Ever wonder if you are a good neighbor? Sure, you keep your lawn mowed. You don’t let your dog bark continually. And you paint your house as needed. Those things all help, but what do your neighbors truly think of you? If you really want to know, ask the neighbor kid. Think I am wrong?  Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Think back of your younger years and the time you spent outside. You were likely more conscious of the neighborhood surroundings than most adults. As such, you had a solid grasp on the temperament of the folks living near you. Which of your childhood neighbors did you really like? And which ones did you avoid? I am betting you didn’t have to think long before images of certain people came to mind. 

I remember the neighbor who taught me how to fly a kite. And I remember the one who tossed my bicycle in the street because I had it in his driveway when he came home from work. 

I remember the neighbor who came across the street to help me down from a tree that I was too scared to jump down from. And I remember the neighbors who never answered their door during Trick or Treating. 

I remember the neighbor who taught me how to throw a perfect football spiral. And I remember the one who told my friends and me to shut up when we were playing kick the can in the early evenings. 

Just a few years ago, I saw a neighbor boy while getting in my vehicle to go to work. The boy made eye contact with me briefly and then looked away. I yelled out, “Good morning, neighbor!” He looked directly at me and then cracked something that was beginning to resemble a smile. I doubt that this brief conversation changed his day, but who knows? That small gesture may have been just what he needed. And even if it wasn’t, it made me smile. 

Robert Frost once said that good fences make good neighbors. He may have been right, but I prefer this quote from Bruce Lee: “If every man would help his neighbor, no man would be without help.”

How will the neighborhood kids remember you?

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

“When you coming home, Son?”” “”I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, Dad. You know we’ll have a good time then.”

Those, of course, are the words of the late and great Harry Chapin in his 1974 folk rock song that has transcended generations, “Cat’s in the Cradle.”

My sister had a 45 of it that I played repeatedly on my General Electric Solid State portable record player nearly four decades ago. I memorized the words then, and I still know them today. 

Many of those words hit home, but mostly the word “then” — back in the 1970s and now.

I thought of the song recently after a conversation with my friend, Brian, who told me he was going on fishing trip with his 80-some-year-old father. This conversation made me think of a similar trip my father and I discussed but never took. 

Dad asked if I would join him on an ice-fishing trip. Like the lyrics of the song, I came up with a number of excuses. 

“The new job’s a hassle, and the kid’s got the flu.” Or something like that.

A wonderful mentor of mine offered great advice when deciding when to do things. He said to ask yourself, “If someday, why not now?” Sometimes, there are legit excuses. More often than not, though, we simply procrastinate. That’s true with tasks, but it’s also true with things we really want to do. 

Like going fishing with your dad. 

In his final years, my dad likely had regrets of not spending more time with his children. I know I have regrets of not spending more time with him. Hopefully, I am learning. In reality, we tend to be like our parents, whether we want to or not. 

“He’d grown up just like me. My boy was just like me.”

Let’s hope we can all turn more “thens” into todays and make time for a few fishing trips.  

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

With our without shoes. That sounds like a poorly pronounced U2 song from 1987, but it’s not. Rather, it is a decision we get to make in Iowa’s summer months. 

Do you remember being a child and feeling the hot concrete on your bare feet? That warmth felt so good and never seemed to burn. And do you remember watching adults in the same situation, prancing around like they were on hot coals? What is it about an adult’s foot that is so much more tender than a child’s? One would think that a kid’s bare skin would be more sensitive than an adult’s. I guess we have pampered ourselves as adults for too many years with all those fancy shoe coverings. 

Speaking of being pampered. We had one window air conditioner in my childhood home, and I thought we had it made. I don’t remember being uncomfortably warm inside the house, but I do vividly remember putting my face in front of that air conditioner and feeling the cold AC blowing my Shaun-Cassidy-like hair. The next house we moved into had central air conditioning, and I soon became spoiled by the evenly cool air. Ever since, I much prefer a well-chilled home. Yes, pampered again. 

Did you ever notice how much cooler a lush forest can be than other outside areas, especially on a hot summer day? Aside from the shade, there are other biological reasons for this that I won’t bore you with in this column. My friends and I didn’t know why it was cooler in the forest — or care — but we migrated to the trees. We pedaled our bicycles to the state park and ran around in the woods on the trails, and we never seemed to get too hot — at least not until the bicycle ride back home in the afternoon. 

Most of my childhood summer days were spent at the public swimming pool. There simply wasn’t a better way to cool down, and, of course, we were also entertained by watching the adults trying not to burn their feet on the hot concrete. 

Regardless of how hot it gets, we still have a wardrobe decision to make.

With or without shoes?

Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.

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

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