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JOHN W. PINKERTON

oldjwpinkerton@gmail.com

A few years ago, I thought it would be amusing to write a group of essays which I would collect into a book to be given to my pallbearers.  Hmm, some explanation seems appropriate: when I was a kid, I always thought it odd that most famous folks did not have final words.  Of course, as I became a big kid, I realized having final words was an option for very few of us.  Well, the essays are my way of having final words, even if I’m not famous, for people I care about.  But now that I have a website, I think I’ll share them with whoever chooses to read them whether I care for them or not.  The pallbearers will have to settle for the good thought or maybe a nice sandwich.

To encourage folks to write fiction for the site, I created my own short story, “Phineas T. McGregor: the Great Bank Robber.”  I discovered the following: non-fiction easy; fiction hard.

I’ve even wandered off into the world of poetry.  I discovered the following: prose easy; poetry hard.

As you probably know, I’m old.  Writing is one more way for me to keep myself occupied in my “golden” years.


MY ESSAYS

1  Television

2  The Picture Show

3  Dogs are Chosen: Cats Choose   

4  My Dog: My Hero

5  Fantasy Football

6  Golf 

  7  My Friend Jim 

8    Music  

9  Poetry   

10  Jokes   

11  Mathematics  

12     Cars  

13     Bars

14   Our Town

15  Flying Is for the Birds

  16    Big Changes Little Noted

17  Religion or Not

18   Farming Bad: Gardening Good

19   The Horse and Other Ways to Die

20   Art: It’s My Nature

21   Intelligence

22   A Curmudgeon’s Report

23   Counting Cats

24   Weird Physics

25   What’s All This Israel Stuff?

26   House

27     Food

28   LSU and Other Things I Don’t Lose Sleep Over

29   Did I Mention It Was Hot?

30   Shock

31   Social Changes

32   The PO-lice

33   Senior Status

34   Clothes

35   Weather

36   Death and Other Humorous Parts of Living

37   End of the World... or Not So Much

38   Gifts

39   I’ve Seen Enough

40   My War with the Army

41   Oops, I’m a Collector

42   Hunting

43   You’re Not the Boss of Me

44   Friends Misplaced But Not Lost

45   Fishing

46   Beauty and the Beast

47   Haircut

48   Vacations

49   Politics

50   Public Education

51   Gambling

52   Coffee

53   The One-Eyed Man

54   I Am No Artist

55     Essay on Essays

56   Holy Moly!  We Went to the Moon!

57   On Turning 70

58     Children’s Games

59     Magazines

60     I Missed the Memo

61     Idioms

62     Reading

63     John Wayne

64     Glossophobia

65     Newspapers

66     Stupid Norwegians?

67     Oops!

68     The New Telephone Book’s Here!

69     I Guess I’m Just a Bad Person

70     Sundays, the Sabbath, and Blue Laws

71     The Sweet Science

72     The Day I “Met” Robert Penn Warren

73     The Ol’ Double-L: a Sovereign Nation

74     Cowboy Bob Steele

75     How to Nod Knowingly

76     Who Are These People?

77     Dear Dallas Cowboys

78     The Academy Awards

79     Photography

80     Discussin’ Cussin

81     Billy Goes Home

82     Same-Sex Marriage

83     Time or Maybe Not

84     Spring Arrives with the Masters

85     Hucklebuckle

86     The Most Interesting Man in the World

87     Funny Folks: Stand-Up Comedians

88     H. L Mencken

89    The Silent Generation

90    The Crazy Old Man

91   GTT

92   Ronnie June “Tumble” Terry

93    How Old Art Guy Became an Online Magazine

94    Cattywhompus

95    Useless Memories

96    UFOs and Me

97    Who or Whom?

98    Humility

99    Email Dilemma

100    Baseball: Things Change

101    The Battered Wives Club

102    Salt

103    Bathroom: the Horror, the Horror

104    The Upside Down and Backward World of Languages

105    High Self-Esteem and Expectations

106    Dang It, Darwin

107    An Ode to Ripple

108    Janis

109    How I Became a Prince

110    Aaron Edward Hotchner

111    I Am a Little Erased

112    Old Minds Wander

113    Night to Day: the Transition

114    The Bug That Bugs Me

115    Listening for the Mockingbirds

116    G. K. Chesterton

117    Bad Luck Bill and Other Superstitions

118    Azalea Pinkwater

119    Hobson’s Choice

120    Evangelist for Writing

121    My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma

122    Work, Work, Work til Your Ass Falls Off

123    Finley Peter Dunn

124    The Moon and Green Cheese

125    Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

126    The Power of Positive Thinking

127    Southern Waving

128    To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

129    Murals

130    Your’re Getting on My Last Nerve: Quotation Marks and Italics

131    The Penny

132    I Don’t Know My Colors

133    Transcendentalism

134    Jaguar XKE or MG Midget?

135    Nancy Said: Quotation Marks

136    Fifteen Minutes of Fame

137    Creepy Places

138    An Open Letter

139    Know Thyself

140    My New Old Cousin

141    Bobby Hebert

142    Top Ten Dead Folks

143    Old Photos

144    Wilbur Shaw

145    The Art Accident

146    What a Strange World

147    Lord Elgin

148    Jousting with Windmills

149    Old Age and Nursing Homes

150    Language Matters

151    From Alvin to Yogi

152    Impossible?

153    Let’s Talk about Hats

154    Last Meals

155    Alone

156    This Is an Intervention

157    Cool

158    Twenty-four in One

159    Zombies

160    Drinking, Camping and the Presidents

161    Coaches

162    A Remarkable “Insignificant” Person

163    Frog or Toad

164    Give Me a Damned Break

165    Let’s Talk about Goats

166    Possum, Linda’s Cat

167    Harrison Barron

168    Linear Week

169     Maybe Folks Just Don’t Like Art

170     New Years Resolutions or Lies We Tell Ourselves

171     Ugly Cars

172     Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum

173     Shakespeare’s Man

174     ...and I Ain’t Too Sure About You

175     Name Change Head Explosion

176     It’s a Ding Dang Miracle

177     Hang Those Deniers

178     Beards Are Trending

179     We Call Our Daddies Daddy

180     Richard Milhous Nixon

181     Bigwigs

182     Grandma Barron

183     Irish

184     Round Top

185     Mrs. Marguerite Miller

186     Flyover County

187     No Apocalypse: Off to Work

188     Duke Ellington

189     Kiss My Grits

190     If You’re a Man over Thirty

191     The Bee Man Cometh

192     I’ve Been Spammed

193     I Ain’t No Graduation Speaker

194     Applause, Please

195     The Real Rocky

196     Roll Dem Dice

197     They Come for the Wine

198     The Death Sentence

199     Where’s My Theme Music?

200     J. W. Pinkerton, Author

201     I Ain’t No Dancer

202     I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Technology

203     I Am a Lucky Man

204     Same Man: Same Problem

205     Small Scenes, Big Memories

206     It Was Never Your Team, Les

207     First, Do No Harm

208     Irish Fathers and Automobiles

209     Bob and Me

210     Speakers’s Corner

211     Enemies Can Be  Blessings

212     You’re Still Not the Boss of Me

213     Old White Guy Speaks

214     Meaning of Life

215     What’s Under Your Bed?

216     Wallowing in Grief

217     Movietone News

218     Addition and Subtraction

219     George W. Bush

220     Wanderlust

221     Leon Hale

222     Will Rogers: Renaissance Man

223     Family Is a Choice

224     The Don Quixote of Donkeys

225     Shoot the Art or the Artist

226     My Tree

227     The Romance Is Over

228     Bored

229     Philosophy: Yeah, That’s the Ticket

230     Francis and Friends

231     Anti-intellectualism My Butt

232     I Ain’t Dropping My Pants

233     Gravity’s Pull on Me

234     Okay, We Need to Talk

235     Words

236    An Epiph

237    Fog

238    P. G. Wodehouse

239    Hitchin’

240    Nicknames

241    The Great Turkey Debate

242   College Degrees:

Look before You Leap

243    Amos ‘n’ Andy

244    Breaking the Code...Maybe

245    I Know Nothing

246    Sultry

247    Bret Harte

248    Spoons

249    Saki

250    Afterlife

251    Preacher

252    What It Is Is Baseball

253    It’s a Freakin’ Miracle

254    People

255    Suicide Happens

256    My Pallbearers

257    Not a Wizard

258    Bob Barron

259    The Old Guy Card

260    Bringing Gusto to the Game

261    The Cool Kids’ Table

262    Trismegistus

263    Jim Was a Good One

264    Attaboy, 8

265    Different Times---Different Standards

266    Icons and Judgments

267    My Front Porch

268    Paul Harvey: American Hero

269    Hell, It’s On

270    Poodle Skirts and Ike

271   My Reality

272   Uncle Earl

273   I’ve Run Out of Stories

274   Archie: What a Guy

275   The Bevish and Other Ways to Goomberdock

276   Difficult  Problem: Difficult Solutions

277   The Mystery of Electricity

278  So...You Have Six Friends

279   I Hate Trump

280   Don’t Want to Be Too Ambitious

281   This Ain’t Brain Surgery

282   The Perfect Crime

283   Bubba Does Standup

284   Out of Office Replies

285   We Bought a Car

286   A Charming Couple

287   My Old Brain

288   The DQ

289   What Art Education?

290   Hell, I’m an Entrepreneur

291   Happy Pessimist

292   Place

293   Sneezes

294   Hold My Beer

295   Magic

296   Jack

297   My Eulogy, a Work in Progress

298   Routines

299   Hate

300   300

301   Bob and Silent K

302   Mark Twain

303   Tibia Vara

304   Bourre

305   No Mahatna Ghandi, I

306   They Called Me Dumbass

307   Cemetary Bargains

308   My First and Best Principal

309   “I Like Rich People

310   “Dumb Aliens

311   “Stephen Hawkins without the Brain

312   Prayer

313   Christine’s Dopplegager

314   Scraps of High School Memories

315   It’s My Birthday

316   I’m Cured...I Guess

317   Lonely Artists

318   Hardware, Software, and Life

319   Man Plans, and God Laughs

320   Apathy---Not Always a Bad Thing

321   I’m a Capitalist

322   Deaf, Dumb, Blind Old Kid

323   I Collect People

324   I Want My Spaces Back

325   Snake!

326   Berkeley PC Police Save the World

327   Do Aliens Have a Sense of Humor

328   Beer for All

329   It’s Football Season and Fall Can’t Be Far Behind

330   God Hates a Straight Line

331   Magical Thinking

332   No Control

332   Oh, Yeah...and I Had a Heart Attack

333   Heart Attack Leftovers

334  Not a Chance from the Get-Go

335  A Mulligan, Please

336   Slogans You Remember

337   Just Not Funny

338   Good Luck, Dems

339   Lawsuit...Really?

340   Country Inn---Gone

341   Javelina Yawns

342   Too Dumb to Know

343   Well Done, You Arrogant Bastards

344   Inez, Buck, and the Whoop

345   Our Big Oak: Hard Times

346   Rosie Orozco

347   The Smells Are Back

348   Uh...Bad News and More Bad News

349 Golf---Oh, Well

350 Mah Jongg

351 Ya’ll Come Back, Ya Hear

352 Ya’ll So Silly

353 Settling

354 John Grant

355 The American People Have Spoken

356 The Class of 1960

357 ET Munoz

358 Rehab

359 Novelty Songs

360 Essay Inspirations

361 My Friend Grady

362 Late Mention: LSU Wins National Championship

363 The Funny Hat Solution

364 I Miss Myself

365 I Know Nothing, Nothing!

366 I’m Very, Very Sorry...

367 Hunter the Artist

368 Square Roots

369 Problem Solved

370 Cock Fighting

371 My Friend Jay

372 Buyer’s Regret

373 Blood Simple

374 Coersion Versus Persuasion

375 Tears---Knock It Off

376 We Must Speak for Them

377 Cheap Lessons

378 Covid and Common Sense

379 Globes and Common Sense

380 Slapped by Facebook

381 Luck or the Clever Monkey

382 Still Got My Compass

383 Living to 130

384 Felon Friendly

385 Pumpkin Fraud

386 Manure Shoveler

387 Chiropractors

388 Ex-Students

389 Bill Neinast: My Hero

390 My Friend Joe

391 Trump’s the Devil

392 The World According to John

393 One of My Better Qualities

394 The Insurrection

395 Objective Observer

396 They’ve Checked Out

397 Youth and Driving

398 And Gawd Said

399  I Sneered at my Fantasy Analysis

400 The 400

401 Get Use to It

402 Okay, I Said It

403 Less is More

404 Just Minding My Own Business

405 Tis But a Scratch

406 Falling...a Lot

407 What a Country!

408 European Statue Haters

409 Barbecue Secrets

410 An Invitation to My Show

411 Birthdays---I’ve Had a Few

412 Knowledge Is Power

413 I Had a ‘Theeling’

414 Liberals and ‘Free Speech’

415 Fantasy Football: Year 100: Part Deux

416 My Show

417 Billy Bob Jumpback

418 Dogs, Fish, and Birds

419 The Naming of Cats

420 Behind Closed Doors

421 What Do You Say to a Dying Friend?

422 You’re Late, Damn It

423 Outhouses

424 Somerville Progress

425 Good Angel/Bad Angel

426 Get Smart

427 Blue Bell Cantaloupe

428 Billy Bob Speaks on ‘lectric Cars

429 Cart before Horse

430 Fantasy Football: Year 100

431   Eighty Ain’t No Party

432   Bobby Joe and Bubba Debrief

433  Cat Naps

434   Methusela

435   Shallow John

436 It’s All about the Hair

437   Rambo

438   Going Home Again

439   Why Essays?

440   The Great Divide

441   I Remember

442   Who Killed JFK?

443   Churches, Work Harder or...

444   I Ain’t No Worrier

445   Open Letter to the Class of ’60

446   Stanford Retards

447   The Library of Unread Books

448   Bobby Joe and Bubba and Fission and Fusion

449   Hospital Vacation

450   Get a Rope

451   Onward and Upward to Hospice

452  Equity and Equality

453   Insults Are Us

454   Bobby Joe, Bubba, and Dylan Mulvaney

455   Bubba and Bobby Joe Solve a Plethora of Problems

456   Christians Redefined

457   Clear Eye on Taiwan

458  It’s Not All about You

459  Magic Words

460   Weaponization of the Federal Government

461  Linda and the School

Board

462  The Zodiac and Me

463  A Complaint from a Loyal Texan

464  Artificial Intelligence and HAL

465  Boom

466  Colleges: Perceptions and Realities

467  Just Too Damned Big

468  Square Pegs and Round Holes

469  Talking to Men

470  Mayberry and Human Value

471  I Fell Again

472  White Dog Showdown

473  Stick It Where the Sun Don’t Shine

474    When I Become Smaller

475     Thanks, Mate

476    Bubba and Bobby Joe: Friends

477   Bubba and Bobby Joe and Dylan Mulvaney: the

Sequel

478    Ball Lightning

479    Arrogance

480    Giant Brains and Camouflage

481    Stuff I Miss

482    Cottonseed

483    Walk It Off

484    The JP Awards

485    A Tableau without Hope

486    Bigfoot

487  Metaphysics

488    TV Today

489    Hospice and Death and Stuff

490    Seychelles

491    Bubba, Bobby Joe, and Waldo

492   Mass Murders

493    Poetry: Odd and Pretenscious

494    Book  Burnings and Censorship

495    Lying

496    Not Much Interested in Your Soul

497    Feeling Like Oneself

498    Golf: a Metaphor of Life

499    Evel Sally

500    500

501   Not So Fast, Old Friend

502   Uncle Sam, You Got a Lot of ‘Splanin’ to Do

503   Little Prayers

504   The Kiwi Man

505   Deranged

506   You’re a Jet

507   Eddie Faust

508   Kryptonite

509   Laugh Damn It

510   Boy Was That a Mistake

511   The Wonderfulness of the Moment

512   Past Lives

513   I’ve Never Had a Mentor

514   Circle the Wagons

515   Never Give Up

516   Vigilance


FICTION

1     Phineas T. McGregor: the Great Bank Robber

2     The Country Club

3     Dark Matter

4     My Name Is Ismael

5     Sundays Smell Different

6     Catch Any Bad Guys?

7     Bobby Joe Does Polling

8     James Meets a Chimpanzee


MY POETRY

See “The Poetry of John Pinkerton

enough