Fun Reads by Rich Schram

  HO HO HO! Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah!    Recognizing these are hard times, Mary and I decided to send cards that would grant your fondest holiday wishes. News flash: Sorry, the wish-granting elves don’t authorize public executions of hedge fund managers or insurance conglomerate CFOs. It wouldn’t be in the spirit of the season. So, we simply wish you a wonderful holiday season and hope Santa replenishes your 401K plans, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and savings. Failing that, may your public library have adequate copies of books explaining how to grow and preserve your own food.    Past years’ rules still apply to this letter. Read on at your own risk. Here are 2008’s highlights from Transylvania County.   1. Laboring thru the dead of winter, Mary and I built a 10 x 18 foot “man-room” above the garage. Problem for me: no bathroom and Mary keeps locking the door - from outside.   2. Note to self from last New Year’s resolution list: Stop sharing l...

My allegedly believable explanation regarding how Central American Olmecs, Aztecs, and Toltecs received their names. Or not . Olmec Olmec is the Nahuatl word certain scholars translated to mean the rubber people . I offer another translation.   It seems a group of Scottish archeologists once visited El Salvador.   Among them was Angus MacDougal, a long-in-the-tooth archeology professor from the University of Edinburgh. While at the digs, this aged but greatly esteemed Professor MacDougal created a fine collection of pottery shards. Sadly, one of his envious colleagues attempted to steal MacDougal’s collection.   Fortunately, a trustworthy friend stopped the theft, admonishing the culprit in a heavy Scottish brogue:   “Aye, man. Don’t be taking those. Those shards are Ol’ Mac’s.”   The Aztecs and Toltecs Early centroamericano cultures relied upon fútbol for athletic diversion. Its popularity continues today. In 650 AD, ...

I read the entirety of Cormac McCarthy’s  All The Pretty Horses . All the way to the book’s depressing end. I know it was a literary best-seller and garnered a movie, but goodness, don’t read it if you want to finish a book with spring in your step and a happy whistle on your lips. I switched to nonfiction, trying  When Einstein Walked With Gödel  by Jim Holt. It didn’t deliver a brain-cleansing escape. Barnes & Noble’s website describes it as “ . . .  an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries.” That description may be a stretch; I suspect some readers might consider the book a cure for insomnia. Call me strange. I plowed through to the last page, and doing so activated some brain cells I thought long dead. Portions of the book drift away from Einstein and atoms. One section examines how the structure of English affects the way American kids learn to count when compared with Chinese child...

Kevin Solter leaned against the pickup’s side panel and gave its rear tire a half-hearted kick. “Dude, it’s not working out. Probation’s only ninety days, and if I don’t get good evals, I’m gone. They’ll can my ass. Know they will.”   At the driver’s side of the truck, his friend Darrell Buckner slugged down the remainder of a soda and tossed the empty can into the truck bed. It settled among a collection of toolboxes and spooled wire. “C’mon, buddy. What are friends for? You get on my crew, we’ll help you out. You know that.” He patted the truck bed’s rear panel with the same reassuring nonchalance as his promise. Solter’s face tightened and he dug at a bit of dirt with the toe of his boot. He said, “What about your foreman? Heard he’s tough.” Buckner said something unintelligible and spread his open palms in front of his chest. “All foremen are SOBs. You gotta know how to handle ‘em. Quit worrying. I’ll take care of you.” He was three or four years older than So...

It was a scene from years past. The toddler was fearless, and I saw no impropriety as he slipped onto Andreas Bauernsohn ’s lap. Although in his late eighties , he remained big-boned after decades of heavy labor, clutching the arms of his chair with fingers as round as hammer handles. His fingernails, trimmed with a jack-knife, were nicotine stained and thick as a leather belt. I appreciated his sturdy plainness. As a great-grandfather to the little boy among that gathering of children, parents, and grandparents, he smelled of kindness, bath soap, and . . . mothballs. Mothballs! By the gods of the ages. I was there to judge his worth and he assaulted me with mothballs. Holy oracles with stone tablets! Other than house flies and mosquitoes, mothballs were one of my few failures; they pained my ethereal nose so much I wanted to go old-testament and smite the old man dead. Hellfire and damnation! Sometimes my job was tougher than being a Presidential spokesperson. Smite? Don’t smite?...