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Burton Cole

The old man and the staring at whatever he sees

I must have watched the old guy for 20 minutes, maybe more. All he did was sit at that table with his coffee and stare out the window. I couldn’t understand it. How can someone just sit for extended periods of time and do nothing but stare at something? Or nothing? I studied him for another 10 or 15 minutes. Every so often, he sipped the coffee, so I knew he was alive. He never looked at the coffee. He continued to stare out the window at… what? Not being an old man who simply sits and stares, I shifted my gaze out the window to see if I could figure out what so intrigued the ...

I’ll trade Green Stamps for an Amazon truck

Gather ’round, kiddies, and your ol’ Uncle Burtie will tell you about how we survived in the ancient days before Amazon. Oh, yes, it’s true, there was a time before Prime and FedEx trucks roamed the land. I was there. I also remember when there was no such thing as the Super Bowl, Snoop Dogg or Google. Seriously. Back in those dark days — well, not really dark because we spent a lot more time playing outdoors in the sunshine — instead of scrolling through screens and screens of shopping options, we licked sheets and sheets of S&H Green Stamps. I swear that I am not ...

Revisiting bygones with cake in my face

I was a twig-sized seventh-grader at Rowe Junior High School — the puniest of ranks in the strangest and most emotionally unstable three years of a human being’s “wonder years.” I sat at a table with my loud and obnoxious friends in an echo chamber of a lunchroom full of loud and obnoxious strange and emotionally unstable pre- and newly minted teens. As I lifted a hunk of Mom’s chocolate cake to my mouth — because, why waste time using a fork — one of the big kids, a blond-headed ninth-grader in a jean jacket, and his buddies passed our table. The big kid casually ...

In a pig’s eye, I understand what you said

I mopped my brow with the bottom of my T-shirt. “I am sweating like a pig.” “Nope.” Cousin Ollie shook his head. “Pigs don’t sweat.” “Then how come we say ‘sweating like a pig’?” “WE don’t. YOU do. Real farm kids know better.” I sighed. “My mom says my room looks like a pig pen. Why are pigs so dirty?” “They’re not, doofus. Pigs are clean critters. They’re almost as clean as cats, if you want to let that cat out of the bag.” “Why was the cat in the bag?” “Who knows why cats do anything? Or why grownups say weird things like ...

Burt’s Eye View: I just had a thought. Now, what was it?

Writing a column every week is hard. Not the writing so much. It’s the coming up with topics week after week that taxes the nooks and crannies of my cerebrum, cerebellum and Cocoa Wheats. That’s why I keep a file of random thoughts and observations — to goose the gerbils in my brain to germinating ideas. Let’s take a gander at a few of these eggs. • Maybe eating a doughnut wasn’t cheating on my diet. Maybe going on a diet was cheating on my doughnut. • When I was a toddler, I didn’t care about things like what to wear. My parents dressed me. Looking back on some of ...

Some football, Phil and fondue: Welcome, February

As I rooted around for inspirational quotes about February, I came across this ridiculousness: “February: Our last chance to NOT play in the snow.” Whichever great philosopher came up with that piece of faux wisdom obviously isn’t from northeast Ohio! We can NOT play in the snow all the way through April. Sometimes even May. NOT playing in the snow, especially with a shovel, is among my favorite activities in life. I used to play in the snow many years ago. I gave it up for old age. Or maybe old age crept up on me when I stopped playing in the snow. All I know is a chair, a ...