A Real April Fool

I'll do it again tomorrow, April 1. Every other year on that date, I enter a branch of my bank dressed in a long coat, sunglasses, and hat, and carrying a paper bag. I choose a young-woman teller, preferably a bleached-blond one, and approach her counter. I silently push the paper bag in front of her with an attached note which reads, "Quick! Take all the money from this bag, and put it into your bank!" Inevitably the alarm sounds, and a guard is quickly in my face. Then I have to start explaining. Well, wish me luck for this year.

-Old Gargoyle

Where You From?

Young parents these days like to give the names of cities, rivers, or lakes to their new babies. Madison this, Paris that, Sydney this, etc. Why stop there? Why not venture more extensively, and assign names such as, say, Warsaw Williams, Jonestown Jones, Vancouver Vanderhorn, Salzburg Smith, Birmingham Burns, Pittsburgh Parker, Pensacola Perkins, Saltlake Steinberg, Chattanooga Cohen, Moscow Mathis, Tokyo Thompson, Glasgow Gillespie, Lima Lewis. What will be the next fad---naming them after different insects?

-Old Gargoyle

Three Blind Mice

Well, it seems that rocker Ozzy Osbourne, actor William Shatner, and I are the only three persons in the U.S. with a confirmed case of mad-cow disease. We maintain fairly frequent contact with one another. Ozzy thinks he contracted his on one of his many visits to England. Bill think he was stricken when he and James Slater filmed one of their "Boston Legal" episodes in woodsy Canada. What a shame. Three good, different lives racked by such a weird disease. I'm trying to have the two guys clear their schedule so that we can all meet for a drink. I'll let Ozzy pay. Bill can bring the cigars.
A fourth person, of course, will have to light them for us.

-Old Gargoyle

Soup and Nuts

I miss Soupy Sales. I don't know why. I wish they'd bring him back. Whom did he ever harm?

-Old Gargoyle

And Me without My Rosary

March 25 was commemorated by many Christians as Annunciation Day, the day angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her she would become the mother of Jesus (nine months before December 25 = March 25). On that day our town, our streets, our cars were showered by hail the size of golf balls. Rather frightful yet wonderful to behold---kind of a Hail, Mary day.

-Old Gargoyle

'Tis Better To Give

You know, if I had the time to sit and write a thank-you note to everyone who has sent me a nice, expensive gift, what a wonderful world this would be.

-Old Gargoyle

Mad Lady of Spain

I decided a good thing to do for the spring would be to take accordian lessons. I've had four so far with Miss Olga at what she calls her BuddhaPest Music Studio. I'm reading her first evaluation of me: "plays with such excitement . . . hands and even face and body constantly moving with accordian . . . energetic though eccentric . . ." Little does Miss Olga know that this is all due to my mad-cow disease.

-Old Gargoyle

Water, Water Everywhere

It's early spring, and already I'm reading about local boating or swimming accidents. I can't swim. I never learned to stay atop and move across the water. A most-frightful moment was at my seventh-grade class outing at a lake. My classmates and I were jammed on the pier, when someone accidentally bumped me off. Down I went some twenty feet, I think, into the lake, stunned, not knowing what to do. I had no idea that eventually I would float back to the top, so I in panic I thought that I would drown. When surprisingly I did surface, fighting to reach the nearby ladder, no one even noticed.

Thank goodness my cousin noticed my brother, who was 4 or 5 at the time, when he plunged into a very deep-water ditch after one of the heavy rains we used to get in our town of Aheadofrepoman. Cousin pulled Mike by the hair out of the ditch just before he began to drown.

I used to be unable to watch drowning scenes in movies. Being hit by a train---shot in the head---mangled in a farm thrasher? Piece of cake. But not drowning. (And it doesn't help that I'm listening now to the gripping, near-drowning story in Eric Clapton's blues song, "Floating Bridge.") Next time I go onto the water, it'll be with a life jacket and in an internal cabin in a 500-foot cruise ship. Oh, I forgot to add: I haven't had a drink of water in some 50 or so years now.

-Old Gargoyle

Don't Be a Slav

St. Patrick Day was March 17; he's the patron of Ireland and all the Irish. Almost the whole world celebrated the Irish that day. Today is St. Joseph Day, patron of all Italians. Again, almost everyone will be celebratory Italians. February 17 was St. Vitus Day. He's the patron of Slovenia and all the Slovenes. The little woman, a Slovene herself, wrapped her hair in a kerchief, picked a few flowers from the yard, danced three or four turns in a circle, and reentered the house. That was it. Nobody cares. Poor Slovenes.

-Old Gargoyle

How Will We Wrap the Fish?

It's a shame that national viewers of the nightly broadcast-news networks have greatly declined in the past twenty years. Old timers now are the bulk of those viewers; that's why all the commercials during those broadcasts sell medicine. Newspapers too have seriously declined, and more and more permanently are closing shop. Younger people obtain their news from the Internet, not the networks nor newspapers. Yet from where do they think the Internet derives its news sources? Largely from these same endangered newspapers! What a shame.

Only this afternoon, as I was driving to my secret neighborhood pub (don't tell Jonka), I saw a small crowd gathered in the cemetery which I pass on the way. The people seemed more curious than anything else, so I decided to stop and explore the scene. It was then that I saw the grave of their concern. Its tombstone had the front page of several newspapers tacked onto it, accompanied by the tombstone's headline reading "Mourning Edition."

-Old Gargoyle

Please Strike Twice

I was thinking. I hope they never find out that lightning has a ton of vitamins in it, because then do you hide from it or not?

-Old Gargoyle

Metal Makes the Man

"So, which kind of automobile do you drive? What would you like to drive some day?" were the ad-hoc questions asked in many interviews of potential employees by bosses, and were the same questions popping up in cocktail-party talk in the 1940s to the '60s. In those days, before foreign cars became popular with the American public, cars made by the big three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) dominated the national market. The various brands of autos actually were used as unofficial gauges to determine a person's economic-social status and even his potential as a worker. On the bottom of the totem pole were drivers of Chevrolet, Ford, and Dodge. A little higher on the scale were owners of Pontiac, Mercury, and Plymouth, topped more or less by Buick, Oldsmobile, and Chrysler. The top cats drove Cadillac and Lincoln.

This categorizing no longer holds sway today. Younger or wealthier persons are more likely to be driving smaller cars, foreign cars, or vehicles designed for specific, practical purposes. This is also why, of course, younger drivers laugh at old farts or little old ladies who can barely peer over their steering wheels as they drive their big-boat Buicks, Caddys, etc. Give the ancient ones a break---they're simply living out their live-long dream. And when you see me passing by in my '69 Delta 88 Oldsmobile, stand clear, but do honk your horn at me. Don't expect me, though, to acknowledge you.

-Old Gargoyle

Snuffy Smith

A person's style of his or her own signature is something which no one may control. Some young Americans, though, write their "signature" in print. But a printed name is not a signature; a signature is by definition scripted. One reason for this is the ease by which a printed name can be forged; it's more difficult to do so to a scripted name. If you have a European-born friend, notice how probably his signature is much more illegible, much more artistic or abstract than the typical American's. He signs his name in that manner because, I've read, he's reflecting the historical-cultural background of old Europe in which forgeries of personal names were common; in order to make such forgeries more difficult, Europeans created eccentric styles for name signing. Nor may others---except probably one's own family---control the pronunciation of one's family name.

In light of this, I'm hereby officially changing my signature to a smiley face with the smile turned upside down as a frowny mouth; and I'm pronouncing my fourteen-letter last name and my "Gargoyle" honorary last name together as "Smith." Address all future correspondence thusly.

-: ( Smith

Hail, Brittanica

Things are quiet and dull here in Delaware. I look out my widow and see the many neighbors' chicken farms with their little chickens wrapped in winter coats and hats, and I see my own beets and squash fields needing tending before long. And I can see our small capital city on the horizon.

Many of my e-mail chat contacts are from persons living in Eastern or Southern Europe. When they ask me in their broken, barely managed English where I live, I tell them, "right next to the white cliffs of Dover." They become excited, because they think I live in southern England, and then they want to visit me and the little woman. I encourage this, and I provide them with my "Dover, England" address, make plans for the visits, etc. I can't tell you how many couples from Eastern and Southern Europe have been stranded on the cliffs of Dover asking the local Englishmen over and over where to find Mr. and Mrs. Gargoyle. Stupid foreigners. Learn English. Stop swimming the channel. Buy Chevrolets.

-Old Gargoyle

Jason Is Freddie

To get the little woman to cook one of my favorite meals, spare ribs with 'tater salad, I had to promise to watch t.v.'s final episode of the most-recent "The Bachelor" with her. I'll voluntarily watch "Project Runway," but, dear Lord, I had to be strapped in to watch this godawful "Bachelor" program; and I was. Call me crazy, but I'll bet my diminished retirement fund that the Bachelor, Jason is one polished con man who will dump Molly in a few weeks or months. And, of course, he'll cry---for a minute or two.

-Old Gargoyle

Sticks and Stones

I'm looking at a pen drawing hanging on my office wall. The picture is that of a small, wooden, rural church, now long gone. As a teenager, my father helped build this church almost a century ago. It must be a source of great pride and honor for workmen everywhere to have participated in the physical construction of any house of worship. I'm grateful too for those half-drunk, superstitious workmen who sculpted the cathedral gargoyles.

-Old Gargoyle

Let George Do It

Ever notice how the typical statue of the seated Buddha sold in America, the kind found in the lobbies of Chinese-American restaurants, in gift stores, in pictures in textbooks, etc., looks strikingly like George Foreman? Whenever I eat at such a restaurant, I feel as if I should buy a barbeque grill from my waiter.

-Old Gargoyle

Pull the Plug

I agree with an item I just read: Parents, be alert. Are today's video games adequately preparing our kids for the coming apocalypse?

-Old Gargoyle

Look before You Leap

"You heartless cad!" the little woman says to me when I laugh. Not when I laugh at just anything, but when I do so at certain persons on t.v. who are injured, become lost, etc. Not just any injury but those incurred in foolishly risky endeavors. I can understand persons being daredevils (e.g., the late Evel Knivel) as a profession (though I would have advised Evel, "Look, just be a motorcycle repairman, tester, or salesman, and stop putting your family through such worry and financial risk"). And I fully understand and appreciate those who risk their lives for scientific advancement or for the security of others. But I have little sympathy for those clowns who want to climb Mt. Everest just for the thrill of it, or who wander off into dangerous woods or snow mountains or shark-infested swim areas simply because they refuse to obey weather or safety warnings. Then rescuers have to risk their own lives to save those fools. So when I see the latter being buried in snow avalanches, or being eaten by bears, or having their legs chomped off by sharks, I laugh until I cry. That to me is the REAL reality shows. Thank God for such reality t.v.!

-Old Gargoyle

A Real Champion

I hear that one of my former students has majored in college in the same discipline as I did---one of the very few to do so. Go get 'em, Nathan! If all else fails, go into the beets- and squash-raising business as I did.

-Old Gargoyle