It’s a good thing my girlfriend isn’t the federal government.  If she was I would quietly surrender all my liberties.  She has barred me from eating at Mr. P’s pizza because pizza would be fattening.  So I go along with her decision despite a fondness for Mr. P’s.  I’ve been telling her they’ll make us a personalized pan pizza and I’ll eat just a slice.  No deal.  Last weekend we drove by Mr. P’s on or way to the movies.  No deal.  I got away with buying her a latte next door to the theatre.  Guess I shouldn’t complain about saving a few dollars. 

Tuesday morning I had an early committee meeting for Rotary and the redhead had a meeting as well not far away.  So I invited her to meet me for breakfast at the family restaurant in downtown Georgetown, our county seat.  Call it our St. Patrick’s Day celebration.  She arrived and ordered a breakfast of grits and fruit.  She didn’t react when I ordered toast, two eggs over easy and homefries but then she ate some of my homefries.  Yet she would rather have grits and I suppose it’s one of our cultural differences.  I’m from the north and she’s from Baltimore, which is pretty much a southern city.  The differences are few but sometimes I still can note them.  I say Baltimore to her Ballmore.  The papers back home don’t dwell on racial issues but the papers in Baltimore, Washington, Wilmington and Salisbury spill a lot of ink on the topic.  At the movies we saw a Clint Eastwood film about a retired auto-worker coping with a changing world.  Whenever the main character grumbled about his neighbors people in the theatre broke out in laughter.  Walt Kowalski, the main character in the picture, isn’t shy about the names he uses when describing various ethnicities.  As a product of the north I know I incur the wrath of the politically correct but we always used to joke with our neighbors about their last names, however.  My childhood friends were a mix of Irish, Scottish, German, Dutch, Slovenian, Hungarian and Polish names.  I loved those guys.  My college friends were Steinberg, Wojnovich, Dolan, Simmons, Wormley, Morales and Quinlan.  I’ve the same reaction as to my childhood friends. 

Over the years my work friends have been Heslin, Weidman, Guy, Siciliano, Katersky, Modell, Sheehe, LaPoint, Sadik, Wright, Craig, Creller, Johnson, Woodard, Sadar, Wood, Granozio, Ezzo, Tetta, Roche, Galley, White, Alexander and Puma. 

My current friends are Palmer, Karol, Morski, Shaw, Rasa, Fink, Brady, Hermann, Alvarez and Hoffman.  And I must confess I think the world of the people I work with.  When I come through the lobby door everyday I get a big smile and hello from Miss Dee, the woman who is the glue of our business. 

There are probably another one hundred I haven’t mentioned and who are just as important. 

A couple of weeks ago I did say some liberal slacker at the Wilmington paper made the claim I’m a racist.  Well, I was a big fan of Petty, Allison and Unser when growing up so maybe he’s got a point.  What the fellow really meant, I think, is that I don’t buy into his narrow education and view about our country.  You see, the names aren’t really important.  It’s about what you believe and what you stand for and these big city liberals are all about touchy feely and they’ve got no logic gene.  The one thing I got out of the Eastwood movie was that it isn’t about the fuzzy P.C. pap you spew to impress some fair weather liberal friends.  It’s about your actions.  No greater love has a man but to lay down his life for another. 

Oh, and another point.  Some of the folks at the newspaper can’t write.  I can.

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