This ancient brass sprinkler hooked up to a hose sends its cooling spray into the inferno of superheated noon air of an August Minnesota day and saves my life and lives of thousands of youngsters across the Midwest who have lawn sprinklers.

In 1924, when the mercury is hovering around 110 degrees in the shade and air conditioning a futuristic dream, we do what we have to do to lower our body temperatures and avoid fatal heat strokes and death by dehydration.

In a state that advertises 10,000 lakes, why not cool off by immersion?To qualify as a “lake” in Minnesota a body of water must be at least ten acres. That’s 435,600 square feet. Northfield’s three “lakes” are puddles.Mothers are too busy with five kids to herd them several blocks to this swimming hole.

A brass ring with spray holes is cooler and cleaner than a mud bottomed lake.

Here is a photo of me at three in my one-piece summer undergarment buttoned half way up the front and hanging limp and soaked over my tiny frame, cooled and refreshed by bravely running through the spray. I am testing the temperature of the water with my right hand.

The big boy running toward the brass ring is probably Orville Heffernan. We stay out of his way. He is not a bully, but sometimes he doesn’t understand his ability to inflict pain innocently.

The Heffernans raise chickens. They eat roast chicken every Sunday. We get to watch Mrs. Heffernan grab a fat hen by the neck and chop off its head with a large hatchet, release the dead bird and see it run around their back yard spouting blood from the stump of its neck. We wonder how a headless chicken can entertain us with its dance of death. It’s a mystery.

Then it’s back to our crabgrass and dandelion yard and its faithful, cool brass sprinkler.

Blessed baby.

Three heirless girls and finally a crown prince son!

Oh, glorious day.

O, holy day.

The day that He was born and wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a crib.

And the glory of the Lord shone round about him and he grew in wisdom and stature and in respect among all peoples in the tiny town of Northfield on the Cannon.

From the day you see him newborn sitting uncomfortably on his father’s lap until He was six and had his locks shorn and was as helpless as Samson, He remembers nothing. A total void. A tabula rasa. A preternaturally dry sponge thirsting for a flood of memorable stimuli.

February 19, 1921 was a cloudy, cold day. The most earthshaking event? A snowstorm that draped a fresh blanket of purity upon the face of Minnesota farm fields and lawns, roofs and streets.

Not an auspicious day.

Kansas went dry in 1881 on February 19.

In Peru, in 1600, stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the most violent eruption in South America’s recorded history.

In 1942, iconic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, imprisoning 140,000 loyal Japanese Americans—the most shameful act in modern U. S. history prior to the invasion of Iraq.

On February 19, 1945, cousin Lt.jg Bill Murray, U.S.Navy surgeon, landed on Iwo Jima with 30,000 U. S. Marines for six weeks of hell, sewing up an average of 100 broken bodies a day.

No, February 19 is not a good day to be born. It is either the last day of Aquarius or the first day of Pisces—an astrologer’s cusp and curse.

He shared his natal day with such lesser luminaries as pot stirrer Karen Silkwood and six footballers—Belgium’s Enzo Scifo, Dominican’s Mikko Kavén, Italy’s Gianluca Zambrotta, Ireland’s Clinton Morrison, England’s Nicky Shorey and Brazil’s Marta.

But He transcended these negative portents and brought great light and pride into the lives of his earthly mother, municipal court judge father and five siblings.

His Hebrew name means beloved, and He strove like Sisyphus to take away the sins of the world—to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless and triumph over tribalism. He knew grief and sorrow and bowed low to kiss the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace.

His progeny have steadfastly marched in his footprints, bringing him overwhelming joy now and forevermore. Amen.

I can’t take it any more.

I refuse to look into the eyes of a dead US trooper whose photo is shown on PBS Nightly News after being blown to bits by an “improvised explosive device” in Iraq. Show me the body, if you can. Don’t sanitize slaughter.

Most of the 3,829 US troopers killed to date have been defenseless against powerful roadside bombs. They are set off by remote devices at a safe distance. Humvees aren’t designed to protect our troops. They are helpless targets.

I printed out 105 pages with photos of the 824 US troopers slaughtered pointlessly so far in 2007.

Most are from little towns—many too small to even be listed in the Rand McNally Atlas. That’s tiny.

Towns like Ewing, Kentucky; Richwood, Texas; Verdon, Nebraska; Trafford, Alabama; Davidsonville, Maryland; Nakin, Ohio; Santa Fe Pueblo, New Mexico; Windthorst, Texas, Chagrin Falls, Ohio; Centerville, Massachusetts; Candor, New York; Sun Valley, California; New Tripoli, Pennsylvania; Givens Hot Springs, Idaho; Kenduskeag, Maine; Crimona, Virginia; Alanson, Michigan; Sims, Arkansas; Hondo, New Mexico; Minong, Wisconsin; Speedwell, Tennessee; Holstein, Nebraska;

Quitman, Mississippi; Spring Hope, North Carolina; Crystal Falls, Michigan; Inver Woodbury, Minnesota; Scott Depot, West Virginia; Otis, Oregon; Browersville, Georgia; Lone Tree, Colorado; Chiocton, Wisconsin; Lone, California;
Gays, Illinois; West Valley, Utah; Clinton, Utah; Hager City, Wisconsin; Ivyland, Pennsylvania; Sweet Springs, Missouri; Cataldo, Idaho; Millstadt, Illinois; Pembroke, Massachusetts; Kingston Springs, Tennessee; Spangle, Washington; Burns, Wyoming; Gold River, California;

Dibble, Oklahoma; Lee, Maine; Vequita, New Mexico; Greenwood, Nebraska; Bismarck, Arkansas; Okeana, Ohio; Moscow, Maine; Earleville, Maryland; Bedias, Texas; Bon Aqua, Tennessee; Mashpee, Massacusetts; Parlin, Colorado; Pittsview, Alabama; Groveland, California; Wallins, Kentucky; Clackamas, California; Ismay, Montana; Cameron Park, California; Pointblank, Texas; Rootstown, Ohio and Killingworth, Connecticut.

Everyone in these 66 hamlets can put a name to the young man or woman who died in Iraq “to protect them.” There are no strangers in Killingworth, Connecticut or Pointblank, Texas.

They don’t want some unpatriotic World War II combat veteran like me to tell them their sons and daughters died in vain in a “war” to avenge the loss of 2,464 Americans killed by non-Iraqi terrorists on September 11, 2001 and to save us from the nonexistent “imminent weapons of mass destruction threat of Saddam Hussein.”

It’s got to stop now!

I am attending the fiftieth reunion of my high school graduating class of 1939 at the Northfield, Minnesota Country Club. The host committee is making awards. The award for the class member who traveled the greatest distance goes to Dave McGuire of Auburn, California. He wins the door prize--a real, hollow core bedroom door provided by classmate Paul Kump of Kump Lumber Company. It stays in Northfield.

I bet you can guess my award. The baldest. My prize: A GIANT COMB. I vow that if I ever win another huge comb for having a bald head, I will smash it into smithereens on the spot and sprinkle the teeth on the dinner plates of all those sitting at the head table. I’m serious.

“Oh, you look just like the guy on ‘Everyone Loves Raymond,’” thecorpulent lady in the Leisure World Fitness Center exclaims. Yeah, right. Just like bald Peter Boyle, the ugly schmuck. I never watch this stupid, award winning TV sit-com.

I experience premature baldness at the sadistic hands of my father’s brother Chuck and my playful grandfather Charles Webster Blodgett. They give me a fee haircut when I am six years old and at their mercy. Ultimately, all my locks lie on the grass. I am hairless.

With my shaved head I am the centerpiece of the five Blodgett children being captured in the lens of an itinerant photographer to enter into the Grand Theater’s contest to select the best looking family of children in town. All photos are projected daily on the town’s only movie screen. Here I am--the sad sack with shirttails out, pigeon toes in and the target of spontaneous ridicule and laughter by the entire community. Not the high point in my life.

We are not winners, although my three older sisters, Mary, Jeanne and Elaine in their neat dresses and pleasant smiles and my little brother Fritz in his smoothly combed locks and sailor suit are adorable.

Here are three historical portraits of the real me. The first is my official high school graduation photo. “Why aren’t you smiling?” someone asks. Obviously, she is not of my generation. In l939, smiling faces of high school graduates are inappropriate. We are to look serious, pensive.

Now you know why all the girls are on the chase after this 18-year old with his full head of wavy hair and long eyelashes. In the middle is me at thirty-six flanked by Old Baldy at eighty. Three different people--spring, summer and fall--“The September Song.”

Although I accept my dandruff-free state, what bothers me is the unfair pricing practice in barbershops. My few strands grow as fast as yours, but a haircut for me--including eyebrows and ears--is a two-minute operation and costs me the same as the guy in the next chair who wants a little more cut here and there and warms the chair for twenty minutes. So,I bought a $10 kit set at 1/8" and do my own.

On these cold, wintry nights I lose all my body heat through my chimney head unless I wear my trusty nightcap.

Hair. Billions of dollars spent each year on dead keratin. Hair and how we wear it have deep historical, social and cultural significance. Long-haired hippies. Hairless, heartless and lice-free skinheads. Peroxide blonds, henna redheads and sculptured Mohawks. Braids, cornrows, knots, headbands and buns. Bangs,wigs and marcelled waves. Permanents and pixie cuts. Find a good hairdresser and hang on to her for dear life. Bond with her or him. Once you find a compatible and competent coiffeuse, never let her go. Hair is a damn nuisance and a bottomless financial sinkhole.

Thank goodness I’m bald. As Kurt Vonnegut Jr. says, “So it goes.” And it does, and I reply, I’m glad it went. As a Pisces, I’m just not comfortable in the age of Aquarius with all that hair.

The rat-faced, middle-aged, scruffy little man driving a beat up old 1947 Ford sedan with four bald tires is a pain in the neck and puts my patience to the test.

Every Sunday morning when I am busy waiting on cash customers at the one-island, two-pump gas station where I work part time he pulls up to the air hose and demands that I replace the air his worn out tires lost during the week. He never buys gasoline.

After six weeks of this routine, I ask him, “What do I have to do to get some of your gasoline business?”

“Oh, I buy at the cut-rate station on the other side of town. They’re two cents cheaper than you.”

“Then why don’t you have them put air in your tires?”

“They don’t have no air.”

After this confrontation I am certain I will never see him again.

But next Sunday, just as I am busy waiting on regular customers, he pulls in and parks at the air hose.

I ignore him.

“Hey, you!” he shouts, “How about a little service!”

“Just a minute, sir. I’ll be right with you.”

I trot over and quickly put air in his four leaky tires.

Without a word of thanks, he pulls out of the station and drives about a half block down the street.

Suddenly, we are startled to hear four loud explosions followed by the clanging sound of steel wheel rims rolling on concrete pavement.

Patience has its limits.