WE MET AS LETTER-TO-THE-EDITOR WRITERS in The Herald in the late 1980s. I remember seeing her name in print on various letters and issues in town and one day we met at Raley’s. In no time at all she invited me to be the organizer for the Poet’s Tree at Arts in the Park. I […]
A Cappella Handyman: I flipped my lid
YES I DID. I REALLY DID. I flipped my lid. I was at the dump in Martinez. My trailer has been with me since 1999, when I bought it used but in good shape on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley as a metal base with wheels only, no sides or top. Over the past 15 years […]
A Cappella Handyman: Treasure hunt
YES, THAT’S WHAT I’M DOING, going on a treasure hunt. I have a few clues, but maybe I need more. The treasure? My ’32 Ford hot rod that I built — or nearly built 90 percent of — in the years 1957-60 while in high school, Las Lomas, to be specific, in Walnut Creek. I […]
A Cappella Handyman: Crohn’s Disease, The Book
YES, I’VE DECIDED, I’M GOING TO WRITE THE BOOK. I’m already at it for the past week. I have 24 years of a parent’s lay experience and all the pitfalls we landed in and I’ve had two immense, hard years of grieving. So who is better qualified to write a parent’s perspective on the subject? […]
A Cappella Handyman: Beauty & Sweetheart
IT WAS WALNUT CREEK, 1953. We rose early on a Saturday morning. Mom had fixed hot chocolate and powered-sugar doughnuts, a light breakfast, and we were headed for the farm! Yahoo! Farr and Granmore Larsen, our Danish maternal grandparents, had come from Denmark in 1923, when Mom was only two, the only daughter in the […]
A Cappella Handyman: Emergency vehicle
I WAS GOING TO CALL THIS COLUMN “Toilet stories,” but “Emergency vehicle” better suits this first story and since it’s a rainy night, just after quitting time, it lends itself better to a little more drama. I’ll save “Toilet stories” for another time. Monday late afternoon, this week, just home from work, still in our […]
A Cappella Handyman: Hotrodder
MAYBE THAT’S ALL I’VE EVER BEEN. Simple as that. Seeing my first hot rod at age 8 in San Leandro, my head spun around to follow it in traffic behind us. “What was that?” I asked my Dad, driving us somewhere in the family Buick. “That’s a hot rod,” he answered, to which I asked […]
A Cappella Handyman: Reporting phish
AS IF LIFE WEREN’T DIFFICULT ENOUGH, now we have to contend with white-collar criminals sending emails to our home computers with our bank’s logo, telling us in corporate-sounding language that “several fraudulent attempts have been made to enter your bank accounts” and therefore unless we click on the link below and “verify all our bank […]
A Cappella Handyman: Sick at home
BUMMER! I WENT THROUGH THIS COLD BUSINESS just this past Xmas and here it is February and I’m sounding like a seal barking at the waterfront. It began last week. I worked in and out of the rain, got a little wet running between a customer’s house and my truck, put on my jacket, and […]