I SAY for…27 February 2009

`        Jousting with organized religion most of my life, I’ve had an epiphany…or rather TIME magazine has shown me the light, if not the way.

          The TIMES cover story is titled “HOW FAITH CAN HEAL”. The headline, in itself, is quite a grabber…particularly when my inclinations are that it, faith, cannot heal. To my knowledge, there is no documented proof of healing by prayer. Granted there are healings that were unanticipated and perhaps, in a sense, miraculous, but no tests are of record where patient A and B both have, say, incurable pancreatic cancer…and A prays and is cured and B does not and therefore makes a quick exit. I’m inclined to go along with Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who states, “Science doesn’t deal in supernatural explanations. Religion and science address different concerns”.

 However, the TIMES article, by Jeffery Kluger, takes a different approach as to the efficacy of prayer when it comes to health. His carefully worded statement goes like this: “The parietal lobe of the brain is special, not for where it is, but what it does…particularly concerning matters of faith. This lobe processes sensory input. And there is nothing we pray, chant or meditate more than for our health. What is surprising is a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health. People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any one year than people who do not attend. People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God.

And yet, a skeptic will say there is nothing remarkable, much less spiritual, about these findings. You live longer if you go to church because your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, go down first. ”

The article is too lengthy to quote in its entirety, but it concludes: “Few people think of religion as an alternative to medicine. The frontline tools of an emergency room will always be splints and sutures, not prayer…and well applied medicine along with smart prevention will always be the best way to stay well…but we can’t be choosy about where we look for answers. Doctors, patients and pastors battling disease already know that help comes in a whole lot of forms. It’s the result, not the source, that counts the most.”

So be it.

* * * **

 In pro football, if a player “demonstrates” to excess, he can be fined.

 This rule is designed to stop show boating athletes, who are a bit full of themselves, from such antics…when they forget they are paid to do, nay expected to do, little chores like gaining yardage and making touchdowns. However, I saw the illogical extension of this demonstration complex in the Ess Eff Chronicle last Monday. There was a photo of a bass fisherman, with his arms extended above his head while clutching a fish in each hand, and tilting his head to the sky in exaltation. The caption read, “Skeet Reese of Auburn holds up a pair of fish at the Bassmaster classic fishing tournament in Louisiana. Reese held off a rally from ex-champ Michael Laconelli to win the title for the first time.”

          Boy, I bet the excitement was nearly unbearable! I hope he was not fined.

                                                 * * * * * **

          This business of hugging is getting out of hand…no pun intended, and it may be the President’s fault. Sources say that the Obama family was always cuddly on the campaign trail, last month the President apparently bestowed 9 hugs on senior staffers at a single meeting. It must be a sign of the times. I can not remember nor envisage Nixon, Eisenhower, nor Bush Senior doing so. Clinton? Yes. He had a penchant for hugging folks of both sexes…some more than others.

          Anyhow, if one insists on hugging, there are three prescribed hugs for your repertoire. 1) The full frontal hug…a total body contact embrace with a firm squeeze, for parents, children and very good friends. 2)The Ass-out hug where nothing touches below the shoulders, reserved for office workers and bad dates. 3)The Hip Hop hug where two guys shake with the right hands and hug with their lefts…plus two slaps on the back.

                                                  * * * * *

          Last week’s quiz asked for the name of the café in “Casablanca”, the full name of the owner…and the famous remark by Claude Raines portraying Captain Renault when informed there was gambling going on in the café. However, as no one responded, the café was called “Rick’s American Café”, the owner was Rick Blaine, and the remark by the Captain was “I’m shocked! Shocked!”

          This week’s quiz: The Oregon Trail ran from where to where?

The Orient Express from start to finish…and Highway 36 in northern California?

                                           * * * * *

          An eight year old swaggered into a lounge and demanded of the waitress, ” Give me a double scotch on the rocks!”

          “What do you want to do,” the waitress replied, “get me in trouble?”

          “Maybe later,” the kid said. “Right now I just want the scotch.

Robert Minch

OUR STORY SO FAR 27

            If you are not familiar with the cast and the premise, there is little we can do to fill you in except to say that country western singer Proberta Gerber, heiress  to the Whompdocker and the Humdinger Diamonds fortune, is missing and feared kidnapped. Private Eye Grimes Arbuckle has been hired to find her, and sleazy lawyer Maxell Williams claims to be her attorney of record.

            After a contentious confrontation in Williams’ office, Grimes has stormed out past the desk of secretary Adin Lookout and is hell bent to find the last person alleged to have seen the songbird alive, that being one Chilcoot Vinton reputed to be strong as an ox and almost as smart.

            Leaving the office in a 47 Huff, Grimes drives to a convenient bar known as the  “The Bombay Beach Café”, and orders a beer. A comely waitress strikes up a conversation with the handsome fellow. She speaks. Listen!

Waitress: “What’s a nice looking chap like you doing in a place like this?”

Grimes: “Just thirsty, I guess. What’s a good looking dame like you doing in a place like this?”

Waitress: “I have no choice. I was sold into involuntary servitude by a wicked aunt when I was just a child.”

Grimes: “What’s your name, sister?”

Waitress: “Crescent. Crescent Mills…and yours?”

Grimes : “Grimes. Grimes Arbuckle. What was your wicked aunt’s name?”

Crescent: “You’re pretty nosy, fella…”

Grimes: “I’m paid to be nosy. What’s her name?”

Crescent: “Well…I guess it won’t do no harm in tellin’ ya…it’s Madeline Ravendale…but she croaked years ago.”

Grimes: “Sorry to hear that…but if she was wicked, then I guess…but, I digress. Take a look at this photo and tell me if you recognize this woman.”

Crescent:  ”Why…this photo is of the back of a woman’s head!”

            Why would Grimes have a picture of a woman’s head? Was it meant to confuse his new found acquaintance Crescent Mills? Was the negative reversed? Tune in next Friday when the waitress exclaims, “Wait…I recognize that marcelled hair do!”

WE SAID: August 1985

          Goat breeders are perplexed. The general public does not appreciate the goat. Heaven for them would be that little old lady in the T.V. ads looking at her hamburger, and shouting “Where’s the goat?”

          Last week I attended the North Valley Dairy Goat Association Open Doe Show at the fairgrounds. There I saw Alpines, LaManchas, Nubians, Saanens and Toggenburgs. They were all a great looking bunch of animals. Very friendly and curious. When I wandered down the aisles past pen after pen, they would line the fence, put their feet up on the top rail and let me rub their heads. They would say “Baaa”, and I would answer them in kind.

          I’ve always liked goats. My father had a pet goat named David out at the plant. I have a photo of him and the little kid head to head. Very touching.

          We owned goats at one time. We had a nanny named Anna and she had an offspring we named Banana. They were very tough goats and very sufficient. Never had to feed them. They lived down in the grove behind the horse barn and grazed year around on grass, weeds and shrubs.

Each night when I went down to the barn to feed the horses, I would let the dogs loose and they would race ahead to wreck havoc upon the goats. The goats, however, would merely lower their considerable horns…and the dogs would lose interest very quickly.

          Back to the show. The goat people put out brochures touting the benefits of goat milk which does not need to be homogenized, you know. They even publish a newsletter, sell goat pins, note pads and greeting cards. A sample: “Be My Horny Valentine”. And have a clever bumper sticker which reads, “Have you hugged your kid today?”

          When the goats are being readied for show, the owners shave their little heads, and those breeds, with little ears, once shaven, look like E.T. from outer space. One owner told me he believes they are almost human and therefore are treated as same if sick. If they develop a cough, he gives them Vick’s 44 Cough syrup.

          Anyhow, that’s all the news from the goat front. Now back to our studio for regular programming.

Robert Minch

          Ben Perry went to his reward several months ago. He was 95, or so, and was an interesting, yet bothersome, fellow. He latched onto a few people and had the habit of calling them on the phone, day and night, to the point many of them either hung up on him or threatened to get an unlisted number. He also called radio stations and harangued until they would not put him on the air unless it was a slow night. He had an eclectic and inquiring mind, and would pontificate to any who would listen to him. Former Daily News columnist, C. Larimer, does not suffer fools gladly, and Ben, knowing this, would call him at all hours to argue anything and everything that was on his mind at the moment. Cliff, of course, would hang up on him, and eventually called me in frustration. I told him that Ben Perry was old, but his mind was not…and that he had a dire need for conversation. I suggested Cliff should humor him and let him rant, but also lay down some strict rules as I had done. I had early on told Ben that I would take his calls, but only before my regular office hours. At first he would not abide by my rules. If he called, but not as instructed, I would merely say,”Ben…remember the rules…” and hang up. After awhile, he reluctantly restricted his calls to between 7 and 8 each morning, and he often began his rant where he had previously left off. There was never a hello or a goodbye. He would speak his mind, occasionally ask my opinion…and then just hang up.

Mr. Perry was a tall, gangly, eccentric fellow, who had been orphaned at an early age, handed off to relatives, and then ran away from home to seek his fortune. I don’t know if he ever found it, but he made many stops along the way, even to Alaska. He worked in the bay area ship yards during WWII before eventually settling in the Dairyville area for the remainder of his life. He was tight lipped about his residence and only said he “lived in a house in an orchard owned by Crain”.

          Ben was married for years to Marge, but she died many years ago and he was living the life of a bachelor when I knew him…and a lonely one, at that. He confided once that he had a son, but he lived in Australia, and had not seen him for years.

Ben Perry may not have been a mover and a shaker in life… and probably left no monuments behind as to his accomplishments, but he had intellect and energy to burn to the very end, and therefore deserves mention in Our Passing Parade.

I SAY for…20 February 2009

          There was a time when downtown Red Bluff was for banks, retail stores, bars and restaurants. This, plus drug stores, grocery stores, a hotel, newsstands, real estate and insurance offices. The only public building was the post office. Then, as local government expanded, more space was needed for city and county employees…and so the encroachment began. Vacant retail stores began being occupied by a public agency. A good example would be the Hallmark store at Main and Pine which moved to Belle Mill Landing, and the site became home for County executive offices. Downtown merchants bemoaned this happening, but the landlord of the large corner site was delighted to have the County as a tenant.

          This pattern has repeated itself again and again in varying guises.

The Job Training Center now occupies the site of the former Lyon and Garrett hardware store and a woman’s apparel shop. My point being that we have lost downtown retail stores which somehow lessens our small town appeal to shoppers…and yet we all prefer an agency to a vacancy. But now what happens when agencies, mandated and funded by State or County, finds themselves unable to pay the rent when the money tree withers?

The trickle down funds stop trickling when the State can’t pass its annual budget. This is nothing new, of course. We are property managers for  buildings occupied by State agencies. In the past, the tenants have had to delay rent payments until the State budget was passed. Fortunately the landlords were able to weather such rental payment draughts. The current impasse in Sacramento portends rent payment delays… perhaps of longer duration.

          The moral to the story is that big government appears to be a trouble- free tenant who pays like clockwork…until somebody forgets to wind its clock.

• * * **

Sightem on Antelope Blvd: Two unshaven and unkempt young men,

kings of the road, trudging along toward the freeway. Though it is raining, one of them has un-slung his guitar, and is strumming away. No one is listening, including his partner, but the little fellow is providing his own good karma…and all is right with his world.

• * * * **

Lee Pitts, in his column for the Northern California Farm Bureau

magazine, noted that the majority of pickups on the road and in car lots, are white. He asked a salesman why that was, and he replied that a white pickup is easier to keep clean than the colored ones. Lee didn’t buy that. He thinks the only pickups that don’t show dirt are dirt colored. Makes sense, however Lee did not understand why most pickups in California are white. It is because they are cooler…and white reflects better than darker colors.

Everybody in Tehama county knows that.

                                            * * * * **

          More wisdom, allegedly from the mouths of babes. This time, 6^th graders were asked to complete famous sayings. Their answers in quotes:

          Strike while the “bug is close”.

          It’s always darkest before “daylight saving time.”

          Don’t bite the hand “that looks dirty”.

          The pen is mightier than “the pig”.

          A penny saved “is not much”.

          Two’s company, three’s “The Musketeers.”

          Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry “and you have to blow your nose.”

• * * * * * *

          Last week’s quiz: Give the first names of the Brothers Karamazov, the Ringling Brothers, and The Ritz Brothers. L. Merry and J. Angelo knew the answers: Dimtri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov for the Brothers K. They even added a few of which I was not aware. The Ringlings were Albert, Otto, Charles, Alfred and John, and the Ritz boys were Al, Jimmy ,Harry.

          This week’s quiz: In the film “Casblanca” , what was the name of the Café? What was the owner’s full name? What did Claude Raines ,as Captain Renault, say when informed there was gambling going on in the Café?

* * * * * *

A married woman is entertaining a man in her bedroom, not knowing

 her 8 year old son is hiding in the closet. When the woman’s husband comes home unexpectedly, the man hides in the closet and becomes aware of the young boy besides him. The boy whispers, “Boy it’s dark in here!” He then asks the man if he likes baseball.  The man says yes and the boy asks if he would like to buy his baseball. The man asks how much, the boy says two hundred dollars…and the man whispers “Sold.”

Same thing happens the following weekend and the man once again is

hiding in the closet. The boy again says, “Boy it’s dark in here”…and proceeds to sell the man his glove for $800.00.

          The next day the boy’s father, learning that his son has sold his baseball and glove for $1,000.00, marches the lad over to the church and into a confessional booth to atone for his sins. The boy says, “Boy, it’s dark in here!”

`        And the priest says, “Don’t start that crap again!”

THE PASSING PARADE 20

Last week we told the story of the Senator and the bull. Now, with an assist from Tehama County Library researcher Scott  Sherman, here is the biography of U.S. Senator Clair Engle, who died of brain cancer, July 30, l964, at the age of 52.

He was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1911, moved to Tehama County, was a graduate of Red Bluff Union High School and Chico State College …and, in 1933, from Hastings Law College with honors.

Back in Red Bluff, he served as District Attorney from 1934 to 1938

until California Governor Earl Warren appointed him Deputy Attorney General. From there he had a meteoritic rise being elected State Senator in 1942, then a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and finally, in 1958, he became a U.S. Senator, a position he held until his untimely demise.

          Upon his death, Red Bluff Daily News reporter Paul Brook wrote, “With his death, Congress lost one of its most colorful figures. Known for his boundless energy and razor sharp tongue during his fire-eating days in the House of Representatives, he mellowed only slightly since being elected to the more august Senate. He was sometimes referred to as ‘Senator Fireball’ by colleagues who marveled at his energy. A friend likened him to a mountain quail…’When he lights, he keeps running.’ ”

          After his brain surgery in 1963, rumors flew that he might not recover. He put the lie to the rumors when he made a dramatic wheelchair appearance in the rotunda of our nation’s capitol to pay his last respects to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 24^th.

          If it were not for his untimely demise, Clair Engle could have, in the words of his close friend Dave Minch, “Gone all the way to becoming President.”

WE SAID July 1985

            If asked, hypothetically, to choose between losing your hearing or your eyesight, you would probably opt for loss of hearing. But what if you were asked to choose between a mental or physical impairment? A tough choice, right?

            Two vivacious sisters lived in Red Bluff years ago. They were happy-go-lucky, very attractive and talented. One was somewhat more reserved and ladylike…the other a bit more tom boyish, athletic, enjoyed hunting, fishing and riding horses.

            They both married prominent business men and each had a child. Their lives were full and rewarding for many years. Then both suffered strokes of a medical nature rather than of fate…but, as it turned out, that too. The more reserved sister was physically impaired and had to be “cared for” in that sense of the expression…but her mind remained functional and lucid. The other sister, the very active one, suffered the reverse. For the remaining years of her life, she physically raged and fought unseen demons while her gay, carefree and witty mind meandered like the wind.

            I knew the latter sister quite well. My wife and I would invite her and her husband to our annual Saturday night bonfires at Roundup time; see them at Xmas and during the Community Concert season.

            One day the ebullient sister breathlessly announced she was, “Going to Ireland!” We were all happy for her. As time went by, she would repeat the announcement at every chance meeting, “I’m going to Ireland!” We began to have the sinking feeling that she was not going anywhere except out of her mind. In happier times, she would have laughed at the play on words. But now she is gone…worn out and worn away after a steady battle against God-knows-what forces and imagined foes.

            Today, as I sit on our deck overlooking the horse pasture, on a warm summer evening, I feel a mixture of relief and frustration. I’m glad, of course, that she suffers no more, and yet am saddened that she will never again feel a strong, swift horse under her saddle and the wind blowing in her short cropped hair. I have a 16mm film, taken 50 years ago by Dr. Frank Doane, showing her racing  her horse on the track of the old fairgrounds. Then, in the next scene, she is coyly looking straight at the camera with a mischievous smile on her face. She was indeed full of life…but life is so very short.

Robert Minch

OUR STORY SO FAR…6

(The cast: Proberta Gerber, missing country western singer; Grimes Arbuckle, private eye; Maxwell Williams, sleazy lawyer; his secretary Adin Lookout ,aka “Peaches”; Buttonwillow “The Button” Mckindrick, rival songbird; Skyway Cummings, former stunt man;  miscellaneous characters.)

As our scene opens, Grimes has burst into the office of sleazy lawyer Williams demanding to know the whereabouts of Proberta Gerber.

Wilmer (aka Henley Hornbrook), the lawyer’s hired gun,, attempted to silence Grimes, but was easily overcome by the private eye, and suffered a bruised ulna for his trouble. Grimes speaks. Listen!

Grimes: “Listen to me, fat man! You wanna get roughed up also…or are you ready to tell me what I want to know?”

Williams: “Har, har…I like your aggressive style, Mr. Arbuckle. It looks as though I should have hired you rather than little Wilmer. At any rate, you want to know what I know about Ms. Gerber. I am her attorney of record, and have assisted her in…in certain matters from time to time. However, I have not seen nor heard from the songbird for several weeks. I fear she may have been kidnapped . She is, after all, heir to the Wompdocker Diamond.”

Grimes: “And the Humdinger Diamond, as well?”

Williams: “That to. The woman is up to her pantaloons in diamonds, and someday will inherit a fortune.  I fear for her life.”

Grimes: “And you also fear of losing such a client…

Williams: “Egad sir, you are a man after my own…”

Grimes: “Let’s cut to the chase. When was the last time you saw her…and who was she with?”

Williams: Let me think. Yes…I believe it was several weeks ago she stopped by my office…and was in the company of a swarthy fellow.”

Grimes: And his name was…?”

Williams: “She introduced him as ‘Chilcoot Vinton’, but he never said a word. I think he was dumb as an ox.”

          Will this Chilcoot person be a lead for our intrepid private eye? Will he lead Grimes to the whereabouts of the songbird? Tune in next time when

Peaches, the lawyer’s secretary, asks, “How do you spell Winnemucca?”

I SAY for…13 February 2009

A recent TIME issue was headlined “HOW TO SAVE YOUR NEWSPAPER”. I have not read the article as yet, but I watched a Charlie Rose interview the other day on a PBS channel…his is an excellent show, by the way, and his guest was New Yorker critic David Denby. Denby was bemoaning the possible demise of newspapers and said, “If the New York Times…and the Washington Post, cease their hard copy production (i.e. no longer offer their papers in print), and go fully electronic, they will not have the same authority.” Yes! That’s it, exactly.

What one gets over the internet, and in blogs, is opinion, whereas the medium of print bestokes authority. Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.” He may have been facetious, but his remark still supports the theory that what we read is very close to gospel. If it were not so…they, the papers, would not have printed it. Oh, they print retractions

from time to time, but usually, what you read is what you can take to the bank, assuming you still have a bank.  In today’s political parlance, newspaper articles are “vetted”.

          So that’s why we need papers like the Daily News, Record Searchlight, the Bee and the Ess Eff Chron. Our papers tell us who died and who miss-stepped. Let us hope they find their way to profitability again.

• * * * * **

There is nothing Freudian about a senior person having difficulty

attaching a garden hose to a hose bib. It is merely a question of diminishing dexterity, poorly positioned water outlets and fading light. Same with trying to align the threads of a light bulb to screw it into a socket. Younger observers should not try to read anything into these minor failures. Their vexing encounters are just around the corner.

• **** * * **

A humorous tract making its way around the internet is reputably a

child’s version of the bible.  Such as, “Jesus had 12 opossums. The worst was Judas Asparagus so evil they named a terrible vegetable after him.”

And, “Jesus healed many Leopards and even preached to some

 Germans on the mount.”

          I don’t know how old the child was…probably 21. You could look it up.

                                                       * * * * **

          Speaking of Will Rogers, here is his prescient yet ageless quip: “You can be killed just as dead in an unjustified war as you can in protecting our own home.”

• * * * * *

Last week’s quiz asked for the highest mountain in Africa and the

highest in Europe…also the name of the most famous mountain on Iwo Jima. There were no responses. Was everyone at the post office looking for their stimulus package? Killamanjaro, now named Mt. Kibo, Mount Blanc, and Suribachi.

This week’s quiz: Name the Brothers Karamazov, The Ringling

Brothers of circus fame, and the Ritz Brothers.

• * * * * * *

My annual Xmas card to an old army buddy in Alaska came back

 marked “Return to Sender”. On the left hand side of the envelope was hand written “Dec.” Thinking this might mean “deceased” I started checking in his home town of Anchorage, and in Juneau. Nobody would tell me sic ‘em…and when I finally contacted the Government’s Vital Statistics department, they would not talk to me because I was not next of kin. Frustrated I called the Governor’s office. Sarah Palin did not answer but her aide did, and the answer was the same. “That information is confidential”. Finally an internet jockey found me the name of my buddy’s daughter. She confirmed that the clever and humorous Robert Yaskell had indeed gone to his reward last August.

Sigh.

• * * * * * *

The difference between men and women:

A man will pay $2.00 for a $1.00 item he needs. A woman will pay $1.00 for a $2.00 item she doesn’t need, because it’s on sale.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can

spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

A woman knows all about her children…their dentist appointments,

 romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and dreams.

A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in his house.

                                * * * * **

 Traveling salesman was driving down a country road and saw a 3

 legged chicken running besides his car. He sped up but the chicken kept pace with the car. Finally it ran into a farm yard, so the salesman stopped and asked a farmer about the chicken. The farmer said,” My son is a geneticist, and he developed this breed of chicken because all three of us in the family like drumsticks. So when we have a chicken dinner, we only have to kill one chicken.”

The salesman replied, “That’s the most fantastic story I’ve ever heard.

 How do they taste?”

The farmer answered, “I don’t know. We can’t catch ‘em!”

THE PASSING PARADE for…13 February 2009

U.S. Senator Clair Engle went to his reward in July of 1964. Prior to gaining a seat in Congress he was our District attorney and a great friend of my father who thought the lad had potential to someday be President. But rather than recount Senator Engle’s many accomplishments and virtues at this time, let me tell you the story of the Senator and the bull.

Senator Clair Engle had succumbed to a brain tumor. The town’s people felt this great loss and planned an elaborate ceremony. The grand finale was a funeral procession leading to his burial site in Oak Hill Cemetery. The family plot was on the east side of the cemetery, just across the fence from the Jackson Heights Elementary School.

The evening before the ceremony, I was making my rounds of the corrals at our old meat plant 2 miles west of town, and noticed we were missing a very large Holstein bull. As the gates were closed, I figured the bull had jumped the fence. Some bulls can jump higher than a pro basketball player. I called up some of the boys and we set out looking for him but without success. As it was getting dark, I called off the hunt until the next day. I figured somebody would spot him and call in. They did.  The bull turned up in the Jackson Heights School yard, was calmly eating grass therein, and the Principal called to ask us to remove him, at once.

Knowing the bull and the cemetery were in close proximity, I called the funeral home and discovered that grave side services for the late Senator were scheduled for 1 pm. As it was then 11 am, I assumed we would have no chance of capturing the bull of that size without a struggle, so I ordered a tow truck from a wrecking yard and then hastily got together a crew to handle the situation. I asked our sales manager, Wendell Stringfellow, to get his deer rifle and meet us in the school yard.

We all converged on the spot like clockwork…everyone was their except the bull.  He had jumped the fence and was now grazing in the cemetery. He had picked a spot about 50 feet from the hole in the ground destined to receive the remains of our famous Senator.

I instructed the tow truck driver to go around to the cemetery, while the rest of us climbed over the fence and tried to lure the bull away from the Senator’s final resting place. However, he would not budge. The clock was ticking away. Skeet Flournoy observed, “If the bull falls into the open grave, it might be a chore to get him out.” I nodded in agreement.

 I could now hear the approaching funeral procession coming out Walnut Street, and knew we did not have the luxury of waiting to see what the bull would do when a large crowd of people began encroaching on his grazing grounds. I gave the sign to Wendell. He aimed, fired and dropped the bull with a shot between the eyes. The wrecker driver wheeled around, put a cable on the bull, winched him onto the truck and then raced out the back gate as the funeral procession approached. We borrowed shovels from the gravediggers and cleaned up the site until no trace of the bull remained as the crowd surged into the area. It was just that close.

Looking back, I have a hard time, these 45 years later, of remembering what the Senator looked like, or who gave the speeches that summer afternoon. But I certainly remember that great big jumping Holstein bull who nearly upstaged our most important citizen.