1964

1964

Gus Buchtel, puzzle master for a blog created for our age group, has contributed material for this column. His blog asks a question and then he grades the answers. The following are answers from our classmates. In 2024 he asked for answers to the following challenges. With “Write a clerihew about a famous person,” winners were Richard Scaramelli (on Biden) and Wendell Smith (Trump). With “Advice to young relatives to help them safely navigate the turbulent conditions oftoday’s world,” Chuck Carroll won. On “Why the monkeys in a temple in Bali steal phones from tourists,” the winners were Paul Brown and Richard Scaramelli, who said the monkeys use the obj ects to barter for things they did want, such as bananas, afterthe monks inadvertently taught the monkeys that stealing would be rewarded. In 2025 he shared the following challenges. For “Best talking animal j oke,” Bill Hamm won with a talking dog whose owner is selling him for $10 and, when asked why the price is so low, the owner explains the dog is a first-class liar and has never left the backyard. Fred Kolo, Bruce Michal, and Joe Cardillo earned honorable mentions. With “Best story or joke that illustrates the difference between men and women,” Bill Hamm won and runners-up were Marshall Noecker and Doug Raybeck. For “Provide an autobiographical incident when classmates thought they were going to die but quirk of fate intervened,” the winner was Carlos Ballantyne with a near-death experience with pulmonary edema in the Himalayas. First runner-up Doug Raybeck, who listed the benefit of learning how to fall in judo classes, which came in handy when a car turned in front of him on his motorcycle: “I went sailing clear over the car, lowered my shoulder, tucked my head to my chest, rolled, came out, and slapped with my left forearm.” Others included Kjell Johansen, fearing for his life when hiding in a basement bomb shelter in the early 1940s while the Allies bombed nearby harbor facilities in his hometown in Norway; and Chris Palmer, who fell asleep at the wheel but came out just fine. Contact Gus Buchtel (gusb@med.umich.edu) to participate in the future.

—Robert Goodman Jr., Kaufman & Canoles, PC., 2101 Parks Ave., Suite 700, Virginia Beach, VA 23451; (757) 624-3238; rcgoodman@kaufcan.com