Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Trucks with Ladders


Admit it, some things in life spook us, like being behind trucks with ladders.

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They’re everywhere, these pickups, their loose ladders bouncing about, deadly potential projectiles threatening with every bump to pierce your windshield and remove your head. Oh, the paranoia.

Recently I’m driving down a two-lane highway at a pretty good clip. The right-of-way slopes steeply into the marshy swamps. No room for mistakes. My nerves get neurotic.

I’m sandwiched in behind an 18-wheel Heineken beer truck and a long line of kamikaze bumper-huggers. Boxed in again. With sweaty palms I grip the steering wheel. Paranoia strikes deep.

Flashbacks resurface of being hung-up in the crawl space under my house, hemmed in with occupants of the dark spaces of life. Backing out takes hours, which demonstrates another design flaw in the human anatomy: lack of rear-view eyes. Lesson learned? Avoid boxed-in venues, front row church pews and audible use of the word ‘trump.’

An enticing photo of a frosty Heineken is painted on the truck’s rear panel. It temporarily distracts my mind from this disturbing dilemma. Its momentary reprieve transfers the fear factor over to the taste buds, then back again. The fear is real, the beer an illusion.

A large hand truck swings violently in the truck’s slipstream. It dangles there, hanging by a bungee cord noose like a condemned man waiting for the gallows door to drop. Stenciled beneath it is a warning: “Watch out for flying objects.” Trapped again, caught in the vortex where all options are bad ones.

Thoughts of disaster run wild. My mind does visual take-offs on all that can happen, none of which is good. Like that time I signed a large stack of loan documents. I ask the banker, “Say, Leo, what’s in these documents?” His reply is stenciled into my brain: “Nothing that’s good for you.”

So here I am, visualizing the hand truck flying off, hitting the highway, bouncing a couple of times and sending a twisted mass of steel hurdling through the windshield. A still, small voice whispers in the inner recesses of my brain: “Your morning’s repentance was weak, my son.” Paranoia covers all bases.

Miraculously, luck prevails. Catastrophe is averted. The bungee holds, and the truck turns off to deliver more of its frothy libations. But wait, all’s not well that ends well. Because the day has just begun.

I soon merge onto the interstate, thankful for options, three lanes each side. Good music on the radio, emails quiet, cruise control, life is good. Until I see ‘it.’

Lumbering ahead is a mammoth Caterpillar, twenty tons of yellow steel and rubber tires teetering on the edge of a lowboy trailer. The truck straddles the two outside lanes while traffic backs up, trying to decide what to do. Options narrow again.

This mass of disaster is anchored on the trailer by tiny chains found on a set of yard swings. Soon it’s my time to pass this enormous hunk of impending cataclysm. But wait, some boob in front slows down. Hedged in again, forced to contemplate the caveat written on the truck: “Danger. Wide Load. Stay Back.” No mention of a frosty beer.

Later I’m behind a logging truck. Its pine-tree products protrude waving a red flag and declare, “Watch for Flying Debris.” They’re perfectly positioned to give new meaning to the cliché, ‘a sharp stick in the eye.’

Listen, life is perilous and it’s not all just trucks. Hazards lurk everywhere, from sticky sidewalk chewing gum to random bird droppings from overhead.

Vertigo and the fear of heights make stairwells a snare. Escalators are shoe-eating monsters to the faint of heart, capable of chewing off foot and leg of the less than nimble. Home ladders, while useful, are entrapment devices engineered to lure unsuspecting fools into early hospice.

Don’t forget home elevators, cubicles so small they resemble vertical coffins. Trapped inside, … so long to sanity and a toilet.

Perfect places for paranoia to breed are slick bathroom stone floors and rolled-up corners of kitchen rugs. One fall will end it all.

But look, why carry on with this soliloquy? You have your own neuroses to nurture. Let’s just leave it at that for now.

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Time distills the essence out of everything. In retrospect, the Heineken truck episode was not all that bad. But next time I’ll follow it. I’ve concluded that beer is what’s real; paranoia is only an illusion.


Bud Hearn
August 29, 2017

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Slang It to Me


The venerable, time-tested idioms and clichés are rusting out. They’re about to bite the dust. Acronyms and instagrams of verbal arcana now rule, the new Esperanto. I’ve dusted off and cobbled together a few old ones. They still tell it like it is.

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We live in a culture of idiomatic clichés. We’re comfortable with our favorites. You can belly up to the bar with such claptrap chatter as lol, yolo and omg, but you’ll never get the same respect as letting you ain’t just whistling Dixie, bubba, roll off your tongue. Amen?

Today, our Republic seems to be hanging by a thread. Cordiality is as scarce as hen’s teeth and protest rules the roost. Politics is business as usual. Congress keeps slamming the door in our face and we’re tired of having to go around the block with Hillary.

What’s happened to consensus? It fell off the wagon and got in the ditch. Everybody’s posturing, saving face. The wolf is knocking at the door demanding more hand-outs. We’re robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep anarchy and looters off the streets.

There’s enough blame to go around. But, misery loves company, and the fat’s in the fire when government can’t pay its bills. Our leaders keep kicking the can and assuring us we’ll dodge the bullet of disaster in spite of the eleventh hour. They’ve hung us out to dry while rewarding themselves with the fruits of our labors.

The moment of truth has arrived. The Treasury is broke. We’re running from pillar to post, taxing everything that moves, and searching for money to pay the piper. Our ‘leaders’ are impotent. These hot-dog, flash-in-the-pan fat cats are making off with billions and laughing all the way to the bank.

Loose screws are everywhere. Our Supreme Leader is running around like a chicken with his head cut off and competing with Kim Jong Un on weird haircuts. Neither can figure out who’s on first and neither is playing with a full deck.

POTUS is hounded by the press and is trying to get the monkey off his back by blaming fake news. He shoots from the hip with nuclear tweets while Putin, a short dog in tall grass, sucker-punches him silly on Syria. He’s all talk and no action on making America Great Again. We’ve heard his empty rhetoric until we’re blue in the face. We’re fed up. He’s obsessed with walls and is drawing lines in the sands of Mexico. The world hates us. We’re easy pickings now, saturated with egg on our face and left hanging out to dry.

Robert E. Lee is disappearing while glib gloaters rub salt in the collective wounds of the fading Confederacy. National heritage is being swept under the rug of history in the glare of a gilded Sherman in Central Park.

America is passing the buck on world leadership and riding on the merry-go-round of avoidance, living in a fool’s paradise. We’re down in the back, stooped like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s high time we roll up our sleeves and stop equivocating. Then the world will be laughing out of the other side of their mouths.

Legalized duels will end political gridlock. No more endless beating around the bush of debate. Put your money where our mouth is I say. We’ll get to the bottom of it quickly when it becomes a matter of life and death. Such contests focus the mind. It’s a fair and square way of coming to grips with the issues. It would be the final nail in the coffin of flawed concepts and idiotic ideology. It will truly separate the men from the boys.

Citizens keep getting the short end of the stick. We’re left leaning on the weak reed of one measly vote, unless we live in Chicago. Yet we still run off at the mouth while eating humble pie. Soon we’ll be forced to man up and face the music. The biased media’s grim handwriting on the wall throws fuel on the fire, while we sit on our hands and hope the sorry mess will run its course.

While we may be as clueless as the man in the moon as to what’s going on, we’re still hard nuts to crack. We tend to our own business and try to make hay while the sun still shines. We let no grass grow under our feet.

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It’s a dysfunctional, dystopian new world of instagrams, sexting and tweeting. Get used to it. If you don’t like today, tomorrow will be a real pain in the ass. So put your foot in the door, sign up for Twitter and throw your own hat into the ring.

Remember, the long and the short of it is still: You Only Live OnceYOLO, y’all, and bless your little hearts.



Bud Hearn
August 17, 2017






Friday, August 11, 2017

Fitting In


It’s easy to fit in…it takes courage to step out.

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I’m reading La Rochefoucauld’s maxims. This one catches my interest:

In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought. In fact, one might say that society is entirely made up of assumed personalities.”

I chew on it while thinking about which is better: fitting in or stepping out. How far out can one step before they cross the threshold of becoming one of the deplorables, avoidables or uninviteables? Worth pondering.

Clearly, fitting in can get boring at times, but being ostracized is a serious matter this late in life. You can run out of time trying to make mid-course fashion adjustments before it gets too late. You have to think about such things as who’ll be pall bearers at your funeral.

My daughter comes in, slides an Austen-Heller shoe catalog across the table.

“Dad, check out these shoes. Think how you’d look with the green ones,” she says. “You would really be stepping out on the island.”

Hmmm, interesting. But what would I be stepping into? The last guy who tried this was Chuck Berry, and he’s dead. Currently I’m not making any societal waves and keeping character assassinations at bay. Besides, wearing green shoes won’t add one cubit to my stature.”

Come on, dad, get a life. Times are changing. Fashion is moving fast. Don’t be left behind. These are cool shoes.”

Maybe she’s right, they will make a statement. But matching them with my current JCrew wardrobe presents a dilemma. I don’t need to buy another round of clothes just to match the whim of green shoes. So I debate.

Uh, you’re right, but what would people think? (‘But’ always keeps the debate going) Brown and black match everything.”

Right. That’s the point. Step out in green leather loafers and you’ll make a fashion statement.”

I push back and take the defensive position of discussing the merits of fitting in. No waves, no discussions, no critiques. Just part of the herd. It’s safe and harmless. It’s a kind of invisible life. You’re in it, but nobody notices. It’s a place where all men look alike, comfortable in conformity, complacent in status quo.

Get with it, dad,” she says. “Toss the Cole Haan/khaki pant/blue blazer generation and step out. You’ll be noticed again.”

I tell her that fashion is a fickle, wallet-busting frivolity, better suited for the young who are trying to find themselves. At a certain age we have either found ourselves and approved or given up the search as a hopeless endeavor.

Look, dad, the green ones are on end-of-summer sale, a bargain at $125. Buy them, and I’ll guarantee you’ll get respect. Cachet will be in your future. Overnight you’ll be a trendsetter, an arbiter of style. And who knows but what your pals are just waiting for someone to take the lead. Do it, dad.”

All right, suppose I do. Just what crowd am I fitting into? Anybody over forty? And there’s your mother to consider. What will she think?”

Well, it may be a shock at first, but I think she’ll come along. After all, she keeps up with the styles. Have you seen her closet?”

I remind her of my past disastrous experience with the Stubbs and Wooten black velvet loafers, the toes emblazoned with red devils, and the Palm Springs pink flowered silk shirts.

Yes, that was unfortunate,” she says. “But you made those choices on your own. Now I’m going to help you. These green loafers will be your ticket to freedom in individual expression. Trust me. What credit card do you want to use?”

Like a hungry bear out of hibernation, the primal urge for individuality begins to stir again and it waves goodbye to the herd.

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W. C. Fields once remarked, “There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” Green shoes will soon be arriving.

So I step out, buy the ticket, take the ride. A promise of freedom for $125 seems like a bargain indeed.


Bud Hearn
August 11, 2017