When last we discussed the Steelers here, the case was made in passing that this year’s team of limited talent incredibly might win 12 games due to its ridiculously easy schedule.

But, as the Steelers have proved the past two weeks, while you can gift a team with pathetic opposition, you can’t guarantee they will take advantage by winning. And so it was that a pair of current 3-10 teams, Arizona and New England, claimed Steelers scalps amidst their otherwise stumbling, bumbling seasons.

This leaves the Steelers at 7-6 and, astonishingly, still among the teams that would make the AFC playoffs were the season to end today.

Alas, the Steelers have four more games to play and, judging by their production the past two outings, only the optimistic would expect two or more wins over that stretch.

It’s not that the opposition is especially daunting – with the exception of the Baltimore Ravens. And even those Ravens always seem to find a way to keep the Steelers in the game, even lose at times despite a superior record. Also, the Ravens might have their playoff seeding assured by the time they face the Steelers and rest star players.

Despite all this, I’m lumping that Ravens game in the loss category, where it has resided for some time according to my calculus. And we won’t cross that bridge until Jan. 7.

Meanwhile, the Steelers have, in order, games with Indianapolis Saturday, Cincinnati Dec. 23, and Seattle Dec. 31.

The Steelers and Colts are two of no fewer than six AFC teams sporting 7-6 records. The game is at Indianapolis, but I’m not sure that matters considering the Steelers lost their last two home games, against the aforementioned poor competition.

While the Steelers were imploding against Arizona and New England, the Colts found a way to get blown out by Cincinnati, 34-14, after the game was tied 14-14 at the half. That’s Cincinnati, playing without quarterback Joe Burrow.

But one of these lurching outfits, Steelers or Colts, likely will win this meeting, although an overtime tie would somehow be fitting.

Speaking of Cincinnati, the Bengals are yet another of those 7-6 AFC teams. This meeting with the Steelers will be played in Pittsburgh.

The Steelers then finish their season with road games at Seattle (6-7) and Baltimore (10-3).

I didn’t see the back-to-back losses coming to Arizona and New England, even though Bill Belichick owns Mike Tomlin. NBC’s NFL guru Peter King was in a similar position as me, describing himself as “borderline kind of stunned” that the Steelers could lose back-to-back home games to a pair of teams that had arrived with 2-10 records.

King added that the Steelers QB play is “putrid.”

And NBC’s Mike Florio noted that the Steelers made history, becoming the first team in NFL history with a winning record to lose back-to-back games to teams each at least 8 games under .500.

Speaking of history, this looks like yet another season that will be reduced to keeping alive the ability of Tomlin and his backers to boast of the coach never having had a losing season.

Kind of gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, doesn’t it?

Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s NFL team, AKA the Kansas City Chiefs, lost a tough one Sunday to the Buffalo Bills. The Chiefs had an apparent go-ahead touchdown that was scored late in the fourth quarter get wiped out by an offside call against them.

How could the refs do this to Taylor? And it wasn’t nice for her boyfriend, either.

Let the record show that the bonehead KC wide receiver did line up offside, for no apparent reason. Watching the game on television with my son, I was heard to exclaim, “the idiot in the slot is way offside” or words to that effect.

Usually such exclamations fall on the deaf ears of my wife, who could care less. Yet, having spent most of my 35 years working at newspapers covering sports, I feel moved to make such observations.

When the play seemed to produce a touchdown, I speculated that since it was the Chiefs, the blatant infraction might not get called. Understand, there are those who suspect that the Chiefs get a lot of benefit of the doubt on officiating, and not just because Swift now is their biggest fan.

Just last season, in the AFC title game with Cincinnati, the Chiefs got an extra third down, benefited when they had a key personal foul called on a late hit against their quarterback near game’s end, did not receive a personal foul for a late hit on the Cincinnati quarterback, and got away with a hold or two on key offensive plays.

The Chiefs won by three points, on a last-second field goal.

Predictably, Cincinnati fans were not pleased with how this transpired. They were more than happy to suggest the NFL wanted a KC-Philadelphia Super Bowl, which would pit the KC coach Andy Reid against his former team, Swift’s boyfriend against his brother on Philly who is not Swift’s boyfriend, and feature the ever popular KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who seems to lead the league in commercial endorsements.

Benefiting from the second chance to stop KC’s offense Sunday, the soft and cheesy Bills defense did just that– three times. This produced the sort of out-of-control behavior we don’t get from Mahomes on those syrupy insurance commercials.

Screaming, cursing, slamming his helmet, needing to be held back by teammates, Mahomes was incensed at the officials. The cynics rushed to social media to declare that now he knows how Chiefs opponents feel when they can’t get a call while playing the Chiefs.

The most ridiculous take from Mahomes and his coach was that even though it was a penalty, the refs were at fault for not telling the wide receiver he was offside, or shouldn’t be calling penalties on such pretty plays. Understand, about the first thing kids learn while playing peewee football is how to line up correctly in relation to the line of scrimmage.

Also, officials will give alignment help if asked, and mostly to the widest men in the formation. To repeat, the KC bonehead didn’t ask, and was lined up tight in a bunch formation, far from the sideline where an official might have communicated with him. It’s on the wide receiver. Period.

Mahomes whined in his postgame interview that he doesn’t want officiating calls deciding games. But he was not outraged when the officials handed his team a win last year against the Bengals. Just a tad hypocritical, don’t you think?

The rage of Mahomes should be directed at his underachieving wide receivers, who not only line up incorrectly, but also have a habit of dropping passes hitting them in their hands.

Maybe Mahomes should be mad at management for not providing better receivers. Perhaps management should be mad at Mahomes for making so much money they can’t afford to hire competent wide receivers.

But Mahomes raging because officials called an obvious penalty – in a season during which more such calls are being made as an apparent point of emphasis – is ridiculous.

In the words of the great Taylor Smith: Shake it off.

So, Hunter Biden finally was indicted on some felonies – for income tax evasion.

That’s how the Feds took down Al Capone. Not murders. Not bootlegging. Not prostitution. Not drug running. Just failing to pay taxes on all those ill-gotten gains. I wonder if Hunter is guilty of any of those other Capone things?

Since it’s in the leftist hotbed of California in which Hunter has been indicted, we expect that, even if he is found guilty – and that’s a reach – his punishment will be needing to clean up human excrement on San Francisco streets for a day or two.

And then he’ll be clean, so to speak.

Wake me up when they get around to filing charges against Hunter and The Big Guy for selling the family’s influence to foreign bidders.

Meanwhile, I had cobbled up these fresh lyrics to an old Christmas standard even before Hunter’s indictment was announced. Talk about co-inky-dinks!

To be sung to the tune of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.”

We wish you a Biden Christmas

We wish you a Biden Christmas

We wish you a Biden Christmas

And a great grifting year.

Glad tidings we bring, from ChiComs and friends

We wish you a Biden Christmas

And a great grifting year.

Oh, bring us a Brandon present

Oh, bring us a Brandon present

Oh, bring us a Brandon present

That’s a box of depends.

Glad tidings we bring, from ChiComs and friends

We wish you a Biden Christmas

And a great grifting year.

He won’t go until he gets some

He won’t go until he gets some

He won’t go until he gets some

So bring Jill right here.

Glad tidings we bring, from ChiComs and friends

We wish you a Biden Christmas

And a great grifting year.

Now Hunter goes to trial

Now Hunter goes to trial

Now Hunter goes to trial

Let’s see how that ends.

Glad tidings we bring, from Chicoms and friends

We wish you a Biden Christmas

And a great grifting year.

The FBI has gone from domestic crime prevention unit to a politically weaponized secret police co-opted to pursue perceived enemies of the public.

Worse, they don’t let the rule of law impede their persecutions.

That’s why it was sad, pathetic and yet amusing when current director Christopher Wray was trying to explain to Congress why his SS unit now is conducting an inquisition of Catholics as terrorists.

In that spirit, we present updated lyrics to be sung to the tune of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree.”

Following ‘hind the FBI

As they put it to the right

Better be quiet, low-profile

And just keep yourself from sight

They’re on a hunt to bury truth

And to prop the left upright

Laws can be broke, bent and ignored

Just to satisfy the Woke

Yet there is a hopeful feeling when we see

Wray before the Congress kneeling

Spewing pap without much feeling

Old Wray he makes a sad, sad sight

As he tries to dim the light.

Can’t we just fire this wretched soul

And so resolve this plight?

Following ‘hind the FBI

’cause we can’t believe our eyes

Persecuting Catholics, Trump, et al

With a pack of complete lies.

Today we continue a holiday tradition, born years back when I wrote some freelance columns for the Tribune-Democrat and I took it upon myself to update the words to Christmas songs.

Back then I didn’t have carte blanche in terms of space and publication dates, so I had to pack fresh lyrics to several songs into each submission. With the freedom of a blog, writing as often, or infrequently, as I desire, I’m planning on one example per blog post.

Today’s inspiration comes from my late teenage years (and early 20s, perhaps) when most of my friends and I drove cars that were roadworthy only if you squinted hard and took a few hits of your favorite adult beverage.

We used to carry wire hangers with us, the better to use to secure fallen exhaust systems, hold down a hood, or keep a balky door closed. Hammers, to beat on hit-and-miss starters, also were common.

I had a 1973 Pinto whose overhead cam belt used to skip a few teeth at high RPMs. I carried a box wrench, 9/16s of an inch as I recall, so that when it happened I could stop the car, lift the hood, loosen the distributor hold-down bolt, and re-time the thing by ear.

On one trip to Pittsburgh, for a Pitt-Penn State game, I failed to have the wrench along. The belt skipped and the car ran progressively rougher and rougher before failing totally, just as I pulled in front of my house to conclude the return journey The ignition points were burned out.

Our cars rode on tires of questionable pedigree, with engines that were rated in miles-per-gallon of oil they burned, rather than miles-per-gallon of gasoline consumed.

My brother once used a sweeper hose to connect the side exhaust pipes on his Camaro.

Repeat, we drove heaps.

As an ode to that time, here’s a few verses to be sung to the tune of “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)”

Fenders flapping on the open road,

Tires that have given up the ghost.

Fading brakes little more than a joke,

And what bothers me the most, is the heater’s broke.

But, what the heck, it gets me there.

Sometimes even gets me back.

And though you may say, it has seen better days.

It’s my car.

It’s my car.

It’s my car.

That wreck!

I had a bad day with my college football picks Saturday, going just 2-3. The College Football Playoff selection committee had an even worse day Sunday.

These cloistered geniuses broke precedent by excluding an unbeaten champion (Florida State) from a power five conference – in this case the Atlantic Coast Conference – and put a pair of once-beatens (Texas and Alabama) into its four-team field.

These two join unbeaten Michigan of the Big Ten and unbeaten Washington of the about-to-be-dissolved Pac-12 in making the cut.

And thereby we have removed yet another argument that college football is anything more than a semi-pro feeder system for the NFL, designed to make mammoth profits for schools, constantly realigning conferences and many other parasites.

Student-athletes? Yeah, right. Success on the field rewarded? It’s hard to be better than unbeaten.

This has been a long-running trend. Witness how many college teams selectively recruit key cogs in the transfer portal. To argue this is anything more than athletic restocking is a joke.

Previously, such widespread transfers were held in check by rules requiring transferring players to sit out a season.

Now, it’s just another recruiting session; free agency for experienced players. Not only do schools have to land athletes coming out of high school or junior college, now they have to battle to keep them from honing their skills at one school and then moving on to greener pastures if one of the big-time operations has a glaring need at one position or another.

The right thing at this point would be just to pay the athletes in revenue-making sports and drop the charade that this about playing for good, old State U.

Florida State was penalized because all-everything quarterback Jordan Travis suffered a season-ending leg injury. Without him, the Seminoles offense was not as potent. His backup was sidelined with a concussion for the ACC title game, leaving an untested, third-team freshman to start. The Seminoles still beat a good Louisville team for the title, and had won previous games without Travis.

The reward was also-ran status in the playoffs.

Also left on the outside looking in was a once-beaten Georgia team, the two-time defending national champions who had a 29-game winning streak snapped by Alabama in the SEC title game.

The winning margin was three points. It very easily could have gone the other way but for a missed Georgia field goal attempt and an Alabama freebie field goal coming off a turnover by Georgia deep in its territory.

It was clear the fix was in for Alabama when expert after expert treated the outcome as if it had been an Alabama domination.

Part of the explanation for that is Alabama coach Nick Saban, who shows up on national commercials much more frequently than on the sidelines and is a larger-than-life figure pandered to by many, including the selection committee.

You don’t need to be wearing a tinfoil hat if you see a conspiracy in that the committee needed to get Alabama in, but couldn’t ignore the loss to Texas. So, Texas had to be in, too. Sorry, Florida State, as an unbeaten you were passed over not once, but twice.

Nonstop reverence for Alabama is a variation of the way Notre Dame is ranked highly every football season until the Fighting Irish absolutely, positively prove they do not deserve the acclaim by losing enough games.

To the credit of Saban and Alabama, they don’t often lose. But, when they do, they always seem to get the second chance that, say, Georgia doesn’t.

Yes, Alabama beat Georgia on a neutral field. But Texas had beaten Alabama by a larger margin, on Alabama’s home field, earlier in the season.

And Chokelahoma had beaten Texas in their annual Red River Rivalry game.

No one had beaten Florida State.

At this point why even have a regular season? Just let the committee sit around eating donuts and tell us how it all would have played out.

Sports, by their nature, are full of surprising outcomes that don’t go according to the resumes.

Consider that defending NCAA Men’s Basketball national champion, UConn, was ranked 10^th in the final poll before the NCAA Tournament.

Were that championship a four-team playoff field, decided by the geniuses, the eventual champion would not even have made the party.

Florida State did all that it should have needed to do to make the football playoff final four. That the playoff field expands to 12 teams next season, something to which playoff selection committee apologists point to as some sort of saving grace, matters little to this year’s Florida State team.

Or to Georgia.

College football stinks with hypocrisy and, as with fish, it rots from the head down.

Oregon

Texas

Georgia

Louisville

Michigan

Maybe you’ve noticed gold and silver prices rising the past week and change, but likely you have not.

These two precious metals, with silver also being an extremely widely used industrial metal, operate in an investment netherworld as far as the general public and conventional business/financial cable networks are concerned.

When gold or silver are mentioned on these cable venues, it’s often in a snarky way. This happened twice already this week on CNBC’s daily wrapup show Fast Money.

There was a guest host sitting in one day, this being a day on which gold and silver had risen notably. So, the show deigned to slip in a segment on gold. The regular host returned a day later and did the same reluctant acknowledgement of positive gold price action.

In the guest host example, one of the regular panelists noted early on that he knows she “hates” gold, which she did not deny.

What followed was the usual litany of trite laments about gold not having a dividend, not producing earnings, and being reliant as an investment merely on price appreciation, or depreciation of a competing asset in the form of national currencies.

Of course most of the same things can be said for your house, in spades, yet these investment shows regularly devote copious amounts of time to real estate. The family home is hailed positively as the cornerstone of the average family’s net worth.

Still, just like gold, your personal residence does not produce income if you live in it, does not pay a dividend, actually costs you money to use it in the form of real estate taxes, homeowners insurance and even utility payments.

It was ironic that Mrs. I Hate Gold was displaying her disdain for the precious metal shortly after the show had run a segment on Bitcoin, the crypto currency that has no yield, no earnings and relies on price appreciation to reward investors. But no such snarkiness existed on that segment.

Bitcoin is sexy and attracts viewership despite the fact it trades just a little above half of its all-time high of $68,798 per “coin.” Bitcoin is not a coin, but instead a digital entry on a computer. Repeat, there is no tangible coin, although the symbol for Bitcoin often is a gold coin with a B and dollar-sign-like vertical lines running through it.

Allow me to emphasize that this all transpired on CNBC, which is a font of investment misinformation.

A key dispenser of same is Jim Cramer, whose show follows Fast Money on week nights. Cramer is often wrong, but never in doubt.

His most infamous boner of advice came on March 8, 2008, in the midst of what now is known as the Great Financial Crisis. Cramer went on a rant – his favorite shtick along with sound effects – to lecture viewership that financial company Bear Stearns was solid.

A viewer had written asking this sage’s advice on the whether or not he should be concerned about Bear Stearns and withdraw his money.

Responded Cramer, according to transcripts you still can find easily on the internet: “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine. Do not take your money out.”

The rant continued and ended with Cramer advising the guy not to be “silly” by withdrawing his money.

Bear Stearns stock at the time traded at $62 a share. It was bailed out just five days later by the financial firm JP Morgan Chase for, wait for it, $2 a share.

Bear Stearns was anything but fine.

Gold had traded early on March 8, 2011, at $1425 an ounce. As I write this sentence, 8:02 a.m. Thursday Nov. 30, 2023, it’s trading at $2,038.30, down 4.30 in overnight trading.

Clearly, buying gold then would have been better than Bear Stearns stock, but you’d have been unlikely to get that message on CNBC.

CNBC worships at the feet of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, the later having died yesterday. They are/were investment legends, that CNBC loves in part because of their shared hatred of gold, branding it a pet rock and something one might need to sew in their garments if they were Jews during the holocaust, but clearly not an investment.

Yet Central Banks, the national concerns such as our own Federal Reserve, hold large amounts of gold and have been adding to it at record rates in these troubled financial times.

That number was 800 tons of gold purchased through the first nine months of this year, up 14 percent year-over-year according to the World Gold Council.

Gold is financial insurance, an asset that is not dependent on the financial health of some third party such as bonds and shares of stock rely on the strength of the issuing company (Bear Stearns!) or a currency, which relies on the stability of the issuing nation.

Gold has been wealth for thousands of years. China and Russia, among others, are buying gold to isolate themselves from being under the thumb of the U.S. dollar, the current world reserve currency.

There are many in the financial community (ones unlikely to show up on CNBC) who predict a dire future for the U.S. dollar due to our nation’s fiscal overreach and, by consequence, a good future for gold.

This also would be good for silver, gold’s poor cousin. The argument is made that silver would provide even more upside leverage, considering it now trades at around $25 an ounce, roughly half of all-time highs of approximately $50 previously hit in 1980 and 2011.

Declining interest rates, as the Fed tries to keep the economy going in 2024, should lead to a lower dollar and higher gold and silver.

That’s the way I’m betting. But I’m no financial expert, so you shouldn’t attempt to mirror me.

Better to wait for Cramer’s next Bear Stearns moment.

Throughout many of my working years I’ve been part of unions — for better or worse — and I’ve too often seen that union workers have about as much to fear from their union sisters and brothers as from the company.

It matters not whether it’s USW (steelworkers), UAW (autoworkers), CWA (communications workers), NEA (teachers), AFGE (government employees), or any of the other alphabet soup acronyms for unions, all are part of a governing group IGMFU (I got mine, f – – – you).

Companies sometimes use this union infighting to their advantage in negotiations. The two-tier pay scale is a familiar tactic, offering existing employees a raise and the opportunity to remain on the existing scale, but with the agreement that any additional employees come onboard on a lower rate of pay scale – permanently.

Too often current membership, with dollar signs in their eyes, take the money. Down the line, however, when newer employees on the lower scale outnumber those on the higher scale, companies love to propose a mammoth raise for those oppressed “new” employees if only they could get rid of the higher scale for the oldsters.

Traditionally these offers are accepted in a heartbeat. IGMFU, or karma is a female dog.

Seniority is a mainstay of unions, basically dictating long-term people have more job security in the event of layoffs than the recently hired. Nothing wrong with that.

However, seniority also very often is a cudgel used by me-first union types to get all they can at the expense and inconvenience of fellow members. A person hired literally one day before you can use seniority for preferred shifts, days off, holidays off, vacations, job descriptions, assignments, etc.

Ability, personal need, are not a part of this union calculus.

My union experience began early while at the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat. The business writer thought the newsroom should be union, as the composing room and press room were at that time. He began organizing, working with the USW since Johnstown still was a steelmaking town.

At the time, management gave the newsroom staff the same wages and benefits that the union types had negotiated, but there was no guarantee this would continue forever.

Customarily, newspaper editorial employees back then were represented by the Newspaper Guild, which since has been folded into the CWA (Communication Workers of America).

The International Typographical Union (ITU, also since merged with CWA), which represented composing room employees at the Tribune-Democrat, cried foul and demanded a chance to represent the newsroom since that union already was in the building.

The vote outcome, ironically, came down to me. I always was confident in my abilities and felt comfortable succeeding or failing on my merits. But union organizers lobbied me hard and, in the end, I felt although it might not necessarily benefit me, I’d vote yes for the good of all.

Not that long afterward, when the newspaper underwent its first sale to chain ownership (read: cutting costs to the bone, product be damned) I was glad I’d voted union, thereby avoiding arbitrary firings, pay cuts, and benefit losses.

We were protected by our existing contract. That’s held true through many, many ownership changes and contracts at the paper since I left in 1994.

And, in the end, that’s why unions were created in the first place, to give the employees the opportunity to negotiate on a united front for fair pay, benefits and working conditions.

But, too often unions are highjacked. Government employees and teachers unions increasingly are politics-first, dependent on the bottomless public purse to provide comparatively good pay and benefits, not to mention virtual lifelong job security.

By comparison, private companies – a good local example would be defunct Bethlehem Steel – must pay the economic piper eventually when they provide union employees with overly lucrative pay and benefits for the jobs performed. They can, and do, go bankrupt.

Governments and school systems do not have that economic reality weighing on them, which is why when I was younger there were not unions for public employees. The thinking was that the workers might make a bit less money than those in the private sector, but they more than made up for it in terms of generous benefits and job security.

President John F. Kennedy changed that with an executive order in 1962, beginning an inexorable, state-by-state march to our current politicized public employees unions, allowing these union members essentially the right to hold the taxpaying public hostage.

These public employees now tend to make more money than comparable private sector employees, have better benefits and better job security, all of which they can insure with their political activism, almost 100 percent for Democrats.

This is good for them, but bad for the rest of us. It also helps explain why overall union membership as a percentage of the workforce is in decline, falling to an overall 10.1 percent in 2022 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Also from the BLS, 33.1 percent of public sector employees are union, while just 6 percent of private-sector workers are in a union.

Karma is a female dog.

Even an activity as seemingly innocuous as a neighborhood walk can turn into an exercise bracketed by buffoonery.

Allow me to explain.

The wife was back from her walk Sunday. The granddaughters were planning on watching a Christmas movie with their daddy. I needed to get in a few miles myself.

So, I left my house at about 4:43 p.m. and couldn’t even get off the block before encountering the first bit of annoyance. A group of late-teen boys (at least I think they were boys, but I apologize in advance if some of them were gender-confused girls) turned onto the street and dispersed in the kind of spread-across-the-sidewalk pattern favored by would-be toughs.

Think of it as a game of pedestrian chicken, to see who will veer out of the way and avoid contact.

All were at least as tall as me, but also considerably thinner. Visions of bowling pins filled my brain as I kept walking. When they realized I wasn’t deferring to them and shuffling onto the grass, two of them yielded to their right, falling in behind the others.

Just before I got to them, one uttered “Good evening,” to which I replied, “Hello.”

They continued walking, as did I. But, while still within earshot, one offered, likely for my benefit, “We oughta rob that guy.”

Replied I: “Go for it, baby!”

No takers.

And so it goes.

The years have taught me attitude is important. If you act scared, you embolden people to press you.

Allow me to share one incident.

I was new to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in November 1994 when I covered a Steelers game with the Los Angeles Raiders in the L.A. Coliseum.

After the game, I had ridden down the press box elevator and begun walking to meet a cab that I had called when two security guys in yellow windbreakers said they would walk me to my car.

“It’s going to be a long walk,” I told them. “My car is parked at the Pittsburgh airport.”

They decided they’d guard me while I awaited the cab. But, when we got to the street separating the Coliseum from the LA Sports Arena (a basketball arena since torn down) there was a California Highway Patrol car parked in front of the arena with its motor idling.

The security guys felt I’d be OK as long as he was there, but they left with the warning “If someone jumps you, try to make a lot of noise, knock over garbage cans or something, so we’ll hear you.”

Within minutes, a guy hit me up for $5 for a deposit to borrow jumper cables from a garage.

I told him no way, and shortly thereafter another guy wanted to borrow $5 to make a long distance phone call. Remember, this was 1994 so there still were phone booths and the like. He would return my money once his ride arrived following the call.

Feeling a bit mischievous, I told him that I’d called a cab and didn’t know from which direction it would come. I asked him if he was a betting kind of guy, then offered to give him first pick. If he was right, I’d give him the $5. If I was right, he’d owe me $5.

I still recalled the baffled look on his face, which remained until the cab driver pulled up (from my right for those of you keeping score at home) with his driver’s door in front of me, reached behind to open the rear door and ordered me in — immediately if not sooner.

As we sped away, he scolded me. He said I was an idiot to be standing around in that neighborhood when I clearly didn’t belong.

I told him something along the line of I didn’t suspect he could get his cab up the elevator, so I didn’t have much choice

There are other walking/standing tales in my memory banks, but we’re running long here so I’ll save them for another time.

The punctuation on tonight was more more typical neighborhood fare. As I bent over on my front steps to unlace my shoes at walk’s end, one of the youthful neighbors arrived home and perhaps spotted me lingering. In the past he has been an annoyance due to he and his friends mistakenly thinking they have fast vehicles simply because they can deposit a bit of rubber on the street.

Perhaps for my benefit, he power-braked his pickup truck to a pathetically brief driveway burnout before giving up on it all.

I kind of felt sorry for the guy.