The heat is on

It’s hot outside!

(How hot is it?)

It’s so hot that…

…the fiddler on the roof took his act to the penthouse pool.

…NFL players are locking themselves out of training camp.

…you’ll get slapped by a pickle for calling it “cool as a cucumber."

…Donna Summer is singing, “Lookin’ for some hot stuff baby this evenin.’ I need some hot stuff baby...oh, forget it, I’m going inside where it’s cool.”

Who let the dog days of summer out?

…the Good Humor man doesn’t even find it funny.

…lobsters would just as soon stay in the pot of boiling water.

…death row inmates aren’t being sent to the electric chair. They’re

being sent to the exercise yard instead.

…“America’s Got Talent” was won by a guy with a Super Soaker.

…Captain America turned his shield into a wok.

…weather forecasts now come with a McDonald’s coffee cup warning.

…sports fans are doing a modified, seated form of the wave called the low tide.

…drug addicts are snorting Freon.

...rapper Ice-T had to drop the “Ice” from his name.

…Civil War reenactors are staging the Battle of the Ole Naked Swimmin’ Hole, which never actually happened.

…truck drivers are pulling their trailers with convertibles.

…the president is proposing a new Cold War.

…chickens are seeking shelter in KFC buckets.

…the National Park Service has closed Mount Rushmore due to falling thousand-gallon drops of sweat.

…bank time and temperature signs have dropped the degrees and are posting “Don’t ask.”

…Burlington Coat Factory is selling two-piece thong parkas.

…Sasquatch got a crew cut.

…heat-seeking missiles can’t decide which of the 3.7 quadrillion targets to hit.

…Congress is adding a fan to the debt ceiling.

But they probably won’t get the bill passed before Aug. 2.

Fair-ness doctrine

Summers can be awfully boring in the Midwest. There’s not much to do besides watching corn grow and cows lactating.

Fortunately, we get a reprieve in July and August. We spend a week or two with a bunch of other people in a carnival atmosphere where there just happens to be lots of corn and lactating cows.

We call it a fair.

You've gotta have heart -- for now -- to eat fair food

California and Florida may have the Disney theme parks, but we here in farm country know a thing or two about amusement ourselves. In fact, long before millions of people began driving thousands of miles to magic kingdoms ruled by a round-eared rat, Midwest states already were introducing generations of Americans to the enchanted worlds of artery-blocking confections, lunch-losing rides and amateur-hour entertainment.

No need to thank us.

Fairs begin and end with eating. Remove the food vendors and the average fair could fit into an area roughly the size of Jiffy Lube.

The moment a fairgoer’s foot steps onto the fairgrounds, edible matter appears in his hands. When that is consumed, more edible matter instantly appears in its place. This continues uninterrupted until the fairgoer gets into his car to leave.

Fair foods are prepared one way, and one way only: deep-fried. No one knows exactly how this came to be, although I suspect it might have come from congressional lobbying efforts by the business development committee of the Open Heart Surgeons Association of America.

Step to the counter of any fair food vendor and you’ll hear a conversation that goes something like this:

VENDOR: Can I help you?

FAIRGOER: Yes. I’d like a deep-fried alpaca burger with chocolate-dipped bacon, molasses-soaked tomatoes and jelly bean-topped pickles; a deep-fried Fig Newton on a stick; and a large deep-fried Red Bull. Oh, and can I get the burger in a deep-fried wrapper and could you put it in a deep-fried bag?

VENDOR: Sure. Would you like the burger between two glazed doughnuts?

FAIRGOER: Are you kidding?!? That’s GROSS!!!

While it is true that fair rides are nowhere as sophisticated as Disney’s least high-tech attraction, it doesn’t cost a hundred bucks plus parking to spend the day spinning in a creaky Tilt-a-Whirl. You need only a 50-cent ride ticket. Or 10.

What fair rides lack in technological flair they more than make up in fright. Not because of the rides themselves, but because of the ride operators.

Carnies take you for a ride, and hopefully nothing else

Carnies are scary people with leathery tans, unpleasant aromas and half-smoked cigarettes stuck between their lips. They look like the same people who just days earlier were picking up garbage along the highway as part of a prison work release program. Now these same people are responsible for the lives of 8-year-olds on rides like the mini-motorcycles, which is one of the most dangerous of all midway attractions due to the fact that the motorcycles are equipped with annoying buzzers that the kids press the entire ride, pushing the carnie to the edge of serial killer.

Ride lengths vary greatly at fairs. For instance, if five or more people are waiting in line for the bumper cars the carnie will flip the power switch off after 35 seconds. That’s a problem, since it takes a full 34 seconds for a rider to figure out which direction to turn the steering wheel to get the car moving forward. Conversely, if there’s no line for the Scrambler you’re probably going to be whipped into unconsciousness while the carnie goes out back to smoke a carton of Marlboros.

Then there’s fair entertainment. It comes in various forms: clogging clubs, greased watermelon races, electricity safety demonstrations and performances by Elvis impersonators who, if the King were really alive and ended his self-imposed exile, would immediately lose their jobs and cause the nation’s unemployment rate to increase another 3 percent.

Among the myriad entertainment options, fairs could not exist without the Big Four: the queen contest, 4-H projects, livestock showing and tractors.

Everybody within the fairgrounds attends the queen contest except the carnies, who use the opportunity while no one’s around to switch from tobacco to marijuana. Hundreds of people pack into small, non-air conditioned livestock sale arenas to watch young women smile, say hello, wear sequined formal dresses of retina-burning shininess and answer important questions like “Do you think the ‘Twilight’ movies are instilling within young people a wrong image of vampires?”

The lucky girl who becomes queen is rewarded with a crown, sash, flowers and an opportunity that she’ll treasure for a lifetime: posing for pictures with the Grand Champion sow.

No trip to a fair is complete without a walk through the 4-H exhibit building, where 4-H members display the projects they’ve spent all year working on but didn’t actually get serious about finishing until a week before the fair. There are armoires made of Popsicle sticks; 200-pound zucchinis; watercolor paintings of what are either kittens or mountain lions; and powdery substances on plates that were once believed to be cookies.

4-Hers also raise animals and bring them to fairs for everyone to see. Cows, pigs, horses, sheep, chickens, goats, ducks and rabbits by the dozens are housed in barns, so that fairgoers can stroll through and take a quick glance before turning their gaze back to the ground so as to avoid stepping in poop.

Another tractor cleared for takeoff

For many fair visitors the tractor exhibit is a must-see. Farmers from near and far bring their antique machines to the fairgrounds in what could be described as the agricultural version of a classic car show. To the casual observer, the whole collection might look like the same tractor: two big back tires, two little front tires, an uncomfortable seat, and painted green. But to those in the know, the tractors could not be more dissimilar: two big back tires, two little front tires, uncomfortable seats, painted green and built in 1939. And that one in 1940. And the one over there in 1945.

Newer models compete in the fair tractor pull. Well, we Midwesterners assume they are newer since we've never seen anything like them on a farm. We also assume the tractors are capable of flight, given that they are long, sleek, jet engine-powered vehicles that reach for the sky while dragging 14,000 pounds of concrete blocks behind them.

We assume something else, too: That if the tractor wasn’t chained to all that weight it just might chart a course due southeast.

Right to Disney World.

Cursive, foiled again!

I have a confession to make. I’m a card-carrying member of Cursive Writers Anonymous. I’ve been in recovery since, oh, about junior high.

From the day teachers didn’t care whether I turned in papers in cursive or printed letters I’ve been phasing out the former from my skill set. Except when I’m required to provide a signature, which is just a corrupted version of cursive that isn’t supposed to be legible, anyway – ask any doctor or professional athlete – I’m strictly a print man.

Cursive was a write of passage

Cursive has never felt right to me. Cursive is beauty and art; print is plainness and functionality. And in the handwriting universe I’m less Monet and more Dogs Playing Poker.

Besides, Indiana is writing cursive off. Why shouldn’t I?

This past spring the Indiana Department of Education announced that it would no longer require schools to teach cursive, so that more time can be spent on typing instruction. More than 40 other states are ditching cursive for the keyboard, as well.

I’m not sure what I think about eliminating cursive from school curriculum. All I know is cursive never worked for me.

I remember those long, painful penmanship classes, where we started by tracing cursive letters and then moved to writing on wide-lined paper with dotted lines. Everything about that exercise set me up for failure: pencils as big around as storm sewer pipes; confusing rules about which parts of letters touch the top line and which parts go only as far as the dotted line; capital letters which look nothing at all like their printed equivalents; and sitting beside the girl in class whose cursive writing could be displayed in the National Archives next to the Declaration of Independence.

Whether they actually believed they could turn me into John Hancock or just wanted to get me to a C grade so they could pass me on to the schmo in the next class, my teachers agonized over my cursive writing.

“Steve, that’s not a capital F. That’s a capital T,” a teacher would say. “Do you know what you did wrong?”

“I didn’t print?” I’d say. Not really, but I wanted to.

“No, Miss Wallflower. Can you tell me?”

“Of course, Steve. You forgot to cross the F in the middle. Try to remember that next time, all right?”

“Okay, Miss Wallflower,” I’d answer, making a mental note to never again start a sentence with a F or T.

Eventually, I was handed off from teacher to teacher enough times that I reached the grade level where we traded the wide-lined paper for thin-lined notebook paper. It was a terrifying experience. I felt like a New York City apartment dweller dropped into the middle of an Amazon rainforest. Worse yet, we laid our pencils aside and picked up ink pens.

No more erasers?!? How was I going to expunge my numerous penmanship errors? I couldn’t rely on ink erasers – a satanic invention if ever there was one – because I discovered early on that they were of no use. After minutes of rubbing the grayish wedge against the page, disaster would strike. The moment ink began to disappear the eraser would tear through the paper, leaving me to hand in an assignment that was 30 percent wood pulp and 70 percent Scotch tape.

My handwriting analysis: It stinks

Over time I chose the alternative. I covered my mistakes in a thick layer of ink and accepted the consequences for failing to turn in a “clean” paper.

By high school my teachers ran up a white flag, allowing me to print all my assignments. Then, as a sophomore, I took a typing class, where I was introduced to Wite-Out – a heavenly invention if ever there was one. Years later the manual typewriter was replaced by the word processor and then the personal computer, which rendered corrective tape and liquid obsolete. I had arrived at the throne of God.

Today I’m about as far removed from cursive writing as Lindsey Lohan is from The Parent Trap. The photo accompanying this blog might be the most cursive writing I’ve done since George Bush was president (the first one), and it only took me 10 minutes and a Google search on what cursive letters look like.

So THAT’S a capital Q in cursive? And I thought I was writing the number 2.

Like father, unlike son

Each Father’s Day we celebrate dads and all they do to provide, protect and problem-solve. At my house we have to settle for the first two out of three.

Problem solving in the dad world usually means fixing things. In my world problem solving involves taking a leaky pipe and turning it into Old Faithful. For a project as simple as replacing a toilet seat, my wife and kids track my progress not by a stopwatch, but by a Day-Timer.

Can't we all just get along?

I’m the one male branch in the Leer family tree without mechanical skills. My father, a toolmaker for General Motors Corp. by trade, could tear an engine apart and put it back together with the precision of a NASCAR pit crew. His dad – my grandfather – was an auto mechanic. My Uncle Gene was a civil engineer in Chicago; my Uncle Dale, employed at a GM components plant. I’ve got a cousin who is a retired pipefitter, a nephew who rebuilds cars, and the list goes on.

Even my stepfather, who spent most of his working life selling insurance, knows his way around a home improvement store better than me. It doesn’t hurt that he works part time at Menard’s.

And then there’s me. Somehow I didn’t inherit the family Mr. Goodwrench gene. If examined under a high-powered microscope, my DNA would form the words “Mr. Good-grief-use-a-wrench.”

My fix-it failures are legend.

There was the time I installed a new doorknob/dead bolt set on our front door. I felt proud when the job was done, until I noticed my wife struggling to open the door. Turns out, I’d put the set on upside down.

Both the doorknob and dead bolt had to be turned in opposite directions to work. I shrugged and said, “I’m sure I followed the instructions. Well, at least this way, intruders will give up trying to break in.”

I cut my losses and left everything the way it was.

On another occasion I tried to repair a faulty bathtub faucet. After removing the hot/cold water knob and another couple of small pieces, I couldn’t get the valve to move. I put a pipe wrench around the valve and tugged hard to get the part to unscrew. Again, no luck. Finally, I concentrated all 165 pounds of me into the 2-inch metal piece.

Movement! But wait – I was bending the valve.

Fixing this bike tire took four hours. It might even work.

We called a plumber. He was impressed with my effort. He hadn’t seen many do-it-yourselfers come as close as I had to breaking the valve in two and the water line behind it. Another few minutes with me at the controls and the job might have required tearing out part of the bathroom wall.

Then there was the episode with my father-in-law’s car. He’d left it with us to watch over while he and my mother-in-law went on a vacation trip. One day just before they were to return, I noticed a tire was flat. I decided to save them the trouble and put the spare on myself.

It was difficult locating the designated spot under the car where the jack was to go, but after comparing the diagram in the owner’s manual with the underside of the vehicle, I went to work. About 20 minutes later the car was again on four good tires.

When the in-laws came to pick it up their vehicle I told my father-in-law about changing the flat. He looked down, then looked at me.

“Where did you put the jack?” he asked. “Right there,” I said, pointing to the spot.

“Are you sure that was the right place?” he said. “Look what happened.”

There, small but still visible to the naked eye, was a crease in the sheet metal just below a door. I’d missed the designated jack spot by a few inches.

I could recount other repairs that went awry, from breaking a light socket in our living room ceiling fan changing a bulb, to numerous unsuccessful attempts to stop rain water from getting into the attic, to clumsy lawnmower maintenance, to disassembling most of a cabinet because I missed an important step in the assembly instructions. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Maybe one day mechanical things will start making sense to me. Maybe tools and I will become friends rather than rivals. Maybe it will start with the door frame on our master bedroom that needs to be replaced.

Maybe – just maybe – it will be repaired by next Father’s Day. I’ve already marked it on the Day-Timer.

Letter to my mother

Dear Mom:

Tomorrow I’ll make the trip to Anderson to celebrate Mother’s Day with you. I’ll come bearing a card and an inexpensive gift, and, as you always do, you’ll receive them as if they were purchased at the most exclusive shop in Beverly Hills. What I’ll have a more difficult time giving you is a proper expression of what you mean to me. I’ve never been good at conveying those kinds of feelings verbally, so I’m doing it in this letter instead.

My mother, Betty Leer Engle

For 51 years your influence, example, support and love have carried me. I would be hard-pressed to name another person who has had a greater impact on my life, although you would be quick to redirect the credit to others with more education and longer resumes.

Yours has been a life devoted to giving. Time after time I’ve watched you deny yourself to meet the needs of someone else -- acts of kindness done with no fanfare and often met with little or no gratitude. I’m ashamed to say I’ve been one of those benefactors who sometimes took your generosity for granted. On those occasions it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate what you did, mom. My attention was focused on something else or, most likely, I was embarrassed by your loving deed. I’ve always felt a sense of inadequacy in your presence. How could I -- or anyone else -- ever measure up to your compassion and care?

The evidence is overwhelming. You raised five children, a stepson and two grandkids. To help put us through a private Christian school you first drove a school van then, when dad died, you went to work at a local automotive components plant. Somehow you kept the household operating efficiently, made sure we got to ball games and church youth activities, and always had a hot meal on the table at dinner. I still don’t know how you pulled it off.

When I headed to college you were right there with me. Although I earned money and received a couple of small scholarships to help pay for tuition and housing, it was really your financial support that pushed me across the finish line. There probably was not a prouder parent at that 1986 Liberty University commencement than you, and certainly none that had worked harder and overcome such incredible obstacles to put a child through school. The Liberty degree bears my name, but it really belongs to you.

You’ve accomplished so much despite having to overcome incredible hardships. Few outside our immediate family know what you’ve been through. Often I’ve asked God why He would allow so much pain and suffering to be heaped on one of His children, especially one who has never complained, never asked why and never stopped believing in His goodness.

There was the poor upbringing in Temple, Texas, and the humiliation of having to wear hand-me-down clothes and drop out of the high school band because you couldn’t afford the rental fees for your clarinet. There was the first marriage that ended almost as quickly as it started when the older man who made you his wife left you and never returned. There was the stomach cancer that claimed your second husband -- my father -- on Valentine’s Day 1976, just four months after the diagnosis. There was that awful news on Labor Day weekend 1992 that my younger sister Pam had been brutally stabbed to death by her estranged husband. And then one final kick in the teeth when Pam’s killer’s attorney worked out a plea bargain for him to serve a reduced prison sentence on a manslaughter charge.

Through experiences that would have destroyed most people and left them bitter and disillusioned, you remained a pillar of strength, steadfast in your faith. I remember watching you stand for hours beside the caskets of my dad and sister, greeting every last visitor who came to pay respects. I don’t know if I could have summoned the courage to do the same.

And yet, even in the darkest of days, you exhibited joy and thankfulness. You refused to feel sorry for yourself, when by anyone’s accounting you had ever reason to do so. Would that I had just one-tenth of your optimism.

Mom's name on a donor's plaque at Liberty University

Even today, with the kids leaving the nest and having retired from the factory, you continue to reach out to help others. You work part time as a caregiver for an elderly woman. The pay doesn’t come close to reflecting the time you spend cleaning her house, preparing her meals and serving as her listening board. But you really don’t do it for the money, do you? You do it because of who you are: a sweet, humble woman who thinks about others far more than she thinks about herself.

I don’t know how many more Mother’s Days I’ll have to spend with you. You’re getting up there in years and I can see that age is starting to take its toll. But if we had a hundred more Mother’s Days together they wouldn’t be enough for me to tell you how blessed I’ve been to call you mom.

So please accept the card and gift, and these simple words: I love you. Thanks for giving me life and teaching me how to live it.

I owe you more than I can ever repay.

With much affection,

Your son Steve

Let's vote on it…someone, anyone?

When I want a nice, quiet spot to be alone with my thoughts, I find a primary election voting place. It never disappoints.

Yesterday was the municipal primary election in my city. Apparently no one in my community knew about it, because when I showed up to cast my ballot there was just me. Well, and those two people over the age of 70 who got off at the wrong bus stop and decided to wander into the building marked “VOTE HERE.”

That’s fine by me. Voting is a civic responsibility that I’ve always taken very seriously, even if no one else does. Part of it has to do with my strong belief in the right of the people to choose their government leaders. A bigger part of it is the fact that I get to spend a few minutes touching buttons on a computer much cooler than the one I own.

It would have been dynamite had these guys voted, too

The polls were less than an hour from closing when I headed to the voting venue nearest my house. When I arrived at Outpost Catering I found four cars in the parking lot. Had I inspected them closely I’m sure I would have found three of them packed with cake, nuts and mints, and preparing to depart for a wedding reception. I didn’t bother, although I could have used a mint to freshen my breath for the three souls I found inside the vast banquet hall -- one of whom looked like the janitor, and needed the mint more than me.

Once inside I was met by a poll worker who asked for a picture ID. I handed him my driver’s license and nearly my Visa card, which, fortunately, became unstuck from the license and landed on the table, or I might have been accused of buying votes. After meticulously examining my license -- maybe he was looking to see if I was an organ donor (I am, except for my large intestine) -- he pointed me to a man distributing the voting cards. When I stepped up to receive my card the man smiled, entered some information into a machine and gave me a card with a computer chip that was probably already programmed to re-elect Barack Obama.

I took the card and made the long walk to the other end of the room, where five lonely voting machines were lined up side by side. The silence was so loud you could almost hear the electric current running through the machines. It sounded something like “Pick me! Pick me!”

I chose a machine in the middle, hoping two other voters would come in, use the machines on either side of me and commence to copying the answers off my screen. No such luck.

Undeterred, I slid the voting card into the appropriate slot in the machine. The screen came to life and voting directions appeared in digital luminescence.

For a moment I considered how far voting technology had come in my lifetime, and how the public had embraced each improvement:

THE PUBLIC, circa 1980: We don’t trust paper ballots, because voting intentions can be misconstrued. We need computer voting machines.

THE PUBLIC, circa 2000: We don’t trust computer voting, because there’s no paper trail. Give us paper ballots.

THE PUBLIC, circa 2010: We love voting by cell phone. For “American Idol.”

At last the screen with the ballot came up. I could choose between two candidates for mayor. They were, as follows:

1. You don’t know him, but he’s for jobs and children; and

2. You don’t know him, but he’s for jobs and children.

My selection made -- the quarter came up “heads” -- it was time to pick three candidates for city council at-large seats from a slate of contenders. For this important decision I relied on my proven method for choosing candidates: a couple of choruses of “Eenie-meenie-miny-mo.”

Voting machines lead very lonely lives

After what seemed like 5.6 seconds, I was done. The voting card popped out of the machine and a cartoon President Obama thanked me for giving him four more years to spend my great-grandchildren’s money. Just kidding about that last part. It was actually Joe Biden.

I returned the voting card to the poll worker, who I could swear was staring at that area of my body where the large intestine is located, and made my way to the door.

A feeling of patriotism swept over me. I’d participated in the great American tradition of democracy. Later that night I participated in another great American tradition:

Waiting to hear that my candidates lost.

See Steve run, and run, and run

See Steve.

See Steve run.

See Steve run down the street.

Steve is running a long way down the street.

Steve is doing this to stay in shape.

He is not doing it for fun.

Running is not fun to Steve.

Getting old and fat isn’t fun to Steve, either.

So Steve runs.

Run, Steve, run!

Steve runs onto a sidewalk.

The sidewalk is getting old like Steve.

The sidewalk is not in shape like Steve.

It has cracks and holes.

It has puddles of water.

It almost has one of Steve’s ankles.

Steve is not happy with the sidewalk.

Steve wishes the city would fix the sidewalk.

Steve isn’t getting his hopes up.

Why doesn’t Steve get his hopes up?

Look at the streets.

The streets look like the surface of the moon.

Except the moon is smoother.

So Steve keeps running.

Run, Steve, run!

Steve runs into a park.

The park has a jogging trail.

Steve likes the jogging trail.

He doesn’t like it very long.

People walked dogs on the jogging trail before Steve.

The dogs did something besides walking.

The dogs left what they did in Steve’s path.

Steve detects a smell.

The smell is following Steve.

The smell IS Steve!

Steve’s shoe has dog on it.

Steve runs on.

Run, Steve, run!

Steve comes to a busy street.

The street has a pedestrian light.

The light tells Steve to wait.

Now the light tells Steve he can go.

Steve crosses the street.

A car wants to cross the street, too.

The light didn’t tell the car it could cross the street.

Steve stops.

He stops quickly.

The car doesn’t stop.

The car goes by Steve.

Steve is close to the car.

He is so close to the car he can see the driver.

The driver does not look happy.

The driver thinks Steve did something wrong.

The driver says something to Steve.

The driver invites Steve to go someplace.

That place is very hot.

Steve would rather keep running.

Run, Steve, run!

Steve runs home.

Steve is sweating.

Steve is tired.

Steve’s shoe smells.

Steve almost twisted his ankle.

Steve almost became a hood ornament.

Steve was told to go to a hot place.

Steve thinks about running.

He thinks getting old and fat might be better than running.

Then Steve sees his wife.

His wife likes to exercise.

His wife is in good shape.

Why does Steve’s wife have to be in such good shape?

What can Steve do?

Steve runs.

Run, Steve, run!