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News & Features Columnists Editorials Hang Your Hat Obituaries My Huntley News

March 9, 2017

The View From Planet Kerth

Just one more purgatory to add to the pile

I was more than a bit surprised when my wife pointed to the car just after breakfast on Black Friday and flashed me that “Buckle up, Bucko” look. After all, she knew my policy about hitting the mall on the worst shopping day of the year.

The tolerant testimony of molasses and vermouth

I don’t know how old I was when my curiosity kicked in, but I finally asked Mom: “Who is that, anyway?”

She had given me a chore to do that I attacked with my customary zeal — which is to say that I dragged my feet and mourned my tragic station in life.

Of famines and feasts, minnows and beasts

When a century-old curse finally gets lifted, it’s hard not to look for whatever other curse might be lurking beneath. At least, that’s what a die-hard Cubs fan does.

Is ending the streak a cursed blessing, or a blessed curse?

At long last the question has been asked and answered: Is 2016 the year that the Cubs break the curse and win the World Series?

A memory of the (almost) perfect Halloween costume

It was the perfect Halloween costume.

Well, that’s what I thought when Mom showed me the Frankenstein mask I would be wearing that year when I was eight or nine years old. But I should have known better right from the start.

It’s October, when creatures of the night come calling

It’s still several weeks until Halloween, and already the creatures of the night have come calling.

Our first visitor last night was that toad — as big as a tennis ball — who likes to sit next to the screen door just outside the back door. He’s been showing up now and then just after sunset to sit in the same spot, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what he wants.

The appliance with something insistent to say

My clothes dryer has become pretty opinionated lately.

An early morning walk out where the sidewalk ends

I took a walk this morning out where the sidewalk ends.

Ask any city kid how to get to the end of the sidewalk, and he will thumb his nose at you, because any city kid knows that the sidewalk has no end.

Where, oh where, has our craftiness gone?

Americans don’t seem to be as crafty as they used to be, do they?

Finding the right footing just a step ahead of disaster

Some twenty years ago, when our kids were grown and my wife and I determined that our family had finally grown out of the hand-to-mouth stage, we decided that with a bit more hand-to-mouth sacrifice we could afford to splurge on buying a vacation property.

Too much to check out in a slow, sad checkout line

It’s never comfortable standing in a long checkout line, but this one was more uncomfortable than most.

An alarming tale and some hard-won advice

It was a few minutes past two in the afternoon when the smoke alarm went off. And then the next alarm, and the next, until all five alarms in the house were screaming.

I leaped to my feet and almost stepped on the dog, who was also leaping to her feet at the time. She looked at me with an accusatory glance, as if all the noise was my fault. But I knew better.

What’s a mom to do when the channel-changer is way over there?

Let’s face it, we’ll never make America great again until our politically correct legal system stops harassing good parents.

I speak, of course, about the McHenry County woman who was charged with a misdemeanor and forced to plead guilty of endangering the life of her children, just because she fired a pistol shot into the TV where the kids were watching a music video.

It’s simple human nature to be so complicated

Nothing could be more simple. Which is exactly why it’s so complicated. After all, what could be more simple than the decision to save a little boy’s life?

Just another day at the office — for an angel

I wanted to buy Patty a little something to remember us by, but when I turned around, she was gone.

Sometimes the best way to honor the vote is to sink it

Democracy can be frustrating — especially when you hold a free election, expecting the citizenry to vote according to their time-honored conservative principles, but they instead cast a landslide of cartoonishly absurd ballots.

Easy to say “Let them eat cake,” when you never eat at all

Just when I thought it was impossible to be shocked by anything that came out of a politician’s mouth, the bar got raised today. (Or maybe it got lowered. I can’t remember if we’re trying to high jump over the bar, or limbo under it.)

Never been here before, but it’s nice to see it all again

When I was younger, I often experienced feelings of dĂ©jĂ  vu, but it’s been a long time since it’s happened to me.

Hey, America, what part of ersatz don’t you understand?

I came down with a cold this week, the kind of epic head-pounding, nose-geysering, throat-blazing, lung-honking cold that could cause a guy to get exiled from a shopping mall — or maybe even an emergency room. A lesser man might have buckled, but not me.

A holiday explanation for when a calendar just isn’t enough

It was one of those falling-asleep moments in bed long ago, when my drowsy wife mumbled to me, “Is Easter two Sundays from now or three?” We had plans for a family gathering on Easter Sunday that would take some preparation, but that was at least two weeks away. Maybe three.

I don’t know how anything works anymore, do you?

When I was a kid and I was baffled by how something worked, Mom or Dad could explain it to me in a couple short sentences, and then I was up to speed.

Just when you thought you had heard from the biggest idiot


Several weeks ago, I told you what an idiot I was when it came to the stupid things that leaped from my mouth when I met celebrities like Meadowlark Lemon and James Brown. It was a simple bumbler’s confession, and I thought that would be the end of it.

Hold onto your asterisk, it’s going to be a bumpy ride

Whenever I used foul language when I was a kid, my grandmother Nani would sit me down and explain, “People who use words like that are too ignorant to think of a better word. You’re not ignorant, are you?”

Welcome a new president to the Celebrity Stumblers Club

Misery, they say, loves company. And now I have proof positive that idiocy also loves having a club to belong to.

A memorable pizza with a bit of Lemon on the side

Millions around the world were saddened by the recent passing of Meadowlark Lemon, the basketball “crown prince” of the Harlem Globetrotters — the only man on the planet to be inducted to both the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the International Clown Hall of Fame.

Shoveling snowy memories for the land of sand and sun

Not long ago, I spoke to a friend who has lived his whole life in south Florida. He said to me, “I’ve never seen snow.” Mind you, this neighbor isn’t in kindergarten. He isn’t a junior-high-school boy hoping to get an X-Box for Christmas.