Fun Reads by Rich Schram

Marcus Williams yanked his forklift’s steering wheel to the right, ripping past cereals and breakfast snacks. Just beyond miscellaneous condiments, he floored the accelerator and escaped warehouse hell. In his mind, he heard the forklift’s engine respond with the throaty precision of European engineering. Hundred sixty, hundred seventy, hundred eighty kilometers per hour . Bianco Freight and Grocery faded from view as he changed lanes and was swept back to Bavarian Germany, July 1980. “Go, go!” He pressed harder on the BMW 5 Series’ gas pedal. “Come on,” he pleaded. “You're just tuned up. Now give me two-twenty.” The car surged ahead, wind sizzling through the vented sunroof. It was 6:30 a.m. as he shot past the Augsburg exit on Autobahn 8. Morning sun shone through the rear window. Too early for Sunday traffic, there were no tractor-trailers, no vacation campers, no families headed home from Oma and Opa’s. Just empty road. He was twenty-five again, Ranger ...

If you have found occasional enjoyment in reading some of my work, I would like to suggest a blog by a writing friend. She possesses a contemplative mind, and writes both essays and fiction pieces. Her blog is entitled When I Come To Be Old: Thinking About Aging, Literature, and Life . Her writing is more philosophical thank mine. She writes with file and scissors, where I rely on a sledge hammer and chisel. Her blog also appears on a secure site and contains no advertising. It may be accessed at https://whenicometobeold.com/ .

We say they work in the trades . It’s the catchall label we assign offhandedly to those who build, maintain, and repair our homes. The label is inadequate. Such people are more than utilitarian functionaries with gravity challenging tool belts; they are unrecognized poets and performers, with each specialty possessing its own artistry and unique language and rhythm. Consider the drywall hangers who helped convert our cement-walled basement into living area. Only a two-person team, the lead was a slender, average-height man whose tool pouch spilled over with a shop’s worth of gear: electric drill, oscillating saw, metal tape measure, utility knife, pliers, handsaw, and other drywall-appropriate pieces of apparatus. From his drill and saw, serpentine fifty-foot electric cords twisted and writhed beneath his feet. But his feet were not flesh and blood feet. He was a man-machine atop three-foot aluminum stilts, maneuvering in fluid, untroubled steps from measurement ...

Allow me to tell you about a book by science writer Brooke Borel: Infested: How The Bedbug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms And Took Over The World . I’ll share what I learned, still hoping you are able to sleep tonight. Of about 14,000 sanguinivorous 1 species that feed on blood, bed bugs are the species most dreaded of some 300–400 insect species routinely feeding on human blood. We fear bedbugs because they attack in the night while we sleep, leave us itching with telltale blood spots on pillowcases and bed sheets, and retreat unseen, sometimes becoming uninvited companions that attach themselves to our bedding, clothing, or suitcases. Their clandestine behavior makes us suspicious of strangers, visits by friends carrying luggage, as well as possible travel via ship, plane, or taxi. Borel discussed scientists’ research into bedbugs’ role in transmission of numerous serious diseases. Some of the more exotic or hot button health crises included leprosy, typhus, TB, t...