Martha Stewart’s Cross-Dressing Twin Arthur’s Thanksgiving Holiday Hints

December 1, 1997

Martha Stewart’s Cross-Dressing Twin Arthur’s Thanksgiving Holiday Hints
By Bob Coskrey


1. Turkey Stuffed with Laxatives: eliminates need for Tums or Maalox since you won’t have time to get indigestion. Large families may need to rent a port-o-let.
2. Green and Red Dyed Turkey: white meat/dark meat squabbles are history. Red and green bones and gristle leftovers will make wonderful Christmas tree ornaments.
3. Giblet-filled turkey piñata will add to the festive atmosphere.
4. Country Thanksgiving: Decorative and functional corn cob display in the bathroom.
5. A Frank Gifford Thanksgiving (A “Franksgiving”): An oversized turkey cooked in a special bra-shaped bag, which when opened, reveals two “beautiful breats.”
6. Dysfunctional Family Turkey: Boneless turkey meat molded into the shape of a turkey, can be eaten with hands, eliminating the possibility of family members using utensils or bones against one another at the annual Thanksgiving free-for-all.
7. Politically Correct First Thanksgiving Day Reenactment (“Laughing Last’s Revenge”): Participants dressed as pilgrims display symbolic forks tied to their tongues, while fictional Native Americans, Chief Laughing Last and his hot-headed brother Kicking White butt, sniggeringly sign treaties with disappearing ink, make double-entendre “beaver pelt” jokes, not fathomed by the pilgrims, and accept cheap trinkets from their dinner guests, while muttering eye-rolling “yeah, rights” at each other.
8. Turkey with Cross-Dressing: To discourage the usual male vegetation around the televised football game, guys who choose to watch must wear bras and panties and read scripted game commentary such as: 1) “Oh my, those pants are just too, too tight—yessss!”; 2) “He’s the best wide receiver I’ve ever seen—yessss!”; and 3) “Well, I guess I’m stuck with the locker room interview again—all those big, sweaty men’s bodies—yessss!” These guys will be relegated to eating turkey backs only—yessss!”
9. Thanksgiving Day Floats on Flatulence: Turkey stuffing composed of pinto beans and cabbage produces “gasly” results—enough methane to lift 200 pounds plus humans aloft. The more one eats, the longer one can hover like a miniature Macy’s float above the dinner table. Caution: No Smoking.
10. Thanksgiving Mental Health Day: Family members are sent precautionary invitations, reading “you are hereby invited to attend a socially mandated thrusting together of often very disparate people, many of whom have nothing in common but enmity and DNA, with probably unhealthy or dangerous psychological effects.

I absolve myself from the responsibility for anyone else’s well-being.
Love, Grandma

Senior Citizenship – At What Cost?

I became 50 years old this year. So what, I retorted defiantly. I've got lots of impressive company: Woody Allen, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicklaus, Robert Redford, Thomas Wolfe, to mention but a few. I remember when we were all in our 30 and 40s together. We got through those decades without any problems. Big deal. So now we're just going to slip on through this one. Nobody will even notice.

Except the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons). They sent me a letter and a membership application a month before my birthday. My close friends probably don't even know my age. How did this group find out? I guess Woody and Jane and the guys got theirs too. I don't even have to retire—just be 50. Only $5 per year. Great benefits: Senior Citizen discounts on drugs, motels movies and so on. Practically speaking, it makes sense to join.

Never! I don't mind being 50, 60 or even 70, but I'm not going to register myself as a "senior citizen" because some group of quidnuncs arbitrarily selected age 50 as a qualifier for what it perceives to be the primordial populace. What does that ambiguous term mean, anyway? Senior to whom? Even a two-year-old child can be a senior citizen. After all, he's senior to a one-year-old and why must I be a citizen? If I were Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones) in the US on a temporary work permit would I be ineligible? But, believe me, I know the group the AARP is referring to, and I'm not ready to join them yet, nor are many others over 50.

I'm not ready and neither are Woody and the others. Maybe one day I'll rise that prunce juice fueled tour bus to Miami, but not this year. If the AARP knew anything about me at all except my age, it would not have extended me this lefthanded invitation to antiquity.

Surely, if they were aware that I run 20 miles a week, watch Arsenio Hall, David Letterman, and "In Living Color," eschew "The Tonight Show," read and look at Playboy without experiencing cardiac symptoms, can facilely expound on the significance (or lack thereof) of entities such as David Byrne, Sinead O'Conner (and pronounce her name correctly), White Snake, Ton Loc and Dennis Hopper, and never wear wide striped shirts, checkered pants (simultaneously) at armpit level, and white, crepe-soled shoes, they would immediately retract the offer.

I will admit to being cognizant that, statistically, I may only have about 22 more years and I confess to a new predilection for "relative longevity purchasing": avoid buying items such as cars or major appliances that may last longer than I will, and being sure any trees I procure are very fast growing but, on the other hand, limiting my acquisition of pets to only those who will probably transcend my existence (hence, my new sea tortoise and parrot).

But then, this behavior, I feel, is simply an example of sensibility, and as long as it does not affect my taste in shoes, my immunity to senioritis is still viable.

And quite obviously, the AARP has never seen my wife, who although she is within a couple of years of their magic number, exhibits all the physical and mental attributes of youth—though she did recently frighten the daylights out of me by lingering a bit too long (coincidentally) by the blue-rinse shelf in a cosmetic department. We will never be the Poster Couple for the National Liverspot Society and we'll never have our names on our mailboxes, "The Coskreys, Bob and Barbara," (it doesn't even sound right—it would have to be something like Gus and Myrtle or Ed and Thelma). We also have made a blood pact to never own a dog smaller than a large cat or that in any way at all resembles either a mouse with a thyroid problem or Don Knotts.

I don't think that the AARP would feel comfortable at all with my seasoned, yet decidedly hip, image any more than I would be at east trying to adjust myself to their somewhat sterile one.

In fact, I have a very uneasy sensation that if, through torture, or possibly as a result of brain damage, I did become a member, the AARP would be compelled to use all its powers and fiendish devices to try to revamp me in its own image or risk public mortification.

I would awake one bursitic morning more concerned with the universal blight or irregularity than the recession of my sexual drive, which has become permanently jammed in "sexual park," or even the less terminal, but more implicative, "sexual neutral." After watching the video tape of last night's "Golden Girls" (it comes on too late for me now) I ease into my 1953 Studebaker and immediately realize there is an object blocking my view of the windshield—the steering wheel. Apparently, I have shrunk six or eight inches since yesterday. No problem. To my amazement, I find that simply by slumping down in the seat a little, I can see well enough to drive by looking beneath the steering wheel. I am compelled by an inexorable urge to go to a cafeteria (even though it's only 10:30 a.m.). Realizing that my one-way ticket to fossil city has already been punched, I feel that I must take advantage of any urge, no matter what the consequences, so I'm off. Several hours and 15 miles later, I cautiously approach the mall, with a long line or horn-blowing, screaming young people behind me. What in the Hell are they making that racket for? "Shut up you mindless whippersnappers," I yell out the window, quoting my hero almost verbatim (Gabby Hayes in "Riders of the Purple Sage," 1940).

Being a senior citizen, I am also conscious of my need—more really a responsibility, I guess—to plan ahead (the old whatever-you-call-it…memory…takes a little vacation sometimes), so knowing that I eventually have to take a left to pull into the mall parking lot, I have diligently kept my left turn signal on ever since I left home. God, these young people drive like morons. You ought to see the piles of wrecked cars behind me. After finishing my Senior Citizen's Special of the Day—cream of roughage—I amble on over to one of the mall benches, where I sit a spell, watch the pretty young girls walk by and try to remember why I'm doing it—must be some sort of evolutionary vestigial behavior. Some female friends of my son spot me and come over, one of them making my morning complete with her "You're certainly remarkable for your age" remark. "I'm only 50 years old, you 'Sally Sleep Around'," I think to myself. "Where did I get that 19th century epithet?" As I leave I hear them whispering, "Wow, a senior citizen. Should he be out like this by himself?"

"No, he ought to be in a home strapped to a bed. Did you see how he was looking at us, the dirty old creep?"

Could people actually be saying these things about me? Maybe I misunderstood. I stopped in the mall hearing aid center. My hearing was okay, I just needed my ear hair trimmed.

Remembering might right turn into the driveway, I concentrate on keeping the turn signal blinking appropriately and arrive home just in time to catch the final six holes of a golf tournament. My wife is busy in the kitchen putting up preserves. "It's me, Momma," I rasp in an unintended mimicry of Walter Brennan. "Man, this senior citizenry is serious business," I think.

My wife responds, "Okay, Poppa, (muttering under her breath: So what, you lifeless sack of flatulence)."

"I'll show you, you old bag," I think. "I'll find your senior citizen card and tear it to pieces."

Calming myself, I continue to watch the golf, until two straight birdies by Lee Trevino precipitate rapid heart palpitations and I put in my "Lawrence Welk—Raw" video.

But since I have not joined the AARP, and have no intention of doing so, these things will never befall me, because Woody, Jane, Dustin, Jack, Robert, Tom and I are dealing with the decades on our own terms. Oh sure, we'll grow old, and we'll probably not even do it gracefully—but perhaps now and then, graciously, sometimes gratefully, often gratingly, and more times than not, gratuitously. However, we will not do it burdened with the unjust stigma of "senior citizens," but as free-lance, non-affiliated, time-ripened members of society, and if we're forced by the BHC (Bureau of Human Chronology) to register our names it will be as age-neutralized citizens. To all who qualify, come join us!

My Name is Bob and I’m a Sports Fan

Being an ardent sports fan is, at best, a mixed blessing. When your team wins, you are adrift on clouds of Euphoria. It’s as if you hit the game-winning homerun or caught the deciding overtime touchdown pass (for you desperate Clemson fans), but when it loses, the dejected seeps into your bones. It’s as if you not only struck out with the bases loaded and lost the game, but your bat slipped out of your hand and hit one of those Make-A-Wish kids, the one whom you told, “I’m going to hit one out for you tonight, Jimmy.” It’s as if you not only couldn’t hold onto the potentially game-winning touchdown pass in the end zone, but that you tumbled wildly out of bounds, crashing into the team’s mentally retarded water boy, who’s also the coach’s son, rendering him temporarily unconscious.

Realizing the vicissitudes of athletic fandom in my mid-teens, I decided to totally eschew any familial or geographic loyalties, and jump on the bandwagon of proven winners, and I conscientiously followed this plan with a few notable exceptions. For an NBA team, I chose the Boston Celtics, who were in the process of establishing their dynasty. For an NFL team, I started off watching the Washington Redskins, not because of their success, since they had none in those days, but because they were the only game in town in Charleston in the mid-50s, but I didn’t make my final selection till Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts exploded onto the gridiron in the late 50s. My MLB team was automatic, the New York Yankees, the most successful sports organization of all time. And once I had made these life-altering decisions, I “stayed the course” and yes, just like W, I did so even when a team continued to have seemingly endless losing seasons, because I had faith that they would one day be winners again. Faith-based team support, I guess you could call it and, in the case of the Colts, they haven’t made a trip to the Super Bowl since 1971. So keep the faith, we’ll be out of Iraq in 34 years at the most.

The few notable exceptions to the above selection plan occurred in college sports. I attended The Citadel as a member of the corps for a fun-filled year, and then returned to get a graduate degree 33 years later, but I have never been a serious fan of either the football or basketball teams for obvious reasons: They are perennial losers. On the other hand, I have been a frequent supporter of their baseball team, for the opposite reason. That is until the College of Charleston, where I got my undergraduate degree, fielded a team, which is now superior to The Citadel’s. And I am also a fan of the College of Charleston basketball team, well, since the John Kresse/Tom Herrion eras, since they are consistent winners. In the 50s and 60s, the Maroons, as they were called then, were not taken very seriously in the collegiate basketball world, for two reasons in particular: 1) Half the team didn’t know how to play basketball. The coach could have grabbed some people randomly out of the stands and gotten better production. 2) Only about half the team, at game-time, was sober, not always including the coach. Although I knew and enjoyed drinking with many of the team’s members, often just prior to the game or at halftime, I could never motivate myself to hitch on to a team’s bandwagon, while half were falling off a wagon of a different kind. The singular example of my becoming a serious supporter of a team for familial reasons was when a cousin was a cadet at West Point in the late 40s and early 50s, and I became a fan of their football team. I’m still a fan today, although I’ve had little to cheer about since the Davis/Blanchard teams following WWII.

But without a doubt, my most egregious transgression of sports fan loyalty occurred in 1985 at a Clemson pre-game rally, during which I transmogrified from a 30-year USC supporter to an orange-inundated, Howard’s Rock-fondling, Gamecock ass-kicking Tiger fan. As anyone who’s lived in this state for a few weeks or more knows, each state resident is mandated to choose by his or her 13th birthday whether he or she will become a Clemson or a USC fan. I had selected, though with minimal enthusiasm, to support the Gamecocks somewhere in the mid-50s. My reasons were somewhat nebulous, though one of them was definitely not recognition of a prolonged record of athletic achievement. My decision was based on factors such as: 1. It’s the eponymously named state university, despite not even knowing the meaning of “eponymously” at the time. 2. Most of my peers were Gamecock fans. 3. All those Clemson people were a bunch of yokels, while the Gamecocks, regardless of pruriently referring to themselves as “Cocks” every now and then, were urbane sophisticates.

The transformation was instantaneous. I remember looking out over a stadium rocking with 40,000 orange-togged Clemsonphiles. There was an orange band blasting “Tiger Rag,” and orange, white, and purple floats, and this was in a small country town, the day before the game. I was very impressed, to say the least. And I began to think about Clemson football history. A long record of athletic achievement with enormous fan support, but most significant of all, a national championship just four years ago. Next I compared this to Carolina, and the contest was over: No national championship, a pathetic record stretching back to the previous century, and faithful but long-suffering fans whose waking and sleeping thoughts are: “Wait till next year!” And finally came the realization that USC did not even meet my own selection criterion: It was not a proven winner. I must also disclose that there were also non-athletic influences for this change in the form of doltish administration personnel in the state agency for whom I worked at the time, who were all whacked-out Gamecock devotees, and I found it increasingly difficult to have anything in common with them beyond sharing the same employer, which was bad enough. Or to put it less politely, it gave me borderline orgasmic spasms to see the Tigers beat the living (or otherwise) crap out of the Cocks practically every year, with the added bonus of imagining these feckless saps taking turns pulling each other away from an open three-story window after each soul-grinding loss. Is there a possibility that if Steve Spurrier turns Carolina into a legitimate winner, I would reverse my decision? No way. In the first place, Spurrier’s very good, but he’s not a miracle worker. And in the second place, which incidentally is probably the best he can hope for, there’s something a little absurd about pulling for a team that has a chicken for a mascot.

As I end this, the Yankees have been knocked out of the playoffs by the Angels, the Colts are 4-0, and the Tigers are 3-3, after 5 very close games, but my disappointment over their unimpressive record so far is mitigated by the Cocks’ abysmal 2-3 performace and a wellspring of schadenfreude.

Such is the life of a sports fan. Thank God I don’t take real life that seriously.

Crawford Cowboy

As anyone can see, our president has been doing “hard work” for the American people, and sometimes just needs to take a little vacation, oh, about 10 times a year, at least. His favorite place to go, as we all know, is the dusty, sun-baked town of Crawford, Texas, where all he does to relieve the pent-up stress from all the “hard work,” we’re told, is clear brush—for 2 to 5 weeks at a shot—so I figure that by now he must have cleared away an area big enough to build a small strip mall or host the “Crawford Cowboy Games.” The “Crawford Cowboy Games,” as you are probably unaware, are a series of events, mostly competitive, created for the purpose of keeping George W. occupied, so “Uncle Dick” Cheney can concentrate on running the government. The games are held at W’s ranch, the “Lyin’ W,” and they allow the leader of the free world to do much more than simply clear brush.

Some of the games are actually skits, but whether they are dramatic or competitive, they must all have the quality of being able to hold the president’s attention span, which is rumored to be somewhere between a Jack Russell’s and a Border Collie’s. The first event is always humorous and, in fact, is usually the same one each time, except for the interruption of the circus coming through town in 2002, when W pitched a fit till they took him. The skit consists of some of the staff acting out the campfire scene from “Blazing Saddles,” with Lewis “Scooter” Libby having the biggest role. Libby has, to his credit, always taken his part very seriously, assuming the sobriquet, Lewis “Scooter the Poohter Libby’s Pork ‘n Beans” Libby. The president usually then yells out some trenchantly comedic remark, not disappointing this year with his, “Hey, Poohter, you better stay away from that fire. Talk about your WMD!”

The events/scenes always have a western flavor, of course, and another favorite is a shoot-out in which Andrew “Bottom” Card is caught cheating W in a card game and the commander-in-chief gets to challenge the “low down varmint” to a duel, using his prized line, “Bring it on,” which naturally gets him pretty hopped up. But instead of six shooters at 20 paces, it’s a quick-draw bird-flipping contest, with thinner being the one who can not only flip the bird from a hand-at-the-side position, but also the first to retract his middle finger. W always wins this easily, which is no surprise to those of us who say him exercise this skill on reporters on TV, then modestly deny it through Scott McClelland.

Another of W’s favorite scenes is Jack Palance’s Academy Award acceptance for his supporting role in “City Slickers.” Initially, they couldn’t find a staffer who could match Palance’s raw masculinity, but eventually it was Karen Hughes to W’s rescue again, plus she was the only who could do a push-up, much less a one-handed one.

Of course, W is dressed in a cowboy outfit the entire time he’s at the ranch, including an enormous 10 gallon hat that he insists on wearing even when he rides his bike. This has, unfortunately, led to his falling off, even more than usual, and it is the reason that Karl Rove (“Rover the Drover”) must run alongside, yelling, “Get along, little Georgie!” As W likes to quip, “Old Karl sure make for a nice, soft landing.”

Donald “Ropin’ Rummy” Rumsfeld, to W’s delight, always wins the Homespun Epithet contest with his bottomless repertoire of barnyard billingsgate. W has been known to stand up and clap enthusiastically when Rummy unearths such ear-scorchers as “kit and caboodle,” “gall durnit,” “jumpin’ jiminy,” “Jehosaphat,” and Jeff Gannon’s favorite, “by crackie!” The only downside to the game is that every year someone has to explain to W what the word “epithet” means.

A few very special outsiders are invited and, of course, are sworn to secrecy. One of a very small number of regular returnees is “Cowboy” Tom Delay “who can always be counted on to perform his crowd-pleasing ‘Lobbyist-ropin’ act.”

He may have actually been topped by this month’s invitee, Bob “Bullsh*t” Novak, who, along with Karl Rove, appeared as the two-headed “Scourge of the Democrats,” “Ro-vak.”

Scott McClelland’s special guest, Jeff Gannon, wowed the Neocons this year with his “Rough-and-ready Calf-ropin’” contest, which entails Jeff, as a leather-clad cowpoke lassoing scantily-clad buckaroos by their calves, then branding them as his “Bunk House Buddies.” This somewhat risqué spectacle, even by liberal standards, prompted a nonplussed W to ask, “Uncle Dick, suppose the liberal media find out about this?” He was immediate placated by Cheney’s crooked-mouthed reply, “Son, what goes on in Crawford, stays in Crawford.”

Each year, the festivities wind down with an excited but weary W appearing as George “Walker, Texas Ranger Bush,” who proceeds to Karate kick sand-stuffed dummies of enemies list personalities such as Michael Moore and Jon Stewart. Inevitably, he gets a little too rambunctious, and almost always ends up running around frenetically doing air kicks and shouting, “I’m gonna hunt you down, Osama. You wanted dead or alive. Gonna smoke you out!” “Watch out, cowboy boots on the ground.” This year, he boldly added, “Well, I think I’m gonna go home and saddle up Laura, heh, heh, heh.” Which prompted the games abript but typical demise as W was sent screaming into “41’s” comforting lap by the family’s “Boss of all Bosses – Ma Bush” (Also referred to secretly by her grandchildren as W as in Washington, George that is.) as she scolds, “Little George, shut up and drink your sarsaparilla. It’s time to play Commander-in-chief again. Put on your flight suit. Uncle Dick needs a rest.”

W (whiningly): “Aw, gee, Ma, that’s hard work.”

Solving Mount Pleasant’s Traffic Dilemma In a Round-About Way

September 1998

Solving Mount Pleasant’s Traffic Dilemma In a Round-About Way
By Bob Coskrey

Looking at that intriguing, yet daunting, round-about construction on Mathis Ferry Road, which appears to be, at least, one of the ways Mt. Pleasant plans to sovle its rapidly worsening traffic problems, started me thinking about some solutions of my own, and I think I may have hit upon one: By controlling the quality of the people driving into Mt. Pleasant, we can automatically decrease the quantity.

With a system of directional signs at Mt. Pleasant’s three entrances, the Silas Pearman Bridge, the Mark Clark expressway, and Highway 17 North, followed by a series of the aforementioned round-abouts, we could not only control our driver quality but perhaps even improve it.

First of all, of course, we need to establish some standards for the type of people we want driving through our still-barely-hanging-on-to-the-word-pleasant community. On the other hand, that sounds too authoritarian, and I would end up by excluding myself, besides it’s easier and a lot more fun just to tell you whom we don’t want to be driving on our hallowed highways and roads. It’s also very convenient that I already have a prepared list of drivers identifiable by their behavior or sometimes just their appearance that I have complied over my 40 tortuous years of driving, and it is my contention that these kinds of motoring miscreants are most likely to cause traffic difficulties of one type or another.

The following is a short list of the people I feel we should target:

1. Those with any kind of personalized license plates, including those ego-inflated politicians with their emblazoned “Number Ones,” not to mention the self-important members of such vital entities of the state cosmetology board.
2. Men whose machismos are bolstered by driving around with their left arms hanging out of their windows.
3. Men 50 years of age or older driving convertibles.
4. People with obnoxious, plain stupid, or just way too many damned decals on their vehicles.
5. People with multiple dents in their font bumper, a clear indication of a tailgating personality disorder.
6. People with rear window decorations made from plastic 6-pack bolders or a mass of stuffed animals.
7. Drivers with dogs on their laps.
8. People driving Camaros or Corvettes.
9. People too short to see over their steering wheels and make no attempt to resolve the problem.
10. People who drive around constantly talking on their cell phones.
11. Men who continually observe life’s mundanities out the side window instead of watching where they’re going.
12. Last but not least, the proprietors of fuzzy dice.

How will it work?

When these individuals arrive at our entrances, they will be halted, identified, and directed by qualified police to lanes marked specifically for the above categories of driving deviants, and because we don’t want to have too many lanes, they will be shared by more than one category, naturally being careful not to create mixtures of mutually antagonistic groups, such as Camaro driver and people unable to see over their steering wheels, or the Confederate flag decal displayers and the “Free James Brown” ones.

The lanes will lead to the specially designed round-abouts, which will not only utilize their intrinsic ability to confuse and befuddle, but being augmented with electronically controlled revolving lanes, which will spin vehicles several dizzying times before shunting them off to “Driver Rehabilitation Centers,” where they will be directed into huge lots by female parking attendants wearing orange traffic cone bras over their shirts and male attendants wearing orange traffic cone dunce caps and perhaps one other strategically placed smaller one (an attempt to bring a bit of levity to what could become an abysmally sobering experience).

From that point, they will follow signs to building marked for each category of unqualified driver, where they will receive on-the-lot counseling or some other mode of behavior or appearance rectifying the situation.

For example, those with personalized license plates will receive counseling to raise their limp egos to the point they won’t need to rely on obnoxious pronouncements, such as “Missy’s Miata” just to make it from one day to the next; or they may even be asked to use a transitional tag, which reads, “I am secure in the knowledge that no one cares who I am.”

15 Reasons The Citadel can still be proud

1. At the school spelling bee, everyone was able to spell misogyny.
2. New “Brown Shirts” look really spiffy.
3. The cadet who threatened to cut out the heart of one of the female cadts recently received a call of encouragement from OJ Simpson.
4. E Company staff showed “90s man sensitivity” by rejecting gasoline as a hazing fuel in favor of more humane fingernail polish remover.
5. It dispelled wimpy Southern Gentleman stereotype by “kickin’ some female butt.”
6. Administration demonstrated extraordinary insight, when in order not to confuse the female cadets, it changed the term “dress” parade to “fancy uniform” parade.
7. Professor Gingrich will be teaching Advanced Hazing 301 again this fall.
8. Once South Carolina has seceded from the Union, Governor Beasley has promised to let the cadets fire on Fort Sumter again—or at least at New York Times reporters.
9. School has single-handedly allowed Charleston to overtake New York in violent crime statistics.
10. Proved emphatically that ectomorphic white guys can “diss” “hos” as well as those gangsta rappers.
11. Self-nominated for Martin Luther King Peace Award for having gone over three years without having a black student shot on campus.
12. Has saved the state a lot of money by instituting controversial “Designated Hazer” rule.
13. Will be the primary film site of Pat Conroy movie sequel “The Louts of Discipline.”
14. Showed spunkiness with adoption of new school slogan “We Bad.”
15. E Company cadets didn’t let pushy females disrupt “Shower Room Disco Night.”

BONUS: Corps claim that “Our coaches can out-drink anybody’s coaches.”

Originally published August 1997

The Answer’s (Not) Leaf Blowin’ in the Wind

September 1999
The Answer’s (Not) Leaf Blowin’ in the Wind
By Bob Coskrey

If I were to list the 100 most ridiculous invention of the last 25 years—and don’t worry, I’m not going to—but theoretically, if I were, at the very top of the list would be the leaf blower.

Whenever I see someone using one, it never fails to amuse me, very often to point of uncontrolled, sometimes inappropriate laughter.

Why do I feel this way? Because of the machine’s basic, nonsensical function: it moves unwanted material from the user’s property to someone else’s property.

If you cut down a 60-foot oak three and, using a tractor, dragged it from your yard to your neighbor’s, do you think he or she might be at least minimally displeased with your actions?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but you would be well-advised to check out whether the neighbor has a gun collection before attempting anything like this.

So then, why do people allow their neighbors to blow all their grass clippings, leaves, and miscellaneous other bits of trash into their yards? Simple. Because all they have to do is blow it into another neighbor’s yard, along with their own unwanted material.

The next logical question wrenched from this totally irrational scenario is, where does all this stuff go? Well, unless a neighbor, without benefit of a leaf blower, breaks the chain, this landlubber’s flotsam and jetsam keeps getting moved about ad infinitum. It could even end up back on the property of origin one day.

A slightly different event happens with commercial property. Dirt, trash, animal droppings, etc., are simply blown into the street, where it is hoped, I guess, to be washed by rainwater into drains, but of course what actually occurs is that most of it gets blown by the wind or passing vehicles onto someone else’s property or, as with the homeowners, back onto the property of origin.

Now, you must admit, this whole thing is quite ludicrous. It’s sort of like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” story. Everyone just pretends that they’re doing a splendid job with their leaf blowers and simply ignores the fact that nothing is actually being cleaned up, it’s merely being redistributed.

And what makes this whole self-sustaining bizarre world even more absurd is that the leaf blower operators themselves carry out their duties with such purposeful solemnity. On the homeowner’s level, these guys stand there blasting everything that’s not fastened down to the earth into the street or the neighbor’s yard, not once looking up from their assignments.

I would expect that if a female walked by and made a laudatory comment, the response would be something similar to “doin’ muh job ma’am,” followed by tipping his cap, if he had one.

The commercial operators are even more ridiculous, since they often wear uniforms and with these menacing machines strapped on their backs like flame-throwers, or sometimes resembling the team from “Ghostbusters,” these armies of the absurd attack parking lots and sidewalks with a futile vengeance.

I know that if these things had been prevalent 25 years ago, Mel Brooks or Monty Python would have made movies around them. In fact, occasionally upon seeing these regiments of ludicrous landscapers, I imagine them as jousting knights or castle storming medieval soldiers wielding their wicked wind machines.

And I haven’t even mentioned another inanity: that these people are actually paid for this, sort of like hiring someone to featherdust the Sphinx.

What do we do about this, my fellow Americans? And I limit my audience to Americans because we seem to be the only ones who purchase these kinds of goof ball items, just as we gobbled up moon rocks, hermit crabs, mood rings, lava lamps, and those grotesque little trolls. And I rank the leaf blower with these other awful artifacts, not just on their mutual goofiness, but because they also share another characteristic: total uselessness.

Do we continue this neurotic charade till one day we discover we have such a leaf, grass, and trash buildup that we can’t go outdoors?

I’m sure you’re growing impatient awaiting my remedy for correcting this situation, so I’ll get right to it.

I have two recommendations. We can all decide on which one might be more effective.

My first one is to make the leaf flower into a leaf vacuum with a large bag attachment, of course.

This way you’re not simply blowing away the same leaves, grass, etc., until they day you pass on, or as we centipede centurions say, become one with the mole crickets. Instead, you can create a mulch pile or put it in lawn bags. Like normal people.

The only possible drawback I see would be if some of these young horny leaf blower—I mean leaf sucker—operators might want to, er, “experiment,” as they say, as young hormonally saturated guys are inclined to do. Then we might have an epidemic of severe “groin pulls” or even worse, although many of the latter could find work in the exciting field of harem guarding.

Of course, we could only pray that our supercharged president might get hold of one, which he more than likely would nickname “the Monica.” From the beneficial perspective, it might just straighten out his Peyronies disease problem and Hillary could concentrate on her Senate race. But I digress.

My second recommendation is that we all keep our leaf blowers just as they are, but that we get seriously organized. Rather than continuing this endless cycle of reblowing your own trash, we make sure that the unwanted material moves towards one egress point out of your subdivision, neighborhood, or business district, then out of your city and county, state, and finally out of the country. You would have winding phalanxes of leaf blower operators stretched out along highways and roads moving everything along in one direction. We would not want to pollute the oceans with it, so we’d have to decide on either Canada or Mexico as its final destination. Frankly, I think Mexico is the more viable option, since we might have a little more leverage, considering the NAFTA agreement. Basically we tell them:

“If you want our factories then you’ve got take our leaves, grass, and assorted trash.” If they refuse, we simply build a huge mulch and trash wall all along the Mexican border to keep out all the illegal aliens.

My God. I’m starting to sound like Pat Buchanan, so let me close with a benign third suggestion for the use of a leaf blower.

The amazing hurricane dissipater. The next time a hurricane is heading for us, everybody heads to the coast packing his leaf blower. When its winds are a few hundred yards away, everyone, on cue, flips on his machine and the storm is blasted back into the sea. In fact, if each state cooperated, we could blow the whole thing up to Canada, just so Mexico wouldn’t think we were singling them out.

Well, I guess it’s true what they say about good old American ingenuity, even if I do say so myself.

Please let me know which remedy you favor. And although I don’t even own a leaf blower, as a concerned citizen I want to do my civic duty.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to get this program cranked up right away. I’ve got urological surgery coming up next month. I had this really freak accident with an Electrolux.

Biblioflatus Antiquus

Recently, my wife’s nephew, who works in a store that sells used books, told us another interesting story about one of the many characters who frequent his place. Incidentally, the term “used” when paired with “book” doesn’t seem to be a good fit. I mean, if someone lends you a book and you simply read it and treat it with a reasonable amount of care, you don’t really use it as you would a pencil or a lawn mower, and it gets returned in the same condition that it was received. In fact, if someone wants to read a book that belongs to another, they don’t ever say, “May I use your book?” It’s “May I borrow your book?” Although you could make a strong case for a guy, if he’s forthright, asking to “use” another guy’s Playboy or Penthouse. And perhaps, this is the origin of the term, “second-hand.” Being aware of this important nuance, back in my hormones-run-amok days, I never let any of my friends “borrow” from my vast, “first hand” Playboy collection.

But back to my wife’s nephew, Tom’s story: It’s not surprising at all for a used book store to have oddball customers, but the particular behavior, in this case, was, to me, anyway, somewhat astonishing. In brief, he has a problem with the geriatric set using the store as an unofficial flatulence zone. And it’s not just an occasional occurrence. There appears to be a sizable sample of seniors with this condition, which I have labeled “Biblioflatus Antiquus” or BFA, to save space. To dispel any hint of ageism, I asked Tom if this condition had expressed itself in any members of a younger group, and he answered and unswerving, “No, they’re all in your age group or above;” a reply eliciting a reflexive “Well, you can be assured I would never do anything such as that, not even in the magazine section of Kmart.” After allowing me sufficient time to contemplate the guilt-tinged inappropriateness of my outburst, Tom calmly continued with his tale.

Interestingly, he said these people never evince any recognition of their gaseous gaffes, but simply continue to look through the books or even participate in the sales transactions, showing no reaction whatsoever. Of course, my inevitable reaction to this phenomenon was to ask, “Why is this happening.”

Initially I asked Tom was the evidence both olfactory and auditory, thinking that if it were olfactory only that perhaps it may be a combination of old book mustiness and old people mustiness, having experienced both. The former I actually enjoy, since it reminds me of my early youth when I would spend hours in my grandmother’s attic perusing ancient journals so laden with dust that I was occasionally distracted by a coughing silverfish. The old people odor, which happily my grandmother did not emanate due to the strategic use of “Lilly of the Valley” bath powder, is an essence that wafts pungently from many of our senior citizens and always triggers in my mind the funereal phrase, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and, possibly, is the first indication that that process is already beginning. Tom states that most of the time he is fortunate enough to receive an aural warning before the methane miasma pervades his territory, so we know we’re dealing with the real thing here.

Pointing out to Tom that no one should have to endure this vile sort of treatment, I suggested a couple of ways of dealing with it: 1) Just accept it, but also purchase some remedial devices, e.g., a gas mask (just say you’re conducting a terrorist chemical attack drill) or place a large industrial fan behind you; 2) attack the problem head-on/know your enemy. Have some fliers places on the sales counter that read as follows: “Biblioflatus Antiquus, a devastating medical condition that causes involuntary flatulence in used book store environments strikes 3 in 10 senior citizens. Don’t be afraid. You are not alone. The BFA support group meets every Monday at 8:00 in this bookstore. Please not that even though we will meet initially in the store, the meeting itself will be conducted outside for obvious reasons.”

At least, this way you’ll be able to identity all these individuals, I pointed out to Tom, that he, naturally, would be the group leader. He could then begin the group therapy that might eventually uncover the reasons for this devastating affliction. And even if this is not possible, perhaps reasonable modes of control might evolve such as self-administered or group wedgies or the ingesting of perfume-laced flatus-inducing foods such as Mexican cuisine, beans, or cabbage. Last but not least, should all this fail, you’ll now know who these perps are, which will enable you to utilize the Bush town meeting strategy and ban them from the store.

Feeling all my methods could be a bit too draconian, I finally suggested that Tom try to obtain a book I had just recently come across and display it conspicuously. It’s called—and this I’m not making up—“Cutting the Cheese or A Cultural History of Farting.”

Fortunately, Tom never takes anything I say or write seriously—and neither should you.

Scared Witless

I can remember being scared of the dark when I was a kid, to the point that whenever I would walk into my bedroom, I would always be afraid there was “someone or something,” as they liked to say in those old grade B movies, behind the door. Unfortunately, the light switch was not on the wall near the door, so I had to walk into the “Chamber of Doom” before I was able to flick it on, and I was so certain I would be accosted by some blood-curdling apparition that I would actually see an amorphous white flash (Incidentally, that was my nickname when I played halfback in high school in 1957) shoot out from behind the door every single time I walked by it. Hallucination? Only time would tell.

Of course, after I frantically turned on the light, everything was just fine. Until it wsa time to go to bed, then I felt that “someone or something” was now under my bed, but I could easily fend it off simply by covering myself up completely with my blanket and, at the same time, making sure neither of my hands or legs was hanging over the side of the bed. If nature called during the night, I could protect myself from Satan’s minions by wrapping myself up in the same demon-proof covering, even though I wouldn’t see where I was going.

My feeling that these coverings were impervious to the assaults of Asmodeus and the like led to a game I would play with my cousins on the screened porch or my grandmother’s beach house in which we would take turns covering ourselves with five or six layers of heavy bedclothes and walk about bumping into anything in our way. Inevitably, we would hit walls, trip over our chairs or beds, and topple over onto the floor like one of those people in the giant wiener suits after being whacked on the head by a just-kidding-around baseball player, with the six inches of cloth protecting us from injury. It was amazing, really, for even when we would fall onto the corner of one of the iron-framed cots, there would be no pain or injury.

Incidentally, one ponders, or more accurately, I do, about the term “bedclothes.” Why would a bed have clothes? And if it does, then are table cloths “table clothes,” slipcovers on sofas “sofa clothes,” and doilies (I’m dating myself, a phrase that sounds like a prelude to self-gratification) on any kind of furniture “furniture clothes”? Please forgive the Wal-Mart Seinfeld Stream of Consciousness digression.

In retrospect, I should have gotten this information about the protective qualities of these bedclothes to the DOD so they could have issued them to our troops, at least until they invented Kevlar. And think of the psychological impact of soldiers covered in layers of camouflaged blankets, mini mountainous forms with helmets on top. (They would still need to project a military air), slowly progressing across the battlefield. The enemy would be as confused as Dubya at a spelling bee (fourth grade). We would just have to be sure that we weren’t fighting anyone who had seen those old Flash Gordon serials, since there might be a tendency then to view the Blanket Brigade as a throwback to some of Flash’s goofy looking foils, and the anticipated terror and befuddlement would be displaced by ridicule and certain defeat.

My scariest moment, without a doubt, occurred when I went to see the first version of “The Thing.” It was 1950, I was ten years old, and, for some inexplicable reason, had decided to go by myself, an act oddly similar to the characters in the horror movies in those days who always insisted on venturing out into the dark, howling night to “see what that noise was” or even just taking a look outside because “it’s quiet—too quiet,” and of course, always unarmed—and inevitably dead. It was the dramatic build-up to finding out that this evil plant creature was that primed me for maximum terrification. (I know it’s not a word, but it should be.) I can remember thinking it was the reporter simply because he was the oddest looking member of the cast, and then I finally saw “The Thing” walking down that dark corridor, his features still undecipherable, even before he burst into flame. No matter that this menacing cousin of the Phil O’Dendron family had been defoliated; my five block walk home was a solitary march of misery. The term “scared sh*tless” comes to mind, a description that, of course, demands some serious tangentializing. How this could literally happen to someone, I can’t imagine, but apparently, their gastrointestinal tracts were evacuated before they, themselves, could be. But if this were factual, you would think some enterprising individual would have come up with a non-invasive substitute for laxatives: “Yes, I’ll take a package of ‘Scared Sh*tless’,” which would be an over-the-counter product, consisting of nude pictures of unprepossessing celebrities such as candid shots of Rosie O’Donnell doing honeymoon poses or maybe a limboing, bethonged and well-oiled Abe Vigoda. It would be a money-maker, believe me. Fortunately for me at the time, the term was only metaphorical and my only problem was that I was so scared that I walked the entire five blocks home backwards (not having my trusty blanket), ensuring that if “someone or something” was loping after me, at least, I could see it coming and close my eyes real tight before impact.

Except for a brief setback resulting from “The Exorcist” experience, my fears have fortunately taken more mundane, middle-class manifestations such as road rage (me, not them), spiraling beer prices and the threat of age-related impotence, in reverse order of important, although I have recently been having a terrifying recurring nightmare in which Karl Rove and I are in the finals of “The Apprentice” program, but it suddenly turns into a Pilsbury Doughboy Look-alike Contest, and, of course, I’m trounced, in fact, I come in third after Scott McClellan. Next I’m chased by a nude, knife-wielding Jeff Gannon (see James Guckert), whose Dick Cheney-hockey mask I pull off at the last minute and I awake “scared stiff,” which, of course, is both scary and incriminating due to the Gannon factor. Considering the content of this last paragraph, I’ll end this, based on the shocking discovery that writers can apparently be “scared witless.”

Tempus, Frig it!

“It’s been a long day.” That’s what my wife said to me on a Saturday in March, but it wasn’t till a few hours later that I realized that my uninspired response of “Yeah, it sure has been,” was totally insufficient. It was at some point either in my 40s or 50s that I began to realize that time seemed to be moving a little faster, and now, in my 60s, I seem to be soaring along at warp speed, so for Barbara to have said that we were having a long day is extremely significant. Perhaps we had stumbled onto the secret of slowing down this rocket train to Perdition. So I tried to recall just what we had done that day, and it did not seem to be anything out of the usual. It had been a typical, leisurely Saturday, beginning for me slightly later, as usually, with breakfast, and on that particular Saturday, some token attempts at eliminating the invincible mole who continues to plow with abandon through my yard like one of those giant worms in “Dune.” I have tried to kinds of mole poison pellets, and Malathion spraying, finally resorting to jamming the garden hose down one part of his al Qaeda-like tunnels, hoping to see him blasted out of the earth 10 yards away, resting on top of the small geyser of water like some helpless cartoon character. This fruitless endeavor was followed by lunch at “The Mustard Seed,” two and a half hours of misery watching Clemson basketball, which I have since learned is not nearly as excruciating as Clemson baseball, followed by two hours of near dry heaves inducing laughter watching a “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” DVD, and finally ending in my 30-year long ritual of closing out my Saturday with “SNL.”

Not much here from which to form a time-retarding theory, except maybe the basketball game in which Clemson got soundly thrashed. There was never any doubt about the outcome, so it became excruciatingly painful to watch, to the point that I wished it would hurry up and end, but instead, it continued to drag on and on, with the Tigers getting further and further behind. Therefore, I offer my totally unscientific theory: Unpleasant or painful situations seem to slow time down. Then there’s the case of my unsuccessful jihad against the mole, which is simply a somewhat violent manifestation of yard work, to me the most boring endeavor imaginable, with two hours of the motorized monotony of lawn mowing seeming like four to five hours. Hence, my second theory: Boredom seems to slow time down.

So, it looks like all I have to do is make sure I plan boring and/or unpleasant agendas each day. The first thing I would do is quit my job, which is neither unpleasant nor boring, as evidenced by my work day, which flashes by so quickly that the weeks seem to be only two to three days long. As a matter of fact, this job, which I just started two years ago, may be directly responsible for most of my time acceleration.

Then, there’s my after-work leisure time: I get home around 5:00, listen to a brief accounting of how Barbara’s day went, go for a run, and eat dinner while we watch the news. After this, I either read, write, or check my email till 11:00, when we watch various combinations of Howard Stern, Jon Stewart, Leno or Letterman. I guess I have to include the times that I doze off during our TV watching, a revelation which Barbara will find both interesting and irritating, since whenever she inquires, “Are you asleep?” I always answer, as if being accused of sleeping with Michael Jackson as an adult, “No, of course not, it was just a prolonged blink.” This is a vestigial, reflexive male response, I feel sure, dating back thousands of years, which is triggered whenever the hunter’s essential manliness is challenged: Cro Magnon wife to husband asleep at the cave’s entrance while saber-toothed tigers’ growls are heard outside: “You awake, Zarg?” Zarg: “Of course, woman, me just have some wooly mammoth dander in eyes.” So, to be accused of drifting off during a particularly somniferous Leno monologue is to be charged with abject failure to protect my family, at least according to my genes.

I would seem I need to come up with some things I can experience that will be either or both painful and boring. I have, therefore, devised the following agenda effective tomorrow morning:

6 a.m.: Wake up and instead of listening to Howard Stern or “The Morning Sedition,” break out my new CD, “Bill O’Reilly and Pat O’Brien discuss the effective use of the telephone in relationship enhancement.”
7:30 a.m.: Give my co-worker afflicted with chronic, terminal flatulence, a ride to work, after having treated him to dinner at a Mexican restaurant the night before.
7:45 a.m.: On the way to work, signal of those cars with the decal that says, “Have I shown you the pictures of my grandson?” to pull over, then ask to please let me see the pictures with a half-hour narrative.
10 a.m.: Tell me neighbor, who sells Amway, that I’d not only like to join, but also have an Amway party at my house at least once a week.
12 p.m.: Take my client, who’s the professional wrestling fanatic, to lunch and ask him to catch me up on what’s been happening in the wrestling game since the 50s, then insist on seeing his fake WWE championship belt collection, while also begging him to let me wear one to work.
2 p.m.: Send out an intra-office email saying that I am making my office an official “Rush Room” site, and inviting all “dittoheads” to come and help me celebrate “B.O.B.” (Blame it on Bill) week.
3 p.m.: Meet with a plastic surgeon, tell him I want to look like this, then show him a picture of Don Imus.
5 p.m.: As soon as I get home, insist on not only that Barbara tell me everything that happened on “The View” that day, but also what everyone was wearing, including designer names, plus how many times the term “girl” or “girlfriend” was used.
7:30 p.m.: Randomly call 10 life insurance companies leaving a voicemail message to have an agent call me either at home, work, or on my cell phone, to set up an appointment at my home as soon as possible after I get home.
8 p.m.: Dial up 1-900-Talk to New Yorker for a one-hour three-way conversation with Fran Drescher and Rosie Perez.
9 p.m.: Call Jehovah’s Witness headquarters and request a subscription to the “Watch Tower” only if it can be hand-delivered with a 15 minute sermon.
10 p.m.: Make door-to-door fund-raising calls on Goose Creek residents for the purpose of starting a Goose Creek chapter of the Jane Fonda fan club.
11 p.m.: Instead of watching any late night talk shows, have all my pictures in the family album enlarged, so I can carefully track my personal aging process on a nightly basis.
My weekend would be spent two ways:
Saturday—all day: Shop for used cars, even though I don’t need one, and insist on being served only by guys wearing white belts who greet me with “What can I do you in for?”
Sunday—all day: Work as a Wal-Mart greeter (hence, qualifying me for Medicaid) and request that my wife meet me at the door wearing a blue vest saying: “Welcome home from Wal-Mart!”

There, that should do it, and it shouldn’t take too long to find out if my theories work or not. If they do, an unfortunate side effect will be that you will be cursed with my articles for another 50 years, but will all those years of painful and/or boring experiences be worth enduring? Will the quality of life issue raise its contentious head again, compelling millions who practice my theories to consider living wills? “Questions too ponderously imponderable to be pondered.” (Yogi Berra, 1957) Perhaps, the plug should be pulled—to my computer, that is. Ironically, I feel like I’ve gained a few months writing this article. Just think how much time you’ll acquire having spent three or four days reading it.

A Zoo Ran Through It

I ran under the protecting arms of giant oaks and magnolia trees, sometimes bounding through the wet spongy grass, sometimes pounding against hardened clay and concrete, being careful to avoid the threatening finger of thickly gnarled roots, as they erupted slowly from the earth. Scurrying squirrels chattered curses, as I disturbed their fast-forwarded lunch breaks. Loitering pigeons made last-second decisions to avoid the wrath of my lumbering Nikes.

I had been wanting to do this for quite a while—take my afternoon run through Hampton Park, a place so totally cluttered with highly charged, palpable memories of my childhood, that I half expected to run into lingering apparitions of my mother, my aunt and myself as we walked around this sylvan inner city retreat in 1946.

Of course, the park in those days was an even bigger attraction than it is now—especially for six-year-old boys.

Because it had a zoo. Oh, certainly not on the scale of San Diego's or the one in Washington, DC, but in my cloistered little world, it was quite an amazing place. It was filled with the kinds of animals that, until that point, I had only seen in books or movies.

Ninety-two years ago, this site had hosted the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition, a spectacular even authored by Colonel John H. Averill to promote trade with the West Indies, Central and South American. Thirty-one states and territories showcased multifarious industries, professions and trades, with exhibits ranging from art collections to agriculture to railroads. A New York architect, Bradford Lee Gilbert, designed the layout to reflect a motif blending the Colonial South with Ancient Spain. There were extraordinary Palaces of Commerce, Cotton, and Machinery together with a sunken garden, playing fountains, a race track and statuary from famous sculptors. The City of Philadelphia sent the Liberty Bell, there was a trolley line installed, and numerous dignitaries attended, including President Theodore Roosevelt.

The expanse of the exposition covered about 252 acres, extending from Rutledge Avenue on the east to the Ashley River (including what it now the Citadel) on the west and from Moultrie Street on the south to the present St. Margaret Street on the north. It closed after 6 months on May 31, 1902.

Unfortunately, all these fantastic structures were razed, but the city was left with a beautiful park, to which it added thousands of trees and, eventually, the animals. It is named after the state's Revolutionary War hero, General Wade Hampton.

The remains of the sunken gardens, the ponds, rose bushes, and the bridge—although the latter was altered a few years back—are still there, along with the remodeled bandstand and a small concession stand.

I received my kindergarten diploma on the bandstand in 1945, impatiently fingering the rolled up piece of paper, anticipating the termination of the silly ceremony so I could partake of the essence of Hampton Park—the animals.

When we—my mother, my aunt and I—visited the park, we would usually park on Cleveland Street and enter from the front. It was a most impressive entrance, at least to a six-year-old. In the center of the promenade there was a vast, looming aviary. It had soaring tropical trees whose tops I could barely glimpse from my three-foot level. The entire enclosure was fended in and covered by a wire mesh to maintain, as well as protect, its inhabitants. The aviary was filled with magnificent birds such as iridescently feathered peacocks, cranes, egrets and owls. They were not always immediately visible, forcing me to visually comb the viscous foliage till I suddenly spotted a splash of whiteness.

Me: "Momma, look up there (pointing to where a behemoth oak gently stroked the wire's apex and a patch of white flashed out between its dark green leaves)."
Momma (equally excited): "Yeah, Bobby, that's a crane."

On your left as you entered the park, there was the buffalo area and on your right, the deer.

Although I had seen a stuffed buffalo at the Charleston Museum, seeing a live one was immensely more interesting. First of all, they seemed much bigger and their fur was falling off in clumps like some old moth-eaten coat whose donation might arouse the indignation of a Salvation Army worker: "You keep it, Mister. What self-respecting homeless person would wear that?"

They moved about only slightly more than the one at the museum, mostly just standing around in small groups ruminating, but when one did finally start his slow motion gait, it was always a stirring moment for me, since I always hoped it might be the initiation of one of those dust-billowing, earth-rumbling, prairie dog terrorizing stampedes I had seen in the movies. An earnest request that I be allowed to bring my cap gun next time to "sort of get things started" was flatly rejected by my mother, although four or five moderately annoyed buffalo running around a two or three acre area would not have even come close to meeting minimal stampede requirements, I'm sure. So, while I certainly enjoyed watching the buffalo, there was always a small fly of frustration in my soup of contentment.

Never having witnessed a white-tailed deer stampede, my time spent with them was consistently of a higher quality. They tended to be less inert than the buffalo and sometimes would even come up close to the fence. Once, there was even a frolicking, but spindly legged little fawn.

Me: "Is it Bambi?"
My Mother (always ready with a little white or white-tailed lie): "Yes, it sure is."
Me (verifying): "Who's that with him (referring to the placid doe standing next to him)?"
My mother (having become an involuntary expert under the Bambi category): "Uh, that's Bambi's aunt that he went to live with after his mother died."

To my great elation, I soon discovered that the zoo also housed Bambi's friend, Thumper (the rabbit) and his girlfriend, Patter, along with the adorably malodorous Flower (the skunk), not to mention his sweetheart, Pansy.

In the zoo's declining years some of its ducks and even some peacocks were transferred to the deer habitat. I suspected this may have been a cost-cutting measure to gradually pave the way for more insidious actions, such as moving the raccoons in with the lions or the parrots and mynah birds in with the falcons, but thankfully these never happened.

Following the main promenade beyond the deer and buffalo areas, you came upon the "snakehouse," a relatively small building whose walls were lined with glassed-in cages of these wriggling, eerie reptiles for whom I had no Disneyesque frame of reference. My courage was hardly bolstered by my mother's "Ooh, I can't look at THOSE CREEPY THINGS" or my Aunt Gert's "Bobby, did you know a python can swallow a pig whole, or even a little boy" (suddenly grabbing me around the waist, as she shouted the last three words for emphasis). Needless to say, in those early years I was an infrequent visitor to the "snakehouse."

The zoo's two largest animals were a male lion and a bear. Neither of these beasts ever projected the ferociousness I had hoped for, although people who, no doubt, had been many places behind both animals where brains and dignity were doled out—still vengeful over this evolutionary shot change—did their best to provoke them by screaming at and taunting them: "Hey, lion, get up! Hey you! Leo, wake up, wake up! Come on, bear, you can sleep all winter."

They would throw peanuts or popcorn into the cages. The lion would lazily amble over and eat a few, but the bear, who, for some reason, only had three legs, only got up occasionally and hopped slowly about the cage, regally ignoring the crazed rabble peering through their bars.

My mother told me the bear's paw had gotten infected and had to be amputated. Aunt Gert, whose lifestyle was as wild as her imagination, said the bear had lost it battling the world's only sabre-toothed tiger, which incidentally dwelled at the uninhabited end of the Isle of Palms. I figured the bear had probably gotten too close to the bars and one of these people had bitten his leg off.

Without a doubt, the zoo's most fascinating attractions were the monkeys. They were in a couple of large cages to the left of the "snakehouse" as you entered the park. I don't recall the species represented. They were just your generic monkeys, as far as kids were concerned, but they always gave crowd-pleasing performances, flying around their cages on swings and ropes and making NFL-transcending, spectacular catches of the peanuts we threw them. People also threw them bananas, which would not fall through the small holes of the wire mesh; but if they landed on top of the cage, the wily primates would reach out and force them through the holes or cut them on the wire, as if it were "the amazing Ronco Banana Slicer," pulling them in piece by piece. Of course, there were fights—though never the life-threatening kind, but quick decisive ones establishing who was king and who wasn't.

But the monkeys' most uproarious performances were much more amusing to the kids than the adults or, more exactly, the adult parents. As kids are universally and perennially into "slapstick" humor, especially of the "toilet" variety, we couldn't have asked for a more representative group of comedic actors than these shameless simians.

To take in the monkey show at Hampton Park Zoo meant not only the witnessing of the aforementioned astounding feats of meal-time acrobatics, but unlimited exposure to a sufficient degree of vulgar personal habits and occasional sexual forays to make Madonna blush. Most all of the behavior was self-directed, such as complete genito-urinary and rectal examinations (minus the glove, of course) but, occasionally, a male would decide it was "big nasty" time and this—you have my word for it—was the original "big nasty," and, obviously the reason for that pejorative terminology. I will spare you a description. My mother, who tended to be quite embarrassed by this behavior, would drag me away, as I gaped in amazement.

Momma: "Come on, Bobby, let's go feed the ducks."
Me: "But, Momma, look at what they monkeys are doing."
Momma (to Gert, in a low whisper): "It's disgusting."
Gert: "Now I know were that saying 'More fun than a barrel of monkeys' came from."
Momma: "Hush, Gert. (Tugging my arm.) Come on, Bobby."

That was the first time I had seen sexual intercourse, and I had no idea at all what was going on. Actually, with all the kids crowsded around the monkey cages starting wide-eyed and mesmerized, it was probably a missed opportunity for the parents present to explain the "birds and the bees," which, incidentally, is certainly a fatuous expression. Up until the recent spate of animal mating shows on ETV and the Discovery Channel, never in my entire life had I seen a bird or a bee copulating. A more appropriate expression might have been the "dogs and the cats," or the "rabbits and the love bugs," or maybe just the "monkeys" or, even better, "monkey business" or "monkey shines." But this was the 40s, so they probably picked animals that no child would ever see, on purpose.

Sometimes, there were crowds of teenagers there also, cheering the monkeys on: "Come on Cheetah!" "No wonder Tarzan slept on his back!" "Oooo, look at King (rhymes with Kong)."

The monkeys' sexual antics were simply a matter of animals doing what comes naturally. As for the genital groping and extemporaneous body orifice examinations, it seemed to be so excessive that I feel there may have been some environmental stimulation. After all, the zoo was located just between the home of the Charleston Rebels (the city's minor league baseball team) and The Citadel. Monkey see, monkey do…

I completed my sex mile run around and through the Hampton Park, ending up at about the spot where the monkeys used to be. I felt I could almost hear the screeching and howling, smell their awful stench.

Hampton Park is still a beautiful spot, and although I miss the animals, I don't miss the zoo. Over the years, I've come to feel that wild animals don't belong behind bars except to protect them from vengeful, short-changed humans.

[Bob Coskrey writes from his cage in Mt. Pleasant.]

Must Use New Words and Phrases for the Millennium

June 1999
Must Use New Words and Phrases for the Millennium
By Bob Coskrey

Having been introduced to the interested word list in Wallenchinsky and Wallace’s book of Lists “Names of Things You Didn’t Know Had Names,” “Obscure and Obsolete Words,” “Untranslatable Words,” etc., I was inspired to come up with a list of my own words and phrases, entitled simply, “Must Use New Words and Phrases for the New Millennium.” Some of these you will note, are old words or names with newly ascribed meanings, like the first one, for example:

1. Cher Crop (Share Crop), noun: How a middle-aged female rock star obsessed with remaining forever young refers to her stable of young men, hence any group of young men preyed upon by one or more horny old women.
2. Clintonize, verb: This word, as one might guess, has multiple meanings: a) to lie publicly in an astoundingly audacious manner; b) to deny that a very commonly known human sexual behavior constitutes sexual relations, despite overwhelming clinical evidence; c) a specialized type of dry cleaning effective in removing incriminating stains, also known as “semenizing.”
3. Win One for the Gifford: to accomplish an extramarital liaison without being video-taped.
4. Pam-Mammicide, noun: the diminishing or eradicating of a personal characteristic that is totally responsible for one’s professional success.
5. Dennygrate, verb: to racially discriminate against someone in a public eating place.
6. Newter, verb: to jeopardize or destroy one’s career through making absurdly idiotic and self-destructive statements, e.g., Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder newtered himself in public.
7. Springer Spaniel, noun: a dog trained to detect whether an androgynous person claiming to be female is one or not. If after a thorough sniffing, male genitalia is discovered, the dog will go into a pointing stance.
8. Dylanate, verb: to conduct a successful career as a singer/songwriter even though no one can understand a single word you say.
9. Gorify (GORE-i-fy), verb, two meanings: a) to take credit for something that everyone else knows you had nothing to do with, e.g., oceans, fire, or the Internet; b) to be glorified is: to act/talk as if your limbs and brain cells were petrified.
10. Join the Dick Armey: to make an embarrassing public malapropism, unconsciously revealing a prejudiced mindset, requiring an immediate public apology.
11. Carlie Simonize: to write a disparaging song about your ex-lover.
12. Concession area: section of a movie theater where a customer conceded to pay whatever price is demanded for junk food he/she could buy elsewhere for half the amount or better.
13. Cardiolotto, noun: game played by theater concession counter employees in which cholesterol gorging customers are secretly assigned numbers, which a randomly selected, and the lucky employee whose selectee has a heart attack before leaving the theater receives a sizeable bonus.
14. Pop-off corn: name given to butter saturated popcorn sold at concession counters by its employees because of it deadly effect on customers.
15. Fruit Loop: specialized subway systems in Chicago for gays.

Reasons Why I Love St. Patrick’s Day

(originally published March, 1998)

1. Always enjoy the re-enactment of the St. Patrick’s miracle with local lawyers and politicians playing the parts of snakes.

2. The colorful contrasts of bright green outfits with brilliant red faces.

3. The Long Distance Barfing Contest outside the Knights of Columbus Hall.

4. Seeing people with naturally green teeth looking proud instead of self-conscious.

5. I’m looking forward to the Christening of the new Mart Street Vomitorium.

6. The friendly wagering on which old drunk guys won’t finish the parade.

7. Observing the morning-after hysterics of guys who drank green beer and now mistakenly think they have urinary tract infections.

8. Raucous boasting by guys at the Hibernian Hall about who has the biggest Shillelagh.

9. Seeing restaurants unloading their green with mold she-crab soup as “Kilarney Crab Chowder.”

10. That new race, the 5k Guinness Stagger.

The Idle Poor

As we all are aware, thanks to programs like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," not to mention the daily stories carried by the national and local media, rich people, old or nouveau, growing weary of laying on chaise lounges eating grapes, and ordering others to "amuse me," sometimes have to dig deep into their shallow reservoirs of creativity to keep themselves interested. That's why we see them doing bizarre things, such as, buying complete wardrobes for their neurologically afflicted rat dogs or racing each other in giant hot-air balloons that I secretly wish would disappear into the sun (Well, I guess it's not a secret anymore). However, I am here to aver emphatically that boredom-precipitated aberrant behavior is not the proprietary expression of the well-to-do. The term "idle" can be pejoratively applied to the poor as well as the rich, take none other than myself for example.

During what I refer to as my "Fallow Years," 1960-63 (I was in my early 20s), when I endured some times in which I neighter was availing myself of educational opportunities nor experiencing gainful employment, I managed to subsists solely on an unemployment check of $37.00, although this was supplemental by occasional odd jobs such as sanding a friend's sailboat one summer, for which he paid me through a beer tab at "Big John's Tavern." Being a very caring and insightful friend, he was unburdening me from the excruciating, moral dilemma of having to decide whether I would apply my hard earned wages to something so spiritually unsatisfying as rent or a utility bill or temporarily fill up the vacuum of a vacuous life with unlimited pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon. 45 years later this munificent gesture still brings tears to presbyopic eyes.

But, when the occasional jobs dried up, I was forced to move back home for a while, an act which to most parents is tantamount to having a huge banner covering the front of the house screaming, "Welcome Home, My Son, The Loser!" I would always have to save most of my money for the weekend, not being able to afford to go out during the week, which was just as well, since all of my friends wee either still in college or working and wouldn't want to carouse on week days anyway. Being stuck with an abundance of personal downtime, I had to think of ways, preferably non-productive, to amuse myself, that is once I'd come up with some ostensibly worthwhile pursuit designed to bolster my foundering self-esteem. To address the latter, I decided after reading an article about playwrights one day to pursue the totally spurious goal of becoming one, and this was before I had ever written anything for publication. To legitimize this mirage, I would go to the library every day and read plays, from Odets to Cocteau to O'Neil to Chekhov. I would spend hours in the Charleston County Library. Did I ever write a play? No. What's worse, despite my ill-founded diligence, the most I can say about the experience is that I learned that plays are much more enjoyable seen than read, and I didn't find this out till 35 years later.

But what I did enjoy was my daily game of Mantle-Ball (which had nothing to do with "The Mick."), a semi-vigorous solo endeavor played within the confines of my mother's small living room, which involved my taking a carefully rolled up wad of paper and trying to toss it into a small brass vase located on the mantle piece. I would always pretend to be a Boston Celtic, and would imagine it to be the last few seconds of the game. Of course, I was also the announcer as well as the crowd: "the ball goes in to Russell, with time running out, and he tried an off-balance scoop shot under the outstretched tree trunks of Chamberlain—the Celtics win!" I see myself making the incredible shot in the large mirror strategically located directly behind the vase. This is accompanied by self-generated crowd roaring, which as most guys know, can be created by breathing out as if you're trying to fog up your glasses prior to cleaning them, while simultaneously whispering the word, "haaaaaaaay." Then I would briefly acknowledge the frenetic crowd with a wave (we didn't dance around with our arrogant index fingers raised in those days). As quickly as the game ends, another one begins, as I, in the form of John Havlicek this time, fire off a floating jumper from the top of the key. This continues with different Celtics for about a half an hour or until my mother or some other semblance of reality interrupts me. And before you condemn this as a pathetic and wimpy pastime, let me douse your flash-fire of obloquy with the bulletin that Mantle-Ball is a lot rougher than it appears, as the pinkish scars on the knuckles of my shooting hand injured by the oaken mantle itself while executing a particularly vehement, backwards dunk from behind the coffee table will attest.

For pure relaxation, though, "Baseball Cards"—and I don't mean the kind you trade—was the best. It was a relatively simple game in concept. These were games of winding down, after all, following an intense day of all out self-imposed reading at the library, occasionally exacerbated by continuous hours of complete physical non-involvement, as a result of my mother occupying the Boston Garden/living room to watch her soap operas. I would use an "ordinary deck of cards," as the magicians feel they must say, with each one representing a specific baseball action: Aces were homeruns, the King of Spades was a triple, queens were doubles and all Jacks and tens were singles. The red kings were walks, the King of clubs a hit batter, the Joker an error, and black twos were double plays. There were no cards designating things like steals, blacks, triple plays, bunts, infield flies, or interference. I just wanted to have fun, not prepare for a Mensa test. Then, I'd like the lineups just like the box scores that you see on the sports page. It would always be the Yankees against the world, sort of like it is now. There would be Maris, Mantle, Richardson, Ford and company against Killebrew and the Twins, Kaline and the Tigers, Mays and the Giants, and so on. I would simply deal out the cards until one team won, usually the Yankees (no, I didn't cheat), and when it was over, I would then figure out the batting averages and ERAs. And, of course, I didn't calculate the slugging or fielding percentages. What do you take me for? Some sort of creepy misfit with no life? Sometimes, I would substitute scrabble tiles for cards just to show a bit of my wild side.

Near the end of my "Fallow Years," I briefly lived in Florence, SC, with two friends who were attending what is now Francis Marion College and was then the USC extension at Florence. It was my intention get a job there and go to school, as well. The job never came though, so neither did the school, but fortunately, the $37.00 check continued. Pathetically, I had more money than either of my friends. We shared two rooms in a motel till we could find an apartment and it was there at the Colonial Court Motel, our outside social activities being limited by our communal poverty, that we spent much of our time play my single, socially interactive game of this period, the only one I cannot take credit or discredit for creating. It came in the form of an electronic football game that I had had for about 11 or 12 years. I just came across it in a bunch of old packed away stuff and brought it with me, envisioning delphically that it would might somehow fit into our social (in)activities. This, as the others, was a very rudimentary game, a perhaps 2 ½ X 1 foot metal football field whose surface would vibrate when you turned on a switch.

Then there were 22 flat, one dimensional football players on a small metal base with 2 square, vertical plates beneath, facing fore and aft that slanted backwards. Once the switch was pressed, these little figures would start moving around the board. The ball was an oval shaped piece of felt, which could be wedged into any one of the figures so it would seem as though he were carrying it. There was also an extra man who was the kicker. You would load the ball into a catapult-like device attached to him, and you would aim at the tiny goalposts, squeeze and let fly, and maybe 8% of the time you would split the uprights. If you were on offense, you would basically try to arrange all your blockers into a wedge and hope they would push through the defense, whose men you would line up between two blockers so that they would split them. You could also bend the action plates, so that a player could make an end run, but you would have to be close to the goal or else he would simply go in a circle or maybe end up scoring for the other team. Once the ball carrier was touched by an opposing player, the ball was downed there. This game, as with the rest, did not require an abundance of gray matter, fortunately for us, but as is common with most indoor games organized by guys, it did inevitably inspire/require a lot of beer-swilling. In other words, a game designed for Ward Cleaver-like dad to spend quality time with their 10 year olds became one that many former child stars would probably like to play now, a loud, sloppy drinking game, but without the drugs. I make a first down, you chug down half your beer. You stop me, I do likewise. I make a touchdown, you chug a whole beer. You take over on down, I chug one. I make a 100 yard field goal, you drink 2 beer in 10 minutes. You tackle me in the endzone or recover a fumble, I swig 2 in 10 minutes. In reality, while the primary goal was to win the football game, secondary one of being the last man to throw up and/or pass out gradually evolved. Since there were three of us, two would play, while the odd man out would be the referee and scorer, but he would also have to bet on either the offense or the defense on each play. If he chose the loser, he would have to drink the same amount of beer. We didn't want some wiseass sober dude laughing at us.

The game would end after two hours, and whoever was head at the time, was the winner, with ties being decided by whoever emitted the longest belch.

It's been 42 years since the $37.00 unemployment check finally ran out, as did my roommates, and now, instead of creating inane games, I write crap like this, although I still occasionally make a brief contest of tossing a piece of paper into the trash can. Not playing cards very often, I've had no opportunities to segue into baseball cards again, and I don't know what happened to the electric football game, but if I ever see one on eBay or the Antique Road Show, I'll probably try to buy it.

An article on the "Idle Middle Class?" No such thing, we're all holding down three jobs, trying to survive in George Dubya's America. I apologize to my conservative readers. You're probably thinking the whole article was a setup for this last comment.