Different Slants

by Robert M. Katzman ©️ June 27, 2019

Matt Jerke, the technical assistant on the 2nd floor of the Racine Public Library, has been incredibly helpful in trying to bring me into the 21st Century. I am a work in progress. Very slow progress. Thank you, Matt

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Some beautiful sunlit morning
While I wait for Cinderella to arrive
My grand-daughter might say to me:
“Grampa, what did you learn in your life?”
And I look through the colors of the glass
Fade backwards thru time
Drifting  
Wondering how to answer someone so young
And pointing to the pretty window
I’d say to her,
“Well sometimes things were wonderful…

May 14, 2019

I planted 4 trees today. 

I drove far away to a lovely rural nursery and the prices were tiny compared to near me.

Amber, Lisa and Kaitlan helped me with the transaction and with loading my old van.

The van needed to be jump-started because I haven’t used it all winter.

My driving forever cured the van’s sad battery.

My old body is inconceivably tired.

So tired I can’t tell how tired I am.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how tired am I?

42

(A Doggy Christmas Story)

Readers, believe what you want to believe.                                                           But this happened on Sunday December 16, 2018, in Chicago, at about noon.

Max is not an attractive dog.

A year and a half after the death of my wife Joyce, and the three old dogs who progressively had to leave our home as her cancer spread, I decided that it was long enough for me to live in a silent house in Wisconsin. A dog out there might agree with me, but which dog?

After visiting many shelters in Kenosha and beyond, and not connecting with any dog I saw, I went searching further afield in the Lonely Dog Metropolis of The Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society, at 510 South LaSalle Street.

Years ago, after being fired from a horrible job by a beastial boss who screamed obscenities into a phone when leaving messages for his quivering employees into their voicemail, and he soon discovering I was no good at all at quivering, I decided I may not be able to change my own luck, but perhaps I could change the fate of a soulful dog waiting for me there at the CACS, a couple of blocks away. 

I hunted around for a while in my silent misery; saw a smallish black dog with a white chest about Beagle size, but a mutt. 

On Not Finding a Girl in the Wilds of Wisconsin

By Robert m. Katzman © July 2018

I wrote this on Facebook months ago and forgot about it. All 600 words of it.

Seems funnier now than when I first wrote it.  Even tho’ nothing’s changed, you might read it and smile:

So here’s my ironic and quixotic quest to find a new love using the internet since the death of my wife in May 2017.

I tried Plenty of Fish for anyone of any background, and JDate and SuperTova for Jewish girls only. I wrote very nice, friendly, romantic and honest descriptions of myself and put up current photographs.

I received a number of responses and met with two women. One was from a prosperous North Shore town and one was from Germany.

(Read on …)

by Robert M. Katzman © July 22, 2018

So in my ongoing War with the Squirrels up here in the hinterland, or North Woods–or, oh…I don’t know where the hell I am anymore–I decided to take decisive action against the birdseed stealing bastards with grey furry tails.  Problem is, they’re organized.

They have this practiced pose where they sit on their haunches and hold their little grasping clawed paws together, so people will assume they’re eating something they’ve stolen. But really, they have advanced communicative implants in their paws so all squirrels know where either food or danger is at all times. The Twitchy Nose Mafia, everywhere and hidden at the same time.

This is hard for a bird-lover (without a shotgun) to overcome. I know, we have bigger brains, but no claws so we can’t scramble up trees after them, and no wings so we can swoop down on ’em, and so on. But…

(Read on …)

When I was very young on the South Side of Chicago, my Mother, a daughter of immigrants from the Jewish Pale area of Eastern Europe where Jews were forced to live by the Czar, was addicted to this drink called a “chocolate phosphate”.

She ordered this delicacy in Jewish restaurants which was essentially ice cubes, chocolate syrup and carbonated seltzer water. The basic point, she explained to me, was to make her “greptz” or belch after a heavy meal.

Decades later when I began going to New York City in 1980 for book conventions, I naturally assumed this common Chicago beverage would be available anywhere in a city with the largest Jewish population in America. But no one heard of it, didn’t know what I was asking for and quickly conveyed the impatience and rudeness that NYC was also famous for.  (Read on …)