By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

By now, everybody knows almonds and pistachios are good for you, and that you should eat some every day.

The problem I have is that eating them is no small undertaking. One has to watch one’s consumption, or one will start to fill out in places where one doesn’t want to. You’ve heard of a double chin? Well, too many almonds or pistachios will give you a double tummy.

No offense to our many almond growers, but it’s too easy to find almonds in highly consumable forms. One can buy almonds that have been smoked or made to taste like candy. They have been unburdened from their shells. You can eat them by the handful without having to do much more than chew and lick your lips. The average recommended dose of shelled almonds is about one-fourth of a cup. One can inhale that much in about 30 seconds.

But they make one want to eat more, and soon one is signing up for waddle-a-thons instead of jog-a-thons. One finds oneself joining a gym, although one doesn’t go there very much.

Of course, one can buy almonds in the shell, and they will give one a workout just getting to them. Nature has deemed that almonds are hard to get to. Which would be all right, but almond shells by their nature tend to get all over everything within a radius of 20 feet. If one is at a computer, one has to keep blowing everything off with canned air.

Pistachios are a little better. Nature has arranged it so they arrive partly open. One’s fingers get raw, however, and the shell liners fly all over. It’s eat a nut, grab for the canned air. Hire a small boy to pick up after you.

It’s such a trial to stay healthy.

All comments are edited for length and content. Due to content some comments may not be published. Please limit your calls to two minutes or less. Some weeks, due to the number of comments and space, some may not be published.

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A man who said he “was raised in Madera, called “about the Hall of Fame (dinner) for Madera High School.” He suggested, “we go back and look at some great, great hall of fame people.”

In his lengthy message he listed many athletes of Madera High “back in 1938, ’39 and early ‘40s” that had gone on to be outstanding athletes in college. The caller thought it was “a mistake to go ahead of all those (earlier) people that so deserve their day in court.” However, he did conclude by saying, “thank you for creating something that is needed and well deserved.” (Note: Future Hall of Fame inductions will continue to include former athletes of Madera.)

A man said, “the announcement of (Gov. Arnold) Schwarzenegger’s signing of a compact with the Mono Tribe was to be expected.” He went onto say that “the chief lobbyist for Station Casinos (Las Vegas) was “best man” for the governor’s chief of staff. “Got the connection?”

A woman who said she “lives out here, off (Avenue) 18 1/2, near where the new casino is going. They never came out and asked us. We don’t need it. Let them find some other place to put it. We were here first and I’m tired of people saying what a wonderful thing it is.”

Another lady said, “finally, there is some hope that money will again be coming into this county and city. They can’t build the casino fast enough. With over 1,000 jobs and payroll, let’s hope they hire a lot of local people who will spend their earnings here in Madera.”

A lady “who was driving on Riverside noticed, right by the walkway, there’s a sprinkler spraying the street.” She was concerned because of all the talk “about always saving water.” She pulled her car around to the sprinkler “and washed my car.” Afterwards she wondered, “all this water going to waste, what about the city?”

Another was “just wondering why, at the Department of Corrections, our county jail, they (the inmates) have HBO (television). How can the county afford that? Isn’t there a better use of money for the citizens of the county than providing inmates of the jail with HBO?”

A man called “about the article in the paper about the railroad police stopping the lady for stopping on the tracks and that she didn’t know it was illegal.” He asked, “lady, what do you do when you’re on the tracks and the lights start flashing and you have nowhere to go?”

Another call, a woman, “applauded the railroad police for citing the violators at the railroad crossing at Gateway (and) Cleveland. Whoever designed that intersection was a moron. Now I wish the police would come out to Parkwood. There it is 25 mph (speed limit) and where 9 out of 10 people are exceeding it.”

A woman saw “a fight at Courthouse Park on Yosemite near Gateway” and “called the police department. On the way back, I saw Zak’s security instead of the police department.” She wondered, “what we pay our (city) police department for.” (Note: Courthouse Park is a county park) She was “very concerned over who is paying for this.”

A man was “very upset” after he received his “sample ballot in the mail.” He said, “98 percent of it is printed in Mexican (Spanish). I am so d-mn sick and tired of this. Print the d-mn stuff in English and let them worry about how to read it.

“This is a bunch of garbage, and I hope you print this verbatim. I want to hear some replies.” (Note: The message was too lengthy to print in its entirety.)

A man called concerning what he thought was “the biggest waste of tax dollars that I’ve seen in a long time. The traffic signals at Stadium Road and Pecan Avenue are going out to bid again, for upgrades. Those traffic signals have never been put into full operation. They are brand new. If they are so brand new, why are they needing to be upgraded already? Why weren’t they put in right in the first place?”

A man who “just read Friday’s (May 2) letter to the editor with recollections of the writer about her family, Sheriff Barnett and Dr. Ransom,” had this follow up. “She probably knows that Dr. Ransom lived on North C Street, but I wonder if she knows where John Barnett lived during the time he was sheriff. If not, stay tuned.”

A gentleman called in regards to a newspaper (not the Tribune) printing a photo that showed “our American flag upside down. A Mexican rally has our flag upside down. They put the flag upside down and they print it.”

“Shame on you, Madera Unified School Board,” began a woman’s call, “for taking away 8th grade graduation ceremonies and replacing them with daytime, school hours, recognition events. But, more importantly, shame on us, the voters, to elect a school board with so little understanding of the students and families that they serve.”

A lady who gave her name said, “I know you can print some things more important and enlightening to put on your front page than a bunch of fools tormenting animals.”

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Thank you for your calls. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24-hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by visiting www.maderatribuneredline.com.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is urging Congress to take additional steps to help homeowners “avoid preventable foreclosures,” which, he said would be in everybody’s interest.

Bernanke is right. Some homeowners now facing foreclosure might want to keep their homes and keep paying their mortgages if they could get a bridge to help them over the rough places in which they find themselves. Perhaps a government-backed bridge loan, which could be used to catch up on mortgage payments, then paid back over a period of time which the borrower could handle, might help.

It also might make sense for some mortgage companies to lower interest rates which have reset, resulting in payments which homeowners can’t handle. These adjustable-rate mortgages were fashioned to allow some marginal buyers to purchase homes they might not otherwise have been able to afford. When the rates reset at a higher rate, the mortgage company was supposed to be paid back for low-balling the earlier payments.

It might make sense for the mortgage companies to wait longer for payback instead of winding up with a lot of properties on their hands that can’t be sold for enough to retire the mortgage. If loss is inevitable, why not let the original buyer stay in the home, and both could possibly recoup down the line?

These strategies would make sense, because the real estate market will normalize eventually. People still are being born. The population of the country is continuing to expand. The demand for housing will bring prices back up.

The tragedy is that those who choose to walk away from their mortgages will have a tough time getting another mortgage, and eventually will wind up dealing with a subprime lender, which will start the spiral over again.

A parody of the 1966 hit song “Cherish,” which was performed by The Association and written by Terry Kirkman. The parody is written by Marcy Shaffer.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The word “flummox” showed up in the newspaper again the other day, and I thought it was being used incorrectly, but apparently not. It was being used as a synonym for the word “perplexed,”
which is correct.

I had always thought a flummox was what your mother gave you when you didn’t feel very well. It usually didn’t taste all that good. “Here, take this flummox and lie down for a little while, dear,” Mom might say. “You’ll feel better before you know it.”

It turns out, though, that after all these years, I’ve been wrong. Your Mom wouldn’t have said, “here, dear, take this perplex and lie down for a while,” would she?

Flummox also means “baffle,” which is a word also applied to some of things I have purchased over the years and had to assemble. For example, if one is putting together one’s new barbecue, one may encounter the instruction, “Attach the baffle to the flummox.” Need I say more?

Another source of confusion has been the word “hautboys.” Ever since I first studied Shakespeare, and saw the stage directions “flourish, hautboys and trumpets,” I have assumed that hautboys (pronounced “hoe boys”) were young lads hired to stand around the royal court and do little chores, which might include flourishing, which is to make a bold or extravagant gesture intended to attract attention to oneself or another. Perhaps, somehow, a trumpet would be involved.

At times, I have thought it might be a good idea to bring back haut-boys, to run little errands and
so forth. Well, it will not be so.

First, hautboys aren’t boys at all, but oboes, I recently learned to my astonishment. The French, for some reason, called oboes hautboys, and it stuck. Also, a flourish is a musical fanfare.

I must say, I find all this most flummoxing.

Thanks to Bill Coate’s Madera Tribune article, I now know what Sheriff John Barnett looked like. I have heard stories about the man; but reading about him in the paper is even better. The following story about my grandfather gives a little more insight into the problems the sheriff was confronted with in the Wild West valley town of Madera, and how he rose to the occasion.

When I was a child, I was told about my grandfather, Joseph Edward Myers. He was a sheep herder. One time, when he came into Madera for supplies, a man kicked his sheep dog in the rump. Grandfather laid his rifle alongside the man’s nose, and threatened to take the mans life. His two brothers, Charlie and Steve Myers, had to quiet grandpa’s anger, and make him let the man go.

Grandfather and his brothers, Johnny, Steve, and Charlie were into music. They played in the bars and for public dances, and spent a good part of their lives tripping the light fantastic. They were known all the way from Happy Camp down to Visalia for their music.

Grandfather drove a logging train, and worked for the Sugar Pine Lumber Company. He was a happy alcoholic who loved to play his music and dance and sing.

He was over 6 foot 3, and had a red, curly beard and golden, curly hair and beautiful blue eyes. He had a craggy, chiseled nose and sharp cheekbones. He was a German Jew with a fierce temper, whose ancestry went back on his mother’s side, to a French soldier who came over to this country with Lafayette.

He was home-schooled by his father, a school teacher who caught “gold fever” and went to work in the gold mines. As a result of his home-schooling by his father, he could read and write and speak Spanish and English. And he was somewhat conversant in German. He could count and curse in German quite fluently.

Well one day when he and his brothers came into town to get supplies he and Sheriff Barnett got into a scuffle, or had words. Maybe the sheriff was trying to get grandfather to leave town; or trying to get him to part with his gun; or to go home and sleep off his liquor; or maybe Sheriff Barnett said something derogatory about grandfather ’s sheep dog.

When you said anything bad about that sheep dog or kicked it, you could get killed.

Anyway, something crazy went down because the next thing you know my grandfather chased the sheriff up the light pole and wouldn’t let him get down. Sheriff John Barnett was heard wailing into the air, “For God’s sake Ed, let me down.”

Grandpas brother came running to the sheriff’s aid and persuaded their irate brother to let the sheriff down and quit giving him a bad time. To my knowledge there was no account of Ed Myers getting arrested for that mischievous act of running the sheriff up the light post. But back then when Madera was still a pup the townspeople knew each other on a first-name basis. The people were more like a big, extended family.

Even the undertaker, Bob Jay was like a family member. My grandfather would greet him on the street and say, “All right Bob, get that gleam out of your eye, and that smile off of your face, I’m not ready for you yet.”

Everyone knew that eventually Bob Jay would get them and Jay’s Mortuary got my grandfather around Christmas of 1942.

Doc Ransom was a frugal man who studied hard and pinched pennies during the time he was studying and going to school and building up his practice. He wasn’t ashamed to wear patched clothing on his journey to success. Grandfather and others used to tease him and call him patches. He would always tell them, “That’s all right, you can call me patches now; but one day you will be coming around to have old patches patch you up.”

Doctor Ransom’s words came to pass. He became our family doctor.

Anyce Ruth Malone Hutchison,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

It’s official now. Senate leader Don Perata has told The Associated Press that he is running the recall election against Sen. Jeff Denham, a Merced Republican who represents much of Madera County, so that the Legislature can raise taxes.

Perata is backing former Democratic Assemblyman Simon Salinas against Denham. Apparently Salinas has agreed to raise taxes.

The tax hike would be allegedly aimed at closing the state’s looming budget deficit, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says is approaching $20 billion, a shortfall caused largely by a slowdown in real estate transactions and the taxes generated by them, but also by over-budgeting last year, which Denham opposed.

Denham has another idea, one which he has pursued since he was elected. He believes the state should sell the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of surplus property it is sitting on, and from which it receives little, in his opinion.

Denham isn’t alone in this thinking. The governor’s Performance Review Commission also reached somewhat similar conclusions. But it probably will lead nowhere.

Here’s a fact: Californians are not under-taxed. California jobholders and the self-employed pay well above the average in taxes per person when compared to job holders and the self-employed in other states. Some claim we are the fourth-highest payers in that category.

On a total per capita taxation comparison, however, we are about average among other states, which means a lot of people in California are paying little or no taxes at all.

That is the Legislature’s fault. But in general, the Legislature won’t fix the problem. Instead, it raises taxes in such a way that the paychecks the wage-earners take home are smaller because deductions are larger.

The Legislature often has no historical perspective. At times, the state has run more efficiently. Why not learn something from that?

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BELOW — “California Dreaming” performed by a boy named Sungha

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

Word just in from New Zealand is that scientists there have been thawing out the biggest squid ever caught, and have found that it has the biggest eye anybody has ever seen, about 11 inches across, with a lens the size of an orange. The collossal squid, as it is known, is about 26 feet long. It can grow to 46 feet, unless it gets caught.

A photo of the squid shows it to resemble a 10-foot plate of spaghetti without the sauce. It was caught by accident by a fishing boat, the crew of which took one look at it and put it in the on-board freezer.

What is it with scientists and cephalopods? Just last month, we had a scientist being written up in the news for getting up close and personal to the love lives of octopuses, and now we have scientists poking around in the earthly remains of a collosal squid.

Imagine how the squid’s husband (she was pregnant) must feel. Now he is probably going into squid singles bars, looking for another wife, but probably running into scientists who are snooping around at collosal squid mating behavior. Imagine the remaining members of her collosal squid bridge club who had to look for another fourth.

The lustful octopuses and the collosal squids are probably hoping the scientists go back to their test tubes soon so that they, the cephalopods, can carry on hunting other animals and romancing each other, which is about all they do.

If people ever decide to establish colonies on the sea floor, squids probably will grow legs and move to Kansas. Even tornadoes there wouldn’t be as bad as what they’re going through now.

Cephalopods need love, too.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

I don’t know what you’re going to do with your stimulus bonus, but I’ve been thinking the patriotic thing to do is buy stuff that I’ve been putting off buying.

For example, I’m going to get a bunch of new undershirts, so Mrs. Doud won’t have to wash so often. We have a big washer that could wash bigger loads of undershirts than it already does. But since I have so few, she has to wash what I do have a lot more often than if I had more. However, I might be making it tough on the laundry detergent people, who will be selling us fewer scoops if Mrs. Doud washes fewer loads.

But something has to give as we stimulate this economy.

For another example, I was thinking of buying an upscale brand of cat food instead of the cheapo stuff we’ve been feeding her, and which she seems to like just fine. Buying the upscale cat food will put money in the pockets of the upscale cat food moguls, but will pick the pockets of the poor folks who turn out the cheaper stuff. I tried a few cans of the expensive stuff, and the cat didn’t seem to like it, so I could have saved my money But we are talking about stimulating the economy here.

Here is a way to stimulate the economy that can’t miss: spend those dollars locally, whatever you spend them on. When you spend locally, the city sales taxes you pay stay home instead of paving somebody else’s street or putting gas in somebody else’s police car. The dollars pay local wages, maybe even yours.

Locally spent dollars get passed around locally. That really stimulates an economy.

If you use your bonus to pay off your credit card, that’s okay. When you’re ready to max it out again, though, do it here in town. You’ll be glad.