Sunset

I'm a lady of few words - so let's just say the pictures speak for themselves.  (Thanks for the suggestion Cousin Ick!)  - Lori (the Art Director and Kurt's other half). Pictures taken Lake Monona, Madison, WI.

Wildlife Art, and Art on Wildlife

     When I first started writing this column, I was concerned that I might eventually run out of material because I need calamitous events to happen so I have something to write about.

     But then I had a happy thought: Why is it necessary that these events happen to me?

     So look for a hilarious account of how my buddy broke his leg in an upcoming issue. Only thing is, he won't break his leg until the second day of this year's muzzleloader season. Guess I can't count on that.

     I was also concerned that as news spread of my ineptness in the woods and on the water, I'd find myself short of hunting and fishing partners.

     This indeed seems to be the case.

     I stopped by my parents' house recently-- kind of a pop-in after a trip to Green Bay-- and asked my dad if he wanted to try a few casts off of the breakwall at High Cliff State Park on Lake Winnebago.

     "No thanks, son," he stammered through the door as he barred the latch. "I have to help your mother pick out dried flower arrangements."

     So now I'm having a difficult time finding someone to hunt squirrels with this fall. My friend, Hodag, would be game-- he was always up for anything-- but he's gone on to his just reward, and by that, I mean heaven, and not the return of 10-point bluebills.

     Fact is, not many people hunt squirrels anymore, and if you mention that you're going, folks look askance at you and exclaim, "Tree rats! What do you want with them for?"

     It wasn't always that way, of course. Kids used to get their start in hunting, as I did, by chasing squirrels. And bushytails were a hunting mainstay of a lot of sportsmen and women even in adulthood.

     I admit that I haven't spent a whole lot of time hunting them in recent years, but I'm not joking when I say that I still dream about my favorite Calumet County squirrel woods, even though I haven't been there in 20 years. I can still feel the roughness of a shagbark hickory against my back, and in my mind's eye, I can see sunlight filtering through black walnut leaves as I sit listening for the patter of falling cuttings.

     I used to have squirrels on the brain the way most hunters nowadays go bonkers over big bucks. I checked out books on them, and even kept them as pets-- I didn't see any contradiction in feeding city squirrels in the morning and going out to hunt their wild cousins in the afternoon. And I live-trapped squirrels in our backyard.

     I trapped them for an advanced biology class I took when I was a senior in high school. That was the only advanced class, except for art, that I've ever taken. If you'll allow me to digress for a little bit, I'd like to talk about that art class before I return to advanced biology.

     I had won promotion to Sister Carla's Salon of Artistes on the strength of a watercolor I painted of a smallmouth bass-- a painting which, against all odds, turned out so well that it won a few awards.

     The advanced art class was full of studious artists. Nothing excited ever happened, except for when I got my tie stuck in a lathe in front of a girl I had a huge crush on. Thus freed of any further concern about scoring points with her, I was able to concentrate on my masterwork. I spent a whole trimester chipping a large plaster block into a small one, which I then painted brown and called a rock.

     True genius is amost never recognized in its time. Being a giant smart-aleck, however, almost always is, and I richly deserved the "F" I received on that project. My classmates from back then probably all work in commercial graphics now, or are artists-in-residence at the Louvre. I, however, am back to having other people draw when I play "Hangman."

     O.K. Thank you. Back to advanced biology.

     A major part of the class consisted of a field project, followed by the dreaded presentation in front of the class. I had the idea of live-trapping squirrels, marking their tails in some manner, and then releasing the squirrels in a far-off neighborhood and observing to see if they returned to their home ranges. The only real hitch was in the marking, as far as I could tell, so the first day of my project found me kneeling next to a closed box trap in the backyard, with a can of yellow spray paint in hand, wondering what all wildlife biologists wonder:

A.) Should I use a primer?
B.) Why are the neighbors staring?
C.) How on earth am I gonna get steel wool anywhere near this critter?

     In the end, a long plastic tube attached to the nozzle of the paint can worked fairly well. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I marked and released a dozen squirrels.

     In case you are wondering, yellow-tailed squirrels do return to their home ranges, and when they come home, they're moving at a pretty good clip.

     As an aside, I repeated this experiment in college for a class in wildlife biology, only this time with people. The results were much the same, only they didn't return to their homes, they returned to mine, and when they arrived, they were plenty peeved.

     As you spend time afield this fall, I ask that you refrain from shooting yellow-tailed squirrels. Instead, please write the date, time and circumstances of your encounter on a 3x5 card and mail to: Kurt Helker, c/o Mrs. Stecker's Remedial Art Class, Toki Middle School, Madison, Wisconsin.

Gear

     The other day I was sitting at home feeling downright disgusted with the state of the world we live in. New housing is being put in across our street, and the builders had filled in and paved over a tiny pond. The pond had always been populated with spring peepers which cheered our spring evenings, and I wasn't happy about seeing those frogs go. To make matters worse, my wife Lori and I had gone for a walk in the woods and found it strewn with trash-- every conceivable type of trash. There were beer cans, soda bottles, plastic bits of unknown origin, and what seemed like hundreds of Styrofoam fast-food containers.

     I fumed when we got home.

     "We live in a consumer culture run amok," I said. Well, I didn't say "amok," but you get the idea. "It always has to be more. More, more, more. Pave over that last piece of farmland, slap up those condos, buy the latest gee-gaw. Anything to increase the Gross National Product."

     I looked around me and got a malevolent glint in my eye.

     How many candles do you have?" I asked my wife. I didn't wait for an answer. "That one there's new, isn't it? The raspberry one?"

     "It's mulberry, and it's not new," she said. "We've always had it." (Sure. I tried that with a new gun last fall-- "I've always had it"-- and it didn't work for me.)

     You see, my wife collects candles. Well, she would say "collects," while I would choose a word more along the lines of "archives." Her collection is a living, breathing entity, like an amoeba; oozing and sprawling to fill every space in the house. I have to say here that I was kind of disappointed none of the Y2K calamities happened as predicted. I figured we'd make a killing selling candles on the black market. I pictured a survivalist hunkered in a candlelit bunker somewhere, awaiting the looting hordes, saying "Is that...is that a hint of soapberry I detect?"

     "Why don't you go fishing for awhile?" Lori said. "I can tell you're going to be a crab today."

     Ah, fishing. Relaxing fishing. "Perhaps she's right," I thought. "I have been meaning to get out for the early trout season."

     I went out to the garage to collect my ultralight spinning outfit.

     It wasn't there.

     It wasn't in the boat. It wasn't in the back of the garage, by the belly boat and lanterns and duck and goose decoys. It wasn't in the front corner, either, by the nets, the four tackle boxes, the pair of waders, and the ice-fishing gear.

     It wasn't under the raingear or stashed in the tangle of rods: the three spinning outfits, the two casting rigs, and the three fly combos.

     It had been stolen! This was some kind of day I was having-- my favorite spinning outfit; stolen right out of my own garage. I decided to calm down by undertaking a long-overdue review of the contents of my tackle boxes-- surely there were some things I could get rid of.

     There were, too. After much painful deliberation, I threw out a rusty three-way swivel, two old spoons lacking hooks and split-rings, and an old plug I had fashioned when I was a kid. Basically, it was just a whittled piece of bark wrapped in tinfoil. It had no discernible action, but still I had saved it for all those years against that tough-conditions day when I figured fish might just be looking for a piece of bark.

     I didn't touch any of the plastic worms, though. I have a hundred or so-- not as many as a lot of folks, I know, but still probably more than most, and in every color of the rainbow.

     "I don't want to throw any of these out, " I thought. "You can go through a hundred worms pretty quick."

     As I placed the worms neatly in their slots, I remembered a trip I had taken with my wife.

     We were out in a rowboat up North at my folks' place, and it was one of those magical still evenings when the water is dark and full of promise and the shouts of children playing carry all the way across the lake. We had caught a mess of bluegills for a late supper, and decided to try for bass for awhile. I opened my tackle box to the worm compartment.

     "Why do you have so many?" Lori asked.

     I thought it was a rhetorical question like "What's it all about?"-- the kind best answered with another question.

     "Why, indeed?" I mused.

     "Well, I'll take a brown one," Lori said.

     "It's not brown, it's motor oil," I sighed.

     "Whatever. A pink one, then."

     I monkeyed with the fish basket and muttered under my breath. "Bubble gum. It's bubble gum."

     But my wife is relatively new to fishing and can't be expected to absorb a lifetime of knowledge in the space of a few short trips.

     To get back to my tale of the missing ultralight rig-- I have now largely concluded that it was not stolen, but instead left streamside by me after my final trip of the season last September. I would prefer if it had been stolen, because then I would get to feel righteously indignant instead of merely stupid. But the important thing is that after my anger had subsided, I was secretly pleased, and pleased because I got to buy more gear.

     That got me to thinking about the nature of gear, and I have concluded that it is of only two kinds: gear you have, and gear you want. I almost said "need,"
 but I think that is not the case more often than we'd like to admit. And those categories can be divided into stuff which is usually relatively easily attained, like lures, and big-ticket items such as boats and firearms which require real sacrifice.

     Last year I thought I "needed" a salmon/steelhead spinning outfit. I enjoy casting for trout and salmon from Lake Michigan's beaches and piers, and get to do a little of it most years. I figured the extra casting distance offered by the long rod would pay off in terms of more fish. I took the rig to the mouth of the Pike River, near Kenosha, and found that I could cast, alright. The rod could launch a Krocodile spoon well over a hundred yards. I caught fish, too, a three-pound coho and a twenty-pound king, both of which had the nerve to hit the spoon only a dozen feet from shore. But that's the way with fish: you spend hard-earned money to outsmart them, and they prove themselves to be still just stupid old fish.

Guns are another matter, and for me, at least, they usually fall under the category of mercurial wants; wants which dry up like a seasonal wetland as soon as the rent payment or an unexpected car-repair bill arrives. I have to admit that I have enough guns-- a few "working" guns, and a few "luxury" firearms, like a dedicated clay-target shotgun and a cap-and-ball copy of the Colt 1860 Army revolver. There are a couple of perennial wants, though-- a Ruger Number One in .270 Winchester with a full-length Mannlicher-style stock and a 2-7x compact scope parked up top, and a lightweight 20-gauge for the popple patches and overgrown fencerows.

     I've been trying to justify the 20-gauge to myself for years. Never mind that I already have a 20-gauge-- the bolt-action Mossberg which was my first gun. It's very light, and holds the distinction of being one of the few shotguns I shoot well. And having essentially one shot has never struck me as being a huge handicap in the hunting fields. Still, the old Mossberg isn't specialized; it lacks a label as a dedicated grouse gun. All of the famous New England partridge scribes wrote about old L.C. Smiths and Foxes and Parkers. You never read, "I stopped by a woodland stream to clean a brace of birds and light my pipe, and there I received quite a shock. I noticed that the baling wire securing the forearm of my full-choked single-shot to its rusty, pitted barrel was completely missing."

     I'd like a large-bore centerfire revolver, too, for...well, for no good reason. I tried to convince myself that I could carry it in the deer woods. That line of reasoning didn't work-- my rifle and my slug gun and my muzzleloader all work just fine. So I thought that perhaps I would use it as part of a personal protection plan. That didn't work, either. I can't see any gun owned by me as a particular deterrent to crime-- after all, generations of wild game can attest to the fact that seeing me at the end of a gunstock is no bar to a long and happy life. Besides, in the town where my wife and I live, we are the criminal element. Just last year, for instance, at the beginning of what can only be called a "spree," we received a warning for having unauthorized patio furniture. Then, barely a few days later, I again succumbed to baser passions by leaving my car parked on the street on the last night of our town's snow ordinance.

     But there comes a time in every outdoors-minded person's life when he or she has to admit that they have enough stuff. Luckily, that period doesn't last long, for new interests arise, and with those interests comes the desire for more specialized gear. Such is the case for me and turkey hunting...after all, there are always calls to buy, and I do need new camouflage, and perhaps a short-barreled 12-gauge with the latest screw-in chokes...but here I have to mention that buying clothing-- any clothing-- has always left me cold (literally, too, and why I probably should have paid more attention to it.) I'm largely immune to the catalogs' depictions of rugged-looking models attired in English waxed-cotton as they cast flies or split wood at some rural retreat. My looks could never be desribed as "rugged"-- utilitarian, maybe, but not rugged-- and I already own a waxed-cotton jacket. I received it for Christmas a few years back. It got accidentally thrown in with a week's worth of laundry, and now it looks less like a jacket and more like a waxed-cotton halter-top.

     Writing all of this has depressed me. Like most sportsmen, I always thought of myself as a simple, straightforward type unimpressed with the trappings of the material world. But a look in my garage, and in my boat, and in my gunrack tells a different story. Thoreau said, "Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplify, simplify." Maybe he was right.

     I remember reading that in class once. At the time I was living the bachelor life in an old farmhouse. It hosted truly Biblical plagues of flies, but it was a farmhouse, and I could hunt geese right out my back door. I sat in my living room one day, recalling Thoreau's words and feeling pretty darned good about myself. After all, like most bachelor pads, my place was pretty spartanly furnished. Call it the feng shui of not much caring. I had a stereo, a few dishes, a "Great Lakes Gamefish" poster, and a chair (even Thoreau needed a place to sit.) I felt so good, so simple and Zen-master-like, that I decided to reward myself by going after geese in the fields behind the house. When shooting hours had ended, I packed up my decoys and went into the barn to put them away. I had to climb a pile of gear to find a space for them, and I tumbled down and smacked my funny bone.

     I remember that incident now, and I resolve myself: "Simplify, simplify." And I will, too.

     Right after turkey season.

Vegas Baby!! February 2012

Shark Tank Golden Nugget -
water slide goes right through the tank! sweet!

We always suspected as much.

Shark Tank Golden Nugget

Downtown Vegas Street View

Fremont Street

A buddy says that when Judgement Day comes, Vegas will have the honor of being the first thing obliterated.

Chart House Restaurant, inside Golden Nugget.

Artistic view from the Stairwell outside the Venetian

Gardens inside The Bellagio - Vegas Strip

Stratosphere Vegas Strip

Golden Nugget pool. Las Vegans in parkas, Midwesterners and Canadians swimming.

Downtown Las Vegas

Mini Elvis!! and me :)

"What, no tip for mini-Elvis?"

New York New York  - Vegas Strip

Breakfast shot at the Vegas Airport, they send you off  partying!

Breakfast Brewski at McCarran International.

http://www.goldennugget.com/

http://www.vegasexperience.com/

Brunch at The Avenue Bar , Madison, WI

The BEST biscuits and gravy EVER! 

BLOODY MARY :)

Avenue Bar, Voted Madison's Best Fish Fry by Madison Magazine

www.avenuebarmadison.com/

Technical Difficulties

       "Guys on Ice," by Fred Alley and James Kaplan, is billed as "The Ice-Fishing Musical," and is set in my home state of Wisconsin. I haven't seen it, since I have a long-standing aversion to theatrical productions not involving showgirls. But I understand dancing is involved.

     I think I speak for ice-fishermen from the Finger Lakes of New York State to the Sandhills of Nebraska when I say that anyone performing a dance in an ice shanty should be shoved outside, and then pelted with dead smelt.

     Well, wait. I suppose a little impromptu jig if you've caught more fish than me is entirely appropriate. But any sort of choreographed number is completely unacceptable.

     As an aside related to dance, I will say that after I graduated from college I obtained work as a forester in Michigan. While in Michigan I maintained a dalliance with a gorgeous young woman whose name escapes me now. And by "dalliance" I mean that I pursued her ardently, and she was dimly aware that I existed.

     Anyway, she was heavily involved in flag team competitions, where groups of girls performed dance moves to music while waving brightly-colored pieces of cloth. To impress my intended, I attended one of her competitions in some Detroit suburb. I took my seat in the gymnasium bleachers, and the first number began to pulsating beats. After it ended, I admitted to myself that it was really good, in much the same way that the moment when you stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is really good.

     After a couple more such exhibitions, I surmised the entertainment was pretty close to an end. I thought the same thing after the next number, and the next, and the next. On it went, for six hours, until finally the whole god-awful mess came to a halt. I scrambled out of the gym, knocking over contestants and coaches and proud grandparents, and sprinted to my truck.

     Back to Guys on Ice. My general impression after reading press releases and critical reviews is that the musical portrays we of the hard-water clan as good-natured, if a little dim, and maybe a bit behind the times.

     Good-natured but dim perfectly describes my fishing buddy, John. But behind the times? Many ice-fishermen, John included, use technically-advanced equipment which would have left our jigstick-wielding forebearers slackjawed. Locators. Lightweight, mobile shelters. Global positioning system units. And underwater cameras. We're practically ready for a trip to Mars.

     Of course, I do not own an underwater camera-- out of concern for the fish. Just as I don't want a recorder in my living room, catching me sitting in my boxer shorts eating hot dogs from the package while watching professional wrestling, so I want to spare a bluegill the embarrassment of me catching it doing the piscine equivalent of picking its nose.

     The truth is, you could say I have a somewhat adversarial relationship with technology. A month or so ago, I called my wife, Lori, out to the driveway for our annual trailer-light inspection ritual. The results are always the same, no matter how well the lights worked the previous year. This year was no different as I looked in my truck's rearview mirror while Lori stood behind the trailer:

     "Brake lights?"

     "Good."

     "Right turn signal?"

     "Good."

     "Left turn signal?...Left turn signal?...(Expletive!)"

     It has now gotten to the point where the collective wads of electrical tape attached to the trailer's wiring weigh more than the trailer itself, and I have a more extensive collection of wire nuts than most hardware stores.

     John has no such adversarial relationship with technology. In fact, he never met a piece of technology he didn't like (or buy), especially when it pertains to ice-fishing.

     He not only has an underwater camera and a locator, he also has two ice shelters and a bucket full of graphite jigging rods, along with a dozen state-of-the-art tip-ups and a backpack to carry them all in. Of course, a lot of this has to do with the fact that John has obsessive-compulsive disorder and is compelled to buy every new piece of gear he finds.

     I guess that's better than, say, having to turn a light switch on and off 20 times before he enters a room. But if John ever misses a credit card payment all of us will be on street corners selling apples from carts...which John will happily buy.

     On our ice-fishing forays, I trudge behind John and his team of Sherpas, bearing a five-gallon bucket which contains my meager assortment of gear: one jigging rod, a tip-up, and a prescription bottle containing a few ice jigs.

     I usually get cold pretty early in our trips, because while John sports the most advanced apparel, mine hasn't advanced significantly since the days of my grandmother's hand-knitted yarn mittens-- which had the insulating qualities of, well, wet yarn.

     I wore a pair of those mittens one day long ago, during a fisharee on Wisconsin's Little Lake Butte des Morts.

     "Butte des Morts" is French for "Hill of the Dead," and in retrospect I should have considered that an omen.

     It was a very cold day, and to combat the cold I did what any kid would do, which was drink massive quantities of hot chocolate. Now, the human body requires a certain amount of liquid for its own needs, but the excess has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, my hands-- encased in a mixture of frozen snot and yarn-- were so cold that I was unable to unbutton my fly.

     Well, I fidgeted and danced and jiggled for an agonizing hour or so until I realized that I had to make a choice: Give in and let nature take its course, or have one of my warmer buddies unbutton my fly for me.

     You're right. Not much of a choice.

     Later, my friend's mother came to pick us up, and as she drove to drop me off at home the scent of urine filled the car.

     These days, I'm a little jealous of John's mastery of technology. Because of his gear and ability to use it to adapt to changing conditions on the ice, he regularly outfishes me. And because he pays attention to dressing for the cold, his truck doesn't smell like urine. Well, no more so than usual.

     Yet, I'm a sunny soul, and take solace in the fact that, after our trips, while he's no more than halfway through with putting away his stuff and has yet to clean his fish, I'm having a hot toddy in front of my fireplace.

   

My Glittering Ascent in the World of High Fashion

     I've been through many job interviews in my life, and in them I learned excellent lessons, some of which I'd like to pass on to you. Specifically, the store manager who called your business suit "a timeless classic" when you first bought it in 1974 was not using the word "timeless" in any generally accepted sense of the word. Also, when an interviewer asks, "What would you do differently if you had your life to live over?" DO NOT say, "I wish I had been born a woman." Unless you actually were. But Paul Wait, the editor of Wisconsin Outdoor Journal, really threw me a curveball a year ago when we first discussed the possibility of me writing the magazine's closing column.

     "Kurt," he said. "You're just about perfect for the position. You hunt; you fish; you do both of them badly. But-- and this is really what we're looking for-- do you know anything about the world of high fashion?"

     Do I know anything about high fashion? Let me repeat that, for dramatic emphasis. Do I know anything about high fashion?

     Well, no.

     But I assured Paul that I'd do my best to catch up before this, the highly-awaited Spring Fashion Issue. My "catching up" consisted of watching a Victoria's Secret special on television. Now, this was a fine, fine program, of such redeeming social value that it's a wonder it wasn't picked up by PBS. First the models all walked out together, and their body types were such that the stage looked as if a fleet of dirigibles had crash-landed at a Popsicle-stick factory. Then the models walked the runway individually; each in turn, looking mightily peeved to be so beautiful and so wealthy at the same time. None of them ever smiled, as if they'd been dining exclusively on lemons for weeks. That, or they'd just been told that their half of the tax refund no longer exists, because you let the salesman talk you out of the used rifle you secretly knew you weren't going to buy anyway and into the Remington Model 700 in .270 Winchester that you've always wanted. Not that I've ever done that.

     Well, I got to thinking. Why not put on an outdoors-themed fashion show? Wisconsin Outdoor Journal could use it to sell subscriptions, or as a benefit, maybe for Trout Unlimited or The Ruffed Grouse Society or another of the organizations that make our tired old world a tolerable place to live in. I can picture it now:

     The lights come up onstage. A man, who looks suspiciously like yours truly, shambles out. The crowd gasps in unison; retinas scorched. "It's the glare from his forehead!" someone yells from offstage. "Makeup! Makeup!" A girl runs out, buffs the model's head, and disappears. "Sorry," the announcer intones. "On with our show." The model walks to the center of the stage and stops while the lights illuminate his footwear. The announcer continues:  "These knee-length rubber boots are the centerpiece of our Spring Footwear Collection. They are perfect for turkey hunting. They are scent-free, for bowhunters, and in a pinch can also be put to use on the trout stream..."

     I guess it's not coincidence that I was thinking about footwear yesterday. Specifically, I was thinking, "How many pairs of shoes does my wife own?" (12, as it turns out.) Even more to the point, I was thinking, "How many of them will she not miss?" You see, I like to throw stuff out. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling deep inside, particularly when it's not MY stuff I'm throwing out.

     "No way," Lori said when she got home from work. "You're not throwing any of my stuff out."

     "But you have 12 pairs!" (This is just good information to know. At some point in the future when she yells, "You haven't entered any cash withdrawals in the checkbook for six months!" I can respond with, "Yeah, but you have twelve pairs of shoes!")

     "Bet you do, too," she said.

     "Do not."

     "Do too."

     Well, I got to looking. I have barn boots, for turkey hunting. And two pairs of leather boots. And ice-fishing boots. And old canvas tennis shoes for wade fishing when it's a billion degrees outside. Oh, and chest waders.

     Pleased to make your acquaintance. I'm the Imelda Marcos of the sporting fraternity.

     On with our show. And now our model is sporting a light rain jacket which can be kept rolled up under a boat seat until that moment when a sudden squall pops up...

     One of the benefits of living down here in the Madison area is the sheer abundance of cultural events. On any given weekend since we first moved here four years ago, there have been literally dozens of events available-- not one of which I actually attended. In fact, the last time I had a little culture whipped on me was years ago, at a dance program in Whitewater. I went because my then-girlfriend had an interest in the arts, and I had an interest in feigning interest in the arts. The centerpiece of the show consisted of a woman shouting while performing a series of awful contortions. A great many bridesmaids can attest that I've done the exact same dance at reception halls across the land, and I never got any grant money for it, either.

     I bring all of this up to mention that I very nearly attended a cultural event recently: a showing of the play "Muskie Love." I'm sure it's excellent, but what caused me not to attend was the poster. In it a man-- supposedly a muskie fisherman-- is wearing a floppy hat and a fly-fishing vest, and holding a spincast outfit which even a sub-legal muskie would destroy in about ten seconds. The muskie fishermen I know all look like Paul Bunyan-- or his Blue Ox-- and would tell this usurper to try his luck at the trout pond next to the petting zoo.

     "Now our model is wearing a thick flannel shirt. Wait, is he exposing a little chest hair? I think he's trying to impress that pretty woman in the front row..."

     When I was a kid, goodness personified lived about four doors away, in the form of Kristy McCook. You know the type: a scent of rose petals always seemed to be in the air, and her hair blew gently in the breeze, even during the doldrums of August when there was no breeze. Well, I was smitten, with a capital "S." One day I was pedaling the new bike my dad had bought me home from youth football practice, and from a block away I could see that Kristy was on her front porch.

     "Excellent," I thought to myself as I built up speed. "She'll be impressed; me being a football player and all." Heck, there was even a little blood on my jersey. Can't get much manlier than that.

     As I neared her house I switched to riding "no hands," and in front of her house I looked over, in a more or less smoldering way, and piled right into her dad's new Volkswagen.

     "And for the finale...Wait, he's fallen off of the stage. I believe he's hurt himself..."

     Some things never change.