KAREL'S CHEESE HOUSE

There was a huge nut tree by the cemetery fence. One day two boys filled up a bucketful of nuts and sat down by the tree, out of sight, and began dividing the nuts. "One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me," said one boy. The bucket was so full, several rolled out towards the fence. Cycling down the road by the cemetery was a third boy. As he passed, he thought he heard voices from inside the cemetery. He slowed down to investigate. Sure enough, he heard, "One for you, one for me. One for you." He knew what it was. "Oh my god!" he shuddered, "It's Satan and St. Peter dividing the souls at the cemetery!" He cycled down the road and found an old man with a cane, hobbling along. "Come quick!" he said, "You won't believe what I heard. Satan and St. Peter are down at the cemetery dividing the souls." The man said, "Shoo, you brat! Can't you see I'm finding it hard to walk as it is!" After several pleas, the man hobbled to the cemetery and heard, "One for you, one for me. One for you, one..." The old man whispered, "Boy, you's been tellin' the truth! Let's see if we can see the Devil himself." Shivering with fear, they edged toward the fence, still unable to see anything, but they heard, "One for you, one for me. One for you, one for me. And one last one for you. That's all. Let's go get those nuts by the fence, and we'll be done."

They say the old guy made it to town 10 minutes before the boy!

"Every winter I would eagerly wait for the first snow flake to fall. I remember how I excited I got waking up to see those first few snowflakes of the season. I was thrilled as I raced to the door, shouting to my Mom and Dad. When I got to the front door, I would pound on it and shout, "IT'S SNOWING! Remember our agreement? Let me IN!"

Copyright (c) 1991, 1992, Sheldon T. Hall

Mailbox Baseball is as old as teen-age driving privileges, and is played at varying levels of expertise all over the nation.

In our neck of the woods, contests matching man and mailbox are traditionally held on Friday nights, frequently in conjunction with high school football games.

Customarily, it is the supporters of the losing football team who are the most enthusiastic mailbox baseball players, practicing their craft as they return to their own disgraced part of town.

One of the finest players ever to grace the sport went to high school with me, here in Atlanta. Al LaFarge.

Perhaps you have heard of his exploits. It was Al who first perfected the "Lancelot" variation, whereby a short 2x4 is propped, lance-wise, against the car's window frame, projecting forward and slightly outward, allowing the full inertia of the automobile to be transmitted the length of the 2x4 as the free end of the lumber came into solid contact with the mailbox.

Before LaFarge, the standard play had been to lean from the passenger window of a chauffeured sedan, swinging a friction-taped Louisville Slugger at the standard bent-tin-on-a-stick suburban mailbox, but the all-brick mailbox soon become the bane of the bat-wielding proles.

LaFarge's new technique worked even with the all-brick items; those it did not decapitate it uprooted. No mason's handiwork is meant to survive a direct hit from a 1963 Chevrolet Impala 327 SS.

Big Al met his match late one night, however, when he attempted the never-before-achieved Lancelot Trifecta, drawing a bead on the self same masonry mailbox he had demolished on both of the two previous Friday nights.

His team scouts, however, had failed to notice that during the most recent rebuilding the mailbox had been reinforced with four twelve-foot lengths of 132-pound-per-running-yard mainline railroad rail.

The installation of the rails had required the services of a pile-driver, since some what over seven feet of each rail was inserted into the firm Georgia clay underlying the property of the aggrieved homeowner.

The brick was merely veneer. Camouflage. Show business.

Set the scene: the car, each of its five passenger positions occupied by a smart-ass white boy utterly devoid of social conscience; the lance, tucked knight-wise under the arm of the primary primate, one end butted against the car, the other weaving slightly as Al aligned it with ....the mailbox, an irresistible target in pristine brick and virgin mortar, beckoning in the moonlight.

Just before the inevitable impact, the aforesaid homeowner, standing in his front yard at the end of a seventy-five-foot length of electric-lawnmower extension cord, pressed the trigger on his trusty Kodak super-eight home-movie camera, bringing into play the triple flood lights atop the camera, bathing the scene in light.

LaFarge never wavered, his concentration was absolute.

The result was as you might imagine; the 2x4, caught between the massively-reinforced masonry and the rump-sprung Chevrolet, exploded into organic shrapnel as it ripped the passenger's door, and Al, completely out of the car. The resulting lateral displacement of the trajectory of the mortally-wounded Impala resulted in its inebriated and incompetent driver's steering starboard when port was required.

The first roll ejected the other student-athletes from the car, and, after an extensive series of aerial arabesques, the remains of the empty automobile came to rest, inverted, in a shower of broken glass, oaths and empty beer cans.

The homeowner's movie film was back from the drugstore about the time the doctors got the last of the splinters out of Al's armpit, and it proved that a picture is still worth a thousand words. Among those requesting prints of this cult hit were the mason, the postmaster, and the Federal district attorney.

His car demolished, Al feared he would have to walk to our exclusive private school, but the fear was unfounded; he and his henchmen were summarily ejected from those hallowed halls. Al's short appearance in Federal court earned him a year's probation, and his parents were still buying their neighbors new mailboxes months later.

So, yes, I'd say we know about Mailbox Baseball here abouts.

Copyright (c) 1991, 1992, Sheldon T. Hall

* Cats rule. Dogs drool.

* Cats rub your leg when they want affection, not when they're horny.

* Cats use a litter box. Dogs use your leg.

* In 1996, over 10,000 US deaths were attributed to a dog owner's choking on saliva during morning wake-up licks.

* Cats always land on their feet. Dogs won't even let you throw them.

* Cats let you kick them when you're stressed out.

* Cats will wait until you've read your morning paper before tearing it to shreds.

* Cats look cute sleeping on the TV. Dogs crash right in front of the screen.

* No one has ever had to "Beware of the Cat."

* Cats bury their crap. Dogs dig up others'.

* Cats have better things to do than stick their nose in your crotch.

* Cats lay on the car in the heat. Dogs in heat lay the car.

* Why do you think they call it "Dog Breath?"

* Garfield. Odie. Enough said.

Sure, it seems easy being a space alien. You've got your x-ray vision, your late model space ships and media coverage galore. But, as usual with most glamour jobs, there's a lot of nitty gritty work the public doesn't get to see. The job can become routine, and even a bit tedious, as we learned when we stumbled upon this intriguing page from...

S P A C E A L I E N ' S L O G B O O K

***********************************************

8:15 AM Leave asteroid for work.

9:00 AM Hover over cornfield on outskirts of small Midwestern town.

9:30 AM Land in backyard where housewife is hanging laundry. Silence barking dog with penetrating gaze.

10:00 AM Stun housewife with laser-gun or energy pulsating finger- tips. Levitate her body just long enough to be glimpsed by a passing motorist. Materialize the body inside spaceship.

Remove internal organs; weigh, label and categorize. Return most, if not all, to the body. Erase all traces of surgery.

Rematerialize housewife in backyard. Turn back time two hours. Bid enigmatic good-bye. Leave.

1:00 PM Visit once prestigious astronomer who everyone thinks has gone mad. Deliver pep talk. Leave him fist-sized fragments of an unidentifiable element.

2:15 PM Drop by Whitley Strieber's house, pick up royalty check from best seller. Communion.

3:00 PM It's Saturday; Beam Mulder psychic impressions where to go next.

3:20 PM Hover over southwestern desert.

3:30 PM Offer psychotic drifter a lift.

4:30 PM Pose for cover of "Weekly World News" with Pres. Clinton. Discuss ozone depletion, space travel, scandal evasion, future political endorsements.

6:30 PM Back at the asteroid. Introduce psychotic drifter to other aliens. Listen to Windham Hill.

9:00 PM Dinner. Eat drifter.

10:00 PM Wash antennae, brush eyeballs, peel off outer layer of skin. Beam cryptic message to NASA satellite. Lights out.

1. When speaking fast you can make yourself sound gay

2. It's easy being a soap dodger

3. You get to eat shitty little things like snails and frog's legs

4. You know what you are ordering in expensive restaurants

5. You don't have to read the subtitles on those late night films on Channel 4.

6. You can test your own nuclear weapons far away from your own doorstep

7. You can be ugly and still become a famous film star

8. If there's a war you can surrender really early

9. You don't have to bother with toilets, just shit in a hole

10. People think you're a great lover even when you're crap

1. You can have a woman president without electing her

2. You can spell colour wrong and get away with it

3. You can call Budweiser beer

4. You can be a crook and still be president

5. If you've got enough money you can get elected to do anything

6. If you've got a driver's licence you can get a gun

7. You can invent a new public holiday every year

8. You can play golf in the most hideous clothes ever made and nobody seems to care.

9. You get to call everyone you've never met "buddy"

10. You can be Irish and American at the same time

1. Two World Wars and One World Cup (doo-dah doo-dah)

2. Warm beer

3. You get to confuse yanks with the rules of cricket

4. You get to accept defeat graciously in major sporting events

5. Union jack underpants

6. Water shortages guaranteed every single summer

7. Puts you in with a chance bedding Lady Di

8. Bathing once a week-whether you need to or not

9. Ditto changing underwear

10. Beats being Welsh,

11. Or Scottish

1. In-depth knowledge of bizarre pasta shapes

2. Unembarrassed to wear fur.

3. No need to worry about tax returns

4. Glorious military history... well, till about 400 a.d.

5. Can wear sunglasses inside

6. Political stability

7. Flexible working hours

8. Live near the Pope

9. Can spend hours braiding girlfriend's armpit hair

10. Sweating tenors

1. You can be mistaken for a Mexican all over North America

2. The rest of Europe thinks Africa begins at the Pyrenees

3. You get your beaches invaded by Germans, Danes, Brits etc

4. The rest of your country is already invaded by Moroccans

5. Everybody else makes crap paella and claims it's the real thing

6. Hard to get the women into bed without marrying them ...

7. .. and twice as hard still if you're not a Catholic

8. In fact, the only sure way is to dress up in silly too-tight clothes and risk your life in front of bulls

9. You get to eat bulls' testicles

10. Supported Argentina in Falklands War.