The Hunter

Excerpt from:

The Hunter

A short story

by

Ken Anderson

 

Uncle Roy, a wannabe sadist, timed everything just right. He had me reluctantly stripped naked just as my school bus came by and stopped in front of the house. About 25 of my peers rushed to the near windows to see that my pitiful pale body had not yet grown one hair other than the ones atop my head. I heard giggling screams from the girls and hooting guffaws from the boys as the windows were lowered and the bus door swung open. The boy I disliked most in the whole world jumped out the door, pointing and laughing at my embarrassment which caused my body to flush away the last vestiges of the cold night. Fortunately and before I swooned, my uncles had lifted the tub to the ground and I jumped into it, not caring if it was hot enough to scald my already ruddy skin. Not quickly enough to suit me, the grinning bus driver waved, closed the door, and drove off with my future history besmirching the faces of 25 kids aged from six to eighteen. I would long rue that day.

 

©2011 Ken Anderson. All rights reserved.

The First Bank Affair

The First Bank Affair
by
Ken Anderson
Based on actual events

Hiding in the bushes like a coward; shot in the butt like an idiot. How can a man tell his future grandchildren that his greatest chance at fame came to an untimely end when he was shot in the butt? He probably should keep his mouth shut. It began like a lot of innocent adventures—an average day in an average life…

I walk across the asphalt that fronts the little shopping strip where my hardware store is located, heading to the First Bank branch to deposit my weekly receipts and to size up the new girl who is working as a teller. Some of the boys say that she is a real looker, and I’ve been feeling a little lonely the past few years.

Her back is to me as I enter the lobby—a back covered to near the middle with magnificent raven hair.

Wow. If the front is anything like the back . . .

As she steps from behind her station, the crimson mini-dress that ends just below her tush shows off the nicest legs ever beheld by a man’s lusting eyes. Red heels add to their unabashed sexiness. I am becoming extremely interested but my gaze quickly returns to that bushy crown of hair and the mysteries that it hides.

As she turns to face my direction, the breath leaves my body. Love has drop-kicked me in the gut.

This isn’t a girl; this is all woman . . .

After I wipe the slobbers from my chin, I remove my baseball cap and shove it into the back pocket of my jeans. No need looking like a redneck, even if I am one.

Nearing her desk, I notice that a gold pin over her left breast says “Mindy”.
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Copyright© 2002 by Ken Anderson. All rights reserved.

The remainder of this story can be found on my private writing blog.

Techie

Some tech items that I own or do not own:
iPod … no
Cell phone … yes. Used only for talking and time checking. 5 yr old antique with no camera.
GPS … yes. When you get old, you will know why.
Video camera … no.
Gaming system … no.
Digital camera … yes.
Laptop PC … yes. Potty computing.
PDA … yes. Used it for book reading.
Flat screen tv … yes. I watch Spongebob Squarepants and Shimmy. I used to watch Duckman.
Stereo system … yes. A very good one.
Blue ray player … no.

Economic thoughts

This economic stimulus “plan” the government is rushing into looks reasonable on paper. Creating jobs will bring on a flush of consumerism once more, and the economy will have a chance to stabilize and then slowly climb out of the mini-depression. On paper.

During the 1930’s, we had a similar situation with the Great Depression, the biggest difference in then and now is the number of affected people. In 1930, there were nearly 123 million people living in the United States. In 2006, the population had ballooned to more than 300 million. The increase has been just as dramatic worldwide. Then as now, the US elected a president whom they thought had the best chance of leading them out of the economic woes. Some of the same type public works projects that were put in place then are again being considered. The problem is, all that money thrown at the depression didn’t fix the problem and lead the US into economic prosperity. It took a world war at a cost of many millions of lives and countless billions of dollars to finally snowball the economic recovery. Not to say the public works programs did not work, but there is never enough of them and the private sector will not do business at a tiny profit margin. They will shut down most operations in a long term, low profit economic situation, and try to wait it out. The economy would have eventually recovered without a war and there would have been no Baby Boom that a lot of we geezers came out of, but the world would now be a far different place than it is now. Imagine the 60’s without Boomers!

The US government is considering a package of as much as $900 billion for economic stimulus, but is it considering the rest of the world that is struggling under hard economic conditions?

More next time …

This is my Brasstacks for February 4, 2009

Baseball police

I will finish off my musings on baseball by writing briefly about baseball cops (the same applies to other major professional and amateur sports). Sports cops are better known as league commissioners or such, and are paid solely to make sure their particular sport is bettable. That is to say they want to make sure the game is played on the up-and-up so that all betting will be “fair”. The boys in Vegas want to know that they will make a profit on all gross wagers in a given day. Cops don’t pay much attention to whom team owners socialize with or partner with in business ventures, or what bets they place and on whom, because the owners sign their paychecks. But let a player, even if he is one of the best and most popular and dedicated players that ever donned spikes get caught betting on his own team and he is verbally castrated and burned on a sacrificial alter to the fairness and wholesomeness of the all-American game. We must remember mom and apple pie! Just ask Charlie Hustle himself, the legend-in-his-own-time Pete Rose. No one that I can remember has ever played the game of baseball harder and with more intensity and passion than did Rose. In all probability, he will never be inducted into the Hall of Fame for baseball, its highest honor, at least not while he is alive. He got caught betting on his own team. Gracious! If he had been wagering against his teammates, he may have solicited at least a tut-tut from me, but not for betting on them! Had the team owner been caught doing the same thing, nothing would have been said, and the team owner is the person most capable of throwing a game. These are greedy folk and how they make their money goes hardly noticed by fans. I don’t say they would or do cheat, but whom is in a better position to do so? You own a team, you own the cops, you own the money and connections and betting is sort of fun …

Even though Rose has had some skirmishes with Federal cops since being forced out of baseball, and even though he may have some in-your-face personality issues, he was still one of the greatest players to pull on a strap! In my opinion, top ball cops should allow demand him entry into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, and it should be done in his lifetime. While they are at it, Shoeless Joe Jackson should be right beside him, although not in his own lifetime!

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This is my Brasstacks for January 26, 2009.

Baseball since Maris

As I said in my previous post, baseball as a sport died with the coming of the big money in the early 1960’s. Not only was television responsible for the cash influx, but so were sponsors with deep pockets wanting to reach as many people as possible to sell their products or services. In that era, Major League Baseball was the sport. Games, especially the World Series, had been broadcast on tv for many years. I remember the principal of my elementary school bringing a television set to work with him and setting it up in a classroom where some of the lucky boys got to watch the greats of the game vie for the world championship. I was fortunate to get to see some of the games, but the girls and non-selected boys had to stay in their usual classes. No equal rights or women’s lib then.

It is my opinion that on the day in 1961 when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season, baseball’s fun died as the ball cleared the outfield fence. It started when Maris was belittled—mainly by the press—for breaking Babe Ruth’s long-held record. It took him a few more games to set the new record than it did for Ruth, but the press forgot to mention Maris was up against more and better players than was Ruth, especially pitchers. The art of pitching has gotten better over the years, and is still improving to this day. With a bat, things are quite different; hitting has never kept pace with pitching, so Maris had to slug against far better throwing than did Ruth. The lead-up, the spectacle of the record being broken, and the contrived and controversial aftermath is what attracted the attention of tv and the corporate sponsors, particularly tobacco companies, auto makers, men’s toiletry makers, and brewers.

There have been some very good players since then, with many of them better than anyone that ever played the sport. Their biggest problem is their money and egos overshadow their abilities. But a few like Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Cal Ripken Jr., Roberto Clemente, and some others were very good players and very popular with the fans because the fans were very popular with them.

I don’t consider any home runs per year hitting record since that of Maris as being legitimate, and everyone knows why. Strength enhancing drugs and Major League Baseball’s refusal to test players for them was the final nail in the coffin for the credibility of the sport.

I said that hitting has not kept up with pitching. The biggest reason pitchers do not see as much improvement from steroids is the bio-mechanics of the human body can take only so much stress, and pitching a baseball at 90+ mph is extremely stressful on muscles, bones, and joint tissue. Building more muscle becomes anti-conducive to pitchers after a certain limit, as increased muscle strength causes that much more stress on bones and joints, even to the point of breaking and ripping them apart. Not so bad with hitters though. The pure power that a strong muscle delivers through a bat to a ball is enormous, but there is not that over-and-over repetitive motion that a pitcher has to go through. Pitching improvement has come mostly through the refinement of the technique of ball delivery.
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I will finish this later with a few words about Pete Rose and baseball cops.

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This is my Brasstacks for Juanuary 24, 2009

Welcome

Welcome to Brasstacks44.

• This is my first blog on WordPress.com
• I have been in a mid-life crisis since puberty
• I am 64 years old and male
• I am retired from heavy construction
• I dislike politicians in or running for office
• I distrust preachers
• I dislike organized religion
• I like to bitch … a lot
• I have other blogs on blogger.com and post photos on Flickr

Blog entries will more than likely be sporadic at first. I don’t know how WordPress works, so everything is subject screw-ups.

Having stated that I am 64 years of age, this blog will either be the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end. Contrary to popular opinion in a poll I took of myself when I turned 50, I probably will not live forever.