(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

There is a big window in our bedroom.  At night we drop the blind to keep our privacy in and prying eyes out.  It is an old window and does not open.  On rainy days we sit on the bed reading in the gray light or just watching the cars and trucks splash by.

The window has a wide sill.  And when the blind is pulled up and the sun spills in, it is perfect for a catnap- if you are a cat.

The window is less than a stone’s throw away from the double Chicago and North Western tracks that run thru Boone.  We can not see the tracks from where we live.  Other buildings block our view. But we can hear the trains.  Their sounds have become familiar.  Some night if no trains go by, I wonder if we would be able to sleep?  Perhaps we would lie awake with the uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong, without being able to quite put our finger on it.

But the trains come. And at night, behind the blind, the window rattles angrily as the trains go by.  I suppose it rattles during the day, but we are too busy to notice it then.

As we lie there in the darkness, we can hear the big diesel locomotives laboring in the yards on Boone’s eastern edge.  The echoing crash of two empty cars being hooked together booms through the night, yanking us back from the edge of sleep.

Where will those cars go?  Will they be loaded in the grimy industrial districts of Chicago or Omaha?  Or will they catch the golden spill of corn cascading out of an elevator on some remote siding in rural Iowa?

Now a locomotive comes toward us.  Perhaps there are two or more of them.  Our window’s rattle tells us they are working hard.  Are they coming from the west, bearing car after car of coal?  Or do they approach from the east, towing long flatcars with boxes that have somehow lost their rubber wheels and now must ride the train?

Tonight the train comes from the west and the air horns blare out a warning to late-night motorists on Story Street.  The blast of horns mingles with the fading rattle of the window.

It is as if the window dislikes the locomotives the most.  Once they have passed, the window is silent and we only hear the click-clack of the track and the rumble of steel wheels.

So I listen as I lie there in the dark, having been rudely pulled from the gentle abyss of sleep by the booming of railcars and the rattling of a window.  I wonder where those wheels will stop rumbling.

Next weekend our window will be rattled by Pufferbilly Days revelers.  The beer tent will be just down the street and the street dance will be just beyond that.

But intermittently those noises will be interrupted by the sound of a laboring locomotive and the blast of an air horn as if to remind me, my window and Pufferbilly Days celebrants beyond, just what it is we celebrate in Boone on the weekend after Labor Day.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

We huddled in comfortable blankets in the darkness.  The only light came from the dancing flames of our campfire.  The song of insects in the darkness was punctuated by an occasional bird call.  We didn’t talk.  We weren’t doing anything.  We just sat there feeling the warmth of the fire on our faces.

It was a very nice way to end a beautiful day.

Not long ago, we decided to take advantage of August’s beautiful weather.  We packed up our new tent, our cooler and basket of food, and headed for the great outdoors.

That’s not to say that we were really roughing it.  It was the first time camping since we married four years ago.  We decided to play it safe and stay close to home.  In the campground at Ledges State Park, we were only a couple of miles away from our apartment.  The car stood ready to take us home in the event any inclement weather or camping disasters.  The weather was fantastic, and there were no disaster.  We stayed for two nights.

We took an early-morning walk along one of the hiking trails in the park.  Although the sun was already bright, morning’s coolness kept us comfortable.  We talked about the trails and the rock formations and about whatever was on our minds.  My wife, an old pro at the camping days, cooked delicious pancakes over the campfire.

In the afternoon we sat around the picnic table, talking and playing cards.  We were not alone.  Other campers were engaged in similar pursuits.  Laughter echoed among the trees.

In the evening we cooked over out small barbecue grill- a concession to modern convenience.  Still, the food was delicious.  Later we made smores over the open campfire.  They were also delectable.

We’re planning another trip soon.  We don’t take time to talk when the television’s on and there are magazines on the coffee table and there are dishes to wash at home.  Nor do we take a break for quiet time with each other.

Trees and tents and campfires lend themselves to those wonderful activities.  And we found you don’t have to travel to the mountains or to the Boundary Waters to find nature and seclusion.  You can do it in here in Boone County or in any number of campgrounds in Iowa.

In fact, we did it again last weekend.  We returned to Ledges on Saturday evening with some friends.

It was kind of a two-couple camporee.  This trip was more given to mirth and merry-making than quiet study of seclusion and nature study.    We splashed along in the sandy steam bed down in the park, catching minnows and skipping stones.  W discovered how hard it is to tell in the dark when your hot dogs cross the line between cooking and burning.

Then as the fire burned down to glowing embers, we sang out-of-tune childhood songs intermingled with a few rusty choruses of some old college tunes.  Then, by the last glow of embers we talked in hushed tones of blood-thirsty bears horrifying, horrifying aliens, giant spiders and the Loch Ness Monster.

Fortunately none of the above visited the campsite after we crawled into our sleeping bags in the wee hours of the morning.  Sunday morning, we awoke smelling of pond water and campfire smoke.  We feasted on mounds of Mary’s pancakes prepared in a blackened iron skillet.  It was all great fun.

Hope to se you at a neighboring campsite soon.

 I was not well traveled as a child.  Between the cows and the remoteness of our patch of earth in rural Minnesota, the annual trip to Fargo was a big deal, our intermiten trip to St. Paul even a bigger deal, the occasional trips with school activities and functions were even a larger ordeal.

After my first experience at the Minnesota State Fair after my senior year in high school, I prepared for my second experience at the Great Minnesota Get Together.

Serving as a Minnesota FFA State Officer had a lot of requirements, camps, conferences, training sessions - both ones that we were participates in and those that we led.  Part of it too was interacting with the public and working with Agricultural Literacy.

The Minnesota State Fair was the perfect place to do that.

The Minnesota FFA had been running the FFA Children’s Barnyard for decades, and the State FFA Officers were an integral part in that process.  In conjuction with high school volunteers from around the state, we would help to run the barnyard (feeding, cleaning, and making sure things were neat and tidy), helping with the livestock shows (announcing, handing out ribbons, and looking like we knew what we were doing), interacting with the public (visiting with people around the judging rings, holding animals and letting people pet them in our arms), as well as special events (helping the Bee Queen make honey ice cream, officiating at the pedal tractor pull, participating in the “celebrity cow milking contests).

In short, we were busy.

To the general public, it looked like a well organized machine.  In reality, it was usually a panicked frenzy of high school and college aged kids flirting with one disaster after another.

To the few adults in charge, it required a great deal of crisis management.

It is also important to point out that this was a different time and a different era.  The barn yard of today is fully equipped with veterinarians and adult staff….years ago, that wasn’t quite the case.

Some of the incidents we were merely innocent bystanders in.  There was the group of animal rights protesters that stood on a back wall of the Children’s Barnyard and sang “animal freedom songs” trying to entice us to let the animals go free.  We stood in shocked silence as they attacked our industry.  The crowd in the petting zoo listened…then applauded…and went right back to petting the animals…thinking that the protesters were yet another form of entertainment we had provided.

Then there was the sheep that had the explosive diarrhea.  We stood in the staff area, trying to decide if we should call the vet and what could possibly be causing the problem…but knowing that we needed to do something (the six foot stream had hit a very proper ladies high heels and she was not happy).  As we were discussing, one of the high school volunteers popped their head in and said, “Hey, we are almost out of lamb starter.”

Situation solved.  Lamb starter to a mamma sheep is equal to the runs.

 It was better if it was raining, or shortly after a rain, but in the end, it didn’t matter, school shopping would have to be done.

During those elementary school years at St. Mike’s, the annual tradition would go on unabated - at some point before those first days of class, rain or shine, combining or haying, the youngest of my folk’s brood would climb into the car and head to Detroit Lakes, the bustling town of ten thousand people forty miles down the road.

The conversation would start in the first weeks of August as the letter from school would arrive telling of all the things that we would need for the up coming school year.  Most of the time, it was the basics.  Color crayons, #2 lead pencils, ruled paper, pencil sharpener, one box of Kleenex, eraser.  For the older ones, it could also include markers and a simple calculator.  Much of the time, the supplies could be had by way of hand me downs.

But regardless of the year, or the difficulties on the farm, this was the time of year when we actually got to do some of our cloths shopping.

Usually we all got new cloths at Christmas time, but then we depended upon the keen fashion sense of Mom - always practical and rarely wrong.  Once every couple of years we would get a new pair of work boots or tennis shoes, usually they needed to have gapping holes or ridiculously small for replacement as farmboy feet tended to grow exceptionally fast and you couldn’t be out buying shoes wily nilly.

Back-to-school shopping meant that we actually got a say in what we would wear for the coming year.

Detroit Lakes had both a Pamida, the mega mart of it’s day, and the classic two story JC Penney’s right across from the Woolworth store in downtown.  We would get one shirt and one pair or jeans of our choosing (but within the budget allotted).

As much freedom as we felt we had, it was usually under the careful guidance of our mother.

“Do you really want those jeans?” Mom would ask innocently.

“Why?  What’s wrong with them?”  We would ask intently.

“Nothing, but these are the ones that fit you better and last longer.” Her mother instincts already knowing which would work best for school and hold up best once they were out grown and being used for pitching bales next summer…and probably which brand also held a patch better.

The shirts we were usually allowed to pick out ourselves.  And some of them were memorable.

There was the Smurf shirt that I got to complete my back to school ensemble as a first grader.

There was the Bart Simpson shirt that my brother chose as my mom bought it through gritted teeth for him.

Perhaps most memorable for me was the wild life shirt that I got as a forth grader, showing a buck and a doe running through a quiet forest in winter.  The doe running along the forest floor, the buck running alongside with his front feet seemingly up in the air.

To an innocent young farm boy - it looked like an idyllic scene…one trip to school in the new outfit, it took about five minutes for a sixth grader to point out that it didn’t look like the buck was running through the forest as much as trying to get a piggy back ride from the doe…

I never wore that shirt to St. Mike’s again…

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

There’s a mean streak in all of us.  We try to hide it.  We try to deny it.  But it’s there.

Have you ever seen someone walking down the sidewalk and suddenly stumble on one of those cracks?  It’s awfully hard to stifle that quiet little chuckle, isn’t it?  Or how about when someone has a piece of food stuck to their teeth?  Why is that so funny?

It’s just human nature, I guess.

Nobody I know gets any real joy out of true tragedy?  Serious injuries, fires and deaths in the family are no laughing matter.  It’s those little day-to-day mishaps that happen to everybody that can be so humorous.

But sometimes there are incidents that are on the border between serious and the hilarious.  At those times, you try to maintain your composure and show the proper respect for a serious and sad situation.  You try not to laugh.  You try to be supportive.  You try not to add insult to injury.  But it can be awfully difficult.

For example, my brother-in-law sank his pickup truck in a lake last weekend.  What a terrible thing to happen! (Ha!)

On Sunday, Bill drove his pickup and boat to White Bear Lake near the Twin Cities.  The lake had been dredged recently and the boat ramp is a little steeper than in past seasons.  A friend who was backing the boat down the boat ramp stopped and stepped out to make sure everything was going OK.  Before you could say,” Don’t forget to set the parking brake!”  The boat, boat trailer, and the pickup were headed down the ramp all by themselves.

Bill and his friend watched helplessly as the trailer and then the pickup disappeared into the lake.  Only the boat remained on the surface of the water.

That’s a sad, sad accident.  Bill’s pickup is ruined.  And I’m sure the incident put a damper on what could have been a very good day fishing.  You can’t help feeling deeply aggrieved by what happened.  (Hee!  Hee!  Hee!)

Bill called a wrecker to come and pull his fishing rig out of the lake. As the tow truck slowly pulled the truck out of the lake, water poured out of the truck.  When he opened the doors, gallons of murky lake water spilled out onto the pavement.  There were even a few fish flopping about.

How sad.  (Haw! Haw! Ho! Ho! Hee! Hee! Hee!)

Think of what that lake water will do to the upholstery.  I bet it will smell forever.  Think of how it will ruin the electrical components in the dash and on the engine.  Think of all those bearings and seals in the engine and drive train that will be ruined by the water.  And can any rust-proofing treatment survive a dunk in the lake?

I feel bad for Bill.  I really, really do.  I know how I’d feel if my pickup rolled into a lake.  (I’d probably feel pretty stupid.)  I’m planning to call Bill and let him know how terrible I feel about the whole thing.  I’m just waiting until I can do it with a straight face.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

Things change fast.  Back then the office was at 524 Story Street in the former Boyd’s Dairy building next to the Boone Blank Book Company.  Now both buildings are gone and Moffitt’s Ford-Lincoln-Mercury uses the area to display new trucks and vans.

When the doors opened, our word processors hadn’t arrived yet.  We borrowed an old manual typewriter from the folks over at the Boone Bland Book and hammered out our first stories the old fashioned way.

The buildings cantankerous air cooler leaked water on the floor periodically but it rarely cooled the air.  When it rained, gasoline fumes permeated the building.

There were no room dividers.  The sales staff, the editorial staff and the receptionist all shared the same big room.  We shared desks and telephones and pencils.

Hardly anyone knew who we were.  Nearly everyday someone walked in to ask for a famous Boyd’s ice cream cone or malt.  They never seemed very excited when they found out we were serving news instead of frozen diary treats.

It’s amazing to see how much things have changed.  Dick Kelly and I are the only two original staff members left and all I write now is this column.  My full-time job is at Iowa State.

Four years ago, we scrambled to find every bit of news we could and struggled to put out a paper once a week.

Now, news releases arrive by the handful in the mail.  Readers mail in or call in news items and suggest story ideas.  And now it takes two papers a week to satisfy advertisers and readers alike.

Last month, Boone TODAY moved from its second location in The Livery at 806 Seventh St. And now shares its office with the Shopping News at 2136 E. Mamie Eisenhower.  I sneak in at night to write my column and I’m amazed.  There are six telephone lines and telephones everywhere.  The walls have pictures and plaques on them.  The air conditioning works beautifully and is whisper quiet.  There is nice furniture in the offices and carpet on the floors.  Offices and work areas are spacious and well-kept.

But not all of the changes have been in offices and equipment.  There’s more community news than ever and people look to each issue for news of past happenings and future events.  The plethora of press releases that arrive each day shows that area residents now see Boone TODAY as a valuable tool for spreading community information.

That was the goal we were striving for when we opened up on the first day.

People always used to ask me if I though Boone TODAY would survive or is it would fold up after a few years or months.  I guess progress should tell them their answer.

I’m a little jealous of the way things are now, but at least I can brag to the people who work here now about how tough things used to be in the “good old days.”

 It was the only time that we had rented a camcorder - a video camera that preserved our memories on film, a VCR tape, to be shared and viewed.  Mom rented it for twenty-four hours from the Ben Franklin store in town.  We used it for the visit by our relatives from Czechoslovakia, but Mom, with a large family and poor farming economics, always looking to get her money’s worth, suggested that since the camcorder wasn’t due back until noon, why not take it and walk around the farm.

Taking off from chores a little early, I took the camcorder in hand and did a walking tour of the farm.  I started with the wooden granary next to the barn, complete with the Farmall H and auger that stood at the ready for harvest later that day.  Then walking through the barn, I captured Jaime as he milked cows, and the look of the pasture and feedlot on a bright August morning.  Walking to the machine shed, I carefully showed each piece of machinery, then on to the garden, the shop, and the a quick look at “Machinery Hill” - the retiring place for all of our farms old equipment and parked “parts” repository.  Then back to the house.

The entire tour took less then twenty minutes.  But my brothers all laughed and told me I was nuts.  For not only did I video tape our farm, I provided running commentary - the grain would be dumped into the pit at the base of the elevator, the PTO of the Farmall H would drive the auger and bring it to the top of the bin.  The Farmall H was restored by my brother John.  The cows were milked twice a day, the pipeline was installed only a couple of years ago.  Prior to that was the bucket milkers.  The siding on the barn was two different sizes because it was build during World War II and they couldn’t get anymore twelve inch siding.

For all twenty minutes, you could hear me commenting and telling stories about our farm - this place that we lived and worked every day for most of our lives.

“What are you?  Stupid?  Everyone is gonna know this stuff anyway.” Brother John chided.

I will admit I panicked a bit, wondering how I could erase the commentary off  the tape, how could I separate the words from the pictures so that generations of my family wouldn’t be commenting on that addled brained youngster who ruined a perfectly pretty picture of the farm with his incessant talking.

But it was too late.

Copies were made and sent out to relatives from Minnesota to Pennsylvania.  It took years for history to judge.  When visiting relatives that had gotten the tapes years before, I made a comment about the commentary on the video.

“Oh, the commentary was the best part.  How else were we to know what you were talking about!”

As the farm has evolved and changed - the combine, the swather, the plow, the auger, the barn, the shop, the pasture and the feedlot are all gone.  The wooden grainery converted to a garage.  Only the garden, the machine shed, the house, and the windmill remain more or less unchanged.  The face of our farm, the face of our family has changed.  The farm where we lived and work is now a homestead with no cattle and no equipment for almost as long now as when we worked it.

The video, and the commentary stand as a picture of our farm, our working farm, and will speak to my children and my grandchildren of the life that their family lived.  It will explain the equipment, the buildings, the stories of their ancestors.  It will serve as a link to the past, that helped to form them via their ancestors.

Maybe I wasn’t so stupid after all.

 As our traveling dignitaries from Czechoslovakia made their way back into the house after their tour of our farm, they were met with the overwhelmingly wonderful smell of my mother’s cooking.  This was the full meal deal.  The table was weighed down with the bounty of our farm and of our country: roast beef, wild rice hot dish, new potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, fresh coleslaw, newly made beet, sweet, and dill pickles, fresh peas, fresh milk, kolaches, koblaha, and cakes.

No one left the table hungry.

We laughed, we visited, we reforged the family bonds.

Once the table was cleared, Grandma (born in Bohemia) and my father, both newly surprised by the fact that they were still very proficient in speaking Czech despite a forty year hiatus, visited with Emmon and Ludmilla Stolka.  Finding out about the family that had been left behind, hearing about the horrors of the Nazis and the Communists.  Learning about farming practices and customs in the old country.  Sharing stories of their children and grandchildren.

Emmon and Ludmilla were surprised by the vastness of this country.  On their first day in Minnesota with their initial hosts, my Aunt Julie and Uncle Omer, they asked if they could drive out to Maryland for the afternoon.

They shared their families concern during World War II - when they had been told that if you were no longer hearing from your family, it was because they were likely killed during the German assault on America…and the Russians never told them any different.

Emmon noted that he also played in a band as a trumpet player back in Bohemia.  Ah!  My sister Margaret was also a trumpet player - soon Margaret was called for a command performance for our visitors and did a rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”  With some fanfare, we enticed Emmon to take the trumpet in hand.

He was a wonderful player.  He made the trumpet truly sing as he played a sweet melody for us.  But soon, our smiles of joy at his playing turned into snickers and laughs…and with a hurt look in his eye…Emmon lowered the trumpet…he thought we were laughing at his trumpet playing…when he found we were laughing at the two farm dogs outside the window that were “singing” along with is wonderful trumpet playing, he too burst out laughing.

Soon they were inquiring about some of these things they were seeing in our home - the microwave oven, the camcorder, but perhaps most surprising to them was the dancing flower - a simple noise activated flower that waved back and forth when it heard music.  They were singing to the flower - watching it wave back in its spindly little dance.

As the day wound to a close, and good byes were said, we gave them some gifts from Mahnomen, some wild rice and some small momentos of our family and our town.  They in turn presented us with a plate, painted in Bohemia and bearing the image of the Nativity of the Christ Child.

As we drove them to the next relatives, with the sun setting over the horizon, they commented to my grandmother, “what a wonderful country.”

As we took my grandmother back to her apartment in town, she said to us, “what wonderful people.”

As we drove back to the farm, I believe we all thought the same thing…what a wonderful day.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

The boar was big.  The weather was hot.  The new tractors were nifty.  And the funnel cakes were delicious.  So were the ice cream cones, the “Grater Taters,” the corn dogs and the turkey drumsticks.

I didn’t even have to tell you that I was at the Iowa State Fair last week, did I?

I spent a couple of evenings there working at the Iowa State University booth.  My co-workers and I explained and re-explained the wonders of earthworms and soil bacteria to hundreds of state fair goers.

Did you know there are millions of earthworms in a healthy acre of soil?  Millions!  And they’ll never outnumber the bacteria that live down there.  In fact, there is a special variety of bacteria that produce “geosmin” the compound that gives soil it odor.  Soil, it really is fascinating stuff.

Kids couldn’t resist the microscope.  “What are those things?” They asked.

“Bacteria,” we explained.  The best part was letting them smell the bacteria.  Some came back for a second whiff. Some even brought mom and dad over for a sniff.  Others were less impressed with the earthy odor.  It’s amazing how kids can wrinkle their noses like that.

There were people of every shape and size.  There were several visitors from out of state and a few from out of the country.  We even explained things to a few people who were wearing “Hawkeye ” shirts.  We’re prohibited by law from discriminating, you know.

Between shifts I had a chance to look around.  The bunnies were cute.  The Belgians and the Percherons were magnificent.  And that butter cow, wow.  I’ll bet you can’t do that with margarine.

Here are some observations for those of you who didn’t make the fair this year.

Bart Simpson is in.  At least 50 percent of the people at the fair this year were wearing “Bart” T-shirts.  I don’t have one.  I do have one now that is emblazoned with a cow, and the slogan:” Don’t have a Bart, man!”

Fanny Packs are in.  These zippered belt pouches were almost as prevalent as “Bart”.  I heard somebody say they look like “love handles with zippers.”

Eating is in.  Corn dogs.  Turkey drumsticks.  Funnel cakes.  You name it.

The Big Boar in big.  Really big.   “Big Daddy”, an Indiana Duroc weighed 1,212 pounds.  That’s 65 pounds more than the record-setting winner last year.  Incidentally, of the hundreds of contests at the Iowa State Fair, the Big Boar Contest was one of the most competitive this year.  Delta-King, the second-place winner weighed 1,211 pounds.  (Wouldn’t “Big Daddy” and “Delta King” be great names for a pair of tag team wrestlers?)

I was at the state fair for parts of three separate days.  I didn’t even get inside of all the buildings.  I somehow missed the ostrich.  I only had time to climb into one tractor.

I can hardly wait for next year.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

They spoil weddings, holidays and graduations.  The show up to ruin family gatherings, holidays and picnics.  They are persistent, obnoxious and rude.

They are people with video cameras.

I’m sure you’ve seen them.  They obviously think a video camera gives them license to stand in front of you and block your view.  They think they can walk to the front of a crowd or climb to the highest location because they have to “get the shot.”  The worst offenders seem to be parents.  If an event involves children, you can almost bet that a horde of camera-wielding maniacs will be there too.

It irritates the heck out of me.   This silly sideshow spoils the solemnity of occasions like weddings and graduations, the spontaneity that makes birthdays and Christmas so much fun is instantly doused when somebody starts lurking around with a video camera.

Now that graduation is just around the corner and the wedding season is getting underway, consider leaving the video camera at home.   But if you must videotape, at least be discreet and polite.

And be honest.  Who ever is going to ever watch all those old videotapes?  They’ll probably wind up in a box in the attic next to all those old 8 mm home movies you took years ago.  You might as well relax and enjoy the summer without lugging around all the electronic gear.

Remember the memories, like food and wine, are best enjoyed in moderation.

Confirmations, graduations, first communions, weddings, birthdays, holidays, family picnics and other occasions are exciting and fun.  They become incredibly boring the second and third time around.  Our own memories are edited.  The pictures we see in our mind’s eye are compiled like highlight tapes of our lives.

My most vivid memories are of happy times.  I remember summer days at the lake.  I recall romping with the family dog.  I remember Christmases with the family.  I remember my first kiss (Wow).  I remember the proud and nervous feeling as I walked across the stage during graduation.  I remember how happy I was on my wedding day and how radiant my bride-to-be looked in her flowing white gown.

Those happy memories become clearer and more important to me as time marches on.  Bad memories seem to fade with age.  I remember fighting with my brothers and my parents.  It seems silly now.  I remember stepping on my new bride’s wedding dress and tearing it at the reception.  It seems like a minor mishap today.  I’d rather not have video-tapes of those moments to remind me how traumatic they were.

It’s bad enough that my parents have nude photos of me.  My mom snapped them with her instamatic at bath time when I was three.  I was handsome dud even then, but it’s still embarrassing.  Thank heavens I learned about modesty before the advent of the video camera.