Month: August 2011
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sepia
My great-grandmother Josephine, whom we called Feenie, is almost unknown to me except as the sweet silver-haired woman who welcomed us into her house with a great big smile whenever we stopped by on our frequent trips to Algoma to see my grandma Lil and grandpa Leo, who were on my father’s side of the… Read.
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so long
I may have just driven to Waupaca County for the last time. Mom sold the ancestral manse and bought a condo in Arkansas where she hopes to live the rest of her days all cozy and snug and never again hear the words “snow-covered and slippery” used to describe roads during the winter. While she… Read.
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big
I went to Menard’s this afternoon looking for a decorative shelf and found that the store was in the advanced throes of a major remodeling. They’d knocked a huge hole in the front of the store and extended it at least fifty feet into the parking lot. This, after they pushed the south end of… Read.
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shredded
Listening to Car Talk on the radio this morning, we heard the story of a guy who stuffed an athletic sock down the intake manifold of his car to avoid dropping anything down there while he was working on it and then, of course, he forgot the sock was in there and put the engine… Read.
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results
“Now that you’ve been working for the state for almost a year,” one of my coworkers asked me, “which bureaucracy do you think is more mixed-up, the military or the state?” “The state, no question,” I said, without having to think about it at all. When he laughed and asked me why, I explained, “The… Read.
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dumbshit
I wash all my work clothes in the evening, but leave them until morning to throw them in the drier. That’s the guy way to get out of ironing. The trouble with this method is that I have to remember to throw them in the drier first thing in the morning, a time of the… Read.
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butch
One more goofy old-time photo, and then I’ll let it go for a while. I have no idea who these guys are, they could be Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for all I know. Now that I’ve said that, I kind of hope they are. I’m pretty sure they’re not, though. They’re just two… Read.
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swingin’
I got this snapshot from one of the Great Big Photo Albums of People Related to Me but, unlike most of the other photo albums, this one was chock full of familiar faces. In this photo, weighing all of 98 pounds and swinging a solid-steel iron like nobody’s business, Cleo Mary Melchoir, who had this… Read.
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molten
I walked over to the co-op last week while a paving crew was laying new blacktop on the parking lot. Had to walk all the way around to the other side of the lot to get into the store. The whole front of the lot was fenced off with bright orange plastic webbing strung between… Read.
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great
Beer: I drank lots of it at The Great Taste of the Midwest yesterday, but – and this is key – not as much of it as I have in the past. And especially not as much as last year, thank goodness. I was hoping to remain upright and not spill as much beer this… Read.
This Is Drivel 