Under the Wire

“Old Jim didn’t have any enemies, just a lot of friends who didn’t like him.”

I caught that line from an old movie on TV the other night. You know, the kind of movie that’s on at two in the morning when you can’t sleep so you go out and flip on the old boob tube. “Old Jim” was a gangster being laid to rest after a chance meeting with 30 or 40 machine gun bullets. In an effort to say something good about the departed that was the best they could come up with.

I watch a lot of TV in the winter when the days get shorter and things kind of slow down around the “old rancho.” There’s a lot of junk o...