by Curt Kovener

Some of my friends are just too witty for my own good. Take for example some of these gems of (ahem) wisdom they shared.
•A day without sunshine is like night.
•On the other hand, you have different fingers.
•42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
•99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
•Remember, half the people you know are below average.
•He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
•Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
•The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap.
•Support bacteria. They’re the only culture some people have.
•A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
•Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
•If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
•How many of you believe in psycho-kinesis? Raise my hand.
•OK then, so what’s the speed of dark?
•When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
•Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
•How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges?
•What happens if you get scared half to death, twice?
•Why do psychics have to ask you your name?
•Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, ‘What the heck happened?’
•Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
•Life isn’t like a box of chocolates, it’s more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your butt tomorrow.

by Curt Kovener

Newspapers are rather unique since when we make misteaks…er, mistakes, they remain on the printed page to be recalled and entered into evidence of our blunder for sometimes years to come.
But often in life the most fun we have is when we poke fun at ourselves.
Thanks to a a good friend(?), here are some goofs, boo-boos, and errors found in some newspaper ads.
• Illiterate? Write today for free help.
• Auto Repair Service. Free pick-up and delivery. Try us once, you’ll never go anywhere else again.
• Our experienced Mom will care for your child. Fenced yard, meals and smacks included.
• Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.
• Stock up and save. Limit: one.
• Semi-annual After-Christmas sale.
• 3-year old teacher needed for pre-school. Experience preferred.
• Mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating.
• Dinner special – Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00.
• Now is your chance to have your ears pierced and get an extra pair to take home.
• We do not tear your clothing with machinery. We do it carefully by hand.
• For sale: Three canaries of undermined sex.
• Great dames for sale.
• Have several very old dresses from grandmother in beautiful condition.
• Tired of cleaning yourself? Let me do it.
• Vacation special: have your home exterminated.
• Get rid of aunts. Zap does the job in 24 hours.
• Toaster: A gift that every member of the family appreciates. Automatically burns toast.
• For rent: 6-room hated apartment.
• Work Wanted: Man, honest. Will take anything.
• Used cars: Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first.
• Christmas tag sale. Handmade gifts for the hard to find person.
• Wanted: Hair cutter. Excellent growth potential.
• Wanted: Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink.
• Our bikinis are exciting. They are simply the tops.
• Wanted: Widower with school age children requires person assume general housekeeping duties. Must be capable of contributing to growth of family.
• And now, the Superstore—unequaled in size, unmatched in variety, unrivaled inconvenience.
• We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for just $1.

by Charley Kovener

Curt, the male human I live with, overdid himself this weekend with work. At least that’s what he is telling people. Actually, I was a witness as he engaged in too much recreation and consuming those hops flavored soda pops and homemade wine.
While he’s recuperating, I’m taking over writing the weekly column. He’s always spouting off on his views, now it’s my turn. Let me tell you about life from a dog’s perspective.
So make sure you read this to your family canine. See if they don’t agree with Charley’s Dictionary.
LEASH: A strap which attaches to your collar, enabling you to lead your person where you want him/her to go.
DOG BED: any soft, clean surface, such as the white bedspread in the guest room or the newly upholstered couch in the living room.
DROOL: Is what you do when your persons have food and you don’t. To do this properly you must sit as close as you can and look sad and let the drool fall to the floor, or better yet, on their laps.
SNIFF: A social custom to use when you greet other dogs. Place your nose as close as you can to the other dog’s rear end and inhale deeply, repeat several times, or until your person makes you stop.
GARBAGE CAN: A container which your neighbors put out once a week to test your ingenuity. You must stand on your hind legs and try to push the lid off with your nose. If you do it right you are rewarded with margarine wrappers to shred, beef bones to consume and moldy crusts of bread.
BICYCLES: Two-wheeled exercise machines, invented for dogs to control body fat. To get maximum aerobic benefit, you must hide behind a bush and dash out, bark loudly and run alongside for a few yards; the person then swerves and falls into the bushes, and you prance away.
DEAFNESS: This is a malady which affects dogs when their person want them in and they want to stay out. Symptoms include staring blankly at the person, then running in the opposite direction, or lying down.
THUNDER: This is a signal that the world is coming to an end. Humans remain amazingly calm during thunderstorms, so it is necessary to warn them of the danger by trembling uncontrollably, panting, rolling your eyes wildly, and following at their heels.
WASTEBASKET: This is a dog toy filled with paper, envelopes, and old candy wrapper. When you get bored, turn over the basket and strew the papers all over the house until your person comes home
SOFAS: Are to dogs like napkins are to people. After eating it is polite to run up and down the front of the sofa and wipe your whiskers clean.
BATH: This is a process by which the humans drench the floor, walls and themselves. You can help by shaking vigorously and frequently.
LEAN: Every good dogs’s response to the command “sit !”, especially if your person is dressed for an evening out. Incredibly effective before black-tie events.
BUMP: The best way to get your human’s attention when they are drinking a fresh cup of coffee or tea.
GOOSE BUMP: A maneuver to use as a last resort when the Regular Bump doesn’t get the attention you require…especially effective when combined with The Sniff. See above.
LOVE: Is a feeling of intense affection, given freely and without restriction. The best way you can show your love is to wag your tail. If you’re lucky, a human will love you in return.

by Curt Kovener

Two matters cropped up last week on the same day to put my knickers in a knot.
Back when I was in the 4th grade I recall a lesson on the importance of phone manners and communication. Granted that lesson was almost 50 years ago but the lessons were important. And they are obviously not being taught now, maybe because we text, tweet, twitter, e-mail but rarely talk.
It is frustrating to listen to a voicemail message where a name and phone number are mumbled and muffled. I can usually make out either a first or last name but many times the phone number gets recorded like someone speaking from the bottom of a well with a sock in their mouth and trying to mimic an auctioneer chanting bids.
There was one instance when a person called on two different occasions and mumbled the last four digits of their phone number. I have no way of knowing who to call. On the third try, she was obviously pretty miffed that I was failing to get back in touch and she spoke in an exasperated but very clear tone. I immediately returned her call and explained the reason for the delay. And she denied mumbling.
Later that evening, as I purchased some adult beverages to console myself for not listening clearly, I was asked for my I.D. Now back in May when the alcohol retailers began practicing for the new law, I thought it was kind of cute to be carded. Now it is just a pain.
For the record, anyone purchasing any alcohol must show a photo I.D. proving their age. Apparently this got passed in with a large all inclusive bill that nearly everyone wanted to vote for parts of so there was little knowledge or debate. And I learned it was the alcohol retailers themselves that pushed for this bill.
So now a gray haired wrinkled adult has to show a clerk (who is usually young enough to be their son or daughter) that they are old enough to buy alcohol.
“If I don’t ask, I’ll lose my job,” a clerk told me as she looked at my driver’s license.
“That’s fine,” said I, putting away my license after showing her my I.D.. “Now, how old am I?”
“I don’t know but you look old enough” was her reply.
And she couldn’t tell that without viewing my driver’s license?
I suspicion that I am not the only post-50 person who is getting cranky with the delay and intrusion and suspect that the next legislature will hear enough grief over geezer I.D. to get something with more common sense written into the law.
At least my mother hopes so.

by Curt Kovener

Now that summer has officially arrived—as indicated by the calendar not the early June 90° temperatures—family reunions will traditionally gather, eat, chat, eat, kids will play, eat, remember patriarchs and matriarchs who have departed and maybe laugh and cry, and eat.
For three weekends in a row it looks like I get to have family reunion overload.
This past Sunday we gathered for my mother’s side of the family. Around 90 of the clan gathered under a tent to enjoy some of the best food around. (You are free to think your family reunions food is best, but I know better.)
There was laughter and quizzical looks as family members without name tags were tried to be identified. Some were youngsters who had grown up suddenly some were “Shirt Tail Cousins” as a good friend of mine calls them. There were recollections and remembrances of our times of our youth spent with grandparents. We talked about some of the mischief we got away with and the times we got caught.
The older folks sat around and talked and laughed. The young kids ran and explored the woods and the barn and laughed…pretty much what we 50-somethings did when we were pre-teens.
This weekend, my Dad’s side of the family will meet up at the wilderness retreat—assuming additional storms don’t blow or wash it all away.
And it’ll be more time to sit and laugh and remember those who used to fill the now empty places at the family reunion table. The young kids (and not so young kids) will explore the wooded trails and take Gator rides around the property. And eat.
And the following weekend, I have been invited to a branch of my mother’s clan of which I was not aware. But I guess I impressed them enough to be asked to attend their reunion on July 11. But I think what really got me an invitation was our mutual interest in making homemade wine.
So as I wrap up the wilderness retreat reunion I will bottle some of last year’s apple and blackberry wines to take for all to sample.
Seeing familiar faces, meeting new ones and learning of how our families’ lives over the years have intermingled…sometimes unknowingly…makes for some heart binding times.

by Curt Kovener

I attended a birthday party last Friday evening and I believe I was about the youngest in attendance. In fact, even though I am just a couple of years shy of being three score years old, I think I brought the average age at this event down to around 78.
The very special occasion was the 90th birthday of Edna Pennington of Scottsburg.
I first met Edna through her son, Don, when we began playing music together several years ago. Don plays all things stringed: guitar, upright bass, mandolin and he was joined by our mutual friend John Sheckler who plays dulcimer.
As an aside, I soon learned that all three of us had worked for newspapers “way back when”. I was just the only one who didn’t graduate on to other things.
During the original three man get-to-know-one-another jam session, Edna wanders from the house into the barn to see what all of the racket was about.
Listening for a bit, she slid onto the piano bench and began plinking out honky tonk piano accompaniment. I smiled as this gray-haired grandmother could give Jerry Lee Lewis a run for his money.
Now Edna is no stay-at-home Mom. She can be found regularly at Scott Memorial Hospital as one of the pink lady volunteers.
On Friday I was told to arrive around 7 p.m. at the Pennington’s party barn and when I did found the parking areas full and music already flowing. It seems old folks like to party as well. Either that of because of their advanced years they want to get some more good times in just in case their name gets called for roll call by the Almighty.
It was a delightful evening of food and music with most of it (the food and the music) being supplied by Country Neighbors significantly older than I. But the party ended pretty abruptly as all of those early starters decided they needed to be home before dark.
Through all the food, through all the music, Edna showed no sign of being 90 years old as she joked and joshed and played that piano with aplomb.
Last year at her 89th birthday she said it was a rehearsal for her 90th. Now we are all looking forward to she what she will do for her century celebration.
I am glad I got to celebrate with such a gracious, fun loving lady.

by Curt Kovener

Small towns are where everyone knows your business whether you want them to or not. And there are other telltale signs that you are from a small town…
•You can name everyone you graduated with.
•You get a whiff of manure and think of home.
•You said the ‘f’ word and your parents knew within the hour.
•You schedule parties around the schedule of different police officers, since you know which ones will bust you and which ones won’t.
•Almost everyone in your school also has a cousin in your school.
•It was cool to date someone from the neighboring town.
•You have ever gone for a walk in the cemetery, on a date.
•Whenever you decided to walk to school for exercise, twenty cars pulled over and offered you a lift.
•You could set your bookbag out in the hall at lunchtime and it would still be there when you came out of the cafeteria.
•There were three generations of your family in the same bleacher row at every home game.
•You know all the old veterans carrying the flags in the festival parade.
•For that matter, you know everybody in the festival parade.
•Your only newspaper was a weekly.
•The mini-mall you now shop at has more stores than your entire home town.
•Loitering isn’t a bad thing, it’s the only thing.
•The Shell station and Subway are the only franchised businesses in town.
•You refer to THE stop light.
•You don’t give directions by street names or house numbers, but by references (“Turn right by library, go past the VFW, and it’s the fourth house on the left past the stop sign.)
•You call lunch-dinner; and dinner-supper.

by Curt Kovener

Summer school session has begun and one of the focuses in the public school is language arts.
English is a peculiarly difficult and illogical language…even for someone who gleaned enough to make his living with word from Crothersville High School English teacher Corean Lewis.
Pay attention to the rhythm and rhyme and the truths of the English language gleaned from an unknown author.
- – - – -
We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes; but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice; yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.
Let’s face it, English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.
We take English for granted.
But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea, nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends, but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes, I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?
Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down; in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
- – - – -
Truthful, accurate and unexplainable.

by Curt Kovener

Just when I thought I had exhausted all of the puns and wise acre word smith remarks, more came running in to the office. Perhaps you won’t mind indulging me with these witticisms.
•Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.
•A man’s home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
•Dijon vu – the same mustard as before.
•Practice safe eating – always use condiments.
•Shotgun wedding – A case of wife or death.
•A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.
•A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
•Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.
•Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
•Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
•When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.
•A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two tired.
•What’s the definition of a will? (It’s a dead give away.)
•She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.
•A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
•If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed
•With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
•The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
•You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
•Every calendar’s days are numbered.
•A lot of money is tainted – Taint yours and taint mine.
•A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
•He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
•Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.
•Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
•Acupuncture is a jab well done.

by Curt Kovener

The 114th senior class at Crothersville High School will be graduating this Sunday and they are to be congratulated for completing the educational milestone.
But they also need be aware that high school graduation means the easiest time of their life is just about to draw to a close. Now I certainly didn’t feel that way four decades ago before graduation day, I thought high school and particularly two or three teachers intentionally made it particularly difficult for me. But high school it turns out, was the easiest ride of my life.
However, with the benefit of some living I find the advice proffered then by those who I thought were over the hill and out of touch still rings true.
The Statler Brothers are right: “Things get complicated when you get past eighteen.”
But even though, throughout the coming complicated times, always remember the Golden Rule: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” Admittedly, that very simple Scriptural based philosophy is difficult when the alligators seem to be snapping all around you, but in the longer scheme of things, you, your family and your community will be better for it.
While we live in a world of instant gratification and immediate convenience, always remember that the things of true value and quality take time. Diamonds are merely chunks of coal put under pressure for a long time. Whether it be your job, your community, your church, stay with it for the long haul.
And remember through those tough times metal gets stronger when it is tempered by fire. The same is true of the human spirit. While the difficult times are never pleasant, seeing them through helps develop character.
When things seem to be at their blackest, remember “Tough times never last, tough people do.”
Grampa used to tell me the story of a farmer who took his potato crop to market. Rather than drive his horse & wagon over the well used, smooth path, this farmer went over the roughest roads on the way into town. “In rough times the big potatoes rise to the top,” he would say. And it is true in more than just the physical farming sense.
But do not become so tough that your heart is callused to the needs and concerns of others. There will always be folks less fortunate than you. Do not turn your head and your heart to them. Consider for a bit what it might be like to walk in their shoes and remember the Golden Rule.
We were put here for a reason and that reason is not to be a bunch of takers and collect as much of life’s “stuff” that we can. Giving of our time and ourselves is much more important. Remember to do what you can to make your family and your community better than how you found it.
“Live simply so others can simply live,” is a good philosophy to govern your life.
Stand up for that which you believe is right. Speak out against injustice. Do not accept at face value that “we do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.” See if you can find a better way.
Keep up with new, emerging technology but do not allow it to force you to sacrifice the simple joys of walks in the woods with nature. Those times are therapeutic breaths of fresh air for the soul to better prepare you to deal with the continually hectic, continually advancing workplace technologies.
I remember a story told by one of the speakers at one of the graduations I have attended over the years. It seems a recent college graduate runs to the top of the campus hill, thrusts his arts diploma toward the sky and shouts proudly, “Look world, I earned my AB degree.” To which the world replies, “Then pay attention, son, and I’ll teach you the rest of the alphabet.”
So seniors, this column may not mean much to you today. But place it in your scrap book or high school annual for future reference. It may gain some wisdom over the next decade or two.
And remember the Golden Rule.