"Bagpipes started as an Irish pun/ to hide a lamb they said was won/ in a game of darts at O'Doules."

That's Anvil O'Malley reading The Origin of the Pipes with his ugly Irish accent. It's open mike Friday at the Poultry Barn, a tavern, a watering hole for local university pundits, a place to meet the opposite sex, or the same sex, if that's your inclination. On weekends Anvil O'Malley reads two or three of his latest poems delivered in an ugly Irish accent. Dressed in a floor-length African moo-moo, KEEN sandals and a red wig, Anvil draws a crowd with his histrionic disguise. He's a change of pace after listening to the noir academic poets who clog the Barn's agenda. Even though they can't understand some of the language fractured by his lame accent, the audience loves him. The same verse read by someone else would not be near as amusing. Just listen to him:

"They sewed the lamb's hide in a Scottish kilt/ to infer the culprit with the guilt/ was a Calvinist named O'Toole." The audience smiles, quietly waiting for O'Malley's next lines.

He credits his gifted histrionics to his Irish heritage, although his ancestors were German. Anvil loves poetry. In Ireland he might be able to make a living writing verse; but not here in America. At the most, someone buys a beer for him. With his arms akimbo, he continues:

"All the king's men looked for its skin/ while Irish pubs sang songs to their kin/ whoever butchers royal sheep is a fool."

"The missing lamb floats into the Clyde/ bobs on waves with its bloated hide/ like a tartan bag lost at school."

Anvil O'Malley is George Schopene's alter-ego, whose last name is pronounced like Show-penny. George supports himself working for UPS, where he loads trucks on the night shift. The work and the hours suit him. Lifting gives him the physical exercise he needs after writing all day; plus, there's very little personal interaction with other people. George has a phobia for people and crowds. He stutters when confronted with new challenging situations. He's also obsessive about some things. For example, his shirts and sweaters hang in a small closet arranged by colors according to the spectrum. He stands for long periods of time trying to decide whether the greens go before the blues or after. He hasn't learned that he's color-blind to the blue-greens. His life is easier in summer, when he wears a lot of whites. For different reasons the building superintendent and George's father suspect he is gay. His mother denies it. She still carries hope that George will one day be called to a church vocation.

Anvil reads the final stanza of Origin of the Pipes:

"A tipsy old Scot spies it on shore/ sticks it with his cane, a hole he tore, / and the ruptured bag brays like a mule."

"Along comes McBride, equally gassed/ stoops to examine the hide, coughs and farted/ Relief felt so good, the bag blown full/ 'Tis how playin' the pipes got started."

Anvil leaves the mike with his audience applauding and cheering, another performance that adds to his regional reputation as an eccentric poet. In a university atmosphere of affirmative action and international diversity, anything goes.

I needed cushion-sole socks. Pounding the concrete floor of the warehouse day after day in steel toes and ribbed anklets was turning the bottom of my feet into raw meat. When the safety shoemobile backed into the plant's loading dock for a day, I charged another pair of shoes against my pay check and discovered that they also sold socks-white cushion soles with bright red cuffs. I bought two dozen of the largest size-a perfect fit.

Twice a year the shoemobile made day-long visits to all seven of the company's plants. A day later it was downtown at Plant Two, where my son worked. Larry had returned from several years of hippy vagabonding to temporarily reside with his parents while he pondered the meaning of life before his next venture into it. Coincidentally, he also decided to buy socks.

Larry's genes were not inherited from my side of the family. Some years earlier, while Larry was living in San Francisco, rumors of Bigfoot were circulating in the Pacific Northwest. I suspected that Larry, on a weekend outing, had created the Bigfoot panic by simply leaving his footprints on an Oregon beach. The large size socks were too little for Larry, but he managed. After a single wearing, his socks were adequately stretched to a size 12.

That was okay for him, but a size 12 sock on my foot curls up under my toes like Captain Queeg's ball bearings, or slides out over the top of my work oxfords to create a winged foot imitation of the god-messenger Mercury. Not comfortable.

Why, then, after buying perfect fits for myself, did I occasionally find myself wearing a sock on one foot that had a convulsive, creeping life of its own? Aha! Larry's socks and my socks were getting into the family washing machine at the same time. Since his and mine were the same color, my wife, who never mated socks after the dryer disgorged them (except for the mate that is never seen again) simply counted out equal piles and dumped them in our respective dressers. I would be on the job before the one overstretched sock in my current pair, woke up and began to migrate.

My tactful attempts to offer practical, efficient, and curative solutions to the washer woman were met with equal tact: "If you don't like the way I do the wash, you can take over anytime!" I sought an alternative solution.

I pulled Larry's socks out of his dresser and with a permanent ink marker, enscribed the upper toe of each sock with a large letter "L." I then monogrammed my own socks with the letter "R." Then, as Master of the Castle, I informed the domestic help that henceforth only socks marked "L" were to go to Larry's room and only socks marked "R" were to be neatly dumped on the floor (as was her quaint custom) beside my bed. Thereafter the socks I wore to work remained all day in my shoes. The problem was solved.

Some weeks later I wanted to catch my millwrights at quitting time to pass on some company information that they, no doubt, had already learned from the grapevine. The shop floor had not yet been swept. I walked through a gritty covering of split-pea sized granules scattered about to absorb oil droppings from machines the men had been working on. What usually happens when a pair of low-cut shoes walks across a gravel parking lot, happened. I got a "pebble" in my right shoe.

While the men cleaned up, I leaned against a workbench, lifted my right leg, slipped off my right shoe and held it upside down to dump the foreign intruder. As I stood there, shoe in hand, my socked foot raised in display, I became aware of Arnie standing still and staring at the "R" on my exposed sock.

"Do you have to mark your socks to tell your right from your left?"

I laughed good naturedly (believing as I did in "democratic management,") and proceeded to explain the problem of father's and son's socks. Arnie's unchanging expression told me he was not buying my story. By this time the rest of the crew had gathered.

"Look!" Arnie pointed out to them. "The boss can't tell his right foot from his left!"

I decided this familiar jocularity had gone far enough.

"Alright you guys," I intoned in my best managerial voice. "I'll prove it to you. My initial is on the other sock, too."

I put on my right shoe, transferred my stance from left foot to right foot, lifted my left leg and proceeded to slip off my left shoe.

There, brightly emblazoned across the sock above my humble toes, was the letter "L."

DIRTY WORDS Seems to me I've been hearing a little four letter word lately that I don't like to hear. It's rude and offensive. Granted, it was always around, but I think it's gotten more prevalent. While it's true, I don't hear it coming out of the mouth of very small children, by the time they reach teens, it is quite common. Adults use it a lot. Some words just shouldn't be spoken.

Yet it's everywhere. I've heard it on TV and I've seen it in magazines. Everywhere I turn someone is using it. The world is obsessed with this nasty little four letter word. It doesn't matter if you're a celebrity or a common person. Heck, I've even heard clergymen use it. It comes out of the mouth of the rich and poor alike. Seems everyone has some opportunity to use it.

Me? Well, of course I've said it. But no matter what the excuse, that small four letter word "diet" can upset me. Think about it, the first three letters of the word diet are die. You can die if you don't diet, or you can die trying to diet.

Maybe I should be paying more attention to this little word and giving it a fair shot. Yet if I ever sat down and figured it out, I bet I've lost hundreds of pounds over the years. You lose ten pounds, then put some on. Later you lose fifteen pounds, but put a few more back on. Already I'm up to loosing twenty-five pounds and don't look a bit thinner than in the beginning.

But we hear so much lately about how obese we are getting. They blame a lot of it on fast food places that offer up all sorts of stuff which is bad for us. Personally I think it's more our lifestyle that's to blame. Granted, French fries and greasy hamburgers are probably not the best food to eat, but I don't think we can blame it all on that.

I remember when I was a kid I stayed at my Grandparents farm over the summer. It was fried potatoes, ham and eggs for breakfast every morning. And the potatoes were usually fried in bacon grease. Grandpa ate a good share of that food for many years and he lived to be in his late 80's. But when he was done eating, he went out and did physical labor. He didn't go from one room to the next to sit down at a computer or in front of the television.

So it's not only the food we consume. It's what we do after we consume said food. I don't believe any one food is really bad for you unless you eat it every day. If you like bacon, have some bacon. Just don't eat bacon three times a day every day.

Now I know experts will disagree with me. Eating fatty food is bad. Eating starch is bad. Eating sweets is bad. My doctor said the perfect diet is "If it tastes good, spit it out." So you pick lettuce and spinach and get E-coli poisoning instead! Person can't seem to win.

So what's my personal remedy? Well for starters, I don't have any full length mirrors in my home and I hide the scale. If that doesn't work, I buy clothes a size too big because when people see the loose fitting clothes they ask, "Are you loosing weight?"

But every once in a while reality sets in and I admit, "I know I really "need to go on a diet. (As soon as I get a grip on reality - I'm gonna choke it!) Course knowing it and doing it are two very different things. I don't have as much self control as I'd like. I'm good for a day or so, but then out comes the ice cream and well, I can't resist. I have a problem - it's me.

Sometimes I give it some serious attention and even do some exercises. I work out and soon I'll be able to touch my toes. Well, I will as soon as my fingernails grown another 24 inches. I read somewhere the way to prevent sagging is eat till the wrinkles fill out. I like that kind of thinking. I can do that. Another little quip was "All food is fat free - if you don't eat it." That may be true but folks, there's nothing that tastes so good as food. Maybe if I did diet I'd be able to get my pantyhose on without a problem. But - that's another subject for another time.

Malcolm Lopez came to America to open a fish market. He had flyers made up advertising the many sea foods he would be selling. As he went about on foot, handing out the red and white sheets of paper, he wondered into the Broadway Baptist Church. The doors were open as the members of the Women's Missionary Society were decorating the lower auditorium for Sunday's Mexican dinner.

Audrey Springer spied Malcolm as he cautiously came down the four steps in his heavy shoes. "Here's our man power!" she called to the other women. Racing to grab his arm, she pointed to the ten-foot-ladder. "Put the ladder up here," she said. Alice Moore was holding a colorful horse and held it out to him. "Hang the pinata on the pipe," Audrey motioned.

Malcolm carefully put his flyers on the table and moved toward the ladder. He was a short stocky man. but his powerful arms moved the ladder without effort. He climbed several rungs, took the pinata and had it hanging in minutes.

With the women "oohing and aahing" at the swinging horse, Malcolm folded the ladder and looked for a place to put it.

"Bring it right over here," Audrey summoned. "We'll hang these serapes on these three walls," she pointed, handing him a box of thumb tacks. Malcolm's black eyes took in the various women, mostly elderly, he noticed. He nodded, thinking American women were as bossy as Mexican woman. But he proceeded to hang serapes, and paper lanterns, and straw hats and streamers. He helped clip on festive table cloths to accommodate 90 people at the eight foot tables. He laughed when Bernice O'Brien dropped a basket of flowers, tripped, and landed in the basket.

Everybody was kept busy, decorating the tables, the walls, the podium, with the kitchen crew testing and tasting Mexican dishes-Spanish rice, taco salad, enchiladas. They had Malcolm sampling for authenticity. He didn't comment too much, just nodded or added a little more cumin to the rice.

By three o'clock the auditorium passed inspection, and the kitchen crew were pleased with their labors. They thanked Malcolm for his help, as he put the ladder in the storage room. "You must come for dinner Sunday," Audrey said. "Bring your family."

Malcolm smiled, and nodded. Before he climbed the four steps to the outer door, he handed each lady a flyer advertising his fish market. "Fresh fish," he said with a grin.

The women read the announcement, commented, and affirmed it would be nice having a fresh fish market. Not considering that Malcolm wasn't the hired help the trustees promised, they gathered their belongings and started to leave, when Audrey tapping the flyer, bellowed, "Look here, ladies!" We used this fellow, this Malcolm Lopez, and he wasn't a hired hand. The board was to hire a Francisco Romo."

"Well, this one was a good worker," Bernice said. "Look at the place. It's authentic and festive. We have his name and address, let the trustees send him a check."

"Really, Bernice!" Audrey shook her head. "The man is a respected proprietor of a business. He would probably be insulted that we took him for a hired hand."

Malcolm who was listening from the foyer, thought, no insult, I take money. I take customers, too.

"We can turn it over to the trustees and let them decide what to do," Alice offered. "In the meantime, let's patronize Lopez's business. I like fish."

"I don't much relish fish, but my daughter's family does," Marie Stewart said.

"I love shrimp," Janice Beil, read from the flyer.

"It's settled then," Audrey nodded. "We'll turn the situation over to the trustees and we'll all buy fish."

"Si," Malcolm clucked, slipping noiselessly through the outside doorway, assured of at least twenty customers. He smiled to himself, glad he had been in the right place at the right time. Jauntily, he swung down the street, handing out his flyers to whomever he passed. America was a good place to be.