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The Advice Column

The Source

People are nice…really. I know several of them. And they mean well, but sometimes….sometimes their advice confuses me. Last week I was standing in line at County Market when a guy behind me said, “Hey Ken. I liked your column!” Assuming that such a comment could only come from a close relative I turned around to see which cousin I was addressing. I didn’t recognize him, but figuring he’d mistaken me for someone else I smilingly took the compliment and started sorting out my cheese from my toilet bowl cleaner. Then the man said, “Hey, I’ve got a good one for you!” Assuming he’d discovered a new and spectacular new brand of bowl cleaner, I said, “What’s that?” He said, “My neighbor!” His neighbor cleans toilets? “He’s a pain. You ought to write about him. He mows his yard on Sunday mornings. My dad always taught me you never mowed a yard on Sunday. And he doesn’t wear a shirt. …but he should.” My plans to discover a new way to refresh my bidet having been completely blown out of the water, I said something clever like, “Really?” I shouldn’t have responded with such eagerness. The fellow proceeded to describe his neighbor from irritating top to disgusting bottom, including the way the offensive guy next door leaves his boat parked in front of house, turns up the radio very loud when he washes his car, and keeps an illegal chicken in the back yard. I still don’t know how my shopping friend could tell that the chicken was illegal. Perhaps he checked his papers. But my new County Market acquaintance isn’t the only person who gives me advice on what to write. Don’t get me wrong…there’s nothing I welcome more than a good idea, but more often than not I receive topic ideas that I just can’t use or more commonly, don’t know beans about. I mean I’d have to actually interview the guy’s irritating neighbor if I wanted more of the story and I’m not sure the chicken would let me into the yard. A lady once sent me photocopies of her deceased mother’s letters, asking if I’d put them into a newspaper column. I read through the letters and although the lady had elegant handwriting, there was absolutely nothing of interest to anyone outside the immediate family. So how do you tell a person that her mother isn’t column-worthy? Several years ago I received a newspaper clipping from a lady whose grandson was making it big in the Tokyo fish selling market. I’m not kidding. A former Waverly boy was in Japan selling fish to American wholesale buyers. While I found the article fascinating, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out a way that would make the story interesting to anyone other than other Japanese fish sellers and perhaps a few well-read tunas. Of course, sometimes the opposite happens and you’re threatened if you do mention someone in a column. I once sat foreman of a jury in Cass County. The judge was visiting from Pike County and wasn’t used to the peculiarities of the Virginia, Illinois, courtroom. Chief among these eccentricities was the fact that the judge’s chair had no “stops.” That is, when you tilted it back there was nothing to halt its backward progress. About halfway through this trial of a fellow who’d been accused of sticking a polish sausage in his pants and walking out of the Beardstown IGA (I’m not kidding) the judge leaned back past the chair’s center of gravity. His legs flew into the air and the judge was gone. Unfortunately, there was a panic button located underneath the judge’s bench and his knee slapped it a good one as his body took off heading due east. This caused a small army of Cass County’s finest law officers to rush into the back of the courtroom, hands on their guns. The looked around, saw no judge, and were a bit confused as to whom to arrest. That’s when the judge slowly raised his head from behind the bench and instead of looking at the police or the lawyers, looked directly at me and said, “Bradbury, if this appears in your column, you’re a dead man.” Death threats from judges to jury members are unusual, even in Cass county, but I took the judge at his word and shook my head, promising to never write about what I’d just seen. The dear judge’s death a few years ago removed me from any such obligation. You got advice? Go ahead and send it . . . armed police optional.