Photos Of Slim Aarons

Come-Back 101

A man was sunbathing naked at the beach. For the sake of civility, and to keep it from getting sunburned, he had a hat over his privates.

A woman walks past and says, snickering, "If you were a gentleman you'd lift your hat."

He raised an eyebrow and replied, "If you weren't so ugly it would lift itself."

Ha-Dee-Ha-Ha thanks to my leisurely brother-in-law.

WALKING THE WALK by peter nolan smith

Road trips need a destination. Point A to B. The travel is important. Not A or B.

The summer of 1987 Greg Hunt, and I threw our bags in back of Paul Fullerton's pick-up. Our friends in Michigan had extended invitations to visit them in Onekema and the Upper Peninsula. We celebrated our departure at the Milk Bar. Drink and drugs. The city was losing the night, as the green F-150 left Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel.

Our first stop was the Delaware River.

Dawn.

We were entering America.

Beer cans littered the front. Greg was holding low. I was carrying high. Paul had two guns under the seat. A shotgun and a 45. Traffic was light through the Allegheny Mountains. The temperature rose with every westward mile. The blue sky giving way to haze by the time we crossed the Ohio state line. More cars. Lots of trucks. Paul insisted on driving. Greg and I were in no condition to stay on the road.

I crashed in the flatbed past Cleveland. The wind ruffled my clothing without any relief from the heat. The air was heavy with the threat of tornado. An exit sign read AKRON. I sat up and leaned against the cabin window. Greg and Paul waved to indicate that we were on schedule. I wrapped a red bandanna around my head. Sunglasses weakened the harsh sunlight. We were a rolling version of MAD MAX, the prequel to the apocalypse.

A state trooper was cooping at the end of a copse of trees. His eyes met mine. The battered pick-up was maintaining 60. Most of the other cars were traveling faster. The cop saw us as three dirty longhairs.

Potential wrongdoers.

His lights lit up and the cruiser roared onto the interstate.

The rest of the motorists parted a way for the statie. The cruiser fell in behind our pickup. Paul pulled over onto the breakdown lane. I thought, "Drugs, guns, drink. we're going to jail."

The trooper got out of his cruiser. He was young. Paul was in his 40s. Greg and I 30s. There was a big generation gap. The trooper was straight and we had been brought up on the Rolling Stones. 3 against 1. His hand flicked the safety strap from his holster. He was expecting trouble.

"You want me to get out of the truck?" I was good at taking orders in a situation like this.

"You stay where you are." His face was smooth. He might have shaved once a week. His hand went to his 9mm and the officer peered into the front seat. Paul was a professor of art. Greg a literary agent. The trooper only wanted one thing. "Can I see your license?"

"Sure thing." Paul fumbled with his wallet. He had been driving over 7 hours. His search was taking too long.

"Sir, please get out of the truck?" The trooper stepped back carefully avoiding the speeding traffic. The cars were only a foot away. His hand gripped the gun. The knuckles went white.

"Yes, officer." Paul opened the door. Several empty beer cans fell onto the pavement.
Passing drivers shook their heads. This was bad.

"You've been drinking." His words were a statement not a question.

"Last night. Not today." This was a lie. It was a little past noon. We had left the Milk Bar at 5am. "Those empties were were saving for the next trash stop. Didn't want to throw them out the window."

Paul sounded educated without an slur from the tequila shots that he had downed to take off the edge of cocaine. The trooper wasn't impressed by the erudite accent. Cops only needed a high school diploma.

"Please, come to the back of the truck." The officer was planning on a drunk driving test. A breathalyzer was an instant 'go to jail' card. The trooper wagged a pencil in front of Paul's face to test his eyesight. Paul's head wobbled on his neck like a spinning top losing speed. The officer put down his pencil.

"Walk in a straight line."

Paul put one foot in front of the other. His balance was sublime. The officer appeared disappointed by the results and looked ready to back up his hunch by getting out the Breathalyzer. The pencil dropped from his hand. Paul picked it up with the grace of a 13 year-old ballerina. The young officer pointed a finger at Paul.

"Where are you going?"

"The Upper Peninsula. See my family." More friends than family, but the way Paul said it rang true to the officer.

"There's a rest stop five miles ahead. I suggest you wash up there and empty the truck of those beer cans. Obey the speed limit too."

"Thanks, officer."

Our two vehicles parted ways. I sat in the front. Paul started the truck.

"How we get away with that?" Greg asked pulling out a joint.

"You really think we should do that?"

"We have a free pass." Paul pulled into the westward flow of traffic without explaining his thoughts on our reprieve. Sometimes it's a good idea never to question your luck. We made Detroit that night. We drank beer in a bar. It was a tough town. The night the Tigers won the World Series in 1984, three people were shot dead and scores of houses were burned to the ground. Greg and I finished off the drugs. We left the beer cans in the bar. We were good citizens given the chance.

BEAR MEAT by Peter Nolan Smith

In August of 1987 Pullie Fallen, Grieg Packer, and I left New York City for Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The art professor, literary agent, and I took turns driving Pullie's F-150 pickup truck through the sweltering heat of the Midwest. None of us broke the speed limit, since Pullie had two unlicensed guns under his seat. He used the .45 and .38 to blast his steel sculptures. The bullet-holed pieces sold well in the South.

We stopped at the Great Bear Dunes to visit mutual friends from Florida. Vonelli's sister had a beach shack overlooking Lake Michigan. The art dealer took us out on a ChrisCraft. The vast expanse of water rivaled Conan the Barbarian's Vilayet Sea. Three days passed riding dirt bikes off the dunes and drinking beer. Vonelli was heading back to Paris. The auctions at the Hotel Drouot opened in less than two weeks.

We said our goodbyes at noon. The Vonelli clan was heading south to Florida. Pullie pointed the pick-up north. I sat in the back of the truck. The midday heat zapped my strength and I passed out in the back of the truck short of Petrowsky.

The Ford's humming over the Straits of Mackinac Bridge disrupted my sleep. It was a little after sunset and the temperature had dropped into the 70s. The sky was filling with the cosmos illuminating the black waters on the two joining lakes. This was Hiawatha's shores of Gitche Gumee by the shining Big-Sea-Water and I sat up in the back to breathe in the boreal night air.

Pullie drove for another 15 minutes and pulled off Route 2 somewhere north of St. Ignace. We slept in the back of the truck and rose with the misty dawn. Breakfast was a bag of warm pasties from a Epoulette diner. The delicious meat pies were a hang-over from the Welsh miners working mineral deposits in the mid-1800s.

The bearded sculptured had summered on the UP in the 50s. His deceased father had designed cars for Chrysler. His son had a photo of an black Imperial sedan parked on thick ice next to a fishing shack. His family wintered on the UP too.

"The UP was a paradise back then. Jobs, nature, and good people. Most of them gone since the mines closed. Now all you got are old Finns to stubborn to quit the land. "

The Upper Peninsula had a population density of 10 people per square mile in the late-80s. We hadn't count heads passing through dismal towns overlooking the Great Lake, but I hadn't seen more than 3 people in a clump the entire morning. The stocky men and woman looked the same in their jeans and flannel shirts topped by a baseball cap.

Three men, three women, or a menage a trois.

I couldn't tell the difference.

We pulled into Fire Lake around 3.

Pullie beeped the horn before an old farm house. The walls had been weathered by many winters and the two-story structure leaned away from the prevailing wind. A herd of cows grazed in a fenced field. One cow stood by itself. It was not the bull.

Our host limped into the afternoon sunlight. Uvo was in his 50s. He greeted us with a firm handshake and a yellow smile. He lit an unfiltered Camel.

"Where's everyone?" Pullie's scratched at his beard. It was more salt than pepper.

"Down at the lake fishing, but Jim left for Ann Arbor two days ago, eh."

"Sorry, I missed him." Pullie had attended U Michigan with Uvo's second son. Both were artists.

He tugged on the cigarette and exhaled a flume of smoke. "You boys fish?"

"Not much fishing in New York." Grieg regarded Uvo, as if he were a Norman Rockwell painting.

"No, guess they don't like to swim in concrete.

The afternoon sky that filled with high clouds from the north. The summer was almost gone. Uvo held a pair of axes in this hands.

"Going to get cold tonight, eh. Call me old fashioned, but I believe in the work ethic. You work. You eat. No work. No eat."

Grieg and I looked at each other.

The Londoner was no farmer.

I had picked crops as a teenager at my local farm.

Neither of us was a farmer boy. We had blisters on our hands within minutes, but as an Englishman Grieg believed in doing a host's bidding and the both of us hacked logs into firewood, while Pullie and Uvo drank Schlitz beer. They were examining Pullie's 45 and the shotgun. Beer cans floated in a metal tub.

Hard work.

We finished our task in a sweat and joined the other two. Grieg slung the ax over his shoulder, as if he graduated from Paul Bunyan School. Uvo surveyed the woodpile.

"Not bad for trolls, eh."

"Trolls?" I had been called many things in my life, but never a troll.

"Trolls is the Yopper euphemism for people coming from unda the bridge," Pullie explained, as he handed us two cans of Schlitz. The beer that made Milwaukee famous was unavailable in New York. The gusto of the crisp cold beer brought back memories of my youth on the South Shore of Boston.

"Good beer."

"Better than Bud." Grieg refrained from his usual assault on American beer. They tasted like water to the Brits.

A breeze whiffled through the trees bordering the pasture

Uvo sported a serious bruise on his forearm.

"Cow butted me, eh." The farmer glanced over to the single cow in the pasture. "You boys feel like a sauna."

Many of the inhabitants of the UP were descendants of Finnish immigrants. Uvo had build a traditional Scandinavian steam room next to the barn. He stripped off his clothing and waved for us to join him inside the sauna.

The gnarled farmer threw water on the hot stones. Steam furled from the rocks. Te temperature was close to the surface of Venus.

"Good to see new faces up here, eh. Fire Lake is a long way from anywhere. Most of the people in town are tired of seeing each other. Crabby as a bear coming out of hibernation and the winters are long up here. People just don’t like getting together too often. Too busy working, but nothing gets them together faster than talk of a barbecue, so if you want to see people, we’ll have a barbecue.”

“Fresh meat too.” Pullie's was a total carnivore. His blood pressure was that of a 300-pound man. The art professor weighed under 160. He ate steak four times a week. The Homestead Steak House on 9th Avenue knew him by name.

“Y-up.” Uvo spoke with tinges of Finnish clinging to his accent. He scratched his buzzcut then rubbed his unshaven face. “Go shot a cow after we’re done.”

“Shoot a cow?” I was a meat-eater, but my steaks came from a supermarket. I wiped the sweat from my face with an old towel.

“Would rather he kill it with an ax?” Grieg joked from under his wrap of towels. The English literary agent looked like a soggy mummy.

“I kill one cow every fall.” Uvo stated matter-of-fact. “Keeps me in meat until the spring. The way snow falls up here you never know when you might get supplies.”

Winters were hard this far north. 200 inches of snow were the norm. A few communities had recorded annual snowfalls nearing 13 feet.

“Killing a cow ain’t sport, eh. I known this cow all its life. Fed it as a calf.” Uvo seemed sad about the upcoming culling of his herd. “Strange but the other cows sense what's going to happen.”

“You think they tell each other?” Grieg came from London. The only cows in that city arrived dead at the Smithfield Market for slicing into steaks and grinding into hamburger.

“Dunno. Cows are funny, eh.” Uvo stripped the edge of an old straight-razor to the sharpness of an assassin’s blade. He stroked the grizzle from his face with an economy of motion. . After finishing Uvo stropped the edge. My beard was scrapped from my face without a nick. Paul had a beard, but Greg wasn’t so lucky. His skill with the blade suffered from his heroin intake. He exited the sauna patting his cuts with a towel.

"You boys religious?" Uvo didn't wait for an answer and said, "Because up here on the Upper Peninsula we take the Word of God for truth."

"Okay." I was a confirmed atheist, but kept my devout non-belief to myself.

"In da beginning dere was nuttin." Uvo's accent thickened to a nearly indecipherable patois, "Den on the first day God created da Upper Peninsula. On the second day He created da partridge, da deer, da bear, da fish, and the ducks. On da third day He said "Let dere be Yoopers to roam da Upper Peninsula". On the forth day He created da udder world down below. On the fifth day He said "Let there be trolls to live in the world down below". On the sixth day He created da bridge so da trolls would have a way to get to heaven. God saw it was good and on da seventh day, He went Huntin and that works as the Word of God on the UP."

"Good for me." I toasted his version of Genesis with a cold Schlitz.

We raised our cans to the sky. The sunlight dried our naked flesh. The winwu lipped up the silver bottom of the leaves. Uvo looked over his shoulder to the large pasture. The herd of cows were standing against the fence. The one cow was in the distance.

“That’s the one.” Grieg lifted his head from a nod. He was handsome in a desperate way.

“Weird, eh?” Uvo reached into the bucket and pulled out four more beers. They were going fast. “They shun that one like killing might be contagious.”

Death awaited all creatures. We drank our beer. Uvo saved the empties for target shooting. The cows stared at us like we were holding a vote to change the sacrifice.

“Funny how they’ll protect themselves from other animals but not man.” Grieg aimed a finger at the distant cow. It moped in protest. “That’s because they trust us.”

“Trust?” Uvo laughed with a farmer’s certitude. “Cows ain’t no one’s friend and nuttins as dumb as a cow tied to a post, eh. How you think I got this black and blue on my arm.”

“The lone cow.” Pullie was sitting on a log. His legs were thin. The sculptor needed more exercise.

“Yup that’s the one.” Uvo walked over to the gate. He lifted his fingers to his mouth. A long whistle got the attention of the solitary cow. The others huddled closer to the fence. The cow shook his head.

Uvo whistled again and then banged the grain bin. Corn husk dust misted a halo around the farmer’s head. The cow meandered to the gate. Uvo slipped a noose over its head. Long scars crisscrossed the haunches. Something wild had had at it. Uvo led the beast to a trellis constructed of thick logs. A pulley hung from the beam. The naked farmer fed the lead line through the pulley and hauled the cow’s head upward.

Uvo returned to us. The other cows scattered over the pasture to munch the long summer grass. Grieg was sprawled against the sauna wall. The heat and the beer had taken its toll on the Englishman. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Something wrong with that troll. I don’t want no one dying on my farm, eh.”

“I’ll take care of him.”

“You a doctor?”

“No,but I know what to do, but my grandfather was a doctor in the First World War." I went into the sauna and came out with a bucket of icy water. I emptied the contents over Grieg. The Englishman sputtered to life. Uvo and Pullie laughed as only naked men can laugh.

Hands over their genitals.

Grieg wasn’t too happy with the sudden reveille but understood that he had violated his guest privileges.

“Thanks for the wake-up call."

“No problem.”

“I have some calls to make and that cow has a date with a Winchester.” Uvo walked over to his house. He entered by the front door. The cow in the rear mooed our surrender. We followed Uvo’s path across the lawn. I went to my room. It was on the second-floor. the windows overlooked the cow. I stuck wet tissue in my ears waiting for the killing shot.

Uvo and Paul exited from the house. They were still naked. Uvo held a Winchester rifle. Paul had his 45. The cow mooed once and Uvo stuck the rifle muzzle in its ear. One bullet buckled its legs. Paul gave the coup de grace.

The killing took less than 10 seconds.

Uvo and Paul tugged on the rope around the dead cow’s neck. The creature was ready for slaughter. I lay on the bed. The mattress was old. The sheets smelled of the seasons. I fell asleep in a minute.

I woke to the sound of people talking and the smell of sizzling steak. I got out of bed and went to the window. Meat was burning on the grill. Ten people were drinking beer. Pullie, Uvo, Grieg, three women and four men. Everyone was wearing the UP uniforms. The only way I could identify Uvo was by his red cap.

I dressed in the uniform and joined the party.

Pullie's truck was parked next to the house. The tape deck was playing a tape of garage music. ? and the Mysterians. Grieg was entertaining the congregation with tales of Oxford. I had heard them before, but he was a good storyteller and I laughed along with the other guests. We drank beer and ate steak. Medium raw. Blood dripped from our lips. The meat went well with the potato sausage and cudighi, a spicy Italian meat.

One of the women had brought a nisu, a cardamom-flavored sweet bread. Another juustoa or spueaky cheese and sauna makkara, a Finnish bologna. It was good eating. The sun was going down.

Uvo gathered the empties and placed them on a shot-up fence post 50 feet from the grill. Pullie placed his 45 on the table. A box of ammo.

We shot the entire box in ten minutes. Only two of the beer cans survived the onslaught. Pullie put his pistol under the seat of his pick-up and I sat on the porch.

“Good steak, eh?” Uvo was aglow with beer. His smile was shared by his friends. They smiled broader when the stereo played DIRTY WATER.

“Delicious.” Better than anything from the Homestead. “But I meant to ask you. What were those scars on that cow.”

“Bear, eh.” The nisu woman answered my question. Pullie was flirting with the scrawny 40ish brunette. She was in her 40s. She wanted to dance to LOUIE LOUIE playing on the pick-up’s stereo. They did the two-step.

“Yup, a bear attack that cow last spring. I shot it dead.”

“Don’t say that too loud, eh.” The woman glanced around the guests. “Game warden hear that and Uvo has a big fine.”

“Maybe $2000 for out of season.” Uvo popped open another beer.

“But it was attacking your cow.”

Bears in Maine roamed the blueberry patches for a sweet treat. The police warned hikers to stay away from the patches. Last summer spotted two black bears. Smaller than a Grizzly, but big. They were scavenging a moose carcass across a river. Both studied me as if I were food.

“Bears won’t attack something big unless they’re hungry. Guess that bear was hungry. I shot him with that Winchester, eh.”

The same one with which he had killed the cow. It was almost like the scene in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA where Lawrence has to shot the man that he saved from the desert in order to seal the alliance of another tribe of Arabs.

“Uvo called me up and I came over with my backhoe.” A longhaired farmer nodded his head in remembrance of that day. “Big hole, eh.”

“Yup.” A chorus joined by the other locals.

“That cow was a little crazy after that. Always running around the pasture. Scaring the other cows. Sorry it had to go, but crazy cows are bad for milk.”

“Yup.” Another round of ‘yups’.

“Bear meat tastes like pork. Best are the legs and loin.”

“bears too strong for me. Too much grease.”

“Plus they get trichinosis.” Paul’s date made a face. “Bears are no good eating. Not like steak.

“Yup.”

Grieg and I joined in the chant of yups, for after the fifth beer we all spoke the same language.

The land of beer.

And no bears.

At least not at a barbecue on the UP.

No Guns For Me

When I first arrived in New York, a gay jazz pianist friend of James Spicer, offered me a .38 on Christopher.

"No, thanks."

"No, thanks?" CT was small. He carried a piece for protection. New York in 1977 was very dangerous for man, woman, and in-between. "Someone like you needs a gun."

CT thought of me as rough trade, but I was planning on being a poet.

"If I had a gun, I would shoot every skell on the street." I lived in Park Slope. Thieves outnumbered citizens after dark. They were violent, but I came from the West of Ireland and every young thug in Boston was taught to fight. Running was never an option. "I've never broken the 5th Commandment and I don't plan on doing so in this city."

"Suit yourself." CT slipped the pistol into his leather jacket and walked off toward the river. The bars along West Street had a bad reputation. Sex was hard-core and a .38 wouldn't make anyone kiss and hug. I headed off to the Bowery. The Ramones were playing at CBGBs. Merv checked everyone for guns. The punk club was as safe a dive as you would get on the Lower East Side and no one shot anyone there.

And that was a good thing.

The Closet of Closeness

Four friends, who hadn't seen each other in 30 years, reunited at a party

After several drinks, one of the men had to use the rest room.

Those who remained talked about their kids.

The first guy said, 'My son is my pride and joy. He started working at a successful company at the bottom of the barrel. He studied Economics and Business Administration and soon began to climb the corporate ladder and now he's the president of the company. He became so rich that he gave his best friend a top of the line Mercedes for his birthday.'

The second guy said, 'Darn, that's terrific! My son is also my pride and joy. He started working for a big airline, then went to flight school to become a pilot. Eventually he became a partner in the company, where he owns the majority of its assets He's so rich that he gave his best friend a brand new jet for his birthday.'

The third man said: 'Well, that's terrific! My son studied in the best universities and became an engineer. Then he started his own construction company and is now a multimillionaire. He also gave away something very nice and expensive to his best friend for his birthday: A 30,000 square foot mansion.'

The three friends congratulated each other just as the fourth returned from the restroom and asked: 'What are all the congratulations for?'

One of the three said: 'We were talking about the pride we feel for the successes of our sons. ...What about your son?'

The fourth man replied: 'My son is gay and makes a living dancing as a stripper at a nightclub.'

The three friends said: 'What a shame... what a disappointment.'

The fourth man replied: 'No, I'm not ashamed. He's my son and I love him. And he hasn't done too bad either. His birthday was two weeks ago, and he received a beautiful 30,000 square foot mansion, a brand new jet and a top of the line Mercedes from his three boyfriends.'

How Hot Was It?

"How hot was it?" Ed McMahon.

"It was so hot, the musicians were snorting ice cubes." Johnny Carson

The master.

Stormfront FLA.

My membership in Stormfront has yet to lapse and I'm counted as one of the over 200,000 members of the white supremacy website. My reason for joining during the 2008 election was to convince the racist members that a vote for Obama would hasten the Last Days.

I am not a racist or white supremacist, but its founder Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and 1981 coup leader in Dominica, has called for a crusade to save White America with its corruption of the Celtic cross inscribed with the motto "White Pride World Wide".

One of its more successful media strikes was taking over a Fox News poll asking about attendance at racially segregated proms. Bill Reilly refused to publish the skewed results.

Stormfront is the 338th largest membership site on the Web according to Wikipedia and over 40,000 people visit his site each day.

In contrast Mangozeen.com gets between 1000-1500 a day.

Stormfront's home base is West Palm Beach, Florida. Russ Limbaugh is reclused across Lake Worth in Palm Beach. David Black hosts a weekly forum at a popular restaurant off the Dixie Highway. One of my friend's brothers financially supported Stormfront until his new step-father cut all the natural children from their mother's trust.

His sister refused him entry to her house on Xmas.

No one in the family wanted to hear his racist rant.

Her brother joined his friends at Stormfront to celebrate to birth of a Jewish Messiah.

Somehow none of it makes sense to an atheist.

The Whites Of Mayberry

Several years ago Andy Griffith, star of stage and screen, passed away years after Marilyn Monroe with whom he shared the same birthdate. The North Carolina native debuted as a hick comedian from the wrong side of the tracks and Griffith parlayed this success into a film career with critical hits in A FACE IN THE CROWD and NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS. A 1960 cameo role as a southern sheriff in Danny Thomas' MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY led to creation of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, where his character of a rural Solomon in Mayberry NC played straight man to his friend Don Knotts' portrayal of the hapless deputy Barney Fife. Ronny Howard was cast as his son Opie and for many black Americans no white boy could be more white than Opie.

From 1961 to 1968 American sat in front of their TVs on Tuesday night to watch the rubes in action introduced by the song THE FISHIN' HOLE.

While THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW was filmed in black and white, not a single African-American character was shown in the series other than the rare background appearance of a passing Negro, for Mayberry was the South the way the South envisioned the South, if the South rose again and reinstated Dixie. There were no blacks on PETTICOAT JUNCTION, GREEN ACRES, or THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, since these shows were aired at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and offered the comfort of security to a White America.

One episode of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW had a vignette in which none of the townspeople could explain what The Emancipation Proclamation might be, then again segregation in the South meant that blacks and whites kept to their own areas thanks to such welcome signs as NIGGER DON'T LET THE SUN LET ON YOUR ASS IN MAYBERRY.

At least the producers never featured a KKK segment.

Unless a viewer reads between the lines.

No matter what THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW was a classic and spun off GOMER PYLE.

They were funny in their own way and the wrinklies loved Griffith in MATLOCK.

He continues to be missed by his people.

ps there were no blacks on THE JETSONS or THE FLINTSTONES either.

To view Barney Fife Explaining The Emancipation Proclamation please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yupu8DE6vzw

Father's Day Gift

My father came around the world to see me and Angie in Thailand. Most of the time he had no idea where he was. It was the start of his decline. Frank A Smith II passed in 2010, but my father will always be in the here-now with the love I carry for him into the here-to-come.

A-Rod's Lost 3000th Hit

Yesterday A-Rod smote a first-inning fastball into the bleachers to get his 3000th hit.

The all-star infielder joined Derek Jeter as the only other Yankee to reach that milestone.

Stadium officials attempted to retrieve the ball, except the catcher refused to give back the ball.

MLB reckoned the ball was worth $50,000 to collectors.

The man, who caught the ball, has succeeded in catching 8000 other homers and foul balls around the league, which must make Zack Hample the best home-run snagger of all-time.

And none of them were deflated.

ps Zack Hample is another great name for a baseball player.

Names In Baseball

Last season Brock Holt cracked the Red Sox record book by becoming the first Boston player to start games at seven different positions and last night he hit a cycle against the miserable Atlanta Braves, which was the first single-double, triple, and homer combo for a Bosox player in nineteen years. Even better my team stopped a seven-game losing streak, however I'm more impressed how baseball and many other sports come up with players' great names.

Enos Slaughter, Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue, Liuz Tiant, Reggie Jackson, Big Papi, Willie MaysHonus Wagner, Dewey Evans, Babe Ruth and thousands upon thousands of monikers destined to grace Little League fields, minor league parks, and MBL stadiums.

"Now up for the Reed Sox_____."

A-ROD A-ROD

In the 2009 World Series Alex Rodriguez threw off the mantle of post-season goat and MVPed his way through the Phillie pitchers. Glory doesn't last long in the modern age. MLB suspended the all-star Yankee infielder some of 2013 and most of 2014 for self-medicating his aging body. Fans spoke about A-Rod, as if he had gone to the Red Sox for less money, however doping means nothing to a doper and I look at the number.

666 home runs.

2001 RBIs

Almost 3000 hits and 322 stolen bases.

don't mistake my saying good for A-Rod. He's a Yankee and as a member of the Red Sox Nation we are not prone to say good for the Bronx Terrorists, but the Yanks are in the pennant race. Every at-bat is a milestone for A-Rod and I'm saying, "A-Rod AROD.", because Sports Illustrated is a shit magazine.

ps the top foto is of Rick Rodriguez who owns the AROD Deli on Mrytle Avenue in Brooklyn.

MC5 Baseball

As much as I loved Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching a no-hitter on LSD and beaning every player on the Cincinnati Reds in one game, my favorite ballplayer of the 1970s has to be Fred Sonic Smith from the MC5.

Strangely I can find any mention of Fred Smith in the records of the Major Leagues other than that from 1914. Fred Smith played ball for Buffalo. The man on there right looked nothing like Fred Sonic Smith. Well, maybe a little.

Then again all white people look the same.

Another Year of Bosox Sux

Four years ago the Red Sox traded away their stars and finished last in AL East under the manager Bobby Valentine.

That inglorious season I listened to one Red Sox game on the radio driving up to Western Mass with another loyal New Englander. They lost the game against the Angels 7-1 and I took a sports holiday the rest of the summer.

The following year my hometown team shocked Major League baseball by going last to first with their future Hall of Famer David Ortiz hitting over .700 through the World Series.

The Re

Once more I watched no games.

The Red Sox Nation was back on top of the world, however the 2014 team sucked from start to finish, as if the Babe Ruth Curse had risen from the zombie dead and this year the Bosox are so bad that now I can only watch ESPN's FOUR DAYS IN OCTOBER chronicling the Red Sox's 2004 miraculous comeback against the Yankees to feel good about the team of Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Luis Tiant, Bernie Carbo, Dewey Evans, Jim Rice, Oil Can Boyd, Tim Wakefield, Tony C, Roger Moret, Pedro Martinez et al.

The good, the bad, and the forgotten.

All that be said I will remain true to the Red Sox Nation.

My daughter Angie would expect nothing less.

She likes the color red.

Libre Puerto Rico

On September 12th of 1983 Víctor Manuel Gerena dropped off his girl at Hartford City Hall to get a marriage license after which the minimum-wage guard finished the day's work at Wells Fargo armored car facility by drugging his two white co-workers and quit his job by robbing the depot of $7,000,000 in cash. His girlfriend was left standing at the altar and the FBI accused the fugitive of belong to a pro-Puerto Rican Liberation gang called the Los Macheteros.

Members of Los Macheteros distributed the loot to the island's poor.

The FBI confiscated approximately $80,000 in the years allowing the White Eagle Robbery.

Federal authorities prosecuted several gang members, however Víctor Manuel Gerena remains at large to this day, Puerto Rico Day, but every day the fugitive sets another record for being on the FBI's Most Wanted List longer than any other man or woman.

Felications and a clenched fist salute to the FALN.

Libre Puerto Rico.

ps The FBI are dumber than a bucket of doorknobs.

Heaven or Hell In Miami Beach

Two old men are living in Miami Beach. Their hotel is undergoing renovations. The entire neighborhood has been transformed by young people. Izzy and Moishe sit on the terrace of the Breezemore Hotel and watch the parade of revelers. They are feeling their age and Izzy says, "You know Moishe, we've had a good life, but I've been wondering about what's next?"

"What's next is we die. One of us first the other second." Moishe was more pragmatic than his friend. He had been an accountant. Number added up to a total sum. No more. No less.

"What about Sheol?" Izzy had been a lawyer. He still believe in good and evil. His wife Miriam had been good. Her mother was evil incarnate.

"A bleak afterlife, feh?" Moishe was too pragmatic to be pessimistic.

"What about Olam Ha-Ba?"

"The world to come where we are rewarded for our good deeds. Feh. And Gan Eden is a fairy tale."

"But what if there really is a heaven and hell?"

"I don't know." Moishe had no questions, but there was always doubt, especially at the age of 87. "Listen, I tell you what, if one of us ides and there is a heaven or hell, the one who dies should come back to tell the one staying whether there is a heaven or hell. Is it a deal?"

"For you, anything." The two friends went back to 1st Grade in Brownsville NY.

Neither man thinks anything about the oath until Moishe dies two weeks later.

"At least he went in his sleep." Izzy tells the children who are transporting the body back up north. No one gets buried in Florida. The ground is tref.

A week goes by, then another. A month and then more.

A year to the day of Moishe's passing, the curtains of Izzy's windows billow inward without a breeze. The temperature was in the 80s, but the room is freezing. Moishe can see his breath and asks, "Izzy, is that you?"

"Of course it's me, who else were you expecting?" The voice sounds like it's coming from across the universe.

"Only you, so tell me, are you in heaven or hell?" Moishe is eager to hear the answer, since then he can tell Izzy that he was wrong about heaven and hell.

"Neither."

"Neither?" Moishe hadn't expected this response. "So what do you do all the time?"

"I eat, I fuck, I eat, I fuck, I eat, I fuck, and then I go to sleep."

"Well, aren't you in heaven?"

"No, I'm a rabbit in Montana."

No Tattoos in Heaven by Peter Nolan Smith

After my best friend drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960, I became a non-believer. Chaney was a good boy and no God would have let him die. My atheism was a secret. I was an altar boy at Sunday Mass. My mother prayed that I might take the cloth as a priest or at the least a brother. The nuns mother at Our Lady Of The Foothills also had high hopes for my avocation, however the Baltimore Catechism failed teach me religion to resurrect my faith in the Holy Trinity and I bore my godlessness in silence.

My secret was sussed out by 6th grade teacher.

"I know faith when I see it. I know lack of faith too." Sister Mary Goretti was more tolerant of my puerile apostasy than her whip-bearing compatriots. "But you really shouldn't be an altar boy."

"My mother wants me to be one."

"And she wants more."

"I know."

"So if you can't quit, just lower your head during Mass and say whatever you want, but I don't want to see you taking the Holy Communion. That would be sacrilege."

'Yes, sister."

I might not have believed in God, but I did believe in Sister Mary Goretti.

She Mary Goretti was as ancient as dust. The old nun had taught school in Egypt. Her tales of children running over stalks of harvested crops without touching the jagged tips was a magic miracle. Her students loved her and she loved educating us.

No question was undeserving of an answer and one day my friend Chuckie asked, "Do atheists go to heaven?"

"I don't know, but I think they would be surprised to wake from death in the after-life." Sister Mary Goretti looked in my direction and I shrugged, since going to heaven meant worshiping the man in a dress and hell was a burning oven. I was more interested in purgatory. Nothing bad ever happened in Limbo.

"My mother said if you get a tattoo, then you don't do to heaven."

"Leviticus 19:28 says, "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you." She knew her Old Testament. "That's against the 5th Commandment."

"I thought that meant 'Thou shalt not kill." I got As in religion, despite my godlessness.

"St. Paul admonishes us: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” She was no slouch with the New Testament either. "But my father was a sailor and had tattoos. He was a good man and I can't see him going to hell for an anchor tattoo, but who am I to question the dictates of the Church?"

None of us dared answer this question and we returned to our Baltimore Catechism lesson.

At year's end my report card was straight As for the year and Sister Mary Goretti rewarded me with a mother of pearl rosary.

"I know you don't believe, but that doesn't make you a bad boy. God loves us all."

"Thank you, sister."

She was playing a game, but I was lucky to have her as my teacher and while I don't believe in either heaven or hell, I have refrained ever getting a tattoo.

Out of respect for an old nun.

And only a little bit the fear of hell.

Wo Ist Deiner Tattoos

I've been watching the brutal defensive NBA finals between Cleveland and Golden State. The Cavs have lost two stars and the coach has gone to the bench to fill the ranks. LeBron has been happy to play with his ex-Miami Heat teammate Mike Miller, but when I saw the 35 year-old forward on the court I thought he might have had several of his tattoos removed during the off-season.

I mentioned this metaporphosis to several of my freinds without them refuting my claim.

Today I googled 'white tattooed NBA player, and discovered that I had mistook Mike Miller for Chris Anderson or Big Bird.

The two don't really look anything alike, but I'll keep on making the comment about tattoo removal until someone corrects me.

Cleveland in seven.

Writer's Block

Writer's Block has beset writers for time immemorial. For some people the words won't just come. They remained stuck in the head or the writer suffers a collapse of inspiration. I used to say that I only experienced writer's block when my bank account dropped below $200, however this most recent lapse arose from several sources.

Chronic bronchitis combined with working six days a week accompanied a post-birthday malaise along with the day not having enough hours in which to get the seat of my pants to the seat of the chair.

This situation has yet to remedy itself, but I can feel the juices flowing in my skull.

Words don't fail me now.

The Wheaties Curse

Bruce Jenner captured the hearts of Americans with her gold medal decathlon in the Montreal Olympics. Everyone loved the all-American boy, yet Jenner's struggles with gender issues was heightened by his eating of GMO-Wheaties in accordance with his status as Wheaties poster boy. Decades later Jenner announced that he has changed his sexual designation to female, proving the dangers of eating genetically-modified foods, although Caitlyn Jenner has denied the connection as would any Republican in denial.

Wheaties eaters beware.

Free Again From The Patriot Act

Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act or the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 in October of 2001. The Act flew through the House with a vote of 357 to 66, all the dissent votes were by-and-large from the Democrats. The Senate's near-unanimous ballot of Senate by 98 to 1 showed less resistance to the overthrow of personal liberties guaranteed by by the Constitution and President GW Bush sign the bill into law.

The abuse of these laws have remained under the cloak of the NSA and CIA and FBI, as these agencies vied for more power and funds from the sweeping mandates authorizing illegal search and seizure as well as the unbridled surveillance of millions of innocent Americans.

"I have no problem with the NSA listening to us," a state judge told me yesterday, as Rand Paul attempted to block a vote of the renewal allowing access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"Even though it's a violation of civil rights." I was afraid they might curtail my XXX research.

"If it protects America, it's good with me."

"The NSA computers listen to billions of conversations every day. Do you really thin that they have developed an algorithym to cut out all the OMGs? The answer is no. No one is deciphering the onslaught of information, because no terrorist will talk on a telephone or send an email. It's not how they operate. They operate the same as Whitey Bulger; no phones, no cars, no emails, no written messages. It's standard operating procedure for secretive cells. But this doesn't stop the NSA from spending $47 billion a year on this useless program, because the more money you spend, the more power you have."

"So you don't care if they listen to you?"

"Me, not really, but if they ever wanted to mess with you, they are experts at making someone looking guilty. Same as the FBI with DNA. All lies."

"You are a true cynic." The judge shook his head.

"No, I only believe what I believe, because I don't watch TV."

The judge had an 80" screen in his living room.

"No TV?" The way he said it sounded almost, as if I had created treason.

"Not since 2008."

I had thrown my thin screen into the street.

It hadn't survived the impact with the sidewalk and neither has part of the fucking Patriot Act thanks to Rand Paul.

Do I feel safer?

A little, because last year Western Union investigated me for money-laundering under the orders of the Patriot Act. I had sent too much money to my families in Thailand. It took them a month to clear up the problem during which time I had to pay extra to wire money to my kids.

All to feel safe from terrorism.

But I always feel safe.

AS long as I don't watch TV.

Not So Great Scott

Scott Walker had surprised the Democrats by maintaining his control of Wisconsin. His right-wing policies have won favor with the white voters in the Cheese State. Unions have been weakened and taxes on the rich have been cut to insure lottery winners that they too will benefit from the GOP's trickle down economics.

While Scott hasn't announced his candidacy for president (he's busy cutting the state budget ), he does lead the GOP back by a solid 7% over his nearest rivals; Kentucky's Rand Paul and Doctor Ben Carson, who each have garnered 10% of the vote.

Republicans are praying for a solid candidate to oust the Democrats from the White House.

It's early yet, but on a dreary June 1st, I can't see any of these clowns winning the election, but then I haven't spent much time in the hinterland, so my finger is on my own pulse and not that of America.

And I can't feel a thing in my veins.

Out Of The GOP Closet

Today Rick Santorum announced his presidential candidacy along with New York's governor from the last century What's his name Pataki. During his governorship campaign I shouted at him to go back to suburbs. He must have heard me and won the election by a landslide, although I doubt whether Gov Pataki has the moral courage to shove a kielbasa down his throat like a 53rd Street Hustler on a rainy night, but it's got to be done.

Michelle Bachmann met the challenge.

As had Rick Scoot of Texas.

A true sausage swallower.

The longer the thicker the better.

Anything beats kissing babies.