Tuesday, April 22, will mark the 38th anniversary of Earth Day. According to Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia.en), in September of 1969, Gaylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin, announced that a nationwide grassroots demonstration by citizens concerned about the environment would take place the following spring. Nelson said he was behind the demonstration because he wanted concerns about the environment to be on the national agenda. On April 22, 1970, Nelson got his wish, as concern about the environment drew enough attention to begin a national movement to improve our environment and brought calls to eliminate many sources of pollution.

The scrawled sign on the rusted metal building read “Cycle Shack.” My 10-year-old son and I were trying to find used parts for a worn-out motorcycle. By the looks of the building, we were at the right place. I tried to knock, but the moment I touched the door it fell open and I stumbled in, trying to catch it. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the light, I knew I had interrupted something. Forty people that stood in the center of the room turned and stared at us. They were obviously part of a gang, a rough-looking lot. Everywhere I looked, there was leather, body piercings, tattoos and just mean expressions; and those were just the women. I knew we were in trouble, but before I could back out of the room, someone said, “What do you want?”

It’s funny how events can change your outlook of a day. Just about a month ago, on a dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon, I received a phone call. When I answered it was my old buddy, Eddie-Buck. We’d been playing phone-tag for almost two weeks and he had finally managed to catch me.

I am about to take the hint. As of today, three people have sent me the story of Conan. No, I do not mean Conan the conqueror, portrayed in films by the governor of California. I mean Conan the Chihuahua (no relation).

Lately, there has been a commercial frequently running on television. It pictures a fellow doing the old spinning dishes on long, thin wands balancing act. Unlike most acts, the fellow doing this one just isn’t very good. He has all sorts of trouble doing his act. If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t been watching TV lately.

“How many?”
If I heard that once Sunday night, I heard it 278 times.
We were coming home from Granny’s and Papaw’s, just the two of us, my eldest and I. It took me a few times, 50 or so, to catch on that he was pretending to lick the cars headed West Virginia way on Interstate 77.

Many a kid dreams of hitting it big in show business. It’s almost always a long shot.
However, four girls will get the chance to taste the acting life in the Barter Theatre’s production of “Beauty and the Beast.”

My husband declared that he screamed like an adolescent girl, and being a middle-school teacher he knows something about their vocal range, so I believed him. He’d encountered a snake, not outside mind you, but on the second floor of our home. The long reptile was stretched out across the old plank floor warming itself. Apparently, the snake was equally frightened and disappeared into the cluttered recesses of our attic. 

My eldest son required that I deliver the present, a mostly rotted orange that had somehow escaped the Christmas box and had been ravaged by the frozen and unfrozen days between then and now, last night. In fact, the orange would now be more aptly named a dishwater gray, except that no one would ever want to quarter and savor a dishwater gray. 

I normally try to avoid writing columns on the same subject too closely together, unless the subject is an unfolding story that bears further discussion. Just three or so weeks ago, I wrote about the signs of spring, that being my favorite of our fair nation’s pastimes, baseball. However, something just happened that has me upset (in fact, irate or furious would be a more accurate description), and I have been grouchy and irritable ever since. (No comments from my wife, family or friends to the effect that I have been that way since birth will be tolerated.) And it involves my beloved national pastime, baseball, Opening Day of the 2008 baseball season to be precise.