Post-Tribune

Carrol Vertrees: College gives kids a nice start

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 06:28:46 -0500

Maybe it was something in the water. Or in the wild and crazy social life, like skating parties in the old gym. There was something special about that little church college on the south edge of Indianapolis, an unsophisticated place for unsophisticated kids away from home for the first time. I have felt this for years, but it touched my heart again when my college roommate and his coed wife got their pictures in the paper down in Kokomo. They have been married for 69 years, since shortly before he shipped out for his Navy duties. Good grief! That is …

Carrol Vertrees: Memory of life ‘back home’ comfort medicine

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:20:22 -0500

Its welcome lights went out years ago, but that little barbershop in the middle of my hometown’s mostly comatose business district still leads pilgrims like me home to places we remember so well. It was run by a remarkable fellow named Sheldon Eubanks, probably Elnora’s best known citizen, next to Doc Porter. He did not make house calls, but folks who drifted in got some good medicine anyway — they were exposed to the art of conversation. The haircuts and shaves were OK, too. My memory scales tip easily, without warning. I thought of Sheldon when I read an item …

Carrol Vertrees: Executing our right to the First Amendment

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 06:14:51 -0500

I like to quote people who are brighter than I. Their number is infinite. Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I thought of Pogo after the horrendous killings in that Connecticut school. That may be a harsh judgment, but there is some truth in it. An air of complacency hangs over our land. Or maybe it is just confusion. Puzzlement. When a little religious sect shouted that God ordered it as a punishment for the state’s stand on same-sex marriage, I remembered Yul Brynner telling us in “The King and I” that “There are times …

Carrol Vertrees: Is Pat Robertson an evangelist or a comedian?

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:03:01 -0500

He may bring down an army of garter snakes to my condo yard, or a truckload of broccoli to the front door, but it is a risk I must take. The “he” I refer to is this fellow Pat Robertson, who for all I know is a mere mortal. But I am not sure and I yearneth to know: Is he an evangelist or a comedian, or a mixture? Does he really have a static-free line to the source of heavenly power? I don’t tune in to his television gig, lest I be reminded of how little I understand about …

Remember only that you are not alone

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 02:09:27 -0500

A few years ago I drove past a farmhouse near the place of my birth and saw an old man sitting on his porch as the sun was close to going wherever it goes at the end of the day. This man seemed old to me — I was barely a youngish 70. I wondered what he was thinking about, or if he were dozing and dreaming. Now, when I have reached a more mature age, I sit on my porch a lot, watching the birds, admiring the flowers and yes, thinking about being old. I have been old for …

A time to contemplate wars, soldiers, parades

Sun, 26 May 2013 02:02:35 -0500

If the prophet Isaiah is still watching, he surely is running short on patience. He surely wonders what is wrong with the human race. So should we all. We have not turned swords into plowshares. Instead, we have created deadlier swords. Maybe, some day. For now, in this Memorial Day period, the nation is caught up in the euphoria of patriotism, remembering, being thankful, glad to live in a land of the free. What we really feel, deep in our souls, is private, no doubt a mixture of pride and sadness. What will we feel about this official period of …

‘In God I trust’ may be a better license plate

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:01:31 -0500

I am not an eminent historian, so I don’t know if Chris Columbus actually discovered our place or if some folks got here first. One account said he and his men saw some people running around without any clothes on, but they didn’t stop. I don’t know exactly where that was. The Columbus story is romantic anyway, exactly accurate or not. We do know that 1492 was a big year. The question is not who discovered America or when, but when we are going to discover ourselves. Our real selves. I wonder what Chris would think now if he sailed …

Moms: We owe them, and not just this day

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:01:30 -0500

They hold and comfort us when we are sad. They love us when we are bad. They are there when we need them, with a cookie or a hug. Even when they hurt or are weary, they have time for us. It is a thing we call love. That’s what mothers do. And a million other little acts that help us through stormy times. Too late, sadly, some of us remember. Too soon, sadly, some of us forget. Most mothers, I think, ask not what we can do for them but what they can do for us. We owe them. …

In search for truth, many trials

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 06:18:58 -0500

‘You have some really neat vibrations,” the fortune teller woman said, as she caressed my left hand. I thought “Wow.” Then she whispered “You should be a boss. You should lead people.” This exciting news hit me decades ago in a booth at the Lake County Fair, where I was looking for a story to prove to my many superiors back at the paper in Gary that I was on the job. They never got the message, apparently, for I never got to do much leading. The fortune teller urged me to get the “deluxe” reading “before I lose the …

Puff piece: Don’t get burned by smoking

Wed, 29 May 2013 06:17:00 -0500

If the street signs in my next world say “Parallel Parking Only,” I will have to come back or just drive around. Forever. Maybe longer. If signs in their next world say “No Smoking Anywhere,” what will habitual smokers do? Can they quit? Being addicted to cigarettes is not funny, but my parking ineptitude probably is, so go ahead and laugh. Just don’t blow smoke in my direction. I never learned to smoke, but I didn’t try very hard. Kicking the habit apparently is awfully painful, so why do so many try so hard to catch the habit? Sometimes it …

Ice cream cranking proves no chore for top paddle-licker

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:20:45 -0500

When I was a farm kid in the days of FDR, I often heard someone described as a crank or cranky, meaning out of sorts, irritable, peevish, in a state of fretful fussiness. But I did not pay much attention because I was too busy reading books by Horatio Alger, like “Herbert Carter’s Legacy” and similar stirring literature. Now, as I approach adulthood, I understand, because I know a few cranky people. I am eternally grateful that I am never a crank. Well… But the word often comes to me in a deliciously positive way when I admire stuff in …

Vertrees: Onset of spring brings back memories of youth

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:33:55 -0500

My thoughts are not as lofty as Tennyson’s — he wrote that in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love — he didn’t say much about old men. But in the diaries of my heart, my fancy turns eagerly to kid days on the farm. Tennyson should have been there, down where the persimmons grow and there is no temperamental lake to send a chill on a nice warm day. Back home, when spring sprang, it usually stayed sprung. By this time, we were thinking eagerly about the end of school. Eight months was enough. …

On Easter, all around us, a fresh day dawns

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:03:59 -0500

Wearing earmuffs with a spring bonnet would look funny, but in some areas, that might be wise. No matter — it’s how warm we are inside on this special day that counts — deep in our beings, feeling the touch of something special. I read some stuff about why Easter is not on the same day every year but I got confused. It does not matter. What does matter is the message in the Easter choir anthem: the rejuvenating announcement that “Morning Has Come.” Indeed it has. After deep sorrow and darkness it is light again, a new morning, a …

We make a difference in the lives around us

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:19:57 -0500

Finding samples of deathless prose in an obituary sounds contradictory and unlikely. But I am dead sure I found some in the final sendoff of a fellow named Larry Vincent down in Fort Myers, Fla. I knew it was a winner when the first paragraph said he died at 2 a.m. “because he never did anything at a decent hour.” Poking fun, gently deriding him seemed to fit perfectly, little waves of levity there in the river of love that flavored the obituary, taking some of the sting from the sorrow at losing a man who touched his family and …

Listen up or miss out

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 06:04:13 -0500

In my reveries, I often drift back home to the rural haven that nurtured me. Like, I sorely miss the sounds from my childhood. I am thinking how much fun it would be to have a loudspeaker bring the early morning sounds of a crowing rooster (they do other stuff too) a moo or two from the barnyard. A whinny. Maybe the friendly cooing of a dove. The folks who make our condo rules would surely cry “foul” so I won’t do it, but I am tempted, here in my old age cocoon. An acoustic ecologist (have you ever met …

Men try to carve out a role in the kitchen, usually just get burned

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:05:34 -0500

Some years back, I began a column like this: “In the autumn of my life … ” Where has my autumn gone, I wonder, here in the chill winter of my life? Where do the seasons go, when it is their time? They just wait, I reckon, knowing that their turn will come — it goes on and on, even if we don’t, which suggests it all is organized well. And it is dependable. It comes and goes whether we are here or not, which may deflate some of us who think we are hot stuff. But we should be …

Two left turns don’t make a right

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:13:21 -0500

It is not as much of a life changer as indoor plumbing, but the turn signal invention rates high as a life saver. Some of us don’t know much about the turn signal, even how to use it. One of the pillars of American independence is “Let us do our own thing,” even if it kills us, or somebody else out there on the highways. I read the other day that a thing called the “thermal flasher” makes this gadget work. Did you know that? For folks who can’t get the hang of it, try this, as in doing the …

Vertrees: Being biased isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 06:18:40 -0500

Anyone who does not have a serious bias is missing a lot of fun. I don’t mean like a Gary councilman from many years back who said solemnly: “I am against gambling, vice and everything.” Bias is not a bad word. If we have opinions about anything, and most of us do, we are biased. When I wrote opinion stuff at the paper, some readers said I was biased. That made me glad, because I had obviously made it clear that I had an opinion. When I reported on an important story, I tried to hide my bias, but probably …