Hickory, dickory, dock. The mouse ran up the clock. And over the recliner. And under the table. And across the kitchen counter. 

I really don’t like mice. In fact, I haven’t met anyone who does. Well, other than cats, but cats don’t count. 

I have written in the past about learning as a teenager to turn my farm boots upside down and shake them before putting them on or risk having a mouse running up inside my pant leg. I had that happen. Once. 

Having mice in a barn is one thing. Having mice in your home is another. 

A few decades ago, Jolene and I lived in a small town in Nebraska, and our house was on the edge of town near corn fields. As such, we had our share of mice each fall. I’m no Sylvester the Cat, but I did kill a record six in one day. As the old saying goes, you never have one mouse. 

I recall a time when my mother visited, and she saw a piece of half-eaten candy on the kitchen counter. She laughed that one of the kids must not have liked that one and left the other half there. Then she ate it. I knew that my kids never met a piece of candy they didn’t like, but I didn’t have the heart to tell Mom about the mice. 

I became quite proficient at setting traps in the appropriate places to snare these mice. The kitchen was the jackpot. From our bedroom, we could hear the traps go off in the kitchen at night. At times, we could hear the little fella dragging the trap across the counter. This happened around midnight once, and Jolene yelled at me to get up and deal with it. I told her it would take care of itself, and I rolled over. Then she hastily got up, threw the mouse and trap in a paper bag, took the bag outside on the deck, and bludgeoned the mouse with a hammer. I never looked at Jolene quite the same after that. 

Since moving back to Iowa, we haven’t had to deal with mice like those Nebraska days. Meanwhile, I still have a few dozen mouse traps — and Jolene still has a hammer. 

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305

The two words in the above headline are quickly becoming irrelevant. 

Most all of us have questioned the need for the penny. In one of my first introductions to the value of money as a child, I learned the hard way that pop machines don’t take pennies. I wasn’t happy. The vending machine guy probably wasn’t either. Through the years, some reports have shown that the cost of producing a penny is more than 1 cent. So other than “find a penny, pick it up, all day long, you will have good luck,” why do we keep it as part of our monetary system? One answer is obvious. Unless we want tax increases in 5-cent increments, we better hold on to the penny.

The nickel is my favorite coin. As a regular reader of this column, you may remember this past musical reference from my childhood. The nickel is a hearty coin without those annoying ridges. It is easy to blindly locate inside your pocket. Good luck finding “nickel candy” today. Much like the penny, the nickel has become mostly useless.

The dime is the most interesting coin. Small, light and flimsy, it is the coin most susceptible to, literally, falling through the cracks. As a teenager in the 1980s, my friends and I discovered an interesting perceived value of a dime through a series of experiments. When we asked people for a dime, they would give it to us without question or expectation of repayment. When asking for a quarter or more, those expectations changed. The greater challenge with that experiment today would be finding someone who actually has a dime. Dime stores now being called dollar stores pretty much says it all. 

Let’s jump to the quarter, and quite a jump this is. Why not a 15-cent coin or a 20-cent coin? We may never know. Meanwhile, here is some fun that my same dime-experimenting teenage friends did. Take a quarter and lay it on a piece of paper. Draw around the perimeter of it with a pencil multiple times, and then challenge a person to roll that quarter off his or her nose and see how close it can be dropped inside the circle. The participants will become obsessed with the challenge and not notice the lines of graphite they mark down their nose. It’s all about the ridges. Don’t try this with a nickel.   

And you thought pocket change was useless? 

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

With the Kentucky Derby just behind us, some people still have horse racing on their mind. And some people are still grumbling over their lost wagers, too. Have you ever bet on horse racing? Are you a regular at the track? Or do terms like “win,” “place,” “show,” “across the board” and “exacta” leave you clueless? 

I am in the latter. I am not opposed to horse racing; I just haven’t had a burning desire to get involved. Although I have not been to a racetrack or bet online, I did participate in something some of you may remember from the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

Hy-Vee food stores was part of a televised series at the time called “Let’s Go To The Races.”  These horse races were shown each week on local TV stations as part of a 13-week series.  Participants could pick up race cards at any of the 114 Hy-Vee food stores in the Midwest at the time and then view the five races that were in the 30-minute programs. Mom shopped at each of the three grocery stores in my hometown, depending on where the best deals were for the week.  I doubt that this promotion made her shop more at Hy-Vee, but this kid was happy when she did. 

The game was simple. If your horse won, you won. I knew nothing of “win,” “place” or “show,” but I could follow my horse and eagerly see if I could collect anywhere from $2 to $500. 

Horse racing probably wasn’t something a young boy should have been watching, but it seemed harmless. Based on the disappearance of these types of programs, others must not have thought so. Hy-Vee wasn’t the only grocery store chain that took part in these horse-racing programs, as they were popular across the country with a variety of versions. The one I recall seeing was produced by Telecom Productions, Inc. of Des Plaines, Illinois. Check out a sample here from 1981. 

As a young boy, I would sit in front of the TV with the game cards that Mom gave me from her grocery shopping to see if I would win. The program claimed 180,985 winning cards were “available” each week with a total of $1,066,000 in cash prizes. From week to week, about $82,000 in prizes were offered. How much was actually claimed is clearly another question.

The shows were pre-recorded, so the odds of winning were pre-determined — and the risks were minimal. It was kind of like the carnival game at the county fairs where you pick a duck out of the circling water to see which prize you win. Of the 100 ducks, the grand prize was on one of them, the medium prize on four, and the small prize on the remaining 95. I know this because my buddy Dave and I once befriended a carnival worker and pulled each duck to count.

I am guessing Telecom Productions wasn’t as eager to share their odds with “Let’s Go To The Races.” Regardless, I was ecstatic to win a $2 prize from time to time on these pre-recorded horse races. I still don’t know what terms like “win,” “place,” “show,” “across the board” and “exacta” mean, but, for me, that’s probably a good thing. 

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305

It was a Panasonic RX 4920 — the best boombox available from my dad’s Raleigh cigarette coupon catalog in 1981. I banded together all those paper coupons from my father’s decades of smoking, packed them in shoeboxes and patiently waited for the boombox to arrive. 

What’s a boombox, you ask? Well, it was a handled, portable, radio cassette deck with built-in speakers. It was invented in the Netherlands by Philips in 1969, but the Japanese companies took the idea to the next level. The boombox was introduced in America in the late 1970s and became a mainstream product for youth like me in the 1980s. The use of boomboxes in urban communities resulted in them being called “ghetto blasters,” a name my friends and I commonly used then that doesn’t seem so appropriate now.  

When my boombox finally showed up, I couldn’t wait to unpack it and start playing my cassettes. It was a simple device with an AM/FM tuner and a single cassette deck, but I loved it. Most all my friends had some version of a boombox as well, mostly manufactured by Panasonic, Sony or General Electric. Boomboxes were a status symbol of sorts for kids in the 1980s, much like cell phones are today. As such, the technological features grew — and so did the dimensions, with some boomboxes comparable to the size of suitcases. The fancier ones had dual cassette decks, equalizer controls and booming bass sound. The larger models were 30 or more inches wide, and some weighed more than 25 pounds. Of course, the portability of these units was not simple — or inexpensive. Many required 10 D-size batteries, and those costs added up.

As a result, most boomboxes were almost always plugged into wall outlets, but, inevitably, someone would bring one on a school bus for long and noisy trips. The boombox trend didn’t last long, though. In 1986, 20.4 million units were shipped in the United States. By 2003, the number dropped to 329,000. The Sony Walkman and similar portable headphone devices became the new, trendy and much quieter ways to listen to music. School bus drivers everywhere rejoiced.

I remember using my boombox so much that the markings for play, pause, fast forward, eject, etc. wore off, but I had them memorized anyway. I sometimes wonder what happened to it, as I have no idea where it ended up. It probably quit working and was tossed, or it may be this one listed on Ebay for $49. 

I am sure Dad enjoyed those Raleigh cigarettes, even though they ultimately, and sadly, took his life. The high volumes of my Panasonic boombox might have taken a few years off his life, too  — or at least his eardrums — but that boombox sure made for some enjoyable music-listening years for me.  

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

The recent rainfall has many of us smiling. At least it does me. A little water from the sky does wonders not only for our Iowa crops but for our yards, our plants, our wildlife and our attitudes.  Some people say rain makes them sad. Not me. In fact, I happened to notice how many of my favorite songs are about rain. See if any of these ring a bell:

Of course, there is the classic, “Singin’ In The Rain” by Gene Kelly. The clip from the iconic movie is a cool video of sorts in a time before videos were cool. Check it out. You will smile, too. 

The late 1980s brought us “Blame it on the Rain” by Milli Vanilli. OK, they didn’t actually sing the song, but the guys could dance — not like Gene Kelly, but they could dance. I have not admitted this publicly for a few decades, but I do have this CD… somewhere. 

One of my favorite sing-along rain songs is “I Love A Rainy Night” by Eddie Rabbitt. I will forgive him for the misspelling of his last name, because “the windshield wipers slapping out a tempo” can make you forget about anything and start tapping your feet along with this snappy tune — with or without rain. 

I remember being a child and hearing “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” by B.J. Thomas on the AM radio in our kitchen. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and it was played by nearly every radio station on nearly every rainy day for a decade.

Those who know me well recognize that one of my favorite songs is “Purple Rain” — not the Prince version but rather the twangy 2016 tribute by Dwight Yoakam. It’s a bluegrass masterpiece. Check it out.

Creedence Clearwater Survival had several hit songs about rain including “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain?” John Fogerty and the band couldn’t seem to make up their minds as to when to use a question mark or not in their song titles, but they did play incredible music. And with the word “water” in the band’s name, they had to write at least a few songs about rain. 

OK, rain makes me happy, but a few songs about rain can be depressing. Even so, they are some of the best songs of any era. “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor defines that, which is clear in this 1970 live version. 

In recent years, I have come to appreciate the music of Gordon Lightfoot and came across this wonderful song about “Rainy Day People.” It’s not “Sundown,” but it works.

In middle school, our chorus teacher, Mrs. Mawdsley, had us sing “Smoky Mountain Rain” by Ronnie Milsap. Even though I flunked chorus, I still like the song, including this live version with commentary from Milsap about working with Elvis Presley and playing piano in “Kentucky Rain,” which, maybe not ironically, was co-written by Eddie Rabbitt.

What songs about rain did I miss? Shoot me a note and let me know.

Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707

Symmetry is wonderful. It is part of the whole balance thing. The ying for the yang. The right for each left. And a necessity for those of us who believe there is a place for everything and everything has its place.   

I was reminded of the need for symmetry and balance the other day when I had a hangnail and trimmed it off with some clippers. Then I decided to trim all the nails on my left hand. My daughter told me we were late to go somewhere, so I put the clippers down and decided I would do the right hand later. I was off kilter all night, as I couldn’t get the unfinished nail thing off my mind. 

My barber told me of a similar story when he was trimming those crazy eyebrow hairs on a customer. He said he trimmed one side and then got caught up in a conversation and forgot to do the other. The customer came back — with his head tilted. 

Have you ever noticed how many things are truly symmetrical? Cut them in half, and you get the same thing on both sides. Our faces are symmetrical. So are our bodies. When cut the long way, a bicycle is even symmetrical. But a car isn’t. Huh?

Can someone explain why steering wheels are not in the middle of otherwise-symmetrical vehicles? I sort of understand why we in the U.S. do the opposite of those in the U.K., but why isn’t the steering wheel in the middle on all cars, everywhere? 

Some say it is safest when the driver is placed closest to the middle of the road, which is on the left side in America. OK, I will buy that. But then why are the steering wheels for boats traditionally placed on the right side? Well, according to boatingbasicsonline.com, there are several “technical and conventional reasons, lookout theories, and even international disciplines that come together and keep the steering wheels of boats on starboard.”

In plain English, it comes down to propellers. According to the same website, “as propellors spin clockwise, the motion tends to put the left side down. The port side is then pushed by around 2 to 3 degrees physically. In turn, the right side of the boat will significantly rise out. The weight of the one behind the steering wheel may prevent this rise and keep the ship afloat.” Sure.

Meanwhile, some modern pleasure crafts and wooden speed boats do have steering wheels on the left. Sometimes, they can also be found in the center. That makes more sense to me, at least from a symmetrical point of view.

Now, would somebody please pass me the nail clippers? 

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.

Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707