Skip to main content

Schrams' Christmas Letter 2008

 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 local waterfalls death stats with friends and relatives. Also explain that no one ever died at “Bust Your Butt Falls”.  While seeking other watery leisure activities, I typed “falls” in the Transylvania Times’ search engine. Search results yielded an obituary for  a man named Klutz. (Would I lie?)

 

3. Another recent headline from the Times: “Raging Rooster Pecks Woman 71 Times, But Crows No More.”  Knocked her down, causing fractured pelvis and concussion. Search http://transylvaniatimes.com archives for “rooster,” for full story.  

 

4. Because Christmas letters require bragging: My essay about bald-faced hornets won a gold medal in Brevard’s Senior Games. (No doubt a stinging loss for other participants.  And, no, I didn’t pay off the judges.)

 

5. Four geniuses from our local college football team photocopied some $20 bills, spent the copies in town and bought marijuana from another student. All five are in jail.

 

6. Do you remember the bob-cat from last year’s letter? He visited our yard a few weeks ago.  But our neighbors see bear tracks, so we doubt the Nature Channel will call us.

 

7. County gossip: Actor-comedian Steve Martin is reported to be building a home in nearby Lake Toxaway. We later also saw him at our gym. Please sent SASE & $2. We’ll mail autographs  - ours.  

 

8. An unidentified neighbor, perhaps wanting to help with my wasp research, pounded the side of his house beneath wasp-infested overhang. Duly disturbed, a wasp stung him on bridge of nose between eyes. Outcome: mongoloid appearance. He still won’t discuss it.

 

9. To save money, we stripped, pressure-washed and stained exterior of our house. destroyed neighbor’s pressure-washer and our in-ground water pump. (540 feet down) Saved $2000 on paint job but new pump installation cost $4500.

 

10. Bought a new car. Visited Rhode Island. Rear-ended by big truck.  Insurance settlement went well. Suggestion: have close relative who is a trooper in every state you visit.

 

That’s it for this year.  Feel free to mail in your rebuttals.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cookie! Cookie! Cookie!

           Although we Schrams are pallid-skinned subterraneans and seldom emerge from our garden level retreat—OK, it’s a basement office with a big window overlooking a bird feeder—we respond to our subdivision’s monthly TGIF announcements like small-brained animals answering an inbred urge: “TGIF Friday, bring an hor- d’œuvre sufficient for six.” We’re shallow. We don’t attend these gatherings social reasons; we show up because we’re sweetivores driven by gustatory lust. We feign just enough neighborliness to avoid expulsion and shunning. Yes, there we are, the ones saying, “Hi, good to see you,” with one eye reading nametags while the other eye scans the desserts. Shuffling closer to each month’s pinnacle of confectionery nirvana, we ask, “How are you?” “Dodge the flu this year?” “How was your vacation?” Using the skill of clandestine operatives, we surveil the options while monitoring body language and positional tactics. Only ruthless cunning will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gray

You need only browse Lowes’ or Home Depot’s paint samples to confirm gray is a poetic color: autumn fog, twilight mauve, hazy stratus, mountain smoke. Each outlet lists about 200 variations of gray. Yet, gray is despised. Ask a random group of acquaintances to associate the gray with the five senses, and they’ll offer acerbic, pain-filled responses: “Dismal dark day,” “Groan,” “Smells like dead mice,” “Tastes like stale oatmeal,” “Feels like somebody’s grave.” Some unfortunates claim the grayness of dreary winter days causes seasonal affective disorder and indebtedness. Easy enough to prove: do an internet search on SAD images . You’ll immediately hunger for sunshine and mental-health trips to Fiji, Aruba, and Curacao. Hope you have deep pockets. Yet, for all its drab monotony, gray has other powers. Peer into impenetrable fog. Don’t you begin to imagine camouflaged soldiers lying in wait a hundred feet distant, their only concern being whether their exhalations betray their pre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Er-Ee, Er-Ee

Go back in time with me thirty-five plus years. It’s1982 and America has almost a half million military and civilian personnel stationed throughout Europe. I work as the European Advisor of an obscure DOD activity, while my headquarters and boss are stateside, 5,000 miles and seven time zones distant from my office in Heidelberg. I like my job. I keep my nose to the grindstone and give the taxpayers their money’s worth. On this particular night I am in a third floor room in the American Arms Hotel in Wiesbaden. Built in the fifties, the hotel is a five-story, mega-barracks incongruously situated amid vine-covered homes built in the previous century. In contrast to their old world opulence, my room is stark. A few landscape prints, too small for their placement, hang on the walls in lonely isolation, and the room’s furniture suffers from a military feng shui influence. Beyond the hotel, all nearby cites—Darmstadt, Mannheim, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt—are speckled...
Post a Comment
Read more