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THE MUTE BUTTON
When I was born in 1922, there was one radio station offering broadcasts of music and news. That was station KDKA in Pittsburgh. You may recall that at that time there was no such thing as television. That remained in the never-never land of things to be yearned for. When I was about 12 or…
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SAVERS OF STRING
I have given this essay the title which may recall some distant memories of the Bible by calling it “Savers of String” instead of “String Savers”. Now having settled that question, I would like to dedicate it to Thelma Dupont. This essay is so dedicated to Thelma because she comes from a family larger than…
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A PAIL OF HOME BREW
During the period of the 1920s, there was a resurgence of thought pioneered basically by Southerners. It resulted in the banning of the sale and use of beer. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol and came to be known as the Prohibition Act. Prohibition was widely flouted. It…
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KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN: AN ADVENTURE STORY
During the 1930s and 40s, and perhaps a bit longer, there was a magnificent tenor who appeared in several productions of The Metropolitan Opera as well as in concerts. He also appeared on radio and later on television programs like The Bell Telephone Hour and The Firestone Hour. I was glad to tell people that…
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TALL GRASS
When I was a child, my friends Charlie Aldridge and Billy Seyfried liked to play baseball. There were plenty of empty lots which we often converted into ball fields. There was a problem because the weeds and grass had to be cut down before the ball game could start. But the only means of cutting…
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TO GIVE ONE BIG FAT RAT’S ASS
Over the years I have been a big consumer of sports news. Specifically, I have followed the fortunes of the New York Mets and before that the St. Louis Cardinals. When the fall and the winter came, I followed some of the St. Louis college teams but after the war, I was much interested in…
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ANOTHER ROUND WITH A POLYGAMY OF ESSAYETTES
You will recall that these are individual subjects that have absolutely no relationship to each other. With that forewarning, we will begin a new venture into the world of polygamy which I am determined to rescue from the Mormon Church. First there is the bladder scanner. This subject is considered by some to be…
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THE SILVER DOLLAR BLUES
I am going to reach into racetrack terms to introduce this essay. At tracks where horses and dogs race each other, there is a highlight of the afternoon called the Trifecta. This means that when a bettor picks the winners of the Trifecta, he will be rewarded with extra cash. I have been to the…
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DON’T FORGET YOUR CHANGE
In Missouri where I come from, we don’t like fanciful titles or road signs. The main highway leading from St. Louis to Clayton, Missouri, my home town, is called Clayton Road. It is so called because it goes to Clayton. Similarly, in the suburbs of St. Louis there was a road called North and South. …
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COPENHAGEN SNUFF
At the moment, I am involved with this essay on the horns of a modest dilemma. The dilemma has to do with the Republican Party whose candidate in the year 2012 in all likelihood will be Mitt Romney. As it turns out Mitt Romney is a Mormon. This may be hard to be believed in…