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I’m in a harness race handicapping contest that began back in April and ends this Friday. The contest is sponsored by The Horseplayers Association of North America, the Hambletonian Society and The Grand Circuit. There is one race left, and I’m in 5^th place, 4,610.90 fictional dollars behind the leader. The maximum bet is $250. So, I need a real longshot.

Last week I hit a home run.   I played a $250 cold triple that returned $3,100. Otherwise, I would still be in 10^th place, over $7,000 behind the leader. I just need one more big hit to make it into the top three, and the top three all win money for charity. I’m playing for Heading For Home, a Saratoga based charity that takes care of horses after their racing career is over.

Because I was so far behind, I’ve been swinging for the fences for about a month now, and I’ve been striking out, usually, but that $3,100 hit gave me hope, even though another hit of that magnitude on the last day of the contest would still leave me about $2,000 shy of actually winning the contest.

It’s hard enough to pick a winner, but trying to pick a cold exacta or triple is way harder, but that’s what I’ve got to do if I want to get a check for my charity. One race left. One bet left. I have to swing for the fences.

I also got an e-mail this week from the Lancaster Barnstormers. Last year I bought a ticket package that included throwing out the first pitch at one of their games, and they wanted to know if I was interested in doing that again. I sure was, and this year I bought 3 packages, so that two of my friends could join me on the mound, instead of just sitting in the stands laughing at me.

The Barnstormers (ahem, I mean the 2014 Atlantic League Champion Barnstormers) also wanted to know if I was interested in a ticket package that included taking batting practice with the team. I signed up for two of those packages, so I could invite a friend to participate in that – our own little home run derby. So, I will be swinging for the fences in 2015. But right now, first things first, before I start swinging for the fences at Clipper Magazine Stadium, I’ve got one fence to swing for this Friday at Northfield Park in the Cleveland Classic Pace.

Wish me luck. I’m gonna need it.

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

I just got back from a weekend in Ohio celebrating my Aunt Miriam’s 80^th birthday. Naturally, the weekend was filled with all the usual stuff, like food and drink, music, and tons of relatives. But there was also a little bit of the unusual, at least for me. There were guns.

On Saturday, I went with 3 of my relatives to their 40-acre property in the woods, where, in addition to the woods, they have a picnic area, a lake, trailers for overnight stays, and a target range. We were there to use the target range and an assortment of my Cousin Ed’s handguns and rifles.

He could tell that I didn’t know the first thing about guns, so he loaded them for me, told me to pick one, gave me a set of earplugs, and pointed me towards the firing line. The last time I fired a weapon was on the rifle range in boot camp back in 1967, so I grabbed a rifle that looked closest to what I used back then.

I’ve read a lot of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, so I knew a little something about marksmanship. I knew that, for greatest accuracy, you had to hold your breath when you pulled the trigger. I took in a big gulp of air, held my breath, sighted on the target and squeezed the trigger. I squeezed until I was turning blue from holding my breath, but no shots were fired.

Through my ear plugs, I heard the muffled scream of my cousin. “You have to take off the safety,” Ed said.

I didn’t know where the safety was or how to take it off, so he did that for me and handed the rifle back to me. I held my breath, sighted on the target, and squeezed the trigger.

Blam! The bullet raced towards the target, well at least in that general vicinity. A clump of dirt jumped into the air about 25 feet away from the target. I pulled the trigger again and caused more dirt to dance. I kept pulling the trigger until I was out of ammo. The target was still untouched.

Ed reloaded the rifle and went to the firing line.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! And the target was turned into Swiss cheese.

My other two cousins fired off a couple rounds, and then Ed loaded a handgun for me. I fired the first shot and the gun recoiled upward as soon as I squeezed the trigger. I missed the target by a mile, but I scared every bird within two miles of the target. After a few more shots, I was able to somewhat control the upward swing of the gun, and I managed to make some more dirt dance.

Keeping the gun pointed at the target, I turned to my cousins behind me and said, “In all the excitement, I don’t know if I fired 6 or seven shots, so you’ve got to ask yourself, do you feel lucky. Well, do you punk?” They laughed and I emptied the clip and actually hit the target with one of my shots.

We took turns blasting off round after round at the targets. I saw that the shotgun had a lot more kick than the other weapons, so I passed on those rounds. I didn’t want to risk hurting my shoulder. There was a lot of weekend left and I needed my arm in good shape for all the beer I would have to lift.

After several hours of them blasting the targets and me blasting the dirt, we packed up the guns and headed back to Akron. It was my Cousin Barbi’s son’s birthday. Terrence turned 23 and a few of his friends were coming over to help him celebrate. A couple dozen relatives and a few dozen of his friends showed up and we partied. Around 4 a.m. the party was still going strong, but I was out of gas. I slipped off to the guest room, which was just above the garage where the music was blasting. The room was rocking.

Then I remember that I still had the earplugs from the firing range. I put them in and slept like a baby.

When I woke up my cousin Barbi was serving breakfast to all of Terrence’s friends who spent the night. She told me that the house rule was that her sons and their friends were allowed to party all they wanted but nobody was allowed to drive home. She was used to making breakfast for a small army of hungry college students. I joined in, and it was delicious.

I got invited back for Terrence’s graduation party next June. I hope I can get in a little target practice before then, so I don’t embarrass myself too much on the firing range. “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

Rarely are the seats full at the ballpark. One night I was there and they announced the paid attendance at around 9,000 people. That was their third highest attendance ever. Since the stands are so empty, a lot of little kids entertain themselves by running up and down the stairs, back and forth in the rows. One such tyke, around five or six years old came running up to where Debbie and I were sitting.

He waited until he got our attention and said, “I eat my boogers.” He made a perfect comedic pause before he continued, “Lots of them.”

He then ran off, I guess to inform other people of his culinary preference.

When I got home, I had to Google to see if there might be any scientific data on booger eating. To my surprise, most of the articles were actually positive and said that it might actually improve a child’s immune system. The only harmful side effect was that too much digging in the nose might lead to a nosebleed.

Recently, I was diagnosed with severe arthritis of the left hip joint, a condition that began when I twisted my hip in a dance lesson around 7 years ago. I explained to my new medical team, that I never had any treatments on my hip because I had developed a heart problem at the same time, and that always got priority. They asked me what I was taking for the pain and I told them that whenever I was in pain I squirted my hip with Wd-40 Oil.

They thought I was joking, but I managed to convince them that it was a serious home remedy I learned from my Dad, who learned it from my Aunt Miriam, who has been using it for decades and swears by it.

When they stopped laughing, they made an appointment for me to see an orthopedic doctor, who might have a more conventional treatment for my hip pain.

This past weekend I had a lot of things to do, so I sprayed the WD-40 oil on quite liberally before I left the house. I went to a Mavericks concert in Harrisburg, PA with my friend Maria on Friday. Then I went to Valley Stream, NY on Saturday to hang out with my friend Tilda. On Sunday I went to Long Beach, NY to see my friends John and Margaret. They live a couple miles from the Long Beach train station and I used to walk it until a couple years ago when the hip pain flared up.

I walked from the train station to the new post-Sandy boardwalk and the hip still felt pretty good. So, I figured I would walk a bit, rest a bit, and see how far I got. I made it all the way to their house, and we partied for hours.

On Monday I went to Secaucus, NJ to see my friends Barbara and Jim’s new apartment, (and to whup them at Scrabble). On Tuesday I headed to the Amtrak station in Penn Station to head back to Lancaster. I got there early and decided to call Debbie to see how she was doing without me. She asked me how my hip was doing after 5 days of being on the road.

I told her that it was doing well.

“Did you squirt more WD-40 on it?”

“Of course,” I said, I coated it well on Friday before I left the house, but I’ve discovered something else that’s really been helping me a lot.”

She took the bait, and asked me what it was.

“I eat my boogers,” I said laughing. “Lots of them.”

Peace & Love, and all of the above,

Earl

I was stationed in Germany in the late sixties. World War II had been officially over for more than two decades, but it wasn’t really over.

First a little background with the previous World War, WW I. After the Germans were defeated, the French occupied Germany, and treated the German citizens with classic French arrogance. The Germans had no choice but to accept it, but they harbored a deep resentment and knew that somehow, someday they would get revenge. Fast forward to WW II and Hitler and the Germans got their paybacks on the French and now occupied their country.

Then that war ended and we Americans occupied Germany with the same distain for the German citizens that the French had shown. The Germans had no choice but to accept it, but again, they harbored a deep resentment and knew that someday they would get revenge on the Americans the same way they had gotten revenge on the French.

When we went out on the town we were not welcome. Invariably fights would break out. It was a nightly occurrence in the taverns closest to the base.  Usually it began with a group of Americans hurling chicken bones at any Germans sitting nearby.  German girls were ostracized from their communities if they were seen with Americans. The War had been over for more than two decades, but like I said, hostilities were still going on. It wasn’t over.

Then, an amazing thing happened. It was on my brother Kevin’s birthday, July 20^th, 1969, that hostilities ceased. That was the day we landed on the moon. Americans were naturally filled with pride for what they had accomplished, but the Germans were proud, too. The head of our space program was an old German rocket scientist, Wernher Von Braun. When we landed those men on the moon, we created an instant partnership with the German people. We were no longer the occupying army. We were now allies in the space race.

The fighting in the taverns stopped. Now, instead of hurling chicken bones at one another, we were buying each other drinks and toasting the great accomplishment of the American-German team of scientists at NASA. The German girls could now openly date Americans, and, their German fathers would insist that they brought their American boyfriends home, not to be inspected, but to be congratulated and toasted with a glass of German Schnapps.

July 20^th, 1969, in my mind, is the day that World War II ended. On that day, we landed on the moon and found a little peace on Earth. “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind,” indeed.

Peace and Love, and all of the above,

Earl

I usually get jolted out of bed long before I planned to get up. I order a lot of things online, so, usually it the mailman or UPS guy who rings my bell, puts the package on the floor, and dashes off to his next delivery. I get out of bed to meet them in case they need a signature. What the hell. I can go right back to bed after signing for the package. However, I rarely get to the front door before they are gone, tail lights in the distance. I even switched my nighttime attire from pajamas to shorts and a t-shirt, so I wouldn’t waste any time getting “decent,” on mornings that I was expecting a delivery, and he’s still gone before I get to the door.

Today, I was expecting knick knacks to be delivered for my backyard, so, I was sleeping in shorts and ready to run to the door as soon as I heard the bell.

Ding Dong Ding Dong! It woke me and I sprinted the 20 feet to the front door. When I opened it, I was face-to-face with what looked like “The Brute Squad.” Three very large cops, who combined could probably bench press Rhode Island thanked me for opening the door. Before I could say that I had nothing to do with what might look like pot plants in the backyard, they told me that they had business with the upstairs tenant. They banged on his door and charged up the stairs. Since they looked like they started each morning at Gold’s Gym, and since each of them had guns in their holsters, I decided that this was not a good time to play nosey neighbor. I went back into my apartment, closed the door, and thought about where I would hide if shots rang out.  I regretted that I only had a shower, not a big sturdy bathtub.

Then I remembered that I didn’t have any upstairs tenants anymore. They moved out last week. I thought they were just being unusually quiet, because I never saw them move out, but when I saw my landlord earlier in the week sprucing up the place and actually doing repairs, I knew something must be up. When he asked to put an “Apartment for Rent” sign in one of my front windows, I knew what it was.

So, remembering this, and hearing the mini swat team come back down the stairs without any shots being fired, I stepped bravely back into the hallway. “I think they moved out. I haven’t heard any noise up there, and the apartment is for rent.”

“Okay. We know where he works. We can pick him up there. Do you know his girlfriend’s last name?”

“I don’t even know her first name. I just know that she had a pretty face.”

“What color hair?”

“I didn’t notice.”

Realizing that I wasn’t going to be much help, they asked for the landlord’s phone number, politely thanked me, and left.

After they left, I was so pumped with excitement that I could hardly go back to bed, but I forced myself.  I needed my rest in case the UPS guy showed up.

Peace & Love, and all of the above.

Earl