Make the most of your brief time on Earth

Life is good if you have your health and not all bad even if you don’t, which is sometimes forgotten in an election year, what with the high-pitched oratory on behalf of the embittered rich and people with ingrown toenails and what not. Apparently we are on the verge of losing our Second Amendment rights and will need to defend ourselves with tent stakes and bug spray. So I’ve heard people say.

I had an uncle, a farmer, who suffered from chronic hemorrhoids but he knew a druggist who sold an ointment made from opium and wormwood and it worked like a charm. The druggist was Catholic and we were born-again so there was moral compromise involved but when Uncle Gene was in need, he eased himself into his 1947 Ford with his special doughnut cushion and drove to town and got the cure. An illegal drug sold by a man who sent money to buy golden shoelaces for the pope, but what are you going to do? Gene was a farmer and the tractor seat was hard and there were bumps. This is the amiable America I grew up in. You didn’t blame your hemorrhoids on the party in power in Washington.