The Luck of the Draw

(Our nation is living in lockdown due to the coronavirus. The news is grim. Survival is critical, physically and economically. It helps to put things in perspective. I hope this Weakly Post will lighten your spirits and give you reason for hope.)


The Luck of the Draw

There are 52 cards in a deck and 52 weeks a year to play them. Possibilities are endless. Outcomes often depend on the luck of the draw.

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In cards, like life, there are winners and losers. One can only play the hand they’re dealt. Fate is the dealer; nerves, skill and luck play the hand. But the game’s never over until the last card is played.

Driving along I-95 I pass a man walking. A blue duffle is slung over his shoulder, a wool cap pulled low. His ragged appearance suggests he’s drawn a hard hand to play.

My friend, Pappy, plays poker every Thursday night. He’s had run-ins with losing hands. He usually drops by the next morning to boast or lament. His eyes reveal how the game went.

Today he eases into the leather chair in my office, all smiles. I ask how the game went.

He winks. “Got lucky,” he says.

“How so?” I ask.

“Well, I had this feeling, you know, like when my stars are in alignment.”

“Betting on that star algorithm again? Remember last time?”

He scratches the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, bad karma that night. Luck skipped out on me. But this time was different. Like my golf. I triple-bogie every hole, throw my clubs and swear I’m never playing again. Then one day a hole in one. I keep coming back for more ridicule.”

I laugh. “Well, Pappy, have you ever calculated your win-loss ratio, like having a budget for your habit?”

“Nah, man, nobody does that. It’s not about how much you win or lose; it’s all about betting and bluffing. Money is just the score. Besides, we play friendly poker.”

“Is money involved?”

“Of course,” he answers. “That’s the thrill of it.”

“Well, brother, where money’s concerned, there’s no such thing as a friendly game. Beyond a certain point there’s nothing friendly about money, especially if you’re losing.”

He thinks about it. “Never thought about it that way. I guess ‘friendly’ is a relative term, huh?”

“Poker is like fighting,” I say. “You have to play to learn, and you only learn when the cards are dealt and your money’s on the table. But forget about my philosophy. How’d it go last night?”

Pappy becomes animated, sits on the edge of the chair. “Get the picture. Six of us playing Texas Hold ‘em. We’re betting heavy. Everyone’s counting on luck. Me, I’m down to my last chips. Might be my last game. Good thing we’re not playing strip poker.”

“I’m sitting across from Leet Bohannan. He’s cornered most of the chips and looks smug. Nobody’s happy about that. He keeps grinning like a Baptist preacher who’s holding four aces in the Saturday night game.”

He continues. “Rocky deals ‘em up. I look at my two hole cards. Two deuces. I figure I might as well fold. Deuces never win.”

“The betting begins. Rocky deals three open cards on the table—a five, an ace and a deuce. Suddenly my hand’s starting to look interesting, so I hang in there, bet and raise.”

“Already counting your money, huh?” I say.

“Yeah, man. That’s when this feeling about my stars kicks in.”

“Napoleon had the same star feeling, Pappy. Know what happened to him?”

He ignores the comment. “Rocky deals the 4th card. A queen. Leet raises. He sits there smiling like he just shook hands with God, but I think he’s bluffing. So I match him and raise. The others fold.”

“Leet raises again. I shove everything I have on the table, including my glass eye, Timex watch, truck keys and my last two Viagra pills, and call. The table gets so quiet you can hear the temperature drop.”

“I figure Leet maybe holds one ace and thinks three will win. Who wouldn’t? Hard to lose with 3 aces. He lights up a cigar. Rocky deals the final Showdown card. Can you believe it, a deuce?”

“I can’t believe it myself. My four lowly deuces trump his three aces. Who’d ever think deuces would win anything?”

“Leet withers, the others laugh. I buy the drinks.”

**********

Life deals us cards every day. Our money’s on the table. Some have more, others less. But everyone has chips. The question is, “Will we bet, bluff or fold?”

I think about the fellow walking along the interstate. How will he play his hand of deuces? I wonder how I’ll play mine. How about you?

Game on!

Bud Hearn
March 30, 2020

Holed up, locked down and getting by

To paraphrase W. C. Fields, “There comes a time when we must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” This is one of those times.

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We’ve got a mess on our hands. Routines have been replaced with the reality of quarantine. Once unthinkable among Americans, it has been dusted off and exported from Guantanamo to the mainland.

After almost a week of mandated isolation and dystopian ‘social distancing,’ the natives are getting restless. Americans can only stand so much of one another in restricted airspace. The lid’s about to blow off.

The gigantic engines of commerce are ceasing to hum. An eerie silence is replacing the frantic ebb and flow of humanity on the roads and in the aisles. The tension is building while the gods of amusement and entertainment sit sidelined waiting for the Vesuvian top to blow.

In the hinterlands the shut-in captives wander aimlessly about in a fixed stupor, staring into the vacant space of their brains and wringing their hands at the vanishing cash flow and empty shelves of toilet paper. Holed up, locked down, getting by. Lord, Lord, what’s to be done?

While attempting to quantify the quandary we’re mired in, I’ve been occupying myself with things that get my hands dirty, things like cleaning out the garage, raking leaves and ridding the pool furniture of winter’s mildew. Dirt and grime abolish fear and panic. Besides, Armageddon is staged for the Middle East, not America. So, lighten up.

The mayor of Baltimore is pleading with local gangs to refrain from shooting one another until this scourge is past. Hospital beds are scarce and reserved. Progress is being made.

Like us, the Federal Reserve is uptight. But they’re dealing with the crisis creatively. They’re funding $1 trillion dollars a day for overnight loans to support liquidity. How can they do this, you ask? Easy. Simple legerdemain.

Madoff is negotiating prison release in exchange for revealing his secret of creating ‘illusionary cash,’ an art form like a high-stake check kiting scheme. It works until the float stops. While it won’t help the hardship resulting from most people’s shortage of ‘elusive spondulix,’ it might restore hope, and hope is a valuable currency.

How do we grapple with such a vast and invisible enemy? Estimates and extrapolations are about the best tools we have to quantify the situation. It helps to have expert advice in these cases.

So I call the eminent Cosmologist, Dr. Effingham R. Dimwitty, Esq., MSBS, fondly called ‘Dr. DS’ by friends. He offers a glimmer of light on the malaise.

“Dr. D, what’s your take on the situation?”

“It’s complicated,” he says. “It’s because a vagrant gene got loose from a Chinese bat and has mutated into humans. Some anecdotal conjecture suggests it’s a venal plot from interplanetary alien forces that apparently teamed with China in retaliation to the recent trade war.”

“Aliens? Really? Are people that spooked?”

“They’re spooked on shortage of toilet paper.”

“Who’s to blame?”

“Best I can deduce, from observing the thick moss on the north side of my oak trees and size of mushrooms sprouting from cow patties, is that somehow politics got out of hand and disturbed the cosmic balance. Order had to be restored.”

“Could this explain the recent meltdown in the stock market?”

“Indirectly, maybe. But germs and stocks do operate on similar principles. Germs aren’t picky. Nothing’s off limits. Fear and panic follow in their wake They attack the strong and weak alike. Same as markets do. The strong survive, the weak perish. It’s nature at work, restoring balance and equilibrium.”

“What are you doing to avoid the alien influx?”

“Same as you, just a prisoner of the earth, holed up, locked down and getting by”

Outside, life is happening. People walking, jogging, biking; children playing, dogs barking, flowers blooming, bees buzzing. Nature seems at peace with itself. Is there one word, or phrase that sums up this moment in history?

These lines resonate from John Donne’s poem, “For Whom the Bell Tolls:”

“No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.”

Whatever the final outcome, we’re all in this together. Let generosity rule.

**********

Opinions differ on the number of 4-inch squares in a roll of toilet paper. Because of the shortage, I’m being frugal. In Turkey, there’s no shortage, they use stones.

Stay safe, enjoy the vacation and survive the day.


Bud Hearn
March 23, 2020

Coronavirus…a Snapshot of the Future

"For in one hour so great riches are come to nothing.” Revelation 18:17

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It was bound to happen. Everybody knew it would. When, or how, nobody knew. Such is the way with plagues. Cry safety, and the world collapses. Chaos rules.

Chaos has no rules but one: crap happens. Since rolls of toilet paper are selling for $50, dumpsters on the island are being raided, kiosks are set up in parking lots. Squares of discarded newspapers sell for $5. The lines are long.

People are housebound, in shock from the financial market melt-down of $5 trillion of wealth. Your stash has been picked clean by hordes of algorithmic buzzards on Wall Street. It vanished into thin air from whence it originated. Air unto air.

But you know all this. You read the news…fear, closures, long lines. People panic shop. Shelves, picked over, empty. There’s even a run on condoms. Lamentations and weeping fill the air.

Calm down, it’ll pass. Of course, you might, too, but then again so what? It’s not if but when. Everything passes, even in America. Still, it’s not likely to be as disastrous as the Spanish flu of 1918, not to be confused with the Cuban invasion of the ‘Spanish fly’ which for all its hype did little to arouse the population.

Let’s take a snapshot of the future. Change is coming. Get ready.

Quarantine and rationing will be acceptable lifestyles. Those stigmatized with a scarlet V stenciled to their forehead will be confined to colonies surrounded by concertina wire where loudspeakers blast day and night, “Unclean, unclean.” Others will seek shelter in sanitized enclosures like bubble tent cities.

Don’t worry about pumping gas. American oil fields have gone dry. All vehicles will have solar panels embedded in their roofs. The Saudis and Russia have cornered all fossil fuels and have resorted to taking worthless IOU’s from Europe to pay for the unholy alliance.

The ‘drive-through’ phenomena of the ‘50’s will rule the future. Mechanical arms jutting from germ-proof windows will hand off your Starbucks and burgers. No one will be allowed out of the vehicle for any reason.

Even now our small island is experiencing drive-through mania. Grocery shopping is done by phone and delivered to your vehicle outside. Those brave enough to venture inside will find sprinkler systems installed along all aisles that regularly spray sanitized solutions on the merchandise.

Today I visit our local drug store and find it has installed a sprinkler system over the door entrance. It emits a fine mist of Clorox-disinfectant that does a fair job of sanitizing the shopper, but its chemical stench clings for hours. These systems are subsidized by the Sanders Sanitation for All bureaucracy in honor of its progenitor.

Personal hygiene will be paramount. No more touching of any sort in public. Hand shaking is out, bowing is in. Anyone found kissing or showing intimate signs of affection in public must have a notarized document stating mutual consent.

Churches will no longer have convocations of celebrants. They will offer drive-through tents where preachers in HAZMAT suits offer communion and absolution in a sterile atmosphere. Repentance will still be a private matter.

A big shocker will be the obliteration of cash. It happened so fast that the drug cartels had to forfeit their coffers of cash and go legit. The tradeoff was receiving the lucrative franchise from Medicare to operate clinics for the addicted.

For everyday folks, no cash, no problem. Swiping is more convenient. Besides, cash is filthy. With inflation it’s worthless. It’s been replaced by the free, no-limit Universal Credit Card for All in honor of tribal senator Warren’s tireless efforts to accomplish equality for all. It’s being funded by the Fed which repudiated all outstanding debt and confiscated all the stock from Fortune 500 companies.

Perhaps the most positive progress occurring in the post-panic years of financial reset is the Stock for All concept credited to Princess AOC. It is funded by a hostile takeover of assets of all billionaires in exchange for the State of California.

**********

In the meantime, blame no one, just survive the virus and its consequences best you can.

But one thing is for sure: Made in China has a brand-new meaning.


Bud Hearn
March 16, 2020

A New Pair of Shoes

Wednesday was my birthday. I got a new pair of shoes.

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Birthdays at advancing age tend to be heavy affairs. No more hot-breath doozies that youth brag about. Such are now only fumes of faded dreams long past. Getting long in the tooth tends to load us down with burdens grievous to be borne, or else it’s the barometric pressure that makes it feel that way. Whatever. But my load lightened with the UPS delivery of the box containing a new pair of shoes.

I pop the box open. There they are, heavy-duty Sperry’s, manly footwear, nice Vibram sole, full of bounce which is critical in the older generation. I put ‘em on. They’re a little tight around the edges. I can tell right off they’ll need some breaking in to be comfortable.

In the old days we usually got new shoes in September, the beginning of a school year. I always had a love-hate relationship with new shoes, especially the Sunday school sort. Why? For a lot of reasons, same as you.

First of all, new shoes were usually of the lace-up variety. “Tie your shoes, son” mama would say. Now these models required work. They had to be kept polished and clean, unlike smelly sneakers which were a pleasure to wear.

Another reason is that these lace-up models required breaking in. It’s hard to find a worse torture on your toes than trying to break in a pair of brand-new shoes. The only way to do it is to wear them.

I was always self-conscious when wearing new shoes. I felt people snickering as I shambled down the street in a robotic walk. “Look, Bubba’s got a new pair of shoes. He’s trying to break ‘em in.” I wanted to be invisible.

But it was inevitable that new shoes got scuffed up. Oh, we’d avoid deliberately kicking stones, cans or one another; but it’s impossible to avoid scratches and dents from happening to new shoes. Look, life’s full of stones, cans and one another.

One of the lessons I learned from this experience was whenever I bought a new car or anything subject to damage by the insensitive public, the first thing I’d do is go kick it. It relieves the anxiety of someone dinging it later. New shoes provide many instructive lessons of life.

It takes time and patience to break in new shoes. I wouldn’t say it’s the same as breaking in a horse, or for that matter a spouse. Some things are impossible to accomplish. I used to enjoy riding horses. “Is this horse broken in?” I’d always ask. Mostly they were. But life’s full of surprises with horses and spouses.

There was this time I remember when standing next to an 800-pound brute of a horse and wondering if he’d been broken in. He had wild, crazed eyes that seemed to read my mind and smell my fear. It took about ten seconds to understand the utility of saddle horns.

New shoes teach other valuable lessons for instruction in discernment. Things like what kind of foundation one’s walking on. Foundations are important. Without a ‘firm understanding,’ so to speak, one is tiptoeing on thin air. Like the voguish ‘driving shoes.’ They have soles thinner than the gold on a bride’s ring on a drive-through Vegas wedding. They’re fit only for show by today’s popinjays who sashay around on thick pile carpet making selfies. Life’s not always soft and comfy.

It takes true grit to break in a new pair of manly footwear. I remember hearing often, “Better wear some socks or you’ll get blisters.” I didn’t listen then, and I’d like to say I’m wiser now with age, but it’s just not so. I wear my new shoes today without socks. It’s cool, and after all, it’s my birthday.

Still, the advice rings true again. Blisters happen. But here again is instruction in life: a lot of things need insulation in the breaking-in process. Take relationships, for example.

In any new personal encounter, it’s just not wise to bare soul and body to strangers, even if they seem to have possibilities of being our new best friends. Some insulation around the tight edges avoids the rub and grind of discord when the subjects of politics and religion invariably come up. Given time, the breaking-in process will work, or it won’t.

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Satis verborum, enough said. Life and shoes have a lot in common if you want to look at it this way.

But for today, I’m proudly walking around in my new pair of shoes and breaking in another new year of life. Good luck with your own new things.


Bud Hearn
March 6, 2020