Ezra's Essays

Category: 2007

  • UPON BEING A GRANDFATHER

    Beady-eyed accountants may emerge from their grimy offices from time to time and lift their green eye-shades to contend that the Chicka-Carr combine has only five grandchildren. To that contention, I say “Bal-der-dash” and “Bah Humbug,” which are terms used with great effectiveness by John Major, the British prime minister who tucked his undershirt and…

  • THE PARADISE OF LARRY CRAIG

    The morning newspaper in what I generally refer to as my home town was called The St. Louis Globe Democrat. The name of the paper is misleading in every respect. The Globe covered local affairs and rarely ventured into global concerns or even national concerns. Secondly, the Globe Democrat was the voice of the Bob…

  • A LITTLE MORE FROM THE GRANDPA IN AMERICA

    Those of you who read these essays may recall one called “Thanksgiving 2006.” That essay recorded our joy at our ability to help two hardworking immigrants from Costa Rica. The cast of characters on the Costa Rican side included the parents, an eight-year-old boy named Esteban, a six-year-old boy named Fabian, and a five-month-old daughter…

  • AN ADOPTED GRANDPA

    Over a long span of years, I have been a son, a brother, a grandson, a husband, a father, a grandfather, an uncle, and a brother-in-law. Over that same span of years, I have been a filling station attendant, a soldier, a telephone worker, a union president, a lobbyist, and an international telecommunications representative. But…

  • BERNICE and WERNER’S UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

    Bernice Hughes and Werner Friedli, two likeable people, have been waiting since 1944 for answers to their questions. At this late date, I am still unable to provide them with suitable answers. But I will offer their questions to you in the hope that you may have a suggestion or two. Let’s deal first with…

  • THE 0-FER FACTOR

    The Salvation Army, the Baptist Young People’s Union, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Luther League (Missouri Synod) have approved this essay only on the ground that I disclose that it is a political and not a baseball essay. But to make my point it is necessary to call on the practice of baseball…

  • CRI DE COEUR

    The title of this piece is French, of course. It means “cry of the heart” in English. It must be assumed that the cry of the heart arises from anguish and distress which causes one to cry out. In this essay, I am going to attempt the impossible. It is to place this French thought…

  • EUPHEMISMS

    In the last four years of my career with AT&T, I was a Director of Correspondent Relations. The word “correspondent” is an anachronism. It goes back to the days when people wrote to each other and before the use of the telephone. Nonetheless this job required that I should visit other telephone companies around the…

  • ONAN AND THE GENTLEMAN FROM CHRISTOPHER STREET, NYC

    Larry Craig, the simply superb and sweet-smelling Senior Senator from the great state of Idaho, has been in the news recently and has caused me to rethink my thoughts about homosexuals. As many of you know, I did not attend an Ivy League college. In point of fact, I didn’t attend any college. I spent…

  • PRUDES?

    A few years back, Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchor, wrote a book in which he called the survivors of the great American Depression and of World War II the “greatest generation.” That was a very generous comment by Tom Brokaw, which we may or may not have deserved. But nonetheless, that greatest generation is now…