FRONT END SUSPENSION, SPACERS, AND BUMPER STICKERS

I'm not even going to write about dice hanging from the rearview mirror or ermine dash cover add ons.

Raising a car or truck whether front, rear end or both is not cool. Sure everyone would like to be able to see ahead. What's causing the hold up, the slow down. But adding spacers to jack up the car also endangers that car and others. It's hard enough to see over, around, and through most SUVs anyway. Additional height increases your chances of getting whip lashed by a rear end collision. If you're really jacked up there, then the bottom of your gas tank can be exposed which makes for a bomb if a little Masda runs under you.

Bumper stickers aren't a good idea anymore either. First, who are you going to educate anyway? Do you really want the drivers all around you looking at your message(s), when they should be concentrating on the road. Never mind that most will be cell phoning/ text messaging anyway. So do you want to give them one more distraction?

If it's sports related or political, you're going to irritate at least half the drivers and passengers anyway. Do you want to make known your preferences to someone who knows more about you than you know about them? I mean, they do have your license number. The equivalent to "I know where you live" threats.

These times dictate anonymity. The fact that you're driving a car not made in the US is enough to rile some. Also your speed will irritate others. No matter if you're driving the limit or speeding. You just can't win.

I was thinking of just taking a taxi wherever I want to go. But then I decided I'm not that big of a risk taker.

ANN OR ABBY?

I read more advice from Abby simply because she was the columnist from the old St. Louis Globe paper that I read more than the Post-Dispatch. I think she may have been featured in our local RN rag as well.

I don't know if I ever followed any of the advice, maybe subliminally. I was more interested in the people who wrote for advice than the problem solving offered by the two sisters. Of course, like all readers I wondered how they got to toss out their opinions on what should be done in what particular situation. What was in their background that qualified them for the job?

With any advice or admonition there should be some responsibility, some accountability for offering to help. For instance, if someone asks me if she should stay with an abusive husband, I'd say heck no. That's easy. But if someone had a life altering question that wasn't a slam dunk, then I , for one, would really have trouble offering not just alternatives, but definitive answers. I mean, you're messing with people's lives. Where's the mandate that you can advise, Abby and Ann? And who gave it to you?

Oh well. Maybe I took them too seriously. I kinda doubted the legitimacy of some of the questions anyhow. Plus, on the positive side, maybe they did really make a difference in people's lives. We all need a little help now and then.

HOW DO I BEGIN

Does a story begin with an event or a character?

I guess it all depends. It can begin with a photo as well. That's the way most of my blog entries begin. I see a picture and it makes a connection. It fires or ignites a memory or an idea.

This picture of Clift Montgomery or Montgomery Clift, I really don't know which for he was before my time, sparked a question or a possibility for me. What happened to all those cars once the left the lot?

What will be their fate? Their history in the making? Will one stand out above all the others? Will one haul a passenger of importance? Will one hold a person who could change the face of history?

What decisions will be made in those cars? What regrets? What longings? What might be left behind in one of those cars? Which car would wind up in the junkyard first?

All kinds of questions/all kinds of possibilities. It's up to the writer. He has the power. And that makes writing the creative, fun experience that it is.

BIG BEN

Ruined a beautiful storybook ending for the Super Bowl back in February. An absolutely perfectly thrown td pass in the corner of the end zone. I can still see it; I can still feel its sting.

My devotion to the football Cardinals goes back to Charley Johnson and Johnny Roland. It reached its zenith in the Don Coryell years with Jim Hart, Jim Otis, Mel Gray, Conrad Dobler, Dan Dierdorf, and others.

It hit its nadir with Steve Pzarkewitz, Clyde Duncan, Kelly Stouffer and Bill Bidwell's move to the desert. After our move to the same desert, I only attended Cardinal games when they played my new football allegiance the St. Louis Rams.

But when the Rams fell apart after two Super Bowl appearances and released Kurt Warner, well my interest started to wane. Back to the Cardinals and Warner. When Kurt won the starting qb job, I started rooting again for the Cards on an almost equal keel to the Rams.

When last season's playoffs began, I was full bandwagon Cardinals since my Rams had won only 2 games all season--three the year before. A fair weathered fan? Somewhat. The final decision on that will come in a year or two when Kurt is no longer directing them.

Maybe that's why I can't understand Cub fans. How can you root for a team that hasn't won in over 100 years? I mean, maybe anonymously, but when Cub fans wear their team's apparel out in public, to me it's kinda like the shirt with the arrow pointing and saying "I'm With Stupid."

PATHS CROSS

If they didn't we'd never have met. And by the way (some say by the by and I never understood that), what's wrong with fighting windmills? I mean, who gets hurt?

Did I tell you I once met a girl from Plainfield, IL named Amber Waive? As in of grain.

Another who aced a 300 level Poetry class was named Jo Roetzell from Rochelle. She made an A because of her name. My arch German prof loved to roll her name off his tongue while he winced when he said mine. I'm sure he smiled when he recorded my C.

When we shared our final grades, she had a look that combined the wince and the smile. By our Senior year, she had become...well, nevermind; I don't want to be libelous.

Another Roschell, also an English major, had the last name of Bewick. I always thought Jackie a better name. As in the broomstick. Ok, so it was a stretch. I was a older teen who loved words.

Rod Richrequez, tell me that name was never screwed up, was an English major who gave me a disgusted wince look when as grad students I told him I was a commuter and wouldn't be around to hear a guest lecturer in Davis Auditorium one night.

I wonder what happened to all those former students and co-eds and the gal who borrowed my Wallace Stevens book chock full of notes. She told me she would return it on her way back to Chicago. She didn't.

Sometimes paths don't cross again.

BILLY JOE ROYAL, ET AL



In college, I roomed next to a pre-med Kuwati student who loved the old (nee current) song "Deep in the Eyes of a New York Woman". He was a little homesick, probably never been to New York and so he substituted Kuwati for New York. He sang it often and then would laugh.

I remember another pre-med student friend of mine in high school. (I guess you can be pre-med that far back when you do become a doctor as Mike did). We were at a basketball game and I was singing "Walk Like a Man" by the 4 Seasons. Mike asked me to quit singing because I was ruining a good song.

Other songs I remember my buds liking were Terry "Hey Baby They're Playing Our Song", Gary "Michelle", Jimmy "Have I the Right" which he always sang "Haven't I the Right", Blaine "Venus in Blue Jeans", Hoobie "He's So Fine", Hunk "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted", and Wayne anything Gene Pitney.

As for me, I was a sucker for "When a Man Loves a Woman," and "Duke of Earl". I'm sure there were several others. Music was really important to me back then. I had several albums and nightly went to sleep with an LP on the cheap little stereo next to my bed.

How I can remember what my high school buddies liked, I don't know. Just more trivia that has stuck to the side of my brain, while the really important stuff seeped out my ears.

THE COBWEB

I can put off. With the best of them. Take furnace filters, for instance. By the time I change ours, they have needed it badly.

It's not all that expensive or strenuous to do. It's just a hindrance. Put it on the list of things I just don't want to do.

We had a cobweb at the highest point in our house. I watched it grow. Until it turned black.

Out came the ladder and with a steady hand of my wife holding my stairway to heaven, I ascended. Still couldn't reach it even with a long handled feather duster. One more step.

Now visions of falling entered my head. Two friends have fallen from ladders and have suffered greatly. I pictured them both. I started to wobble or felt like I was teetering as I stood on the step of the ladder that they warn you about. My swinging bridge, was really not moving; I wisked away the web but had to leave a smaller one, a light gray one. It nah, nahed at me after I took it's friend. Another day.

Another way my body is telling me I'm not as young as I used to be.