Barefoot in the Park

June, 1990 Today, we discuss cats and snakes. The reason we're discussing cats and snakes is that I have two of them (cats, not snakes), male and female, black and grey, respectively. The grey cat doesn't figure in this discussion, because she is, for all intents and purposes, a moron. I've seen lint with more snap. And she's a coward. The last thing she attacked (in that cruel, vicious way cats have of attacking things) was the aforementioned piece of lint, which promptly escaped intact. The cat in question is the black male, Storm. To date, he has killed 3 mice, 2 birds, 5 lizards, 13 snakes, and assorted lizards. The only ones that really bother me are the snakes (although one of the birds, a blue jay, managed to cover the entire front half of my house with feathers before buying the farm). Snakes are sneaky little critters. They know in their legless-lizard minds that if they don't play, then Storm will lose interest and go bother someone else. So they play dead. Storm, of course, thinking that—great hunter that he is—he had successfully relieved the beast of its worldly cares, then wanders off to find something else to kill—something a little more challenging, like a pecan. This leaves me with a live snake in my house. You have to understand that, obnoxious sexism notwithstanding, there are certain jobs in any house that fall to the man. The removal of vermin is one of these. I have seen my wife, Donna, who will calmly stroll right up to a rabid pit bull from hell and give him a pat on the head, turn to jelly at the sight of a cockroach, an animal several million times smaller than her. Because of this fear of really small things, I am the household snake remover (and bug killer). The problem is, I wouldn't know a poisonous snake if it strolled up and bit me (by which time, the point would be moot, at best). Mind you, I was a Boy Scout, and still remember what they taught me about poisonous snakes. But there's a difference between reading "Red on black, good for Jack" in a book, and seeing this little brown devil lounging around on the carpet you just paid the guy a hundred bucks to clean. So we go through the Snake Removal Dance, which involves the snake trying to slink off to a corner so I'll stop bothering it while I try to work out some way to pick him (as far as I know, all snakes are "him"s and they reproduce by cloning) up without risking even the slightest chance of being bitten. It's all very elaborate and, a few years ago probably would have rated a ten-minute segment on Wild Kingdom, ending with Jim wrestling a seventy-eight foot python while Marlon sold insurance.

April, 1991 I'm sitting in front of my keyboard, breathing heavily. This is not, as you might think, because I've been scanning my Christie Brinkly photo album. I've been exercising. Exercising has it's roots in Greek culture. The word is taken from two Greek words meaning "look like an idiot" and "until you die from pain". The first man to take up exercise as a serious occupation was an Athenian soldier who ran the twenty-six miles from the battler of Marathon to Athens, shouted "We're number one!" then died of a massive testosterone overdose. You would think that a logical connection would be made. You'd be wrong. Men have always thought that dying while looking stupid was a good idea, why do you think we thought up something as ridiculous as war? Ask any man how he'd like to die, and he'll say, "While making love to Claudia Schiffler." While the meaning of this is vague, my staff of experts assures me that it means something. "This means something," they say in that serious tone that lets you know that they're experts so you should just shut up and let them do expert stuff. There's a difference between guy exercise and girl exercise. If a woman says she did ten fanny-tucks, she gets congratulated on her accomplishment, and all her friends tell her they can see the missing inches. If a guy says he just did fifty pushups, every man within hearing distance will immediately throw himself to the floor to prove that he can do a hundred. Try it, it can be great fun. Women exercise to get thin. Men exercise to get "into shape." The shape in question is that of Arnold Schwartzenegger, an actor whose best (and most comprehensible) line to date was "I'll be back." Of course no normal man can gain Arnold's physique—he was force-fed anabolic steroids from birth—but that doesn't keep us from wanting it (in the same way that women want to look like Raquel Welch, without shelling out the bucks she spent on cosmetic surgery). In any case, experts say you can never get truly into shape without a "good diet". What they call a good diet consists of foods that either sound like a Hungarian insult or have the consistency of Levi's 501 blue jeans, or both. In reality, these "experts" are paid gobs of money by the Disgusting Foods Industry, and are mainly expert in the field of making people believe ridiculous things. The fact is that some people will eat dirt if you tell them it will make them lose five pounds a month. To sum up, after two weeks on my strict regimen of diet and exercise, I'm proud to say that I've lost my watch.

February, 1992 Welcome to The New Yankee Woodcutter's Shop of Projects Much Nicer Than Anything You Could Make. Before we go on, I'd like to take a moment to stress the importance of reading and understanding all of the instructions which came with your tools. Shop safety relies on such gems of wisdom as "It's probably a bad idea to rest your arm against a high speed band saw blade." And there's no more important piece of shop advice than this: Always wear a helmet. You never know when your wife is going to come in and start chunking shoes or blocks of wood at you to get your attention. Our project today is based on this antique Shaker fruit crate. It's fairly crude, but I noticed that with some minor design changes, it can be modified to make a nice desk lamp. A measured drawing with a supplies list is available, but I suggest that you buy my book, Huguenot Furniture and Desserts, available at your local bookstore. The first thing you need to do is select your lumber. The original piece was built out of common yellow pine, but I decided to go with black oak, because it's much more expensive and next to impossible to find unless you happen to be a lumber wholesaler. Now that you've got your lumber, you should cut it to length using your radial arm saw. I can't stress enough times the importance of using the right tool for the job, which is why you should buy each and every piece of heavy equipment that I show you, and all of the specialized attachments, even if you have to mortgage your house to do so. Next we need to join the wood. For this, we'll use biscuits. You can get biscuits at your lumber store in a package of about a zillion, or you can make them at home with a mixture of flour, shortening and water. The slots for the biscuits are made using your table saw. Just lower the blade beneath the table, line up the wood, and raise the blade until you've mangled the wood beyond all repair. Now glue all of the surfaces of the wood. Glue the biscuits and the biscuit slots as well. If your cat happens to be in your workshop, glue him. Use a lot of glue, because we'll be sanding it all off, later. Now, it's just a simple matter of clamping the wood and waiting for the fade... Okay, we're back. The first thing we'll do now is sand all of the glue off using our random orbit sander. This has been used extensively for quite some time in the auto industry, but wasn't used in carpentry until we discovered they had a power tool that we didn't. Make sure you remove all of the glue. Don't forget the cat. Now, after a liberal application of more glue, we'll nail the pieces together using standard concrete spikes. You can reduce the chances of powdering your thumb with a hammer by using this nail gun which is capable of driving a credit card through an oak tree. Remember: It's probably a bad idea to test this device by placing your hand in front of the firing barrel. Once it's assembled, you can see that we've done a great job of making a nice home entertainment center out of this simple Anglo-Saxon spinning wheel. Next time, on The New Yankee Woodcutter's Shop of Projects Much Nicer Than Anything You Could Make, we'll take a look at this antique dressing table, and learn how, with some minor modifications, we can make it into a four bedroom ranch home.

September, 1992 The great issue of the 1992 election seems to be—not the toilet-bowl economy, as you might expect—but one of family values, meaning that candidate A will say he's heavily in favor of them and that candidate B is not. Under the best of circumstances, this would seem to be a non-issue. For one, there's the matter of definition: what, exactly are "family values"? Webster's Seventh collegiate defines family as "a group of persons of common ancestry" and value as "something intrinsically valuable or desirable". Actually, the dictionary had several definitions for each word, and none for the phrase, so I had to pick the ones that seemed closest to the intended meaning. If we take these definitions as the best available, then "family values" can be defined as "things, specifically ideas, which are intrinsically valuable or desirable to a group of persons of common ancestry." By that definition, since the fourteenth century Borgias were expert assassins, one can assume that the idea of "family values" applies to the search for a better and speedier poison. Certainly, the Manson family would agree. Donna suggests that "family values" might also mean group rates at hotels and theme parks. Now, that is a concept we can ALL get behind. I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing a mandatory rate reduction at the gate of Disney World. Maybe they could throw in a few extra coupon books, and free parking for your minivan. Last night, on the news, the President was bemoaning the loss of the "nuclear family". Doesn't that one just give you chills?Deep in the back of your mind, don't you get a vision of Mom, Dad, and their 2.5 (literally) children? They're sitting around the table having a six-legged chicken, and little Suzie is depressed because—just before Prom Night—she sprouted a third eye in her forehead and and extra arm. Personally, I think we might be better off without it. Another big issue this year is "taking America in a new direction." They never tell you what direction that might be; for all I know they plan to change the earth's rotation from it's familiar east-west spin to a more northish-southish slant. I suppose they mean a new ideological direction, and while I've always been fond of the "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" direction we've followed for most of our history, who am I to say? It almost makes you wish the Soviet Union hadn't broken up. At least when we had the Evil Empire, the only real issue in the Presidency was whether he'd be man enough to face them down and smart enough not to actually push the button. Of course, we've still got Saddam Hussein, but it's not the same, is it? Casting him in the same role the Soviet Union once held is a lot like having Peter Lorre play Sidney Greenstreet's part in The Maltese Falcon. Oh, well. Next time, we'll talk about the high cost of living, or "Living on five Cheetos a day and being thankful".

June, 1993 Remember high school and college? Remember the cliques? If you weren't in the right ones, you were glad all that ended when you grew up. Uh-huh. I am continually amazed at our capacity as adults to band together in the same ways we did as children against the "outsiders". I don't mean true loyalties: spending the night caring for a sick friend or giving our aged parents a lift to the doctor. I mean meaningless, or worse, senseless prejudices. I think most of us have managed to get our heads beyond the big prejudices (although I've heard plenty of people who wouldn't dream of using a racial slur speak of the negative qualities of "those people", and there's enough man-bashing going on lately to make up for all of those "silly women" Lucy shows), but we still haven't resolved the little ones. Homeowners (and I, regrettably, have to include myself here) tend to look down on renters. Renters, homeowners will tell you, have no respect for the property on which they live. Yet I know one family of renters that has not only cared for their home, but has made substantial improvement to the property's appearance and overall value. As parents, we tend to trust our children before we trust other people's children. Good lord, if you can't trust your own child, who can you trust? But if it comes down to our children's word against that of another adult... We do it, I think, because we're lazy. It's much easier to determine the right of any disagreement based on our own arbitrarily assigned loyalties than to sift through the options to find the facts of the matter and determine truth from that. It may be impossible; so much is subjective. My mother has, on separate occasions, called me arrogant and manipulative, and has commented on my tendency to speak out of turn and with too much candor. If someone else commented to her that I seemed a little conceited, however, I doubt they'd have time to finish the third word. She's argued with me about it. It's all a matter of viewpoint. When she reminds me of my faults, it's constructive criticism; when others do, it's insulting. I've never heard of an argument where either party had the right of it. There is one event that happened years ago that is still the fast track to heated debate in my neighborhood. Strangely, the parties most involved lost any interest in it a long time ago; it's merely a matter of division among their friends. Even though the original occurrence was one of those misunderstandings where right and wrong get seriously blurred, many people still make judgements based entirely on that one disagreement. I'm not saying that loyalty is bad, nor am I saying that all loyalties are prejudiced. I am saying that it's probably a good idea in most cases to step back and give all opinions a fair hearing. Avoid the black and white, and try to see the grey.

October, 1993 I was asked, by a gentleman whose name I forgot to remember, to mention fire safety in this month's column. Kids, don't play with matches. In fact, don't even play with light bulbs. Or hot English muffins. Leave that sort of thing to the professionals. Actually, his concern, and I kind of agree with him, was that during the Long Hot Summer, there was a distinct danger of fire due to people improperly storing inflammables in their garages. Since the Long Hot Summer is, effectively, over, I guess it's a little late to make that point, but if I can't be a responsible journalist, then at least I can get a few laughs at fire safety's expense. It would be tacky of me to ridicule actual fire safety tips, so I won't. I will mention them—just in case you've never heard them before—as my insurance agent has mentioned them to me. You should have a smoke detector in working order; it should feature a loud, annoying alarm, and be sensitive enough to go off every time someone closes the door. Also, the battery should be fresh. Squeeze it, and if it isn't firm, or has soft spots, replace it immediately. It's also good to have an ABC-type fire extinguisher around the house. Most important is a family plan for escape. This plan should include several detailed maps of your house, its vicinity, the nearest phone, the phone number to 911 (911), William Shatner's phone number, and the long-term rates of a good hotel. You should sit down with your children and explain to them the importance of giving you first dibs on any escape routes. Remind them that it's your paycheck that allows them to spend hundreds of dollars on clothes that make your neighbors think you can't afford to dress them properly. You should not store any flammable liquids in a place that is subject to high heat or direct sunlight. It's usually easy to identify these liquids, because the bottle they come in has a big red picture of a fire, and some sort of subtle hint such as the words "HIGH EXPLOSIVES" printed on the side in 2-inch letters. You should not keep anything that matches that description close to your gas furnace or water heater, or any other open flame. In fact, it's probably a good idea to keep these things in your freezer. Since Halloween is coming up, I should probably mention children's costumes. I can't stress the importance of proper costuming enough. No more Power Rangers! No—wait. What I mean is that your child should be dressed in either flame retardant (the package says "Flame Retardant") or natural fiber costumes. When I was young, there was a problem (this is true and kind of gross, so you might want to skip to the next paragraph) of children having their polyester costumes melt and bond with their skin. Off-hand, I'd say that if a costume has the texture of Saran Wrap, it's probably a good idea to pass it by. Also on the subject (but just barely), you should have Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCI's) installed in all of your bathrooms. Men, it's frightening to realize how many husbands have died because their wives accidentally dropped a toaster oven into the bath tub. GFCI's aren't a guarantee of safety (she still knows where the knives are) but they do help. Well, that's all I've got for now. Remember, fire's like a lawyer, it serves a wonderful purpose, but don't turn your back on it.