Category Archives: humor essay

Smerkle Grumpy Punchin’ Pumpkins!

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Note to reader: It has been some time since Smerkle Grumpy, an occasional “guest” here, has penned something for this page. However, his dislike of Trump has gotten him arrested three times. Something to do with pumpkins. Don’t ask me. I’ll let him explain.

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“Pumpkins. Keep me away from pumpkins. And I don’t mean those once a year Halloween jack-o’-lanterns that have some really cool faces carved into them by carving out parts so maybe you have this wild-eyed jack-o’-lantern looking at you, lit from inside by a candle. They really are a sight to behold.

Anyway, this is not about jack-o’-lanterns. This is about straight up uncooked sitting there on the aisle or farm or wherever the hell pumpkins like to sit, but mostly when I pass’m in the supermarket.

They have arrested me three times in markets because of Trump who’s as orange as it gets. I’m telling you, three times in the same fucking supermarket, I failed to quell the urge to punch out the first pumpkin in reach. Just three of’m. One punch each caves their chests in. Boom! Boom! Boom! Of course this doesn’t go over well with the supermarket manager.

There was a nice moment that really took me by surprise. When I was being arrested the third time, right before they were taking me out, I wasn’t in handcuffs. It was the same two cops as the first two times. There was no animosity in the air at all. It was just, no, you can’t destroy the store’s produce with repercussions. Anyway, that’s when this nice moment happened.

As I was leaving with the two officers the third time, the store manager came up to me and handed me a bag containing three pumpkin, smiled and said, “Three pumpkins for you to knock out. On us, Mr. Grumpy.” A gentleman truly, if ever one was born, that store manager”

~ Smerkle Grumpy ~

Shady in the house

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– How long you called Shady?

– All memory long, or thereabouts.

– Nice sound.

– Been trustworthy from jump street, so there’s some humor in it.

– Like jazz notes, the sound. Shay-dee. Shaaaaay-deeee. 

– Saxophone.

– Clarinet, could be.

– Absolutely, yes.

– It’s a good name.

– Thank you, man.

– You’re thinking these days?

– It’s like Benjamin Franklin said when some folks asked him what kind of government the new constitution created. “A republic, if you can keep it.” We’re going to find out if we can keep it.

– This president.

– Does not want the republic.

– Shady’s a good name.

– Thank you.

– Jazz.

– Clarinet.

– Shaaay-deeee.

Final straws

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Those chilled or are they warm last moments. Last moments sought after so many final straws untended. You’ve seen too many make that choice, infinite silence, the eternal blank, or so you’ve come to believe. Correct or not, you’ll never know until the switch is flipped.

This perpetual process of getting up again and again and again. The words stay down would be a hug were they in your nature. This day in the supermarket, you inside the glass shell, watching faces smiling, a middle-age woman and young man happy to unexpectedly see each other hug and laugh. You turn your cart quickly into an aisle, trembling, fighting back tears, in your glass shell. Invisible.

Has it finally happened? Are you, after all these years finally (Could it be, thankfully? Survival is exhausting) collapsing into pieces, dust to dust?

And then, out of the corner of your eye, a sign in produce reading, Ripe Ass Avocados.  You  look at the sign. Ripe Hass Avocados, not Ripe Ass Avocados. You begin to laugh. You are smiling and laughing. You share the misread story with a few customers in the checkout line. People, cashier and bagger, laughing.

Back home, putting away the groceries, better now, you pause. Think. Saved by a sign. This time.

Final straws. They’re everywhere.

Damn Ants

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I am two years old visiting Mommom and Poppop in Rumson. New Jersey. Mommom and Poppop are my mother’s parents and I adore them, especially Poppop. They have boats and a house on Highland Avenue that looks out over a canal that leads onto the Navesink River towards the Oceanic Bridge. Their home is a heaven to me.



I love Mommom and Poppop, especially Poppop. He reminds me of Jimmy Stewart. He speaks in a stumbling, soft-voiced cadence. His eyes always glow warmth and kindness. He also smokes a pipes. He keeps several of them in a lovely wooden pipe rack near his large wing chair. I love to put the pipes in my mouth and pretend I’m just like Poppop and my father. My father smokes pipes too. Both would prefer I play with the pipes only when they are around.



But I am an early riser.



Early one morning I crawl out of bed, make my way into the living room, climb up into Poppop’s large wing chair, remove one of his pipes from the rack, and pretend to puff away. Pieces of smoked tobacco fall from the pipe and speckle me in my white t-shirt and underwear. I don’t care. I’m having fun sitting in this big wing chair just like Poppop. I look out the window with the pipe stem firmly clamped in my teeth. I have to hold the pipe with my hand because it is heavy. I hear a sound, turn, and there is Poppop looking right at me, trying desperately to look annoyed at me for playing with his pipes when he wasn’t there.



I look down at the black speckles of tobacco all across my front and brush them away saying, “Damn ants!”



Peter & Poppop circa 1955

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