Bum steer

 We're a long way from the cattle drives in Kansas here in Baltimore, but yet...

Someone needs to be told "you're up pasture bedtime" because this bovine was roamin' the old Baltimore Beltway yesterday afternoon. Yeah, I-695 became the stomping grounds for this big ol' Bessie, who got on around the Reisterstown Rd exit and had traffic all snarled up.

County police went to a neighborhood in Pikesville and were told "He went thataway!" So they wound up on the interstate and roped him with a lariat they keep in the police car for people rescues.

It's not unheard of to have future hamburgers afoot (or ahoof, I guess) in Baltimore. There's an abattoir in South Baltimore, and every once in a while some animal gets a glimpse of a short future and makes a run for it, but in leafy suburban Pikesville, you don't see too many cows. It's just unherd of.

I know I've told you about my rustic upbringing, and that there were really cow pens on Cowpens Av, which runs into my old street. All sorts of cattle roamed around there in my childhood. Then they built houses and Spiro Agnew moved in.

I stewed about it for years. 

Anyhow, the cow is back home now and no longer wants to jump over the moon. 

Normal

 If you've ever met me, you know it didn't take long before I started nattering on about how great I always thought Norm MacDonald was. He created the kind of jokes that were far above the average "I'm not saying he's fat, but..." wisecracks.

Norm is dead now, but there's a new documentary on Netflix that shows examples of his wit and philosophy. And if you watch it, you'll see countless examples of how funny and smart he was. 

The documentary shows Norm's memorable appearance on the final David Letterman Show, in which he said "Mr Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental." "Truck" in this sense has nothing to do with anyone's Tacoma or F-350. It became English from its start as the French word troque, which meant business dealings, or trading. At first, after becoming English, it was neutral, and meant good or bad business,  but over the years it's come to where it refers to things we'd rather avoid.

It's one of the quirky expressions that make me love written and spoken English. It's easier to have no truck with those who don't. 

Empty your pockets!

People were asking about this sign...

...because what possible difference could it make if I carry my Parker T-Ball jotter around in a titanium factory?

And as a man with titanium knees, thank you for leaving that pen in the car. This is why: The teeny rolling ball in your standard Bic ballpoint pen tip is made of tungsten carbide, which is extremely hard, as you will remember from the time in 8th grade that you and that Wellington kid finally popped the roller out of your Papermate and tried to coat it with some mercury secreted from the science lab. You'll have to get a fire underneath tungsten that's 6,192°F to melt it, while they only have to heat titanium to 3,400°F. The deal is, if your pen falls into a molten titanium vat, the tungsten will not melt.  

And while that might not bother you (you can always get another free pen at the Credit Union), that teeny bit o' unmelted tungsten would get into jet airplane rotors or aircraft frames and even something that little can cause a lot of problems, such as fatigue cracks and other performance problems.

There was a guy at work once, went out at lunch came back with a cold cut sub. He asked for "everything" on the sandwich, and when he bit into it, he found more than everything...there was the plastic glove that the sandwich maker had been wearing until it fell off in the middle of my buddy's sandwich.

That's the parallel I draw for unwanted foreign items. Not blaming anyone, but check your lunch carefully (unless you packed it!)

And leave your pens outside whenever you find yourself at a titanium plant!

    

Fly me

Bosses like to say, "There are mistakes, and there are mistakes." Take the case of the errormaker at Alitalia Airlines in 2006. This person was supposed to key in the price of a ticket to fly from Toronto to Cyprus as $2,558.

For some reason, he or she entered the price as $33, which meant that 509 people got tickets at that low-low price before the bosses noticed something wrong in Toronto. 

Getting to fly for 1.29% of the regular price is a pretty sweet deal.

That's why I hang around Jersey Mike's, waiting for a mistake in the price of a giant sized #13 (Provolone, ham, prosciuttini, cappacuolo, salami, and pepperoni) which is enough for two dinners for the two of us. 

That's a lot of gabbagoo for very few buckaroos!

Sunday Rerun: Head East!

  I can't tell you what I was listening to the other day, but I heard someone mention the town of Atlantic, Iowa.

I'm no geographer, but I know Iowa is a state pretty much in the middle of these United 50 States. It seems odd to mention the Atlantic Ocean, way out there in corn-fed Iowa, like when we Marylanders find ourselves in Iowa, being offered "Maryland crab cakes" for dinner. 

I didn't have anything better to do, so I looked it up.  Atlantic is the county seat of Cass County and sits on the banks of the mighty East Nishnabotna River. Last time anyone counted noses (2020) they tallied 6,792 Atlanticans, which was down from 7,257 (2000).

The books tell us that Atlantic was founded in October 1868 by Franklin H. Whitney, B.F. Allen, John P. Cook, and others. 

And they're still arguing about where the name for the town came from. Best guess is that the town fathers figured they were halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, maybe a tad bit closer to the Atlantic.

That little pointer is pointing to Atlantic, Iowa.

What I think, Ocean City, Maryland, should invite the entire town of Atlantic to come east for a weekend and see the ocean for which their town is named. 

The Saturday Picture Show, October 17, 2026

The guys in the warehouse said Gary called out sick today and they
don't want to handle it without him...so wait 'til Monday.

Mama Celeste started selling her pizzas nationwide in 1969, and I would estimate that in my salad days, I oven-baked, and later nuked, at least 200,000 of them. Of course, I preferred the Meat Lovers pizza...and a salad. They're gone now :(

You'll recognize this if you live in Baltimore County and you like the pure goodness of food from the Amish Market in Cockeysville. This mural is on the wall outside the restrooms and it depicts a tranquil life.

I guess at some time we will all have to answer this question. The next question is "Where?"  Try to get that one right.

This is America in 2026.  Suburban Virginia, nice houses - mini-mansions, one might say - right next
 to a data center. The good thing for the residents is, they no longer need reading lamps in the 
living room. They can read by the glow in the air.

Hurricane Isaias was pretty tough on some places down South, and yet, not as devastating as it might have been. On his way out, he played Scrabble with the Waffle House highway sign.

My favorite time of the year is here, so I find lots of autumn pictures to share.

I have never eaten a persimmon, and don't intend to, but I like the way they come scored with e-z cutting lines nicely marked for the persimmonizers out there!

Baltimore gets lit up purple this time of year for the Ravens!

This is Reno, Nevada, in 1963. Not so remarkable to see a man in clown motley at a lunch counter.  We've all seen that, right? But how about a turkey dinner with "all the trimmings" for 69¢? That's just like living!

The cat's pajamas

 Let me take you up the road to semi-rural Harford County, MD, where Cynthia Morgan, a school bus driver with 11 years of time in driving for the public schools (via contractor Cleary Transportation Inc.) had the can tied to her because she let a 10-year-old student hop off the bus to rescue an injured kitten on the road in the north part of the county.

The road where Alex Thomas was the only passenger still on the bus at the time is known as Heaps School Rd, and that should tell you that it's not like pulling over on I-95. It is in fact designated as a low-traffic rural road. So, Alex gets the kitten and the cat is taken for help and Alex gets home maybe 45 seconds late, so what's the issue?

The charges against Ms Morgan: Stopping at an unapproved/non-designated bus stop and letting a student exit the vehicle, alongside policies prohibiting unauthorized animals on school buses.

I've seen the back-and-forth online about all this. Most people take the sensible approach that sometimes, a little flexibility is a good thing when it comes to the choice of leaving an animal - to wit, a little kitten - in a dangerous place.

But then, there is a group of people I call the Whatifs. "What if the kid got off the bus and was run over by a car driven by a drunken politician?" "What if the cat was rabid and clawed her way to freedom, infecting the boy and the driver?" "What if the kitten belonged to a kindle of kittens out in rural Pylesville?"

This is not the actual kitten, but still.....

And to Mr and Mrs Whatif, I always come back with, "What if the 45-second delay in going down the road had saved the lives of the driver and the young man, not to mention the kitten, when a rogue communications satellite dropped out of the sky?"

This thing is dragging its way through the levels of bureaucrazy up there (misspelling intentional) and I hope that people will come to a level of common sense about it. The anonymous poem "Kindness To Animals" points out that gentle care of any animal is always returned. Maybe with affection, maybe with Androclean loyalty, maybe just, as in the poem, with a song from a robin in return for a few crumbs.

What's really crumby is firing the lady for doing the right thing. I expect everyone who had a "WWJD" wristband, tee shirt, or hat to stand up for Ms Morgan.

Reading is fundamental

 The first country radio station I worked for was WICO in Salisbury. The second thing the general manager there ever told me, after telling me not to leave my lunch on the table in the break room because "the river rats might get it" was that he did not allow his DJs to play any records by George Jones and Tammy Wynette because they were scheduled to play a concert in town one night, but Jones showed up drunk and pugnacious, got into a fight with Tammy (his wife) and roared out of town, leaving concert-goers disappointed.

The boss wrote to Jones and told him that he was instituting a lifetime ban on their records, and Jones wrote back - the letter was framed and hanging on the office wall - saying "I'm gonna build me a station right there in your town and put you out of business. - George."

I'm telling you this because I am almost finished Jones's autobiography, "I Lived To Tell It All," and it is one horrible book because every chapter is just "I drank a gallon of whiskey and passed out on stage" over and over and over again. Plus, in the later years of his addiction, someone got him hooked on cocaine, so add that to the toxic mix.

Jones was my favorite country singer, because he had a voice that could convey any emotion, but what I didn't know about him was that he was so desperately hooked on self-destruction that absolutely nothing - legal means, physical restraints, tears from those who loved him, and begging from people who had looked forward to hearing him sing - stood between him and his intoxicants. Even though he had fairly long periods of sobriety, it was always a matter of when, not if, he would plunge headlong into a bottle or a vial again. I knew he was messed up, but I never thought he would write a book bragging about it.

I guess it's true, that old saw about never learning too much about the people you admire. I wish I had never read that book about Andy Griffith and Don Knotts being total philanderers. Imagine cheating on your wife with Miss Crump! 

Kitchen Switchin'

 I'm not one for home decorating tips, which makes it all the more interesting that by logarithms keep sending them to me online. To me, "throw rug" is a verbal command, not a noun, and any time I see a piece of furniture labeled as as "occasional" table, I have to ask what it is the rest of the time. And I get few answers.

But here we go! The other day I was informed that tile backsplashes are no longer cool and I should start digging the grout of mine to make room for what all the cool kids have on the way behind the sink and stove...mirrors! 

Yes, they said that people are breaking their necks to have mirrors replace those old tile backsplashes.

They submitted these pictures to make their point. Couple things. #1, if I'm boilin' grits in the kitchen, I don't want to look up and see my dumb face at that hour of the morning.  And B, I don't want to see the mirror image of a clock while I'm trying to get breakfast on the table. I couldn't tell if it's quarter to six or half past nine!

Here's another picture they sent, but I like our tile backsplash. It doesn't look back at me, and it doesn't try to make the kitchen look twice its size with smoky mirrors.  Home designers, come back to me when you find a way to make a backsplash out of a 41" TV monitor! Do that, and I will have you over for grits!

Tuesday rerun: Fact known by few

  This is a fact known by few! Do you know Rachel Scott, the marvelous ABC news reporter? She's on TV most every night and she works hard to help us understand what goes on in Washington, DC.

Years ago, she was brand new to national news and was covering one of those early presidential primaries in an ice-cold state. She mentioned on Instagram that she was freezing under her top coat and I mentioned that she ought to look into purchasing a down vest. Being a California native, she had no idea such a thing existed, but I don't think she's been that cold ever since then. Down is marvelous for keeping warm. Ask any goose!

The happy couple, Rachel with husband Elliott Smith!

But that's not the fact known by few, and you will be among the few soon. Rachel got married earlier this month, and I read the wedding story in the New York Times because I am a romantic at heart. The article talked about her lovely trousseau, which included no down garments, and all the fun she and her new husband and their friends and family had, and that crowd included singer Gene Chandler, who is her grandfather.

The happy grandpa

You cannot have listened to an oldies station for five minutes without hearing his big hit "Duke of Earl," a huge hit in 1961 that really sets the mood in a lot of movies about the good old days, and I wish they were back. Gene really did it up fancy back then! He would come out on stage with a top hat and fancy cane and cape, as any proper duke would.

I like knowing that Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are brother and sister, and that Peter Graves and James Arness were brother and brother, and that Keisha Lance Bottoms, former mayor of Atlanta and advisor to President Biden, is the daughter of Major Lance, whose hit songs included "The Monkey Time" and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um".

But being the granddaughter of a duke confers a certain status on Rachel, who is a  royally wonderful reporter and seems to be a very good person as well. Congratulations to her and her husband! 

Indigenous

  Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday celebrating and honoring Native American peoples by commemorating their histories and cultures.  After all, they were here first! It's time to recognize and pay them respect! Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday in Baltimore County and is observed today.

 Local government facilities, state motor vehicle branches, and public libraries across Baltimore County will close today, in observance of the federal Columbus Day  holiday. 

Baltimore County government offices, senior centers, and all branches of the Baltimore County Public Library will be closed for the holiday. Recreation and Parks indoor facilities will also be closed, except for activities operating under previously approved permits. There will be no CountyRide service today.

Sunday Rerun: C'est dommage

 A long time ago, at work, a computer guy showed me something he should not have...it was a printout of all the passwords of everyone who worked there.

He wanted me to see how many of the passwords were filthy. That was hardly surprising, given the general tone of the billingsgate in that workplace. We were told over and over to make sure that no one could guess our password, so as to make sure no one did a dirty deed in someone else's name, but I'm here to tell you, a good 60-70% of the signons were terms for favorite activities among the highly libidinous. I think they were easy to guess, but I never tried.

The other surprising thing was how many people thought that something like "BOBBYD" would be hard to guess, if your name was Bob and your last name started with a D (made-up example).  Or for the guy who hummed "Stairway To Heaven" to choose "LEDZEP."

I'm walking down memory lane as a way to get around to telling you that the French people are looking into the $multi-million ripoff at the Louvre, and they found that the most famous museum in all the world used "LOUVRE" as the password to their security system.

I mean, sacre bleu! 

Not only that, but France’s National Cybersecurity Agency first was made aware of this foolish choice in 2014, when they reported “serious shortcomings” in the Paris museum’s security systems, such as two-decade old security computer software.

 “An attacker who manages to take control of it would be able to facilitate damage or even theft of artworks,” the agency said in 2014.

But here we are in 2025, and no one saw fit to do something about the situation.

French riot police stand near the Louvre Museum's glass pyramid 

And on October 19th, thieves entered the museum, stole the nation's crown jewels, and made good their escape within eight minutes.

If only the people in charge of guarding the jewels had known!

The Saturday Picture Show, October 10, 2026

Now I'm getting mixed signals.

I thought Dakota Johnson did a fine job on SNL the other night. She brought along a friend, who brought along a birthday cake.

A guy went to an Air B'n'b that said to bring your own ladle. No need to anymore!

I really didn't think they were still in business!

Here is Celine Dion, falling down at a concert in France. She was trying to do the duck walk. She is not Angus Young.

It's almost cranberry season, so don't get bogged down! Get yours early. 

You've heard of a dog in the manger. Here's a fox in the bushes.

Wherever this hotel is, I want to stay there someday so I can hear them call my name every time they answer the phone.

Yankees fans seem to feel that just because they show up wearing Yankee caps and Yankee jerseys, they are also Yankees. My advice: when you go to a game, sit there and watch the professionals play, and keep your hands to yourself.

 A long time ago, a friend of mine who happened to be a Baltimore City police officer told that I should look at the year and expiration month of a car stopped ahead of me at a light or whatever. She said I would be surprised at how many thought they could just drive around with expired tags and just get away with it. This picture was taken the other night in Baltimore City.

Classic Peanuts

 

Between the daily editions and the Sunday strips, Charles Schulz posted 17,897 original "Peanuts" comics over the years.  At the time this one appeared in our daily paper on October 4, 1969, I thought it was and always would be the best one ever, and nothing ever changed my mind about that. 

The words Charlie Brown said to himself sounded like every one of the good old country music songs that I loved since I was Charlie's age.  What I didn't know back in the pre-WWW days, was that Schulz was a big country fan, even naming the "boneless cat" Faron after his favorite male singer, Faron Young.

Just swap out the gender and this strip works for anyone who's ever been lost in love. I just hope that Charlie wound up with the little red-haired girl for real. 

The Ride

 Remember those Canadian wildfires this past summer? Let me tell you about Patricia Robinson and her story in the fires.

Ms Robinson is 90 and she had been traveling alone by plane one day from her home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to see family in Kelowna, British Columbia. Her family had paid for her trip as a gift for her big birthday.

She didn't get far. Less than an hour into the flight, the pilot came on the intercom with the news that the airspace across Western Canada was closed because of the smoke from the fires, and the plane was turning back to Calgary.

Picking up her luggage, she chatted with two guys who were in the same stranded boat, if you will: disappointed fellow flyers Quinn Sedmak, 48, and Tanner Salewich, 45. At first, all of them were booked on later flights that same day, all of which were cancelled because of the smoke.

So....

Sedmak found a reasonable rental car, and Salewich said he was down for the drive. Then they invited Robinson to come along, and she was up for it.

“What kind of crazy 90-year-old would be getting in the car with two strangers?” Robinson said. This kind: the kind who said, “I really didn’t want to spend the night in Calgary or go back to Saskatoon,” said Robinson.

Then she texted her family to let them know she’d be driving to the family gathering with two strangers she met on the flight. 

“It didn’t even occur to me what they might think.”

That is my kind of person!

“I wasn’t concerned about it at all,” she said. “I just totally trusted them both. I had no qualms about it.”

Leaving the Calgary airport at dinnertime, Sedmak, who has driven this trip "countless times" took the wheel. Salewich sat shotgun to navigate and Ms Robinson got in the back, riding shotgun shadow and remembering drives along the same roads years before with her late husband.

 

Quinn Sedmak, Patricia Robinson and Tanner Salewich

They got her to her family after seven hours of stories and listening to comedy. “They were very kind and considerate and polite to me all the way,” Ms Robinson said. “It had to come from somewhere, so I’m giving their moms the credit.”

Yes, we're told to be careful and don't go off with strangers, but sometimes, I think you have to trust your fellow humans. 

 

Nepo coach

Ms Carlie Irsay-Gordon is the granddaughter of Robert Irsay, the eldest daughter of Jim Irsay, and the sister of fellow Colts co-owners Casey Foyt and Kalen Jackson. She is the CEO and calls the shots after all is said and undone.

She found a Colts cheerleader outfit from the 1950s.

Just her bloodline is enough to make me shun her. Her great-grandmother, mother of Robert "Bob" Irsay, once said that Big Bob was "the devil on earth," and that was before he took our Colts and moved them to some hellhole in a state with towns such as Gnaw Bone, Toad Hop, Floyds Knobs, and French Lick.

She does have people running the team, but she has decided to cosplay as some sort of supercoach. She struts along the sidelines with a hat on and a headset with mic, and is seen taking notes and pulling on the sleeves of the real coach when she has a question or a suggestion. 

Now, a lot of people say she has every right to do as she wishes, since she inherited the team upon the passing of her drug-riddled dad Jimmy.  And I agree. It's her football, so to speak, and she can do with it as she wishes.

And her supporters say she is doing what every business owner should be doing - keeping a close eye on the family moneymaker and learning the game from the ground up.

And then come people such as I, saying that in 1976, Ted Turner, having bought the Atlanta Braves baseball team (with his own money, I hasten to add: he didn't inherit anything but a million dollar-debt when his father died) and finding it hard to watch so many losing games, put on a uniform and managed the Braves for a game. They still lost, and the next morning, cooler heads prevailed, and Ted was back to watching the games from the owner's booth.

I don't care for anyone whose name includes "Irsay" in any form. She does run the place, but just as I wouldn't want to be having brain surgery and having some new owner of the hospital donning surgical garb and peering into my noodle, Ms Irsay does not need to be parading around on the sidelines while people are doing the work they have trained all their lives learning to do. That diminishes their authority. She can take notes like the rest of us do while watching the Colts: half asleep in a recliner. 

What matters more

 Everyone was talking about Usha Vance almost taking a header while coming down the staircase off a helicopter at Joint Base Andrews yesterday. She was toting her  10-week-old infant Alec Neel Vance in a baby carrier. Fortunately, she did not fall, and no one was hurt.

SLOTUS grabbed the banister to right herself, and got back on both feet in no time at all. Listen, I have no truck with her or any member of her family. But she is a fellow human being, and being one of them myself, I cannot figure how the two Air Force airmen who were standing there with their arms at their sides, and the Marine who was saluting, did not make a move to be there to help.

 Now I saw people on social media saying, "oh you have to understand, there is a strict military protocol in these matters and they are duty-bound not to drop that bearing in any circumstance." 

But here I am, private citizen, saying that makes no sense, especially in a day and time when very high ranking gov't officials use the coarsest gutter language in the high gov't office and no one even looks askance at it any longer, and people of great importance carry on unsanctified congresses with people not their spouses and everyone just shakes their head. Man, woman, child, male, female, I believe we help someone who's about to fall especially when they have a baby in their arms. 

What good is protocol if that woman or the baby had been injured?

 

Camping!

Just as I was planning to spend a week hiking a rugged island in the middle of Lake Superior, I read about what happened to Craig Berg, and I changed my mind. From here on in, all my rugged hiking will be done on rugs.

Berg is 70, still a young man, and he left in August to traipse around Isle Royale National Park. It did not go well. 

A park ranger told him, “If something happens to you, it could be several days until somebody finds you.”

That alone would be enough to make me change my mind and stay home. I hate to be alone.

But Berg thought he'd be ok. He had a satellite-capable phone with a mapping app. 

This reminds me of all the people who told me over the years, "I'll be ok...I have four-wheel drive!"

So off he went, and then on Day Four, disappointment set in. He lost his way on what he called "a poorly marked trail," winding up in a swamp. He fell in the muck, drenching his clothes, bag and food. His boots came off but he found them, and you can just imagine how great it feels to put your hooves back in wet muddy boots. And his phone was sucked into the morass beneath his muddy feet.

Lost somewhere in the 207-square-mile island’s network of trails, he began hollering, "Help! I'm lost!"

He estimates he hollered those three words more than 10,000 times before embarking on the worst 11 days of anyone's life. He wandered in the woods, eating some freeze-dried food and drinking the worst water he ever tasted. 

Meanwhile, back at home, his wife Debbie was scared witless, of course, as her thoughts ran to what would happen on that island and images of moose and wolves danced across her thoughts.

Then Berg spotted a pair of kayakers 11 days after he’d gone missing.

When they came ashore, he told them his story and they were surprised to see him, having planned on simply seeing moose walking about. 

So, thanks to heaven for sending two kayakers. They told Berg they wanted beer for their trouble.

We have our priorities.

Sunday Rerun: Body Hacks

 

I found this list...and wanted you to see it.

 You know what they used to say; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but this is a list of ways to fool your body. Having lots of time on my hands, I roadtested them for you last week when we were stuck in the house with the weather outside being all frightful.

Here are the results of that trial. I pretended to be nervous, so I pinched my nose (1). It doesn't say for how long, and soon enough, I ran out of breath, so I got nervous for real, about the heartbreak of asphyxiation. But my nose said "no" when I went for another pinch.

I thought of something that would make me anxious, and that was the tendency of so many people to confuse "eager" and "anxious" ("I'm anxious to see what's in that Amazon box") - when you know very well it's the set of canvas shoebags you've had your heart set on, so you're eager, not anxious.  So I put my hand on my heart and took slow, deep breaths (2). Peggy thought I was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and changed the Music Choice to the John Philip Sousa Channel.

My energy levels range from somnambulant to near-hysterical, so I splashed cold water on my face while taking a brisk walk (3) to bring up the recycling tub. It being 13° at the time, little flecks of ice were forming on my chin and cheeks by the time I got back, so I energetically grabbed a warm towel.

My nose is stuffy at all times. I think my adenoidectomy needs to be redone. But I tried putting an ice cube on the roof of my mouth (4) but unfortunately it came too close to the Vicks Vapoinhaler in my nose and suddenly everything tasted like peppermint patties.

I don't know what it means, not to be able to sleep (5). I did try blinking rapidly, but I wound up straining an eyelid muscle, and it's the darndest thing, getting an Ace bandage on that!

Maybe the people who put out that list need to try a different test pilot.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 3, 2026

The homeowners asked online what to do with this architectural error. I say, make it a tiny stage for Junior to practice his oratory skills on the subject of poor house design. 

It is October and time to trot out the Halloween Snoopy decorations! 

What happened here was, all the years of glue holding advertisements to the billboard provided a perfect breeding ground for mushrooms!

Just think - these leaves, and several trillion like them, will soon be on your front yard. And the side yard, the back yard, and the driveway. And the porch.

There's no sign-up sheet, just go! or should I say just went?

I wondered what happened to the querulous woman and the sassy cat. I see, they wound up on this guy's calves!

You know, there will be some who come in and ask for the Oil Change Latte!

Just tell the kids they're for keeping Dad's cigarette package dry, and hope he doesn't go in and ask for one that fits a Camel.

If you've been fortunate enough to go to Amish Country, you've seen this sort of sight...the hoss burns oats, not gasoline...

Looks like the KMart where you used to get that popcorn and an Icee, right? But look at the quarter by the door...it's a perfect model!