"If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot that goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!" From Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

Snow is falling outside my window as I write this. Thanksgiving is well behind us, and at our house preparations for Christmas are well underway. I've brought my Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra CDs out of exile, tubs of decorations have been hauled down from the attic, and my VISA card is getting its annual workout. Christmastime is a big season for almost everyone. It's big for givers, it's big for receivers, and it's big for retailers. Unfortunately, it's also a big season for Hysterical Hacks.

Early in my blog I introduced this sad group of people who, for reasons real or imagined, spend their lives pointing out the dark cloud in every silver lining. Like bargain hunters at a post-Thanksgiving sale, Hysterical Hacks fairly swarm at this festive time of year. They're busy writing letters to editors and making the rounds of the morning talk shows, decking halls with black crepe and bringing ill tidings of no joy which shall be to all people who don't see things their way.

Here are some samples of this year's dreck:

"Running all those Christmas lights contributes to global warming!" 

"Santa Claus is too fat!"  

"'Ho-Ho-Ho' sounds like a swear word!"

"You can't say 'Merry Christmas!' It offends me!"

"You didn't say 'Merry Christmas!' Now I'm offended!"

One must wonder at the earnestness and tenacity of these charmless folk. Maybe the cold weather brings out the killjoy in them. Or perhaps they're cursed with Grinch-like hearts, three sizes too small.

I have to wonder how my Christmas lights put the world at peril. Do two strings of tiny incandescent bulbs really have any significant impact on my carbon footprint? I know there are people who switch their lights on at the end of the high-school football season, and some peoples' yards are visible from space. But what's the real per-household impact of outdoor Christmas lighting that runs for four weeks out of the year? I suppose there's also a question of whether cutting down a live tree is as environmentally damaging as making an artificial tree from petroleum products. Let's save that for next year.

There's no denying that Santa is on the paunchy side, but who appointed him a role model for physical fitness? Can't a fat man be cheerful and giving? Isn't this discrimination against the portly? (Hacks hate it when you measure them with their own stick! I should get told off shortly.) Scrooge, on the other hand, is described as lean and flinty-faced, which makes him the perfect poster boy for the Hack crowd.

I've heard that Australian Santas are laughing with "Ha-ha-ha" instead of "Ho-ho-ho" because the latter phrase may be construed as a slight against women. If that's true then I need to ask: What kind of moron can't tell an outburst of jollyness from the lyrics of a rap song? While we're lowering the bar, maybe we should rename all those big concrete things that hold back rivers. "Honey, for vacation let's visit the Grand Canyon and Hoover Darn." As long as we're at it, let's give the Jolly Green Giant a good scolding, too!

The last two seem to go hand-in-hand, because someone takes offense in both cases. I wonder if it's purely a Hack trait or if some members of the general population go out of their way to be offended. If someone wishes a reasonable person good wishes for a holiday which that person doesn't celebrate, how would that reasonable person respond? "Gee, I don't really celebrate that day, but thank you for the kind thought." Perhaps the real problem isn't offensiveness of the part of the well-wisher as it is a lack of graciousness on the part of the receiver.

Let's restore Christmas as a season of giving. How about if we give each other a little space? I promise not to shove a manger down your throat if you wish me "Happy Holidays." Will you promise not to garrote me with tinsel if I wish you "Merry Christmas?" I promise to run my lights only after dark and I'll shut them off on my way to bed.

Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends, and to friends who celebrate the day for purely secular reasons. To my friends who celebrate other things at this time of year, Season's Greetings.  And to all the Hysterical Hacks out there in the blogosphere (and you know who you are), I have a Season's Greeting especially for you: "Bah! Humbug!!"

The whole thing started at our reunion way back in January. Bob, Mike, Dale and I, along with our wives and sweethearts, got together to re-hash old times in our high-school rock-and-roll band Batwipe and the Dead Fish. Oh, we did the obligatory catching up, finding out who worked where and how many kids we all had and what they were up to. However, the evening's main event was the reliving some of the crazy (and quite possibly illegal) fun stunts we pulled off back in the day.

A lot of our walks down memory lane had to be kept short, as our knees and wind aren't what they used to be. Several of them centered around various gigs we'd played in the band's early days. Someone recalled an afternoon matinee performance we did for the ladies at the local Methodist church. I think my mom arranged that one, and now it makes sense that we were excommunicated. To say that the band was untalented doesn't begin to cover our ineptitude and ignorance of little things like volume control. Mike shouted lyrics into an overdriven microphone. We not only didn't play in the same key, we weren't even on the same key ring!

Dynamics and tuning aside, we all believed in our little hearts that we were destined to become The Next Big Thing of 1973. By the end of '74, though, reality had crept in and we all moved on to other things. Other bands, whose members obviously never heard us, took on various Batwipes. Occasionally we played together in twos and threes, and even got together to jam once about 1978. For the most part, Batwipe and the Dead Fish was history...until dessert that night at Applebee's.

I think it was Dale who said that it would be fun to play together one more time. And we all agreed that it would be nice, in the same way that I think it would be nice if I could fly. But then Bob mentioned that he often played down at the Vets' Facility with his bluegrass band and he could get us in there. I felt my jaw go slightly slack as the possibility of getting the band back together hit me. I looked across the table at Mike. "Sure, I'll do it," he said. "It would be fun." We said our goodnights just ahead of the manager's coming to throw us out of the restaurant, and went back home to our grown-up lives. But the seed was sown. Over the next couple of weeks we settled on Sunday, February 25th as the date of our reunion concert.

We met again over breakfast at a local restaurant on a Saturday morning in early February to plan the event. This time only the four of us showed up. That was probably a good thing; at one time all four couples could have fit in one booth but owing to the ravages of time and greasy food, or possibly restaurant owners stinting on booth sizes, only four could fit. We wrote up a list of about 25 songs that we all knew, or at least we all played at one time. Bob, Mike and Dale threw in some country songs from some of their post-Batwipe bands. I was more for staying with the original band's format but no one else wanted to play Alice Cooper anymore. Go figure. By the time we finished breakfast we were on our mark; now we had to get set.

The first hint that maybe this reunion wasn't such a wonderful idea came when Dale unearthed his bass. After his dad died, Dale pretty much forsaked music and followed his heart into revamping and landscaping his back yard. In 13 years he'd built three koi ponds, a gazebo, a fountain and several waterfalls. He may have done all that to get out of cutting his lawn, but I digress. The bass and its amp came out of storage and Dale sat down to play. But he jumped right back up when the head started smoking! Years of disuse had caused massive internal corrosion and deterioration to the point that it couldn't stand the sudden plunge back into service. (Please note that I'm referring to the electronic head of Dale's amplifier, not his personal head.) A local musical-equipment repair shop estimated the cost to fix the head would be more than Batwipe and the Dead Fish ever brought in, by about a factor of three. We all wondered whether Dale's amp's self-destruction was an isolated incident or a warning. Perhaps the Muses were trying to tell us something. And yet we persisted. Bob lent Dale a spare amp, and Dale practiced on.

Weather forecasts for the weekend of the 25th grew increasingly dire as the week passed. Each day brought warnings of heavy snows and high winds. Throughout the week we maintained the machismo that led us to do some very foolhardy things as teenagers. "Let 'er come!" we cajoled each other. "It'll take more than a few snowflakes to stop the Batwipes!" We should have known not to tempt fate: Friday night ended with a blizzard and by Saturday morning lower Michigan was smothered under ten inches of solid-packed snow! Nothing moved across the whole state, except for Bob, who somehow made it to the Vets' Facility to tell them we weren't coming. We convinced ourselves that we cancelled for the sake of our fans' safety and that all of us wanted to get out there and play. But I knew, as I believe the others did, that we all have smart women in our lives who wouldn't let us act like a bunch of idiot 17-year-olds and pile ourselves up on those icy highways!

Bob rescheduled us for March 31st. I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion, as Dale had when he created some colorized copies of the backstage picture from our 1974 Teen Center triumph. (At least we thought it was triumphant, as someone outside of our immediate families applauded.) I copied Dale's rendition of the band's logo and added a bar with the words "The Reunion Tour 2007" below it. I saved the design as a t-shirt transfer and ironed it on to some economy-priced t-shirts. Not to be outdone, Dale whipped up some "backstage passes," lanyards with plastic sleeves containing the colorized picture, with our names below and an enlarged photo of our teenaged faces alongside. If we hadn't gotten any more musical talent along the way, at least we'd gotten craftier in our middle age.

The month of March hadn't passed so slowly since I was ten. Perhaps the anticipation of playing in front of a live audience caused a huge, month-long anxiety attack. I think may have been caused by the minute-by-minute countdown with which we all time-stamped our e-mails. But then April Fools' Eve was upon us, and I loaded my drums into my truck and was off. I wound my way up the driveway into the facility and, after a few wrong turns, found Bob and Dale unloading gear at the rear of the building. I parked at the curb and started lugging equipment. When they were done I backed in and we took the drums inside. Aside from our being older and thicker in the middle the event was starting just like 1973. We laughed and cajoled each other through pre-concert jitters; Mike was nowhere in sight.

Once or twice back in the day, Bob, Dale and I combined our setup work with loud wonderings about what we'd do for a lead player if Mike didn't show up. Mike always had a good excuse, usually involving his current girlfriend; and he usually had a valid reason for not arriving earlier, such as difficulty hitching a ride back from whatever event they'd been at. I went back to my truck for some drum parts and found a message on my cell phone. It was Mike: "Umm, fellows, I hope you get this. I'm driving aimlessly around the Vets' Facility looking for you."

I stuffed the drum part in my pocket, called Mike back and talked him in. The rest of us gave him the requisite needling for showing up late (again) and then we got down to business. Dale, Bob and Mike tuned up and checked our sound levels. From my little vantage point in the back I was already impressed; those guys had learned quite a bit in 33 years; maybe we'd get through this escapade after all. We settled in and put in a full half-hour's honest practice before we left to have dinner at a nearby pizza joint.

Friends and family gathered shortly after we returned, which took care of any hope we had of getting more practice. Our siblings and their mates, along with our nieces and nephews, stood at the edge of the room and we had a big reunion. Bob's dad and mine showed up. Dale placed a special tribute to his dad on the stage: The famous "Lou" guitar, his dad's pride and joy. Carolyn came and took on the job of recording us on video. Around 6:30 the facility's residents, the guests of honor, took their places in the front rows. Batwipe and the Dead Fish took its place on the stage, Bob introduced us, and the show went on!

Batwipe was and still is a cover band. We served up songs by Johnny Cash, Lee Greenwood, CCR, Buddy Holly, and the Animals. Everybody hit the key changes and breaks spot-on. Once or twice I noticed Mike stomping his foot. I thought it had gone to sleep on him until I realized he wanted us to speed up. I picked up the tempo and the guys followed along. The evening went on its way to becoming an unparalleled musical triumph for our little band. Then Bob spoiled it all by calling for Wipeout.

On our best days, back when we were skinny kids in prime condition with hours of practice together, I could whip out a fairly good rendition. In the band's waning days I was actually darn good. Sadly, years of sitting at a desk with nothing to pound but a keyboard had pretty well atrophied my Wipeout muscles. Oh, I gave it a fair shot, and we got through the first chorus with no trouble. Things flew apart as I started my first solo. Both my biceps started cramping just at as the guys stung their chord. I could hear the notes coming farther apart, but I strove on. But it was no use; I flopped like one of Dale's koi out of its pond. I had only one recourse...I dropped my sticks and laughed. I looked up at Mike and just broke up. What the heck was I thinking, trying to dive into Wipeout cold like that? Mike asked if anyone in the audience had a Viagra; I said I didn't think it would help if your arms went limp.

The guys gave me a moment to compose myself and we tried it again. I stuck to a straight 4/4 60's rock-and-roll beat until the final solo part. By then my arms had rested and were ready to kick out the jams one last time. Which they did. I finished the song to the wild(ly sympathetic) applause of the crowd. Mike, Dale and Bob then took pity on me and let me redeem myself with another drummer's favorite, CCR's Travelin' Band. Back in the day I wanted to be Doug Clifford. Just for that song, I was. We did a few more songs and then it was over. The residents had to turn in at 8:30, so we played our big finally number and ended with God Bless America.

Epilogue: Four 50-year-old men sat on a rickety stone bridge in a darkened park on the Vets' Facility grounds. It's a special place near a waterfall where, after long practices on hot sticky summer nights, the goofball teenagers of Batwipe and the Dead Fish would strip to their shorts and cool off in the falls, all the while eluding the guards who patrolled the area. It's a place of great and dear memories, and on a March night so many years later the grown Batwipe members made a new one, only this time they did it inside. No one wanted to go home. It was a Peter Pan moment and we wanted to stay in Never Land. We agreed that we'd do it again, for the fun of playing together and to honor the veterans. Bob still plays there on a regular basis, and I've joined him once or twice. So far, though, Batwipe hasn't returned. Responsibilites, schedules and conflicts have trumped our wishes and desire. And I wonder, with a bit of fear: Could reality come around and kill the band a second time? I don't want to wait another 33 years for a reunion; it was too much fun to put off that long, and I probably won't feel like hauling those drums around when I'm 84.

I've been a leader of Scouts of the both the Cub and Boy varieties for about the last third of my life. I enjoy the avocation very much. I've done quite a bit of camping, a few canoe trips, a little hiking, traveled to some fun places and seen some neat things. Along the way I've met folks whom Carolyn and I count among our dearest friends. I admit it's a lot of responsibility, leading a group of fifteen or twenty adolescent boys into the woods. That's especially true in Scouting, since they're armed with knives, axes and fire. Fortunately the boys I've led are for the most part trustworthy, loyal, helpful, and all the rest of the things that Scouts are. I and my assistants never endured a Lord Of The Flies experience, but along the trail one or two things happened that made me wonder if perhaps I shouldn't seek a less risky hobby. But as a Mr. Sorenson, one of my wise Scouter friends observed, last year's disaster campout is this year's great story.

The first memorable moment happened not long into my tenure as a Den Leader in our son's Cub Scout pack. It happened when Patrick was in second grade. Our pack participated in a project called Scouting For Food. It's a nationwide outreach of the Boy Scouts of America in which Cub packs and Scout troops collect food for local charities. That particular year our local council provided white plastic grocery bags imprinted in green with the Scouting For Food logo and instructions for would-be donors. The bags' instructions requested that they be filled with non-perishible food items and placed on the homeowners' front steps for collection on Saturday morning. On one den-meeting night, we loaded the boys down with armloads of bags and they spent the evening tying bags to the front doorknobs of every house in the neighborhood.

Saturday came and Den 4 gathered at our meeting place, the local Congregational church. Several other Cub Scouts and leaders from the pack's other dens joined us. The leaders split the neighborhood into different sections and each den collected from their section. Pat and I rode with Cubmaster Tim, his son Kevin, and a couple of my other charges. Kevin was in my den so I knew Tim and his wife fairly well. As we made our way along quiet Wyoming streets, the boys fetched bags from porches and steps with the full-on gusto that only eight-year-olds can muster. I hunkered in the back of Tim's Bronco, sorting various kinds of food into separate boxes. Soups went into one box, canned vegetables into another, and boxed goods into a third.

Our system worked well for several blocks. The boys ran from house to house like trick-or-treaters in their blue-and-gold uniforms, neckerchiefs flying behind like Superman's cape. Kevin swung one bag up to me and then he was off again. I reached in it and pulled out a box full of doorknobs!

What the...? I looked down at the bag. It was green and white but it sported the logo of a local home-improvement store! I called for Tim to stop the truck and beckoned Kevin over. I showed him the bag and asked him which house it came from. Kevin then gave me my first answer I really didn't want to hear.

"I don't know."

I stuffed the doorknobs back in their bag and disembarked. Kevin and I retraced his steps until we came to the house where he thought he'd picked them up. I knocked on the door. No one answered. I left the bag on the porch and we hurried back to our duties, hoping that we wouldn't be picked up for doorknob-napping! Maybe I should have just put an ad in the paper and let the owner contact me.

Let us fast-forward a few years to around the turn of the century. I was then the Scoutmaster of Troop 102, and the troop was heading to a fall camporee. We drove our sponsoring church's old, well-used 12-passenger Ford van. (I don't want to say anything against that poor old van...I might be old and slow someday too!) It was the first campout I led as Scoutmaster that I didn't have my predecessor with me in case anything went haywire. The trip started out with a wrong turn. I arrived at the designated campground, but I turned one driveway too early and had to turn the church van around. That would not have been a difficult undertaking under normal circumstances. Unfortunately the two-track road we were on dead-ended in the campground and turning around involved backing down a boat launch. That wouldn't have been any harder than backing down a steep driveway, except that I had the troop's gear trailer hitched to the back of the van. Even that wouldn't have been completely unnerving, but I had nine agitated boys watching my every move. Our vehicle was just short enough that I made the turnaround with only a couple of close calls; everybody slept dry that night.

Saturday's activities erased the Scouts' memories of jockeying around in the boat launch. Before long evening approached and dinnertime advanced on us. I sent two fairly-new boys, whose names were Ryan and Tommy, to fetch water for cooking. They picked up the blue two-gallon water jugs and headed off. The other boys unpacked food and set up the stoves. The evening had turned cool and damp. Ryan and Tommy returned presently, carrying the jugs between them on long sticks they'd found in the woods. The boys proudly delivered their cargo and announced that they'd found two water outlets from which they'd filled up.

As I picked up a jug to fill a pot that would soon hold spaghetti, Ryan looked up at me and innocently said the second thing that I really didn't want to hear:

"Mr. C, what does 'non-potable' mean?"

Contrary to the way this story's been embellished at various scout-leader gatherings and around many campfires, I did not lose it. I merely told Ryan that it was special water for putting out campfires. I also announced that he and Tommy would get special training in sanitizing water jugs at the next Scout meeting.

There are six words that I never want to hear in combination ever again. I heard them one July in the wee hours of the morning at a Scout camp in northern Michigan. Going to summer camp is the pinnacle of the year for everyone involved in Boy Scouts. The boys spend their days earning merit badges, swimming and diving in the lake, shooting .22s on the rifle range, hiking through the woods, making crafts and learning woodlore. Scoutmasters do all of the above except for earning merit badges; sometimes we end up teaching them. Our greatest reward for the week is seeing the boys grow as self-sufficient young men and watching them revel in their accomplishments. The second-greatest reward is a whole week away from work!

It takes a little while to adjust to camp life. At home I'd cuddle up next to my wife in our own comfy bed. At camp I share my tent with a buddy and sleep alone on a squeaky iron cot. It takes a night or two to get used to the new environment, and Tuesday night is usually a Scoutmaster's first night of really good sleep. Such was my case. By Tuesday night I had trained myself to lie still in the cot and relax so that the iron springs didn't squeak at all. I was deep asleep, just reveling in my repose when I heard the sound of footsteps outside my tent. They weren't the footsteps of forest creatures; they were definitely human, and they belonged to a young Scout named Paul. It was Paul who brought me the six words I never want to hear together ever again:

"Mr. C?" Paul spoke soft and low.

"Yeah?" I groaned, trying to shake the cobwebs loose.

"There's a...skunk in our tent!"

Paul said it like he couldn't quite believe it either. Earlier in the week we found a skunk resting in an unused tent, and when he realized that we weren't going to feed him he went on his way. But now, possibly smelling some illicit snacks stashed in someone's gear, he'd returned. I almost told Paul that if the skunk could take it in their tent he could too, and to go back to bed. By that time my tentmate Steve had awakened, and we decided we'd better look at the situation.

Steve and I grabbed our flashlights and followed Paul back to his tent. Sure enough, there was the skunk, a full-sized one, laying under Paul's bunk like a big fuzzy slipper. On our arrival at camp our guide told us that if any skunks came into our campsite we could convince them to leave by shining a flashlight on them. Steve and I stood at opposite ends of the tent and shined the skunk. The skunk, who had missed the meeting, didn't know his part. He held his ground, his beady milky eye staring vacantly at nothing.

There is nothing written at all in the Scoutmaster Handbook about evicting skunks. We owned this problem ourselves. Steve and I consulted as Paul and his tentmates hunkered on their bunks and stared at the intruder. We decided that perhaps the skunk didn't know how to get out, and maybe if I lifted the side of the tent he'd reorient himself and wander away. I went to the side of the tent and, sticking my fingers well past the skunk's last known position, I slowly lifted the canvas. From inside I heard four unusually high-pitched voices hiss "Back off! Back off!"

I dropped the tent and looked in the door. Steve told me that the skunk didn't like the motion of the tent-raising and threatened to blow his cool. He was going to blow something anyway, and Steve and the three boys found themselves looking at the pink of his...well, suffice to say they stared down the barrel of a loaded skunk!

Steve and I went back to shining our flashlights at him until the skunk, who only wanted peace and quiet, ducked under the tent and disappeared...into the Cooper brothers' tent! The Cooper boys were pretty calm as a rule, to the point where occasionally I'd hold a mirror under the younger one's nose to make sure he was still with us. It was a trait that served them well as their leaders flung their tent open at 3 AM and whispered, "Don't move! There's a skunk in your tent!"

The skunk finally tired of the game. He lit out of the Coopers' tent and made an end run around Steve...and then made a beeline for our tent! By that time I'd had enough of the skunk, tents, camping, and everything else connected with them! I threw my flashlight at the interloper and yelled "Scram!" He waddled off into the woods; on our last day at camp he gave us a parting shot. But the experience didn't dissuade the boys from Scouting. Paul, his tentmates, and the Cooper boys all made Eagle Scout.

Obviously, a Scout leader's job is not for the faint of heart. It has its frustrations, and a time or two I declared that anybody who wanted the job could have it that night. But the rewards far outweigh the aggravations. I've seen the sunrise from a campsite on a high bluff and watched as the woods across the river turned bright amber. I've heard the loon's call echoing across a lake after sunset and seen shooting stars fly across the sky above our campsite. I got to camp out on a submarine. Most importantly, I've had the chance to do some good for the boys and young men in my charge. Nothing will ever replace the joy I've seen on a boy's face as I've crunched down the burnt offering that was his first try at cooking breakfast over a campfire. And I've had the privilege of pinning a red, white and blue medal on a brand-new Eagle Scout. I had some trouble getting it pinned, and his mom thought the boy's shirt was falling apart. But his shirt was fine; it was his Scoutmaster that was coming apart.

Let me just say it straight out: I'm a dog person. Mom said that from early on there wasn't a dog that I couldn't make friends with. (Sometimes she'd end sentences with prepositions, but she was still a good person.) I've owned five good dogs in my lifetime and happily tended to several others. All our dog-owning friends know that if they faced a family disaster at least Tippy or Chloe or Barney or Sam would have someone who'd not only look after them but would spoil them rotten with chew toys, doggie treats and long, long tummy skritches.

So why do we have two cats? We were invaded, that's why!

It began ever so innocently. My wife found a tiny black and white kitten mewing plaintively in the garage one weekend afternoon. Apparently it got separated from its mother and wandered away, eventually stopping to rest under the workbench. Carolyn brought it in the kitchen. "Isn't it cute?" she practically drawled as she stroked its slick fur, completely under the spell of the kitty's cuteness.

Benji, the dog we had then, was not taken in. "Daddy!" his little shoe-button eyes seemed to shout, "you're not going to let that thing in our house?" I assured him that it was only here until we could make other arrangements, like putting the kitten on the porch and letting its mother find it. Ben shook his head and went off, grumbling, to lay on the couch.

Things didn't go to plan, much to Ben's continual dismay. I knew we were in trouble when Carolyn wanted to name the kitten. "How about Scaredy?" I said. "It was meowing its head off outside. I think it's a scaredy cat." Carolyn thought it was a horrible name but acquiesced. Before long our house had all the life-support equipment that cats require: some balls with bells in them and a stinky litter box. Scaredy had a home, Carolyn had a kitten, and Ben and I learned to deal with it. After a claw or two to the snoot Ben even shared his water dish. Begrudgingly.

About a year later Scaredy was a full-grown cat. One evening in early fall she didn't return to the house after her daily roam around the yard. When she stayed absent for several days I thought our cat-owning phase had passed like our stint in Amway. Each time I came in from outside Carolyn asked me if I'd seen Scaredy. And each time I gave the same answer...a big, faked-sad "No."

On a Saturday afternoon not long after, I made a trip to the chicken coop to retrieve some garden tools. When I pushed the door open I heard a familiar squeaking noise coming from the very back corner. I worked my way to the rear, moving old bicycles, grimy window sashes and rusted metal buckets as I went. Scaredy lay nested in the corner, curled up around her new family. Three tiny kittens, their eyes still unopened, nursed at Scaredy's side. One was black and white like her mother and sported white mittens on her front paws. The second was a calico and the third one was gray with a white spot on the tip of her tail. The rest of the family gathered around to gaze and coo at the new brood. Benji came in, sniffed, and stalked off disgusted, perhaps sensing what this new beguilement would cost his people.

The invasion began in earnest as autumn turned to winter. One evening Scaredy showed up at the basement door with her family in tow. Fearing that they'd freeze over the winter we let them stay downstairs and I only saw them when I went down to change the furnace filter. I hardly knew they were there until one morning at about 2:30 Scrappy (the Calico) and Mittens (the black-and-white) had a cat-fight on the back steps. The awful screeching and growling jolted me out of a sound sleep. With murder in my heart I stormed to the cellar door and shoved it open. The combatants, who joined their battle at the top of the steps, got knocked off the stoop. They ran back into the basement, leaving no evidence of their fight but a big puddle. Not long afterward I evicted the whole family. They moved back into the chicken coop. Had I known what was in store I would have left them where they were.

The kittens grew to adulthood, earning their keep by holding down the mole population. They stayed in the chicken coop but paid us occasional visits. Around summertime a gray-striped tabby who looked like a fighter claimed the coop for his harem. He had a big nick out of one ear, and that feature earned him the name Big Nick. Fighting was only one of Big Nick's hobbies. I don't have to explain the other one to you. As summer turned to fall our four cats turned to nine. Mittens and Scrappy both delivered litters containing variations on a tabby-striped theme. Not long after the blessed event Big Nick hit the road. Judging from the position I found him in he hit it pretty hard. That can happen out here in the country. A lot of big farm equipment travels our road.

Our herd had reached its zenith when we scarcely dared to back the cars out of the garage for fear of running over kittens. Something had to give, and it turned out to be us. Our vet earned a couple hundred dollars spaying Scaredy, Mittens and Scrappy. Only one of Mitten's kittens remained unaltered, a one-eyed tabby we (okay, I) named Deadeye. She managed to sneeze just as she went on the operating table so the vet wouldn't anesthetize her; that sneeze resulted in three more kittens. The gray cat and several other kittens disappeared on their own, and now we're down to a manageable two cats. We kept Deadeye and one of her daughters, a jet-black kitty named Midnight. The two couldn't be more different. Deadeye is a first-order lover who craves long strokes and chin rubs. Midnight spends most of her time outdoors, occasionally coming in the house to fill up on free cat food and mooch a bite of whatever I happen to be eating.

I'm not sure whether we were irresponsible pet owners back when we had kittens popping up like dandelions. Except for the first one and the last two, most of them didn't qualify as pets. They were barn cats who had family ties to us. Whatever we were then we are definitely responsible pet owners now. Midnight got a trip to the vet for her first half-birthday. Her mom, who had trouble delivering Midnight, got spayed during an expensive Mother's Day Cesearean section. This, however, I do know: in terms of multiplication, barn cats got rabbits beat hands down. If they were a better cash crop I could have retired on them.

Not long ago I volunteered to help out with the Wednesday-night boys' Bible club at church. My job was a simple one. The club's director asked me to bring a brief lesson for the gathering time at the end of the night. As a veteran leader of Wednesday-night Bible clubs this should have been a cake walk. And maybe if I'd baked a cake I would have been all right.

The lesson I planned would be simple but memorable. The club's members are boys who are in the third through sixth grades. I'd make a caramel apple for one boy in each grade, plus one for a leader. I planned to conceal the last apple until the end, substituting a caramel-dipped onion for the fifth apple. Now, don't write me angry comments and don't call Protective Services. I planned to reveal my little subterfuge before anybody took a bite. The boys' suspicious looks, sniffs, scratches and tentative tastes would lead into my talk about how sometimes things that look good really aren't and it's wise to know how to tell the difference. Then I'd retrieve the counterfeit and give its holder the real apple. Believe me, I don't go around pulling mean tricks on small children. Nor do I look forward to Thursday-morning phone calls from angry mothers and distraught youth pastors. No children would be harmed. They might be a little grossed-out, but boys love that sort of action.

On Tuesday I stopped at the store and bought five Golden Delicious apples, a white onion of about the same size, some Kraft caramels and a bottle of caramel ice-cream topping. I figured that the topping would speed the coating process up since it was already liquid. The caramels were for the boys who didn't get apples; they could at least take home a pocketful of caramels. After supper I set to work. I poured the topping into the top half of a double-boiler and filled the bottom half with water. I put the double-boiler on the stove and turned to wash the apples before I stuck the sticks in them. By the time I had the last apple washed, rinsed and stuck I noticed that the empty topping bottle was almost clean inside save for a gooey little ring at the bottom. I stepped over to the stove and picked up a spoon, dipping it in the warm caramel. The stuff ran off like water. I took the double-boiler off the cooktop to let the caramel cool. Just then I realized, too late, that caramel topping was the wrong ingredient for coating apples. Since the topping ran off the bottle's sides at room temperature, clearly it was designed to congeal on ice cream!

I unwrapped one bag's worth of Kraft caramels and threw them in the topping, stirring vigorously to speed up the melting process. By the time I had all 50 in the pot (45 if you count the ones I sampled) the goo started to resemble caramel that belonged on an apple. I dipped the first apple in, rolled it around a bit and stuck it on some pre-greased waxed paper. For a moment the caramel appeared to be holding; perhaps all was not lost. Then, like a glacier suffering an inconvenient truth, the coating slowly oozed down the apple.

Still hoping for a satisfactory outcome, I let the coating cool a bit longer before I dipped the other apples. By the time I was done I had five partly-glazed apples surrounded by a puddle of melted caramel glop, a sticky brown trail across the stove to the countertop, and an ego as flat as an apple stick. I took a deep breath, got out some more waxed paper, buttered it up, and moved the apples onto it. Then I scraped the residue back in the pan and prepared to give the apples a second coat. As I picked up the double-boiler I looked down at the cooktop. My heart sank; I'd dropped the butter tub lid right in the center of the hot burner and melted it on the cooktop! I stared disbelieving at this new glob of sticky gunk. I could see the product logo printed on the other side. Carefully I lifted the outer ring, hoping that the thing was just really soft. Nope, it was goo; all I picked up was the ring.

Panic erased my frustration. I couldn't let Carolyn see what I'd done. That stove is her pride and joy, the crown jewel of her kitchen. Damaging her cooktop would be the same, to her, as leaving a full-length key scratch down the side of my truck. Quickly I fell back on a lesson I'd learned the hard way over 27 years of marriage. If you make a mistake, the best thing to do is...say it with me, married men...GET RID OF THE EVIDENCE!! I grabbed a metal spatula out of the kitchen drawer and quickly but very, very carefully scraped up and disposed of almost all the molten plastic, which extruded wispy little strings as I carried it to the trash. All that remained was some of the blue printing, including that infernal logo. I turned off the burner and moved the double-boiler to the other side of the cooktop.

Several tries later I finally got enough caramel to stick to the apples so that they didn't look completely anemic. Then I turned my attention to the onion. I peeled off the papery skin, trimmed off the ends and stuck a stick in it. By then I'd calmed down enough to remember to shove the stick in more deeply so I'd know the onion by its short handle. Not wishing to taint the apples, I dipped the onion last and stored it in a separate cooler. Then I made another unwelcome discovery: Onions hold even less caramel than apples do. A big shiny white spot glimmered through my candy camouflage. I tried a second dip; that only revealed more onion. I tried pouring semi-solid caramel over it. All I got for my effort was a large glob on the plate just below the bald spot. In one desperate final attempt I threw the onion in the cooler while the caramel was still at high tide, hoping the cold would slow the sliding to the point that I could at least get it through my talk. I scraped the last few gobs of caramel into the trash, cleaned up the kitchen, scrubbed the last of the plastic off the cooktop, and dropped into bed.

The next morning I peeked in the cooler. A stark white onion diffidently greeted me, as round and pale as a full moon. Its caramel coat lay in ruined heaps on the plate underneath it. I snapped the plate up off the shelf and with one graceful motion flung the caramel onion into the trash bin. Then I got out my old leader books and went to work designing Plan B.

As I half-heartedly flipped through the section on Games and Stunts I pondered the previous night's sticky ordeal. Did the devil cleverly deceive me into buying stuff that wouldn't work, thereby ruining what would have been a great lesson? Did God know that some impatient boy would bite the onion without waiting for instructions? Did He allow the project to fail to spare the kid and me unnecessary grief? I don't know. I wonder if perhaps the apples were the source of the trouble. After all, man's fall from grace began with an apple. Maybe that fruit just isn't His favorite!