I hope your long weekend was fun. You may recall, I was working on the 4th at the hardware store. We did close at 4pm, rather than the usual 6. I normally work until 1pm on Saturdays, but the boss and another full-time guy decided to use vacation time to get the 4th off, so the poor part-time schmuck was stuck until 4. Some might say I brought it on myself, so what can do? A reasonable person might ask why we didn't just close, since business is always slower than slow on the holidays? Lots of customers mentioned it on Saturday. The fact is that it is cheaper to stay open than to close. Close and everyone get a paid holiday. Stay open and the paltry trickle of business at least pays the payroll. If you live in New York or Washington or L.A., you are probably accustomed to meeting the rich and famous. Maybe, you are walking down the street in Santa Monica and recognize a guy headed your way. You pass and give him a "Hey Brad, how are the kids?" Or maybe you are picking up a few items at the grocery and the President is in line behind you. That sort of thing. Here in Hooterville, it doesn't happen that much. A guy at a hardware store on the far east side of town claims to have sold some nuts and bolts to Paul McCartney. Paul used to and may still have a mansion out that way, so I suppose it could be true. Linda Rondstat used to live in a big old swanky joint in midtown, but she got pissed about something and move to SF. She grew up here and went to Catalina H.S. Diana Ross famously and inexplicably got busted for DUI just a couple of miles from Casa Sneed. Johnny Lee, who played the character Algonquin J. Calhoun on the old Amos and Andy show, came to my house with my dad when I was about 13. Don't ask me why. One time I gave Father Daniel Berrigan a ride to the airport. If you are old enough you will remember that Frs. Daniel and Phillip Berrigan were on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List in 1970, for their anti-Vietnam activities. We just chatted and talked about Hooterville. Father Daniel's major comment was about the local power plant. He was concerned that it might be nuclear powered. It isn't. Lee Marvin used to live here, before his unfortunate death. I was stopped at a traffic light one day and he rolled up next to me in an old pick up. He looked at me and I at him. We each gave a knowing nod and off he went. Except for the part where I stuck my head out the window and yelled, "Hey! It's Lee Marvin!" Then the was the time that the lovely Mrs. Sneed and I met Kris Kristofferson at the MDA telethon. That was in the days before we came to hate Jerry and his kids. Jerry more so than the kids. We were manning the phones and Mrs. Sneed got Kristofferson's attention by melodically blurting out, "Yoo Hoo, oh, Kris Kristofferson." Someone on the phone was willing to pledge if Kris would say hello to him. Yes, when it comes to celebrity sightings, the Sneeds are old hands. Over the weekend, a somewhat famous former professional athlete came in to the store. I wasn't quite sure if he was the famous former professional athlete or just some other muscular, handsome guy. The somewhat famous former professional athlete is not Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or A-Rod famous. Just say he had a decade-long career with a famous American professional athletic team. It finally dawned on me that this customer was the somewhat famous former professional athlete. So, I asked him about it. What a smart guy would have said was, "Aren't you XXXX?" What I did say was, "Should I know who you are?" He said, "I don't know, should you?" We finally got around to the part where he said he was him, but it took more back and forth than it should have. He left me with the impression that I should have minded my own business. Guess so. But then, I've made an ass of myself in front of bigger guys than that. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky