soldier, I found it necessary to keep an eye on the woman, lest she should pull a gun or a knife, or suddenly feel faint. Shortly after the naked lady left the pool area, we started to notice that many other local nationals were naked as well. While this proposed no problem for me, Delores made us leave immediately out of concern for how our kids would be affected. I'm happy to report that this incident had absolutely no adverse affects on any of our children! Nathan is still indifferent, Cuyler is still smiling, and Diana still rolls her eyes alot, but mostly just at me, unless she happens to encounter some stupid person somewhere. As for myself, my left ear is finally starting to heal from this incident, as that is how Delores got me back to the car from the pool, pulling me by the ear and chatting into it, knowing the kids would follow daddy and be ready to go home when he was, or risk walking.

Family Vacations

It's that time of year again, when a lot of hard-working folks choose to take their yearly journeys to some place fun and exciting, leaving behind the rigors of work for a couple of weeks, and most importantly, leaving behind your ignorant co-workers. When I was a kid, Dad would load up our family of five every summer into a 1969 Ford pickup truck with a camper on the back and head for Colorado, Wyoming, or the Black hills of South Dakota for a week of fun and adventure. These vacations turned out to be valuable learning tools for my sister, brother, and me, in such a way as we learned how hot and miserable it was to try to sleep five people in a camper with no air-conditioning, as well as how loud mom could snore. We always had lot's of fun, even though I often wondered why dad would only take us to places that had cliffs to fall off of and bears that could quickly eat our remains if we did. These type of vacations, (though possibly life-threatening), are much more economical than some of the more modern trends have become, such as taking the family to "Disneyland", or "Six Flags over some state that only joined the union so that other states would stop talking about them", but while the destinations and travel mode are different, the basic principle's are the same. I've taken the time to break down the family vacation into easy to understand tables for you, just as a service to help you know what to expect, should this year be your first "family vacation". 1. Your family is bonding, and excited to think of all the fun you'll have together. You say "money is no object, let's have some fun"! 2. Less than 17 miles from home, your kids are already fighting over something very serious, such as someone's leg is touching someone else's, or someone won't shut-up. 3. You pull over for gas and something to eat, and after paying, you start counting your cash already, even though money was no object. 4 After filling up on gas and food, the kids immediately resume fighting, and you threaten to turn the car around and go back home, which shut's them up for awhile, but by this time, everybody really want's to. 5. You reach your vacation destination, which looks nothing near as elaborate as it did in the brochure, but still costs more. Remember, money is no object. 6. You're actually having fun right now, probably feeding cheetos to a duck-billed platypus, though you're still concerned about finances.7. You're looking for a hotel bar, filled with other vacationers who are in the same boat you are in, and may understand you, cause your wife doesn't. 8. By this time, you are badly missing your ignorant co-workers, as well as your steady paycheck, and can't wait to get back home to both. 9. You break the news to your wife and kids that it's time to start packing up to go home soon. This must be done individually, as most of your family members haven't spoken to each other since day one. 10. You head for home in a silent car. I would be surprised if your spouse even speaks to you by now, let alone the kids. You are counting money in the back of your mind and secretly thinking of locking the kids in the trunk. Your wife needs to have a cappuccino every 17 miles, and use the "ladies room" every 9 miles. You seriously contemplate leaving her behind at a gas station. Congratulations! You've just had your first family vacation, filled with bonding, love, and the realization that your particular family cannot stand being in such close proximity to each other. Now I know why dad always took us kids to places with high cliffs and black bears.

Coming soon! A special humor blog from Rany J. Delimont. . . My daughter Blizzard is trying to teach me how to do this, so be patient.