If Acme’s here, can Coyote be far behind?

While riding my bike this morning, I passed a construction site where a new house is being built. At the entrance to the project was a line of orange barricades marked “Acme Barricades.”

And I thought, “Acme Barricades? Wile E. Coyote must be building this house.” Because if you’re a kid like me who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, Acme could mean only one thing: the Acme Catalog from which Coyote ordered every gadget imaginable to outwit Roadrunner — gadgets that failed spectacularly every time.

The ham that took it on the lam

I lost a ham today.

I know that’s not the kind of confession you expect to hear every day, but there it is:

Today, I lost a ham.

“How does someone lose a ham?” my friend Anne asked when I told her.

“Well, if I knew the answer to that, I’d be able to un-lose it,” I said, so I tried to recreate the day’s stunning mystery as well as I could.

I went to the grocery store to pick up a few staples I was running low on — bananas, sour cream, grapes, juice, chips — and when I passed through the meat section a nice ham caught my eye.

Welcome to the year of death by nuance

A few weeks ago, when a town-hall questioner lobbed a softball question to Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, she answered in what many pundits now claim could be the death blow to her candidacy.

“What was the cause of the Civil War?” she was asked.

And rather than giving the answer that any ten-year-old American could give, she opted instead for nuance.

The Civil War was fought over “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do,” she said.

Of course, Haley was right in a technical sense, because embracing or abolishing slavery was all about “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do.”

Discovering the wonder of “Amazon origami”

About a week before Christmas, my daughter came to my house and noticed a worn, beat-up plastic water bottle on the nightstand next to my bed. “How long has that been there?” she asked.

“Probably four or five years,” I said. “I refill it in case I get thirsty through the night.”

She was horrified and started talking about microplastics, forever chemicals and any number of other unpleasant thoughts.

“Then I probably shouldn’t tell you about the plastic water bottle in my car that’s been there for the last five or six hot summers,” I said.

The scent and sound of a favorite Christmas memory

Ask someone to share their favorite Christmas memory, and they’ll probably tell you about that cherished present they got when they were young. Or the joy in their children’s eyes when they came downstairs to see all the presents beneath the tree. Or the snowy trip into the pines to find the perfect tree to cut down. Something like that.

But for me, it’s cookies.

To be specific, it’s the scent of baking cookies, and the clatter of baking pans from the next room.

Reflecting on the history of harnessing sunlight

With daylight growing ever-shorter, I was gazing out the window at sunset yesterday watching the light fade, when a traffic-jam of sunlight-related thoughts collided in my brain.

The first was the memory of a powerful passage from a novel by Elie Wiesel, in which a man is waiting to execute a political prisoner who has been sentenced to die at sunset. He says you know night has arrived when you’re gazing out a window in the evening and you suddenly realize that you’re looking at your reflection in the darkening glass instead of the landscape outside.

A guide to apps for people who hate apps

Although I am as much a slave to technology as the next guy, I don’t embrace it willingly. I never play video games. I don’t listen to music while riding my bike. I refuse to jam a white stick in my ear so I can talk to distant people as I walk.

It would be a stretch to call me a luddite, but it’s fair to say I’m luddite-adjacent.

Yes, I carry my cell phone wherever I go, but I tell myself it’s purely for safety reasons.

Not losing sleep over a hero’s fall from grace

Years ago, when I taught high school English, I assigned students to write an essay about some real person they considered to be a hero, and why. I met with each student beforehand to discuss their choice, to ensure they understood the assignment and were going in the right direction.

And when a boy named Jim said his hero was Jean-Claude Van Damme, I asked him why.

He talked about all the characters the actor played, and how much he liked those characters.

In memory of an unhinged Bear

Whenever someone you know passes away and their name comes up in conversation, a mental image of that person will rush to the surface of your thoughts — and often it’s one very specific image of one very singular moment, before other images come flooding into your mind’s eye.

It’s like that with me whenever I hear the name of Chicago Bears middle linebacker Dick Butkus — “the most feared tackler of all time” according to the NFL Network — who passed away two weeks ago on October 5.

When the AI gods plunk you into a demographic

It can be a bit jarring to learn that you’re part of a demographic, especially if it’s one you didn’t particularly want to be part of.

Oh, sometimes we choose our demographics willingly, if unconsciously. If you watch a lot of Duck Dynasty, you’re probably glad to see ads for camouflage outdoor wear. Watch a lot of Golden Girls reruns, and you’ll find the best prices for hearing aids and hemorrhoid cream.

But what if you watch a show that might be of interest to pretty much any American?

Biking back to a memory of Kathy and the bullfrog

As summer peaks and edges toward autumn, and with winter not far ahead down the road, I cherish my morning bike ride more and more each day.

Early every morning, weather permitting, I ride out of Sun City southward along Sandwald Road all the way to Timber Creek and back, a roundtrip of a bit more than seven miles that lasts me the better part of an hour. I wish it were longer, but that’s as far as I can go in the countryside without too great a risk of being squashed like a bug by a truck or car.

Sail on, Jimmy. Thanks for the memories

As I write these words, it is early Saturday morning, September 2. Just a few hours ago, my musical hero Jimmy Buffett died.

When I learned the news, I did the same thing I did when my musical hero John Prine died of covid three years ago: I pulled out my guitar and started playing as many of his songs as I knew, fighting back the tears before my throat choked each song to a premature end.

Both Jimmy and John were only about a year older than me—and I have a personal connection to each of them.

Too soon or not, a taste of pandemic nostalgia

After an unmitigated disaster has passed, when can you say anything good about it, beyond the point when anybody might say “too soon”?

After WWII ended in 1945, it took 20 years before “Hogan’s Heroes” could crack jokes about life in a German prisoner of war camp. It took a similar number of decades before “Mash” could get us laughing about a Korean War triage medical hospital.

And although I have no jokes to share about Covid 19, I can’t help but feel that in some ways the “pandemic years” were among the best years of my life — because a world-wide disaster like a pandemic can bring sighs of fond nostalgia if you tuck it in between the two most personally disastrous periods of your life.

It’s not easy saving the world, but someone has to do it

I am saving the world through my flower garden —a daunting task, but I embrace it willingly, especially when my Save the World Gardening Instruction Manual reads like this:

Rule 1: Do nothing.

Rule 2: See Rule 1.

So lately I’ve been leaving my garden alone as much as I can. You might say I’m idling my fingers to the metaphorical bone, all in the name of saving the world.

You’re welcome.

So how am I saving the world with my garden?

Meeting Gary and slithering back to childhood

I’ve only known my new neighbor Gary for a little while, but he brings a smile to my face each time I see him, because he reminds me of my childhood.

Well, I guess you might say that Gary is not my neighbor, but my tenant, because Gary is a garter snake living in my garden. I call him Gary because… well, he looks like a Gary to me.

I first met him in early June when I skirted the edge of the lawn, yanking weeds, and I almost stepped on him.

In case you were wondering about that flag on my porch

Every day until the end of her life, my wife flew a flag from our front porch, and she changed it often.

She was an avid gardener, so most of her flags were inspired by the season. Goldfinches and lilacs in April and May. Red cardinals and orange leaves in October. Turkeys and pumpkins in November.

Of course, sometimes she honored other things with her flags. Sundays during football season she flew a Bears flag. During July every other year she flew a soccer flag to honor the World Cups, both men’s and women’s.

Learning to leave well enough alone

It was just about a year ago that I got rid of my old, crotchety microwave oven and got a whisper-quiet new one.

The old microwave had served me for nineteen years, a long enough career I suppose for kitchen appliances and quarterbacks not named Brady. It still worked well enough, except that the handle had cracked and was held together by packing tape, and when turned on it whirred and sputtered like an asthmatic chipmunk riding a bike with a baseball card clothes-pinned to fan the spokes.

All the things you might or not say about roadkill

I guess you might say I have an affinity for roadkill.

Oh, it’s not something I’m proud of. It’s just that over the years, roadkill and I have often crossed paths, and I guess you could say that I took the path less traveled by most people.

Take, for example, that freshly killed mink I found on Springinsguth Road in Schaumburg 35 years ago. It lay at the edge of the street next to the bridge over the creek, and I could see that it had been a beautiful, healthy animal before it crossed paths with a vehicle just the night before.

When a house becomes a home

Sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly when a house becomes a home.

But sometimes you know exactly to the moment when it happens.

The house where our kids grew up was in Schaumburg. It was ten years old when we bought it, so it had already been somebody else’s home, and as my wife and I toured it during their open house, we wanted to see what would make us feel that this house could be home to us.

For me, that happened when the owners took us into the attached garage.

You may ponder, you may wonder, but do you “sonder”?

My friend Lynn loves language, as I do, and she often posts an interesting or unusual word on her Facebook feed. But because she knows that I visit Facebook about as often as I visit my furnace filter or smoke alarm batteries, she sent me her most recent wonder-inspiring word via text.

The word was “sonder.”

She did not include the definition — which was either a passive-aggressive prod to get me to join the rest of the Facebook folk, or a generous compliment implying that I must surely already know this word.

Tax time grimace — and gratitude

Tax time has rolled around once again, and before I raise my anguished voice to harmonize with your anguished tax-time voice, let me take a moment to thank the Internal Revenue Service for a memory that changed my life.

It was 1970, and I was just finishing up my Bachelor of Arts degree at Western Illinois University, about to start a career as a high school teacher. I was married with a very pregnant wife, and Barrington High School, where I had completed my student-teaching, had offered me a teaching job once my degree was complete.

A polarized glimpse of Sunny Florida education

In case you missed this recent news item, publishers of a textbook used in Florida have removed all mention as to why Rosa Parks was told to leave her seat at the front of the bus and go to the back on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. In other states, students attending institutions of genuine education learn that the reason was that she was…

Well, I can’t tell you why she was ordered to change seats, because as I write this, I am in the Free State of Florida, as the governor calls it without a hint of irony.

Being just one chapter of someone else’s Great Loop

A couple weeks ago I was in the tiny town of Goodland, at the eastern tip of Marco Island in Southwest Florida. Goodland is a quirky little town, and you never know what oddball adventure you’ll encounter there. And this visit didn’t disappoint.

It was a Saturday, and a small art fair and music festival was under way. I strolled past the booths of ceramics, paintings, and nature photography as John Prine lyrics echoed through the park. Savory scents of burgers and brats wafted on the air, and I ambled down to a small aluminum floating pier rocking in the salty backwaters between the mangroves and sea grapes.

Valentine’s Day scar-kissed memories

The table where I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day is a fine piece of furniture. Made of pecan wood with wood-peg construction, it has four craftsman-style drop leaves, held in place by sliding wooden bolts under each leaf. It is one of my favorite pieces of furniture—but not only because of the features that attracted me to it when I bought it new 13 years ago.

It took two accidental scar-kisses upon that table to remind me daily of how blessed I have been in love.

Heaven — at the end of the path, or the path itself?

Not long ago, I did something nice for a lady who was a total stranger, and my friend said to me: “That was very Christian of you.”

I don’t remember what I did for that stranger — it was some little kindness any thoughtful person would do for another. Maybe she dropped a dollar and I called out to her. Or maybe she struggled with an armful of groceries and I offered to carry some out to her car. It was some kindness so small and commonplace, I don’t recall it.

THE DOORWAY TO OUR COMMUNITY