All Entries in the "Fractured Opinion" Category
Fifteen Seconds of Fame…
The waddling slider grip proved effective
Wilhelm “Tobacco” Roosterwande loaded up the ball. No one debates the fact. What is particularly alarming and somewhat amusing is that he used horse apples in his final “salsa of saliva”.
The baseball slid 10 ways to Sunday. He happily loaded the ball without paying the price until finally he got busted in 1904, but not until 699 strikeouts had been recorded, and at a record pace.
“I once saw his curveball break a foot, then drop to socks line.” said longtime teammate Tyrone “Pop” Fly who was often pressed into service behind the dish when things got wet and sloppy.
Although passed by for Cooperstown, Roosterwande has remained an icon for upcoming spit ballers, toddlers, old farts and anyone who drools.
Summer ’21 to be juried event
(Colona) Persons vacationing in Western Colorado next season will be doing so by invitation only according to a resolution adopted last night by Colorado Brie Country. While most tourists will be invited back, the roster will be determined by a jury of residents who will make all final decisions on the matter.
“Once the final invitation list is released there will be no exceptions,” said Jack Spratt of Gladstone Amusements. “This is an occasion where less is more. We think the people included in our official observation of summer will experience a more meaningful vacation without the fringe element in attendance.”
Spratt chose not to comment on rumors that the United States Border Patrol will be employed to keep intruders out of the inter-mountain region through September. Unreliable sources here and at the foot of Storm King insist that the feds have been invited in.
“They did one crack job at keeping illegal Latin American immigrants from walking into Maine,” said one member of the jury. We think they can do the same for us.”
It was not clear how this decision would affect restrictions on water grabs by the Confront Range next spring. At present any exchange must be approved on a bucket-by-bucket basis until that region realizes that growth without water cannot be tolerated on either side of the Continental Hayride.
– Zorro DesPlants
“When poor people are rude and ignorant we write it off to bad breeding. When rich people are rude and ignorant we write it off to bad breeding. It is separate but equal bad breeding.”
– Paula Parvenu
Our Presidents and Their Baseball
The only reason that George Washington did not play catch with one of his junior officers at Valley Forge was because it was just too cold. The next summer, according to a letter sent home by a private in the Continental Army, the general really got after it, spending many of his idle hours whipping the ball around the horn to everyone who produced a mitt. You didn’t know that, did you? Imagine Washington to Mad Anthony Wayne to Horacio Gates…The ultimate double-play combination of the day.
Firebrand John Adams wasn’t far behind. Known to engage in a game of rounders, an early interpretation of baseball, Adams loved the competition and became a damned fine shortstop in his later years. In addition, he was the scourge of the base paths, especially when a Tory team was in town. 
As the reader can clearly see, baseball and the Presidency appeared hand in glove from the very beginning of the nation. Although verification is sketchy in the early days, by the mid-1800s the keystone phenomenon had more than reached Pennsylvania Avenue. Sadly, no chief executive ever played pro ball. Most were relegated to ribbon cutting at new stadiums or to throwing out the first pitch.
In 1862, the long-legged Abraham Lincoln, who reportedly could lope from first to second in three steps, built a small field out behind the White House so his sons and he could play. Lincoln struck quite a pose winding up for a curve in the top hat and tails of his dark days at the helm. He had quite a brush-back pitch. Just ask George McClellan (deceased too). His successor of sorts, the bad luck Andrew Johnson was the first chief executive to call baseball “our national game”. He actually gave federal employees the day off to watch a game in 1867 and again in 1868, before his impeachment at the hands of a butter fingered Congress, who thought the game to be a waste of time.
Soon after, General, now President Grant umpired his first game (Gothic, Colorado- June 30, 1878) between two teams of former Union soldiers. The former commander was never challenged on his calls by the adoring troops. He reportedly ordered a keg to be stationed at home plate so as to encourage competitive play.
However, baseball was new and all eyes looked West even though the Dodgers and Giants had yet to move to California. Benjamin Harrison was the first President to watch a live game. In 1892 he watched the Washington Senators lose to the Cincinnati Reds. William Howard Taft was first to see a game in his hometown, in attendance as the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Reds in 1912.
Teddy Roosevelt (a distant relative of this writer) had once called baseball a mollycoddle game. Historians say that it just wasn’t violent enough for his tastes. Woodrow Wilson played ball at Davidson before transferring to Princeton. He threw out the first pitch in the 1915 World Series and watched Philadelphia beat Boston. In 1913 he signed an autograph for the legendary Ty Cobb. The game was pretty much white bread in those days in perfect harmony with Wilson’s much-publicized ill feelings toward blacks and immigrants. Warren Harding owned a minor league team. Herbert Hoover was booed at the Series in 1931.
Franklin Roosevelt, partially handicapped due to polio, served the majority of four terms in the Oval Office. He was an avid fan once telling a friend, “If I didn’t have to hobble up the steps in front of all those people I’d be at the ballpark everyday.” To illustrate the length of his tenure: Jimmy Foxx hit 353 home runs during the Roosevelt Presidency. Joe DiMaggio performed magic while FDR was in office, posting his 56-game hitting streak during the summer of innocence, before the US entered World War II.
In more modern times, the connection between the diamond and the White House became even more pronounced. In 1953 when Dwight Eisenhower took over the love affair went deeper. Ike, who had played semi-pro ball in the Kansas State League, once admitted to sportswriters “not making the baseball team at West Point was my biggest disappointment in life”. Besides personally presenting Mickey Vernon with his batting champion trophy, Ike invited the winners of the Mexican League championship to the White House.
“I wanted to be a real Major player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner,” Ike told a Gettysburg friend before his death in 1969.
Then came John Kennedy, a big Red Sox fan, who went so far as to appoint an under-secretary of baseball when he took office in 1961. Once, when talking to Cardinals’ great Stan Musial, Kennedy said,” A couple of years ago they told me I was too young to be President and that you were too old to play baseball. But we fooled them.”
Did Lyndon Johnson throw a high hard one at Barry Goldwater in 1964? Did Richard Nixon steal signs and change box scores after the embarrassment of Watergate? Did Jimmy “The Smile” Carter once jump the railing to congratulate the Braves after the team won the Series in 1992? Absolutely maybe. Rosalynn verified Jimmy’s enthusiastic feat while visiting Crested Butte in 1998. So did Hank Aaron.
Ronald Reagan began his career as a sports broadcaster. After his landslide election in 1980, while admiring portraits of former Presidents, Reagan told Senator Tip O’Neill that he had once played Grover Cleveland in the movies to which O’Neill retorted, “No Mr. President, that was Grover Cleveland Alexander. “I knew the nation was in tough shape from that moment on, O’Neill had later said. Win one for the Gipper and all.”
In the late 40s, George H Bush played standout first base as captain for Yale, hosted babe Ruth’s visit to the team’s New Haven field and even cracked a single off Milt Pappas during an old-timers game. Bill Clinton grew up a Cardinals’ fan but switched to the Cubs when he married Hillary. Like Jimmy Carter, Clinton favored a pardon for Pete Rose saying he “had paid the price”. Despite his best efforts, he could not end the baseball strike in 1994.
As most of us know George W Bush once owned part of the Texas Rangers and was the person responsible for trading Sammy Sosa to the White Sox (for Dick Cheney?). Many feel Bush was better suited for president of a baseball team than his later position. Longtime White Sox fan Barack Obama won 69 million votes in 2008 and is the only known Chief Executive to have a team named after him: The Class-A Brooklyn (NY) Cyclones renamed themselves the Baracklyn Cyclones in 2009 as a tribute to Obama.
Donald Trump has never bankrupted a baseball franchise. He has yet to turn a double-play. Joe Biden once smacked a ground-rule double into Chesapeake Bay and the ball was returned some 20 years later. It rests in the Oval Office today, guarded by two German Shepherds.
– Gabby Haze
SEASONAL GUSTS SEE RETURN OF CUMBERSOME WIND NETS
(Montrose) An intricate system of wind nets will once again be employed 2 miles east of town, in an attempt to cut losses and aggravation caused by the elements here. The nets, designed by engineers at Howl Turbines of Bostwick Park, saw only limited success last spring but are expected to exercise a very positive influence this year.
Employing the basic science of fly tying, the tiny squares are capable of catching everything from Herefords to lottery tickets.
“We can expect to recover almost anything blown off course by the high winds,” said one engineer. “While we are highly concerned with currency, grocery lists, discarded plastic bags and campaign literature, our biggest complaints so far have to do with the loss of cowboy hats.”
In response to the community the nets will be coated with a non-toxic sticky substance that will prevent these often cunning buckaroo hats from escaping once caught.
“There’s nothing quite so sad as to watch a full grown adult chase a new straw hat all the way to Gunnison in high winds,” said a source from city hall. “Our method is really quite simple, modeled after the spider’s web. Only this time the hat is the fly or visa versa.”
When installed the net stands erect across highway 50 and stretch about 1/2 mile to each side. A backup multi-colored nylon rope maze, knotted and fine tuned by local navy veterans to determine wind direction and velocity, is expected to be in place by Friday.
During normal business hours, small access portals allow motorized traffic regular access from 5 am to 8 pm. After that time only police, clerics and pizza delivery personnel will be allowed to penetrate the peremptory perimeter. During these dark hours teams of praetorian eunuchs will be patrolling the fringes of our strategic locales looking for rogue wind tunnels, wild asparagus and blueprints for the controversial Blue Creek Canyon Remodel.
Air travel to and from Montrose is not expected to be obstructed or improved during turbulent days. Insiders say that vertical service will most likely be more costly due to higher demand.
“It’s just another springtime in Montrose,” said 125-year-old driving instructor, Ernesto “Ernie” Rigarde. Yep, if you don’t like the weather around these parts just wait a few months and it will change.”
Local media workhorses at station ZYX will present a locally produced update this Saturday morning entitled “The Wind”. The program will feature a series of still life shots of the wind from 1900 to present. Filmed in conjunction with the Canning Channel “The Wind” will be broadcast at an undisclosed location from a press bunker somewhere in the Bland Valley. Critics say the presentation is quite appropriate, filling information gaps in a non-election year.
– Fred Zeppelin
“No more demon rum,” she say
“‘’cept maybe on a holiday.
Them holidays fly by so fast
Some for months and months they last.”
-Raynelle Downs, Bluefields, Nicaragua
The Least Influential People in Western Culture
By Ken Currie
Special from our archives
As a handful of Covid-tired, calendar-clutching fanatics watch another month fly by second-string journalists are scrambling for angles, scrutinizing the virus and its accompanying boredom. I, for one, was quite fond of the 20th Century, having spent most of my adult life in it. I did not stand in the way when the 21st Century arrived on the doorstep. I am not whining. We didn’t get enough. We didn’t accomplish enough. As others list and write about the great events and people of the past 1000 years, I too have compiled a list…not of important people, nor of lesser-known greats. My list does not contain the forgotten or the obscure, but is rather a roster of complete and classic nobodies. Here then is my contribution to posterity…last and least influential.
Alfredo Veducino (1102-1168)
Alfredo served as a monk in Spain. He maintained strict silence for fifty-five years although he never really took an official vow to that affect. The monastery where Alfredo lived was one where fellow monks unearthed and translated what was believed to be the grocery list of the prophet Isaiah. In later years the entire ordeal was downplayed when a senior monk pointed out that chicken chow mein was not available during that primitive Biblical period. This discovery and the subsequent dismissal of the said document shook the religious world of the time. Luckily for Alfredo he had had nothing to do with the research from the onset. He was bust keeping silent adhering to his daily regiment of sleeping until 3:45 in the afternoon and spending the remainder of the day engaging in what fellow monks called escucha de conejos or listening to rabbits.
Stefanos Meridan (1460-?)
Born the son of a destitute Portuguese eel trapper, spent his early years living on the beach with his father. His mother, a stout woman, would not allow either of them in the house do reportedly to the presence of an icky eel slime aroma. At age 11 a desperate Stefanos stowed away on a large merchant ship. After three days it became apparent that the ship had been abandoned. On the fourth day he returned home, cold and hungry, only to be locked out of the house by his mother who complained of a musty shipwreck stench that mysteriously followed the lad about. Later, as an adult, he claimed to have discovered a swift ocean-going route between Portugal and Spain. He set sail, bankrolled by the Italian court, centered in the city state of Sinatra, and three years later was swept ashore along the rocky coast of Scotland. He quickly claimed the land for the queen of Portugal and renamed in Stefanoland, after himself. Almost twenty minutes later redheaded Picts in plaid skirts made him sail away by hurling jagged rocks at his head. He was never seen again. Some one hundred years later a rough map surfaced at some insignificant Renaissance yard sale in a familiar writing style common to Stefanos. The map featured England and Ireland carefully drawn to scale, but named Meridanland and Stef’s Isle.
Ping Hi Pong (1225-1324)
As a philosopher in China, Ping taught meditation to children six years old and younger. He is credited with two metaphysical sayings. One was “The man who can boil a rooster’s egg will accomplish an impossible task” and the other, “To hear a beautiful woman sing, now that’s really something.” To this day no one has proven Ping wrong on either saying. As Ping neared his one-hundredth birthday, an acolyte asked him for the secret of longevity. He smiled, settled back into his easy chair and said, “To live a hundred years one must…” and before he could finish the sentence, he dropped dead.
Ivan Ivanivan (1850-1923)
As a distant cousin of Czar Nicholas, Ivan was extended privileges not often enjoyed by young men of his time. He got two extra potatoes per month and a full equestrian scholarship to Kiev Community College. While at school he penned Czar Wars…The Empire Strikes Us. This was considered controversial by the three people who actually read it (oddly enough they made up the majority of literate people in Russia at the time). He also wrote a collection of poems that the same three people began to read but found to be too controversial to complete. Ivan was traded to a Siberian minor league franchise for a warped landscape rake and lived in that barren place for his last 60 years because, as he put it: “In Siberia nobody expects you to grow a garden.”
Dr. Lisa Blackhart (1801-1888)
As the first female doctor in Boston to refuse to touch newborn infants, Lisa was encouraged by her brahman family to hit the Oregon Trail. After two difficult months in the saddle she decided to turn around and try heading west. She settled for a time in Kansas City doing odd jobs like radical amputation and liver transplants. Soon she became shocked by the illiteracy rate among two-year-olds. Determined to start a school to cure these social ills, she found her dislike of children to be a formidable obstacle. She moved on to Denver but found young children there to be equally annoying. She finally landed in Sacramento where she began a medical practice again. However, after only two months as a frontier doctor, she initiated a stern policy of refusing to see anyone who was sick or injured. With no patients to treat and no children to teach Dr Blackhart described her golden years as “the most fulfilling of my career.”
Wolfgang Jack VonStein (1679-1735)
As a boy in Hungary, Wolfgang (a long shot to make anyone’s list) longed to play the piano. Sadly, his parents could not afford to purchase such an expensive instrument but they did provide him with two chicken bones that he carried with him at all times. All over the village Wolfgang could be heard tapping the bones together to create increasingly complex rhythms. After a chance meeting with John Sebastian Bach at a local cafe the maestro offered to tutor the prospect free of charge. Once, at Bach’s home, the great musician demanded that Wolfgang rinse the chicken grease from his fingers before touching the piano. An enraged Wolfgang stormed out of the house never to return. In the years that followed he composed several symphonies to be performed entirely on poultry bones. Today a noted virtuoso, Rupkin Mensonich, performs VonStein’s work outside a sushi bar in Prague free every other Thursday unless it rains or something. Mensonich is number seven on our list.
Marcia Kreep (1821-1891)
Born in Vancouver on the wrong side of town, Marcia perspired to be an inventor. Among her drawings are elaborate schematics for what she called her “clock dismantler” and her similarly designed “pocket watch smasher”. Her early inventions were not well received and she found herself embracing poverty. Plus she was quite poor. This never changed. Other designs by Kreep were the “mechanized digital book dropper” the “self-sinking ponga boat” and one curious concept entitled simply “the thing that doesn’t work right”.
Jeff Singlehair (1946- )
A Flint, Michigan native, the idealistic Singlehair rejected his father’s offer to join him as a partner in an environmental engineering firm. Jeff said: “You engineers are wrecking the world with all that train smoke and other ungroovy stuff, um, man!” Jeff then joined the hippie movement but became disillusioned when, at age 20, all of his hair fell out. He attended a small Everly Brothers concert at Windsock, N.C. in the summer of 1969 mistakenly thinking (to this day) that he had been a part of the largest, most famous rock and roll event of his generation. Jeff currently lives in Chevy Chase in a Chevy van and makes candles for aromatherapy workshops around Southwestern Colorado.
Read more of Ken’s keen observations in his newest coffee table book “Norwood Exposure” which is exclusively for sale in Nucla and Paradox.
Watch for our Nine Billion Most Average People of the Last Millennium
in next month’s special insert site and see if your name is mentioned!
My Night on Camp Bird Road
It was a dark and stormy night or maybe it was the perfect summer evening. I really don’t remember. All I know is that I was hungry, that being redundant since I am a healthy, five-year-old, 300 pound black bear. The heavy rains have netted lots of berries but how many berries does it take to fill the stomach of a bear as big as me? Every so often I need something more substantial, something that sticks to the ribs, as they say.
Wait, there’s a cabin at the end of this lane and no light on. I wonder if anyone’s home? I wonder if the door is locked? It doesn’t matter since I am a bear and doors mean very little, even though we bruins know full well how to open them. Maybe I should break through a window and check out the provisions. It could be trouble but no one’s around and I am big and hairy.
I approach from the wooded side of the cabin and get up on my hind legs to have a sniff around. Boy, someone should firm up this porch. It barely holds my weight. I peek into the kitchen and notice that the furniture looks rough. The couch looks like second-hand but I don’t plan to take a nap. I plan to eat! These humans could really use a decorator.
If I exert just the right amount of pressure on the glass it will give in. A light push…There with a little crash I’m inside.
Now to the important part without further delay. I wonder what kind of grub these absent humans have stashed in the cupboards. The fools always leave something around in case of a big snow. Dispensing with formalities I tear off the cupboard door. Cheerios! I love Cheerios. The only thing better than cheerios is Sugar Crisps, which have a bear on the front of the package.
Now where have they hidden the honey? These kinds of humans always have honey around in one of those plastic bear jars for some reason that escapes me. They should have plastic bee jars. The jars are always real sticky and it’s hard to get the lid off without any thumbs on my paw. Here it is in a small cereal bowl. Real easy to eat. Now I have a feast and there are some grapes in the refrigerator too. I think I’ll go back out on the porch and chow down. Ahhhhh….
Moments after eating I hear a rustling in the bushes. What? It’s one of those humans with a cooking pot and spoon in her hand. Now she’s banging the pot with the spoon. What’s she trying to do? Wake up the whole neighborhood? If she thinks I’m going to run off because she’s banging around, she’s nuts.
Now she’s staring at me. Doesn’t she know how dangerous it can be to make eye contact with a bear? And why isn’t she wearing bells? Didn’t she read the little books that the rangers give out at the cute little campsites?
I stand and give her my best growl. Usually this works. Now she’s gone into the house. Maybe there are a few more boxes of cereal inside. I crawl back through the broken window taking care not to scrape myself on the jagged glass. Look, there are cans of soup but no opener. There’re marshmallows. And what’s this? Coffee? Bears don’t usually like to eat coffee but we eat garbage. I’ll try anything once. Now I hear the human upstairs on the phone talking about me. She’s telling someone on the other end of the line that there is a bear in her kitchen.
In a mater of moments a mob of these funny creatures is at the gate. One has a gun. They all look mad. I hope he’s not stupid enough to fire that thing near the house. Someone could get shot. Apparently he does not realize how dangerous firearms can be in the hands of a human. Now he’s aiming the gun in my direction. He lifts it and fires into the air. I charge without hesitation. I’m a bear, you know.
Despite their sophisticated technology the humans scatter. The bluff worked. I knew they weren’t really a threat. I quickly scamper across the yard and into the black timber and up the hill to safety. I’ll have to go back another night to finish the rest of the groceries. It’s nice to know they are there.
That was fun.
