Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

      Last weekend I took my grandson Dante' to Home Depot to buy some toilets. We left the store with not one, not two, but three "comfort" toilets. I should point out that Dante' is a bit of an expert when it comes to toilets. You would think that I would be since I've had so much more experience using them down through the years. However, he's worked as a plumber, so I trust his knowledge. I once had a plumber tell me that there were only two things you needed to know in order to be plumber- crap flows down hill and payday is Friday. I have a feeling he was over simplifying the job, otherwise more of us would be making the big bucks that plumbers make. There was nothing wrong with the toilets that we had, they were just too short. After my knee surgery, I had a toilet riser that I borrowed from a charity that carries all manner of things needed for folks who have had surgery, wheelchairs, walkers, toilet risers, canes, shower seats and I don't know what...

I used to read comic books when I was growing up. Like many kids my age I had quite a large stack of them. I was a paper boy and on Friday nights when I was out collecting the money, I would always drop down to Meister's drug store, eat copious amounts of junk food, play pinball for an hour or so and peruse the comic shelf for the newest edition of Superman or the Flash or perhaps Metal Men. The back page of comics always had an ad for something like Charles Atlas who could build your body to be the envy of all the other guys, thus preventing getting bullied, or my all time favorite ad- X-ray specs. I desperately wanted a pair of those.The ad led you to believe that you could see right through clothes with a pair of these. As a young lad entering puberty, I couldn't think of a better gift to give myself, but they cost a dollar, and I didn't believe they would really work, regardless of how much I wished they did. Boy's Life magazine, which was affiliated with the Boy S...