In addition to being highly attractive, my wife possesses a fine intellect, good taste and civic obligation. It’s not entirely her fault that she’s married to a guy who has none of these traits.
Case in point, the pile of about 200 bowling balls in our backyard. She hates it. But add to that the 50 or so at Sonny’s house, it’s almost enough to last the entire summer provided we shoot them wisely.
This brings us to today’s column on safety. Many of you may scoff. Getting safety advice from me is...
Kirby: Don't let summer, bowling balls fired from cannons burn you
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Kirby: Slow the flow of H2O
The thirstiest I’ve ever been was during a shooting trip in the West Desert with Bammer, when our car broke down in the middle of nowhere.
We were stuck there with half of a bottle of flat, warm Pepsi between us. It was amazing how quickly that Pepsi started to look good even with the cigarette butt floating inside.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t planned at all. We had a bag of sunflower seeds, a partially gnawed Slim Jim, seven guns, and 8,000 bullets of various calibers. But unless someone defensel...
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Kirby: Evil pollen's killin' my sinuses
Robert Kirby took the day off to blow his nose. This is a reprint of an earlier column.
Allergy season officially began at 3:17 in the morning.
In my dream, the attractive Amazons who had captured me suddenly stopped making carnal threats and instead pounded two muskrats up my nostrils. I chain-sneezed until dawn.
It happens like this every year. Not the Amazon part. Once it was the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. No, I mean the part where my sinus slams shut and my nose starts drooling like a h...
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Kirby: Parenting never ends
Some people believe all sins are recorded in Heaven, and that come the Judgment Bar we’ll all have to own up to them. That might be true today.
I was raised in an age commonly known as “B.C.” That’s how my rapidly fossilizing generation refers to the time before computers. Had I come of age today, I would never be able to live down my youth.
It was easier to get away with misbehavior back then. There weren’t so many things capable of recording what you did for perusal by the rest of the human r...
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Kirby: Looking for the right stuff with the wrong thing
Digger is moving. Now that he’s retired, he’s thinking of going somewhere that doesn’t get much snow. I suggested he stay in Utah. We get less snow every year. Pretty soon we’ll get none.
But he’s determined. He says being retired requires not only a change of pace but also of place. Sitting around the same house he spent his looks and youth to afford isn’t quite the climate of freedom he expected.
Anyway, he’s cleaning out his garage and dumping every bit of useless junk he’s collected onto fr...
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Kirby: Give with a little scream
In the journals of my Mormon pioneer ancestor is a meticulous account of tithing paid to the LDS Church. Cash-strapped and starving, Korihor Kirby made his offerings “in kind.”
Here’s how it worked. At the end of the harvest, Korihor would look around his meager patch and decide how much of it represented a tenth. Most early years it would fit into a small tote sack.
For example, 1856 was a particularly lean year for Korihor and his three wives. They lived in a tree in Cache County and had litt...
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Kirby: Happy Mom's Day to a babe
By the time I was old enough to leave home, I thought I understood the basics of motherhood. I had spent 18 years being raised by a mom, so I knew what was involved.
In my mind, being a good mother was simple. Mothers had the kids. They fed the kids. They washed the kids, tucked them in at night, encouraged them to behave, and occasionally threatened to tell their fathers when they got out of line.
Mothers also cried over their children. At my house, the best I could hope for was that it wasn’...
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Kirby: New laws in Zion
Nearly 400 new laws go into effect today. If you break one of them, that’s OK. The Legislature has asked me to let you know that you’re not expected to get them right immediately.
This grace or “warning” period only lasts 1.5 seconds from reading this. In other words, right … NOW!
You’re now required to obey every word of the new laws, even if you don’t know about them.
Perhaps we should go over a few of the really important new laws. The product of deep legislative thought, they can be quite c...
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Kirby: The forgiving nature of Heavenly Mother
I’ve always believed in a Mother in Heaven. The possibility isn’t something I ever studied, fretted about, or even bothered to debate with anyone. What would be the point?
Short of debating the merits of a color no one has ever seen, I can’t think of a bigger waste of time than squabbling over religious doctrine.
Anyway, Mother in Heaven. Heavenly Father’s partner. God’s wife. Queen of the Eternal House. The serious power behind the throne. Having a mother in heaven just made sense.
I was in Mo...
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Kirby: Getting lucky with the wrong music
I wasn’t a fan of Gordon Lightfoot in the early ’70s. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t aware of his work. Anyone who listened to the radio for more than 10 minutes back then didn’t have a choice.
In 1970, radio stations played Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” until I lost what was left of mine.
I thought it was a stupid song. Why would anyone sing fondly about such a possibility? Any girl who could have read my mind in 1970 would have slapped me into a coma.
Similar feelings arose regard...
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Kirby: The name of the game is fun
Even though I don’t care for sports, I never miss my granddaughter’s early Saturday morning volleyball games. I wouldn’t get out of bed that early for free tickets to the Super Bowl. I don’t even know which teams played in the last one.
But we’re talking about a sporting event involving one of my grandkids, which makes it more important to me than any other possible gathering of human beings including the dissolution of Congress.
What? Yes, including a rodeo featuring Fox noise host Bill O'Reil...
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Kirby: Reading scripture behind the lines
One of the most singular things to me is the utter lack of humor in holy scripture. I’ve read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Quran, and even Scientology’s Dianetics. Not a bit of intentional mirth in the lot.
There isn’t much in them about the benefits of human intelligence, either. There’s a reason for that, but we’ll get to it in a minute. I need to address a couple of points first.
Some might argue that there is humor in these books, but that it’s subtle. Furthermore, the reader must be...
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Kirby: Loaded and locked with zero tolerance
Given the educational standards of today, I’m happy to have received my formal schooling in the ’60s. It’s the only reason I can think of as to why I have a high school diploma.
Had I gone to school in the last 10 years, I would have only made it partway through the third grade. That’s still more than enough education to write a newspaper column, but not much else.
The problem today would be the zero tolerance of most public schools regarding anything resembling a weapon or part of a weapon.
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Kirby: A cemetery is like a library full of stories
Robert Kirby took the day off to observe Memorial Day. This is a reprint of an earlier column.
Wandering through Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City last month, I spotted a small granite headstone. Lillian Louise Cole, born March 13, 1907, died Feb. 17, 1926.
Only the dates indicated that Lillian’s death was unusual. Nineteen is young to die. There were no other Coles nearby. She was buried, probably unexpectedly, among strangers by people who loved her and then moved on.
I can’t remembe...
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Kirby: Watch out for the clowns
An 11-year-old girl in Georgia was recently charged with bringing a knife to school. It wasn’t to protect herself from gang members, sexual predators or even a Kardashian. Nope. She was terrified of clowns.
I can see where it would be easy to confuse a clown with a Kardashian, but let’s not get off track. The girl’s fear was based on all the recent creepy clown sightings in the eastern U.S.
From what little I can tell, the clowns sneak around after dark with the intent of dragging young childre...
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Miscreants like me need to know -- what's new in cop tech?
St. George • I spent two days at the Utah Sheriffs’ Association conference. It was an eye-opening experience even without the embarrassing part where I slammed my thumb in the bolt of a new Glock G43.
The annual sheriffs’ conference features a variety of speakers, training and vendor booths intended to keep law enforcement up to date on the latest methods and tools of crime fighting.
Note: By crime fighting, I mean the process of ensuring that the public is kept safe by offering each of us, reg...
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Kirby: Avoiding the God dogfight
In yet another venue for debating religious differences, former Mormon John Dehlin and LDS scholar Patrick Mason are jousting with each other on a blog titled “Mormonism Inside and Out.”
Exactly what Dehlin and Mason hope to accomplish that 150-plus years of gabbing about the same thing still hasn’t is a mystery. Maybe religion is just something people enjoy discussing, like the weather, or sports, or Donald Trump.
Other than Congress, few things go awry more quickly than religious discussions....
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Kirby: Mormons know how to conference the hell out of things
Several weeks ago, I showed up for church and no one was there. Not even the Holy Ghost. It was just me and a sack of treats for my nursery kids, all alone in the parking lot.
First, I made sure that it was Sunday. It wouldn’t have been the first time I screwed up that part. It’s easy to lose track of what day it is when working the night shift. I came home, got changed and went to church — on Monday.
But this time my watch, phone and radio all confirmed that it was the right day. Where was eve...
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Kirby: Putting my parents in their place
The moment we all had been waiting for took place Saturday. My siblings and I drove our aged parents to an independent living center, kicked them out, and sped away high-fiving each other. We were finally free.
I first fantasized about putting my parents in “a home” when I was 13. For reasons that still cannot be explained, my GPA (0.09) became a topic of conversation during a parent-teacher conference.
My parents expressed loving concern over my scholastic indifference as soon as they got ho...
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Kirby: Tis already the season for Christmas revenge
Today is Oct. 1. Where did 2016 go? It slipped away so quickly, leaving us aghast at the inalterable fact that it’s just 85 shopping days until Christmas.
Panic is completely understandable. We’re now just slightly more than 12 weeks away from the most expensive day of the year.
Note: Unless, of course, you got married/divorced this year, or had a liver transplant. In that case Christmas is the second most expensive day of the year.
The advent of Christmas hit me last week, when I opened the fr...
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