Different Slants

© April 10, 2014 (updated in December 2018)

I learned all you’ll read below from an old man I met in 1965, Bill, when I was 15, born in 1950 and he was 69, born in 1896.  For my grandkids, and yours, listen to his words from over 50 years ago. He lived what I wrote here, and eventually, I did too:

Hard to know all this
When you’re a kid
I was a kid
I didn’t know enough
Didn’t have much choice
Bad times are thrust upon you
Not like choosing a college

***

Bad times can toughen you
Inside and out
Turn your gut from cotton to leather
If you keep your eyes open
Mouth shut
Listen
And don’t make stupid choices

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© January 23, 2014

I fall off of ladders.  Not exactly a talent.  More like a heroin addiction.  I want to stop, but it is so hard.

The following story is completely true. Except for the parts that aren’t. You figure it out.

This is a story about one of those times, in this instance, yesterday.  The words following are evidence of my continued survival. I could say that I’d tell you about this situation step-by-step, but no one likes a smart ass punster, right?

It must be that when the Universe was formed, out of the swirling mist came a category of Lesser Gods. Gods not involved with wind, rain and fire. Not about mortality and fate, nor destiny or love.  No, these unglorified deities were, for example the God of Lost Keys, or the God of Dogs Eating Homework, or perhaps the Flat Tire God.  (Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

by Robert M. Katzman © August 3, 2013 

(Some dates and words updated, seven years later)

When Bill was born, Grover Cleveland was president of the United States.  Horses walked the streets of New York City and Chicago.  Victoria was on Britain’s throne and seven million Jews lived across Europe, my family among them.

The Spanish-American War was two years away.  World War One?  Eighteen years in the future.  About 65 million people lived in America.  Civil War veterans, tens of thousands of them, marched in military memorial parades. Penicillin was decades away and women couldn’t vote until 1920, nor Native Americans until 1924.  Great Britain was the most powerful nation on earth, or at least they thought so.

Truman was my first president, April 30, 1950.  Hitler was dead five years exactly. My horses were only in the movies.  No Interstate Highways yet, but soon, after Eisenhower was elected.  Israel was a new country, and Europe was emptied of Jews.  But all four of my grandparents were living in the USA.  My relatives who couldn’t get here in time, evaporated with the rest of them.  Great Britain?  Now, an insignificant and irrelevant island, a little larger than the State of Illinois, sitting quietly about twenty miles off the coast of France.

(Read on …)