“Christmas comes but once a year”…but it comes more quickly as we get older. A child waits to open presents under the tree for what must seem to them an eternity. Yet for grownups, seasons become shorter and shorter. Oh, I suppose that a cold wet winder may seem to hang around for too long…especially if you are plagued with arthritis and rheumatism.

            However, it has been my experience that once you reach middle age, the weeks and months flash by as though seen from the windows of a speeding train. It’s unfortunate that we can’t find a way to slow things down…to be able to lead that contemplative life that the philosophers write about. We should be able to stretch out the happy times such as when everyone is home for the holidays, clustered about the fire, opening presents and holding them up for all to admire.

            Perhaps we can utilize the special gift that we humans have alone…the gift of remembrance…the thing that sets us apart from our 4 legged friends. This is a good time of year to exercise that gift.

            If this Christmas time finds you alone, then remember the way your own home felt years ago with the smell of roasting turkey from the kitchen and the children underfoot…and the laughter…always the laughter.

            If this season finds an empty chair around the table, remember well the light that the absent one cast into your life. Easier said than done, you say? Agreed. But if you think it can be done, then it will be done, on earth…and elsewhere.

            This is a good time of year when fond memories can make it better…and a little happier. Raise a cup of good cheer to those here and now… and to those who once who sat before us.

Robert Minch

“Christmas comes but once a year”…but it comes more quickly as we get older. A child waits to open presents under the tree for what must seem to them an eternity. Yet for grownups, seasons become shorter and shorter. Oh, I suppose that a cold wet winder may seem to hang around for too long…especially if you are plagued with arthritis and rheumatism.

However, it has been my experience that once you reach middle age, the weeks and months flash by as though seen from the windows of a speeding train. It’s unfortunate that we can’t find a way to slow things down…to be able to lead that contemplative life that the philosophers write about. We should be able to stretch out the happy times such as when everyone is home for the holidays, clustered about the fire, opening presents and holding them up for all to admire.

Perhaps we can utilize the special gift that we humans have alone…the gift of remembrance…the thing that sets us apart from our 4 legged friends. This is a good time of year to exercise that gift.

If this Christmas time finds you alone, then remember the way your own home felt years ago with the smell of roasting turkey from the kitchen and the children underfoot…and the laughter…always the laughter.

If this season finds an empty chair around the table, remember well the light that the absent one cast into your life. Easier said than done, you say? Agreed. But if you think it can be done, then it will be done, on earth…and elsewhere.

This is a good time of year when fond memories can make it better…and a little happier. Raise a cup of good cheer to those here and now… and to those who once who sat before us.

Robert Minch

I hope you will be reading this on Xmas day, but you may be otherwise occupied. After all, It is the holiday of holidays in this country… a time in which we give and receive and spend money we should otherwise be saving in this brutal economy. In lieu of money, you might give, at this season, some of your time to those who are not able to reciprocate.  I’m thinking of those who were once active and vibrant but now confined to four walls and a wheelchair. In this instance, your donation of self will far outweigh any charitable donation of money…and all of it, not just half, will go directly to the person in need.

I write this prior to Xmas day of course, and am reveling in the lap of luxury. I’m sitting by the fire and looking through the large picture windows in the living room to a grey and wet day in the south pasture. The horses and burros are already in their stalls patiently waiting their dinner. Little Bert is at my feet on a fleece cushion…and Murray Clyde is asleep on the ottoman in front of the fireplace. The room is lit only by the Christmas tree, and I have to squint to see the cursor on the laptop. The missus is wrapping presents far from inquisitive eyes.

Is this as good as it gets? Yes, verily. However, we have had many such holidays over our umpteen years. Our hearing is impaired but we can still hear Sinatra, Torme and Ella. Our sight could be sharper but we easily discern our children, great and grand alike. So, as I frequently proclaim, life is good… and we see no reason to change a bit of it.

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In case you are getting overly emotional and sentimental this time of year, you need to know that there are many ways to celebrate the holidays and spread good cheer. The police log in the DN, on the 18^th, reported that “a woman lifting her shirt Wednesday morning at the Laundromat eventually led to an argument”. That is the extent of the brief report. We, the readers, are apparently left to fill in the rest of the story. My first thought was, I thought Monday was wash day. Then I wondered what the woman had under her shirt. A T shirt reading “I Voted Obama”, a red bra, a tattoo advocating the use of medical marijuana? I guess we will never know unless someone, present during the incident, contacts the DN editor and fill us in. I hear newspapers pay big bucks for eyewitness information. Somebody owes it to the public to make a clean breast of this matter…and what better place to do it than in a Laundromat?

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Speaking of Christmas trees, ours is adorned with large, egg shaped baubles mother made years ago. She would buy these unadorned ornaments, and then add beads and

such to make them sparkle.  In the past, the missus would keep a watchful eye on our 4 children when they first learned to walk, knowing their penchant for mischief. But now as they are grown, and no longer grab the ornaments, we have a new problem. Murray Clyde is fascinated with anything new, and so headed directly for the tree once he was let into the house the other evening. As he homed in on the tree, the missus told him to leave the ornaments alone.  He obeyed, only to approach the tree once again while she was in the kitchen. As he carefully disengaged one attractive bauble and headed toward his spot on the ottoman, she took it away from him and scolded the “bad dog” over and over again. As he is a sensitive big boy, he looked fully chastised and climbed onto the ottoman for a snooze. This lasted an hour or so until he tried the theft again. However this time, having a good memory of his earlier rebuke, he took off the ornament…and deposited it on Little Bert’s fleece bed while Bert was asleep. When the missus discovered the theft and Murray Clyde’s attempt to blame it on Bert, she could only laugh.

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Last week’s quiz was once again answered, in depth, by L. Brown. He knew that the Hawaiian Islands were once known as the Sandwich Islands, Orphan Annie’s dog Sandy said only “Arf”…and Santiago was the name of the old fisherman in Hemingway’s “Old Man and The Sea”. However, L. Brown’s reign will surely come to an end with this for next week’s quiz: What noise does a Japanese camera make? What is so rare as a day in June? What was the final score in the Strontium-Carbon game? What do you use to beat up a stork?

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We mentioned hand gestures some time back. Pipe Major of a pipe band (bagpipers), K. Youldon, from far off England, informs me they play in various time signatures, and it his duty to gesture to the band with the proper number of fingers raised. He also states that, in his country, 2 fingers raised with palm away is the victory sign…but when the palm is inward, it conveys the same message as the  middle finger signal in the U.S.

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On the first day of school, the kindergarten teacher said, “If anyone has to go to the bathroom, hold up two fingers.”

A little voice from the back of the room asked, “How will that help?”

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“Our Town” is a well known play by Thornton Wilder. It is staged often without props, yet has the ability to take audiences back in time to convey life in a small town.

Red Bluff is an ideal setting for such a play. It was small in my day, and is still small today. Everything is..uh… handy. If one is a downtown merchant, one can step out of their office, and within minutes, do banking, pick up mail at the post office and gas up your car…things that would take big city dwellers hours to accomplish. But the small town is also intimate in detail. Kids ride bikes, Tomasina, with her entourage of 3 leashed dogs, roams the sidewalks in search of aluminum cans to supplement her meager income, the elderly and handicap now move about on motorized wheelchairs and the town continues to come to life on a regular basis despite a desperate economy.

We have a plethora of churches and a diminishing supply of bars, which suggests that in a small town, people prefer to pray away rather than drink away their problems. In either case it is wishful thinking. It is said that the Lord helps those who help themselves. If it were not so I would have told you.

In addition to working in a small town, people live in them as well. They once lived just a few blocks from the center of town. Stately Victorians on the north and south side of Walnut were interspersed with churches of conventional denominations. Wouldn’t it be handy to walk to work, walk to church, to a restaurant or the theatre? You could walk to the doctor, but you didn’t have to because they made house calls. It was a simpler time… with time not necessarily of the essence.

You got your news via the local paper and on the radio. And the news that could not be printed, the gossip, you got from your neighbor. It could be as hot and stimulating as anything you might see on television today…and better because it was real. It might not seem to be an enticing life to the young of today, but it was to those with recall and a little imagination. Gossip of illicit affairs was, in the vernacular of the time, the “cat’s pajama’s!”

Yessiree, Bob.  Small towns. Nothing like ‘em.

Poetry from MAD magazine of all places!

If Poe’s “The Raven” were written by Joyce Kilmer:

“I think that I shall never hear a raven who is more sincere

Than that one tapping at my door who’s ever saying, ‘Nevermore’.

A raven who repeats his words until I think I’m for the birds;

A raven who, I must assume, will dirty up my living room;

A raven fond of bugs and worms with whom I’m on the best of terms.

Let other poets praise a tree…A raven’s good enough for me!”

And, if Kilmer’s “Trees” were written by John Masefield:

“I must go up in a tree again and sit where the bullfinch warbles;

Where the squirrel runs up and down a limb and the owl has lost his marbles;

And the squawks and hoots and chirps and squeaks that all the birds are making

Fill the air around so I can’t hear the branch beneath me breaking!

I must go up in a tree again, from where people look like ants,

And all I ask is a branch that’s smooth so I won’t rip my pants;

And a dozen bugs running up my leg, and the sap so sticky,

And the cooing doves and screaming crows making messes icky.”

In the book “Connected”, by Christakis and Fowler, the authors suggest we actually choose our friends through proximity and shared activity. I guess that is true when it comes to friends, per se. You meet someone, you approve of their appearance…tattoos, pierced body parts or absence of same, they flatter you to some extent…they watch or participate in your sports, they live in your area so no bus or plane trips are required…ergo they become  your drop-in-any-time friends.

Close friends are something else. Your relationship becomes more intense. You don’t have to buy their friendship…although T. Wood might negotiate otherwise. Your close friends are privy to your innermost and sometimes unflattering thoughts and experiences.

`           I note some writers describe their spouses as “their best friend”. How nice. I prefer “intimate and loyal companion, come what may”.  And that “Till’ death do us part” bit, is a rather archaic and restrictive clause. Once your spouse has gone to his/her reward, all bets and vows are off the table? I don’t think so.

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If you are in the vicinity of Main and Walnut, take a gander at our 760 Main window. It contains a Red Bluff Daily News full page ad for 23 December, 1925. It is headlined “RED BLUFF KNOWS HOW! The article mentions “…an appropriate program will be conducted under the boughs of a gigantic pine, placed in the center of Main Street etc.” …and then lists ads of leading merchants, now long gone: Cone & Kimball, Hotel Tremont, Kilpatric’s  Groceries, City Bakery, Westside Cash Grocery (soon to be B.F. Minch and Son), Guy Davis Ford dealer, Norvell & Hunter men’s wear, J.C. Penney, W.S.Fickert & Son, Tehama County title Co. and Cone Ice & Cold Storage.

Altogether now: “Those were the days!”

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Speaking of the old days, the Tremont Hotel Coffee Shop was the place where, in Duffy’s Tavern vernacular, “The Elite Meet to Eat”. It has now been resurrected in the same location of the original (torn down in 1965), and I am pleased to report the now named Tremont Café & Creamery is off to a fast start. The missus joined her tennis ladies therein Tuesday, and declared

her omelet worthy and delicious. It so happened we had been watching the new movie “Julie and Julia” about the venerable Julia Childs, and watched her prepare this omlets on her old TV show.

Hats off to the Tremont Café proprietors Jennifer Garner and Laurie Hill!

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Last week’s quiz was again answered correctly by L. Brown although I inadvertently served up a red herring in the quiz. I asked for the original names of famous people beginning with Nicholas Bronstein, Lev Bronstein, then Gladys Smith, Mary Ann Evans and Israel Baline.  L.B.  Identified them in order as Liberace, Leon Trotsky, Mary Pickford, George Elliot and Irving Berlin. However, I told him my source listed Doug Fairbanks as Nicholas Bronstein…but I realize now it was in error. As L. Brown confessed he just took a wild guess as Liberace, we decided to drop that part of the quiz. However, the piano player’s full name was Wladziv Valentino Liberace…and D. Fairbanks  Sr. was just D. Fairbanks Sr.

This week’s quiz: Where are the Sandwich Islands, what did Orphan Annie’s dog Sandy, say…and where  would you find an old fisherman named Santiago?

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A blond goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Xmas cards. She says to the clerk, “May I have 50 Xmas stamps?”

The clerk says, “What denomination?”

The blond says, “Oh my golly…let’s see…give me 22 Catholic, 12 Presbyterian, 10 Lutheran and 6 Baptists.”

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Or would  you prefer an more adult joke?

A minister checks into a motel and says to the clerk, “I certainly hope the pornography channel in my room is disabled.”

The clerk says, “No, it’s just regular pornography you sick bastard!”

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Mrs. Agnes Koopman wrote me that her brother, Stephen drove the wild horses through Tehama County that I mentioned in my article about happenings 50 years ago. The horses were bought for $15.00 per head and driven to their ranch in Lake County. There they were broke for riding or work and sold from $50.00 to $300.00 per head.

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H.L. Ferguson came in this week to compliment me on my column and said he had bet a neighbor $5.00 that I did not have to pay to have it printed in the Daily News. I told him I was sorry but he had lost the bet. The News would print it free, but if they did, they reserved the right to change the article or cut out what they did not like, and print it where and when they wished.

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Efforts are being made to generate sympathy for a law to outlaw capital punishment. The following that occurred in San Francisco last Friday should be a strong lesson against changing our present laws.

Joe Soconis from Florida walked into the Welfare Office in S.F. and asked for aid. The woman who was listening to his appeal explained to him that they could help him and his wife get back to Florida, but not give him relief money because he was not a resident of California. Though he had $22.00 in his wallet, he pulled out a gun and shot the woman who was interviewing him. When another woman came running to what the trouble was, he emotionlessly shot her 4 times, and then dropped the gun on the floor so no one would harm him. If we did not have capital punishment in California, this man could be imprisoned for a few years… and then with good behavior and with the prisons overcrowded, could be turned loose to do the same thing again.

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There are still many opportunities to get extremely wealthy. I have always thought the first man who accomplished either of the following would have it made: The inventor of tire chains that can be put on tires and taken off with less discomfort, and the first one who treats a ripe tomato in the summertime so it can be stored for six months and still retain its flavor and texture in the winter.

(Editor’s Note: Father did neither, but still became wealthy in the wholesale meat business.)

Dave Minch 1964

            When discussing the merits of small towns, the ratio of churches to bars often comes up.  Quick scan of phone books of different eras reveals the following listed in or about Red Bluff:

            In 1946, there were only four churches (that had phones), just three “nightclubs”…and two “beer parlors”.

            By 1957 we had 12 churches, 3 “Cocktail Lounges”, 5 “Taverns” and 2 “nightclubs”.

            Today, circa 2009, we have about 30 churches, 0 Cocktail Lounges, 0 Taverns, 0 Night Clubs and 2 Bars.

            We should note that many restaurants have liquor licenses, so the serving of beer, wine and the hard stuff still prevails but under different euphemisms. So, what are we to make of these trends?

            The churches are apparently winning the attendance battle! At one time folks could drink their cares away. Maybe they still do, but with the advent of drunk driving laws, the opportunities of convivial drinking are limited.

            As I personally do not drink nor pray, I have no firsthand knowledge of the workings of the wine and hard stuff business…nor those allegedly doing the Lord’s work. I am reminded of the diverse religions of the world in this regard, and, upon hearing of the demise of Oral Roberts…and a replay of his television ministry in which he was begging for money and suggesting that viewers could place their hands on the television set…and get immediate relief from whatever was ailing them.

            Does this report sound cynical to readers? I hope so. And yet, the numbers speak for themselves and skeptics are in the minority; if not in 1946, certainly in 2009.

There has been much talk lately about the war and honoring the dead.

Here is what grandfather B.F. Minch thought about the subject long ago:

HONOR THE BRAVE
Honor the brave who in glory have fallen,

Strew with bright flowers the tombs where they lie;

These were the heroes who bled for their country,

To save it they feared not to battle and die.

Leaving their homes at the call of the nation,

Marching for many a mile on the way,

Sleeping at night on the earth cold and frozen,

To wake in the morning and rush to the fray.

Honor the brave who in glory have fallen—

Some on the hillside and some on the plain,

Some met their death in the dark gloomy prison,

Some in the hospital burdened with pain;

For not alone in the fierce hail of battle,

‘Mid the smoke of destruction aimed deadly and sure,

With drums loudly beating and flags proudly streaming,

Perished these comrades whose labors endure.

Honor the brave who in glory have fallen—

What though their ashes may lie far away,

N e’er be it said that the deeds of the fathers

Are forgotten by the sons on Memorial Day.

O‘er them unfurl the old banner they carried,

O’er them sing the dear hymns that they loved;

Theirs was the danger and toil of the contest,

Ours is the Union they sealed with their blood.

Honor the brave who among us are living,

Smaller each year are the numbers they bring;

Fewer the hands left to scatter the garlands,

Fewer the tongues that so trembling sing;

Soon will their ears all be deaf to our praises

Soon will they pass where all conflict is o’er

From the muster of earth to the roll call in Heaven

Where beautiful Peace sits enthroned evermore.

Benjamin Franklin Minch 1869-1936

Sources say parents believe that talking to their babies allows them to learn to speak more quickly, but psychologists from the University of Chicago have found, at 14 months of age, babies may have a wide range of gestures that serve as stand-ins for language… gestures they may well pick up from their parents. At 4.5 years, the babies with the best gestural vocabulary had the best spoken one as well.

This is no sudden revelation to me, and gestures work well at all ages. Little Bert, our elderly Pomeranian, is quite deaf but has learned to respond to gestures.  Once I have moved into his line of vision to get his attention, he knows my sweeping arm gestures mean it is time to follow me…and he will follow me anywhere. The missus understands this gesture when directed to her, but tends to question my motive before following. For example, if she is out of voice range, and I make the windmill gesture with one arm while rubbing my stomach with the other, it means it is time to eat. If she is on the phone and, in my estimation, talking to one of the kids too long, I will make a cutting motion across my throat asking her to conclude her discussion. True, she does not respond in the affirmative as often as Little Bert, but that is more of a matter of the marital independence of the former, as opposed to the obedience of the latter. But, all in all, gestures are worth the effort. Sometimes only a single finger conveys the message.

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Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, later the United Farm Workers Union, was the darling of San Francisco liberals, but anathema to grocers and producers alike, and his boycotts of table grapes threatened the market to its core. It is refreshing then, years later, to learn he was a bit of a despot, and  soon  after assuming power, began purging dissidents such as Filipino Philip Vera Cruz, a co-founder of the union. Chavez bragged that he had “absolute power…the whole cake was mine.”, and much to the dismay of his followers, he became impervious to challenge. A 2006 investigative series in the Los Angeles Times by Miriam Pawel revealed that the UFW had become a big money Chavez family enterprise at the expense of organizing union work.

Streets and schools have been named in his honor, and 8 states, including California, have proclaimed the date of his birth, 31 March, as a holiday.  Self serving politicians have been lobbying ever since for a national holiday.   Let us hope that does not come to pass. The fellow, like so many charismatic leaders, apparently had feet of clay.

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Son Brandon has a big gelding named Cactus. I see him as a strawberry roan, but his papers describe him sorrel. At any rate, he is one smart horse. As previously described, we have a new 9 stall barn. Each stall has a paddock secured by a metal pipe gate. To secure the horse in the paddock for the night, you slide a pipe within a pipe into a hole in a metal post. As you slide the pipe bolt forward, a spring activated pin drops down to keep the bolt from sliding back out of the hole in the post. This pin has a knob on it for ease of manipulation. Unfortunately, it has proved no challenge to Cactus, who has been able to grasp it with his teeth and slide the pipe bolt, thus freeing himself from the paddock, and allowing him to forage in the pasture at night. If that was the extent of his little adventure, we could live with it. However, he has now taken to opening up the paddock gates of his buddies, and maneuvering them to roam the pasture with him.

Cactus was purchased at the Red Bluff Gelding Sale several years ago, and I am thinking we might exhibit him, for a fee of course, in a mock stall/paddock, and let him demonstrate his unique talent. We would bill him as, “CACTUS. THE HOUDINI OF HORSES!”

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Last week’s quiz was answered promptly and without fanfare by L. Brown. He reported that Jack Ruby, slayer of the Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, was the owner of two night clubs in Dallas, Texas: The Vegas and the Carousel Clubs.

Some folks have had success changing their names. Please identify Nicholas Bronstein, Lev Bronstein, Gladys Smith, Mary Ann Evans and Israel Baline.

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Isaac  Goldblum was sitting at the bar looking glum. A customer on the next stool asked him why he looked so depressed. Isaac replied, “You may well ask. In June my mother died and left me $10,000.” The customer offered his condolence.

Isaac continued, “Then 2 months ago my father died and left me $50,000.”

“That’s terrible,” says the customer. “Losing both your mother and father so soon.”

“I know…and then, if you can believe it, my grandmother dies leaving me $5,000.”

The customer shook his head in pity. “How terrible! Three close family members lost in 3 months!”

“And then this month,” said Isaac. “Nothing.”

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