In 22 years as senior editor, I have somehow come up with 154 (to date) humor pieces for The Saturday Evening Post. Requests for my books continue to come in. The 24 chapters of this book constitute my first attempt at answering these letters.

Everything Is So Close We Can Even Walk to the Carwash will help substantiate the many marital boners of my dear wife, Lois. (If she should ever get her act together, I’ll be out of business.) In the meantime, I hope to keep our act together after 64 years (seems more like 65) of being suckered into an "I do" from my quivering lips by acknowledging my own limited lapses in this game of chance called married life.

Among them: How I Converted an Old Farmhouse Into a Shambles, Sailing Down the Root Canal, Long Time No Ski, Wrapsody in Blue, and Waiter, There’s a Glass Eye in My Tapioca. While others may come along, the balance definitely lies in my dear wife’s favor.

Please take my words for it. You’ll find them later on in My Wife – and Other Garden Pests, Knit 2, Purl 1, Hubby 0, Marriage – The Best Exercise, Her Cat/My Dog, Women and Gasoline Don’t Mix, and Try Not to Bleed." And that’s only the beginning, folks. Only the beginning.

Released from a wartime job in Indianapolis, I packed my wife, Lois, and our two little kids into a house trailer (now upgraded to a mobile home) and took off for Bradenton, Florida, to launch my writing career.

I would spend many dreary months tied to the dock, however, before shoving off. So dreary, in fact, that the morning we needed a 22-cent quart of milk for breakfast, we could only raise but 18 cents. That afternoon, in the normal mail of rejections, a strange blue envelope stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. The editor of Extension, a Chicago magazine, regaled me with the news that my Do You Mind If I Breathe had their staff literally rolling on the floor. They would be sending me a check for $150.00 . . . and did I have more.

Yes, I had at least a dozen more. And after selling to True and The American Legion, I thought I had it made. I thought wrong.

I would spend another twenty years (as Director Of Communications for the Realsilk Hosiery Mills) before The Saturday Evening Post asked to reprint one of my free-lance efforts. That beloved magazine has to date printed 154 of my original efforts.

This book covers 24 of them.

I was recently interviewed by a sophomore high school student who asked what advice I would give to would-be writers. I believe I said it all in only these three words: "Don’t give up."

"Travels on my Stomach"

If you’re ever wondered whether it’s true that your whole life passes before you at moments of grave (or near-grave) crisis, I now have the answer. It’s yes.

I don’t mean to claim that at my age (which is none of your business) I had time to run through my entire wall-to-wall life while I slid off a porch roof without benefit of ladder...which my dear wife borrowed without my knowledge. But before arriving at the spirea bushes below, I had pretty well reviewed the mileage my body had racked up from similar escapades.

The flashback flashed back to the tender (and I do mean tender) age of 11 and the girl upon whom I had already squandered five cents for a vanilla candy bar. And I was not about to see my investment go down the drain for lack of derring-do. I would impress her if it killed me. And it was close, real close.

At the first snowfall, I unhooked my sled from its peg in the granary and took it to school. When this little blonde beauty came outside during lunch hour, I carried my sled back about a mile and a half to get a running start and belly-flopped on it right in front of her. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to remove the summer’s accumulation of rust from the runners. And I had selected for my landing spot a stretch of gravel only lightly covered with snow. The sled, of course, didn’t go anywhere. But I did. Scraping across it and for another ten feet beyond, I was relieved of the outer layer of skin from my entire abdominal area. And I had to gather up my sled and slink around to the other side of the schoolhouse before I could scream.