I'm Not Old, I'm "Vintage."

Back in my hormonally over-charged youth, I developed a roster of colognes and after-shaves that I depended on to attract rather than repel folk of the female persuasion. Heaven help me in identifying one of those in today's high school market. You can't even tell by their pronouns anymore. Anyway, I depended on those masculine scents to attract (or at least avoid repulsing girls), a species of human in which I found myself developing a keen interest. Television in the sexually charged late 60s and early 70s, was rife with ads for allegedly irresistible colognes and after shaves. 

• There was Hai Karate which promised you would have to resort to some form of martial arts in order to save yourself from the hordes of ravening women who would descend on any male wearing Hai Karate cologne. I tried it but never had to fight off women. 
• I don't think Brut will ever be discontinued. Brut is the king of affordable after shaves, likely because of its better-than-sweat scent and it's ability to inexpensively cover up the aromatic aftermath of a fellow's Mexican food lunch. Brut is kind of the go-to cheap destinkifier for daily use.
• Then came English Leather, which had a vague warrior poet sort of sound which apparently women are attracted to. It was okay, but I didn't notice women flocking around my horse. Likely, because I didn't have a horse at the time.
• Avon ladies used to sell a scent called "Wild Country" in clever decorative bottles. It turned out to be my second favorite scent and they still make it. I may have to order some online as it's an affordable $15-$25 and seems to be available. Apparent it was Avon's best-selling scent. They even make Wild Country for women nowadays. 
• Finally I found Jade East Golden Lime after shave. It had a light citrus smell and though it never drew women like flies despite its fruity ambience, I myself rather liked it. It had the advantage over earthier scents of toning down the smell of sweat. The King boys were and are prodigious perspirers.

Imagine my dismay in searching high and low on the Internet  only to find that my beloved Golden Lime had been discontinued.  Probably it was focused grouped into extinction by those heartless wenches at Jade East who prefer a man to smell like a sweaty British riding saddle; the kind with those ridiculous delicate stirrups that force you to stand up if your horse breaks into a trot. 

Hai Karate was apparently not terribly woke and I can guess what happened to it. Probably the metrosexuals who make cologne decided they had better chances with some kind of muskier scent - something less obvious (not to mention offensive to women) that still drew women without being obvious. The rising flock of feminist young females did like to feel in control of dating rituals back in the 70s and 80s.  The decision to D.C. the dream scent of adolescent males back in the halcyon days before the disco epidemic. Early "woke" girls may have stopped buying Hai Karate because of those patronizing commercials. At the very least the whole boycott of the Karate man may have been due to their resentment of the idea that a mere cologne might force some hormonal response to the application of a deadly mix of male pheromones, a pleasant scent and man sweat. I did find some on ebay at $179.00 for a vintage bottle.

 I finally resorted to a deep search on the Internet for Jade East Golden Lime and was disappointed. Oh, Jade East is still in business but sans Golden Lime. In desperation I shelled out $34 bucks for the scent they were offering, but was disappointed. It was okay, as far as that goes. I did discover in my quest that they do sell vintage Jade East cologne on Ebay and Etsy, but there are apparently no vintage Golden Lime bottles left. I may have bought the last one in 1978. A vintage bottle of 70s era standard Jade East runs from $60 to $89 per elderly bottle.

English Leather is still around and available on Amazon for a price that won't force you to buy it on credit. Apparently the scent of an English riding saddle still brings 'em in. It's okay, I suppose, but English Leather is getting quickly out of my retiree price range. and besides, I prefer a western saddle to a fancy English one.

And then there's Wild Country - more of the scent of a new Western saddle than its mustier English counterpart - fresher and not overpowering. Sheila bought me some after we were married, probably in the 80s. The wife did like the smell which was a big plus for Avon's signature scent. I remember it well. It seemed to still do the trick after a decade or so, though my youthful pheromones had begun to fade. So with some regret for the loss of Golden Lime I've got to find myself a new scent. Wild Country, is still available thanks to the steady marketing and promotional efforts of those wonderful Avon ladies, steeped in the more conservative traditions of Avon. These lovely gals have preserved the now vintage smell of my adolescence. I, therefore, have decided to become a regular Avon customer. 

Truth be told during my short-lived heyday as a popular guy with the ladies, I was a summertime  lifeguard at Lone Star Camp and generally smelled like fishy lake water and man sweat. But I could still dig out my trusty bottle of eau' de cologne, shower up and manage to smell acceptably manly while playing guitar on the boat dock by the light of the moon. Later, when my Sweet Baboo and I worked a couple of summers at camp as a married couple, the pretty girl whose heart God and I had captured, did sometimes resort to sprinkling me with Jade East or Avon's finest - usually, in the evening after I wandered back to the cabin at the end of a particularly hard day on the lake. Hey, maybe a splash of Wild Country might rekindle some of those lovely memories.

A word of warning to those of you with boy children. If your prepubescent sixth grader EVER brings home a bottle of something called Aramis, either hide it in the nearest dumpster or buy yourself a gas mask. It's potent stuff when juxtaposed with the smell of sixth grade boys' feet. I call it Middle School Agent Orange.

Smell is a powerful mnemonic, tied to regions of the brain which store the more permanent kinds or memories. Rekindling the scent of your youth makes your brain cells happy. So unlimber Google or Duck Duck Go, Yahoo Search or Bing, whichever you like best and do a search for your favorite cologne or perfume. You might even buy your main squeeze a bottle of whatever she was wearing when she wrapped you around her little finger. Or you might buy your guy whatever smell that drew you to the handsome guy who walked past you trailing a cloud of pheremones and stole your heart back in school  .

What a blast from the past that could be! Almost makes me look forward to a reminder that I'm "vintage" these days. Sounds better than being an antique or worse, just plain old.

© 2026 by Tom King

PS:  Don't tell anyone who is boycotting China right now, but TEMU, the Chinese version of Amazon sells all kinds of copycat versions of "vintage" and current scents including a version of my favorite Golden Lime. I'm going to order some and see how it stacks up to what I remember. If Jade East is going to stop making it, I don't have any problem buying it where I can get it!

 

 

Games with the Cousins

Scotland fans have a 'restored faith in men' 

The World Cup coming to America couldn't have come at a more opportune time. A lot of people are laboring under the delusion that the world hates us because of President Trump and all those other soccer loving countries are so much better than us, especially if socialism has a foothold. Then suddenly tens of thousand of football/soccer fans actually came to visit.

Someone described the World Cup as "...us having a giant sleepover with the cousins we never see because our parents hate each other."  He is exactly right. And when our cousins got here, especially those from largely socialist countries, they stumbled into a dream and began posting YouTube videos of themselves experiencing things they never see back home and tasting food they have no experience of, sights that flabbergast them and the incredible overabundance of goodness that is America.

These folks were blown away by Walmart, Costco, Bucees, not to mention the awesome stadiums, the concerts, the amusement parks, the forests, rivers, lakes and seashores. And the things they went home and tried to find but couldn't were things we Americans take for granted. Boston rolled out bagpipe and drum bands for the Scotland fans. One European girl couldn't get over ranch dressing and tried to teach someone/anyone back home how to make it and the cooks of England couldn't understand what ranch dressing actually was. Another tried Texas barbecue and couldn't believe it.

And in cities all over the country where the teams played, young people were struck by how much food restaurants put on your plate. One pair did a video complaining that the people back home lied about America. One guy said people told him not to go out after dark or he'd be murdered. An attractive Swedish girl  marveled that she could walk down the street at 10 o'clock and feel perfectly safe. Back home she'd have been attacked, robbed and raped if she did that in the neighborhood near her home.

Almost all of them remarked on how nice Americans were and many of them wondered whether they could stay longer or even move here. And America wasn't show off. We weren't running a PR campaign. We were just the fun-loving nice people we always have been. And now a lot of Europeans, Asians, South Americans, Australians and Africans have a much better opinion of the United States.

I never heard one of them complain about our president; not after the good time we showed them. And soccer isn't all that popular here.

Tom King © 2026 

Must Be That Common Core Math They're Teaching Our Kids Now

Democrat Math at it's finest!
Do the arithmetic and show your work 

This thing is going around the left-wing social media. I think it must be a low IQ test! Either that or some common core nightmare. Here's the deal; the straight poop if you will.

1. Common sense - 180 billion minus 172 billion equals 8 billion to give away. If you give a billion to each person you could make 8 people billionaires. That's all.

2. Regular Math - 180b-172b=8b
    8b(dollars)/8b(people) = $1 (each)

3. Real World Application -  Suppose you did send everybody in the world a dollar. Unless they gave you their bank account number you'd have to mail the dollar to them. In the US alone that would cost 75 cents last time I mailed a stamp. That leaves everyone with a quarter. In other parts of the world, international mail rates would require much more than a dollar to send the dollar AND think of how many people on how many computers would you need to find addresses for all those people. Admin costs alone would require billions. Sorry folks, Elon can't afford to give you all a billion dollars or for that matter split it up among you all.

4. Economic Reality - If everyone had a billion dollars, there would be instant economic disaster. Who would go to work for anything like what they are being paid now? Instantly there would be no workers. Why go to work if you actually were a billionaire? Truckers would stop trucking. Farmers stop farming. Factories, grocery stores, police departments, defense industries, the military and everything else would grind to a stop. Inflation would be nightmarish because you have billions of dollars chasing virtually no goods or services. A Big Mac would run you millions if not tens of millions of dollars even if you could get someone to serve you. If everyone had a billion dollars, the dollars would be worth nothing.

Time grows short.
The signs are there to see!

How stupid do the leftist propagandists think we are? It's obvious from the traction this is getting in social media from the progressive fan base that if they just are hanging out with their own people and judging the rest of us by that standard, the left clearly thinks we are all stupid based on the average intellect of their own supporters.

Lest anyone think I'm calling them stupid, I'm not. Marxism/socialism/progressivism/Democrat philosophy is a religion of sorts and it's adherents take this kind of thing as an article of faith especially if it comes from their cardinals and bishops in government and the media. For many of us we kind of switch off our brains where articles of faith are concerned. It becomes all about the feelings and far less about the truth. And our leftist acolytes immediately post this sort of thing to Facebook without another thought and then dutifully hate rich people like Elon Musk who is actually doing things that benefit actual people.

I'm glad I got through school while they were still teaching the old math.

Just sayin'
Tom King © 2026 

CHRISTMAS AT THE FIVE AND DIME

 

CHRISTMAS AT THE FIVE AND DIME

 By Sheila King

 

This Christmas is looking pretty thin, what with my broken hand and arm healing and Tom's knees reminding him of the upcoming surgery he needs with each step. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to dress myself with only one hand. On my one Christmas shopping outing, even Walmart seemed to be holding back on the seasonal Christmas decoration.

 

Western Washington is experiencing widespread flooding this year and the mood is less than festive here. In stubborn defiance, I've gone back in time to relive a favorite memory from a Christmas long ago.

 

I was nine years old in 1963 and no longer believed in Santa Claus. Two weeks before Christmas, Daddy gave my Mama $50 for her purse. That would be the Christmas budget. My Mother couldn't drive so usually my Dad did all the shopping. This was a rare excursion for her. 

 

Because I had abandoned my belief in Santa, I was invited to go along with her on the shopping trip. She donned her winter coat and head scarf, took an excited little girl by the hand, and the pair of us trekked the long street to the corner bus stop. We stepped off the city bus in downtown Monroe into a damp, cold Louisiana December morning.

 

For a couple of hours, we darted in and out of the brightly decorated shops and stores. Mama was looking for potential gifts for my little brother, sister, and other family members. She would pick up items, look at the price tags, consider her meager budget, and either put them in the cart or place them back on the shelf.

 

She turned to me and asked me what I wanted. I chose a doll. I wanted that year's highly advertised Thumbelina, a realistic baby doll that moved and cried. My mother picked up the doll, looked at the price tag, then reluctantly set the doll of my dreams back in it's place in the display. 

 

She didn't have to say anything. Even at my age, I knew it wasn't meant to be and quickly selected another, less expensive doll; one that neither cried or moved. Thumbelina would have to wait until another year.

 

Around lunchtime, her money nearly spent, she said to me, "Let's go have lunch." I was surprised. This would be the first time I can remember eating a meal someone in my family had not prepared. Mama steered us into the Woolworth Five and Dime. As we stepped through the door, warm air struck me in the face. The aroma of fresh-popped popcorn greeted our nostrils and strains of Christmas music filled our ears. Mama knew just where to go and soon I found myself sitting on one of the tall stools at the lunch counter.

 

Mama didn't need a menu. She knew just what to order. A kind lady appeared and asked what we would like to have. Mama smiled at the waitress and without hesitation ordered two bowls of chili and two cold Coca Colas. It wasn't long before she returned with steaming bowls of chili topped with onions and grated cheese. We each had two packets of saltine crackers and two glasses of Coke over crushed ice.

 

What a meal that was! What an adventure! This became one of my best Christmas memories. Every Christmas to this day, I get a yen for a steaming bowl of chili and a cold glass of Coca Cola. That year, our trip to the Five and Dime lunch counter was my favorite Christmas present - just me and Mama, two bowls of chili and two glasses of Coke. For me, that will always be a cherished Christmas tradition.

 

The Five and Dime is gone now and so is my little Mama, but the memory of that Christmas lingers in my mind and heart. This Christmas, in spite of everything, I count my blessings and they are many. I remember what Jesus said to his disciples as he was leaving this Earth. "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will surely come again to receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also." The baby, born in Bethlehem, unlike the coveted Thumbelina doll, is real. His promises are real. His gifts too are real, and His budget is not meager.

 

So, if you are having a hard candy Christmas this year, take heart. Someday soon, we will meet on that other shore, and oh my,what joy will fill our hearts.

 

See you at the heavenly lunch counter. Merry Christmas everyone.

 

Sheila

© 2025 by Sheila King 

The Myth of Rotisserie Sinners

 

Eternal hell and immortal sinner's torment is a false belief

God is Not a Torturer

Since Rome handed over power to the papacy, people have believed three great lies that have undermined the lives of Christians and attempted to frighten parishioners into the pews (along with their purses). These lies along with a flock of church “traditions” made up whole cloth by the church in order to keep church members under control through fear, cover three basic beliefs that are not supported by the Bible. They are:

1. Thou shalt not surely die. This was Satan’s first lie to Eve. That lie is still believed despite the witness of Scripture through the millenia. Tradition says the soul is immortal and therefore when we wicked folk are pitched into the lake of fire, we chicken fry for all eternity with full consciousness of the pain without it ever lightening up for all eternity. It’s no wonder so many people don’t buy the idea that God is a god of love. Eternal torment is not the act of a loving deity. Hitler wasn’t even that cruel. Jesus himself said “Don't be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” (Matthew 10:28) The most memorized text in Christiandom is John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life," In plain words this familiar text says that only whoever believes in him will have eternal life. When we die we basically sleep and “know not anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). We do not wake again until Christ’s second coming. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” (I Corinthians 15: 51-52) Turns out Colonel Jesus doesn't chicken fry sinners forever.

2. Thou shalt go to church on Sunday. Roman emperor Constantine said he had a dream that putting a cross on the shields of his troops would insure victory against his enemies. So he marched the troops through a nearby river to baptize them all and make them Christians. He legalized Christianity, recognized the pope as an authority, and to make it comfortable for the remaining pagans, declared the Sabbath to now be on “the venerable day of the sun.” In doing this Constantine ignored both the 4^th commandment to “Remember the Sabbath Day” and the command that the day should be the7^th one. Over the ages, Sunday-keeping has come to include football games, yard work and overtime, denying Christians the blessings of a Sabbath rest (shortening life spans according to recent studies of longevity comparing 7^th day Sabbath-keepers to mainstream folk.

3. Thou shalt be saved by your works. In the midst of Rome’s attempts to make pagans feel more comfortable with joining the Roman church, the papacy proclaimed (without Biblical support) that priests could forgive sins, sell indulgences, and perform magic (see “transubstantiation as part of the Eucharist). This doctrine does away with salvation by faith as the way to heaven and leaves you to slide your rosary beads and perform acts of penance and contrition under the authority of a priest whom they claim can forgive your sins or get you banned from heaven if you upset the church. We are saved in a direct relationship with Christ. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2: 8-9) God forgives us directly. No priest, bishop or pope is the gatekeeper of salvation between us and Him.

When you discover the truth according to the Bible, God comes off as merciful and loving. If you reject God, you die and your life and pain is done. You sleep for eternity. God gives no man power to control whether or not we are saved and given eternal life. God even promises to change you and wash away the uglier parts of your soul – the sort of things you wish you didn’t have to fight because on your own, you’re fighting a losing battle.

It’s an encouraging sign that here at the end of time, the ideas of the sanctity of the seventh-day Sabbath, salvation by grace, and the true state of the dead have begun to challenge toxic Christian traditions openly and it’s not just coming from one denomination. The last movements before Christ comes in the clouds and every eye shall see Him look to be rapid ones. That makes sense for these reasons:

• More people are alive now than have died in all of history. God we are told is a jealous God not willing that any should perish.

• Communication and transportation technology have made it possible to preach the Gospel in every part of the Earth.

• Another spurious doctrine is being challenged – the Jesuit idea of a secret rapture which was infiltrated into Protestant denominations in the 1800s in order to get Protestant reformers to stop saying the pope was the Beast/antichrist.

Lately, I’ve been watching what the preachers of my youth said was coming being played out on the six o’clock news. There are a lot of end-time things covered in Scripture that are happening in real time these days. I would recommend that all of us who love the Lord start setting out some extra prayer time.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

© 2025 by Tom King

Beware the Frumnious Money Snatch - Frauds on Facebook

Beware of a product called Gluco-Revive, hawked by a doubtful doctor with an Australian accent. She claims she's going to show you a 17 day cure for diabetes using just the things in your refrigerator. Red flags went up immediately. It had all the earmarks of an online con. I decided I'd check it out and if it was what I thought it was I would do a blog exposing it for what it is. As I went through the presentation, The classic signs popped up.

1. A doctor, often with a foreign accent begins a sincere-sounding appeal. She's sacrificing herself to help people and the medical establishment and big pharma are out to get him or her.
2. The doc claims you should hurry before big pharma shuts them down. They don't know how long this miraculous cure will be available at this special price. The video may be taken down at any moment.
   
3. After a brief pitch you are directed to a video that will "change your life."
4. The doc claims it's a free treatment using things in your fridge.
   
5. Pretty quickly you see it's going to cost you something green that's not in your fridge. It turns out to be some proprietary bled of herbs nobody has ever tried before but works miracles.
   
6. The video is long and repetitive and keeps baiting you with "in just a few minutes I'll tell you everything."
7. The video wades through accusations against the medical system and big pharma and mentions the names of some companies like Walgreen's and Pfizer.
8. The video claims that specific medications are designed to keep you sick and dependent on it. 
9. When you finally get to the bit where you find out a bottle is NOT $29.99, but $39.99, and a total of  $59.85 with shipping.
10. Watch out for the small print when they put up a second product to clean your gut or something like that. The "I don't want this" link is in small print and if you miss it you get two bottles of gut cleaner for $99 each. In the end you're out $259.85.
11. When you call to cancel the order, they keep offering you cheaper versions of the order you accidentally made and if you demand a refund they tell you it will take 7-10 days to get your money back.
12. The bank can't block the transaction if it was by debit card until the preauthorization is cleared, then the bank has to file a claim to get your money back and that can take another 7-10 days. 

So the company keeps your money for almost 3 weeks. If they scam enough customers, they draw considerable interest on all that the money for 20 days from each customers. And so long as they can keep a well made ad, they can keep a steady stream of cash milked from customers they have conned passing through their bank account. 

It's a dirty rotten practice. I once took a course in writing video scripts for marketing pieces like this. I did a couple of such scripts and gave it up. I researched the products in question and wrote truthful dialogue as best as I could. The client kept correcting me and asking me to put in manipulative text that included false claims, manipulative dialogue and fear-mongering. I found that I just couldn't do it.

And knowing what I know, these subtle frauds managed to deceive me. They stole money from me in exchange for something for all I know is some cheap herbal snake oil cure. I mean the stuff might work really well to stabilize your blood sugar, but I can't get past their business practices. I'd hoped to test the stuff, but not for $59.85 plus 199.85 for something I didn't even want because they hid the I don't want it button.

And Facebook made money off the whole thing. And what's really galling. Mark Zuckerberg has the nerve to get all sanctimonious about community standards.

© 2025 by Tom King

 

 

How a Burger Place Wins Friends and Influences People

Out and About Burgers Ain't Ashamed of the Meaning of Christmas 

Okay before you go off on Christmas being all pagan and inappropriate for Christmas, just know I'm not having it. I figure if Christians want to celebrate Christ's birth without being commanded to in the Bible, that God might be pleased with this sort of feeble attempts to show Him our love for His great gift. It's a lot like how our little ones hoist their crayons and scratch out impressionistic artwork to show us. We parents and grandparents don't expect the art world to celebrate their pictures as masterpieces, but they're masterpieces to us and we proudly display these works of youthful art on our refrigerator art galleries.

That said, Sheila's chiropractor recommended a certain over-the-counter "medication" for pain for Sheila's chronic pain. Having found that it works, I take periodic trips downtown to the shop to pick up another box of gummies for my Sweet Baboo.  

Well, in a bit of inspired location selection for their new expansion Out and About Burgers shop, they put up a drive up shop right next door to the dispensary. I know! Can you say "munchies". They even have a walk-up window for their small burger place which is mostly parking lot and driveway. The little restaurant is the joint venture of some college business students from nearby Pierce Jr. College. They started years atio out in a trailer in the parking lot of a truck rental place on South Meridian Street. They hired fellow college students and soon there were lines of cars circled around the joint. The burgers, fries and onion rings were really really good and soon they had built a loyal customer base.

I went by the shop/dispensary for my wife's pain medication. On a whim, I dropped by Out and About's new location next door and picked up a couple of burgers. A young man with a clipboard met me in the parking lot and showed me to the walkup window. When they opened the window a few minutes after my order was placed they handed me my bag of burger goodness and I handed the guy a tip for the tip jar. When I turned around, the parking lot guy was there with a small plastic bag he was giving out to customers.

In the bag was a card and a lovely knitted candy cane ornament for our Christmas tree. On one side of the card was the familiar "Legend of the Candy Cane" explaining the meaning of the symbols incorporated into the candy cane.  On the other side, however was something totally unexpected for a business up here in the land of Happy Holidays, Kwantas and Winter Solstice dances in the woods out by the local volcano. It was a handwritten message of the sort people used to write 50 years ago. It said:

 

Greatest gift of love, Jesus-filled with joy,
peace, hope, mercy and grace.

Will you receive such a gift?

Merry Christmas!

Out and About
Burgers

These guy just earned my loyalty, especially since their food is so good. In an age where submitting to the herd in matters of faith (or rejection thereof) and politics is considered a virtue and wise business practice, it's refreshing to see honest people of faith who aren't afraid to be who they are. It was refreshingly honest and open to receive that Christmas ornament and declaration of faith with my cheeseburger. It tells me a lot about the trustworthiness of Puyallup's own independent excellentpurveyor of burgers.

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING IN AND OUT BURGERS HERE!
WE GROW OUR OWN!
I THINK THE ECLECTIC ASSORTMENT OF TEXANS WHO HAVE
RETIRED FROM THE ARMY AND AIR FORCE UP HERE HAVE BEEN
AN INFLUENCE FOR GOOD ON THE LOCAL HIPPIES.

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS
AND AN OUTSTANDING NEW YEAR

© 2024 By Tom King

John Skelton, The Original Rapper and Cultural Appropriation

A poetic form called Skeltonic Verse was invented by English honky poet John Skelton (1460-1529). You'd probably recognize this verse form. You've certainly heard it on the radio. John Skelton was a colorful character. He was teacher of Prince Henry, later King Henry the VIII (the original party king). Leading the way for modern rappers, Skelton did a stretch in the big house when prisons weren't the fun places they are now. He also was banned by the Church as a "corrupter of youth". Appropriate, given Skelton was the original rapper.

Like rap music, Skeltonic verse has two stresses per line and any number of unstressed syllables. Every line is rhymed with the line before it – unless the poet decides to change the rhymed last word. So sometimes you’ll get 2 lines that rhyme with each other and then two more with a different rhyme. The rhymes could be repeated three or four or ten times – however many times the poet decides he wants to repeat the rhyme. The rhyme pretty much goes on till the rhyme runs out of “energy”. 

 

Given that Skeltonic verse was invented in the 15th century in England, I think it’s fair to say that the rap rhyme scheme was appropriated from medieval Anglo-Saxon culture – at any rate, we had it first. In exchange for my foregoing corn rows, I demand that those folk loudly protesting "cultural appropriation" forego appropriating our historic honky rhyme schemes.

 

As John Skelton would say, "If you play it loose, what's sauce for the goose......

 

* On the other hand if you don't mind me borrowing from your culture, you guys go right ahead and appropriate. Meanwhile, I'm gonna have me some Tex-Mex, maybe some Italian, or Chinese for supper being careful not to get it on my Hawaiian shirt. Perhaps I'll play my banjo, bagpipes, bodhran or digeridoo. If you don't like it come on. I know enough karate and some akido to defend myself.

 

Me? I think this wide world has some really cool stuff in it, if you aren't afraid to appropriate some things you admire wherever they came from.

© by Tom King

Done Stopped Preachin'

 

      A Louisiana grandmother sat in the aisle seat located on the right side halfway between the front and back rows of her small Baptist church. That morning the preacher was cranked up about venal personal sins.
     "All of you that are drinking beer are in danger of hellfire!" he roared.
     "Amen!" Grandma shouted back, glancing over at Grandpa.
     "And all of you who are drinking that moonshine whiskey that Tolley O'Flaherty sells out of the still behind his barn are preparing your souls for eternal damnation!" he shouted. Scattered hands went up across the congregation.
     Grandma turned a sharp look at Grandpa and in a level voice fraught with meaning responded with a ladylike growl. "Amen brother. Preach it!"
     "And all of you brothers wasting your money smoking cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco have fallen into Satan's trap!" the pastor soldiered on down his list of condemnations of sin. A goodly assortment of female hands went up.
     "AMEN!" shouted Grandma tottering to her feet and shaking her fist. "You tell 'em, Reverend!" she croaked.  
     Finally the preacher fixed a stern eye upon the rest of the huddled parishioners. "And don't you dare let the Lord catch you dipping snuff!" A gasp ran through the crowd.
     Grandma sat down abruptly, apparently stunned. She looked around at her friends and neighbors, about half of them nodding in agreement and the other half frowning along with the whiskey drinkers and cigar smokers.
     "Hmmph," Grandma shook her head disapprovingly and turned to Grandpa, "Preacher's done stopped preaching and done started meddlin'.

© 2004 by Tom King (from a story told me by a friend)

Loyde "Snake" Arender: Warrior Poet

Read this again today. Sheila was with him during his final illness providing care. His wife is her cousin. Sheila learned a lot about Loyde and I put together this compilation of this brave Marine's poetry and stories about him for his memorial. I posted it online as a PDF file and from 5 to 7 people a week drop by to read it. Loyde should have got the Medal of Honor, but the Lieutenant who wrote the commendation and recommendation was killed a day or two later. 

There are some dates and things in the news articles and tributes to Loyde by men who knew and respected him. At some point I'd like to publish this. I'll correct the couple of errors made by friends of his.

Here's a link to his very excellent poetry - a tribute I put together for Loyde and to all the men who served in Vietnam.


© 2016 By Tom King and Loyde "Snake" Arender

God Still Watches Out For Us

When God's children face trials and the petty harassments of the Prince of this world, he looks on approvingly. He absolutely hates God's children. CS Lewis captured that in Screwtape Letters where he showed the devils hatred for any bit of pleasure or comfort we draw from life - be it a good meal or a hot shower.

Today I witnessed just this sort of petty demonic harassment as the devil threw everything but the kitchen sink at us in an attempt to ruin a lovely and special opportunity we had to experience a once in a lifetime joy. It is our 50th wedding anniversary and my daughter and son-in-law paid for a cruise to Alaska with them and they are bringing the grandson along to play with Grammy and Poppy. We are so looking forward to the trip. The last days before the trip, however, the demons attacked us to try and destroy even this happiness for us. 

We leave tomorrow, on Monday.  A week ago I contacted my HMO about getting Sheila's most critical medication sent early so she wouldn't run out during the week. The pharmacy said they'd handle it. Having that med is serious. To run out of that medicine in the middle of the trip would have resulted in panic attacks, seizures, and possible hospitalization at sea. We leave on the 20th, but her schedule 4 medication would not be released until the 23rd. The doctor has to approve early release. She was going to run out and she can't do that.  I checked to make sure the medication had been shipped Friday afternoon and to my shock, it had not even been approved. Someone in the system dropped the ball and failed to forward the request to release her meds early in time for the trip.

The next morning I got on the phone to find out what happened and to try and get her medicine released. That's when I began to hit brick wall after brick wall. The upshot was that the consulting nurse said it couldn't be done. So did the customer service lady, the chat utility person and the nurse at the one clinic that was actually open on the weekend. They told me we couldn't even get help at the emergency room because of this new federal law restricting schedule 4 meds. I finally arranged a video chat with the HMO's on duty emergency tele-medicine doctor and after explaining the situation he put me on hold and when he came back sometime later, he told me that the med had been approved and was being filled, but that the note requesting "early release for travel" had inexplicably been left off. He talked to the pharmacy for us but couldn't prescribe that med himself because of a new federal law that makes schedule 4 meds much harder to prescribe and get delivered. Dr. D. finally said we could go pick it up, but we'd have to go to the Tacoma HMO pharmacy nearly 30 miles away. He was right about that. He was wrong about us being able to "pick it up."

The 30 miles presented another problem as we no longer have a car, are on a very fixed income, are both disabled and public transportation to a whole other city is really problematic on weekends. It takes 3 days just to get a paratransit bus to the bus stop. And her psychiatrist's office is closed on the weekend and apparently they don't have on-call docs in an emergency for psychiatrists.

I'm going a bit off my story here. It seems the feds are okay with legalizing marijuana, opening borders for the drug mules, and even allowing some pharmacies to carry over-the-counter morphine. But my wife's prescribed by a doctor anti-anxiety medication requires practically an act of congress to get a few days early so we can celebrate our 50th anniversary. (end of rant)

Our neighbor, Dan, a wonderful human being, when I asked if he could drive us down to the bus stop, immediately left his supper and said he was going to take us all the way to the Tacoma clinic. God bless that man for his kindness. When we got to the clinic, we hit road blocks again and again. The pharmacy wouldn't release the medication to us. so we had to go to the urgent care clinic there and wait an hour or so to see a doctor. All the nurses and receptionists at the urgent care told us they weren't going to be able to release her meds. One even chided us for not planning our trip properly.  

What she meant by planning our trip better was to go through all 15 medications and determine when each ran out and then plan our cruise for the window in the dates when nothing was going to run out. There was no sense from these unpleasant women that the HMO should adapt to our schedule and maybe give us the extra we needed to last the length of the cruise. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the cruise lines' sailing dates are planned more than a year ahead and that the ships are highly unlikely to move around their embarkation dates based on 6000 passengers' medication refill schedules. I'm afraid I lost my temper a bit and threatened to sue somebody.

I went back to the exam room and found poor Sheila prepared to just stay home and send me on the cruise without her. It seemed pretty hopeless. So we did what we always do when things seem  hopeless. We prayed and asked God to help us, for without God's intervention, it looked very much like Sheila wasn't going to be able to go on our 50th anniversary cruise. Her most critical medication would run out 2 days into the trip and our HMO was adamantly denying our request to get the refills before we leave Monday. Without that med her life would be placed at risk on a boat out at sea. It looked very like she was going to have to stay behind while our family went on our 50th anniversary cruise without her and I wasn't going without her so everyone on the cruise would be celebrating our anniversary without us. I wasn't going to let that happen, so I kept fighting to get her meds, taking on every naysayer who popped up to tell us it wasn't going to happen.

After we prayed in the urgent care examination room, a young doctor came in a short time later. Although every HMO staff member had told us no way were we getting her medicine, the doc took pity on us. Turns out he kind of stuck his neck out to get her meds covered for the trip. If her psychiatrist didn't back his play, he could have been in real trouble for what he did. He ordered enough of her meds to get us through the trip and home. It took some doing, but this kind man got it done. God bless him.

What Satan means for evil, God works out for good. The devil works in broad strokes to corrupt our culture, our political system and our religions, but as time grows shorter, he grows desperate and is reduced to turning the forces evil loose in ever more petty attempts to harass good people. Petty demons try hard to spoil any good and worthy thing; every bit of joy we may have if they can. 

So, we had a little miracle yesterday. Today we're packing for the boat. Tomorrow we leave at 7 am for the Royal Caribbean Cruise Terminal, an hour away in Seattle. We've never been on a cruise before. We've never been to Alaska or Canada. We've never seen the northern lights, glaciers, whales or brown bears. And we get to travel all that way in comfort, even though our knees and hips are wrecked, our mobility is limited, and we live on a fixed income. Our children are good to us, our neighbors are good to us and God especially is good to us. I've got a great pair of binoculars and my grandson and I are looking forward to watching whales from the balcony of our cabin and Sheila and I to spending time with our kids who live 3000 miles away. Sabbath we will spend at sea in the midst of God's natural beauty. Even as the world winds down, our loving Savior is there for us to give us joy and encouragement amidst the storms of life.

God is so very good.

© 2024 by Tom King

Pro-Hamas Students Offered a Free Ride.............to Iran!

I know. Let's try one of these protests in Teheran! They'll love it!

 Iran's Shiraz University Iran has announced a scholarship program offering free tuition to American students kicked out as a result of their pro-Palestinian protests. Oh, mercy, I do hope the whole bunch of them take the deal. We should start a Gofundme to buy airline tickets to Teheran for all of them and encourage the to go try out Iranian education. What an experience that will be. Can't wait till....

1. The girls step out in bikinis and halter tops.
2. The girls go burkha free.
3. The guys try chatting up a female Iranian (probably won't be a student though - they don't like women attending college).
4. The women try speaking up in class, if they aren't banned from attending classes because they are female.
5. They try protesting because some LGBTQ folks were tossed headfirst off the science building.
6. They try to rock that purple hair, navel piercings and tatoos of naked people, serpents and skulls smoking cigarettes in public.
7. They complain about a "unfair" pronouncement by the Ayatollah.
8. They pitch their tents on the quad for a quick fun protest.
9. They show off that tramp stamp.

Well, given the cultural practices of this gang of hooligans, at least we won't have to worry about making it a round trip plane ticket!

© 2024 by Tom King

Is Rejecting Religion for Spiritualism a Good Thing?

The dictionary defines religion as a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith. So what is your objection to a system of beliefs? Progressivism, Marxism, socialism, communism, and spiritualism are all "systems of beliefs." These are all faith-based systems. The only commonality between all these religions is that they have no God to trouble them or offer them guidance. They are all self-centered systems of belief, not God-centered. You get to make up your system of comfortable beliefs, principles and causes.

The ardor and faith of the God-free religions is obvious if you dare challenge their beliefs or (worse yet) defend your own beliefs. They work up all kinds of ardor and with total faith in whatever herd ascribes to their shared beliefs. Don't ask them to go to church, though. A nice peaceful riot or burning a federal building, however, is a wonderful spiritual solidarity building activity. Just don't call it a religion. That implies you might be expected to sit in a pew.

The demonization of "religion" is, in my humble opinion, a strategic tactic of the forces of the dark side. Basically it says forsake the assembling of yourselves together as Christian denominations do and go out and worship in "nature" or assemble yourselves together to "peacefully" protest organized religion because organized religion is a bad thing.

Bad for who?

No question that some members of the would-be leader class have claimed religious authority and abused it for their own purposes. The devil, always a good military strategist, never attacks from just one direction. Even today he attacks conservatives from below and liberals from above.

And by encouraging us to disparage each other and fight interminably he causes the sort of chaos that helps his guerilla campaign against God. He has to make God and God's followers the bad guys. He does this, I believe, by introducing this nebulous spiritualism in which we get to believe we can find our own truth from within ourselves. No objective truths. No firm principles and only one's own self-defined "truth". Be wary. Religions as systems of belief provide us with an external framework. It assumes original sin - that we aren't by nature really good people. Spiritualism assumes we are by nature, good from birth. Well, we aren't. Don't believe that? Try raising a two year-old. Hard to find a more stubborn self-centered creature in all creation. If they weren't so cute, many toddlers would never survive to become adults. Our jobs as parents are to civilize the wee barbarians. In the same manner, God's job is to prepare us for eternity. We need His guidance. We don't carry goodness within ourselves.

That all comes from God and even when we think it comes from our own naval gazing, we find we become better people only by adopting into our lives external principles like the 10 commandments and the principles we learned in Sabbath school. By beholding we become changed. We are saved by Grace, not by sitting on a pole contemplating our own goodness. It doesn't work.

Eliminating "religion" wholesale is a very bad idea. Even the rhetoric of those who would selectively eliminate religious ideas and getting rid of institutions that make me uncomfortable, encourages pride and a haughty spirit. Spiritualism isn't about rapping on walls in the Fox sisters' bedroom in upstate New York. It's about turning inward for truth and rejecting the outward search for God and the assembling of ourselves together for mutual support in becoming better people.

When I took counseling studies in graduate school, I learned that one of the best ways to change our behavior was through studying, positive self-talk and performing ritual acts which challenged our own negative behavior. It struck me how similar much of the behavioral change techniques advocated by psychology were strikingly similar to those practices and rituals in many Christian churches. Apparently, when Jesus set up the Christian church, He knew rather a lot about how the human brain works.

Seek Him and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart. Searching for some sort of ultimate truth within your "spirit" is a pathway to what Yoda in Star Wars called the "dark side".

Okay, by now my anti-religionist friends are locked and loaded. You may fire at will.......

© 2024 by Tom King

God''s Mercy to a Partially Tone Deaf Would-Be Musician

I am not a natural musician. My wife, Sheila, has perfect pitch and in high school her band teacher offered to get her a college music scholarship for the oboe, a particularly difficult instrument to play. I envy her. Me? I can barely hold a tune in a fair-sized bucket, but it helped a lot when Bob LeBard, my Valley Grande Academy chorale director, stood me between Dave Dameron and Steve Urich, two strong basses. It took me two years to learn to hear notes well enough to tune my guitar by ear. 

Before that I made use of a principle of physics/acoustics that allowed me to hold down the 5th fret of the sixth string and adjust the fifth string so that it vibrates when you strike the sixth string. Then I'd follow the pattern down to the first string. I could only get the guitar in the neighborhood of in tune. Dave would ask me, "Can't you hear that?" when I played my "tuned" guitar.  I couldn't. I just handed him my guitar. Eventually, I got to where if I struck the fretted sixth and the open 5th string at the same time I could adjust the 5th string till the note didn't warble.
 

God gave me this guitar. When I was first starting out playing guitar I had bought a beautiful solid blonde Mexican guitar from Kim Holdridge for $6. The strings were broken and the nut was missing. I replaced the nut and bought new strings and found I had a most lovely sounding classical guitar. Sadly a couple of summers later someone knocked it off the counter in the camp store and broke the neck. The lovely folk I worked with at Lone Star Camp all chipped in and surprised me with a new Yamaha classical. It died a few years after that in an accident - broken neck again. 

 

At the time, Mickey Thurber played a classical Goya guitar with the AYA team and I always wanted one. I've had two 12 string guitars. One died the same way as the little Mexican. My son lost the other one. I carried my instruments everywhere so it was kind of inevitable that wear and tear would have its toll. I lost 3 banjos one way and another over the years and I'm on my 4th and 5th. David Dameron who lived through a year of listening to me learn the guitar across the hall in the dorm at VGA. He gave me a banjo he had that needed repair. I bought some tools and repaired it not knowing what I was doing. I even straightened up the neck. Before that, I had built a Squared-Eel homemade longneck banjo from a kit my friend Mike Gregory sent me because he felt sorry that I'd lost my last banjo. I was getting good, because I extended the neck to make a longneck out of it. The head was a 2 liter pop bottle I tacked over the frame and shrunk with a hair dryer. Totally cool.

 

My best guitar (the one in the picture above) I found on eBay. It was a Swedish Goya like Mickey's, built in Gothenberg, Sweden before 1972. Some fool had tried to put steel strings on it and ripped off the bridge. I replaced the broken bridge by reading about bridge placement and my little Goya sings as beautifully as my old Mexican. God has been good about keeping me in good musical instruments and I've learned a lot about repairing and building instruments. I'm hoping to build a church dulcimer soon. It's rectangular rather than hourglass or oval shaped. I suspect it has a more low tone.

I've got the tools and I've got the web address of StewMac, a luthier supply place and a membership at Banjohangout.org where the guys love to give out advice if you get stuck. They turned out for me to be kindred spirits, which for banjo players is kind of like when your wife leaves you home alone without competent supervision. 

 

The best part of my musical journey is that I learned you don't have to be a professional musician or be in a band if you're too lazy to practice. I never got very good, but if, like me, you play off and on for 45 years you can follow along with "Awesome God." You can just play well enough to be in the church song service band and Kumbaya for campfires. Learn some chords. Simplify the arrangements. Make yourself a notebook of all the songs you like and do like our ancestor did and sit out on the porch where you won't bother your wife with the perfect pitch. The dogs will howl along with you. It's so special.

 

 

(c) 2024 by Tom King

Are Sharkicanes Next?

A few years back, some cocaine fueled movie producers got together and bounced around some ideas for a movie. They thought, maybe comedy or horror or science fiction - something like that. Jaws made a lot of money and shark movies boiled off the franchise in doves. Someone else suggested a disaster movie. A lot of people love disaster movies. Then someone who obviously was one toke over the line, said, "Why not combine Jaws and Twister; call it say, "Tornado-sharks!"

"It doesn't have the ring of a good disaster film."

"What if we have a tornado pick up a whole bunch of sharks and drop them on people in Los Angeles?  Call it Sharknado!"

"Brilliant!" shouted the third producer. And it was off to the races with sequels that struck LA again, Florida, and sent the hero, surfer and bar owner Fin Shepherd and his surfer chick girlfriend April all over the world. Wherever they go in the 5 sequels more sharknadoes would break out around them. The world is destroyed except for Fin who then time travels in the last installment, rescues a bunch of key people and saves the world.

Now, I don't want to upset anyone, but I watched a documentary about tornadoes a while back and I'm concerned. Apparently, if these two hurricanes cranking up in the Atlantic and Pacific cross paths, there could be water spouts that draw sharks up into the hurricanes and when these hurricanes make landfall sharks actually could be dumped all over what the movie producers called "The Feast Coast"  from Florida to Texas. Now, this isn't the problem that I'm having exactly. I know that between gangs with stores of illegal guns in LA and Texans who are some of the most heavily armed Americans. So both places have adequate ammunition and sufficient stores of spices to handle the situation. 

 

The problem in the states that will be struck would be working out the bag limits on flying sharks. I can't afford to get into any trouble with the game wardens. Can you even shoot flying sharks, when they exit the sharkicane or do you have to wait till they make land fall? Is there a tag I need to buy in the event of a 2020 sharkicane? 

 

If anyone has any information about how to get flying shark hunting licenses, let me know. It will be very much appreciated. 

 

© 2023 by Tom King

How They Made The Canterville Ghost Better Than Oscar Wilde's Original

Why I Like What Some Screenwriters Do to the Stories They Base Their Movies On.

Just finished watching the 1944 movie, The Canterville Ghost and then went back and refreshed my memory of the original Oscar Wilde story from which it was drawn. There have been other versions, but I like the '44 outing with Margaret O'Brien and Robert Montgomery. It is the kindest version of the lot. 

First of all in the movie, Sir Simon is only guilty of cowardice. In the book he murdered his wife in cold blood along with 4 other people who died as a result of his prodigious haunting ability. He is an evil spirit and lies and manipulates the daughter of the American minister's family who have come to live in Canterville Chase while working for the American government. Sir Simon delights in pointing out the hypocrisy of the minister. This is not in any way a story to create good feelings between the British and Americans.

The '44 movie version, on the other hand, is set during WWII and the story is adjusted to promote good feelings between the Brits and their American cousins jammed into southern England preparatory to crossing the channel into France. In the story, a platoon of Army Rangers take up residence in the castle and are confronted by the ghost. The soldiers aren't intimidated by the ghost and drive into a corner in deep depression. Margaret O'Brien who is delightful as the Lady Jessica DeCanterville, meets her spectral  ancestor and sets about to help him find a brave relative to help him end the curse.

The original story also has a female character, Virginia Otis, whom Sir Simon manipulates into helping him cross over to the other side. Given his track record, I suspect that bright light he goes into are the fires of hell, but that's just me. Wilde seemed to be saying that the unrepentant Simon managed to manipulate his way to heaven without having to repent of murdering his wife.

One of the American soldiers in the '44 movie, Cuffy Williams, played by Robert Montgomery, turns out to be a descendant of the Cantervilles and as such can do a heroic deed in Sir Simon's name and free his spirit to rest in the garden behind the pines. He overcomes his own fear, does the heroic deed proving that all Cantervilles are not cowards and frees Sir Simon's spirit from the curse his father had put upon him when he was walled up in the closet. This Simon did repent and was more of a hapless victim than the Oscar Wilde Simon. 

I think the movie is way better than Oscar Wilde's cynical version. Wilde, a gay socialist and aesthetic, never wrote anything I cared for other than ones that screenwriters managed to give happy endings like Canterville. The poor man kept looking for God, but didn't seem terribly interested in obtaining forgiveness or changing his ways. Wishful thinking may explain why Sir Simon in his story manages to take advantage of a pure hearted girl and a letter of the law ritual. Wilde attempted to do much the same by doing a last minute Catholic conversion and last rites on his deathbed. 

I like movies with happy endings. So sue me!

Tom King
© 2023
                                              

I Think Angels Took Pity on Me

The scene of the action. I worked in the mop
shop on the left side of the brown building.
Doc Ward's shop was behind us less than a quarter
mile. The station where I bought Mission Orange
Grape Nehi and, of course, Dr. Pepper is the white
building at the far left which often sold gas at 17¢ a 
gallon when he got into a price war with the station
across the street where Mom bought baloney.*

My friend John worked at one of my hometown's ubiquitous broom shops. Doc Ward had a shop on College Drive where John, now a respectable dentist, worked. I worked just down the street making mops for EK Birdwell. Everybody pretty much had a job in Keene, Texas. At one point it was the per capita most heavily industrialized college town in America someone figured. It was mostly because we worked our way through high school and college to pay our tuition.

John had warned me before I went to work at the mop shop to watch out for the pranks they liked to play on new guys. So, my second day at Birdwell's, the guys tried to send me down to Doc Ward's to borrow back our "handle stretcher." There was a whole, unnecessarily detailed story about mop handles that had been cut too short that went with the request. We worked strictly on piece time so a trip down to Doc's would not earn me a nickel and back then, I could get a bottle of Grape Nehi for a nickel. My thrifty soul, smelled a rat. 

So, I asked the if they wanted #2 or #4 stretching oil to go with it and by their smirks I knew I'd dodged one of those get-the-new-guy pranks. Later they tried to send me to the broom shop for a yarn stretcher. I used the time to step over to the gas station next door for a 16 oz.  Mission Orange. When I got back, I told Rocky who was on his third attempt to "get me" that the broom shop guys had put it under his mop machine. Rocky actually looked under the machine for a second before he caught himself.

For some reason I managed to avoid pranks. I think my guardian angel looked out for me. Tommy Lewis attempted to rig my mop taping and trimming station so that when you pulled the handle release it dumped a big box of mop yarn clippings on your head. Unfortunately (for him) I was over on the mop making machine learning how to make mops that day and EK came in to get a mop sample to put on one of the trucks. He wanted to make sure the sample was perfect and I don't think he trusted any of us to do it right. 

Anyway, E.K. shoved the mop's handle up into the catch above him, taped and trimmed the mop and then gave the release rope a big jerk. A cascade of white mop fuzz rained down on his head. He did not look happy. I managed to look duly shocked and thus avoided retribution. I was laughing so hard inside, however, I think I was internally hemorrhaging. Tommy on the other hand looked like a cat trying to pretend it hadn't just eaten the canary while having yellow feathers sticking out of his whiskers.

While working at summer camp, I had two pranksters go after me. I suppose I looked a likely target. My soon-to-be buddy, the young not-yet-a-doctor Allen tried putting jalapenos and bay leaves in my pancakes, but the kitchen staff, whose aid in the prank he'd enlisted, switched the poisoned pancakes and stuck some extra bay leaves in the ones they gave him. There's no taste quite like onion jalapeno chili powder bay leaf pancakes with butter and syrup. Jack ran choking and gagging across the dining area to the water fountain. It took him 3 days to get rid of the taste. He even apologized to me afterward for even thinking of such a thing.

Another prankster dumped water on one of the kitchen girls after he failed to pull off the old glass balanced on a nail gag on me. He picked the wrong victim. The next day the cook called him aside while one of the girls swapped his glass of red Kool-Aid for a glass of onion juice with red food coloring and ice in it. Tim took a big swig of it while the campers were singing the prayer song. The camp director fixed him with an icy stare when he started coughing and sputtering and he had to wait till the song was over before staggering to the water fountain to spend an unpleasant half hour trying and clear his palate.

I learned from all this that you never prank your boss, the kitchen staff, the bookkeeping staff or the innocent. Angels are watching and the word "karma" is probably derived from observation of the likely gleeful angelic works of retribution perpetrated upon naughty persons.

© 2023 by Tom King

*The photo above was taken from the parking lot of Ada's Cafe across the street from the mop shop, where I would on rare occasions buy myself breakfast or lunch of a warm Sunday morning, taking a considerable chunk out of my pitiful wages for the week. But boy howdy, the woman could cook!