I want everyone to know right from the start that I will not write about anything on which the statute of limitations has not expired. So, if there are any tattle-tales out there, you can quit looking for something to earn a federal reward for. Also, since I am of advanced age, most of the people I write about are already dead and I won’t have to face them for a few more years — I hope.

Since this is my corner and a chance to give my opinion, please remember that what I write is just that: my view. If it differs from yours, go get your own column so you too can have fun. Or, keep on reading and get educated.

Probably the first thing I need to explain is this “Yankee” smear that seems to come up once in a while. I have to admit that I was born and raised in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Not only born a Yankee but also to a Catholic family just one generation removed from Slovakia and the old ethnic battlegrounds of Europe. As soon as I could, I ran off to Texas and joined the military. I called Texas home for 41 years, then started traveling the country in a motor home. I settled in Cleveland, Tennessee because here there are no extradition laws, the hospital gives free lobotomies and I happened to read one of J. Michael Leonard’s columns.

So, I was a “Yankee,” became a “damned Yankee,” and then became a “half-assed Yankee.” It’s just a matter of interpretation. Oh, I forgot to mention that I got the handle “Texas Trouble Maker” because my wife and I spent a winter in a big RV resort in Mesa, Arizona. The resort was the gathering place for a bunch of liberal minded Canadians who liked to do the snow bird routine in the Phoenix area. Their views on life differed so much from mine that by the time they went home to Canada they had left me the name Texas Trouble Maker. I earned it and was proud of it. I didn’t give them their flag back either.

Maybe I’ll tell you about that later. Right now I want to tell you about me arriving in Cleveland … Continue Reading

One of the few things I could do well during my younger years was shoot a rifle. I don’t want to sound like a braggart but I was an expert shot. I started shooting rifles when I was five years old and by the time I was nine I had my own .22 caliber rifle and was allowed to carry it around the countryside like other kids my age carried toy guns.

The early start with rifles and other firearms was natural since my dad was an exhibition shooter and we had a house full of guns all the time. His supply of .22 caliber rifles and ammunition was endless because he worked in an amusement park that had a large shooting gallery. His contact with suppliers of firearms and ammunition led to us having large quantities of both.

During the depths of the depression my dad made a little side-money by suckering other men into betting on who was the best marksman. My dad won a lot in matches that were usually set up on the front porches of beer joints or pool rooms. When his reputation caused other men to decline shooting against him he shamed them into matches by letting me beat them at some carefully arranged shots — like splitting playing cards edgewise, snuffing candle flames and hitting clay pigeons tossed from a trap. I wasn’t perfect at the age of nine but hitting one out of three is ten times better than what an untrained shooter can do. Yeah, I was the come-on for daddy’s con games.

Continue Reading

Hold on, whoa-up!  Time for a break in my usual line of articles about things of the past.  I must interject some current events in  this thing I do.  Yep, time for me to write something in the line of politics.

Wait a minute — don’t be running off to read something that JML guy might have written — stay with me, because I have something to say about the current political campaign of the two main persons running for the office of Sheriff.

First off, I better admit that my only interest in the Sheriff’s race is one centered on my past profession of being a law enforcement officer for 41 years.  Twenty-four in the military and 17 as a police chief in a one-horse Texas town.  Yep, I actually worked for a living when I was younger and foolish yet.  I say foolish because being a peace officer is not the wisest thing a person can do.  It might be the bravest, most selfless, most dedicated and worthy thing a person can do, but it is not the smartest.  Anyway, I did it and thus consider myself to be qualified to talk about law enforcement.

Last week I attended a news conference that Steve Lawson, the democrat candidate for the sheriff’s job, tossed in the legal offices near the courthouse.  I thought that the conference would be about Lawson’s ideas for improving the Sheriff’s department, so was disappointed to hear that he only wanted to complain about someone calling him an Obama Democrat.  Huh? Continue Reading

My boyhood gang was not dedicated to anything other than having fun. Or whatever passed as fun. Our theatre of war was mostly in the southeast sector of Pittsburgh;  an area that had intense industrial activities along the banks of the Monongahela River — which was down in a valley — and a rural setting that covered the plateau and rolling hills above the valley.

Our gang never lacked for amusement because we had the choice of town life or country life. The difference was as simple as going out the front door of the house into the countryside or out the back door that faced the river, railroad tracks and steel mills.

The gang functioned in all seasons, in all weather and at all times of the day or night. One of our adventures in particular gives me a warm feeling — the time Stretch, the tall guy in our gang, taught me that being a shrimp was not a bad thing to be, at times. Me, of course, being the shrimp. It was a balmy evening in the fall of 1944, and I was but a sweet-faced lad of twelve …

Me, Stretch and the rest of the gang were pitching pennies against a curb under a streetlight in the neighborhood when Butterball (the gang’s fat kid) suggested that we find something to eat … which wasn’t anything new coming from him because he was always ready to eat. Anyway, Gump (the gang’s country boy), seconded the suggestion by reminding us that it was harvest time — the time when all the local fruit trees and gardens were ripe for picking. Continue Reading

I just got off the phone. Someone wanted to complain about the way I write. Not about the poor grammar, poor spelling or lack of a theme — she wanted to complain about how I am impolite, insensitive, insensible and sometimes incoherent.

The first thing I asked her was whether or not she worked for a certain local newspaper. She claimed she was unemployed so I took that to mean she was maybe on the City Council. The second thing I asked her was if she had caught me telling a lie. No, no lies. She just thought I should stop writing stories until I changed my ways. I thought that was a bit much so I asked her if I did stop writing, could I try doing poetry.

Poetry? Sure, why not? After reading some pieces that have appeared in local newspapers, I figure I could do no worse. After all, isn’t poetry a few pegs down the skill ladder from prose? (I know I read that somewhere but please don’t ask me to post a link or make a quote because the utterance may have occurred in one of my high school classes. There aren’t any links that go back that far — except maybe the “missing link.”)

Poetry is easier than prose. Poetry is easier because right off the bat, you get some of that “poetic license,” which means that it is okay to make no sense. The stuff doesn’t even have to rhyme — grammar sure doesn’t apply — and you can lie all you want because people who read poetry expect that.

To make a poem all you have to do is think up a first line. A good first line sets the tone of the whole thing. It won’t hurt if the second line rhymes with the first line but it isn’t necessary. No, the secret of a poem is what you put in the first line and then show an utter hatred for grammar. Anything goes.

I already know that Tennessee poetry is the easiest to write because folks are already accustomed to hearing the words in those stupid hillbilly songs.

Twang, twang, I bumped my thang!

Eww, eww, it hurts by dang!

That’s poetry and probably the makings of a song that will no doubt get played at the next open house at the county cattle barn. Probably by someone who has mastered the Jew’s harp. What? That is not politically correct? Okay, lets change that to mouth harp. Continue Reading

Growing up on the outskirts of Pittsburgh back in the 1930 DDs (DDs meaning Deep Depression) meant that kids didn’t have a lot of store-bought toys. Everything was handmade, and instead of going to movies or arcades, we roamed the woods, coal mines, and railroad yards, or went to look at airplanes coming and going at the county airport.

The airport was eight miles from the neighborhood I grew up in, so it was a long walk to and from. We kids didn’t mind the walk because we managed to raid a few gardens on the way, break a couple of street lamps, or hop rides on a trolley or slow moving bus. We were on the way home one day when it clouded up and commenced to drizzle. We started cutting cross-country to shorten the distance home.

We were coming down the slope of one of the mountains when we came to the railroad tracks that ran from the steel mills down in the valley up to the site where the slag trains dumped giant crucibles of molten waste from the mills. Everyone knew about the slag train because when the molten mass was poured from the cars it cascaded down the slope like lava from a volcano and made for an interesting thing to watch at night.

The slag trains hadn’t been running for a while because the mills weren’t very active, but the tracks were still there and on those tracks near the top of the hill sat a half dozen flat cars on a siding.

One of our guys got the bright idea that if we could get the flatcars to rolling we could ride them down the grade, across a giant trestle, through a curve and shoot onto the main line along the river. It would save us five miles of walking in the rain, maybe more if the cars coasted down the main line another mile or so onto the flats. Continue Reading

When I was a pup, growing up on the fringes of Pittsburgh, all kids ran in gangs. The gang was necessary because all the little neighborhoods and communities were ethnic and folks didn’t like strangers passing over their turf. The kids were especially hard on strangers so when we wanted to roam, we had to do it in gangs — you know, security in numbers.

Our gang had the usual members. The tallest kid (Terry Bishop) was named “Stretch,” when his brain was working, and “Big Stoop” (short for “Stupid”) when it wasn’t (after the comic strip character from “Terry and The Pirates”). “Gump” was the hillbilly whose parents moved to town to work in the steel mills. “Butterball” was the fat one. “Einstein” was the smartest. “Crud” the dirtiest. “Jesus” the one who still attended Sunday school with his parents. “Gunboats” the kid with the biggest feet. And “Toilet Mouth”was the one who could swear in eleven languages — that would have been Bobby Coles . . . ol’ Toilet Mouth.

We did all the things other gangs did — hooked rides on the mill trains, raided gardens and orchards, swan in the Monongahela River, rolled boulders down the hillsides to block the roads below, got in long range rock fights with other gangs, built a swimming hole by digging a hole near a water main and cracking the pipe, shot arrows at the low flying local mail planes, made homemade skis in winter, and broke bones going down the slopes. Continue Reading

I was 15 years old when I got my own Thompson submachine gun.  There was nothing unusual about the incident, considering that it happened in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

During WWII, Pittsburgh was a very important manufacturing center because it was the steel producing center for the whole country. It was so important to the war effort that the government took extreme measures to insure that enemy saboteurs did not disrupt the manufacturing process. At the time, the Department of Defense was also worried that the steel mills might be bombed by enemy aircraft.

That part of the homeland defense effort was ridiculous . . . especially in Pittsburgh, where I grew up.

An air raid system was designed and put into practice. It was a piece of stupidity and panic from the start. Laws were written and air raid wardens were appointed to go about the neighborhoods to enforce the laws. One involved the “blackout” requirements (no lights at night). The wardens were serious. After dark, no lights outside were allowed. That meant automobile headlights had to be painted over to reduce the beams to a cat’s-eye thinness. It also meant no more street lights (the bulbs were removed or the wires disconnected), no light coming from  houses through windows or doorways (the glass was painted black or heavy curtains were used), no more bonfires or campfires as they could act as beacons to enemy bombers . . . what a bunch of crap.

The “blackout” regulations went away in a hurry once folks pointed out that street lights, headlights and campfires couldn’t match the light coming from the steel mills every night. The open-hearth furnaces were bare to the sky because it was impossible to cover the things with a roof. The Bessemer furnaces had to be open in order to blast air through the pots of cooking steel to burn away impurities. The Bessemer flames torched the sky three hundred feet high during the process.

Not just that, but railroad engines burned coal and the glowing embers went skyward, riverboats needed lights to load and unload cargo, dangerous coal mine and mill gases had to be burned off to avoid explosions, mill slag had to be dumped in the open where it would glow for days . . . altering everyone’s lives to avoid lighting the sky at night was impossible, if not outright stupid. Pittsburgh was famous for making a glow in the night sky that could be seen three hundred miles away. Pittsburgh made more light than a full moon.

The “blackout” thing was soon junked. But the government made other stupid plans. Continue Reading

By Kenneth Balog

I have reached the age when it is easier to tell the truth than make up a lie. So, you can bet your last taco and salsa dipping bowl that this is true.

First, I have to set you up for what I am going to tell the truth about —  I’ll start with the other day when I took off for Texas in my Ford Explorer.  I have to mention the Ford because it just came out of the garage at Larry Hill Ford where someone worked on the front brakes that a mechanic claimed were worn and needed to be replaced.  Anyway, I started the trip with an ABS Light that kept coming on most every time I mashed the brake pedal, which did not stop the car as it had before the brakes were replaced.

Cleveland was in bloom when I left it; Bradford Pears, Redbuds and Dogwoods were doing their spring thing — it were pretty although I drove in a rainstorm.  Alabama was also in bloom, adding Wisteria to the panorama of blooms.  In Mississippi I added Locust trees to the list.

I didn’t bother looking for anything in Louisiana because there isn’t anything there anyway, and besides, all the scenery is hidden behind signs that advertise the Casinos at Shreveport.  I was anxious to get to Texas and kept the pedal to the metal averaging 68 miles per hour the entire way and did not top 90 except for one short stretch.

I crossed into Texas and hardly noticed any changes except for the number of restrooms along the Highway.  I made it to the edge of Dallas before I called it a night.  The next morning I headed across the flat country, noticing that Texas trees are a bit shorter than the ones I have growing around my house in  Cleveland (TN).  I also noticed that the grass alongside the highway was a bit on the skimpy side and of a gray color that I had forgotten. Mighty oaks gave way to midget mesquites and persimmon shrubs. I didn’t really care because I was back in Texas after a 11 year stay in  Tennessee. Continue Reading