Insight: The simplest thing not everyone has

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When I was growing up, I used to receive compliments for my manners but to be honest, the credit belongs to my parents who drilled into me the basics of etiquette.

My father would describe etiquette to my younger brother and me as like traffic lights for our interactions with others and he said that courtesy was simply a way to show respect for others. My mother was a stickler for proper manners and believed that displays of improper etiquette required immediate corrections.

She was “hands-on” with her corrections of bad manners and many times the lobe of my right ear was yanked as she made a point. Her understanding of good manners also made her mandate that children should not place their elbows on the table when seated for dinner.

According to my parents, exhibiting proper manners included always being mindful of other people’s feelings, beliefs, and expectations and helped to create more positive relationships with everyone in our lives. That included teachers, grocery clerks, bus drivers, aunts and uncles, the mailman and the doctor.

I thought of this last Saturday night while I was sitting alone at a table at a Rock n’ Roll dance waiting for my wife to return from the restroom. I was scrolling through my iPhone looking at Major League Baseball scores. When she arrived back at the table, she immediately informed me that looking at my phone was bad manners and anti-social.

Here are some of my parents’ basic manners tenets:

Wait to eat until everyone is seated and served. During my U.S. Air Force Basic Training experience, if I was to arrive at a vacant table for four in the dining hall, I was required to stand at attention with my hand raised indicating how many seats were left at the table. Once all the seats were filled, you could sit down and eat your meal. To this day no matter if I’m sitting in a restaurant or at home, if I’m served first, I won’t start eating until everyone’s food is at the table.

Respect the personal space of others. My father stressed that I never stand too close to people and insisted that I always ask before touching someone. That included always asking before reaching into someone else’s refrigerator or cupboards when visiting friends or neighbors. Years ago, I had a boss at the newspaper I was working at who would come up from behind me when I was sitting at my cubicle and working on my computer. He wanted to see what I was typing and would creep up so close to me to catch a glimpse of my computer screen that I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. It was a disregard for my personal space and the other reporters in our department to whom he did the same thing.

Being punctual means you’re never late. My mother explained to me that it shows respect for other people’s time when you are on time or early for appointments and meetings. To this very day, I try to arrive for my appointments in advance of the scheduled time not only for my own peace of mind, but also to let the person I have the appointment with know I’m there. Once I was attending a press briefing for an author who had written a popular book and the author had noticed I had arrived early and was so impressed by that, he offered me an exclusive interview after the other reporters had left.

Always tip service workers well. My father came from a family of nine kids during the Great Depression. He worked for 19 cents an hour every day after high school classes at a company that made tin cans. He understood that no matter what a person’s job or social status was, they deserved to be singled out for the exceptional service that they provide. He went out his way to thank waitresses, janitors, or garbage men with a generous tip as appreciation. My father said that leaving a tip is a polite way of saying thank you while recognizing and acknowledging the value of contributions that service workers make to our lives.

Offering to help others is a sign of courtesy. Whether it was helping an elderly woman carry a bag of groceries to her car or returning shopping carts to the proper collection area, my mother demanded that I do something useful for others when I was out in public with her. She told me when I was a paperboy that I should always bring newspapers I was delivering to a subscriber’s front steps, rather than pitching them in their driveway as I rode past their homes on my bicycle. She would often send me over to a neighbor’s house to help rake leaves for them or shovel snow from their sidewalk. Years later, I still push the shopping carts back neatly in the collection spot instead of just leaving it for someone else to push there.

The way I see it, good manners are a way of showing other people that we respect them. Sadly, it seems to be disappearing in today’s world. <

Barbara Bagshaw: Protecting Maine’s voice in Presidential Elections

By State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

Last session, the Legislature passed a law that limits the voices of small states like Maine in selecting a President.

State Rep. Barbara
Bagshaw

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that was approved by lawmakers by one vote, and allowed to become law without the governor’s signature, would award the state’s four electoral votes to whichever candidate garners the most popular votes nationwide, irrespective of who the majority of Mainers voted for at the ballot box.

The Electoral College is a constitutional provision that ensures that small states, like Maine, have a voice in selecting the President of the United States. Because of that provision, Maine has received attention from presidential candidates. The law attempts to circumvent the Constitution by surrendering Maine’s voice through an interstate compact.

It means that if Mainers vote for a different candidate than the candidate winning the national popular vote, state electors would be bound to vote for the popular vote winner. The votes of large states with major cities like California and New York would dominate at the expense of smaller, rural states.

The compact requires enough states to join before it is triggered. It has the potential to create national chaos in our court system, especially if there is a recount in any of the states.

I can only speculate why Governor Mills did not sign it. In her message she claimed that she had conflicted feelings about the law and saw merit in both sides. I personally believe that it is unconstitutional under Article 1, Sec. 10, Clause 3 because it enters into a state compact without Congressional approval. It will not withstand Supreme Court scrutiny if it is ever triggered.

Ironically, the law was passed to prevent President Trump from being elected because Democrats assumed he would lose the popular vote. In 2024, Trump won the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide, winning all the battleground states. It is dangerous to change the constitution for future electoral advantage by looking back at previous elections.

As your legislator I sponsored a bill to repeal the law and recently it had a public hearing. I am hopeful that there is enough bipartisan support to correct the mistake that was made and preserve Maine influence in Presidential elections. The legislature must carefully consider protecting Maine’s 4 electoral votes from theft by large, urban states.

It is an honor to represent part of Windham in the Legislature. If there is any way that I can be of assistance, please contact me at barbara.bagshaw@legislature.maine.gov .My office phone number is 207-287-1440. You can find me on Facebook. To receive regular updates, sign up for my e-newsletter at https://mainehousegop.org/

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff. <

The car accident (with subliminal advertising)

By Andy Young

Monday has never been my favorite day of the week, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that a snowplow tore off most of my car’s rear bumper on one of them this past February. I hadn’t planned on that happening, but there’s a reason that motor vehicle mishaps are referred to as “accidents.”

At the moment of impact, I wasn’t feeling particularly fortunate, but in retrospect I believe that Feb. 3 was an extremely lucky day.

Why? Let me count the ways.

While the inauspicious start to the week sidelined my car temporarily, I myself was unhurt in the Monday morning misadventure. I was also fortunate from a fiscal standpoint, since like a good neighbor, the snowplow driver’s insurance company was there.

A motor vehicle accident can be a major inconvenience, but caring, decent, honest human beings who take pride in doing their jobs right can go a long way toward lessening the pain, and that’s exactly what happened in my case.

The plow operator who hit my car was first and foremost concerned about my condition following the collision, for which he took full responsibility. With a thousand other things going on in his life, in the aftermath of the accident he worked overtime to ensure I was treated right.

Next up were the professionals at the auto body repair place, who were understanding, thorough, and eager to put my car, like Humpty Dumpty, back together again. They kept me informed every step of the way and did so in a manner that was always cheerful and never Moody.

Finally, the Enterprising young woman at the car rental agency set me up with reliable and economical transportation for the three-plus weeks that my vehicle was undergoing surgery. She also made me an offer that required a quick decision.

I am not by nature a risk taker, but when I was given the option to purchase some extra insurance for my temporary ride, I did some quick math and decided to forgo the opportunity to pay $28 per day for the added coverage.

While I had my rental, a Toyota Prius with Maryland license plates, I used the most distant parking lot spots, drove the least-traveled roads available, and totally avoided parallel parking. Naturally the number of drivers who darted out of side streets without warning, stopped suddenly in front of me for no apparent reason, or changed lanes on the highway in my vicinity without signaling, began increasing at an exponential rate.

However, against all odds, after 27 days I brought the car back to the agency in the same condition it was in when I borrowed it. The sigh of relief I let out when I returned it was probably audible in both New Hampshire and New Brunswick. I had taken an uncharacteristic gamble on myself … and won!

But why do I consider an accident that sidelined my car for nearly a month lucky? Well, for starters, I’m just as healthy physically as I was before the incident. I also learned I can still, when necessary, handle inconvenience and adversity. And best of all I met Travis the snowplow driver, Ashley the car rental agent, and Ken the autobody specialist, three exceptionally kind, hard-working, innately decent people whose paths I most likely would never have crossed had it not been for that crash early on a snowy morning.

More than eight months remain in 2025, so it’s possible there are still some days ahead when I’ll get even luckier than I did on Feb. 3. But if I’m truly fortunate, I won’t get that lucky again anytime soon. <

Insight: A Flattened Treasure Hunt

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In the 1950s Johnny Carson used to host a television game show called “Who Do You Trust?” and I was thinking about that program recently when I drove to Kittery to have some old baseball cards appraised by a prominent antiques business.

Ed Pierce had his collection of 1960 Topps baseball
cards appraised last week at an event in Kittery.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE 

For some years now I have been working on collecting every baseball card issued in 1960 by the Topps Chewing Gum Company. I’ve been a baseball card collector since 1964 but didn’t start working on my 1960 set until about 12 years ago.

There are a total of 572 cards issued in the 1960 Topps set and several years ago I completed acquiring all the cards when I purchased a Mickey Mantle card for $350 on eBay. Mickey Mantle’s 1960 card is deemed as the most highly valuable card in the entire set although Carl Yastrzemski’s rookie card, and other Hall of Famers such as Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax fetch a large sum too.

About a month ago I saw an ad on Facebook saying an antique business would be appraising collections and so I signed up to see how much the cards would be worth.

I keep my cards in a three-ring binder in plastic sleeves and the majority of my 1960s are in Excellent to Near Mint condition. I know this because many of these cards were purchased through a reputable card shop in Ohio and none of them arrived in less than Excellent condition. Cards are professionally graded by the sharpness of the corners, creases in the cardboard, paper loss, writing on the cards, photo centering and coloring.

When I was just starting out in baseball card collecting, I’d add cards in less-than-ideal conditions, and after a while I discovered that a card’s condition is crucial to its overall value.

Through the years, I have upgraded and replaced many cards in my sets, and such is the case with this 1960 collection.

When I showed the cards to the appraiser, his expression was priceless. He looked at each page in the binder with amazement at the condition of the common cards and told me I had done a good job in assembling the complete set.

However, when he extracted the Carl Yastrzemski and Mickey Mantle cards, he informed me that both these cards were slightly creased, detracting from the overall value of my 1960 set. I had purchased both of those cards on eBay and never noticed the tiny creases on each card at the time.

The appraiser asked me how much I thought my set was worth and I told him I thought it was probably in the range of $5,000. Last summer, I had taken the cards to a professional grader at a card show in Old Orchard Beach and he estimated it to be about $8,000 but I did think that was greatly exaggerating their value and he only glanced through the binder quickly.

This new appraiser said it was his opinion that my 1960 cards were nice, but he recommended that I have the most valuable cards in the set graded, including the Mantle, Yastrzemski, Mays, Aaron, Koufax and Willie McCovey cards.

He showed me on his iPhone that some complete 1960 baseball card sets in Excellent to Near Condition are selling for between $3,500 to $5,500 at most. He thought that if I did have four or five of the Hall of Fame player cards from the set professionally graded by a nationally recognized grading company and permanently encased in plastic slabs, that I could boost my set’s overall value.

Driving home from that appraisal, I was sort of shocked and disappointed. I had envisioned that the appraiser would be impressed and would make me a decent offer for them, and I would accept and use the money to help pay for my wife and I to take a trip to England.

Now that I’ve had a few days to think about it, and hearing one appraiser tell me my cards are worth $8,000 and another suggesting $3,500, I’m inclined to take the advice of the second appraiser. That will mean I will have to purchase new 1960 Carl Yastrzemski and Mickey Mantle cards and those will not be inexpensive.

The average going price for a 1960 Carl Yastrzemski graded card in excellent condition on eBay is $300 and a decent 1960 Mickey Mantle graded card in excellent condition is $750. It’s probably better for me to purchase these two cards graded and slabbed than take another chance on cheaper deals of ungraded cards.

And once I do acquire those Yastrzemski and Mantle cards for my set, I will still have to pay a grading fee and send off my 1960 Roberto Clemente, Koufax, Mays, Aaron or McCovey cards for assessment and hope they do not get lost in the mail or damaged in the return shipment from the grading source.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, I never liked the Yankees so I would often take Mickey Mantle cards and pin them to the spokes of my bike to make a flapping noise as I pedaled along.

If I knew then what I know now, that surely wouldn’t happen. <   

The end of an era?

By Andy Young

The 100-year agreement designating the bunny as Easter’s official animal has just expired. Until recently it was assumed the continuation of the adorable cottontail’s reign as the holiday’s trademark was a mere formality.

However, determined digging by attorneys skilled in trademark law has revealed the 1925 contract included a clause allowing, after a century has gone by, a one-time opportunity for either of the involved parties to “opt out” of the agreement.

Bunny fans are concerned, and with reason. Easter’s original owners sold the holiday to a consortium of greeting card conglomerates, chocolatiers, and plush toy manufacturers in the late 1970s, and hammering out a new deal with a cartel consisting of a bunch of corporate CEOs is a lot different than negotiating with a genial pope and the Vatican.

Easter has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, and there’s no shortage of groups and/or individuals wanting a piece of it. Those trying to get Easter to re-up with the bunny have their work cut out for them. The competition is fierce, as plenty of animals are vying for what is a potential gold mine, not to mention a public relations bonanza.

“Who says bunnies are cuter than squirrels, chipmunks, or hedgehogs?” asks Avaricious Q. Farquhar, an attorney representing a variety of small animals.

American Avian Association president Harold Rapacious called bunnies “Yesterday’s news,” dismissively adding, “they’ve had their day.” The AAA represents groups advocating for both the Easter Parrot and the Easter Dove.

Adds Nestor Skroobawl, public relations director for a group touting the Easter Eagle, “When’s the last time a bunny laid any eggs, let alone the Easter kind?”

Ching-Ching Yeah, spokesperson for the Easter Panda Association declares, “The ugliest panda is infinitely more adorable than the cutest bunny.”

“What have rabbits ever done besides rob Mr. McGregor’s garden?” asks Conrad Eurograbber, head of a group hoping a lovable, drooling service animal, the Easter St. Bernard, will gallop in with a basket of Easter eggs each April and become the holiday’s future logo.

“It’s high time Easter ends their unholy alliance with these unseemly creatures!” huffs Eunice Priggish, who has campaigned for the Easter bunny’s excommunication ever since “Bunnies” became an integral part of the Playboy empire in 1960.

Attacks on the Easter Bunny aren’t limited to the Northern Hemisphere. “You call those hops?” scoffs Laughlin Downunder, spokesperson for an Australian group bidding to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Kangaroo. “Compared to one of our ‘roos, bunnies don’t hop; they limp!”

Individuals or groups pushing to replace the bunny include proponents of the Easter Elephant, the Easter Tiger, the Easter Flamingo, the Easter Weasel, the Easter Jellyfish, and the Easter Giraffe, among others. “Sure, we’re a longshot,” says Spiros Noncomposmentis, who represents a group trying to install an unlikely holiday animal. “But if we don’t point out the attractiveness of the Easter Jackal, who will?”

Says one industry insider: “Those rabbit people have the toughest job this side of selling pork in Saudi Arabia.”

The Easter Bunny’s spokesperson, Virtuous D. Fender, vigorously defends her client. “Rabbits in general and the Easter Bunny in particular are inherent parts of society. Who’d watch a movie called ‘Who Framed Roger Raccoon’?” she asks rhetorically. “And seriously, could Bugs Beaver have dominated Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam? Buck teeth aren’t everything; long ears matter, too.”

Ms. Fender admits, though, that with billions of Easter industry dollars at stake, she and her leporine clients are facing an uphill battle.

“There’s no question it’s dog-eat-dog out there,” she says of the current competition for official Easter animal status.

She’d better hope it’s not jackal-eat-bunny. <

Tim Nangle: Giving Residents a Fair Shot at Owning Their Communities

By Senator Tim Nangle

In the 1950s, my father bought a mobile home park in Danvers, Massachusetts. He didn’t do it to get rich; he did it to build a life and a community. For decades, he kept that park running with a simple philosophy: treat people fairly. He fixed things himself, unclogging toilets and crawling under trailers on cold winter days. Sometimes he worked throughout the night to wrap heat tape around frozen pipes. If a tenant was late on rent, he worked with them. He took care of his tenants, and they appreciated that. When my father passed away, my siblings and I took over running the park and we did our best to carry my father’s approach forward.

State Senator Tim Nangle

A few years ago, everything changed. We started getting unsolicited offers from private equity firms with deep pockets and little interest in the people who lived in the park. Their goal was simple — buy the park, raise rent and extract as much profit as possible.

Thankfully, Massachusetts has a strong law on its books that gives residents the right to match an outside offer and buy the park themselves. That law gave our residents a fighting chance and they took it. They organized, secured financing and made a competitive offer. Today, they own the park and it’s thriving under their ownership.

Their story could have ended very differently, though. And here in Maine, it too often does. That’s why I’ve introduced LD 1145, "An Act to Protect Residents Living in Mobile Home Parks."

Mobile home parks are some of our last truly affordable housing options in Maine. But in recent years, they’ve become a favorite target of out-of-state investors looking to make a quick profit. These firms often raise rents, enforce strict eviction policies and skimp on maintenance. And because our current laws don’t do enough to protect residents, their actions can go unchecked.

LD 1145 strengthens protections for park residents by:

● Requiring park owners to notify residents when they plan to sell.

● Giving residents 90 days to organize and make a purchase offer.

● Creating a clear right of first refusal so they can match any outside offer.

● Ensuring that if a park is being shut down or redeveloped, residents get 90 days' notice and help relocating, paid for by the park owner.

We’ve already seen signs that Mainers are ready and willing to step up. During the public hearing on this bill, Nora Gosselin from the Cooperative Development Institute shared that under Maine’s current statute, residents in nine different communities have already organized and submitted competitive purchase offers — sometimes offering more than what corporate buyers had on the table. But six of those offers were rejected. As Nora put it, “The law needs to be strengthened into a Right of First Refusal to build upon an effective model, in an environment with so many aggressive, deep-pocketed, out-of-state corporations, amid an affordable housing crisis."

LD 1145 isn’t radical. It’s fair. It’s practical. And it’s proven. This bill gives residents the chance to hold on to the homes and communities they’ve built not just for now, but for generations to come.

The bill is currently being considered by the Legislature’s Housing and Economic Development Committee. If you agree that Mainers deserve a fair shot at owning their communities, I urge you to contact the committee and your local legislators. Let them know that you support LD 1145.

You can contact all members of the Housing and Economic Development Committee by sending an email to HED@legislature.maine.gov. To find your representative, visit legislature.maine.gov/house/. <

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff.

Insight: Gone but not forgotten

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Not long ago, I wrote about people who unexpectedly re-entered being a part of my life after a prolonged absence and that got me to thinking. What about those people who unexpectedly left being part of my life and never returned?

U.S. Air Force airmen serving on a Reforger exercise
deployment in Germany in 1978 included, from left,
Ed Pierce, James Smith and Mike Hodges.
COURTESY PHOTO 

In some of these situations, I probably will never find the answers about what happened to them as too much time has passed and despite being resourceful, I’m afraid I will never know.

Airman First Class James Smith served with me in the U.S. Air Force in Germany from 1977 to 1979. He was without a doubt the wittiest and funniest individual I’ve ever known. “Smitty” as we called him was from Los Angeles, California and was a radio operator for our unit.

From the first time that I met him, I liked him, and he made me laugh heartily. His humor wasn’t the type that made fun of other people’s looks, appearances or physical traits, instead he found laughter in everyday situations.

He was adept at pointing out humorous aspects of daily life and as many of us, including me, had recently completed Air Force Basic Training in Texas, and he often found humor in the lingo or expressions used by Air Force Training Instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

Almost 50 years later, I can remember “Smitty” telling me a story about learning to march in formation with his fellow recruits during basic training. When he missed a step, “Smitty” caught the attention of the Training Instructor. He said he told the instructor “I’m sorry.” The Training Instructor then growled at him saying “I know you’re sorry. That’s why I’m screaming at you!”

“Smitty” made everyone laugh, from the unit commander to the lowliest airman, and he uplifted us all during a time when we were far from home and needed something to smile about.

On the day he was departing back to the United States as his tour in Germany was up, he stopped by my office in his dress blue uniform and shook my hand for the final time. He told me that he needed to go back to the radio operator’s trailer for a second because he had left something there that he wanted to take on the plane with him. While in the radio trailer, another radio operator grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it over his dress uniform as a joke.

The last time I ever saw “Smitty” he was frantically brushing white fire retardant off his uniform before catching his flight home. I never saw him again after that incident in October 1979 and I left Germany myself for an assignment at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. the very next month.

I’ve tried looking for “Smitty” as best I could, but James Smith is one of the most common names in America and it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Rick Walsh was in my first- and second-grade classes at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Brighton, New York in 1959 and 1960. He was quiet and reserved but a good student and his desk was across the aisle from me. We both liked reading comic books and playing kickball. Rick also happened to be the first kid I knew who had a crew cut with his head shaved except for a small tuft remaining in the front of his scalp.

He always took a place in front of me in line when we were going to the school library, outside for recess, or to the school lunchroom. We both brought our lunches every day from home and sat together every day during lunchtime.

We were each advanced readers and in third grade in 1961, Rick and I were both reading Hardy Boys mystery books. When I finished one, I’d pass it on to him to read. After each of us finished a book, we would sit in my garage and discuss it and talk about who should play the part on television. Walt Disney had made some of the first Hardy Boys books into a serial presentation for TV’s “Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s but had stopped doing that by the time we were in third grade.

I would tell him that I thought Paul Petersen, the young actor from “The Donna Reed Show” should portray Frank Hardy if they ever made a new “Hardy Boys” series. Rick disagreed, saying it should be Tim Considine from “My Three Sons,” who had played the role in Disney’s 1950s adaptation.

One day in January 1962, our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wahl, told our class that Rick had suffered a severe diabetic attack and that he was in the hospital. The class all made Get Well cards for Rick, and I was elected to take them to his bedside at the hospital. My father drove me there and we found Rick was in bad shape. Rick’s father said that he would not be able to return to school and that he would require insulin injections for the rest of his life.

I never saw Rick again and to this day, I don’t know what became of him.

We lost touch, but he’s not forgotten. <

Andy Young: Banana. Yellow. Submarine. Torpedo. Speedo.

By Andy Young

It was on a lengthy car ride with several family members some years ago that my sister introduced us to a word association game that made the time pass far more pleasantly than would have otherwise been the case. The initial player names a person, place, or thing, and each other participant follows, in order, with something associated with whatever it was the previous player had said.

For example: Walter Cronkite. Chet Huntley. David Brinkley. Christie Brinkley. Billy Joel. Joel Chandler Harris. Uncle Remus. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Log cabin. Lincoln Logs. Lincoln Continental. Continental Divide. Divide and conquer. William the Conqueror. Conquering hero. Sergeant York. New York Yankees. Mickey Mantle. Fireplace mantel. Fireside chat. FDR. JFK. LBJ. BLT. XYZ. A to Z. Alphabet soup. Soup to nuts. Nuts to you! You stink! Pig-Pen. Charlie Brown. Lucy. Snoopy. Beagle. Dog. Hot dog. Frankfurter. Frank Sinatra. Nancy Sinatra. “These Boots are made for walkin’.” Boots Day. Rainy day. Doris Day. Rock Hudson. Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Fury. Fury Gene Tenace. Tennis, anyone? Arthur Ashe. Arthur C. Clarke. Clark Gable. Anne of Green Gables. Green with envy. Nevada (N-V; get it?).

It’s enjoyable, provided all involved parties trust one another. For instance, in the example above everyone took my word for the fact that Boots Day and Gene Tenace (his given first name really is Fury, and his last name is pronounced “tennis”) actually were reasonably well-known major league baseball players in the 1970s. But that’s only fair, since if my sister threw out a name I’d never heard before and told me they had won an Oscar sometime in the 1940s, I’d have believed her, too. However, if someone younger than me blurts out some bizarre moniker and claims it’s that of a “social media influencer,” well, that’s a different story. “Social media influencers” I’ve never heard of (a classic redundancy, since I’ve never heard of any of them) don’t count. Period.

Or perhaps I’m remembering wrong. Maybe the rules were that you had to name someone or something well-known, real or fictitious, and the next person had to do the same, only using a first name that began with the letter that started the previous subject's last name.

Like: Ronald McDonald. Meat Loaf. Larry Fine. Fred Flintstone. Flat Stanley. Senator Sam Ervin. Ernie Banks. Bart Simpson. Snoop Dogg, Derek Jeter. Julius Erving. Elizabeth Taylor. Thomas Edison. Eddie Arcaro. Australian Outback. Outback Steakhouse. Stan Musial. Mount Katahdin. Kaiser Wilhelm. Winston Churchill. Concord, New Hampshire. Norman Vincent Peale. Peter Marshall. Mashed potatoes. Paul McCartney. Mary Travers. Toni Tennille. Theo Epstein. Eddie Munster. Michelle Obama. Oscar Robertson. Reggie Jackson. Jack Benny. Bruce Wayne. Will Ferrell. Ferdinand Magellan. Minnesota Fats. Flash Gordon. Ginger Rogers. Robert Frost. Fred Astaire. Al Roker. Rhode Island. Ivan Rodriguez. Rodney Dangerfield. Dolly Parton. Patrick Dempsey. Denis Potvin. Pete Rose. Rose Marie. Mahatma Gandhi. George Carlin. Charles Barkley. Benjamin Harrison. Hakeem Olajuwon. Oskar Schindler. Sherlock Holmes. Harrison Ford. Fidel Castro. Carl Sagan. Stevie Wonder. William Shakespeare. Sigourney Weaver. William Shatner. Serena Williams. Warren Spahn. Smokey Robinson. Regina, Saskatchewan. Sandra Bullock. Bo Jackson. Joanne Woodward. Wilt Chamberlain.

When it’s played in a car, the game concludes when everyone quits or falls asleep, you reach your destination, or, while going 70 mph, someone opens a car door and falls out onto the highway.

Every so often I’ll try playing the game by myself.

Andrews Sisters. Marx Brothers. Smothers Brothers. Smothered Potatoes. French fries. Italian dressing. Swiss cheese. Belgian waffles. Portuguese rolls. English muffins. Irish Whiskey. Russian vodka. Hungarian Goulash. Spanish omelet. Polish sausage. Swedish Fish. Dutch treat. Norwegian Wood. Prune Danish. Greek yogurt.

Czech mate. <

Insight: If I could turn back time

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

No, this isn’t about Cher’s 1989 music video filmed aboard the USS Missouri. Not that there’s anything wrong with Cher, I’ve always liked her music, but I’d like to use this space to detail things that have disappeared over time that need to be restored in my opinion.

If I could travel through time and bring something back from the past that’s missing right now, I’d start by choosing to restore theme songs to the opening credits of television shows.

When I was a child, hearing the opening stanza of “The Rifleman” would draw me to the TV set so I could catch Chuck Connors wielding his modified Winchester rifle demonstrating how potent it could be. Yes, “The Rifleman” certainly had a lot of violence but there’s no escaping that anyone who heard that music and soundtrack every week can ever forget it.

Then there’s the theme to “Bonanza” as the three Cartwright brothers and their father ride across the Ponderosa Ranch in Nevada as a map of their property burns. Or revving up the Ferrari with Tom Selleck to take it out for a spin in Hawaii in “Magnum P.I.?”

Sometime in the late 1990s, television producers decided to focus less on theme songs and use that extra minute or so on developing their story or episode’s plot.

I sure miss being able to know all the words and sing along to the theme songs to “The Beverly Hillbillies” or “Three’s Company” or “Rawhide” or “Gilligan’s Island” instead of the screeching discordant sound of shards of metal scraping that are heard in the opening title sequence of “Lost” every week.

My thought is that composing memorable music for a television series theme song appears to be a lost art, and if I could turn back time, I’d love to see it revived.

Another aspect of American life when I was a kid that always fascinated me was going through the Sears catalogue in the months leading up to Christmas. There was page after page of toys, bicycles and hours of fun contained in those old catalogues, and not something that can easily be replicated scrolling through Amazon on an iPhone.

The catalogue was an alternative for a retailer who chose not to market their products on television and was sheer merchandising genius. I could always find a generous selection of items I would want for Christmas and would write them down in order in case we stopped to see Santa on our next department store visit.

It was always a happy day in our household each October when the catalogue arrived in the mail, and I’d have to fight off my brother to see which one of us got to look through the pages while making our annual Christmas gift request list. I would even spend time looking at the clothes and shoes because inevitably if I asked for a toy from the catalogue, my mother would think it was far more practical for me to have a new set of thermal underwear rather than “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots.”

Turning back time, I’d advocate for a return of the Sears catalogue as a place for kids to dream and get ideas for the holidays.

And that leads me to the topic of technology. Posing a serious question way back when sometimes meant that you’d have to explore solutions by going to the library and finding a book explaining that topic. It didn’t result in instant answers found by a Google search, you had to research and made you really think about things, not using AI to solve problems.

Recipes were found in cookbooks, not on your smart phone, and it created an atmosphere so much more personal.

With the introduction of video gaming consoles, it seems that kids stopped playing outside after school, or riding their bicycles through their neighborhood, like I used to. We spent more time as kids telling stories, reading comic books and using our imaginations instead of sitting indoors playing “Fortnight.”

Simple little things produced smiles from us such as drinking from the garden hose, a 1-cent piece of Bazooka bubble gum, catching and releasing fireflies in a Mason jar or running through a sprinkler in the backyard on a hot summer afternoon. Working on the newspaper crossword puzzle occupied my Sunday afternoons after looking over the Sunday comics section.

Before the days of endless cable television channels, your options were limited to just three TV networks, and you made do with what was available.

The internet, cell phones, personalized surveillance cameras and the rise of social media have taken a lot of spontaneity and joy out of everyday life. It affects everything. Movie plots of upcoming films are revealed months before the move debuts, a baseball player hits a home run in a game in California and it’s instantly transmitted to millions globally by smartphone.

More than anything, I would love to return to a day and age when simple conversations with friends, family, and neighbors mattered, and we weren’t interrupted by 24-7 breaking news, social media posts about celebrities, conjecturing pundits or conspiracy theories.

If I could turn back time, it would be for a simpler life.

Rookie Mama: Going bananas for the sweet world of food dehydration

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

In this era of trendy pink Stanley cups and hydration focus, here’s a term with which you may not be overly familiar – the wonder of dehydrating.

Drying food, that is.

A friend recently asked me what gadget I use to make dried fruit, and it occurred to me this process is a frugal, fun, tasty favorite activity I haven’t really touched upon in this column, and dehydrating delicious snacks is truly worthy of its own space in print.

My family and I love to batch together trail mixes when packing for travel, and our blends of nuts and chocolate have always included some sort of commercially prepared delectable dried fruit – bananas, mangos, apples, you name it.

Dried fruit is widely available in packaged form at most grocery stores.

One could make a date of shopping for pitted dates.

A few years ago, my husband and I reevaluated whether there might be a better way to obtain large quantities of dried fruit without such added cost, especially as our family was growing like fruit by the foot.

Life itself was bananas and nutty, which I suppose made us a trail mix variety of its own.

As it turned out, dehydrating our own fruit strips was not only an economical choice, but a healthy one, and an easy enough task to accomplish.

Like a well-loved slow cooker, one must do a bit of prep, then it’s set and forget, as the home fills with delicious aroma.

So, we purchased a fairly inexpensive dehydrator appliance with multiple trays and began our test strips, so to speak.

The science to dehydrating food is that controlled heat and airflow sucks out water, reducing moisture to a level that prevents bacterial growth and spoilage, thus extending shelf life and reducing weight and volume.

Although moisture is removed, nutrients are preserved – a win for the whole gang.

And not only is this process a fantastic frugal choice because it’s less expensive than buying prepared dried fruits, it can reduce food waste.

Think of all those fresh fruits for which you had high hopes that were rendered to the ol’ compost bin because rot and bruising got the better of them before they could be gobbled up.

Think of all the naturally sweetened strawberries and oranges galore you could dehydrate.

And did I mention the bananas?

Once you’ve dehydrated your own fruits, you’ve got yourself a healthy snack, whether for hitting the road or for scrumptious, colorful, nutrition-dense school snacks.

Another favorite – arguably tastier – road snack is homemade beef jerky.

Pick up a lean cut such as top round, bottom round, or flank steak, as fatty cuts can become rancid during the drying process.

Slice into very thin strips – or ask your butcher to do this if preferred.

From here, the Google is aplenty with beefed up easy marinades, and you likely already have many of the ingredients that are just the ticket to create these savory strips, such as Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and so on.

Homemade jerky is seriously cost-effective just as fruit is, but also high in protein, iron, and vitamins A and C. Unlike the storebought variety, homemade jerky has no added preservatives. Ingredients are higher quality, and the resulting treat may be more flavorful.

Look, my family loves some Jack Links from a fuel-up stop as much as the next traveling circus, but the homemade variety – if you can carve the time to carve the beef – really makes for the cool jerk.

There are many other foods to experiment with in a food dehydrator, from fruit leather to herbs, from vegetables to even watermelon jerky.

So as with other new kitchen tools, have fun and experiment. Follow directions carefully. Dehydrators range in price and can be quite costly, but our inexpensive Nesco has been operating tremendously for years, its soft hum a familiar mainstay.

Dried foods are also best when shared with those you love, so don’t forget to gift some of your snack experiments to family and friends – they make a super Christmas gift.

Because that, my friends, would be enough to make anyone go bananas.

­­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!

Andy Young: Making a case for trophies

By Andy Young

I got the first of what I assumed would be many athletic trophies when I was a member of the championship baseball team in my hometown’s Little League.

Never mind that I rarely played; back then 9-year-olds were only there to chase foul balls, coach first base, and go through the stands passing the hat so the coaches could give each kid 15 cents after the game to go get something from the snack bar.

Recently I learned that the word “trophy” originated from the Greek “tropaion,” which referred to captives, weapons, property, or enemy body parts that were collected in war.

That information surprised me, since like most people I had previously assumed the word had derived from some Latin term meaning “dust collector.” Fortunately, none of my subsequent trophy-worthy honors ever involved the forcible removal of anyone else’s body parts.

I knew in my soul that someday I’d need a huge trophy room to properly display all the individual awards I’d win for my many astounding baseball and basketball exploits. After all, those multiple Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player awards I’d earn during my dual-sport career would need proper displaying.

And besides that, I’d likely need more space in the future, since my trophy wife (and later our trophy kids) would undoubtedly be awash in athletic accolades as well.

There are more different kinds of trophies than there are ice cream flavors. They can look like a knight standing atop a reel of film (the Oscar), an old record player (the Grammy), or a football player (the Heisman Trophy).

There are trophies that look like cars, dogs, pianos, horses, typewriters, microphones, elephants, donkeys, fish, ballet slippers, Rubik’s Cubes, and pinking shears.

Still others are shaped like singers, mechanics, doctors, accountants, police officers, dancers, fishermen, chefs, librarians and hunters. Trophies are regularly handed out to top performers and coaches in baseball, softball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, swimming, tennis, wrestling, pickleball, rowing, gymnastics, running, jumping, throwing, pole vaulting, and skiing.

There are also trophies for non-athletes like bowlers, race car drivers, and golfers.

Unfortunately, it’s now officially spring-cleaning season, and who wants to waste time relocating clutter, vacuuming up dirt, washing windows, de-cobwebbing the basement, mopping the kitchen floor until it returns to whatever its original color was….or dusting off old trophies?

After a long winter, the last thing(s) I want to waste time on involve cleaning the garage, freshening up the cellar, or disinfecting bathrooms.

That’s why I always start my seasonal home-cleansing ritual small, by sanitizing my dream-come-true, appropriately sized trophy room.

The most recent addition to my trophy collection came in 1984, when a softball team I was on took home the league championship.

Actually, I had to leave at mid-season, since I had taken a job 4,000 miles away.

I felt guilty about that, since at the time it was obvious to all concerned it was my batting, fielding, and leadership skills which had led us to victory in seven of our first 10 contests. Thankfully though, the team somehow won 23 of their 24 games after my departure.

The upside to having a modest number of trophies: my long-anticipated display case isn’t just a dual-purpose one; it’s portable! And the only times I have to temporarily move my two treasured statuettes are when I need to reheat soup, melt butter rapidly, or make a quick bag of popcorn.

Finally, I keep an old pie plate atop my portable miniature trophy room. It’s a convenient place to stash all the hate mail I get from bowlers, race car drivers, and golfers. <