The Squirrel Whisperer

 Justin Mulneix was a pretty normal kid growing up.

He did the usual kids’ stuff. He liked playing and he liked animals and when he got old enough he liked lying in bed staring at the posters of various female singers and movie stars on his wall. Enough said about that.

But one thing that made him different from the other kids on Patterson Avenue was his fascination with squirrels. It’s not clear how and when Justin became so interested in these little creatures.

The First Annual Patterson Avenue Pancake Eating Contest

Every Saturday morning Malcolm Forsythe and his next-door neighbor on Patterson Avenue, Scott Barringer, would have breakfast together.

They always ate at the same place: Floyd’s Flapjack Palace. All of Floyd’s customers claimed there wasn’t a better place to eat pancakes than there.

Malcolm, who was a pretty big guy, always ordered the big stack of buttermilk pancakes. Scott, who was about average size, would go with the short stack of buckwheat pancakes. During their meal Malcolm would invariably start bragging about how many pancakes he could eat.

It could be asked at this point what kind of man has nothing more to brag about than how many pancakes he can eat, but maybe that’s a story for another day.

Easy as Pie

This is how one man’s supermarket blunder became two new culinary experiences.

It all started one day when Lionel Ferguson was making his way through the local grocery store. Lionel wasn’t much for any kind of shopping, but he was okay with shopping for food as long as there weren’t a lot of other shoppers in the store. As a matter of fact, he found it kind of relaxing to go to the supermarket and look at all the food.

As he walked down the frozen food aisle he noticed a buy-one-get-one-free special on Brubaker’s frozen crumb apple pies.

History will show that up until that day Lionel had never purchased a frozen pie. But the lure of two for one was too much to pass up. Besides, he liked pie. So he bought two of them and took them home. Then things started to unravel.

The Book Signing

This was the greatest day in Lydia Starling’s life.

As she sat at a table in a corner of the local Barnes & Noble, with a stack of her book “The Seaweed Diet” in front of her, she couldn’t contain her happiness. She was a newly published author holding her first book signing.

Hoping to be the Host with the Most

As far back as he could remember Curtis Dalrymple wanted to be just one thing: a game show host.

He grew up idolizing game show hosts like Bill Cullen and Peter Marshall. He’d write fan mail to Bob Eubanks and Jim Lange. When he tried to run away from home he stood at the corner holding a sign that read “Wink Martindale’s House or Bust.”

He fantasized that maybe his father, Curtis Sr., a genuinely nice but somewhat bland man, was actually his stepfather, and that maybe Gene Rayburn or Art Fleming was his real father. This didn’t please either of his parents to any great extent, although his mother did find Art Fleming to be a rather handsome man.

An Orphan Called Pickaxe

Sometime during junior high school Byron Milanovich acquired a nickname that would stick with him for the rest of his life. The kids all called him Pickaxe.

The name came from the fact that back in those days Byron was very skinny with a longer-than-average and very pointed nose. In other words, he was shaped like a pickaxe.

Emile Gets an In-basket

Emile St. Claire was the kind of person who relished small victories.

Not that he was happy with only small victories. He really wanted big victories. But since he’s never really had any big victories in his life he figured he would look at small victories as the stepping stones to big victories, if and when those big victories actually occurred.

He Could've Been Morley Safer Jr.

Morley Safer

Lou Rossman was one of those people who never took responsibility for where they are in life.

He always saw himself as a victim of circumstances, as a person who never got the same breaks that successful people got. In his mind, he was a bastion of unfulfilled potential.

This may explain why, at age 38, he still lived at home with his parents while working as an overnight grocery stocker in the cereal aisle at the local Walmart.

A Streetcar Named Moe

Liz Sorenson loved the Three Stooges so much that as a young girl she decided that her first-born son would be named Moe.

True to her word, when Liz gave birth to a boy years later she named him Moe.

This delighted Liz so much that she announced that her next son would be named Larry, the next Curley, and, if the need arises, her fourth would be called Shemp. Fortunately, at least for the prospective Shemp, her procreation stopped with Moe.

Is That a Cow, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Lon Rizzo always wanted to run his own garage.

As long as he could remember he was interested in cars and engines and how they worked. As a boy he would hang out in the local garages and ask the mechanics all kinds of questions, at least until they got sick of him and told him to get lost.

Rudy Trips the Light Fantastic

 

Rudy Sturgis was a middle-aged man in possession of few social skills.

Whenever he took stock of his life he would wonder what he could do to increase his popularity and expand a social life that might be charitably called stagnant.

Then one day a friend suggested he take dance lessons.

Two Chocolate Chips off the Old Block

Outside of Cain and Abel, it’s hard to picture two more competitive brothers than Al and Anthony Butterman.

All their lives the siblings, who were born just 10 months apart (what can we say, their mom Joyce didn’t waste any time) competed in just about everything they did.

Rolling With the Gift of Gab

Mitchell Lowenstein liked to refer to himself as a people person. 

A people person is what some folks prefer to call themselves when they realize their greatest skill is they’re very comfortable talking to anyone about anything. 

On a Positive Note

Somewhere along the line, where the approach to raising children changed from how their folks did it to how they do it today, some modern parents struck upon the idea that nothing can be more important than their children having high self-esteem.

Feeling good about yourself was imperative, they reasoned. Their children could only excel if they looked at themselves as talented and gifted individuals destined to do great things in their lives. They were special, and it was important they and everyone else, even those who didn’t care a lick, knew that.

Same Game, You Just Add Gravity

 

Orson McFeeney was a man in search of the million-dollar idea.

Sure, he understood the value of hard work and stuff like that, but what he really wanted was to come up with an idea that would make him more money than he ever dreamed off, all while sitting back and doing pretty much nothing while the cash rolled in.

Sort of like a U.S. Congressman.

Going to the Dogs

Sarah Hitchcock had heard all she wanted to hear about her biological clock.

Sarah was 30, unmarried but willing, and had been through enough failed relationships to wonder if she would ever find a husband.

That was frustrating enough, but whenever a well-intentioned friend would offer the observation that “your biological clock is ticking” Sarah became mad enough to scream or take a punch at the commenter.

Or even to just grab a real clock and beat the person over the head with it.

Looking for the Write Stuff

Ever since she was in junior high school, Carol Heckathorn had aspired to be a famous author.

In the four decades since she had churned out dozens of books and submitted letters to hundreds of agents and publishers with the hope of getting her words in print. With every book came a steady stream of rejection letters.

The Man With Two Forks

In the sometimes minimalist world of men who live alone, Clark Memminger probably isn’t too much out of the ordinary in a lot of ways.

Clark is a confirmed bachelor, a status that he and every woman he has ever met seem determined to perpetuate.

Not that he’s complaining. At 57 he has pretty much come to grips with the fact that he’s never going to get married. There are worse fates he reasoned, like having a giant wart growing on the end of your nose or not having cable TV.

The Woman Who Loved Richard X. Slattery

Richard X. Slattery

For many people the road of life includes spots where their dreams come up against the brick wall of reality.

 

Some simply recalculate their route and go on. Others back up and keep ramming into that wall over and over again. Every once in a while someone will break through. But sadly the usual ending is the wall comes crumbling down, burying their hopes along with them.

Such was the spirit-breaking plight of Twila Morgenstern, known along Patterson Avenue simply as The Woman Who Loved Richard X. Slattery.

Twitter: Where Cowards Go to Grow a Pair

Friends liked to say Andy Harrison was so passive he ought to be a Quaker.

Andy, who worked for a local advertising firm, avoided confrontation like some men avoid marriage, or the dentist, or shopping with their wives on Sunday afternoons during the pro football season.

That isn’t to say he was happy about everything. As a matter of fact, his closest friends knew he had a complaint about most things. He would just mutter about this or that and no one would pay attention.