Stories Worth Spinning

                                                                                         Many people have a Christmas story, maybe several but perhaps one stands out, mentally buried for a time in an avalanche of calendar pages of years gone by. It may be a particular story or, like one of my own, is just a simple recollection like walking in the early evening to my grandmother’s house to shovel her snow and watching as the Christmas wreath with the red light slowly became visible in the second-floor window. Ducking inside afterwards for a cup of hot chocolate (she insisted) and conversation was time well spent, and I miss her very much.  This is typical of Chris...

    As a kid growing up in the 1950s, you spent as much time as possible outside together with your friends. One outdoor pastime we really liked was watching aircraft fly overhead and naming them if possible. I still remember what a TWA Super G Constellation looked like. If you were lucky you might spot Goodyear Blimp, military aircraft, or watch a Sikorsky helicopter place HVAC units on the roof of a nearby factory.   But you got a crick in your neck when a skywriter was overhead writing “It’s Toasted” in aircraft oil—exhaust floating in the air above me. The meaningless catchphrase promoted Lucky Strike cigarettes, and you can still find it on a pack of the smokes.   You might correctly guess skywriting to be a difficult skill to learn. The letters must be formed without the pilot having any perspective over what they’re doing. Though the letters look vertical from the ground, they are in fact horizontal, facing the ground, and a skywriting pilot can only...

  Every few seconds, slicing through the clatter, comes the crisp, high-pitched ding of a bell ringing like the sound you hear when your fries are done. But it’s not a Radar Range (who remembers that name?). It’s a typewriter carriage bell, and there are at least a dozen Selectrics on the main floor.   Men wore dark suits. Women dressed accordingly. No one approached you wearing a label-maker name tag on a unisex polo shirt bearing a name like Redneck Bank.   It’s a real bank in Oklahoma, and they lean hard on the brand—very hard. I’m thinking of Green Aces. Their mascot is a mule. Check them out for yourself—and you think I make this stuff up.   1975.   You walked into your neighborhood bank, and it was like Cheers, where everybody knows your name. Well, there were a handful of employees, anyway.   “Good morning, Mr. Dawlidowicz. How’s the family?” And he or she pronounced the name correctly—because it mattered.   You handed the teller your passbook, ...

  They say winter in Mother Russia is long and merciless—долгая и суровая—not as a flourish of drama, but as a simple statement of fact. Stanislav Petrov knew something about Russian winters. He was born in Vladivostok, where cold winds sweep in from the north and winter can be severe. But on the night of September 26, 1983, the coldest thing in the room wasn't the weather. It was the possibility of nuclear war.   So, who was Stanislav Petrov? A lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces—and a man who may have saved the world.   It was late that night when Petrov was on duty at a Soviet nuclear early-warning command center. His job was to watch the system designed to detect an American nuclear attack. The room was quiet. Then the alarms went off.   The Soviet early-warning system reported that the United States had launched a nuclear missile. Then another. Then another. Five missiles were reportedly heading toward the Soviet Union.   Protocol demanded t...

    Close your eyes Hold your nose (We'll get to that) Picture a typical frontier town.   You hear the muffled snorts, whinnies, and nickers of horses. Wagon wheels creak over rutted streets while buggy seats squeak in protest. Conversations overlap—some in English, others in German, Spanish, or any number of immigrant tongues. A blacksmith's hammer rings out as he shapes a new horseshoe for John Wayne's Old Dollor, (The Shootist, 1976, his last film) while somewhere in the distance an out-of-tune piano struggles through Oh Susanna !   Lining the street are weathered wooden buildings: a feed store, a telegraph office, the barber, the blacksmith's shop, a general store—and, of course, at least one saloon. You've seen this town a hundred times. Maybe it was Laredo. Maybe Tombstone. Maybe Dodge City.   On a Hollywood backlot. But before we go any farther, let me ask you a question.   Where are all the houses? Television westerns r...

  Are You in Show Business?” It was the question repeated endlessly on What’s My Line?, as blindfolded panelists tried to identify the mystery guest. If you were a vintage viewer—when channels 2, 5, 7, and 9 were all you had and the family’s 12-inch RCA, Admiral, Zenith, or Philco TV glowed in black and white—you remember it well. When the mystery guest appeared, the panelists were blindfolded. No cue cards. No retakes. Live, coast-to-coast. Panelists like Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf relied solely on voice, intuition, and deduction. The show demanded decorum . Appearing on nationwide television required your Sunday best—not rumpled jackets or distressed jeans revealing more than proper manners allowed. Panelists wore tuxedos and evening dresses. Unlike most game shows, the contestants were everyday workers—people with unusual, fascinating jobs, not celebrities. Think Dirty Jobs:   Oyster shuckers Roller coaster testers Dog food tasters   The pan...

    I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.” — Sarah Palin, 2008. (Yes, it’s been 18 years.) 1859: Thomas Austin had a similar fondness -   for rabbits. Unfortunately, there weren't any to hunt in the State of Victoria. Where? Southeastern Australia. Down Under. The other side of the world, where Mother is Mum, not Mom — too American, you know. Aussies like to tease us, but they'll still put a steak on the barbie for you or so they say. Thomas Austin was a self-appointed champion of the new and improved. A man who gave little thought — really , none at all — to the delicate balance of tooth and nail, root and rain, fire and frost. Left versus Right. Democrats versus Republicans (although there weren't any of those down there, either). With time on his hands, money, and just enough knowledge to be dangerous—Thomas Austin knows exactly what to do. Bring in s...