By: John Carlson— A couple weeks ago, Nancy and I, plus some fellow Lutheran friends, drove south from Muncie to a place called Muddy Pond. Here are the directions: First, drive to Dale Hollow in Tennessee. Having never driven to Dale Hollow in Tennessee, nor Dale Hollow in Kentucky, for that matter, I rode shotgun in one car, along with four others. Another four of us rode in a second car, for a total party of nine. We included Rosanna,…
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By: John Carlson— So Nancy and I had this problem. The problem was, my “man cave” had a closet in it, but totally filling that closet space was a mammoth safe. Black as coal, this empty old safe stood chest high, thirty-odd inches across and roughly the same length deep. Pushing against it felt like pushing against Mount Rushmore. Why anybody wedged that safe into my man cave’s closet was beyond me. For all I knew the closet, and maybe…
By: John Carlson— A good scare always gives me perverse pleasure. That explains my love for Halloween, with its flying witches, flickering jack o’ lanterns, and moon floating behind ominously scudding clouds. This is even though, at heart, I am a true chicken. My younger sister, Patty? Not so much. Remember back when the movie “The Exorcist” came out? She was in high school then. As long as that movie was in the theaters, her social calendar was booked. She…
By: John Carlson— It was a dark and stormy night… No. Wait. On second thought, make that “afternoon.” It was a dark and stormy afternoon. Following a marvelously tasty Italian dinner enjoyed at Osteria 32, Phil and Susie Bremen, plus Nancy and I, walked into the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University. We were in search of the exhibit (cue the spooky organ music) “Gorey’s Worlds.” From somewhere nearby, a woman was faintly yet plaintively moaning. Following…
By: John Carlson— The other day I saw a dude hitchhiking, and it kind of took me by surprise. You don’t see that many people hitchhiking these days. This is a good thing, I think, since America is half-crazy anymore, and most of the nut cases seem to own cars. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hitchhiking was far more common. Young people in search of peace, understanding and the answers to life’s deepest, most confounding questions, stuck…
By: John Carlson— There’s something wondrous about hanging out on boats… This truth doesn’t come to mind all the time, probably because I don’t get to hang out on boats all the time. But when the rare opportunity presents itself, it quickly reminds me how wonderful hours spent afloat can be. We are obviously blessed to have a very nifty body of water called Prairie Creek Reservoir located south of Selma. It’s small enough not to be intimidating, but large…
By: John Carlson— Throughout this lifetime, my key to culinary happiness has been hamburgers. Beats me why, it just has. Maybe I watched too many Popeye cartoons as a kid. My buddies cheered as the musclebound sailor would “eats me spinach” so he’d be “strong to the finish,” then beat the living crap out of Bluto or whoever else was putting the moves on his woman, Olive Oyl. But me? I’d hang on every word that my main man Wimpy…
By: John Carlson— The other day I saw a national news story about a school system down South that is initiating an innovative method of controlling unruly students’ classroom behavior. It’s called “swatting them on the butt with a paddle.” That’s right, it’s good old corporal punishment, something that used to be fairly common in schools back in my day. I know this from personal experience, having been swatted a couple times during my own stellar public-school career. Maybe it’s…
By: John Carlson— A few weeks ago I was watching the Indycar race at Pocono Raceway on television, when driver Robert Wickens spun up into the catch-fence in what was a very ugly crash. No doubt about it, he could have been killed. Witnessing that accident reaffirmed a nagging belief: Maybe it was good I hadn’t become a famous Indycar racer after all. That’s not to say I didn’t want to become a famous Indycar racer. I did want to….
By: John Carlson— How lucky are we to live in the United States of America? Very lucky, as I am sure most of us would agree. That’s not to say it’s perfect here. But as my wife reminds me when I am bitching and moaning about the state of things or some perceived injustice, my problems invariably amount to what are best described, and dismissed, as “first-world.” Take the other morning. Having hopped out of bed at the crack of 9:30,…