Stovepipe snakes and telephone tales

OK, all you young whipper-snappers. Sit back and listen. Erwin ten Bensel, who is 93 years old going on 94, has a story to tell.

"It's true," he swears. It was back in 1920, eight miles north of Mercedes, Texas. "I was seven at the time," Erwin says, "and my sister, Erma, was nine. We were riding along with our folks when suddenly my dad stopped in the middle of road. 'There's a stove pipe in the road,' he said, 'I've got to get out and move it.'"

But, it turns out, it wasn't a stove pipe. It was a huge Diamondback Rattler with both its head and rattlers cut off. "Dad (whose first name was Herman) guessed it was put there to scare us," Erwin said. At the time the ten Bensels were living in a tent they had pitched out in the brush in the Rio Grande Valley.

Their Texas stay didn't last long. By the next spring the ten Bensels were back in Cambridge and Erwin has remained there most of his life.

"That story is the actual truth," Erwin said. "I don't know how much the snake weighed but I saw it and I can vouch for what my Dad said: 'It was big as a stove pipe.'"

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How many of you had a chance to see the moon last Thursday night? It was huge and it was beautiful.

My wife and I had different impressions. Headed east down B Street about 9 p.m., the orange moon looked to me like a gigantic egg, almost of dinosaur size.

Arriving home a few minutes later, my wife, Barbara, called me out to the back patio. "Look at that," she said, pointing up to a moon which had changed shape while I was driving. In its new configuration, the moon looked like the head of a large, bald-headed man. Deep shadows depicted the eyes and nose, and -- very clearly to Barbara and me -- the man in the moon was smiling.

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Neither Barbara or I received a call that evening from Linda Taylor, but we could have. Linda had practice the morning before. According to her close friends and family members, Linda called them at 4:30 in the morning. Her intentions were good. She was just making sure they didn't miss the eclipse of the moon.

Jan Logan, for one, is glad she received the mid-morning wake-up call.

"Linda rousted us out of bed and we headed outside in our underwear. It was neat. The skies were clear and the stars were shining. When we first saw the moon it was red, then it became all-black"

For the Logans, it was a brief, but memorable experience. Another eclipse is coming soon. According to Vernon Whetstone, the Gazette's astronomy columnist, the next moon eclipse will take place in February of 2008. Watch out. Linda may be calling.

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If you've ever lost your cell phone, you may have used the same strategy as the Gazette editor, Bruce Crosby. You called your cell to see (a) If you could hear the ring; or (b) some one else answered it.

After misplacing his phone last week, Bruce had Grant Strunk call it. Bruce and Grant listened together and heard a groan-like "ooOO."

Bruce and Grant were mystified until later when Bruce called his wife, Candy, and asked: "Have you found my cell phone?" "Yes," she said, "The cat was laying on it."

In Bruce's mind, that explains the "oooo" sound. He's guessing that his cat, a yellow Maine coon cross called Whiskers, moved when he heard the ring, thereby activating one of the keys and, in effect, answering the phone.

"Whisker's answer did sound a little like 'hello,'" Bruce said with a bit of pride showing in his voice.